Springsteen and the Silver Medal Syndrome
On the Billboard Hot 100 list, Bruce Springsteen endures the second-place status of silver medal syndrome year after year.
Mark Dursin
Mark Dursin is an English teacher at Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut. His writing has appeared in the Hartford Courant and several online publications, including Salon.com and espn.com. A huge fan of Milton, Salinger, and Tim O’Brien, he also loves, with equal fervor, Star Wars, WWE, and '80s pop culture. You can read his monthly column on '80s pop music at LikeTotally80s.com
Summer 1981 and the Start of ’80s Music
“’80s music” is often a short-hand for radio-friendly pop songs that are New Wavey, synthy, maybe a little goofy, a little overproduced, ridiculously catchy.
How Could F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ NOT Mention the Flu Pandemic of 1918?
F. Scott Fitzgerald and his literary contemporaries ignored the 1918-1919 pandemic. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Frank Stallone Is Far from Over
Songwriter Frank Stallone has always had one little problem — or a little problem in a big, muscular, multi-million dollar frame: Sylvester.
The Artless Losers: Trump and Monty Python’s Black Knight
Are we meant to admire those who, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, just won't concede defeat?
So Help Me: Bartlet, Trump, and the Presidential God-complex
The West Wing's Jed Bartlet developed a God-complex because he became president; Donald Trump ran for president because of his existing God-complex.