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”
The Great Buster: A Celebration (Peter Bogdanovich, 2018). Rarely has a director been more in their element than Peter Bogdanovich is with this documentary survey of the life and career of Buster Keaton. The film features the requisite interviews with … Continue reading Now Playing — The Great Buster: A Celebration; X Y & ZEE; A Love Song
17. Thomas Dolby, The Golden Age of Wireless (1982) Upon its initial release, Thomas Dolby’s debut album had different track listings for its U.K. and U.S. versions. This was hardly an uncommon practice in the nineteen-eighties. What stands out all … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #17
New College is a warning about the price of populist incompetence by Don Moynihan Watching Republicans continue to savage the U.S. education system in every way they can think of, I’m reminded of George Carlin’s long-ago explanation for why this … Continue reading Outside Reading — Lower Learning edition
I suspect Billy Bragg was inspired to pick up his guitar by the laughable corollary drawn between the current #1 song in U.S. and the work of Woody Guthrie, a comparison made solely by right-wing ghouls operating with their usual … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Billy Bragg, “Rich Men Earning North of a Million”
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 early nineteen-eighties, daily newspaper the Dallas Times Herald had … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — The Uncanny X-Men at the State Fair of Texas by Jim Salicrup, David Kraft, Kerry Gammill, and Alan Kupperberg
There are many building blocks of the internet, but the cornerstones are think pieces, offhand lists, and other hollow provocations meant to stir arguments and, therefore, briefly redirect web traffic. Engaging such material is utterly pointless. Then again, it’s not like I … Continue reading Bait Taken — Vanity Fair’s 25 Perfect TV Episodes From the Last 25 Years
FEEBLE LITTLE HORSE Girl with Fish (Saddle Creek) — For Feeble Little Horse’s first studio album recorded under their pact with Saddle Creek (their previous LP was reissued by the stalwart indie label), the Pittsburgh band unleashes a torrent of … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Girl with a Fish; Time Ain’t Accidental; Joy’All
A couple weeks ago, I discovered I made a mistake on the current iteration of the College Countdown, which is tracking through the top one thousand albums on the college radio charts between 1979 and 1989. For all sorts of … Continue reading College Countdown Correction: #346
18. XTC, Skylarking (1986) XTC were handed an ultimatum from their record label. The trio had all the material needed to record a new studio album, which would be their eighth long-player under the XTC name (they’d also just released … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #18
