Jeff the Dog—your point is related to the one I made elsewhere about The Monkees. But it was not just the Beatles, it was Dylan that created this false idea that Rock (and I do mean almost exclusively Rock) artists have to pen their own material to be valid. It's a situation you don't find in pretty much any other…

Parking lots were good sources too—but the fact that you were never actually looking for it made it even more illicit. Sure, dad had Playboys in the bottom drawer to sneak a peek at, but the only way you were going to find a copy of High Society was on the edge of the Stop N Go parking lot, and it felt for all the…

Even as I recognize the range of Generation X nostalgia available, I can't help but think that it will never equal the self-congratulatory excesses of that produced by and for The Boomers—if only because that "generation" by virtue of their numbers alone, has dominated popular culture and the public discourse since…

Don't mess with the bull, Jorge, you'll get the horns.

I have similar questions about whether a suburb can exist independent of an urb. Even in the megalopolis that is the mid Atlantic, I can see a clear difference between small towns like Waldorf and Damascus Maryland, and suburbs like Beltsville and Laurel.

But that would mean missing out on 'Speaking in Tongues' which is one of the greatest, thickest Funk albums of the 80's (an era when most Funk bands—even the great ones—were pared down to thin, minimal synth versions of themselves). What a great record. What a great band!

A. See above

Ew—Sorry to those that like it, I usually don't like to go negative, but I saw 'The Sandlot' for the first time on Saturday and I was not impressed. In fact the experience was so recent and so unpleasant that I can't help it. I watched it because I guess it has this cult following and because Roger Ebert compared it…

I think 'Poltergeist' is more suburban than 'The Amityville Horror', if only because it situates the Horror in a thoroughly contemporary house (i.e. a new one without any obvious history) and in a contemporary subdivision (whose developers are in fact the father's employers). And when I think of 'Jaws' I think of…

I thought it was fine as it is—full of the kind of intertextuality I'm particularly fond of. At any rate I didn't have any problem with the length and given the nature of the task—superimposing the intensely personal and particular on something as expansive, universal and epic as, well, an epic—it's a marvel that it…

I can understand getting sick of Soca—I taught for a summer in Grenada, and you may or may not be aware that they moved their Mas (or Carnival) season to August for the sake of tourism (since they are not predominently Catholic anyway) and so the run up to the big Calypsonian contest that caps the whole thing meant…

I don't mean to suggest that 'Spy Kids' isn't any good, because I haven't seen it—just as I've never seen (nor will I likely see) Cube's family fare (or, for that matter, 'Nanny Fucking McFee'). Not because I don't think they can be any good, but because I don't have children. Such movies aren't intended for me, I am…

Of course you all realize the reason why it took an Italian to make the definitive Jewish gangster movie is because those Jewish moguls who had the most pull in Hollywood were so bent on assimilition that they tried to downplay the critical role Jews played in the establishment and development of organized crime in…

Herne—I tried to get to that a little bit below. A lot of popular music takes a political stand of no real consequence, especially in America (I remember one criticism of 10,000 Maniacs way back when saying "but really, who is going to come out in FAVOR of child abuse?"), and the posturing of everyone from Dylan to…

Cube's role as a producer of family comedies is not all that inconsistent with where he and Kane and P.E. were coming from on 'Burn Hollywood Burn'—which is to say that Holllywood historically hasn't made all that many movies about Black people that were by and for Black people, or that dealt with Black culture in a…

Don't tell me you're going to pull that crap, dada—Even a cretinous turd knows that 'Footsteps in the Dark' and ' It was a Good Day' have nothing in common but a hook. Otherwise its apples abd oranges: the one is for cruising the ave. and the other is for when you finally get her home.

It was too short though, I could've only watched 1 episode of M*A*S*H*.

Tosh was killed by gunmen, but Marley was shot and wounded as well in the mid 70's for political reasons. I have to say that allowing Marley's legacy to be spoiled by its abuse on US college campuses is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I understand that impulse—nothing irks me more than discovering a friend's…

The "toe cancer" thing led to a minor conspiracy theory about political assassination—along the lines of the "he's too dangerous to The Man" variety that also accompanied John Lennon's death for a time. It's the kind of thing that strikes one as absurd, until you consider the fact that both Marley and his old band…

Whenever they finally get it together—
They should get Andre Royo (Best known for playing Bubbles on 'The Wire') to play Marley. He's got the acting chops and looks quite a bit like him: