The A.V. Club - Inventory

It’s not TV—and it’s not available on HBO Go: 27-plus HBO originals unavailable from the streaming service

Kyle Ryan, Sam Adams, Erik Adams, Phil Dyess-Nugent, Will Harris — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. 1st & Ten (1984-1991)
When HBO launched the streaming video platform HBO Go in 2010, it was a boon to discerning viewers and TV nerds alike: nearly four decades of original programming (plus a sampling of the movies rotating through the site’s cable companion) available anywhere, anytime. But the service is not attuned to Home Box Office completists. In some ways, it often seems like an attempt to rewrite the network’s history, with offerings rarely reaching farther back than Oz, which marked HBO’s first foray into scripted drama series in 1997. Case in point: Oz’s equivalent in the comedy realm, 1st & Ten, the chronicle of fictional football franchise the California Bulls created by sitcom lifer Carl Kleinschmitt in 1984. Like its spiritual successor and fellow HBO Go absentee Arli$$ (a series whose greatest contributions to comedy are jokes at its expense from Saturday Night Live and ...

The adventures of Tookie De La Crème: 13 surprising celebrity novelists

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe (2013)
For those who have accrued even a modicum of fame, it’s practically a requirement to write some kind of book. Most end up being some kind of memoir or that other favorite celebrity accessory, a children’s book—few people attempt to write novels, and even fewer do it without a professional collaborator or writing thinly fictionalized romans à clef. Although actress Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls, Parenthood) denies that her debut novel is autobiographical, it’s easy to read her life into it: Like the lead character, Franny Banks, Graham was a struggling actor in New York in the mid-’90s, and the book is set in 1995, just before Graham moved from New York to L.A. and landed her first TV gig. Even if the other elements of the story aren’t directly autobiographical, they’re familiar to the “struggling actor ...

The hand that rocks the puppet: 13 pop-culture attempts to make puppets appealing to adult audiences

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Meet The Feebles (1989)
Long ago, before director Peter Jackson became synonymous with visual-effects epics like the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and King Kong, he got his feet wet as a filmmaker in New Zealand on the shock-and-awe circuit, directing such cult splatterfests as Bad Taste and Dead Alive. Jackson’s Meet The Feebles took a decidedly twisted turn, which is pretty impressive considering his previous film involved a guy who dismembers a crowd of dancing zombies by strapping the business end of a lawnmower to his chest. This dark comedy/musical takes direct aim at Jim Henson’s Muppets with a backstage showbiz story featuring anthropomorphic animal characters such as a starlet hippopotamus named Heidi who gets caught up in a bizarre love triangle with a walrus and a cat, and a foul-mouthed rat named Trevor who dabbles in puppet-on-puppet pornography. Characters are gleefully killed off using ...

Vinny Chase and a weaponized hat: 9 alternate-universe takes on The Great Gatsby

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Ernesto Quiñonez, Bodega Dreams (2000)
Bodega Dreams, the debut novel by Ernest Quiñonez, is narrated by Chino, an ambitious striver from the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan, who—like the author—is of Ecuadorean-Puerto Rico heritage. Chino’s dreams of getting out are dwarfed by those of the romantic demi-gangster Willie Bodega, who uses the profits from his narcotics business to seed honest local businesses and help anyone who comes to him in need of rent or tuition money or legal help. A product of a time with very different public values than those that Gatsby had to contend with, Bodega makes no effort to conceal his crooked past or his crooked present—his outlaw reputation is part of what makes him king of the street. But both his fantasy of using drug money to elevate his people, and his hopes of reuniting with his lost love ...

“Spread your wings and let me come inside”: 13 songs about losing virginity

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Meatloaf, “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” (1977)
Working together several times, songwriter Jim Steinman and singer Meatloaf made music for the horny adolescent in all of us, pop opera full of crashing guitars, rising strings, and panting lyrics. In the duo’s epic, “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” Meatloaf and Ellen Foley play a married couple reminiscing about one fateful night together as teenagers when they lost their virginity together and turned into the Lockhorns. Most of the song is taken up describing the in-car seduction, as ’Loaf pants and begs Foley to give in to his dubious charms, urging her on with lines like “I’ve been waiting so long for you to come along and have some fun” and “You got to do what you can and let Mother Nature do the rest.” Some heavy imaginary necking ensues (with a play-by-play from baseball announcer Phil Rizzuto), before Foley ...

