24/2594. The Boys from Brazil (1978)
This conspiracy thriller is a spy film typical of its era, only with strictly television quality cinematography. However, the brutally violent ending with Doberman Pinschers (a breed with German origins, cleverly reinforcing the conspiracy) is definitely not. I didn't love it, but I was entertained.

25/2595. Palm Springs Weekend (1963)
Perhaps this is best described as Where the Boys Are in the desert... for Easter. With Jerry Van Dyke doing his best Dick Van Dyke impression. Watched with Mom, who spent most of the film complaining about what a fool she was to have once liked Where the Boys Are.

26/2596. Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2026)
Diminishing returns continue diminishing this once delightful series. I know that these productions are limited by formula and actor availability, but I really should start avoiding the ones without Norman the dentist, Hannah's co-detective and former love interest.

28/2598. Dark Victory (1939)
Bette Davis plays a bitch with an incurable brain tumor, but it's a romance? And it was nominated for Best Picture? Yeah, that tracks. Hard pass.

29/2599. Dancing Sweeties (1930)
The title tells you everything you need to know: a couple of strangers get married for a dance contest only to learn that marriage is hard. It never tries to be deep, just a bit of melodramatic escapism for a generation that doesn't yet know what a television set is. And that's okay.

Coke is good for sore feet!

More to come.

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It's primary season in Georgia, and right now there are at least three (three!) leading Republican candidates for governor currently airing television commercials during every Jeopardy! commercial break vowing to get tough on the same issue. Not taxes. Not jobs. Not education. Not data centers or immigration or crime or polluted water or unaffordable housing or traffic congestion or gas prices. The issue they're worried about is "men" stealing trophies in women's sports.

Yes, I do live in a basement, and no, I don't have a daughter, but I still have to wonder if that's really the biggest issue facing Georgians today. Or ever, really. Outsports.com lists only five openly transgendered athletes playing for Georgia teams the past twenty years. Exactly zero of those were biological men who joined women's teams in search of fame and fortune. Zero examples would seem to make this a solution in search of a problem.

Even recognizing there were a couple of swim meets in the recent past where transgendered women stormed our borders and won (or, as in the case of Riley Gaines, placed fifth), this still doesn't seem to be a problem because A) the Georgia High School Association banned transgendered girls from playing as girls on high school teams in 2022, B) the NCAA banned the same at the college level in February 2025, and C) Georgia passed a state law ("The Riley Gaines Act") banning them from any event statewide in April 2025. It's not (yet) illegal to be transgendered in Georgia, but they better not try kicking any girls' balls.

So we ask the question: why are all these Republican governor candidates spending so much time and money decrying a vanishingly rare situation that is already triply illegal in the state they say they know enough about to run? I guess it's too much work to come up with a plan to address the ongoing homeless crisis or social media monopolies when you can just keep holding up your pitchfork and yelling "Won't somebody please think of the trans children?"

All I can say for sure is that it doesn't look like I'll be voting Republican this year. Again.

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Great news! I may have finally killed my "The Way" brain worm (details here) with the following song which I have listened to over and over and over again for the past three days, not because I have to but because I want to. (Is it still a compulsion if you enjoy it?)

Whiskey Peak Saloon featuring Leo P by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli

Lucky for you, if you don't want to listen on YouTube, Netflix has you covered with links to plenty of other platforms here: netflixmusic.ffm.to/whiskypeaksaloon.

TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS AND BOOGIE.

(And before you ask, yes, I have watched both seasons of the Netflix live-action One Piece series. I enjoyed them a quite a lot.)

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The only downside to watching over two hundred hours of Olympic coverage in recent weeks is the constant bombardment of advertisements for the latest entry in the Georgia governor race, Rick Jackson. Apparently, he's a billionaire, and I only know that because A) he brags about it in his ads, and B) he bought ads in seemingly every possible commercial break. From someone who likes to remind us that he's a self-made billionaire, that doesn't seem like a very effective use of money.

The story of his by-his-bootstraps, up-from-foster-care wealth isn't the only thing I've learned from his commercials. He's also really into cutting taxes. A billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes? How novel. I wonder if neither of us pays, which one comes out ahead?

