Summer Starter Pack 2024

Out for Summer, out 'till Fall, we might not come back at all.

Putting ourselves in a 70s state for the season shouldn't be too difficult - just watch the right movies and listen to the right music. Right? But that is aggressively broad in every area - we wanna achieve a mood but we're too smart and too picky to just be like "oh, let's watch the shit outta Chico and The Man because 1970s." Our path is more defined regardless (or maybe because) of whatever wave we've given ourselves to ride, and we certainly can come up with enough stuff to have a solid 70s Summer that's tailored to our taste. 

And now the annual exposition: the following is a list of projects, interests, goals, and such & such that we intend to tackle to fill our favorite season with leisure and enlightenment. We create it for ourselves as a guideline we can stick to (which doesn't always work out) but also to give you ideas - even if it's the singular notion of finding your own song to dance to. So don't be no jive-ass and get on the ball, mama!

- Paul

DISGRACELAND

I've never pushed a podcast before, but that's because I don't listen to them. The opportunity rarely presents itself - I don't have a commute, I don't work in an office, I don't exercise, I don't even own headphones. But convenience and circumstance don't play into this very prominent adventure for the Summer and beyond. If you're not familiar with this - the most downloaded music podcast in the world - it's hosted by Jake Brennan (a name some of our readers may recognize from Bennett Media's Bodega Girls and WOWMANWOW days) who solely and singularly recounts tales of sordid misadventures and rock 'n' roll nightmares surrounding pop culture icons, from Chuck Berry to Andy Warhol to Debbie Harry to Anthony Bourdain. For over 10 years Disgraceland has accumulated a catalog of more than 160 episodes - enough to fill your season with debauched gossip and hair-raising yarns. 

Disgraceland will be consuming much of my summer in a different way. Jake and myself are currently attempting to bring the podcast to YouTube in a compelling way - hopefully steering the built-in audience while attracting a new one. If you do join us in anything this summer, make it this. Rocka Rolla. 

Podcasts: https://www.disgracelandpod.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod

Coca-Cola Classic

There are a few things floating around this season: Pepsi "debuted" their Summer Lime and Peach flavors (though Lime is a rerun from 2019), Dr. Pepper has some coconut thing that I'm willing to try (more on that soon hopefully), and we're still winding down the final days of Coke's poorly advertised Spiced variant (which just tastes like their California Raspberry flavor from 2018). The hunt is fun and a new taste is a cheap thrill, but sometimes I want my Summer to be like Summer, and for that you can't beat the real thing. 

But I'm not just talkin' about regular ol' Coke, that'd be boring. I'm talking glass bottles of Coca-Cola - the kind that were abundantly available during, say, the 1970s. But even more than keeping with some silly theme, Coke in a glass bottle became a major Summer/nostalgia thing for me when I discovered them for sale at my corner store when I was maybe 9 or 10 and they turned into my whole world. I spent an entire Summer Vacation asking my mother every day if I could have money to go buy more, and on days I couldn't I'd refill the empties from a plastic 2 liter. Nowadays they're still pretty scarce, but one of my local grocery stores is selling cases of them at some mildly affordable price. Honestly I don't remember the cost, I don't care, I'm getting them and I'm drinking Coke outta glass bottles this Summer and no one's gonna stop me. 

Cinema Speculation (The List)

In 2022 Quentin Tarantino published a book of his own Film Criticism, titled Cinema Speculation. It's the kinda thing I'd been waiting for since I became aware of the man; personally I get excited when any filmmaker talks about movies they like (or dislike) but Quentin in particular has famously demonstrated his knowledge and wisdom regarding the medium. That part's inarguable, but whether or not one agrees with his takes (or, more importantly, finds them interesting) is the subjective approach. I happen to find his insights fascinating - one, because of how well informed he is with the subject matter, and two, how honest and articulate he is with his sentiments. He is, after all, a great writer. 

I read this book last summer and it checked every box and met every expectation. One of its incidental strengths is what a breath of fresh air it is in the stagnant climate of Metacritic and Audience Score and anything else that reduces art to a numeric statistic - just the simple act of reading a heartfelt review is exhilarating. But of course, the reviews are much more than that: they're deep, they're informative, and more than anything, they're opinionated. Imagine that, folks: subjective judgement of merits and faults from someone who's good at it. And it's that strength in the writing that is why this is top tier Film Criticism: even when I disagree with him, I still enjoy the fuck out of it. 

