More than just raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, there is an entire world of culture out there that finds a way to impact us in personally meaningful ways. Much of it slides past us without leaving a mark, but occasionally something grabs our attention and then refuses to let go, touching our lives and causing us to mark it as a favorite.
Be it a book or author, a movie or filmmaker, a musician or album, a performer, a comic strip, a piece of technology, your favorite place to be creative, or your favorite place to eat, investing ourselves in these items makes them a part of us, and they inform who we are in the world. From the life-changing to the comfortably reassuring, our favorite things become touchstones for how we navigate the cultural currents.
My Favorite Things offers contributors the chance to declare their own favorites and explain why that thing or those things are so special to them. Rather than critically objective arguments for greatness, these are the favorites that we cherish simply for what they offer us individually. The essays encountered in My Favorite Things are deeply personal, reflective in nature, and always fascinating in their ability to reveal how those attachments are formed and what they come to mean to each of us.
Tuesday, March 30 2010
Smoke Up, Johnny: The Breakfast Club, Still Gloriously Poignant 25 Years Later
The Breakfast Club remains a defining moment for a generation 25 years later. What endures is the sheer heart that defines the film, the way that it supplies stark, grave candor and quirky spunk in equal measure.
Monday, April 13 2009
All the Faith in the World: Holiday
Holiday is the sort of movie that gives those who do know it the satisfyingly superior glow of being in on something really good.
Friday, June 6 2008
Shriekback and Me
Rett Snotherly reflects on the familiar tale of the emotional ties to a beloved band stretching across time, and how the impact of youth's engagement remains a part of us that lingers years later.
Friday, March 28 2008
Bob & Ray: The Two and Only
Turning back the clock, Kerrie Mills explores the pairing of two men who became cornerstones of modern American comedy, as well as icons of the mid-20th century media landscape, Bob & Ray.
Thursday, November 29 2007
Let Me Into Your Mind: How J.Ralph Changed My Life
Evan Sawdey gives his personal take on the familiar tale of first musical love, explaining how stumbling across the work of under-the-radar musician J.Ralph opened up new doors into a consciousness of music's capabilities.
Monday, June 11 2007
Scud Mountain Boys: How to Burn a Silo
Matthew Fiander rediscovers the Scud Mountain Boys with his own move south, and realizes that stories are rightfully entangled in their settings.
Tuesday, February 20 2007
Bright Eyes: In Defense of Preciousness
Despite all the self-absorption, and directly in spite of criticisms about the brittle timber of Conor Oberst's much commented on voice, Feldman lays her love for Bright Eyes out in public to defend the mysterious power of the hope that slips through the cracks in Bright Eyes' usually gloomy demeanor.
Wednesday, November 1 2006
Jessica Lange: The Anti-Streep
Can childhood epiphanies really translate into critical pursuits of acting nuance? For Matt Mazur they most certainly can, as attested by his lifelong devotion to the immersive acting of cinematic chimera Jessica Lange.
Thursday, October 12 2006
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior: “Here Comes a New Challenger!”
In the twilight days of the old video arcades, a coin-op game emerged that changed everything about the way fighting games were played and created a minor renaissance. Ryan Smith reflects back on the heady youth of global warriors, quarter match challengers, and "shoryuken!" with the original Street Fighter II.
Wednesday, September 13 2006
The Slow Dance by Mark Janka (The Lesser Birds of Paradise)
the Slow Dance.
Friday, August 25 2006
ICO
While the demands of many gamers and the dreams of many game designers seem concentrated on increasing layers of complexity, critics continually praise those games that buck the trend and opt for playable simplicity. Richard Jude Goodness explains how one such game helped spark the gamer urge inside him while showing him the way a game built on simple gameplay could also be thoroughly engaging.
Monday, August 21 2006
Top Ten Tight-Arse Tricks: Saving Money on Tour by The Grates
For frequent flyers, especially musicians, the expense of travel can often be a real strain. To help their fellows, the Grates offer these ten favorite tips for saving cash on the road without risking jail time.
Friday, August 18 2006
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Spinning the dial and turning back the clock, Bill Gibron travels back in time to nights bathed in darkness and pierced by the crackle of static. Emerging from the speakers, voices beckon our traveler to reflect back on ghostly images of time gone by, revived and resuscitated like the radio drama format itself, and inexorably tied to the long moment-out-of-time that was .
Friday, July 21 2006
Sid Meir’s Pirates!
