JUST BEAR WITH ME…

…maintains that each of us has powerful and interesting stories to tell.

WHAT IS Just Bear With Me…?

This is where I tell stories with data, often using tales from my own life to provide context. My story-telling style – call it “annotated meandering” – inspired this site’s name. Just bear with me…I do get to the point.

The cover photograph shows the Vale Rio Diner, which used to sit at the intersection of Routes 23 and 113 in Phoenixville, PA. It appears prominently here.

This is also where I promote and sell my books, starting with Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own.

Here is what some folks I respect say about it:

David Mayhew: “Greatly have I enjoyed your new book, which kept me glued! It all flows well. Film noir is a real fetching theme! What an expert and connoisseur you are!”

Larry Harnisch: “It’s a good one!”

Morgan Richter: “I am enjoying it immensely.”

I also promote other brilliant storytellers, because we creators need to support each other.

Matt Baume makes entertaining, intelligent and thought-provoking videos about queer representation in mass media. Here is his excellent recent book. Similarly, Jarred Corona pours out his heart in every queer-themed video he produces, doing so with insight and integrity.

If you grew up in the 1980s, you will love Richter‘s When Gen X Ruled the Multiplex series. It is like chatting with an old friend about movies.

Robin Bailes of Dark Corner Reviews mixes in-depth analyses of classic horror films with short streaming reviews and hysterical looks at truly awful horror films. Yes, he went here.

Polyphonic and Trash Theory make the best videos about the history of pop music I have ever seen.

The struggles of Matt Murray of Corn Pone Flicks with the absurd and arcane copyright rules of YouTube are legendary. His David Lynch analysis videos rank among the best.

Nick Hodges carefully separates fact from fiction in historical movies on his HistoryBuffs channel, while the folks at Kurzgezagt tell beautiful animated stories about, well, everything.

FuzzCulture makes insightful videos about the modern world’s active suppresion of creativity.

While the husband and wife team in The House of Tabula (formerly The Cinema Cartography) can be a bit pretentious, few are as passionate and knowledgeable about film as an art form. Shoutouts also to Be Kind Rewind, Cinema Cities, Thomas Flight and Patrick H Willems.

Do I agree with everything these creators say? Of course not. But they do the hard work to back up their insights and opinions, and I applaud and respect that.

THE BLOG

Since my YouTube channel is my only social media outlet, when I have something brief to say, I will put it here. Older entries may be found here.

January 2, 2026: Were I a voting member of the Baseball Writers of America, these would be my 10 picks for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2026:

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltran, Mark Buehrle, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Andruw Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Andy Pettitte, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.

It is my habit to choose the maximum 10 names to keep borderline names on the ballot, allowing time for the strongest case to be made for them.

December 31, 2025: It is perhaps fitting that I close out a tumultous 2025 by saying a final goodbye to a television series that has been a welcome guest in our home for the last six years.

I did not begin watch Stranger Things until the fall of 2019, when the first three seasons had already aired. All I did was watch the cold open of the first episode, and – as had happened almost 10 years earlier with the first few minutes of the Doctor Who episode “The Eleventh Hour” – I knew I was a goner. My wife Nell and our two children followed suit immediately.

While Season 3 was entertaining enough, I never really warmed to Season 4 (to explain would be to spoil). And I still maintain Stranger Things could easily have ended after two seasons, as the narrative arcs had reached a satisfying conclusion. Season 5 had its ups and downs, but…I am surprisingly satisfied with the way it ended.

In fact, the Duffer Brothers did something extraordinary in the final episode. Blasting through the exhaustion I was starting to feel, they reminded me – us – what had made the show great in the first place: the interlocking webs of friendships, the power of community, the notion that we are strongest when we work together, and the reality that we all continue to grow and change and ultimately need to get on with the next phase in our lives.

And so, it is with both sadness and gratitude I say a final goodbye to Eleven/Jane and Kali, to Mike and Lucas and Dustin and Will, to Nancy and Jonathan and Steve, to Max and Robin, to Joyce and Hopper, to Murray and Mr. Clark, to Erica and Holly and Vicki and Derek and Susie, to Vecna and the Mind Flayer and the Demodogs, and to all those we lost along the way.

Thank you.

December 19, 2025: Nine years ago today, I took the plunge. With the essay “Welcome, and just bear with me,” I launched this website.

This proved to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Because this website is and always has been free, I have been able to present my thoughts and data-driven conclusions honestly and openly. I have done so through essays of a few thousand words in length – 298 and counting – and, since December 2022, in shorter forms like this. I am beholden to nobody but myself, so I can be completely candid.

In purely numeric terms – views, subscribers, shares – Just Bear With Me has not been traditionally “successful.” But those are not my benchmarks. Every view is one more than I had before Just Bear With Me: zero. Eight of my essays have been viewed more than a thousand times, and 14 more than 500 times, as folks continually rediscover them.

I am grateful to every single viewer, and I am humbled by your ongoing interest.

It is important to reiterate why I started this website in December 2016. After decades of denial and self-medication, I had just begun to take a daily antidepressant (Effexor). I have since doubled my daily dosage from 37.5 mg to 75 mg. This proved to be life-altering, in the best way. Taking Effexor blew out the cobwebs and allowed me to begin to move past the crippling self-doubt preventing me from putting whatever it was I had to say out into the world. Most important, I realized that the only person I needed to please here was me.

