It is television’s biggest night, a night to honor the finest achievements of a medium that is continuing to grow and prosper. For all the darts that can be justifiably thrown at the systematic support of individuals who crave celebrity … Continue reading And the drinks have been drunk, and the ships have been sunk
Just about a year ago, I noted that I was happily and proudly letting a long-term subscription to Entertainment Weekly lapse. Earlier this summer, they lured me back with a rate so low that I half expect the subscription to … Continue reading All in Color for Two Dimes
While I try to not to be stuck in the past about such things, I’m always pleased to rediscover one of the songs or artists that was a major part of my youthful college radio days. It’s especially nice if the process is triggered in a unique way. Not just stumbling on a forgotten disc while scanning they collection or hearing the song on the radio (although with most of the music that has slipped to the back of my memory, hearing it on a radio station these days would beyond unexpected to staggering), but instead a route that never … Continue reading One for Friday: Lloyd Cole, “She’s a Girl and I’m a Man”
It’s been almost fifteen years since Bill Watterson retired his brilliant comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. The kids entering college this fall have no recollection whatsoever of ever seeing new adventures of the boy and his tiger in the newspaper. … Continue reading A friend is a friend, nothing can change that
Black Dynamite (Scott Sanders, 2009). An inspired spoof of nineteen-seventies Blaxploitation films, Black Dynamite stars Michael Jai White as the title character, who dispenses justice on the mean streets while searching for his brother’s killer. Sanders gets the tone exactly right, mocking the conventions of the subgenre without lapsing into condescension. There’s a clear affection here, a conviction that no matter what else the original films may have been, they were also fun. How many movies can have claim major climactic sequences taking place on Kung Fu Island? Clever as it is, it’s a hard conceit to sustain over the … Continue reading Aldrich, Huston, Kore-Eda, Lee, Sanders
Twenty-sixth in a a series. (Due credit) Continue reading Just like a doll, I am one foot tall, but dolls can’t see anyway
I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the “Awful Library Books” Website is the digital gift that keeps on giving. I hope that picture was submitted to the Pulitzer committee that year, and at least one of … Continue reading Bloody your hands on a cactus tree, wipe it on your dress and send it to me
And now…on with the countdown… 5. Pixies, “Head On” My true confession for today is that, despite the cultural imperative associated with involvement in college radio during a span of time when the eighties gave way to the nineties, I was never all that excited by The Pixies. They were the cool band of the era, the one you could cite to prove that you had genuine taste and proper passion for the music played on college radio. I played them plenty, and I like several songs, but they didn’t really click for me. I like them far more now … Continue reading College Countdown: Winter 1991, 5-1
#19 — Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) During the first part of his career, Steven Spielberg made the sort of movies he could have dreamed up as a kid. Like may good artist finding his way, he was making … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Nineteen
I greatly appreciate the way that this series of tubes that we call the Internet has completely changed our access to art, especially music. There was a time when getting exposed to something new often meant plowing through the architecture dances of music reviews in various publications and trying to imagine what the album sounded like from the collection of sonic descriptors. Unless the material was embraced by radio or got exposure on some television showcase, the only way to actually hear it involved plunking down hard-earned dollars, something that was in short supply in my youth. Now, even those … Continue reading One for Friday: Debbie Harry and Kermit the Frog, “The Rainbow Connection”
Coffee for Two 