we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
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We are our influences
She's too "Precious," indeed.
There are few things I enjoy more than talking about the writers, artists, musicians, etc. that have influenced me in ways that have helped to shape who I've become. In fact, set me up in a coffee shop or a bar with good friends and no time limit, and I can wax on for a ridiculous amount of time on just this sort of stuff. I'm fortunate enough to have a partner and friends who also love doing this, which means I've done it a lot in my life. So—surprise!—I'll be doing it here in this space too. Probably often. So consider this part one of a multi-part series. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on my ramblings and/or if your influences dovetail with mine or if not what's influenced you.
So here we go with the first two entries in what I'll call my Personal Influence Hall of Fame. More to come later. And like my children, I love 'em all equally.
Probably the first band I remember loving, The Pretenders have been a musical constant for most of my life now. I discovered them like most kids in the early to mid 1980s through MTV and their video for "Brass in Pocket." And when I say I discovered them, I think it was really Chrissie Hynde that I discovered and whenever that video came on (which was a lot back in the days when, yes, we watched actual videos on MTV, and there were relatively few of them on so you could be sure to catch the same ones often) I sat rapt, staring at the mysterious waitress singing to herself in a diner, and listened intently to a song whose lyrics oozed sexuality in a way my young mind could not possibly comprehend but dammit if she didn't get my attention. The guys in the video (her bandmates) were clearly idiots for not giving her the time of day and my god didn't they understand she was one-hundred times better than those women they were hanging out with in the diner I mean even I knew that and I wasn't even ten years old yet!
Uh, yeah, so I had what you might call a little crush on Chrissie. I'm pretty sure she was my first pop culture crush (or at least real-life, non-illustrated pop culture crush—I'm sure I'll write about Jean Grey here one day too). A crush that has held up for the last thirty-plus years, in fact. But it was really about the music and lyrics—her authorial voice was so strong and compelling. Her songs were mostly about how complicated it was to be an adult, so as I aged they became even more meaningful to me. Also as I started to appreciate music more I came to realize that while I loved this band's hits and deep cuts equally over the decades, it was really this initial iteration of the band that recorded their first two albums that blew my mind. I return to those first two records often, along with the equally strong third album. The first album is utterly perfect. Not a clunker in sight, all hits no filler: "Precious," "The Wait," "Mystery Achievement," etc. And as I started winding my path through musical genres in my teens and college years, absorbing them like a sponge, I realized that a lot of what I loved tied back to that first Pretenders album. The ringing guitar tones, the gorgeous melodies and catchy-as-hell song structures, and the utterly unique voice of the lead singer who could convey strength, weakness, joy, sorrow, tenderness, and acerbic wit—all in one line of a song! These were the hallmarks of my favorite bands and once I realized this it helped me to further define what most brought me happiness and joy when listening to music. And Hynde and the Pretenders really started it all for me.
I saw them with Elizabeth (also a fan) for the first and only time maybe five or six years ago at a small theater. It was around that time that I realized Hynde was old enough to be my mother, and amazingly always had been! Crazy how aging works, huh? As a kid you think of famous people as ageless, or timeless. I was a little worried, that as an aging band with several new members, they might not do justice to all of the years I'd spent living with their music and words in my head, but as they started to play the first song of the night it was obvious I had nothing to fear. Hynde must have been close to sixty years old at this point and she commanded the stage with absolute authority, just like she had in all of those live videos from their early years that I'd been watching for decades. I guess some crushes are built to last.
Sadly, I never found out what diner she worked at or else I'd have made myself a regular there.
Michael Chabon had written two previous novels before The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but neither he nor those books had made my radar. Kavalier and Clay was getting major accolades when it was published in 2000 and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. I read it sometime in 2000. Or more accurately, I devoured it sometime in 2000. It's been my favorite novel ever since. I also caught up on his previous novels and have read practically every damn word the man has written in the fifteen years since, from novels to short stories to essay collections to online only essays, etc. I've tried explaining how his work has influenced me before, and I think I've failed at it pretty miserably. But here goes, once more with feeling.
