Follow Your Blixt – April 19, 2024
Interesting stuff happening or happened today. Not an exhaustive list. Definite liberal truth bias. The 19 feral cats who live on the grounds of Mexico’s Presidential Palace have been declared “living fixed assets” of the government by President Andrés Manuel López...
Follow Your Blixt – April 18, 2024
Interesting stuff happening or happened Thursday, April 18, 2024. Not an exhaustive list. Definite liberal truth bias. By Jan Blixt (@janblixt on Threads). Voting will run in 7 phases from April 19 to June 1 for India's national elections, THE biggest democratic...
Follow Your Blixt – April 17, 2024
I'm married to an avid news follower. Each day, Jan texts me snippets of the news she consumes while she's doing other things. I've long tried to convince her to make these public. Yesterday she started doing just that, on her Threads account (@janblixt) as well as on...
Recent Posts
Superhero Fatigue – It’s Not You, It’s The Storytelling
I don’t like to join in bashing films. It’s not fun for me. I don’t enjoy being cynical about things I love, or want to love. That said, I want to make an observation about “superhero fatigue.” It’s not that people are tired of superheroes. They’re tired of movies...
Nellie Bly Interviews Wives Of US Cabinet Secretaries
During the election of 1888, Nellie Bly spent a week interviewing the wives of the various candidates, then followed up by embarking on interviewing all the living former first ladies. This must have been well received, for here she is immediately following the...
EVE OF IDES: A Play Of Caesar And Brutus – Now Available!
Those who know my work will recognize my constant blending of Shakespeare and history. It entertains me to reconcile gaps in history with the characters and plots of Shakespeare's plays. I often use these to explore various quirks of history, as well as the growth of...
Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet – The Juliet Trap
There is a particularly pernicious trap awaiting actresses cast as Juliet. A similar trap awaits Lady Macbeth, though of a different nature, as well as several of the more archetypal male roles. But none of them are as insidious as The Juliet Trap. Here’s how it...
Nellie Bly And The Economites
In Quaint Old Economy Sunday, January 8, 1888 There Dwells a Sect With More Millions Than Members. Of the Thousand Who Followed George Rapp to America in 1805 Eighteen Now Remain—They Think the World Will End Before the Last of Them Dies—Quiet and Simple Life in a...
Nellie Bly’s Melancholy Christmas
Nellie Bly made several attempts at a regular column across her career. She was much more successful towards the end of her life, but she had a run of several months from the end of 1894 to early 1895 under the heading of "Nellie Bly Says." These seem to be nothing...
Nellie Bly Interviews Dr. Charles Parkhurst
In 1891, Dr. Charles Parkhurst, a clergyman elected president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime, launched a campaign against Tammany Hall's political and social corruption. He exposed their connections with the police and their role in shielding...
Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet: The King and the Beggar
In the space between the Capulet Ball and the famous Window Scene, we have a terrific mockery of love performed by an inebriated Mercutio, with a tipsy Benvolio laughing and shushing him. Early on, Mercutio tries to summon Romeo by invoking ‘love’: MERCUTIO Romeo,...
October Updates!
Hello, friends! Here's some October news from Blixt World. Collaborations are a joy. I'm working on two books with two friends of mine, Lisa Yarde and Shawn Pfautsch. The books themselves could not be different - one set in 15th-century Granada and the other in WWII...
Star Wars – Fixing Han’s Death
When I'm not writing, I teach theatre history. I often use Star Wars as an example of story structure, so naturally we discuss the films a little. Recently, a student asked me what changes I would make to Star Wars. It's a question I get a lot. Now, having grown up...