Because I launched Just Bear With Me, moreover, I wrote the essay that formed the basis for my first book, which is the basis for all subsequent books (see updates below). Just Bear With Me and Effexor also enabled me, at long last, to pursue the story of my adoption and genetic heritage, another key element of my book. Along those lines, I had my older legal sister Mindy (who recently entered hospice care) genetically-tested using an Ancestry test kit. Mindy is the only genetic child of my legal parents, David Louis and Elaine (Kohn) Berger, meaning she is the perfect stand-in for me had I not been adopted. From this testing – for which I am supremely grateful to her caregivers for patiently extracting sufficient saliva – I expect to learn even more about our joint ancestry, overcoming the limits of existing records.

In short: thank you, everyone, for going on this journey with me. We are only just getting started here, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

December 15, 2025: Assuming the initial news reports are correct, Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were stabbed to death at their Brentwood, CA home yesterday afternoon. These are devastating losses, and my heart goes out to their loved ones.

While I did not watch All in the Family as a child, despite my father loving the show, I was well aware that someone named “Rob Reiner” played Michael “Meathead” Stivic. I knew that he was the liberal counterpoint to his conservative father-in-law Archie Bunker. And I later learned his father Carl was a comedy legend.

My true introduction to Rob Reiner, though, came in the spring of 1985. My then-girlfriend had just seen a new movie called The Sure Thing, directed by Reiner, and she saw some of me in John Cusack’s college freshman Walter “Gib” Gibson. She watched it again with me, and this charming, highly-quotable updating of It Happened One Night quickly became one of my favorite films. To this day, I say things like, “Spontaneity has its time and its place,” “I have a credit card. You have a credit card. Oh, my dad told me specifically I can only use it in case of an emergency. Well, maybe one will come up,” “He doesn’t even know that Cassiopeia was the mother of Andromeda,” “You’re failing English. That’s like, your mother tongue and stuff” and “I was married once. Boy am I glad she’s dead.”

Around this time, I also watched This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner’s 1984 directorial debut. While much of its dry humor was lost on me at first, rewatches have shown me how brilliant and funny it is. And then there is The Princess Bride (1987), the one Reiner-directed film we have shared with our daughters…so far.

These are the three Reiner-directed films I have seen multiple times. I have also seen Stand By Me (1986), When Harry Met Sally (1989) and The American President (1995) one time each. At some point, I expect I will finally watch A Few Good Men (1992). Misery (1990), not so much.

Reiner had a string of seven films from 1984 to 1992 that average 7.7 on IMDb, ranging between a respectable 7.0 (The Sure Thing) and a laudable 8.1 (Stand By Me). This astonishing run of excellence speaks to what a deft filmmaker Reiner was. His movies were entertaining yet substantive, both serious and funny, and filled with dialogue befitting the son of a gifted comedy writer.

In recent years, Reiner was best known as a liberal activist. He routinely appeared on MSNBC in 2016, for example, to warn against the dangers of electing Donald Trump. Simply put, Rob Reiner was a social and cultural force of nature with a commendable legacy. His voice of moral clarity will be deeply missed.

Rest in peace, Mr. and Mrs. Reiner.

BOOK WRITING UPDATES

[As of April 2025] Rather than revise Interrogating Memory (“IM”), I intend to write two new books – essentially forming an IM trilogy. The first, which draws from the first four chapters of IM, is The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). TWPS focuses entirely on my Jewish ancestors, from their late-19th century migrations from the Pale of Settlement through my private adoption in 1966. It is another love letter to Philadelphia and my Jewish heritage, reminding us of the vital role immigrants played – and continue to play – in the economic and social well-being of the United States. The title riffs on the play and film The Philadelphia Story, which my mother, born Elaine Kohn in 1938, thought reflected life on the other side of nearby City Avenue.

I thought that once I rearranged Chapter 2 (Tragedy By the Oakford Bridge), I would have completed a full first draft of TWPS. However, I keep uncovering new information, pushing such a draft further into the future.

The second book, still in the planning stages, will have a title something like Diners and Other Idiosyncracies (“DOI”). The key theme of DOI will be the need to live own’s one life in one’s own way, while still behaving like a responsible adult. Starting with the history of my genetic families, it builds upon the last five chapters of IM. Rather than being strictly chronological, however, each chapter will explores a specific theme: identity, popular culture, mental health, solitary night driving, diners and other family restaurants, critical thinking, etc.

With a little luck and a lot of persistence, I will find a literary agent for these and all subsequent books.

WHO AM I?

Click here to learn about Matt (aka Dr. Noir).

WHAT ELSE WILL YOU FIND HERE?

The Noir of Who: Classic Film Noir’s Imprint on the Resurrected Doctor Who

Disease Testing Worksheet

WHAT DO I ASK FROM READERS?

Please continue to bear with me, while inviting others to do the same. I am grateful to everyone who clicks “Like” and comments in a respectful way. It truly is possible to disagree without being disagreeable.

And if you enjoy what you read here, please consider making a donation. Simply select a “quantity” of $1 payments equal to the amount you wish to donate. For example, to make a $5 donation to Just Bear With Me, you would select “5” under “Quantity.” I adopted this Rube Goldberg method because Stripe stopped processing payments to Just Bear With Me on October 23, 2024 for…reasons.

Thank you again to everyone who visits this website! I value every single view.

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HOW CAN YOU CONTACT ME?

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Please click here to offer your thoughts, ask me questions – or just say Hello!