To be fair, it seems everyone in the race wants to cut my taxes. Getting rid of income tax is a hot topic in Georgia politics right now. I say "right now," but it's a fact of life that no one ever wants to pay taxes. And, as an added bonus, if the state government doesn't have any money, then they don't have to worry that some of that money might be spent on people who "want to sit on your butt, binge watch Netflix, and scarf down Cheetos," to quote the Rick Jackson on my television. What kind of worthless scum likes watching movies and eating delicious snacks? Fuck those losers!

It would be disingenuous to call Rick Jackson an outsider in Georgia politics. He has long been a prominent (and deep-pocketed) donor to state and national Republicans. His late entry into this election indicates he doesn't think he's getting his money's worth from the current candidates. Though I'm no fan of his recent vow to become "Trump's favorite governor," I have read enough about Jackson to suspect he's probably a better human being than his vainglorious attempt to buy an election would indicate. It's nice to think that there are very fine people on both sides.

Therefore, I assume Jackson would be pleased to hear that many, many, many repeated viewings of his life story have already left an impact on my life. I'm so sick of his commercials that I have nicknamed the mute button on my remote the "Rick Jackson button."

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Look, I love Benson Boone's "Mystical Magical" as much as the next guy, but after hearing it in every commercial break since ESPN's coverage of the U.S. Open used it for intro and outro bumpers in August through this week's NFL coverage, maybe there is such a thing as overexposure.

I'm not alone in thinking that. There is, Google assure me, a pretty sizable backlash to the rapid, overt commercialization of Mr. Boone's music. Selling out is fine in America; greed, not so much. The singer and his team are aware of this, and his music video for "Mr. Electric Blue" makes a good-natured joke of it by removing any hint of the hypocrisy that pollutes the modern zeitgeist. (Yes, despite being an old fogey who doesn't really care for music, I do watch music videos on YouTube as the Internet Gods intended. The old-school media's widely reported recent death of Music Television has been greatly exaggerated; music videos are not dead, linear television is.)

It's kind of a funny thing to say that you could hear any piece of music "too much." Despite the tendency of human beings (at least American human being) to resent the familiar, there are a bunch of songs I just never get tired of hearing. Back in the day when I was a waiter at Chili's, the chain played tapes of licensed music over and over until the entire wait staff would gather around the back office cassette player and argue over which tapes management was NOT allowed to play again that day. (No tapes were ever destroyed, but some were occasionally hidden. I hope they still haven't been found.) Despite the repetition, there was one song on those tapes that I could never get sick of. I bet you'd never guess that it was "Silly Love Songs" by Wings. Live and let die, indeed.

Several Paul McCartney songs, both with and without co-writer John Lennon, are high on my list of endless listening, which probably demonstrates that I have a high tolerance for what McCartney is interested in writing: the poppiest of pop music. Fizzy, friendly, sugary pop music. Overproduced sounds that have a good beat and you can dance to, lyrics that really shouldn't be thought about too hard. That's my jam. Music crafted to please the widest possible music-illiterate crowd, "Moonbeam ice cream" sort of stuff, like Dua Lipa, Katie Perry, Madonna, Michael Jackson, or, say, Olivia Newton John.

And please crowds they do. Why else would Madison Avenue adapt catchy tunes for advertising in Apple product ads or the memorable '90s Philips campaign that used the Beatles "Getting Better" (somehow always fading out just before the "it can't get no worse" refrain) or this year's sanitized-for-Christmas "Greased Lightnin'" (with zero creaming girls) or Target's 2025 commercials of their animated Get-Ready Yeti dancing to "Mystical Magical."

Okay, fine. I'm not sick of moonbeam ice cream just yet. 'Cause once you know, once you know...

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I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but the coming year has got to be better than the last, right?

The legacy of 2025 will be that of a time of transition. I have lived through the coming of cable television and the Internet and social media and smart phones and now AI and the loss of newspapers. More than ever, it feels like the billionaire-run corporations own us, body and soul. It certainly doesn't help that the elected head of our government, the man who is supposed to be a champion of the people, is shattering every cultural and economic norm he can reach.

Take heart that there are a lot of us feeling fed up right now. And, as always, the voices of history can provide some guidance in these troubling times:

Someday, somebody's gonna make you want to turn around and say goodbye. Until then, baby, are you going to let 'em hold you down and make you cry? Don't you know? Don't you know, things can change? Things will go your way if you hold on for one more day.

Can you hold on?

