Naturally I thought of a theory about why one of the songs I mentioned affects me so profoundly as soon as producer Nick Fountain turned off the mics in NPR's Studio 46 and episode #161 of Pop Culture Happy Hour -- on which I was honored to be a guest -- wrapped. But fortunately for you, dear listener, the three full-time panelists on this weeks's show -- Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Trey Graham -- were all on top of their games. Their usual fourth man, my pal-for-life Glen Weldon, was on top of a raft or something, vacationing in Grand Cayman.
You can hear the episode in web browser here or download it from iTunes here.
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This is the first comic book I ever bought, from one of those HEY KIDS! COMICS! spinner racks in a 7-Eleven somewhere on the south side of Chicago. I think I had stepped out from some kind of an event for a distant relative. I was very young.
Anyway, I found it again in a Midtown Manhattan comics shop this weekend. When I pointed it out to my girlfriend, she said she wanted to buy it for me. A sweet gesture, especially considering the price tag of $6 -- 800 percent what I paid for my long-lost copy in what the indicia at the bottom of page one tells me was 1986. Some of the best comics ever published came out that year: Watchmen, MAUS, The Dark Knight Returns, Love & Rockets, etc., etc. I wouldn't find that out about those until later. They didn't sell those comics in 7-Elevens.
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Captain Phillips, the seemingly little-embellished new thriller based on a 2009 hijacking at sea, got me thinking about what sort of responsibilities filmmakers have -- and we as audiences have -- when approaching a compressed a dramatized account of true events. You can read that piece over at Monkey See today.
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