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. Last year, our household undertook the important task of determining the finest pumpkin … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: New Glarus Brewing Company Pumpkin Pie Lust
While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956). This noirish drama from director Fritz Lang takes aim at the seediness of the newspapers and the cutthroat competitiveness of those in the media, tiltimng at both with equal vigor. When the newspaper owner’s son (Vincent Price) takes control upon his father’s death, he uses the recent emergence of a serial murdered dubbed “the lipstick killer” to pitch his various reporters and editors against each other in an effort to preserve their jobs or even claim one of the plum new positions available. Lang’s curiosity about the darker instincts that drive people gives … Continue reading Abrahamson, Ford, Lang, Moodysson, Saulnier
9. Tom Waits, Big Time By now, Tom Waits is so solidly ensconced in the canon of cool music-makers that it can be difficult to remember that the man is something of an acquired taste. I once asked a deejay … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 9
This wasn’t the first writing I did for my college’s student newspaper, The Pointer, but I do believe it was the first full-length review I turned in. It’s not that much longer than the most robust pieces written for our radio show, right in the middle of its three-year run when this was published, but I presume I was feeling a little more pressure about the word count, evidenced by me essentially make the same point repeatedly in the last three paragraphs. As is often the case with newspapers, I take no credit nor blame for the headline, which I … Continue reading From the Archive: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Happy Halloween! Robyn Hitchcock, with and without Egyptians, has been featured in this weekly spot more than any other artist, so I’m perhaps running out of insights to offer. I will note that this song comes from Hitchcock’s 1988 album, Globe of Frogs, which almost certainly provided my first exposure to an artist who looms as large as any for me. The single “Balloon Man” was a somewhat unlikely MTV mini-staple for a time, and the smack of novelty to the song got it some further play elsewhere. Naturally, then, when I got to campus radio station in the fall … Continue reading One for Friday: Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, “Sleeping with Your Devil Mask”
#18 — Kurt Russell as R.J. MacReady in The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) Kurt Russell’s best performances are usually in characters that skew towards the everyman. Though I think some overly celebrate his self-consciously cool, tough guy roles in films … Continue reading Greatish Performances #18
#8 — Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953) There are few films in the canon of necessary classics as quiet, tender, and elegiac as Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Accurate as that description may be, emphasizing the fulsome quiet of the film … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Eight
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 reading comic books as a kid, a superhero … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Super-Villain Team-Up #12 by Bill Mantlo and Bob Hall
These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. The Manhattan Transfer formed in the city alluded to in their name in 1969. The may have chosen that moniker to declare their municipal origins, but it’s more specifically lifted from a 1925 John Dos Passos novel. The first album by the Manhattan Transfer, Jukin’, was released on Capitol Records in 1971. This iteration of the group proved to be short-lived, reportedly because … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Spice of Life”
10. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Nothing Wrong Nearly two years ago, my old online home away from home, Spectrum Culture, assembled a small panel of writers and music critics to hash out a list of the 13 Best Goth Albums … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 10
Coffee for Two 