Beers I Have Known: Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA
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’m very pleased that I live in a place that has been dubbed Beer City, U.S.A. More than that, I’m excited that the community continues to live up to the title, years after the sponsor of the annual vote gave up on the process, presumably in part because they got tired of this little North Carolina mountain town winning every year. Among all of our other craft brewers, modest and ambitious, comes arguably the … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Four
#44 — The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) After his debut feature accomplished nothing less than redefining the possibilities of cinema itself, Orson Welles never delivered another film that wasn’t compromised in one way or another. Even with his smaller, scrappier efforts, on which he came closest to the unquestioned creative authority of Citizen Kane, he was constrained by tight budgets and his own bad habits, which only grew the further away he got from Hollywood’s irritating controls. And when Welles was trying to work within the system, it often seemed as though he was thwarted at every turn, in part … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Four
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 66 and 65
66. Alice in Chains, Alice in Chains In the early to middle part of the nineteen-nineties, a band was almost guaranteed some national attention as long as they were from Seattle and knew how to turn their amps up. Alice in Chains officially formed in 1987, when roommates Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell joined one another’s new bands. The funk band Staley drew Cantrell into fading quickly, leaving the other group, defined by hard rock leanings, as the going concern. For the band’s name, they opted for a modified version of the group Staley was in previously, a glam metal … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 66 and 65
From the Archive: The Rookie
When we were doing the radio program The Reel Thing, we got press kits from a few studios and promotion house, but much of the time we had few supplemental resources (of course, there was also no internet to spill every piece of data we might need). So I distinctly remember sitting through the credits for The Rookie with an intense focus, trying to make certain I had Pepe Serna’s name correct for the review. I knew I’d made the right choice in singling the actor out when me colleague on the other side of the broadcast board laughed and nodded … Continue reading From the Archive: The Rookie
One for Friday: Gear Daddies, “Color of Her Eyes”
I plied my college radio, at least initially, in the Upper Midwest, spinning records at a happy output smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin. Existing in the midst of that frozen landscape stirs a certain kinship with those musical artists toiling at roughly the same latitude. There were simply some bands that sounded right, like they were coming at the world from a vantage point that was recognizably a product of frosty nights and taverns with interiors cloaked in wood panelling. They were of a world we knew. It’s not only the existence of a song all about aspirational … Continue reading One for Friday: Gear Daddies, “Color of Her Eyes”
My Misspent Youth: Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 by Tom DeFalco and Ron Wilson
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. I had a few particular weaknesses when I was a kid, and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 hit a bunch of them. I got a geeky thrill from team-up titles, I felt like I was getting something big and important when I bought one of Marvel’s Annuals (double-sized editions of regular titles that typically arrived in the summer months, presumably when young fans both had more spending money and more time to … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 by Tom DeFalco and Ron Wilson
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”
These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. In the late nineteen-sixties, a high school student named Vincent Damon Furnier, a recent transplant from Detroit to Phoenix, started a band with a few friends. They called themselves the Spiders, a name they eventually jettisoned in favor of Nazz. That was problematic because there was already a group calling themselves Nazz, with a talented guy named Todd Rundgren in the lineup. By … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Five
#45 — My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) I have an abiding fascination with and appreciation for those directors who have an uncommon mastery of the language of film narrative. Much as I might ply my modest critical acumen against certain films, willingly and unapologetically lamenting muddy storytelling or other shortcomings in the vital business of presenting a coherent, compelling beginning, middle, and end, I recognize that the task of adhering to established grammar of traditional Hollywood cinematic narrative is extremely challenging. Even coming close can be reasonably termed a feat of craftsmanship. Given that, I am even more agog … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Five
Great Moments in Literature
“I took a deep breath and told Arthur I wasn’t just somebody to fuck. ‘What did you think we were?’ he said. ‘A little family?’ He was getting into a lot of harder drugs — they made him say things he didn’t agree with a few minutes later. But they were still the things he said. That was the last time I felt betrayed by a man, I think. Afterward I expected it.” — Leslie Jamison, The Gin Closet, 2010 “THE POWER KNOWS NO DISTANCE! IT PROJECTS FOR MILES — TO THE CITY! TO A BUILDING — TO A WINDOW! AND … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 69 – 67
69. The Caulfields, Whirligig Much as I’ve groused about the bland uniformity of alternative rock radio circa 1995, dominated as it was by pallid echoes of the Seattle sound that crashed playlists a couple years earlier, largely thanks to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, there were a couple other dismal genre subsets that had secure footholds on the airwaves. The Caulfields nearly represent one of those. Hailing from Newark, the band was part of the long death rattle of A&M Records, the once prestigious imprint of Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss that had a self-destructive proclivity through the late-eighties and early-nineties … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 69 – 67
Coffee for Two 