My Chabon shelf runneth over
Unlike the title of this blog, Chabon's words never seem out of place. They fit together in the most organic of ways to create an emotional resonance in me that few, if any, authors ever have. It doesn't hurt that some of his favorite interests to write about align perfectly with my own: how music can not only soundtrack your life but burrow into your heart and head in a way few other art forms can; the relationships between men, be they friends, lovers, or somewhere in between, have never been as richly explored by any other writer I've ever read; and finding value in works of "low" culture like comics and pulp and science fiction novels by noting that they are just as much worthy of critical analysis as the most respected texts in the "cannon." Kavalier and Clay really did a lot to bring these "low" culture bottom-dwellers like comics and science fiction/fantasy stories to a place of more importance in the greater culture, a place they seem to reside in (occasionally at least, and definitely more often than they had previously) with increasing frequency today (for good or ill). Chabon is of a generation (Gen X) that decided that everything was for the taking when it came to culture—whereas members of previous generations of the twentieth century had been taught to feel ashamed to read comics or lurid pulp novels out in the open, let alone name-check them as influences for god's sake, Chabon and his contemporaries like Jennifer Egan and Jonathan Lethem praised these hidden gems and talked in essays and interviews about how works of genre fiction influenced them as much as works of classic literature. For me, as a younger member of Chabon's generation, I took this to heart. It clearly influenced me, and my friends, in how we participated in popular culture. We proudly wear our Marvel Comics pins on our messenger bags while carrying in said bags copies of a science-fiction graphic novel alongside a seminal work of feminist essays. There is no difference in our minds. Chabon helped codify that for me.
And now I'm realizing I just spilled 500 words and barely discussed how gorgeous his sentences are and, and, and...I'll have to return to him another day here.
Joe Dante's 1980s classic Gremlins will always be a subversive Christmas favorite. From Spike exploding in the microwave to Mrs. Daigle's "stairlift to hell", the movie is packed with deliciously transgressive moments that turn the holly jolly season right on its ear. None are more memorable, though, than Phoebe Cates delivering her legendary "worst thing that ever happened to me on Christmas" monologue. It's a jaw-dropping, tour-de-force moment, a truly horrific story that's also one of the most darkly comic moments in Christmas movie history. Cates really shines during this scene. There's no denying just how seminal that scene of hers in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was for a generation of young people, but her speech in Gremlins is equally important and a wonderful showcase for her serious and comedic acting skills. Here's the speech, in its entirety. No Christmas season is complete without at least one viewing ...
This month marks sixty-five years since one of the most iconic moments in twentieth-century popular culture: Marilyn Monroe’s angelic white dress being blown sky high by wind rushing up from a subway grate beneath her feet in the film The Seven Year Itch . Billy Wilder shot multiple takes, while Sam Shaw snapped photo after photo for what had to be the biggest publicity stunt ever staged at the time. Marilyn wore two pairs of underwear for the shot, yet, as noted in Lois Banner's critical biography Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox (2012), "a dark blotch of pubic hair" remained visible to the 100 male photographers and over 1,500 male spectators, all of whom crowded eagerly around the set to gawk and drool. Due to strict 1950s movie censorship laws, photos had to be doctored to white out the offending blotch, but those in attendance saw it, over and over, shot after shot. Marilyn's husband at the time, the extremely old fashioned Joe DiMaggio, stormed off th...
This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade. Very few television series in the 1990s were as polarizing as Married...with Children . People either loved it or they loathed it. TV critics and good upstanding Catholic families like mine fell into the latter category. Soon after it debuted during my first year of junior high in 1987 (not quite the '90s, but on the brink), my parents made it clear that we would not be watching. I believe the words they used were "vulgar," "unfunny," and, one of their perennial favorites, "risque." Of course, this meant it immediately took on a prurient appeal for me. Parents can never win, honestly. Kelly Bundy—the talented Christina Applegate, who never gets enough credit for elevating the blonde airhead trope into an art form—only further piqued my interest. She was like the girls in school with the absurdly voluminous hair and ridiculously sh...
Linda, that girl looks just like Pat Benatar. I know. Wait, there are three girls here at Ridgemont who have cultivated the Pat Benatar look. I was just a kid when Fast Times at Ridgemont High opened in 1982. Still though, even at the tender young age of seven, I knew who Pat Benatar was, because a.) her music was all over the radio and even then I recognized the utter awesomeness of her vocal talent in songs like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", and b.) some of the older girls around town were obviously cribbing their looks—clothes, hair, makeup, strut—from Benatar's own style. Benatar was ubiquitous. So, when I see or hear vintage-era Benatar now, I think of Fast Times , but mostly I remember that ubiquity—of both the performer and her legion of young imitators. I know it's not true, but when I recollect those years I swear every older girl looked like either Benatar, Juice Newton, or Joan Jett. It's easy to forget, years later, that...
