These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. Jerry Lee Lewis wasn’t so sure about … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee”
The Slumber Party Massacre (Amy Holden Jones, 1982). Released in the heady days after John Carpenter’s Halloween made studios decide that the surest bet for quick cash was conveyor-belting out films featuring weapon-wielding maniac picking off teens one by one, … Continue reading Then Playing — The Slumber Party Massacre; The Fog; Barbarian
125. Pretenders, Pretenders II (1981) No one expected the Pretenders self-titled debut album to be a hit, or at least not a hit at the level it reached. The Pretenders only produced one Top 40 single in the U.S., the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #125 to #123
I’m a Teacher in Florida. The Anti-LGBTQ Rules Are Making the Job Nearly Impossible. by Abigail McLeod Writing for Slate, Florida teacher Abigail McLeod details the challenges she and her colleagues face in adhering to the vague, cruel, and unpredictably … Continue reading Outside Reading —Lessons edition
That guitar. It snarls to life so beautifully. Then the bass and drums join in, like nineteen-fifties hoodlums falling in line for a strut down the city block to signal neighborhood sovereignty. By the time Lexi McCoy starts in with … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Suzie True, “Backburner”
Jurnee Smollett runs like she means it. This is not a small matter in the first and only season of Lovecraft Country, the HBO series developed by and run by Misha Green. The show swoops in and out of genres … Continue reading That Championship Season — Lovecraft Country, Season One
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. The maestros of Marvel knew that The Legion of Monsters was … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Marvel Premiere #28 by Bill Mantlo and Frank Robbins
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Through my teenaged years, … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Late Night Presents: Halloween Costume Parade
Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, 1975). Based on a comic strip written by Jim Lawrence and drawn by Jorge Longarón that ran in the first half of the nineteen-seventies, Friday Foster features Pam Grier in the title role, a photojournalist who … Continue reading Then Playing — Friday Foster; Tokyo Joe; The Return of Doctor X
128. Haircut One Hundred, Pelican West (1982) Guitarist and vocalist Nick Heyward and bassist Les Nemes cycled through a few different bands together during the latter half of the nineteen-seventies, none of them really amounting to much. After a move … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #128 to #126
Coffee for Two 