Just a few updates this time around. I am progressing, slowly but surely, with a couple of the other list items — namely, my Tiki bar comic and the “Reverse Cantometrics” bit — but I won’t have much to report with those until later in the process.
Anyway, without further ado…
Visit three filming locations from favorite movies or TV shows
I’m not sure if this counts: I saw The Goonies, a pastiche of and an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of my favorite movies of all time, on the grounds of the Medfield State Hospital (originally the Medfield Insane Asylum) outside Boston. As well as hosting the showing of The Goonies, the hospital and its grounds have served as a filming location for a number of films — including Shutter Island, The New Mutants and Knives Out — at least one of which I’ve seen and enjoyed.
Listen to 52 albums from the past ten years
Lizzo, Cuz I Love You (2018)
I’m a bit late to the Lizzo party but omigod am I glad I made it. No doubt others have already offered lots of witty and insightful commentary about the album. Suffice to say for me, it’s fan-freaking-tastic.
BLACKPINK, The Album (2020)
I first listened to this album with the audio only and found it generally, well, kind of boring. But then I pulled up some of the videos and I started to get the whole BLACKPINK thing.
Selena Gomez, Rare (2020)
Selena Gomez, Revelación EP (2021)
I’d never actually seen Selena Gomez perform until I watched the video for the BLACKPINK song “Ice Cream.” Not long after, she popped up in the new HULU series Only Murders in the Building, appearing alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. Taking note of what the universe was trying to tell me, I added her to my “albums to check out” list…
John Mayer, Sob Rock (2021)
The New York Times describes Sob Rock as a kind of concept album: a paean to eighties and early nineties soft rock by Boomer-friendly artists with distant and occasionally vague blues roots, which Mayer and co-producer Don Was have drenched in aural signifiers of the era. And they say that as if it’s a bad thing.
Watch 12 classic film noirs; make 12 different cocktails
In the wake of Hurricane Ida, I made myself a Dark & Stormy (because of course) and put on the 1948 Humphrey Bogart / Lauren Bacall classic Key Largo, in which (per iMDB) “A man visits his war buddy’s family hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other.”
Bonus
Does the title of this post ring a bell? It’s the name of Cyndi Lauper’s contribution to the Goonies soundtrack. Don’t worry if you don’t remember it. No one (and I mean no one — not even Lauper) is going to hold it against you. Anyway, here’s the song’s video, complete with cameos from half of the WWF.