“Oh my God—you’re swingers”: 12 surprise TV encounters with the polyamorous

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Bob’s Burgers, “It Snakes A Village” (2013)
Across television’s seven-plus decades of existence, TV writers have developed a handful of go-to methods to disrupt the everyday existence of their characters—old friends who’d never been mentioned before, visiting family members, the occasional celebrity who happened to wander afield. But in the ’70s, the sexual revolution and laxer broadcast standards introduced a rarer species to this genus of TV characters: the swinger. Shows generally deploy wife-swapping and key parties to instill comedic fright, but episodes like the Bob’s Burgers installment “It Snakes A Village” reinforce the notion that, hey, swingers are people, too. Then again, the stakes are higher than “Will Linda’s parents indulge in the partner-sharing ways of their ‘active seniors’ community?”: The episode’s ultimate theoretical indignity involves burger-making paterfamilias Bob taking his in-laws in after the condo board gives them the boot ...

Welcome to the end of the world, have a Coke: 10 cases of prominent post-apocalyptic product placement

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Twinkies, Zombieland (2009)
Apocalypse movies are often dark fantasies about limitless freedom and escape from the madness of civilization, but they come with a price—mainly that lack of civilization, and the loss of millions of people working to churn out convenient, plentiful products. Fictional-apocalypse survivors often lament the things they miss, but as product placement becomes a bigger source of revenue in film and TV, it’s more common to see those survivors getting their consumerist itches scratched, often in ways that make a single item feel like something viewers should treasure as much as the characters do. For instance, Woody Harrelson spends all of the horror-comedy Zombieland loudly jonesing for a Twinkie, and exploring downed Hostess trucks, convenience stores, and a celebrity’s home with laser-intense focus, shouting about his cravings. “Where are ya, you spongy, yellow, delicious bastards, where are ya?” he hollers, just before trashing ...

Product misplacement: 20-plus brands given unhelpful movie associations

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. The Ford Pinto, Cujo (1983) and Top Secret! (1984)
The Ford Pinto, the subcompact economy car and running national joke on wheels, was retired in 1980 after years of being an affordable laughingstock. But Ford Motor Co. was still absorbing punchline after punchline well into the ’80s, whenever creative types needed a car that audiences would instantly associate with phrases like “Found On Road Dead” or “Fixed Or Repaired Daily.” Say this for the Pinto in 1983’s Cujo, though: It can mostly withstand the vicious assaults of a rabid St. Bernard. What it can’t do is turn over when a mother and son need to peel away from the dog. The car barely makes it to the farmhouse where a part-time mechanic offers to nurse it back to health, and it becomes a kind of a tomb where the characters bake in the afternoon sun without food ...

Not up in smoke: 18-plus heroic movie stoners

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Fran Kranz, The Cabin In The Woods (2011)
Traditionally, the stoner character in film is the comedy relief, the modern equivalent of the drunk in old cartoons and comedies who sees something outlandish, examines his bottle of booze as if it’s to blame, and throws it away. Not that movie stoners generally swear off the habit, but they tend to be in a story to provide funny reactions and generally be laughably weak, compromised, or silly. Drew Goddard’s The Cabin In The Woods embraces the stereotype as it embraces so many other slasher-movie stereotypes—at least at the outset. Dollhouse’s Fran Kranz starts out playing a typically affable, dimwitted stoner, a fuzzy-faced, shaggy-haired dude who spouts weirdo philosophy while rolling joints and turns up for a road trip in a smoke-filled car, sucking on a giant bong. “I’m livin’ in a world of reefer, lemme ...

Head up high, feet on the ground: 16 onscreen drug trips that don’t go over the top

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Louie’s wasted afternoon: Louie, “Dogpound” (2010)
It isn’t easy to visually replicate the singular, internal experience of being high, which is why television and movies usually default to a handful of tropes: psychedelic imagery, weird camera angles and cuts, and often, overblown histrionics and hilariously off-base sequences like Helen Hunt throwing herself through a window after trying PCP. Although these techniques are somewhat useful for depicting the stoned mindset, they’re rarely used as deftly as they need to be to really capture the nebulous nature of a chemically altered state. Trying to make an onscreen drug trip realistic and funny (to someone other than the person who’s high, that is) presents a whole other set of challenges, which the first-season Louie episode “Dogpound” rises to admirably. Sure, Louis C.K.’s first time smoking weed in years involves its share of jumpy editing and weird ...