The structure of the book is set up in such a way that mostly each chapter is a different movie review, covering films between the late 1960s and early 1980s. While reading through I never peeked ahead to see what the next movie would be as it always proved to be a delightful surprise. Ultimately I'd only seen roughly half of the movies discussed, and so this summer I'm going to attempt to fill in as many gaps as possible and watch what I need to have an actual frame of reference. I'd tell you what that list consists of, but if you've not read the book then I don't wanna spoil that surprise. 

The NBC Mystery Movie

Between 1971 and 1977, NBC would pile their Mystery shows into a block of programming called The NBC Mystery Movie. This would typically air twice a week and it had an intro with graphics and a spooky theme song to cohere all these otherwise unrelated shows into one case-cracking vibe. A few shows broke beyond the boundaries of this 6 year period, but a lot of them ran for only one season. The programs included were: 

Amy Prentiss

Banacek

Columbo

Cool Million

Faraday & Company

Hec Ramsey

Lanigan's Rabbi

Madigan

McCloud

McCoy

McMillan & Wife

Quincy, M.E.

The Snoop Sisters

Tenafly

Shows like Faraday & Company and Madigan were short-lived - though keeping in mind that each episode was meant to play out like an entire TV movie, they were still all ambitious. McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and Quincy gained enough traction to move out from under the "umbrella" and of course Columbo became iconic and continued solving crimes until 2003.

Not that I've grown tired of Columbo (if that were even possible) but I'd like to branch out a bit to some of these other shows, perhaps even create my own Mystery Movie lineup, particularly with some of the ones I'm less familiar with. Of course, finding "obscure" TV can still be a challenge - even in the vast wasteland of Streaming nearly all of these shows are nowhere to be found. Alas, physical media endures and may be the only option, so there's a good chance that The Snoop Sisters will have a home on my shelf (next to Columbo).

The Best of Disco Demands

One of the biggest adjustments for me this Summer will be my music listening habits; save for a few exceptions, I reserve music from the 1970s for colder months. It's a bit of a personal preference, sure, but not without basis: a lotta that era's music sounds and feels like either frigid despair or enclosed coziness. But Disco? That hot, sweaty, dance beat? That fever to which they so often refer? That could do just fine, and I have just the prescription: roughly 10 years ago I got my hands on a 5 CD set called The Best of Disco Demands, consisting of 45 hot traxxx by various artists. The real joy of this collection is that it's not some snoozy Top 40 Now That's What I Call Disco compilation with all the stuff we're sick to fucking death of, but rather wall-to-wall obscure vibes that sound like score from a Blaxploitation flick. I don't know if this mood will hold my interest all season long, but it'll certainly serve as an exhilarating introduction to the hotness. 

Each CD comes in its own cardboard sleeve. I've scanned them for you, because you've earned it.

Bennett Media's JIVE-ASS SUMMERTIME

Say, my man! What's crackin'? What it is? Are you down for a funkadelic season of party-hardy porking out and boogie woogie boob tube? You're goddamn right!

We've gone as far as we can with the 80s and 90s nostalgia, or at least long enough to take a little break to roll out Bennett Media's Jive-ass Summertime - three heavy months of a stone groove gas exploring the pop culture keystones of the decade that was The 1970s and giving you the lowdown on what's hip and what's lame. For those of us who weren't there the first time it will be a journey of discovery and appreciation as we look at the movies, the music, the fashion and the fads, as Bennett Media keeps on... truckin'. 

STATIC SHOTS

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THE PHANTOM MENACE - 25 Years Later

A long time ago, just a couple miles from my house, I attended the matinee showing of STAR WARS Episode I: The Phantom Menace on the afternoon of Wednesday May 19, 1999. For the first time ever I bought my ticket days in advance so that I could skip school to witness the earliest possible showing of the first new STAR WARS movie since I was 3 months old. I attended alone but the electricity of the crowd created a palpable camaraderie; we were all there for the same thing, we all loved STAR WARS, we all wanted to see that double lightsaber, and we all knew nothing could ever be sillier than the Ewoks. 

If you were alive and aware in '99 you remember what it was like. You didn't have to be into STAR WARS or even see this movie to feel the force of the ad campaign that dominated every corner of consumerism. Outside of the licensed toys there was fast food, clothing, toiletries, trading cards, costumes, personalized checks, and anything else onto which you could stamp a picture of Natalie Portman's kabuki face; every magazine had a cover story, every cable network had a special. Weird Al had a song. I was 16 and from my perspective everyone everywhere was excited and optimistic and happily got caught up in the hype. And then everyone saw it. 

