You're browing the archives for the month of June 2008

1988 Countdown #93: Cher, “I Found Someone”

The video opens with Cher and some boytoy looking at themselves in the same mirror. He’s wearing a white scoop-neck t-shirt, cut low in both the back and the front, and has a big puffy poodle haircut. Cher looks exactly like she did in 1978, or in 1998. The boytoy is fussing with his hair. […]

posted 17 June 2008 in 1988. 1 comment

Darwin’s Cousin

About ten years ago, Wired had a regular feature where they did “interviews” with dead people. They kicked it off with a cover story on Marshall McLuhan; it turned out that skillful excerpts from the works of sufficiently interesting thinkers of the past could create the illusion of a modern conversation. I stumbled on a […]

posted 16 June 2008 in Archives, Articles, Unpublished. no comments yet

Friday Foto: Flipwalk #27

Returning once again to February 2005: The photo and report for my twenty-seventh flipwalk can be found here. David Adam Edelstein was generous enough (and obsessive enough) to make a map of my first twenty-five flipwalks. Check it out and see all the places I ended up, and how they cluster. And then go visit […]

posted 13 June 2008 in Photos. no comments yet

A Love That Even Hepatitis C Couldn’t Kill

Every now and then I learn a nugget of information that really lights up the gossip columns and the blogosphere. I think the last time might have been when Ashton Kutcher told me about the Bush twins’ visit to his house (“I go upstairs to T.J.’s room and I can smell the green wafting out […]

posted 12 June 2008 in Outside. no comments yet

1988 Countdown #94: Michael Jackson, “Another Part of Me”

(There was actually one more ad in that last commercial break, a promo spot for MTV, featuring a guy tied up on the floor of an elevator, being forced to listen to the elevator operator sing along to a swelling orchestral melody.) “Five of the top 100 videos of 1988 are Michael Jackson videos,” Kevin […]

posted 12 June 2008 in 1988. 2 comments

Whither the Funky Bunch?

I’ve interviewed Mark Wahlberg three times over the past two decades, during which time he turned into an movie star and improbably complex screen presence. (He’s playing the lead in this week’s new M. Night Shyamalan joint, The Happening.) The first interview was back in 1991, when he was still the frequently-shirtless rapper known as […]

posted 11 June 2008 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

1988 Countdown: Commercial Break #3

MTV plays a promo for a Michael Jackson video debuting on New Year’s Day at 5 pm, 8pm, 9pm, and 10pm: “Leave Me Alone.” In the clips we see, Jackson rides a toy airplane and dances with the Elephant Man’s bones. A stack of newspapers has fake tabloid headlines (“Michael Weds Alien”). I believe in […]

posted 10 June 2008 in 1988. 2 comments

Yesss!

Marv Albert’s my favorite sportcaster of all time. I’ve spent more hours than I can calculate listening to him. I’ve kept watching bad basketball games just because he was the guy calling them. The best description of his style: “Albert broadcasts like a man who has bet every penny he has on the game, and […]

posted 9 June 2008 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

Friday Foto: Flipwalk #26

I’m delighted to say that after a hiatus of several years, I’ve returned to my flipwalks. If you’re not familiar with my flipwalk project, you can click here for the whole “48 Hours From Ground Zero” gallery. The short version is that while living in New York City, I would leave my house and determine […]

posted 6 June 2008 in Photos, Self-reflexive. 2 comments

1988 Countdown: Def Leppard, “Armageddon It”

Kevin Seal explains that the top-100 countdown will, in fact, have more than 100 songs in it. He doesn’t actually say they’re including the videos so they can pad out the countdown’s running time, but that’s the gist of it: “There are quite a few top-notch videos that you won’t see on this little countdown […]

posted 5 June 2008 in 1988. 4 comments