“Don’t worry about the government”: 13 fictional political machines that are too stupid to be sinister

Erik Adams, Cory Casciato, Phil Dyess-Nugent, Joel Keller, John Semley — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1-3. British parliament, The Thick Of It (2005-2012)
British parliament and U.S. State Department, In The Loop (2009)
Selina Meyer’s vice presidential administration, Veep (2012-present)
Beneath their roiling pace and steady stream of profanity, Armando Iannucci’s trilogy of political satires—the BBC Four series The Thick Of It; its transatlantic follow-up film, In The Loop; and HBO’s Veep—are largely comedies of stasis. The big joke within Iannucci’s corridors of power involves crises nearly rising to the boiling point, before a hotter-yet-somehow-cooler head—usually belonging to Peter Capaldi—keeps everything from spinning out of control. Sure, parliamentary majorities tumble from power and international relations break down, but Iannuci’s is a world where self-preservation rules and typically leads to gridlock. Political sharks like Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker and Reid Scott’s Veep wunderkind Dan Egan use this constant confusion to their advantage, but they’re ...

There’s something I have to say to you: 16 songs with weird whispers

Jason Heller — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Michael Jackson, “In The Closet” (1992)
Of all the sounds the human voice can make, few are as underused—yet as versatile—as whispering. That goes double for music. In song, whispering can be anything from romantic (as in Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus”) to hilarious (De La Soul’s “Can U Keep A Secret”). Often, though, whispers are just plain weird. Case in point: Michael Jackson’s 1992 song “In The Closet.” It’s odd enough that Jackson seems to be mischievously fanning the flame of speculation about his sexuality rather than either avoiding it or addressing it directly. Odder still is the song’s whispered intro: “There’s something I have to say to you / If you promise you’ll understand / I cannot contain myself / I’m in your presence, I’m so humble / Touch me, don’t hide our ...

Tail between legs: 27 solo albums that sent musicians scurrying back to their main bands

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Julian Plenti, Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper (2009)
Band members who go solo ought to know—or at least their labels ought to know—that fans won’t necessarily recognize their actual names. When he stepped out on his own, Interpol singer-guitarist Paul Banks actually took steps that seemed designed to disguise his identity, assuming the silly name Julian Plenti for 2009’s Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper. The songs were far superior to those on Interpol’s 2007 album Our Love To Admire, and yet nobody heard it, so it was back to his main band the next year. (And for 2012’s solo album Banks, he smartly dropped the stage name.)

2. Billy Corgan, TheFutureEmbrace (2005)
After dissolving alt-rock juggernaut The Smashing Pumpkins in 2000 and then crashing and burning with the highly underrated indie-rock supergroup Zwan, Billy Corgan turned his attention in 2005 to what stands as his ...

It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going: 17 solo albums (and one single) that effectively doomed bands

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Phil Collins, Face Value (1981)
When flamboyant frontman Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, the prog-rock outfit found an unlikely replacement: its own drummer, Phil Collins. The unassuming percussionist led the group to new heights of popularity in the late ’70s and early ’80s—due mostly to the everyman accessibility of his voice and lyrics. When Collins went solo with 1981’s Face Value, though, a new side of the singer was revealed: pop star. The album bore hit singles like the peppy “I Missed Again” and the brooding “In The Air Tonight.” As subsequent solo albums became even more radio-friendly and successful, Collins began to neglect Genesis; between 1983 and 1997, the group released only four albums. The final one, Calling All Stations, doesn’t even feature Collins, who has since retired from music—a luxury that all his platinum records, solo and with Genesis, have afforded him ...

7 essential books about comedy by comedians

Nathan Rabin, Zack Handlen, Kevin McFarland, Phil Dyess-Nugent, Will Harris — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Groucho & Me, Groucho Marx (1959)
Comedy, it has been said time and time again, is a serious business. Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx echoes that sentiment in the opening sentence of his memoir about the meager beginnings of the Marx brothers, when he observes, “The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around.” It should come as no surprise to Groucho fans that he goes on to spend at least as much time offering up one-liners as he does delving into the history of how he and his brothers—Leonard (Chico), Arthur (Harpo), Herbert (Zeppo), and, in the early years, Milton (Gummo)—slowly but surely worked their way through the vaudeville circuit, eventually becoming the toast of Broadway before transitioning to film and taking Hollywood by storm. In spite of Marx’s lack of interest in linear storytelling, and his desire to get laughs ...

