Trivia Answer of the Day: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong
This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll return to a bit of a tradition around these parts and share a few personally memorable answers from the twenty-five years or so that I’ve been involved with this contest, in one way or another. In this instance, I’ve reminded myself of the answers by flipping through our team’s old answer sheets. Much as I’ve emphasized the value and importance of writing … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong
Trivia Answer of the Day: Nicholas and Copernicus
This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll return to a bit of a tradition around these parts and share a few personally memorable answers from the twenty-five years or so that I’ve been involved with this contest, in one way or another. In this instance, I’ve reminded myself of the answers by flipping through our team’s old answer sheets. There are questions I simply do not want to miss. … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: Nicholas and Copernicus
Trivia Answer of the Day: Speed Demon
This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll return to a bit of a tradition around these parts and share a few personally memorable answers from the twenty-five years or so that I’ve been involved with this contest, in one way or another. In this instance, I’ve reminded myself of the answers by flipping through our team’s old answer sheets. What follows is my recollection of this question and … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: Speed Demon
Trivia Answer of the Day: Pendleton J. Badger
This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll return to a bit of a tradition around these parts and share a few personally memorable answers from the twenty-five years or so that I’ve been involved with this contest, in one way or another. In this instance, I’ve reminded myself of the answers by flipping through our team’s old answer sheets. One of the requirements of being a competitive team in … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: Pendleton J. Badger
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 56 and 55
56. Rancid, …And Out Come the Wolves Rancid’s third album was greeted with an extremely rare A+ review in Entertainment Weekly (back when that publication still had some credibility), with writer Chuck Eddy asserting the Berkeley punkers made a “better Clash record than London Calling.” That is the very definition of a bold statement. I do understand the impulse Eddy felt to draw a straight line from the California punkers to The Only Band That Matters. Circa 1995, there was a lot of tug of war taking place over the legitimacy of different bands, especially in the punk realm. Now, that’s … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 56 and 55
From the Archive: Point of No Return and Fire in the Sky
This is taken from a March 1993 edition of The Pointer, my college’s student newspaper. Though I hardly offer an unqualified rave, this is probably one of the more generous reviews of Point of No Return you’re likely to encounter. … Continue reading From the Archive: Point of No Return and Fire in the Sky
One for Friday: Laurie Anderson, “Babydoll”
When I trace my foundational knowledge of the music I eventually immersed myself in at my college radio station, I usually have to cite either Rolling Stone or, more rarely, the keepers on the airwaves in my hometown. When it comes to Laurie Anderson, though, I’m fairly confident I was introduced to her by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. While the Chicago film critics dutifully covered the major studio releases on their weekly movie review program, they also committed themselves to highlighting the smaller, independent, even oddball films that weren’t likely to play at a theater near me, not just … Continue reading One for Friday: Laurie Anderson, “Babydoll”
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty
#40 — Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941) For all the huffing and harrumphing that plenty of people resort to when engaged in discussions of the broken state of modern politics (and I include myself in that “plenty”), there’s a sad, corrosive truth at the core of our problems. To borrow a handy bit of phrasing, this dysfunction of our politics isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That’s perhaps best evidenced by the ways in which the damage decried today as proof of the historic animosity and corruption within the power structure can be found recurring through U.S. history like the clearest … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty
My Writers: Richard Price
There was a time in mid-nineteen-nineties — before my energy started to flag — when I actively sought out books that I knew were on their way to becoming potentially significant feature films. This was especially common, weirdly enough, after I no longer had a public outlet to review films, meaning I had no particular impetus — no mandate, imposed or otherwise — to fill in the background. Freed from the burden of collegiate assigned text, I felt I had the time (though I was routinely working well over forty hours per week) and I maintained a hangover principle from … Continue reading My Writers: Richard Price
Greatish Performances #19
#19 — Eric Bogosian as Barry Champlain in Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988) The play Talk Radio had its off-Broadway premiere in May of 1987, with its writer, Eric Bogosian, in the leading role. It wasn’t exactly viewed as transformational theatre (New York groused, “neither as drama nor as social psychology does it cut deep enough”), but it had the air of sensation to it. And it transformed Bogosian, however briefly, from that unique nineteen-eighties calling as “performance artist” into a more well-rounded creator who needed to be taken seriously. When the property was snapped up for a film adaptation, … Continue reading Greatish Performances #19
Coffee for Two 