REVIEW SEARCH

In addition to perusing a simple list you can use this search engine to find anything in the old reviews, the special movie essays, the old reader polls, the sample back issues of the Fun House, or the Other Crap archives. The default selection includes everything in a comprehensive search, but you can restrict the search to individual sections by changing the [All Areas] selection in the form below.

Important tips:

• If you choose "a specific phrase," and search for Bill Shatner, the results will only reflect when those words appear together in that sequence.

• If you choose "all of these words," the results will reflect pages which have the word bill and the word shatner, but in any order. The page may include a reference to both Melanie Shatner and Bill Holden, for example.

• If you choose "any of these words," the results will reflect pages which have either the word bill or the word shatner. That will be a lot of pages, so you need to think carefully about using the "any" option in general. There is another, more useful way to use "any." You can use it if you choose to exclude words. Choose "any" and type in +shatner -bill -william, and you'll get the times when I referred to him by last name only (or perhaps referred to his daughter).

When I tried the Bill Shatner exercise on January 23rd, 2006, I got 109 pages for "phrase," 151 for "all," and 1046 for "any." I got 55 pages using the exclusion method described above.