Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “Ray Parker, Jr. Theme Songs”
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. There’s obviously an admirable surplus of material from the sketch comedy series Key & Peele that is engaged in the most significant political and social concerns of the current era. Much as I admire that, my true weakness when it comes to the collaborative work of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele is for their jabs at the entertainment business. I find that material to be … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “Ray Parker, Jr. Theme Songs”
Top Ten Television, 2015-2016 season
Tomorrow morning, Anthony Anderson and Lauren Graham will take to a podium in North Hollywood and announce at least of portion of the hefty list of Emmy nominees, celebrating (ostensibly) the best in television programming for the past year or so, doggedly sticking to model that pretends the traditional broadcast season running from September to May is still reflective of how this part of the entertainment field operates. Around these here digital parts, it is tradition for me to weigh in with my highly compromised top ten in television on the eve of that announcement. I begin with an acknowledgement of fallibility because it is … Continue reading Top Ten Television, 2015-2016 season
Great Moments in Literature
“After that, I started walking. I walked aimlessly for over an hour, through the driving rain. The pedestrianized centre of Ashbury was mine alone. I decided, somewhere along the walk, that I have to do something. I have to make amends for being insufficient.” –Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train, 2015 IT’S AS IF PART OF THE SKY HAD TURNED TO LIVING FLAME. BEFORE THEIR EYES, A BLOOD-HUED BEAM OF ENERGY LANCES UPWARD FROM THE MUSEUM AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, WASHING THE LANDSCAPE IN ANGRY, GARISH SHADES OF CRIMSON. SOMEONE NEAR PETER SCREAMS. A GRIM-FACED POLICE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
The Art of the Sell: “Limousines for Your Feet”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I can’t overstate the primacy of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars in my day-to-day fashion choices. My default icon on social media outlets provides some insight as to dominance of the footwear brand on the lower level of my closet. Accordingly, I have a perpetual weakness for the various print ads over the years that promoted the brand, largely because of how ridiculously off-base they often were. Few please me more than the mid-eighties campaign that posited Chucks … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “Limousines for Your Feet”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 175 – 173
175. Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, “Elvis Is Everywhere” Neill Kirby McMillian, Jr. was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1957. Years later, he found his true self as Mojo Nixon. Though the exact moment of identity epiphany is elusive, it was undoubtedly somewhere around the point he teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Skid Roper (née Richard Banke). The two started playing gigs together in San Diego, California, in the early nineteen-eighties, in a place that undoubtedly felt a million miles away from their freewheeling, psychobilly musical sensibility. Though Nixon quickly became a cult hero, thanks to songs that indulged in a raucous, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 175 – 173
From the Archive: Sibling Rivalry
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that my unkind words for Summer School don’t properly acknowledge how weirdly watchable I find that comedy to be. On the other hand, I stand by my praise for Kirstie Alley … Continue reading From the Archive: Sibling Rivalry
One for Friday: Swamp Thing, “Learning to Disintegrate”
It’s been almost exactly a year since my household began the segmented process of returning from a decade and a half living in southern states, resettling in our homeland of Wisconsin. During that span, I think it’s fair to say that each of us has occasionally felt the sensation of a unique culture doing its damnedest to welcome us back. The winter was milder, the beer has gotten better, the city has been alive and accommodating. Maybe best of all, there have been a handful of entirely unexpected musical gifts. When I was at my college radio station, Swamp Thing … Continue reading One for Friday: Swamp Thing, “Learning to Disintegrate”
My Writers: Joss Whedon
I was dismissive of Joss Whedon at first, needlessly so. And I probably should have known better. My first exposure — knowingly anyway — to Whedon’s writing was with the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which arrived with the excited promise of flinty ingenuity. It delivered far less, and Whedon was easy to dismiss as another breathlessly celebrated Hollywood wunderkind who didn’t have that much to contribute beyond a couple hooky notions. The nineties were lousy with those. As opposed to now, there weren’t a fleet of entertainment reporters prepared to dutifully transcribe Whedon’s complaints about how his original conception … Continue reading My Writers: Joss Whedon
Beers I Have Known: 3 Floyds Brewing Co. Flying Tigersault and Perched Atop the Denim Throne
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. I am a mediocre beer hunter. I admit this fact with humility and a dollop of shame. Though I take woozy delight in a artfully crafted beer, I am woeful when it comes to holding relevant details in my head about those concoctions that should be chased. I am a willing and eager wingman for those cohorts with encyclopedic knowledge of the breweries and their beers that are simultaneously great and elusive, and therefore … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: 3 Floyds Brewing Co. Flying Tigersault and Perched Atop the Denim Throne
Now Playing: Swiss Army Man
With Swiss Army Man, the directing duo that bills themselves as simply “Daniels” succumb to a very common shortcoming of first-time feature filmmakers: they’re better at showmanship than storytelling. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan wrote and directed the film, which begin … Continue reading Now Playing: Swiss Army Man
Coffee for Two 