Today In Pop Culture: The Breaking Of Patty Hearst

By Jeffery X Martin

How nice it must be, we think, to come from money. Old money. The kind of money you don’t even realize you have because you’ve had it for so long. Money you didn’t earn. You’re going along, living your life, rich as balls, going to a liberal arts college and wearing sweaters when you don’t have to because you’re rich, and why not?

Then it all comes crashing down, and the next thing you know, you’re wanted for bank robbery.

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Music Review: Peter Murphy, Wild Birds Live Tour

By Jeffery X Martin

There’s a joke: Old Goths never die, and if they did, how could you tell?

While Robert Smith is arguably the queen of the Old Goths, their king is certainly Peter Murphy, the former lead singer of Bauhaus, who has found himself in the strange position of Gothic Tom Jones, selling out shows filled with swooning plus-sized women wearing the same black dresses they wore in 1985, while their husbands huffily cross their arms and wonder when Anthrax will tour again.

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Today In Pop Culture: The Day The Music Died

By Jeffery X Martin

Dear rock and roll musicians:
Please stop using air travel.
Thanks,
Everybody

This is The Day The Music Died.

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TV Review: The X-Files, Episode 3, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Creature”

By Jeffery X Martin

Some of the best episodes of The X-Files were the Monster of the Week shows, where the mythology is forgotten about for a moment and we get to focus on a separate case. It makes sense that we would get one of those episodes in the mini-series, and here it is.

Mulder and Scully investigate a case with multiple victims, and those who survive claim the perpetrator is a monster. It’s a typical X-Files setup, with a creature living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, but there are a couple of differences. It’s not a werewolf. It may not really be human at all.

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Today In Pop Culture: I’m Not Saying It Was A Yeti, But…

By Jeffery X Martin

Today in Pop Culture, a hike in the snowy mountains turned deadly for nine hikers in the Soviet Union. The cause of their death has never been determined. If it has, the Russian government has never released it. All they will say is that something killed those mountaineers. You’ll hear all kinds of conspiracy theories about what murdered those people, cockamamie theories from one side of the Internet to the other.

Come on.
We all know the Yeti got them.

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Today In Pop Culture: Polanski Runs For The Border

By Jeffery X Martin

TRIGGER WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

You don’t often think about people fleeing the country unless its wartime, and there’s a flood of refugees hitting the shores. But sometimes, people get the hell out of Dodge because they’ve done something horribly wrong and want to avoid going to the hoosegow.

It’s even weirder when the person fleeing is an internationally known film director.

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Music Review: Tortoise, The Catastrophist

By Jeffery X Martin

There’s a sense of playfulness on the new album from Tortoise, The Catastrophist. It feels like listening to a card trick. Let’s call it “sleight of ear.”

Mostly an instrumental band, Tortoise comes on as Nintendo-core. The keyboards have that glorious 8-bit sound, but then the drums start and the guitar comes floating in like the backwash of a canyon echo. Almost imperceptibly, the music has moved from Bowser’s Castle to some place far more ethereal.

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The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #08–We Don’t Understand People

Welcome to Episode #08 of The Official Popshifter Podcast.

Less Lee Moore and Jeffery X Martin have a hard time dealing with the state of the Hivemind, and discuss the Popshifter Manifesto, which is the driving force behind the pop culture coverage at the site. Also: The Oscars, the Royal Rumble, The X-Files and other stuff requiring the article, “The.” Please enjoy this podcast responsibly.

Today In Pop Culture: The Challenge Of Charles Starkweather

By Jeffery X Martin

While it is proper to acknowledge that this is the 30th anniversary of the explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger, it is also safe to say that the nation will be inundated with those painful memories today. There are other things to remember on this date, though, and they aren’t as glorified and politicized. The paths of glory are many, and we are all on our own road through history.

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TV Review: The X-Files Episode 2, “Founder’s Mutation”

By Jeffery X Martin

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

Boy, do we do things to screw up our children. Some of that can’t be helped; we’re only human, after all. But what if your child isn’t only human? The second episode of Season Ten of The X-Files, “Founder’s Mutation,” is all about the kids.

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