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 spring of 2007, few artists … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”
940. Dead Kennedys, Frankenchrist (1985) Frankenchrist, the third album from Dead Kennedys, should have been a celebratory return to recording for a band that helped define hardcore punk. The group had withdrawn from active engagement with making their own music, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #940 to #937
I thought by now I’d already transferred any and all writing I’ve done on superhero movies into this space, but it turns out I was mistaken. Perhaps it was a internalized defense mechanism preventing me from even taking a moment … Continue reading From the Archive — X-Men: Last Stand
In the late nineteen-sixties, New Zealand club owner Ken Cooper wanted a house band. The patrons shuffling in and out of The Plaice were fans of psychedelic music, so that’s the sound Cooper sought, assembling a handful of local musicians … Continue reading One for Friday — The Avengers, “Everyone’s Gonna Wonder”
#36 — Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne in Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015) As impressive as the Marvel Studios business model of craftily interlocking films has been (and markedly difficult for others to replicate), the actual cinematic quality of their … Continue reading Greatish Performances #36
“They had dozens of sexual partners before they married each other. Dance floor romances, Ibiza flings. The nineties, ecstatic decade! They were married though they needn’t have married, and though both had sworn they never would be. It is hard … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
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 West Coast Avengers first hit comic shops, in the summer … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — West Coast Avengers by Roger Stern and Bob Hall
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. There was a sad, … Continue reading Laughing Matters — “Hulk Sell Cars”
944. David Johansen, Here Comes the Night (1981) Being a legend is nice, but alone it doesn’t keep the debt collector satisfied. As the frontman of the New York Dolls, David Johansen could lay a claim to being among the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #944 to #941
Emma Stone and Jonah Hill have been nominated for the same number of Academy Awards. Stone’s win obviously gives her the edge in any tallying up of awards acclaim, but it remains an odd alignment given that any reasonable assessment … Continue reading From the Archive — Superbad
