Plenty of television series have hung on longer than they should have, the dictates of commerce outweighing storytelling considerations at nearly every turn in the business of doing a show. But I don’t know if any long-running program so thoroughly … Continue reading That Championship Season — How I Met Your Mother, Season Two
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. Friends, Converse shoes have been my primary footwear for a long, long time, and I can assure … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Converse, “For guys who want to keep playing….”
As I’ve recounted elsewhere, I spent an embarrassingly long time trying the kick the habit of comic book collecting I plunged into as a kid. There was always one more series to hang on for, some promise of new wrinkles … Continue reading My Writers — Brian K. Vaughan
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. In the past several … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Muppets Tonight, “Sid Knishes and His Mosh-Pit-atoes”
928. John Cale, Honi Soit (1981) “Among the True Perverts of Rock, John Cale has always been the most persistently wanton,” Boo Browing wrote in The Washington Post around the time Cale released the album Honi Soit. I believe it … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #928 to #925
In the early nineteen-nineties, drab psychological thrillers were inescapable at the multiplex. At around the same time, Goldie Hawn clearly felt a need to take her career in a different direction. These situations converged, and it was not pretty. This … Continue reading From the Archive — Deceived
I wrote about Frightened Rabbit only once. When I was regularly churning out copy for Spectrum Culture, I put in to detail the ingenuity of a track from the band’s sterling 2013 album, Pedestrian Verse, as a contribution to the … Continue reading One for Friday — Frightened Rabbit, “Oil Slick”
It seemed entirely possible that any new music from Janelle Monáe would be a long time coming. Although she had already started the process of developing her third studio album when she stepped into the job of big-time movie actress, … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Dirty Computer
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. Daryl Hall and John Oates were ludicrously … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Don’t Hold Back Your Love”
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 was snapping up as many Marvel mags as my … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — What If? #19 by Peter Gillis and Pat Broderick
Coffee for Two 