Tag Archives: Thomas Pynchon

01/01/2019 · 1:01 pm

Styx

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Podcastery, Thousand Listen Club

Tagged as 1970s, 1978, 1980s, 2019, Alton Kelley, Bands I Useta Like, Dennis DeYoung, Frank Zappa, Gwar, Hipgnosis, James Young, MAD magazine, marijuana, rock, Rolling Stones, Stanley Mouse, Styx, Thomas Pynchon, Tommy Shaw, WWII

12/04/2016 · 12:46 pm

Everyone loves a gingerbread house. Even South Park’s hate campaign against the “ginger” couldn’t dull the sugary luster of the beloved cookie-built domicile. You probably remember the first time you saw one, right? Or the first time you smelled one?

How to make me put a ring on it*, chapter one. (*the robot.)

Sometime in the late 1970s, at my local church, I spied and smelled a real, elaborate gingerbread house for the first time. It was during an Advent festival, with apple-cheeked residents of my snowy hometown selling pinecone ornaments and weaving fragrant holiday wreaths budded with hollyberry. Someone had knocked themselves out on the centerpiece, a resplendent dwelling of gingerbread with all the confectionery trimmings, the kind that lured the likes of Hansel and Gretel to their near-doom.

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Comments Off on The Necco Betrayal

Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All

Tagged as 1970s, 1980s, 1982, absinthe, American Psycho, candy, corporate crap, goth, gum, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Necco Wafers, New Jersey, Optimus Prime, The Simpsons, Thomas Pynchon

04/26/2016 · 12:54 pm

Inherent Vice

So one of my favorite directors made an adaptation of a novel by my favorite writer. That’s a big deal.

In fact, it’s a huge deal. There was a time when I and friends who also read Thomas Pynchon thought that Mason & Dixon, his masterpiece from 1997, was his final effort. Then we figured the swan song was his sublime Against The Day, from 2006. Inherent Vice came along in 2009, and we finally realized that we were witness to a thriving, percolating phase in the lifetime of a literary master.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson read Inherent Vice in 2009 and rightly deduced that it would be the most filmable of Pynchon’s oeuvre. Oh, how I long for a Terry Gilliam adaptation of Mason & Dixon, with a big budget and perfect casting, but this does just fine for the time being. Besides, now it’s on record that audience interest in Pynchon adaptations exists. Maybe someday we’ll get Against The Day, or, since I’m really blue-skying here, Gravity’s Rainbow*. It’s now in the realm of possibility. Continue reading →