I thought I maybe kinda liked it, that was my initial takeaway. I knew I felt let down somehow, but my anticipation for it clouded any articulate assessment. That + the movie itself was so dry and convoluted that it made it harder to point to specific things to criticize. I knew I was mostly on the same page as everybody else about Jar Jar and the pace and the performances and the political plot, but unlike every other STAR WARS fan who ever lived, I was prepared and capable to accept the movie as is - and what it is is a clunky Science Fiction flick that feels nothing like STAR WARS. I went back to see it two more times (which is something I just used to do with anything I found even remotely interesting) and during the third viewing I was overcome with a debilitating headache which even then I took as a sign that my body was rejecting my efforts to grasp onto any hope I had of actually enjoying this movie. 

And in the following years there were two more prequels and it became evident that Jar Jar Binks was the least of our problems as the sobering truth came into focus that this is just how these movies are: stilted and flavorless and overly calculated to the point that it wasn't much more than a graphic depiction of a spreadsheet consisting of plot points and political science. I revisit them for the moments that are good, which are usually superficial action sequences free of their designated context, but the space around them is ultimately "cringe." But now, so many years later, Phantom Menace still stands tall as a unique and bizarre experience, but also film. 

On May 4th (as in May the Fourth) of this year, I revisited Episode I - not just the movie, but the movie theater in which I first viewed it -- this time with a 5-year-old child who enjoys STAR WARS just as much as I, and is just as apathetic towards the Prequels as I. It's been quite the sociological survey since he got into these films a little over a year ago: without subjective influence, he loves the Original Trilogy, he likes the Sequel Trilogy, and he's mostly unenthused with the Prequels. I suppose despite George's insistence that these movies are made for indifferent children, quality prevails.

I've revisited many movies on The Big Screen that I initially or eventually came to know best on home video and always found that the theater experience demanded fresh attention. Such was not the case with the Menace - it was the same tedious slog it's always been, but I think I finally hooked into its peculiar rhythms and I actually took interest in what is basically the bulk of the movie: the Tatooine sequence. 

At a running time of over 45 minutes the entire "getting to know Anakin" portion of the film is the film, and it's coherent, it's logical, and most often it's quite engaging, and while there's no spike in skillfulness when it comes to the dialogue, it unfolds in a way that's almost as fun as a STAR WARS movie. Even the pod race (which is a fantastic achievement in cinematography, editing, effects, and sound) acts as an adequate finale to this otherwise cohesive "Part One", but instead the movie continues into the next drag of an act involving the Jedi Council and Senatorial debates. 

Man does it get tedious. It's always during this stretch that the weight of the incompetence of this movie really hits me. After the pod race was over my son became so bored he started asking me questions about the architecture of the theater we were in, and I was happy to participate. Granted we'd both seen the film many times, but the sound and vision of the theater environment still isn't strong enough to pull in my attention during the slower bits, and that's mostly due to the fact that the movie is empty of enough nuance or depth to make you wanna look any deeper. Having said that, the prequels are famous for "Easter eggs" and little peripheral animations for the fans, and watching it again on a bigger screen for the first time in a quarter century I took extra special notice of Jabba the Hutt's slave girls. 

Off to the left in the shadows is Diva Funquita and all the way to the right in the famous gold bikini is Diva Shaliqua. For me this is the biggest kinda fan service, as the trollops of Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi are one of the most vivd flagships of my own personal nostalgia (Leia included). The biggest strength of the Prequels is that they're populated with minor characters with no dialogue but full-fledged backstories and elaborate names. Characters like them had more of an existence in the Expanded Universe books and animated series and other spinoffs, but mostly it was to sell toys. You're not a real collector unless you have a Graxol Kelvyyn! 

George's backend came largely from the merchandise, and so more characters = more cash. Once he stepped away Disney didn't follow this model so the sequels were a bit more sparse in characters and weapons and vehicles and I believe they suffered a bit for that. But otherwise, the Disney trilogy has only magnified how cold and rigid and boring these Prequels are - to me at least. In recent years a lotta folks have "come around" on the Prequels, succumbing to the notion that not only are they "not that bad" but "actually pretty good." Poor deluded creatures. These are the kindsa people who give nostalgia a bad name - they're no better than the Boomers. Or, perhaps they actually did like these movies all along and were afraid to admit it. Or, maybe the quality of modern popular movies has dipped so far beneath The Phantom Menace that it now seems superior. 

