Great Moments in Literature
“Madame Manec brings sandwiches. Etienne doesn’t have any Jules Verne, but he does have Darwin, he says, and reads to her from The Voyage of the “Beagle,” translating English to French as he goes — the variety of species among the jumping spiders appears almost infinite… Music spirals out of the radios, and it is splendid to drowse on the davenport, to be warm and fed, to feel the sentences hoist her up and carry her somewhere else.” –Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, 2014 “SUDDENLY IT WHIPS FROM THE ANGRY SEA — A BEHEMOTH THAT SMASHES INTO THE QUINJET, … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Then Playing: One-Eyed Jacks
I usually reserve the longer reviews for films still playing in theaters, but sometimes a title I’ve caught up on later merits a few extra words. Marlon Brando wasn’t well past his peak when he turned in his only feature film directorial effort, but the ground beneath his feet was crumbling. At the time shooting began on One-Eyed Jacks, late in 1958, Brando was less than five years past the triumphant On the Waterfront, and he’d nabbed a Best Actor Academy Award nomination while the same calendar hung on the wall (doing so for 1957’s Sayonara). But there was also hints of the … Continue reading Then Playing: One-Eyed Jacks
The New Releases Shelf: The Hope Six Demolition Project
It probably makes sense that Polly Jean Harvey has reach the point of full-on art installation, like Björk at MOMA. Disastrous as that particular exhibition may have been, it was indicative of a certain truth in the notion that the Icelandic performer in her overt and unyielding multifaceted creativity had reached the point where the standard progression of record and tour followed by another record and another no longer seemed sufficient. Similarly, when Harvey released the exemplary, transcendent Let England Shake, it really did seem that she’d come to a creative endpoint, exhausting all the possibilities of the album format. And … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: The Hope Six Demolition Project
Calling Jesus, please, send his love to me
Sixty-second in a series…. (Found elsewhere) Continue reading Calling Jesus, please, send his love to me
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203
205. Los Lobos, “Will the Wolf Survive” While the track “Will the Wolf Survive” provided Los Lobos with the title, slightly modified, for their major label debut, it was the last song written for the album. According to the band members, the impetus for the song came in part from Dave Alvin, undoubtedly hanging around because of his personal and professional connections with the album’s co-producer, T Bone Burnett. Alvin surveyed the material Los Lobos had assembled for the 1984 release and suggested that what the band really needed was an anthem, something that truly and properly represented the their musical and cultural outlook. The worrisome … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203
From the Archive: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
This was written for The Pointer, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. Other headlines in the same issue, published in November of 1992, include “Videos produced on Point’s award winning recycling,” “Freeze tuition costs!” and … Continue reading From the Archive: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”
In my earliest couple of years at the college radio station, I mentally differentiated between those artists who completely belonged to us kids — those that I could see as rough contemporaries — and those who were, for lack of a better term, “adults.” This wasn’t always based purely on chronology. The Cure, for example, released their fourth studio album at around the same time Marshall Crenshaw released his first, but it was the Detroit native who I automatically slotted into a sort of college rock elder statesman role. After all, the Cure were still crafting songs that spoke directly … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”
Daley and Goldstein, Dougherty, Letterman, Ritchie, Silverstein
Vacation (John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, 2015). Like any Freaks and Geeks devotee, I’m rooting for Sam Weir as he transitions from actor to one half of a comedy filmmaking team, but this thing is hideous. A supposed continuation of the Vacation franchise, it’s more of a lazy remake of the 1983 Harold Ramis film, replacing what minor vestiges of wit it carried with hollow raunch. There’s nothing inherently wrong with raw, audacious comedy, but there’s still an obligation to actually structure humor. Instead, Daley and Goldstein have a kid hurl blue insults at his older brother and … Continue reading Daley and Goldstein, Dougherty, Letterman, Ritchie, Silverstein
My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 by Frank Miller and Herb Trimpe
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 I committed to superhero comic books in the early nineteen-eighties, I was immediately enraptured by the connectivity of the Marvel universe. While the storytelling practice has reached levels of pure tedium these days, marked by supposed “event series” that pile as many costumed figures as possible into plots as hopelessly ensnarled as the wires behind a media obsessive’s entertainment center, there was still a frisson of excitement to be had back then when … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 by Frank Miller and Herb Trimpe
Laughing Matters: “Cheers,” The Dime Bet
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. Once, while bemoaning a generation’s regrettable reliance on television rather than books as a conduit to learning, the great novelist Kurt Vonnegut had to allow for an exception to his complaint. He famously noted, “I would have rather written Cheers than anything I’ve written.” Obviously, this is no faint praise, given than it emanates from the author of some of the most justly revered novels … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Cheers,” The Dime Bet
Coffee for Two 