// Category Archive for: Editorial

On Memories And Michael Jackson

It would be absurd to have a magazine devoted to pop culture and fandom and not have something to say about Michael Jackson. The man contributed so much to our culture that we were often unaware of references to him. Upon his death, these references we had seen before somehow became more poignant: a zombie character in a video game wearing a red jacket and walking backwards used to be a funny homage, worthy of a chuckle. Today that same image evokes emotions on top of that, as we realize it as a caricature of a man we never fully understood, even if we did love his work.
(more…)

Record Stores Died For Somebody’s Sins (But Not MySpace’s)

Pretty In Pink, 1986
Screencap from Striped Wall

The new millennium has become the Battle of the Social Networking Websites. Which one you prefer depends upon how you utilize each one. As much as Facebook fans may bitch that MySpace is ugly and user-unfriendly, when people want to hear what a band sounds like, they usually go to MySpace.
(more…)

Tear It Up

MTV blew my mind in 1981. I would spend hours Velcro’d to the screen of my grandma’s wooden console TV waiting for my favorite videos to come on. Even then, my mom was uneasy about the sort of “messages” I was getting from this weird new music.

Adam Ant’s allusions to S&M were the naughtiest of the lot, but nothing compared to The Cramps. I actually heard them before I saw them. By 1985, I was fully ensnared by WTUL New Orleans, the student-run college radio station of Tulane University. It was there that “New Kind Of Kick” wormed its way into my eardrums.
(more…)

You Think You’ve Seen It All Except The Future*

Image from EquilibriumFans

John Preston: What’s the point of your existence?

Mary: To feel. ‘Cause you’ve never done it, you can never know it. But it’s as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock. . . ticking.

(more…)

All The Time In The World

“Every age is the same.
It’s only love that makes any of them bearable.”
Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, from Time After Time (1979)

“I started collecting records when I was five years old.” I can say this with total honesty. However, I’m actually quoting part of the Keynote Address at the Grammy Northwest MusicTech Summit, given by Ian C. Rogers on November 6, 2008.
(more…)

Now Let Us Praise Famous Monsters

Count Dracula, 1977

In reviewing a series of horror and ghost story anthologies, literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote that the “sudden revival of the appetite” for such tales arose in part from:

“. . . the instinct to inoculate ourselves against panic at the real horrors loose on the earth. . . by injections of imaginary horrors, which soothe us with the momentary illusion that the forces of madness and murder may be tamed and compelled to provide us with mere dramatic entertainment.”
—From Classics and Commercials, 1950

(more…)

It Just Doesn’t Matter

At the dawn of the eighties, I was a little kid trying to deal with divorced parents, being crappy at sports, and the overwhelming feeling of not fitting in. My grandma was the first person I knew with cable, and since I was addicted to movies, I watched a few things that I was probably too young to fully understand, but which I still love to this day: Foxes, Foul Play, Heaven Can Wait, and Meatballs.
(more…)

The Days of Future-Past

“He had been a tool in their hands, his childhood image had been used as bait to condition him, he had lived up to their expectations, he had played his part. Now he only waited to be liquidated with, somewhere inside him, the memory of a twice-lived fragment of time.”
—From La Jetée, written and directed by Chris Marker, 1962

(more…)

The Age When Nothing Fits

In Rebel Without a Cause, Natalie Wood portrays Judy, a tough-talking teenage girl who exasperates her parents. She doesn’t seem to be able to decide if she wants to be a little girl or a grown-up. Her mother tries to placate Judy’s frustrated father by saying:

“She’ll outgrow it, dear. It’s just the age. It’s just the age when nothing fits.”

(more…)