People who know me understand that historically, I’ve been a fan of the modern GI:JOE franchise; I own almost the entire run of the 80s Marvel comics series, including a copy of issue #1 signed by both writer Larry Hama and penciler Herb Trimpe. I spent my tween years watching the cartoons and collecting the […]

I’ve written a lot over the last year or two about coming to terms with getting older. It’s one of those things we all have to come to terms with. Of course, the world is remarkably good at coming up with all kinds of reminders of one’s (relatively) advanced age: little aches and pains, graying […]

With this entry, I’ll have reviewed one hundred records since starting this little project back in May. Whether anyone else is enjoying the project or not, I’ve been having a good time revisiting old music and fond memories through the exercise. If nothing else, it gives me something original to write about beyond commentary on […]

If there’s a theme this time around, it’s the idea that you can draw lines between all kinds of things, and despite the existence categories like “rock”, “country”, “r&b” or whatever, a lot of interesting stuff happening in the brackish areas where the borders bump up against each other. Each of these records, quite accidentally […]

As you may be aware, dear reader, I’m a big fan of the kind of pop culture meta piece like this one from (surprise) Amanda Marcotte about what she perceives as the ascendance of mass-market mediocrity in modern American popular culture as being inherently more “worthy” than properties with more limited, niche appeal. I include […]

It’s been a little while since I did one of these. Of course, it’s november, so there’s very little blogging going on at all, thanks to the whole novel-writing experiments and general life stuff. Of course, I’m still doing the up and back to DC thing for work, and last week, coming home took me […]

For reasons that still kind of elude me, this weekend involved cramming more stuff into 72 hours or so than is really possible or advisable, but a lot of it was quite a bit of fun. Still, I’m finding myself dragging a bit, largely due to sleep deficit and a few aches and pains as […]

Took the opportunity in the last week to swap some new discs into my car box, ushering in a new population to revisit and review. Some good stuff here, again, largely a cross-section of the 90s, when I was a loyal member of the BMG record club and bought lots of things I might not […]

It’s turning into one of those lazy sort of Fridays, where I’m getting a few things done, but really don’t have much ambition about it. The rest of the weekend, other than running a few kids a few places, is looking pretty much the same. I can live with that. Incidentally, I woke up with […]

For this, the twentieth(!) edition of this little series of mine, I take on a couple of punk-inspired records and the entire bill of the last concert I attended. Enjoy, or not. Doesn’t bother me any. ♦The Ramones – Halfway to Sanity: I remember the Ramones always being there in the deep background growing up […]