Along with Jackie Robinson, the only athlete that ever really mattered. He’s my favorite poet (delivery counts big with me) and the first and most uplifting rapper of all time. Was this fighting disciple of pure love actually once seen as America’s angriest and most dangerous? The most hated man in America eventually becomes …
I can’t imagine how stupid our world will look someday when people try to figure out why more time was spent covering Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan than George Bush’s Reign of Terror (trademark Borat). One can sort of act, one can sort of sing, and the other sort of tries and fails …
Personally, I don’t think you are a true sports fan unless you truly believe in your heart that watching your favorite team play gives them a better chance at winning as if your love and strong will were the key to their success. I grew up in Cleveland in the pre Jacobs field days of …
Bull Durham is the best movie ever made about baseball, and it’s not even really that close. Writer-Director Ron Shelton was a minor league player and he knows the in and outs of the game, the every day excitement and the dreariness, as well as the Homeric romance that appeals to intellectuals like George Will …
Hall of Famer Cap Anson is said to have personally instituted Major League Baseball’s ban of Black ballplayers when he refused to take the field against Toledo Blue Stocking catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1887. From that point on it was only a matter of time before Black players disappeared from the “official” …
Continue reading “The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars & Motor Kings”
John Tunis wrote these great epic baseball novels for kids starring Roy Tucker as The Kid From Tomkinsville about a young country boy who was destined to be the greatest pitcher of all time. When he hurts his arm he is forced to learn how to hit and become a corn fed Babe Ruth. Bernard …
I must say this movie has aged far better than it ever had any right to, but here I am again to argue for the brilliance of Prince’s sort of Purple Rain sequel Graffiti Bridge. I first saw Graffiti Bridge out in the avenues of San Francisco with my friend Rasheed, a hard core funkster …
“The men don’t know, but the little girls understand” Teen idols haven’t always been a pure indication of little talent. There was Elvis, The Beatles, Ricky Nelson, The Jackson Five and on the warped and scary side I think Jim Morrison was even featured on a few covers of Tiger Beat Magazine. Sometimes things can …
The typical film about the early years of Rock and Roll was called something like Rock Rock Rock or Don’t Knock the Rock, was in black and white, had Alan Freed in it, and had essentially the same plot every time. Look at the insidious jungle rhythms the kids are listening to now! Is the …
My life changed one winter night in 1982. I had recently started to get into music and I desperately wanted to go see a midnight showing of The Kids Are Alright, a movie about the rock band The Who. The only problem was that we were in Cleveland, and the roads were terrible. My parents …
“Hello Cleveland!!” They’re loud, they’re misogynist, they’re wasted, they’re extremely stupid, and they have armadillos in their trousers. This is Spinal Tap was essentially the first and still the best episode of Behind the Music ever. The good times, the mismanagement, the drug problems, the bankruptcy, and the comeback. They make Motley Crue seem …
Death does amazing things for a performer’s reputation. Had Gary Busey gone by the wayside after his swaggering confident performance as bespectacled 50’s hiccupping proto-nerd and Elvis Costello impersonator Buddy Holly, and before all the drugs, motorcycles, and religious awakenings, who knows how impressive his legend might have become. Sure, Jennifer Lopez was the bomb …
Welcome to Elvis Noir, also known as the Encyclopedia of Cool, Volume Three. Everyone says that King Creole was Elvis Presley’s best film, but what they are really saying is that it doesn’t have much competition either. When Elvis got drafted by the army, his only request to the Government was for permission to finish …
“In Jailhouse Rock, he was everything Rockabilly’s about. I mean he was mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he didn’t give a fuck about nothing except Rocking and Rolling, living fast, dying young, and leaving a good looking corpse. Y’know, I watch that hillbilly, I want to be him so bad. . . Elvis …
“I’m not angry sister. I’m fucking desperate.” It’s pretty hard not to be fascinated by the Beatle’s Hamburg, Germany period. Lore would have it that it was sort of a wild untamed boot camp that eventually forged a bunch of kids into a Rock and Roll band. It must have been a great time to …