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As I usually find when I already have an inkling of the correct answer, Google's AI response is wrong. (Is it ever right? What's the point of having access to the accrued knowledge of the human race if you never actually read it?)

I've read a lot of Superman comics, and I know that Superman has a yellow S-shield on a cape. However, I'll grant that not a lot of people actually read comic books anymore, Google apparently included. I'll also grant that Superman's cape in the influential 1940s animated Fleisher Studio cartoons was solid red (to make the animation easier and less costly), a trend that has been followed often in animated adaptations for similar reasons. But every live-action adaptation since Kirk Alyn's 15-part 1948 Superman serial has an S-shield on his cape. Maybe Google needs to watch more television.

Google's obviously wrong answer sent me looking through old comics for the real answer to my question of its first appearance, and the earliest I could find the cape shield in my copies of The Superman Chronicles reprints was in the historically significant¹ untitled Superman story² in Action Comics #13, cover dated June 1939, published on April 14, 1939.

Here's a sample panel, easily found in a Google Search™ (once I knew what I was looking for):

And, as if I needed any further confirmation, here are the issue's indexer notes from the fantastic (and Google-able) Grand Comics Database (GCD), online at comics.org since 1994:

The "S" symbol first appears on Superman's cape. ... Paul Cassidy is credited with adding the "S" symbol to the cape (but it only appears in some panels and not others), and the pencils and inks here look like his work. Note in particular the odd flying poses of Superman in panels one and five of the final page, which are characteristic of Cassidy. He claimed that [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster gave both he and Wayne Boring free reign to interpret the scripts as they liked.

Old school library for the win. Why did you make that so hard, Google?

¹ Action Comics #13 is most famous for being the first appearance of Superman's first recurring super villain: a bald criminal mastermind who vowed to "use this great intellect for crime" who called himself The Ultra-Humanite. (What, did you think it was Lex Luthor? That second-rate knock-off wouldn't show up for another 12 months.)

² The original publication has no printed title, which is not uncommon at the time. Modern reprints often refer this story as "Superman vs. the Cab Protective League," named for a protection racket organized by, you guessed it, the Ultra-Humanite. His criminal genius obviously didn't extend to naming things.

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70/2502. Professional Sweetheart (1933)
Yes, the title of this pre-Code film is suggestive of prostitution, and star Ginger Rogers plays a radio personality who is, shall we say, not exactly the darling girl she plays for the public. But the title actually refers to the gullible rube the show's sponsors hire to grease contract negotiations with their temperamental singing sensation. The best thing about this melodrama is, of course, Rogers.

71/2503. Pie to Die For: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2025)
Once a delight, this Hallmark mystery series is experiencing some terrible diminishing returns. The guilty suspect is obvious from the start, and everything just drags on. And seriously, enough already with the mother mugging for the camera to create "comedy" moments. You're embarrassing yourself.

72/2504. Krush Groove (1985)
Hollywood's fictionalized version of the Def Jam Recording story is mostly after-school special morality play built around stellar musical performances by Run-D.M.C., The Fat Boys, Sheila E., Kurtis Blow, and LL Cool J. If nothing else, it's a great time capsule of its era (even if Russell Simmons looks nothing like Blair Underwood).

Coca-Cola: The taste of the hip-hop generation!

73/2505. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)
This feels like yet another example of a movie made by a studio who felt compelled to make a movie with their intellectual property to appease the lawyers without really having any interest in spending the money to make it right. Sure, it has the appropriate tone and gags for a shorter Looney Tunes cartoon, but it plays out much too slowly and none of what makes it on screen sparkles. This would have bored me even if I was a kid.

74/2506. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)
Jenny Slate is too good a comedian for this (work it, girl), David Cross is clearly just taking a paycheck, and don't even get me started on why they hired Amy Poheler, Anna Faris, and Christina Applegate to play the Chipettes if their signature voices and personalities were going to be opaque to the audience. The target demographic is obviously pre-teens, and they can have it.

75/2507. Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (2025)
This anthology documentary of the early years of Ms. magazine feels like a television series they couldn't sell so they crammed into one movie. That's not a complaint so much as an observation. I actually liked it quite a bit.

More to come.

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While following a link to the recently announced song that will be the theme for Peacemaker Season 2 ("Oh Lord" by Foxy Shazam), I noticed that YouTube has helpfully created a Mix, which they describe as "a nonstop playlist tailored to you." I always say I'm not really a music guy, so it's very kind of YouTube to decide for me what music I like.

