The background information on The Window, the fifth and latest album by Chicago band Ratboys, suggests they knew they had material that would benefit from an added level of commitment. The quartet broke from the usual practice of recording in … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Window
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. In the late nineteen-eighties, getting the first issue of new comic … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Silver Surfer by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers
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. Many comic performers are … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Slipnutz Open for Slipknot
Rather than type out a whole bunch of words, I will cede the floor to the Bard of Barking. Continue reading Happy Labor Day
16. Pretenders, Pretenders (1979) Chrissie Hynde had every reason to believe that a career in rock ‘n’ roll simply wasn’t going to work out for her. The native of Akron, Ohio had kicked around on the fringes of the music … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #16
Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America by Will Bunch Until the mainstream news media comes to its collective senses and starts reporting with proper alarm on the Republican party’s cult-like adherence to despotic tendencies, writers … Continue reading Outside Reading — Burying the Lead edition
“Getting Bitter,” the new track from New Jersey–based band Teenage Halloween, is a chewy, chunky blast of pop punk. It call to mind the Beths when they’re in a louder mode, and that includes in the way the bouncy music … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Teenage Halloween, “Getting Bitter”
CABLE TIES All Her Plans (Poison City/Merge) — The Melbourne, Australia trio Cable Ties comes into their third album with a fine fury. All Her Plans opens with “Crashing Through,” which skews close enough to vintage Sleater-Kinney to flap anyone’s … Continue reading Medium Rotation — All Her Plans; I Inside the Old Year Dying
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. By the middle of the twenty-tens, I had mostly stopped paying attention to movie posters. This was … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Moonlight movie poster
Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years. To understand how distinctly unique Malcolm … Continue reading Golden Words — Malcolm in the Middle, “Pilot”
Coffee for Two 