I was going to begin this by blasting American Idol, but after sitting for nearly 20 minutes in front of a computer screen with nothing on it but a blinking cursor, I’ve decided to admit defeat. Is Idol the O’Doul’s beer of American music? Sure, it is. But American pop has never been very spicy […]

All right, show of hands – who out there buys the National Enquirer, or at least noodges through it while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout? Come on now, get ’em up, Uncle Stevie can see you through his magic word processor and knows if you’re holding back. Besides, I do it, and when […]

I write about pop culture here, but I had no more intention of writing about The Passion of the Christ than I had of writing about Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl booby prize. It takes me weeks instead of days to get my mutterings into print, and that means every talking (and writing) head in America […]

„The more things change, the more they remain the same,” some French wit said, but some things don’t seem to change at all. Back in ’69, when I was young and full of revolutionary fire, Jack Valenti and the MPAA’s motion picture ratings system attracted my less-than-admiring attention. In a column written for the University […]

I’ve been sick. Pneumonia. Three weeks of hospital time. Now I’m getting better. Did you miss me? After this column, you may not. But, if you remember way back at the start, I said I’d tell you exactly what I thought about American pop-cult, and if you didn’t like it… hey, grab a quarter and […]

In 1986, I sold a million hardcover copies of a novel called It, and found myself on the cover of Time, the J.K. Rowling of my day. For roughly 10 years thereafter, my sales remained at that giddy height. Then the numbers started to decline. My publishers estimate we may sell 600,000 copies of Wolves […]

It’s said that in the ’60s, when Francis Ford Coppola was but a lad, he found himself working on one of Roger Corman’s pictures. According to legend, Coppola convinced Corman, a low-budget junkie, to let him make his own film on the side using Corman’s equipment and crew. The film Coppola then made (in nine […]

(Author’s note: I’m sorry you have to wait two weeks for Part 2, but if you can deal with Kill Bill in two parts and The Lord of the Rings in three, I think you can deal with this. – Steve) Of course movies matter. But, you might ask, do movies really matter? Do they […]

In 1988-I think it was ’88-my older son asked if I’d take him to the Tyson-Spinks fight. You may remember it; this is the one that lasted roughly five punches and 38 seconds. When we got to the Trump venue where the fight was being held, a functionary whose job it was to collar „celebs” […]

I want to welcome you to the First Annual Hollywood Babble-On Competition. But before we get started, I have to be honest and say I’m a little disappointed with how this turned out. I had it all built up in my mind: how tough it was gonna be, how it was gonna win a cult-like […]