Looking back at the pop culture mainstays of this Gen-Xer's gloriously misspent youth. One of the most famous and oft-quoted Seinfeld scenes involves Bobka and Jerry's discovery of the existence of Cinnamon Bobka. After Elaine scoffs at the notion of such a thing, even calling it a "lesser Bobka," Jerry unleashes one of the great defenses of a freshly ground spice ever delivered: People love cinnamon. It should be on tables at restaurants along with salt and pepper. Anytime anyone says, "Oh This is so good. What's in it?" The answer invariably comes back, Cinnamon. Cinnamon. Again and again. Joanne Whalley is like Cinnamon. Yes, I just compulsively double-checked my DVD copy and it's the unrated version, thank you very much. Let me explain. You see, during the formative years of my misspent youth, if I stumbled on a movie featuring the doe-eyed, petite, beautiful English actress, invariably I'd feel like Jerry does about Cin...
Looking back at the pop culture mainstays of this Gen-Xer's gloriously misspent youth. ***** A note on the series and this site: This might be the final post in the "Misspent Youth" series - at least here. Maybe it'll eventually move with me. Oh, right, I buried the lede: I've moved, and would love for you to come visit me at my new site, The Starfire Lounge ! Moving forward, this site will likely cease to be updated, but will remain around for posterity and your continued reading pleasure. I have a few more things to post here over the coming days or weeks as a sort of "everything must go" send-off to the old girl. I also plan to write a final farewell post to my main online home for the last five years. Stay tuned and, as always, thanks for reading. ***** It's no surprise that the talented but now mostly forgotten Randi Brooks would make an appearance in the Misspent Youth series. She may not be a household name, but her resume...
"I dream about sex, flying, and being chased by Nazis." — Margot Kidder, Rolling Stone , "The Education of Margot Kidder", 1981 ***** File that quote under, "Reasons why I love Margot Kidder." Last month, Margot hopped a one-way flight with old pal Chris Reeve off into the stars and beyond, where they could reenact their iconic moment from Superman (1978), for all eternity. I wrote a little about Margot, here and here , trying to explain why this particular actress meant so much to me as a kid growing up in the 1980s. I thought that would be enough. It wasn't.* Those posts were my fumbling attempts to sort out just how large an impact Margot had on my young life, and, to my present-day surprise, how much she still means to me now. Before news of her death, I hadn't thought of her in ages. I assumed the early childhood crush I harbored for my Lois Lane had dwindled and faded. Ha! I was a fool. My crush on Margot was very ...
She wants there to be more of her. More space taken by her body, More decibels conquered by her voice, More time by her wakefulness, More equations by her addition. She wants more, I want less. Her blade is rusty, musty, sweaty and vain. I like it clean and sharp and dark-bright. She traffics in surplus, I bare my essentials. Her world is elastic but brittle. Mine is bony but moonlit. Hers flows, she ebbs. Mine ebbs, I flow. She dies in life, I live in death. —Zoe Lund, “Opium Wars”
This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade. For six seasons in the 1990s, The Nanny made many of us laugh. At times, it could be downright hilarious . At others, well, not so much . This isn't a review of a '90s sitcom staple, though. No. This is simply an excuse to come clean about something I've kept buried deep inside for over two decades now: I had a secret crush on The Nanny herself, Fran Drescher. The unadulterated nineties-ness of this is practically blinding. And I love it. While The Nanny was sometimes quite funny, thanks largely to Drescher's spunky charisma and wholehearted commitment, the show was never considered hip. People my parents age seemed to love it, but my friends preferred, well, Friends . That smile! Those legs! That dress! It's all overloading my circuits. I watched Friends with my friends, but I also thoroughly enjoyed The Nanny , to...
Revisiting—or in a few cases, watching for the first time—and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer, the best actress of my lifetime.* If you've been paying attention around here lately , you know that I adore Michelle Pfeiffer. She's likely my favorite actor, hands down. Al Pacino, however, also sits right there at the top of my personal pantheon. So it's no surprise that their two film collaborations are extremely special to me. They first starred together in Scarface (1983), Brian De Palma's wildly ambitious and searing critique of power, avarice, and the American Dream, as told through the rise and fall of a drug kingpin. That film belongs to Pacino, with Pfeiffer in a smaller, yet crucially important role. Eight years later, they shared the screen again in Frankie and Johnny (1991), Garry Marshall's warm, tender, and honest look at two damaged people falling in love. This time, Michelle's Frankie is the film's real focal point, with Al'...
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