No training, no medical license, no problem!: 20 scenes where civilians perform surgery

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. A friend with a hunting knife performs a C-section on The Walking Dead (2012)
When there’s no doctor around, a person in dire need of a medical procedure will have to accept whatever hands are available. These civilian surgeons need some combination of luck, dexterity, and emotional fortitude to pull off what it takes regular doctors decades to learn. Luckily for The Walking Dead’s Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies), what she requires isn’t terribly complex—she just needs a C-section. Of course, with no instruments or anesthetic or stitching gear around, it gets a little messy: Maggie (Lauren Cohan) cuts her open with a hunting knife, in one of the most graphic, bloody scenes in basic-cable history. Callies is only a new mom for a couple of minutes before she shuffles off. And then she’s finished off by her own son, who doesn’t want ...

Filth flarn filth flarn filth: 13 stand-up routines about real-life celebrity encounters

Steve Heisler — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Tig Notaro meets Taylor Dayne
Comedians tend to get great mileage out of stories about celebrities, especially when those stories involve awkward personal encounters. For some unspoken reason, it’s become acceptable for stand-ups to incorporate into their acts stories about meeting famous people in real life—and the results are frequently hilarious. The gold standard might be Tig Notaro’s brilliant tale of the time she ran into forgotten singer Taylor Dayne—one of Notaro’s favorite performers, of “Tell It To My Heart” fame—and completely embarrassed herself. Then she saw Dayne again, and in true Notaro fashion, the embarrassment became something to celebrate. The serendipity of her multiple encounters sounds almost too perfect to be true, but the beauty of her simple retelling is that it is. (On a live This American Life, Notaro did the bit, and was surprised by the real Taylor Dayne coming ...

“What a nightmare!”: 21 TV episodes that do dream sequences right

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Enlightened, “Lonely Ghosts” (2011)
It’s rare to come across a TV dream sequence that seems legitimately dreamlike. The average trip into a television character’s subconscious is conducted with too heavy a hand: The symbolism is ladled on, perhaps, or the dream is used as an excuse to stage a fantastical and/or phantasmagorical series of events that can be wiped away with the simple declaration, “It was all a dream.” (See: Punky Brewster’s “The Perils Of Punky.” Or don’t, if you’re not into having your own legitimate nightmares.) But the Mike White-Laura Dern collaboration Enlightened does nothing without a light touch, including the low-key—and therefore stunningly authentic—dream that opens the season-one episode “Lonely Ghosts.” Cutting back and forth from the POV of Dern’s character, rageaholic-turned-do-gooder Amy Jellicoe, director Jonathan Demme pushes through a party that spills across the landscape of Amy ...

Hide the kiddies, at least temporarily: 11 famous children’s entertainers with adult sidelines

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, Genevieve Koski, Noah Cruickshank, Will Harris — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Shel Silverstein
Our culture holds few things more sacred than the purity and innocence of children. Children’s entertainers are consequently held to a much higher standard than performers who cater to adults. Much of the shock that greeted Paul Reubens’ 1991 arrest for indecent exposure stemmed from the tragicomic gulf between the eminently presentable, clean-cut Pee-wee Herman beloved by children everywhere and the weird, creepy, all-too-fallible human being in the mug shot. But children’s entertainers are just as human as everyone else, and some have embraced decidedly adult sidelines that contrast dramatically with their kiddie-approved oeuvre. Take Shel Silverstein, for example. Silverstein’s whimsical books of poetry have proved a potent gateway to the art form for generations of children, but the same hands that drew the illustrations for timeless classics like The Giving Tree and Where The Sidewalk Ends also penned naughty Playboy cartoons, essays, and ...

The slinky vagabond: 15 notable David Bowie cameos

Nathan Rabin, Josh Modell, Noah Cruickshank — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

1. Zoolander (2001)
Though the most important item on David Bowie’s résumé is “solo musician, 1969-present,” he’s also loaned his skills to a remarkable number of other projects, from movies to TV shows to other people’s songs. One of his most memorable cameos is 2001’s Zoolander, in which Bowie—playing himself—acts as the impartial judge for a “walk-off” between Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and his arch-nemesis Hansel (Owen Wilson). Bowie’s introduction befits his status as a legend, as he stands up in a crowd, whips his sunglasses off, and says, “I believe I might be of service,” to a chorus of gasps.

