These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. In the late nineteen-nineties and into the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Whiskey Lullaby”
For her feature directorial debut, Olivia Wilde wanted to up the intensity of a high school movie. Screenwriter Katie Silberman was brought in to rework a script that had already passed through a few word processors, and she says Wilde’s … Continue reading Now Playing — Booksmart
712. Redd Kross, Neurotica (1987) Technically, Neurotica is the first full-length studio effort by the outfit billed as Redd Kross. The band made their entrance with the 1982 LP Born Innocent, but they were going by Red Cross at the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #712 to #709
Don’t Let Nationalists Speak for the Nation by Jill Lepore This piece showed up in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, and it perfectly expresses one of the most painfully fraught dilemmas of the current political moment … Continue reading Outside Reading — It’s Not TV edition
I have my doubts as to whether the picture-to-words exchange rate still operates at a multiplier of one thousand, but I am sure that a photo can make a mighty promise. The arrival, through social media channels, of a studio-snapped … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sleater-Kinney, “Hurry On Home”
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. When I committed wholeheartedly to superhero comics, it was difficult for … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Swamp Thing by Alan Moore and John Totleben
U.F.O.F., the new album from Brooklyn-based band Big Thief, is a lovely, elusive work. The first three letters of the title stand for exactly what anyone would think they do, and the tacked on consonant represents the word “friend.” On … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — U.F.O.F.
Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955). Boasting an exemplary Paddy Chayefsky screenplay of downbeat eloquence, Marty manages to examine small-scale lives without a whiff of condescension. Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) is a thirty-four-year-old butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother (Esther … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Marty; A Kid Like Jake; The Lego Batman Movie
Instead of tapping out my pop culture observations, I will simply make note that other stories should take priority today. Continue reading Programming Note
716. Big Pig, Bonk (1988) Hailing from Melbourne, Australia — with a formative stop in the U.K. — Big Pig made a brand of propulsive dance music that feels very 1988. Eschewing guitars altogether and employing three different drummers, the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #716 to #713
Coffee for Two 