In contrast to the the infamy surrounding its more contemporaneous descendents, G. Christopher Williams explores the past of the free-roaming criminal video game in its more swashbuckling origins, noting that Pirates! not only made history, but that history made the game less unsettling without losing the fun. Avast, maties!
Thursday, July 6 2006
We Can Rebuild Him: Bionic Commando
Open-ended gameplay, environmental interactivity, bionic arms, and exploding Nazis... on the Nintendo Entertainment System? Mike Schiller explains why the old-school classic Bionic Commando had it all.
Wednesday, June 14 2006
Madison Park Is Into Farm Animals
Madison Park's DeAnna Cool takes her spot on the soapbox to defend herself for her perfectly natural love of farm animals.
Wednesday, June 7 2006
Marykate O’Neil’s Personal List
Singer-songwriter Marykate O'Neil lists in no particular order the things that enrich her life, from the sick day strolls through New York City to the whimsy of '50s TV to the Flowbee. It's all far out, daddy-o.
Wednesday, May 31 2006
Talking Heads’ Remain in Light A-side
Lotus - Jesse Miller of the band Lotus explains how just three songs from the past, namely the A-side to the seminal Talking Heads album Remain in Light, could survive years of genre-shifting tastes and still reveal answers to current questions about the marriage of rock and dance music.
Monday, May 8 2006
The Necks’ Sex
In an hour-long marathon session, Adams revels in the intricacies and slowly building intensities of Sex.
Wednesday, March 1 2006
FOUND Magazine
Gazing at the collected fragments of other people's litter, Schabe finds a little bit of himself and a lot of humanity in the magnifying glass world of the lost and FOUND.
Wednesday, February 22 2006
Bob Greene’s Be True to Your School
After exploring Bob Greene's diary of 1964 for the past 15 years, Besenyodi is able to move past Greene's very public fall from grace and maintain an appreciation for the book and its influence on his own origins and high school memories.
Wednesday, February 1 2006
Family Circus: Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love
Abernethy learns to look below the surface of appearances with the aid of a book that funhouse-mirrors our own ugliness and holds it up to the light in lurid spectacle.
Wednesday, January 25 2006
Escape to and Return from Witch Mountain
From childhood experience to childhood memory, Ward unravels the tangled knots of an oddly affecting story to reveal the connective tissue of a mainstream cult classic.
Wednesday, November 9 2005
Where’s My Dylar?: Don DeLillo’s White Noise
DeLillo's 1985 masterpiece has its finger on the pulse of our most universal preoccupations.
Wednesday, November 2 2005
Urban Urbanity: Fran Lebowitz
Gibron salutes the Messiah of Misery, a humorist ensconced in the concepts of camp and kitsch, the glee in gay culture, and inspirational insights into the life of the mind that would make Barton Fink balk.
Thursday, October 27 2005
From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dyin’ Day: Schlong’s Punk Side Story
Horn discovers the hidden connections between Berkeley and Broadway. Start snapping your fingers....
Tuesday, October 4 2005
Moon Musick: Coil’s Musick to Play in the Dark
In which Schiller discovers beauty and majesty that he never thought possible in experimental electronic music.
Wednesday, August 24 2005
The Iliad
Pride, lust, mortality, and divinity -- McClinton breaks down the heady language and epic grandeur of this classic of classics to reveal a heart that speaks to modern life as easily as it did the ancient world.
Wednesday, August 10 2005
Pizza Pizza
Taking a large, appreciative bite of bland consistency and ubiquitous uniformity, one writer challenges refined taste to prove an old adage right and discover a slice of identity.
Tuesday, August 2 2005
2001: A Space Odyssey
In the journey from utter bewilderment to appreciative awe, Gibron explores how this most contentious film unfolds its philosophical messages slowly, on-screen and over the years.
Thursday, July 14 2005
Iron Maiden’s Live After Death
A young metal-head Begrand discovers heavy metal's Holy Grail of live albums, sparking a passion that continues to inspire two decades on.
Wednesday, June 22 2005
The Adventures of Pete and Pete
In the deceptively surreal trappings of a children's television show, Devine finds real art, capturing the essence of childhood struggles and the spirit of individuality in characters strange, great, and small.
Tuesday, July 27 2004
Radiohead: Kid A
On Kid A, Thom Yorke uses his voice more as an instrument than as a vehicle for his lyrics. And it’s a beautiful instrument—mournful and keening one minute, pissed off the next, jubilant the song after that.
Tuesday, December 24 2002
Blonde Redhead: Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
In the end, I was a damaged lemon in need of healing, and Blonde Redhead’s album offered me an empathetic treatment for my sadness. What a release.
