Did you ever hear the Steve Goodman song, “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”? (A more popular version was recorded by David Allan Coe.) It’s subtitle is “The Perfect Country and Western Song” because it was a joking attempt by Goodman and his co-writer John Prine to squeeze every stereotypical feature of country-western music into just one song. In one of the final verses Goodman, responding to Coe’s complaints about what has been left out, empties the bucket in a ridiculous fashion just […]
God Bless Us, Everyone!
To close out my cannonball, I thought it’d be seasonally appropriate to revisit a Christmas classic. I say “revisit” even though I had never before read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but due to its cultural ubiquity I felt like I have. Like most people I’ve seen multiple adaptations of the story, from the Reginald Owens and Alistair Sim black-and-white movies to Michael Caine with the Muppets and the tragically typecast Scrooge McDuck in the Disney version, I’ve seen them all. So in reading the novella […]
Running Just as Fast as He Can
My attempt to foment a late-in-life love of comic books continues with Volumes 5 and 6 of The Flash. In these collections the scarlet speedster battles the Rogues’ Gallery, meets the Green Lantern, and tries to steer an impressionable Wally West. Unfortunately neither of these volumes has much in the way of memorable storytelling or imagery. I chose the Flash for my introduction to comics because of my love of the CW television series, which features great characters, memorable villains, and only occasionally takes a […]
Days of Their Lives
I had issues with the film One Day, which is adapted from this novel by David Nicholls, but I am so in the tank for Anne Hathaway that they hardly mattered. I always meant to go back and read the novel, and thanks to a sale on the Kindle edition I’ve finally done so. The premise, in case you’re not aware, is that the novel follows two friends, Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley through the course of their lives by focusing on the events of […]