This is the first 50 songs (eliminating duplicate artists) in my current Mix. Let's see how the algorithm did.

1. "One Night in Bangkok," Murray Head (1984)
2. "Original Sin," Taylor Dayne (1994)
3. "Maps," Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003)
4. "Chaise Lounge," Wet Leg (2022)
5. "Owner of a Lonely Heart," Yes (1983)
6. "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra (1977)
7. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)," R.E.M. (1987)
8. "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Deep Blue Something (1994)
9. "Only Happy When It Rains," Garbage (1996)
10. "Teenage Dirtbag," Wheatus (2000)
11. "All the Things She Said," t.A.T.u. (2002)
12. "That’s Not My Name," The Ting Tings (2008)
13. "Got My Mind Set On You," George Harrison (1987)
14. "Video Killed the Radio Star," The Buggles (1980)
15. "Dancing Queen," ABBA (1976)
16. "You're the Best Around," Joe Espisito (1984)
17. "Do Ya Wanna Taste It," Wig Wam (2005)
18. "Loser," Beck (1994)
19. "Buddy Holly," Weezer (1994)
20. "Here It Goes Again," OK Go (2005)
21. "I Love It," Icona Pop (2013)
22. "You should be sad," Halsey (2020)
23. "I Ran (So Far Away)," Flock of Seagulls (1982)
24. "Head Over Heals," Tears for Fears (1985)
25. "Burning Down the House," Talking Heads (1983)
26. "You Can Call Me Al," Paul Simon (1986)
27. "Message in a Bottle," The Police (1979)
28. "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Joy Division (1980)
29. "Steppin' Out," Joe Jackson (1982)
30. "Mr. Roboto," Styx (1983)
31. "Daydream Believer," The Monkees (1967)
32. "End of the Line," The Traveling Wilburys (1988)
33. "Miami Dolphins Number One," Lee Ofman (1972)
34. "Paint It, Black," The Rolling Stones (1966)
35. "The Passenger," Iggy Pop (1977)
36. "Coming Up," Paul McCartney (1980)
37. "Steal My Sunshine," Len (1999)
38. "Groove Is In The Heart," Deee-Light (1990)
39. "Don't You Want Me," The Human League (1981)
40. "Blue Monday," New Order (1983)
41. "Take On Me," a-ha (1985)
42. "Come On Eileen," Dexys Midnight Runners (1982)
43. "In a Big Country," Big Country (1983)
44. "Cars," Gary Numan (1979)
45. "C'mon, Let's Do It," Gerhard Heinz (1977)
46. "Turn It On Again," Genesis (2004)
47. "Life In a Northern Town," Dream Academy (1985)
48. "Flash's Theme," Queen (1980)
49. "Roam," B-52s (1985)
50. "Breakout," Swing Out Sister (1986)

Wow. If I was picking songs for myself, that's not the list I would have made. I mean, if I only get one Genesis song, I'd prefer it was "Land of Confusion" with its overt Superman reference and kick-ass electronic drums. But I cannot deny that yes, that is all Walter Music. I have a real emotional connection to some of those.

I see where your head is, YouTube programmers: audio honeypots! Nostalgia captures eyeballs, even mine.

The one song on that list that stands out to me is "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which is fine; it's just not a song I ever seek out. (I don't recall ever even Googling it. Is it there because of "Blue Monday," the Joy Division/New Order connection?) I also find it interesting that despite including Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and two Beatles, only three of the above performances are older than I am. Fun fact: As I type this in 2025, there are more surviving Stones (3) than Monkees (1).

In case you're curious, as I was: the average year is 1989, the median 1985, the mode 1983 (5). That sounds about right, as '83 was the year of Thriller. I still remember where I was when I watched the debut of the video on MTV (on a cabinet-sized, wood-paneled television with knobs!). We watched a lot of MTV in '83. We also watched a lot of Night Tracks on the TBS Superstation in the wee hours of Friday nights. That's what we had to do before YouTube, kids: stay up real late in the hopes that they would play our favorite songs.

And yes, I just listened to every song on that list again. Don't stop to ask. And now you've found a break to make at last. You've got to find a way. Say what you want to say. Breakout.

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