#26 — Hairspray (John Waters, 1988) The first time I saw Hairspray, it was in black-and-white. I was at the house of a college friend, watching the movie on his big console TV with suspect technical dependability. The color wasn’t … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Six
“I straightened up, took some more air, bent down, touched it, and pulled on the part that was showing. It came up without any trouble, and I sat down and went over it, brushing off the dirt. It was a bone, a human pelvis, and there was not any doubt about it. That’s a damn strange thing to be inside of somebody, I said to myself. And it was, and it is. What I know about skeletons has to do with animals and fish, and I had never seen anything like this except in the medical and first-aid books my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
We had a long holiday weekend and a pronounced need to purge our overloaded DVR with some of the uglier offerings taking up space. Under those circumstances, our household holds the belief that there’s one clear avenue to follow. We … Continue reading Bad Movie Night — The Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
15. The B-52’s, Cosmic Thing My knowledge of the B-52’s was limited enough in the summer of 1989, when their album Cosmic Thing hit the station, that I didn’t realize how difficult it probably was for the band to buckle … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 15
This week, I was all over the site, beginning with a movie review of a offbeat new documentary about, at least in part, the collision between man and nature in the American south. It’s a movie built on so much abstraction that it was a challenge to write about. It was also tough to write about the new New York Times documentary, though for different reasons. It’s a fairly straightforward work and picking out what does and doesn’t work with it was correspondingly straightforward. However, I have such an investment in trumpeting the continued valued of traditional mass media, that … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I know where I was and I know where Jackson Browne was on Independence Day in 1989. This was the first summer I spent as a dedicated employee of the college radio station in Stevens Point, filling airshifts on an almost daily basis. By the timeframe that covered the end of June and the beginning of July, my cohorts and I were starting to get a little anxious and needing some breaks from keeping our slice of the left end of the day operational. Luckily, that stretch of days corresponded nicely with Summerfest, the annual music, comedy and beer drinking … Continue reading One for Friday: Jackson Browne, “For America”
Sometimes I secretly wish Werner Herzog narrated all movies. Hell, I’d go see that new Transformers assault if it had running commentary from Herzog. (“And then the being that began as a motorcar undergoes a metamorphosis. He is now a … Continue reading Horses in my dreams, like waves, like the sea
#27 — Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) It’s worth considering Robert Redford’s place in the entertainment firmament when made Ordinary People in 1980. It was his first film as a director, so he was completely untried and untested in that capacity, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Seven
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. I used to be a sucker for limited series. While this … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Hawkeye by Mark Gruenwald
Coffee for Two 