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. Someday I must write … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Muppets Tonight: Johnny Fiama, “We Hardly Heard Ya”
Working from a warmly insightful screenplay he wrote with regular collaborator Tony Kushner, director Steven Spielberg turns the camera on his own history and emerges with a work that is arguably the most penetrating of his storied career. Heavily autobiographical, … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2022 — Number Four
74. Hoodoo Gurus, Mars Needs Guitars! (1985) After A&M Records blundered through the North American release of Stoneage Romeos, the debut album by Australia’s Hoodoo Gurus, the band and their homeland label, Big Time Records, initially decided to take matters … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #74 to #72
The Undoing of Affirmative Action by Emily Bazelon Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon reports on the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke as a precursor to the anticipation continuance of right-wing wet … Continue reading Outside Reading — Precedents edition
I stole the above photo from Pitchfork, callously cropping out the watermark they included. Given this transgression, I should quote and specifically link to the adoring article they published about the Asheville, North Carolina band Wednesday. Here’s writer Quinn Moreland … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Wednesday, “Bath County”
The opening passages of Decision to Leave move like an entire season of a serious-minded cable channel’s arty police procedural packed into a few minutes. Detective Jang Hae-jun (Park Hae-il), a stern insomniac, investigates a suspicious cliffside death, bringing him … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2022 — Number Five
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. On a day like today, when my environs are buffeted with frozen liquid … Continue reading Beers I Have Known — 3 Floyds Brewing Co. Rites of Ramm India Pale Ale
We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff Nonfiction, 2021 Marginalization was a federal policy in both Canada and the United States for 150 years. The purpose has always been … Continue reading Book Report — We Had a Little Real Estate Problem; Absurdistan
Written and directed by Zach Cregger, Barbarian deftly uses the familiar mechanics of the the horror genre to build in dread at every turn. The style and visual wit Cregger brings to the proceedings would be impressive enough on its … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2022 — Number Six
77. Culture Club, Kissing to Be Clever (1982) Malcolm McLaren knew this young bloke named George had the makings of a pop star. The cunning impresario recruited the androgynously styled club kid to share lead vocalist duties in a new … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #77 to #75
Coffee for Two 