Wes Phillips

Now that the dust has settled on The Deathly Hallows, Stephen King weighs in on the series and on J. K. Rowling. King, of course, is one of the few fiction authors who can write about Rowling's success without bitterness, and his thoughts on Rowling's craft are sharp. He also knows just a little bit about toiling in the genre-novel wilderness.

How The Simpsons has embiggened the English language.

As Jeff Wong and I took our daily constitutional along Brooklyn's Greenbelt this morning, we spotted these colorful boulders along the shore. You never know who you're going to run across in this borough.

Jon Carroll has a fine columnhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/…; this morning (no surprise there) that meanders from his thoughts on Die Hard (very Aristotlian) to the making of the Jeep and how the humvee influences our presence in Iraq.

Skunk Baxter has a new gig. After all, Steely Dan goes for years between tours.

"I wasn't scared," says Huckleberry. "I've seen Bagheera royally PO'd." Actually, he's generally the cause.

Richard Schickel ruminates on an American art form.