THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

Almost everyone I know has at least one moment in their lives, usually seen only in retrospect, where things could have turned very bad very quickly.  A few years back, my father tumbled down the stairs at his house, his body finally halting on the cold concrete floor of the basement, and had he landed just an inch one way or another, he would have died at the base of those wooden steps. A few years after that, my grandmother had a vessel in her leg burst, and had she not called my dad -- which she initially wasn't going to do, because she didn't "want to be a bother" -- she would have bled out in her own house that she had lived in all her life. My friend had his car stall out on the train tracks while an approaching train blew out a warning, and had he not got it rolling again in time, I'd likely be speaking of him in the past tense. This year, between Christmas and New Year’s, I slid at a decent rate of speed on slushy roads into oncoming traffic on US-31, and ...

In the first month of my History of Rock & Roll Era class, we hit "Be My Baby" (1963) by The Ronettes , and who can argue with such an incandescent blast of raging hormones and girl group glee? If you need a reminder, here ya go: The song was added to the National Registry of the Library of Congress in 2006: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/BE%20MY%20BABY.pdf More info on "Be My Baby" is here: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-ronettes-be-my-baby And here's an essay from the BBC on why "Be My Baby" is oh so perfect: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200811-why-be-my-baby-is-the-perfect-pop-song Amid its many charms, "Be My Baby" has quite a remarkable drum figure, courtesy of the legendary Hal Blaine (of the L.A. group of session musicians who became known as The Wrecking Crew, who of course have their own documentary ). That insistent drum beat has popped...

(open on my chair, laptop at my side) Many years ago at NCMC, when I could actually teach a film course on Stanley Kubrick and students would actually show up, the Liberal Arts Administrator right next door to my office fancifully told me I should go to the Sundance Film Festival to study up on film, as if time and money were no object to a freshly minted community college professor. Thankfully, a couple years after that, Michael Moore started the Traverse City Film Festival, which I went to for many years as the next best thing to Sundance. Sure, the TCFF had singular moments – I got to see Borat (2006) in a packed theater months before it had a release elsewhere – but generally, it was pretty punishing to sit next to entitled TC limo liberals as they munched on snacks and checked their cell phones and saved small uncomfortable seats. As much as I wanted to support local endeavors, especially those in the film biz, I went to TCFF less and less until I stopped completely a few years ag...

It's all a fucking blur, the compression of time via floating anxiety and tedious routine, and it was easy to put things on the screens, empathy machines as weapons of distraction and escape, effacing anxiety and routine for an hour and change. As with any year, there will be stuff I discover later than should be here, but the eyestrain says I should take a break from screens and go outside or something.  Movies (whatever that means this year): First Class Flights : The Vast Of Night; Possessor; First Cow; The Devil All The Time; Babyteeth; Never Rarely Sometimes Always; The Invisible Man; Portrait Of A Lady On Fire Coach Trips :  Freaky; Swallow Palm Springs; She Dies Tomorrow; The Assistant; The Trial Of The Chicago 7; Kajillionaire; Yes God Yes; The Whistlers; American Utopia; Fourteen; Gretel & Hansel; The Rental; The Hunt; We Summon The Darkness; Borat Subsequent Moviefilm; The Trip To Greece; Tesla; An American Pickle Plane Crashes :  Tenet (in IMAX, the last ...

In 2016, Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes than Trump. In 2020, Biden received nearly 7 million more votes than Trump. Two similar lines of objective evidence, two vastly different sets of outcomes based on geography and circumstance and perception, the same factors that help to make music resonate in our hearts and minds and asses. In other words, the music is out there for everyone, but it's clearly not for everyone, so let's face the music and dance. When I wanted to dance, these ladies brought the grooves and joy and verve and escape: Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia / Annie - Dark Hearts / Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?  / Ela Minus - Acts Of Rebellion / Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song  / Billy Nomates - Billy Nomates When I wanted to rock, these artists supplied the muscle and nuance and intensity: Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full / Algiers - There Is No Year / Wire - Mind Hive / Bruce Springsteen - Letter To You / The Pine...

“Keep America great” Right now, I can’t watch MSU or U-M football, I can’t go see a movie at the State Theatre, I haven’t been to a concert in almost a year, my neighborhood is swaddled in flags made in China that aren’t the Chinese flag, I haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since February, some of my retirement stocks lost almost 40% of their value, I can’t find certain types of food and drink in the stores, the price of toilet paper has exploded, we are running out of coin currency in circulation, and I haven’t set foot in a classroom since 11 March, which is the last time I saw my friend and colleague alive. “Keep America great” In the United States, there is minority rule from an ignorant off-white supremacist cult leader and the rich and powerful people who can misuse the law and his followers to become more rich and powerful, while people that don’t look like them are being shot in the streets or their homes, or being put in concentration camps where infants wail for their absent ...

  "Two Thumbs Down!" said the Siskel & Ebert review of Lost Highway (1997) by noted filmmaker and mindfucker David Lynch, and if ever there was a marketing tack to make me want to see a movie even more, foregrounding the negative reviews from America's Movie Tastemakers was it. After making the drive from Mt. Pleasant to Lansing to see it with my then-girlfriend, I overheard someone say "what the hell was THAT?" in the parking lot as we were leaving, a sentiment that my then-girlfriend echoed once we got into the car. But for me, that movie elicited a Lynch Lifetime Pass, a guarantee from me that whatever he did from that point on would be supported and celebrated and trumpeted, even if it didn't scale the lofty heights of  Lost Highway . In the singular queue of my Lifetime Passes, there are the Platinum members (Lynch, Bowie), and there are the Gold members, for whom I will give the latest project more than a passing glance. Among my current Gold memb...