At any rate, I sat in a mostly-empty theater on a Saturday afternoon in 2024 to rewatch the highest grossing picture of 1999, so apparently everyone cared even less than I. Needless to say the experience was very different than the first time I was there - especially in the moments before anyone there had actually seen the film and there was an audible shriek of excitement when the "long time ago" title card came up. And therein lies its own incredibly layered nostalgia: me, here, reminiscing about a 25 year old movie that sparked a collective reminiscence for a then-22 year old movie. But the biggest nostalgic thing for me is that sense of unity; everyone was openly let down with the Prequels in some respect, but we all took the ride together, and the fanboys remained on the fringes of the internet's infancy. Today we drown in STAR WARS fatigue, and social media is there to remind us of the toxicity of fandom. In hindsight, much of the recent STAR WARS "content" has been superior to George's tiresome origin trilogy in many ways, but his Prequels at least felt fresh, original, experimental. They were spaced out with legitimate anticipation. They were, and continue to be, unique - for better for worse. Hot drive-thru cuisine is sometimes better than reheated leftovers. 

- Paul

STATIC SHOTS

The Wizard (1989)

CLEAN FIGHT : The Guardian Legend/Legacy of the Wizard

I'm aware that most or all of you dear readers are not quite "gamers" in all respects - and thankfully so, as they're a cantankerous bunch. So if you're not familiar with today's death match, take this as a learning experience. I'll try to make it fun. 

In February of 1986 The Legend of Zelda was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was uncertain as to how well the game would be received due to its then-unique form of gameplay which involved a less linear structure and required the player to find clues and solve mysteries in order to advance towards an objective. Obviously the game was an immediate success and it (along with its ongoing franchise) is regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time, but initially it proved that Nintendo players of America were capable and excited to let themselves be immersed in what would be known as RPG (role-playing games).

And so, Nintendo ran with this new approach and quickly released two more similarly-themed games that were met with comparable popularity: Metroid in August of '86 and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest in '87. Both utilized Zelda's "open world" environment which is actually now referred to as "Metroidvania" style. Unlike most previous "platform" games where you had to move from Point A to Point B in order to save a princess or cross a finish line, these games allowed the player to explore a "world" and play the part as much as the plot. But to be honest Metroid and Castlevania didn't do it for me, mostly because I struggled to connect to these "worlds" (not even the attempted spookiness of a vampire hunting game could live up to its superior box art). What I did connect to were two other games that would go on to become mostly known as the black sheep of retro RPG.

Released in North America in April of 1989, The Guardian Legend was actually a sequel to a 1986 computer game called Guardic, but I didn't know anything about that when I was six years old, and I didn't care - I just liked the creatures and the music and the challenge and the box it came in. The game alternated between a fast paced flying mission and on-foot milling around and it was a bewitching balance. The enemies all looked like Ralph Steadman adaptations of David Cronenberg inventions before I even knew what any of that meant. The score was a mix of 8-bit Jazz and New Wave Synth. Advancing was and is a bitch, but the objective (however fantastical) was always clear and within reach: the player must "battle your way deep within Naju's labyrinths to destroy the alien world" that's "hurtling towards Earth, loaded with a cargo of mysterious lifeforms." Apart from having a pretty badass storyline, the goal was always present and intelligible, and however tough it was to play, I wanted to keep playing because I kinda had a sense of what was going on. Though I can't really say the same of Legacy of the Wizard. 

Released in '89 only one month after Guardian Legend, it was actually a "Part 4" of an ongoing Japanese series called Dragon Slayer and was extracted as a standalone adventure for U.S. markets. That convoluted journey in and of itself may be why the premise and the gameplay feel kinda stagnant and open ended: you can play as one of six members of the Drasle Family (each with different strengths and abilities) to navigate an underground labyrinth to find a magic sword and kill a dragon who's trapped inside a painting. It's such stereotypical fantasy crap but the biggest cliché is its frustrating simplicity; like most RPGs I've tried, the bulk of my gameplay is just me wondering, "Where do I go? What do I do? How do I get there?" What ends up happening is that it becomes more of a zen experience for me: the endless mosaic of neon squares and looping fairy music becomes a sorta abstract escapade - a visual and auditory lava lamp of ambient repetition, but with swords and creatures. 

MY CHOICE: All the attractive elements of Legacy of the Wizard - the music, the psychedelia, the creative context - is present but far more superior in Guardian Legend. 8-bit video games isn't just an era of technology, it's not even a genre of gaming -- it's an art form unto itself. This very specific world of shapes and sounds is indicative only of itself, and maybe real life space travel, and that's what keeps me coming back to think about it, talk about it, and sometimes even experience it. A surprising (to me) number of grownups play video games, presumably for the thrill of the gameplay, and when I was a child I'm sure I partially felt the same way. But those sensations fade from memory and can't be duplicated (again, for me). What does remain is the electro pop aesthetic that moved me then as much as it does today. 

- Paul

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