Beers I Have Known: Big Boss Brewing Harvest Time Pumpkin Ale
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. It might be hard to fathom now, but there was a time, not so long ago, when one could walk through a grocery emporium during the months of September and October without encountered a seemingly endless array of products with pumpkin flavor temporarily imposed upon them. Now that the takeover of our nation’s most insistent winter squash is all but complete, there are a dizzying array of beers that would be suitable substitutions … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Big Boss Brewing Harvest Time Pumpkin Ale
Now Playing: The Birth of a Nation
There is boldness and defiance written into the DNA of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation, beginning with the pointed abduction of the title from D.W. Griffith’s century-old epic that is equal parts groundbreaking and despicable. The new film is about Nat Turner (played by Parker), a Virginia slave who led an 1831 rebellion that was the bloodiest, most successful insurrection against the oppressing Southern gentry until the U.S. Civil War. Ultimately short-lived — it lasted approximately forty-eight hours — the rebellion left over fifty whites dead before it was over. A roughly equal number of enslaved blacks were arrested … Continue reading Now Playing: The Birth of a Nation
Laughing Matters: Bruce McCulloch, “Daves I Know”
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. Having spent the past several days swinging wildly between obsessive tracking of political news and happy but tense viewings of postseason baseball, I need a soul and spirit cleanser. And this will do, nicely. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag. Continue reading Laughing Matters: Bruce McCulloch, “Daves I Know”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 136 – 134
136. Swans, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” For some fans of Swans, the betrayal of principles began with a cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” To the degree that the track — or tracks, really — represented a distinct turning point, they’re not entirely wrong. Michael Gira started Swans in the countercultural swirl of New York’s early-nineteen-eighties no wave scene, releasing a succession of abrasive, challenging albums and EPs. By the middle of that decade, pierced eyebrows were already raising as the hardest, most bruising edges were buffed off, a process accelerated by the inclusion of keyboardist and vocalist Jarboe on the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 136 – 134
From the Archive: “And we begin, as always, with the latest in movie news….”
As was the case the last time I devoted a “From the Archive” entry to one of the newscast portions of our late radio show The Reel Thing, I need to credit a different writer. While I occasionally found a story for inclusion on the station’s AP wire, the show-opening news rundown was almost entirely the province of my esteemed, gifted colleague on the program. This group of stories led the episode that roughly corresponded with the current weekend, twenty-six years ago. He took the picture above, too. The Birmingham, Alabama News says it won’t run ads for Henry & … Continue reading From the Archive: “And we begin, as always, with the latest in movie news….”
One for Friday: Daisy Chainsaw, “Love Your Money”
Sometimes I wish I’d kept absolutely everything from my college radio days. My time as a student broadcaster predated the point when hefty archives could be handily condensed down to a dinky drive the size of exhausted cigar stub, so any exhaustive collection would have been a bulging box of papers and audio tape. No matter the pack rat tendencies that lurk inside me, dragging my history from home to home (and eventually state to state) simply wasn’t feasible. I know that. Still, I’d love to load up different slices of bygone broadcast days. I’m often surprised at just which … Continue reading One for Friday: Daisy Chainsaw, “Love Your Money”
Now Playing: Queen of Katwe
The story moves in familiar ways. With few exceptions, most moviegoers will be able to tick off the main narrative beats of Queen of Katwe in advance. The young, beset heroine Phiona Mutesi (newcomer Madina Nalwanga) finds some respite from the burdens of her hardscrabble life when she happens upon a group engaged in a competitive pursuit. Originally viewed by her new cohorts as a irritating neophyte, she quickly proves to be a prodigy, approaching the game she’s taken up with uncommon insight and sparkling inspiration. There will be highs. There will be lows. But surely there will be triumph in … Continue reading Now Playing: Queen of Katwe
My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #6 by Bill Mantlo and Ron Frenz
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. Around 1983, anguished teen superheroes were all the rage. Marvel’s Uncanny X-MenUncanny X-Men was establishing a stranglehold on the top of the sales charts, and DC’s revamped take on the Teen Titans was a rare sensation to emerge from that publisher at that time. There was perhaps no clearer proof of the trend than the emergence of Cloak and Dagger. Introduced in the pages of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, Cloak and … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #6 by Bill Mantlo and Ron Frenz
My Writers: John Skipp & Craig Spector
I was a skittish kid, even a bit of a fearful kid. The mere idea of engaging with something scary — a book, a movie, or a television show squarely in the horror genre — made me preemptively woozy. Once I did finally engaged with such material, though (beginning, of course, with Stephen King), I spent a few years pursuing ever more spins into the darkness. For the most part, I stick with any given author for only a single tome. While the form doesn’t deserve the disdain often heaped on it, accomplished literary figures writing such novels were a … Continue reading My Writers: John Skipp & Craig Spector
The Art of the Sell: “I’m a Cub Fan and I’m a Bud Man”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. “1984 was just the start/ We’re gonna bring a pennant to this park.” When I was trudging through my teen-aged years, I spent my summers watching WGN. In the days before cities had devoted sports superstations, practically every game played by the Chicago Cubs aired on one of the first local television stations that had the foresight to get themselves a place on the highly limited cable channel lineups coast to coast, especially in nearby Wisconsin. Folks … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “I’m a Cub Fan and I’m a Bud Man”
Coffee for Two 