Media Nugget

Beg, Scream & Shout

Rhino Records
Beg, Scream & Shout!
The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul
1997

The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul has a little bit of everything: from James Brown to Maxine Brown, from Bar-Kays to Mar-Keys, from Sam & Dave to Bob & Earl -- and from "Gong Gong" to "Wack Wack" to "Oogum Boogum." With 144 songs spread over six CDs, it's guaranteed to put your backfield in motion, shake your tail feather, and get right down to your real nitty gritty.

Seven Men

Max Beerbohm
Seven Men
1919

This slim, sardonic entertainment from the merciless, hilarious pen of critic Max Beerbohm offers six preposterous yet familiar fin-de-siecle characters interacting with the author, himself the seventh man. From Enoch Soames, a dim and easily bypassed poet, to James Penthel, a risk addict, this delicately wrought period piece demonstrates that pretense and delusion haven't diminished much in the last hundred years. Accompanied by the author's own caricatures.

Bob & Ray

Bob & Ray

Before David Letterman and Saturday Night Live popularized droll, off-beat comedy on television, Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were making an art of it with bizarre radio parodies of everything from soap operas to the nightly news. Sly sketches like "Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder," "One Fella's Family," and "Webley Webster," about a book critic with a weird penchant for pirate stories, practically serve as a blueprint for the smart, ironic comedy of today. Astoundingly, much of it was done without a script.

Maus

Art Spiegelman
Maus
1986

The award-winning Maus tells the story of Art Spiegelman's father, a Polish Jew caught up in the Holocaust. This grim past is offset by the present-day tale of the making of the book, in which the neurotic author is shown tape-recording his even more neurotic father. In order to make such a story bearable, Spiegelman casts the characters as different animals. As one reads the two volumes of Maus, one is often startled by the realization that these things really happened, not to mice but to ordinary people.

Vanishing Point

Richard C. Sarafian
Vanishing Point
1971

Some people call this an "existential" car chase movie. Barry Newman -- as a sort of nihilistic Richard Petty -- eats tons of speed and hallucinates about his troubled past while attempting to drive his supercharged Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in less than 15 hours in order to win a bet. Goaded on by the voice of Cleavon Little, a stoned DJ who trumpets our amped-up driver as a sort of folk anti-hero, Newman has plenty of strange and groovy experiences out in the desert. The ending is about as starkly powerful as a movie gets.

Daze of Our Lives

Martin Archer
Daze of Our Lives
weekdays

Billed as "State of the Art 19th Century Humor," Daze of Our Lives is a diary of bizarre engravings paired with absurdist captions. Martin Archer and collaborator Neil McKernan clearly toil over this labor of love, offering an exquisite-looking site, rich with extras (desktop icons, greeting cards, an associated hardcover book). But nevermind the gewgaws, just read Daze for the dry humor, the magical images, and the inevitable laughter that they evoke.

Ghost in the Machine

The Police
Ghost in the Machine
1981

As a third-grader, I spent a large amount of time listening to the hit-packed Side A of this cassette while trying to draw the LED-inspired cover portraits. It wasn't until I bought the album on CD that I discovered that it actually had six more tunes, including rare contributions from Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. Put this one on shuffle-play and see how familiar tracks like "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" stack up against forgotten gems like "One World (Not Three)" and "Darkness." (TR)

The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
1960

After a long career in Hollywood, Fritz Lang returned to Germany to revive the spirit of Dr. Mabuse. Producer Artur Brauner had wanted Lang to remake his 1932 classic, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. The director didn't see much point in that, but agreed to make a new film instead. The 1000 Eyes... is a low-budget, yet stylish thriller filled with murder, voyeurism, and plot twists galore. And while Brauner did eventually produce a remake of Testament, as well as five more Mabuse pictures, this was Lang's final film.

Watchmen

Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
Watchmen
1987

In this bleak vision of America, the influence of costumed crime-fighters has kept Nixon in office, whipped Vietnam into shape easily, and brought the world to the brink of Armageddon. Writer Alan Moore began this novel as a reworking of the Charlton Comics heroes of his childhood, transformed it into an operatic dark-comedy of super-hero archetypes, and ended up with a chilling commentary on cold-war America. Artist Dave Gibbons, usually a hired gun in the comic-book world, delivers a tour de force of graphic introspection, knowingly deconstructing the scaffolding beneath his feet. Though created almost 15 years ago, this Pynchon-esque graphic novel remains the final word in super-heroics.

Epiphany in Brooklyn

Brenda Kahn
Epiphany in Brooklyn
1992

"Life is a frijoles negros wasteland
of all things bottled, quartered, and canned
he's a drunk and a fool
but he makes me laugh
and that's better than you do . . ."

     --from "She's In Love"

Like many acoustic-based songwriters, Brenda Kahn is a natural storyteller. Bitingly sharp and intensely personal, her songs are filled with humor and warmth, and delivered in a voice that can go from rapture to longing to frustration in a single line. As splendid as it is, Epiphany in Brooklyn remains out-of-print. Needless to say, it is well worth tracking down in used CD bins.