2. Extras (2006)
In another funny cameo as himself, Bowie appeared on Ricky Gervais’ post-Office show Extras. Gervais, playing the creator and star of a crappy sitcom, dumps all his woes on Bowie in a bar, complaining that he thinks ...

MTV After Dark: 15 R-rated (or at least PG-13) music videos of the ’80s

Noel Murray — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Duran Duran, “Girls On Film” (1981)
Recent videos by The Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, and DIIV have gotten some attention online for their liberal use of scantily clad and/or totally nude people, but this isn’t exactly an original tactic when it comes to building buzz around new music. Promotional clips and short performance films had been a little-noted element of the music business for much of the mid-20th century when, in the early ’80s, these mini-movies began getting more play: in nightclubs, on pay-cable channels, and on videocassette. Some artists exploited the medium’s cutting-edge appeal by making videos that ranged from the merely racy to nudity-studded softcore fantasies. Duran Duran’s Godley & Creme-directed “Girls On Film” video is one of the most famous examples of the latter. While the band performs its slinky neo-disco hit, a succession of lingerie-clad models strut down a catwalk into a ...

Out of a tailspin: 16 great shows that recovered from bum seasons

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Friday Night Lights (2006-2011)
Much like the Dillon Panthers, the high-school team at the center of a pigskin-crazy small town in Texas, NBC’s Friday Night Lights enjoyed a near-perfect first season. Loosely inspired by H.G. Bissinger’s seminal nonfiction book, the show was about more than the mangled priorities of a town too heavily invested in what happens on the gridiron. It was about marriage, family, religion, love, coming of age, and the attempts of bright young people to set a new course for their lives rather than cling to past glories and disappointments. But near-perfection came at a cost: Nobody could be convinced to watch the show, despite the persistent drumbeat of critics and fans. It seemed unlikely Friday Night Lights would even have a second season, but when NBC opted for renewal, it was clear from the first episode that the show would be running ...

Love on the dole: 18 songs about being on government assistance

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Tracy Chapman, “Talkin’ ’Bout A Revolution” (1988)
Tracy Chapman’s folk anthem “Talkin’ ’Bout A Revolution” didn’t catch fire upon its release in 1988, but its timelessness eventually caught up to it. Simple, direct, and indelible, it’s been adopted by any number of causes and movements, big and small, since then. The universality of its message is its strength: “While they’re standing in the welfare lines / Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation,” sings Chapman, “Wasting time in the unemployment lines / Sitting around waiting for a promotion.” Granted, not everyone around the world can relate to the first-world problem of, say, not getting a promotion. But the unvarnished chorus is what drives home Chapman’s zeal, and the song’s enduring appeal: “Poor people gonna rise up / And get their share / Poor people gonna rise up / And take what’s theirs.” (JH)

2. The ...

“I forget who I am—who am I?”: 23-plus alter egos of sitcom characters

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Art Vandelay (George Costanza, Seinfeld)
The average episode of Seinfeld has at least one good time-delayed punchline, a well-constructed payoff to seemingly unrelated story threads, coincidental character meetings, or the antisocial behavior of its main characters. George Costanza stepping into the identity of importer-exporter Art Vandelay takes that tradition several steps further, a big laugh that follows an eight-season-long trail of breadcrumbs stretching from the second episode of the series to its penultimate half-hour. For years, Jason Alexander’s character used Vandelay to bluff his way through sticky situations—helping a friend “stake out” a romantic interest, scamming unemployment money, covering for his lack of reading habits—but isn’t until “The Puerto Rican Day” that he takes the name and credentials as his own. And, in an appropriately Seinfeldian twist, it’s also the point where Vandelay meets face-to-face with two of the show’s other recurring ...

Tom Hanks vs. the Fonz: 35-plus Oscar nominees in weird TV guest spots

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Amy Adams, Smallville (2001)
Even the best actors have to start somewhere. Before the advent of television, movie stars would get their big breaks in bit parts on the big screen or in the chorus of some Broadway show or another. But since the tube has invaded America’s living rooms, most actors get some of their earliest work in guest roles on popular TV shows. Name nearly any Oscar contender—including almost all of this year’s nominees—and chances are good there’s some weird TV guest part on his or her résumé. Take, for instance, four-time supporting actress nominee—and current competitor for that prize for The Master—Amy Adams. Sure, everybody knows she played Tara’s cousin in that one Buffy episode, but fewer know that she guested on Smallville as, of all things, an overweight high-school girl (complete with terrible fat suit) who ...

