College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #374 to #372
374. Yaz, Upstairs at Eric’s (1982) Following the breakup of her group the Screamin’ Ab Dabs, Alison Moyet was a singer without a band. She followed a practice common to musical strays at the time by placing an ad in … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #374 to #372
Outside Reading — The Wrong Questions edition
Ten Questions the Press Should Have Asked President Biden by Zeynep Tufekci It’s easy to pinpoint — and become enraged by — the failure of the White House press corps during the four years they utterly failed to properly confront … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Wrong Questions edition
This Week’s Model — Bachelor, “Stay in the Car”
I wonder if it’s even accurate to use the term side project to refer to Bachelor, the new band formed by Ellen Kempner, frontperson of Palehound, and Melina Duterte, who performs under the name Jay Som. Maybe those categorizations no … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Bachelor, “Stay in the Car”
The New Releases Shelf — The Shadow I Remember
The world shutting down brought out the productivity in Cloud Nothings. The Cleveland band have never been especially slack when it comes to recording new music. In the twelve years they’ve been banging out tuneful noise, they’ve only let more … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Shadow I Remember
Laughing Matters — Garry Shandling on The Tonight Show in 1981
Today marks five years since Garry Shandling died. There was an immediate outpouring in the comedy community, and that’s been remarkably sustained. There is the occasional recounting of Shandling’s remarkable commitment to a complex joke, even when it was delivered … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Garry Shandling on The Tonight Show in 1981
Top Ten Movies of 2020 — Number Three
The cold calculation of capitalism is all but guaranteed to cast multitudes of people aside. Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland embeds with some of those discards, both in the empathy of its fictionalized narrative and in offering several of them a chance … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2020 — Number Three
My Misspent Youth — The Falcon by Jim Owsley, Paul Smith, and Mark Bright
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. When the first issue of The Falcon was released in 1983, … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — The Falcon by Jim Owsley, Paul Smith, and Mark Bright
College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #377 to #375
377. The Pogues, If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988) The Pogues had a mess on their hands. Somewhat surprisingly, given their reputation — or, to be clear, the reputation of their lead singer — the mess wasn’t … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #377 to #375
Outside Reading — Misty Watercolor Memories edition
The Year Has Taught Me a Lot About Nostalgia by Leslie Jamison Writing for The New York Times, as part of a set of reflections on one full year of living with the pandemic, Leslie Jamison pointedly addresses the problematic … Continue reading Outside Reading — Misty Watercolor Memories edition
This Week’s Model — Bloody Your Hands x Self Help, “Santa Monica”
I have only the barest interest in the annual spring ritual of gathering college athlete to dribble their way across a bracket in the name of good fun and shoveling money into the coffers of a mildly exploitative national organization. … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Bloody Your Hands x Self Help, “Santa Monica”