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. My weariness overtook me … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Mr. Show, “Druggachusettes”
964. Sid & Nancy soundtrack (1986) I haven’t done the research to confirm my theory, but I believe Gary Oldman is the first and only winner of the Academy Award in the best actor in a leading role category who … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #964 to #961
Well, we should come up with something appropriate to the day, shouldn’t we? Once again, I raid my former online home, specifically traipsing through the two hundred installments of weekly exercises in crowdsourced music lists. Below is the prompt I … Continue reading From the Archive — Five for Friday, Guinness for Strength edition
Ages ago, I was engaged in one of those late night, multiple-beer-fueled, freewheeling conversations that only seem to happen in one’s collegiate years, when the constant exchange of ideas and theories is the coin of the realm. Since it was … Continue reading One for Friday — Jonathan Richman, “You Can Have a Cell Phone That’s OK But Not Me”
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. Raiders of the Lost Ark was released into theaters less than … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Raiders of the Lost Ark by Walt Simonson and John Buscema
Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014). In this wryly funny and wise rumination on aging and celebrity, the grand Juliette Binoche plays Maria, a movie star who is coaxed into a production of the play that made her a star, … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Clouds of Sils Maria; 13 Rue Madeleine; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Appropriately, I think, Gillian Flynn locked me in for good when I started reading one of her books in a drug store. I was waiting on a prescription, and I wandered over the the dispiritingly sparse selection of paperbacks. A … Continue reading My Writers — Gillian Flynn
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. When I first started buying superhero comics, in the early nineteen-eighties, there were a couple ads that … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Marvel subscriptions
968. Jorma Kaukonen, Barbecue King (1981) Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen was carrying a sturdy rock legacy with him when he recorded the album Barbecue King. He was also toying with that storied reputation, which might very well have been the album’s … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #968 to #965
As means of congratulating the highly deserving winner of this year’s Best Directing Academy Award, I will excavate one this review of an old Guillermo del Toro film, which I believe stands as the final such writerly relic that can … Continue reading From the Archive — Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Coffee for Two 