“Is that one thing?”: 5 pop-culture life coaches who can’t count

Tasha Robinson — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Michael Ironside, Starship Troopers
Film and TV characters should really just have one rule: Don’t proclaim that they only have one rule, then turn it into a run-on sentence full of qualifiers. It undermines the point and makes it laughable. Michael Ironside certainly isn’t going for humor when he lays down the law for his new batch of alien-fighting space-marine recruits in Paul Verhoeven’s over-the-top science-fiction action movie Starship Troopers: He’s trying to be blunt and to the point about his expectations when he snaps, “I only have one rule: Everyone fights. No one quits. If you don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you.” It really wouldn’t have been any less blunt or tough to acknowledge that he actually has three rules, or at least that he can actually count. If nothing else, it might wipe some of the smirks off his ...

Tonight, let’s be lovers: 18 songs about one-night stands

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, “We’ve Got Tonight” (1978)
Considering Bob Seger grew up near Detroit and wrote pub classics like “Old Time Rock And Roll” and “Night Moves,” it’s fairly safe to assume that he’s spent some time in a bar or two, watching sad, drunk loners try to find love. “We’ve Got Tonight” speaks to that kind of quiet resignation that only really pops up at closing time, when “it’s late” and “you’re weary,” but “here we are, both of us lonely.” As Seger argues, isn’t going home with some stranger better than going home alone again?

2. Dave Matthews Band, “Say Goodbye” (1996)
With its jazzy flute intro and softly crooned lyrics, Dave Matthews Band’s “Say Goodbye” at least tries to make one-night stands a little romantic. The song was reportedly inspired by a time Matthews was ...

(But I like it): 30 excellent songs with (mostly unnecessary) parentheses in their titles

Josh Modell — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Perhaps the best-known case of unnecessary parentheses in musical history, The Rolling Stones’ 1965 classic actually didn’t feature the “(I Can’t Get No)” on the artwork for the single—only on the Out Of Our Heads album art and points beyond. Purists just call it “Satisfaction,” anyway. Much better parentheses use by the Stones, but on a far lesser song: “It’s Only Rock ’N Roll (But I Like It).”

2. Luna, “California (All The Way)”
The first song on Luna’s mellow album Bewitched, “California (All The Way)” chugs along like The Velvet Underground gone happy and lazy, but its two-part title does it very little justice. Both bits—“California” and “All The Way”—are mentioned in the lyrics (right next to each other, in fact), but not in the chorus. A more pointed title would have ...

Hold for some minor retooling: 14-plus entertainments altered due to historical events

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Across The Pacific (1942)
This spy thriller starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet originally went into production under director John Huston. It was his third feature as director, and with three of the stars who had appeared in his triumphant debut film, The Maltese Falcon, returning, he must have felt that he was on solid ground. Certainly the script had a corker of a dramatic hook: Bogart would play a hero who, while on a ship bound for Hawaii, stumbles onto and thwarts a Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor. When, two weeks into shooting, the Japanese really did bomb Pearl Harbor, the screenwriters must have gotten some funny looks. The script was quickly rewritten so that Bogart is on his way to China when he stumbles upon and thwarts a Japanese plot to bomb the Panama Canal. What with all the rewriting and reshooting, and Huston ...

Begin again: 27 opening-credits sequences that evolved with their series

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0600

1. Big Love
It’s fairly common for television series to tweak their opening credits as the seasons progress, updating old character images with more recent ones, adding new actors to the roster, or jettisoning an opening voiceover to tighten up the run time. But some series go further, swapping out major elements in the title sequence to reflect major shifts in the series itself—or sometimes, simply to keep things fresh. Big Love took that to the extreme in its fourth season, completely scrapping the sequence of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his three wives ice-skating to the Beach Boys, searching for each other in a sea of white fabric, and reuniting at the dinner table on their own celestial planet (a nod to the show’s Mormon backdrop). In its place was a much more foreboding sequence that ratcheted up the sense of isolation hinted at in the ...