Get your Dirt Shirt!

Get your Digger T-shirt! A full-color quality shirt from Poetic License Printing, be the first on your block to proudly display a creepy old dude who discovers a book of weird tales that can only be told in a comic book series.

wow, they would ban a book over anything

I grabbed this off the shelf at the local library as an audiobook, and because I have an interest in goats and am plotting out a young-adult novel. However, the book has nothing to do with goats. I was surprised by its bluntness and honesty and thought, "This is how kids really think, and not the way adults would like them to think." Which is why young-adult books sometimes are lousy, because they are written to placate and reassure adults. But teens are much harder to fool than adults.

Then I discovered it has actually been on the "banned books" list. I can understand why honesty would upset some people--the same kind of people that don't want to see those behavioral-health surveys that show what the kids are really up to. This book is 20 years old but still feels fresh. It's worth a read.

Haunted Wilkes Paranormal Conference

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley...here is the Old Wilkes Jail where Tommy Boy stayed while awaiting a rope around his neck. Some say he still "hangs out" here, and we'll find out this weekend at the Haunted Wilkes Paranormal Conference! The jail is one of six hunt sites we'll be exploring in Wilkesboro, NC.

Ziggy to ground control

Lego is cool, Bowie is cool, and now...Bowie Lego! The grandpappy of glam rock is now one of the stars of the Lego Rock Band video game that will be out this year. Hard to believe the cross-dressing creator of "Major Tom" and "The Man Who Sold The World" didn't just jump the shark (thanks to Let's Dance, Labyrinth, brilliant marketing, and Web guru-ness), he practically coaxed it into a kiddie pool and hand-fed it gummy worms.

The Hills Have Thighs

Normally, I'm not a fan of anything that makes fun of hillbillies, which is the last socioeconomicultural group that it's still okay for mainstream media to ridicule. But Bubba Cromer is one of "us," and he handles his hillbilly silliness with great sincerity. He assembles an amazing cast of non-actors and somehow gets them to buy into his over-the-top vision. Bubba, whose inaugural film "Bigfoot' took a legend to the woodshed and beat the tar out of it, returns with a story that promises laughs, banjos, and just a little bit hipper social commentary than your average Us magazine column. I don't know who is the "us" in Us, but I'm more at home with Bubba's folks.