Shocktober: “The Ghost of A. Chantz”

The Dick Van Dyke Show – “The Ghost of A. Chantz”

Season 4, Episode 2
Airdate: September 30, 1964

As was my strategy the last time we did a month of reviewing Halloween episodes of TV shows, I’m inclined to watch shows that I have at least some familiarity with. After all, a Halloween episode isn’t going to be that great of an introduction to a show you’ve never seen an episode of, since it usually leans into a horror-esque tone that the show isn’t necessarily known for. That’s the case with this season 4 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which has plenty of the witty banter and wacky situations that I associate with this show, but places these characters in a haunted house setting. Continue reading →

Shocktober: “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”

Season 3, Episode 4
Original Air Date: October 15, 1995

When John suggested we do another year of TV specials for Shocktober in honor of I Saw the TV Glow, I went straight to Wikipedia’s incredibly thorough list and started looking for any shows that were on my radar. The one that stood out the most was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, probably the most significant piece of Superman media left that I still know nothing about. Aside from this show’s modern reboot, Superman & Lois, I’ve never been that interested in the Man of Steel’s live action TV dramas, his super powers just did not ever seem conducive to television’s low budgets. But I did have some knowledge of Smallville and the Arrowverse content and I even read up on George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman back when Hollywoodland came out. It’s just this Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher thing that I remained totally ignorant of.

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Shocktober: “Halloween Knight”

“Halloween Knight” – Knight Rider (1984)

Season 3 – Episode 5
Air Date: October 28th, 1984

Have you ever sat down to watch a “classic” movie or TV show and then realized, “Actually, I have no idea what this is about?” That was me when I watched my first-ever episode of Knight Rider. For some reason, I always thought the show was about a guy and his super-smart car on the run from bad guys. Clearly, I confused it with The Incredible Hulk, which is about a protagonist who moves from town to town encountering various adventures and misadventures.

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Every Beach Boys Album Ranked

Today is the last day of Summer! So in honor (or memoriam) I give you my official Beach Boys Album Ranking. But first! A quick word from yours truly…

One of my favorite musical projects over the past two years has been diving deep into band discographies. Have I spent hours listening to albums better left forgotten? Absolutely. Is there anything to learn from enduring Van Halen III? You’d be surprised.

If it’s a band you love, experiencing their highs—and their lows—brings you closer to them. You note how they respond, album by album, to success and failure. You see them retool or double down on their sound. You feel the impact of lineup changes, shifts in creative direction, and evolving instrumentation and production. It’s more than just hearing a band evolve; it’s hearing the music industry evolve.

So how had I not listened to all of The Beach Boys until this past summer? They’re one of my all-time favorite bands. Hell, I once fought through a sea of drunk boomers at a winery just to see Brian Wilson reunite with the band.

For one, the band has 29 albums. And (spoiler alert) they peaked early. Sure, there were solid albums in the early ’70s and a good song or two later on, but the Beach Boys never had that great “comeback” album. No great albums post-1971 at least in my opinion. Still, there’s a lot to appreciate in their 50+ year journey.

Where do we begin? How about a tier list? Remember when those were popular for a hot minute? Plus, if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, you can just glance at the pic below and peace out.

Note: I did not include the 2011 SMiLE Sessions release as it’s not an official Beach Boys album. It’s good though!

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Born To Bruce

I can’t remember the last time we did a concert review on Mildly Pleased. However, I wrote a bunch of words about seeing Bruce Springsteen at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia on August 21, in the midst of Criterion Month. Since I felt like publishing them somewhere, here are those words…

Bruce Springsteen is an artist that I’ve loved since probably my sophomore year of high school. A few years prior, I first became aware of him watching early ’00s VH1 specials that chronicled his Born In The U.S.A. era and how it at that time tapped into a certain type of ‘80s nostalgia. What these first impressions of Bruce didn’t convey was the amount of artistry, passion, and fervor for rock and roll mythology that were inherent in his records that came before Born In The U.S.A.

But then I remember listening to every track on Born To Run for the first time in sequential order on Limewire, because despite my boomer-leaning musical tastes at the time, I was still at heart a millennial. Born To Run is one of those few albums that aims to sound like a masterpiece and against all odds, succeeds. It started me on my Bruce fandom journey that led me to Darkness On The Edge of Town, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Nebraska, and on and on. In fact, as has been chronicled on this blog, I’ve listened to every single Bruce Springsteen album, which is not a habit I have for most artists who keep recording into middle age. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 30: Perfect Days

Perfect Days (2003)

Do you know what your perfect day would be? I’m not talking about like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or the best Christmas ever or getting invited to the ultra-hot-people-only orgy. I mean what would your perfect, random, workday, Wednesday be like? I imagine for most of us it would be pretty simple, something like: wake up rested, have a nice breakfast, nothing weird happens at work, maybe lunch in the park or some shit, and have a little time to relax before going to bed and starting it all over again the next day. For better or for worse, days like that *should* make up the majority of our lives. And yet, if I’m speaking for myself, I don’t give myself the gift of perfect days nearly often enough. Far too often I wake up exhausted or spend too much time about stressing going to the gym or put off doing work and chores and preparing food. It keeps me hanging on. I should change that, yeah?

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Criterion Month Day 29: All of Us Strangers

All of Us Strangers (2023)

“You simply can’t go home again” is a quote from Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 novel of the same name that is just as poignant now as when it was written. I was reminded of this quote by a 1963 interview Rod Serling did with Binny Lum for Australian Radio.

In the interview, Serling discusses how The Twilight Zone can use imaginative storytelling to explore the idea of going back to another time, but how returning always brings with it a great sense of loss. I can think of no better word to describe Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers than “loss.”

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