Author: Dan Seeger

Everything ElseLeave a comment

How long to sing this song? How long to sing this song?

Dan Seeger

“You’d have to be a clod to feel you’re young again. If you felt youthful, it would be a snap. Far from feeling youthful, you feel the poignancy of her limitless future as opposed to your own limited one, you feel even more than you ordinarily do the poignancy of every last grace that’s been lost. It’s like playing baseball with a bunch of twenty-year-olds. It isn’t that you feel twenty because you’re playing with them. You note the difference every second of the game.” — Philip Roth, The Dying Animal Today is Clint Eastwood’s birthday. Somewhere in Carmel he … Continue reading How long to sing this song? How long to sing this song?

Everything ElseLeave a comment

Gary Coleman, 1968 – 2010

Dan Seeger

Gary Coleman was the first actor I knew by name. I’ve been mulling that over for the past day, and I think it’s true. He was a kid when I was a kid, but he was also a star. When I watched most TV shows at that time, I was thinking about them strictly in terms of characters–Archie Bunker or Arthur Fonzarelli. But when I watched Gary Coleman in something, I was always aware that I was watching him, a kid like me. I was eight-years-old when Diff’rent Strokes debuted on NBC, and even a little bit younger when I … Continue reading Gary Coleman, 1968 – 2010

MusicLeave a comment

One for Friday: Abra Moore, “Four Leaf Clover”

Dan Seeger

Once I wrested myself away from the glum world of commercial radio in the late-nineties, I wanted to get back to what I loved about broadcasting in the first place. I wanted to discover new music, I wanted to build diverse playlists, I wanted to talk about artists that were worth talking about. My best bet was to find some sort of return to college radio. The opportunity came at Christmas. As fate would have it, the holidays found me trekking back to the central Wisconsin city where I went to college, and I knew from first-hand experience that there … Continue reading One for Friday: Abra Moore, “Four Leaf Clover”

FilmLeave a comment

Jewison, Pollack, Roemer, Sommers, Spielberg

Dan Seeger

In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967). I guessed that this film would seem painfully dated. Instead, Jewison’s police drama about a black Philadelphia homicide detective called upon to help solve a murder case in a small Southern town where rampant bigotry still rules the culture holds up nicely. It’s somewhat an artifact of its time, but a dramatically sound one. Jewison makes his points with care, always grounding the conflicts in believable situations populated by well-drawn characters. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in clean, gripping storytelling. Rod Steiger won an Oscar for his … Continue reading Jewison, Pollack, Roemer, Sommers, Spielberg

Books, ComicsLeave a comment

Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“It was the boredom that comes of being cut off from everything that could make life sweet, or arouse curiosity, or enlarge the range of the senses. It was the boredom the comes of having to perform endless tasks that have no savour and acquire skills one would gladly be without. I learned to march and drill and shoot and keep myself clean according to Army standards; to make my bed and polish my boots and my buttons and to wrap lengths of dung-colored rag around my legs in the approved way. None of it had any great reality for … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

Comics1 Comment

Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Four

Dan Seeger

#34 — In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997) In the Company of Men unquestionably depicts vile, misogynistic behavior, but does the film itself traffic in the same abject hatefulness? That’s the question that dogged Neil LaBute’s feature directorial debut when it was released. The film follows a pair of corporate drones on an extended business trip to a branch office. In order to chip away at their boredom, and to exact some sort of cosmic retribution against women who they feel have wronged them in the past, they agree to romance and then dump a pretty deaf secretary … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Four