Out Of My Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Me

By Megashaun

I was in the sixth grade, eleven years old, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t cool. I only knew I wasn’t. I liked Ninja Turtles and Batman in a time when everyone else in my class was into MC Hammer, Technotronic, and Public Enemy. I didn’t own any albums. I didn’t try chasing the girls. One of my classmates—a boy—asked me which girl I liked and I said I didn’t like any (which was a lie; I didn’t want that secret getting out and risk being made fun of for it) and he asked me if I was gay.
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Please Don’t Spoil The Movie By Adding Your Own Soundtrack: An Interview With Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson was a writer/host for the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. In it, Mike (and in earlier years, Joel Hodgson) and their robot pals onboard the Satellite of Love were subjected to watching b-movies while their fictitious employers at the Gizmonics Institute observed the crew’s reactions. These reactions ranged from goofy commentary during the films to sketches between the film and they were, for the most part, very funny.
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My Top Five Summer Movies

By Christian Lipski

I was going to do my top five summer camp movies, but as I looked back through history, it seems that summer camp movies are, as a rule, not very good. So with the kind permission of my editor I expanded to include summer movies in general. These are the films that make me feel cool in the desiccating heat of the Pacific Northwest, the ones full of the possibilities of summer.
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Popshifter’s Secret Garden of Crushes

By Less Lee Moore

Pizzazz of The Misfits

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog is a fabulous resource for discovering music, movies, and art that I would likely never know about if left to my own devices. Sometimes, however, my favorite blog entries are the first-hand accounts of the often-perverting effects of pop culture.
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Andrea, Lynda, Margot, and Erin

By Christian Lipski

Wonder Woman

When I was seven or eight, Annie came out on Broadway, and they published an article in one of those newsprinty school magazines that you’d get for free. The picture was of Andrea McArdle as Annie, and something just clicked in my head, and I desperately wanted her to be my girlfriend. I filled up all the blank space in the picture with little drawn hearts. I kept that picture for a long time.
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Crush Encounters of the Pre-Pubescent Kind

By Julie Finley

We all had crushes as kids. My crushes changed as I aged, mostly because my tastes evolved, or the crushes in question began to look horrible with age. The strange picks I will highlight below, however, only cover the years before puberty.
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The Key Word is “Goofy”

By Less Lee Moore

My mom and grandma were big fans of Jerry Lewis movies, but I don’t think they had any idea that I harbored secret desires for him during my numerous viewings of Cinderfella and The Errand Boy. What was it that I so admired? In all honesty, I think it was just that he was a big goofball who made me laugh. I loathed the movies he did with Dean Martin, who I angrily dismissed as “that old drunk guy”. How dare he take screen time away from my Jerry?
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Just Getting It Out There: An Interview with Filmmaker David Markey

Interviewed by Hanna

For Hanna’s review of The Reinactors, click here.

Cult filmmaker Dave Markey’s new movie The Reinactors premiered at the 37th Rotterdam International Film Festival in January. Detailing the complicated lives of the character impersonators that work on Hollywood Boulevard as tourist attractions, it was one of the greatest successes of the festival, with all showings sold out. It was also one of the highest rated movies in the audience polls.
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Why Uncool Is Cool: An Interview with Paul Feig

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

Paul Feig is one of my heroes. In this age of cynicism, that probably sounds corny, but it’s the truth. Paul Feig has been a stand-up comedian and an actor and is currently a writer, director, producer, and author.
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The Reinactors, Directed by David Markey

By Hanna

For Hanna’s interview with Dave Markey, click here.

The Reinactors follows the lives of a group of Hollywood Boulevard reinactors—those who impersonate well-known movie industry characters on the street, posing for photos and entertaining tourists—for a span of two years. Most of them are homeless or living in mobile homes; some of them are part-time actors in Hollywood or just aspiring to it, but they are all stars in their minds.
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