These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. As the Hollywood hype machine does its thing, desperately attempting to revive the practice of summer moviegoing, … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade teaser trailer
Lauren Groff has logged time in places that are woven into my soul. Groff is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin — located in my hometown and current city of residence, Madison — and she teaches in the acclaimed … Continue reading My Writers — Lauren Groff
The town of Marfa was established in Southwest Texas, in the late eighteen-hundreds, because steam-engine locomotives needed a place to stop in their journey and replenish their water supply. A century and half later, the community endures. With a population … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Marfa Tapes
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. To coincide with the … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Anal Retentive Chef: Cajun Style
350. The House of Love, The House of Love (1988) Signed to Creation Records not long after their formation, the House of Love released a couple successful singles and seemed quickly, comfortably on their way to their debut full-length album, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #350 to #348
Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently by Amanda Hess This fantastic profile of Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, who also goes by the name Shuhada Sadaqat, offers a definitive, paper-of-record pardon of the artist’s notorious rending of a religious figure’s photograph. Better … Continue reading Outside Reading — Very Much an Irish Woman edition
Sometimes nothing hits my ears, and my heart, more sweetly than a new track that reminds me of the chiming, charming college rock when I regularly roamed the poster-covered walls of my beloved radio alma mater. “A Fake Idea,” the … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Hurry, “A Fake Idea”
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. Although I was a dedicated Marvel Comics reader after giving myself … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Six from Sirius by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy
The new album from the Danish band Iceage finds them on a sonic journey that used to be fairly commonplace. Among the titans of college rock who ruled the left end of the dial through the nineteen-eighties, there are a … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Seek Shelter
As part of his starring role in the 1974 caper flick 11 Harrowhouse, Charles Grodin provides the narration. His character is introduced while sitting glumly in a posh waiting area. Grodin’s distinctive voice flatly states: “That’s me there. I don’t … Continue reading Charles Grodin, 1935 – 2021
Coffee for Two 