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Author Archives: Mr. Dan Kelly

Chicago writer interested in many things.

Peace Be Upon Them

Friday, September 11, 2015

Another piece from my stint as a church reviewer with the Chicago Journal. I visited the center and wrote this a week or so after the attacks. My Islam knowledge came from the Internet and a book about salat. Find this and other church reviews/religious essays in my book Hilaretic. Downtown Islamic Center 218 S. […]

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künstwerk

Friday, September 11, 2015

Reprinting a couple of pieces of mine from the months after September 11. künstwerk Review of the here is new york photo exhibit February 4–March 30, 2002 In the shaky days after Sept. 11, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was roundly misquoted as describing the WTC attacks as the greatest work of art ever. Not so. […]

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Ann Rule Died

Monday, August 3, 2015

For a long time I was quite the aficionado of true crime books. I had a fascination with serial murder for a good part of my young life. I published a zine about it, in fact. I probably read most of the books Rule published before the early 1990s. She, John Waters (who also collected […]

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Grin Weeper

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

I spent several days writing about a distressing event that recently happened to me. Happened to someone else, actually, with me in close proximity. I use the word “traumatic” sparingly. I’m not going to argue semantics, but it’s one of those words bandied about too freely these days. There are truly traumatic events—things involving death, […]

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My Deeply Held Beliefs Say Go to Hell

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Oh…you want to use my services? Yeahhhhh, that’s a problem. Look you seem nice and all, but I just can’t do it, because what you…do…and are…is…frowned upon by my religion. But I have an excellent reason for discrim…uh, declining to serve you. See, my ancestors chose to follow an abridged version of a religion practiced […]

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“X-Offender” by Blondie: A Researched Rumination by Dan Kelly

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Recently, Liz Mason of Quimby’s asked me to do a reading at a performance by the Blue Ribbon Glee Club, an adorable punk rock singing ensemble she belongs to, and whom you must see the next time they perform. Pure joy. The band sang three songs, and two other writers and I delivered essays inspired […]

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RIP, Leonard Nimoy

Friday, February 27, 2015

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Put on your pointed ears, speak in a sonorous baritone. Silence the communicator, put your phaser in its box Bring out the coffin, live long and prosper, Spock.

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Help Me Identify the Skiing Cat-Human Dog Murder Film I Saw at Age Five(?)

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Internet has helped me solve numerous mysteries over the years, mostly in the vein of “What was that film/song/book/TV show where the ______ did _____?” Here’s a new one that I’d sure like to solve before I die. Long ago, probably in the first half of the 1970s, I went to see a movie […]

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THIS IS THE BEST POST EVER. LET US DISCUSS THIS FOREVER.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Two highly successful talented and attractive people who have money to burn and have traveled the world doing what they love have an equally rich and talented person complaining that one of them deserves to add yet another award they’ve all already earned several times before to her trophy cabinets, because it’s a god damned […]

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Passion

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

I experience passion in short spurts of time. I’m in awe of anyone who can sustain passion about a subject for months or years and especially to their death. Even when nothing, absolutely nothing captivates me about a subject, I can listen to a true fan—provided he or she is reasonably lucid—for hours. I envy […]

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