These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. Now this is a movie poster. Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Art of the Sell” tag. Continue reading The Art of the Sell: The Birth of a Nation
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. When I first moved to Asheville, North Carolina, the hours of my job were quite demanding, especially on the weekends. Every once in a while, as I toiled away on some Friday or Saturday night responsibility, I got joyful, needling dispatches from those who were engaged in happy tomfoolery out and about. There were friends down from Wisconsin on one of those occasions, and they were taking on the town with my partner-in-all-things. Among their stops was … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Stone Brewing Arrogant Bastard Ale
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. It started with a hand-me-down. I and my partner-in-all-things were visiting some friends in the bustling metropolis of Milwaukee. One of them, a fellow youthful victim of the comic book siren song, presented a gift. It was a old comic book, clearly well-read as the glossy front had the approximate texture of crushed taffeta. The cover promised to introduce us to “THE MACABRE MENACE OF CAPTAIN OMEN AND HIS UNHUMAN HORDES!” The only … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Incredible Hulk by Steve Englehart and Herb Trimpe
172. The Police, “Message in a Bottle” By Sting’s reckoning, “Message in a Bottle” was a breakthrough for him as a songwriter. He estimated that he’d been noodling with the guitar riff, mentally and otherwise, for about a year before he started to pull it together with some stray ideas for lyrics. That approach of working on music and lyrics as entirely disconnected properties that eventually converged was very much his preferred process at the time. Placing words against the music began with the title. “Message in a Bottle” was written down in his notebook, causing Sting to free associate on the term, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 172 – 170
This review was written fairly early in the run of The Reel Thing, the movie review radio show I co-hosted from 1990 to 1993. I worked as hard on this piece as anything I wrote in those first months of the show, because I knew I was out of step with the broader critical community. More than that, I knew my partner on the program absolutely loved this film, so I had to make my case as sharp and compelling as possible. As soon as I was done, there was going to be an on-air fight. It wasn’t going to … Continue reading From the Archive: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
I’ve got a strange, new concert-going tradition, inadvertent and entirely out of my hands. For the past couple of years, I’ve had multiple instances where I’ve seen shows that fall into the category of long-awaited. In all of those instances, I stood in the crowd with a single song in mind. I wasn’t some agonized hipster, pining for a minor obscurity unlikely to be played. In every instance, it was a single, or at least a track that was pushed as such. In no instance was it some deal-breaking tragedy if it didn’t get played, but I stood ready for it nonetheless. … Continue reading One for Friday: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, “Bag of Hammers”
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’s obviously an admirable surplus of material from the sketch comedy series Key & Peele that is engaged in the most significant political and social concerns of the current era. Much as I admire that, my true weakness when it comes to the collaborative work of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele is for their jabs at the entertainment business. I find that material to be … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “Ray Parker, Jr. Theme Songs”
Tomorrow morning, Anthony Anderson and Lauren Graham will take to a podium in North Hollywood and announce at least of portion of the hefty list of Emmy nominees, celebrating (ostensibly) the best in television programming for the past year or so, doggedly sticking to model that pretends the traditional broadcast season running from September to May is still reflective of how this part of the entertainment field operates. Around these here digital parts, it is tradition for me to weigh in with my highly compromised top ten in television on the eve of that announcement. I begin with an acknowledgement of fallibility because it is … Continue reading Top Ten Television, 2015-2016 season
“After that, I started walking. I walked aimlessly for over an hour, through the driving rain. The pedestrianized centre of Ashbury was mine alone. I decided, somewhere along the walk, that I have to do something. I have to make amends for being insufficient.” –Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train, 2015 IT’S AS IF PART OF THE SKY HAD TURNED TO LIVING FLAME. BEFORE THEIR EYES, A BLOOD-HUED BEAM OF ENERGY LANCES UPWARD FROM THE MUSEUM AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, WASHING THE LANDSCAPE IN ANGRY, GARISH SHADES OF CRIMSON. SOMEONE NEAR PETER SCREAMS. A GRIM-FACED POLICE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I can’t overstate the primacy of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars in my day-to-day fashion choices. My default icon on social media outlets provides some insight as to dominance of the footwear brand on the lower level of my closet. Accordingly, I have a perpetual weakness for the various print ads over the years that promoted the brand, largely because of how ridiculously off-base they often were. Few please me more than the mid-eighties campaign that posited Chucks … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “Limousines for Your Feet”
