Rhondaween

If you’re anything like me, the last few days of October always trigger conflicting emotions: extreme joy and excitement over tomorrow being Halloween, but also extreme sadness and a sense of loss at the monthlong celebration drawing to a close. In order to combat those tough emotions, I’ve invited Lounge VIP Rhonda Shear back to … Continue reading Rhondaween →

Rhonda Meets Jason: Up All Night on Friday the 13th

It’s not often that Halloween and Friday the 13th happen in the same month, but that’s exactly what we’re getting this October. This is as good as it gets for horror junkies. So, in honor of today being Friday the 13th, let’s take a look back to Friday, November 13th, 1992, when USA Up All … Continue reading Rhonda Meets Jason: Up All Night on Friday the 13th →

Traveling at the Speed of Love: Judgment Night at 30

Thirty years on, I can still recall how exciting it felt to sit in the theater and watch the opening scene of Stephen Hopkins’s urban paranoia classic Judgment Night (1993). A black screen fades to blue sky as the first notes of De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub’s “Fallin’” ring out, followed by the evocative … Continue reading Traveling at the Speed of Love: Judgment Night at 30 →

The World is Yours: Scarface at 40

In December of this year, Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) will celebrate its fortieth anniversary. At nearly three hours long, Scarface tells the mythic tale of the rise and fall of Cuban drug lord Tony Montana (Al Pacino), whose obsessive quest for the American Dream ends in a hail of bullets. It’s a grandiose, profane, … Continue reading The World is Yours: Scarface at 40 →

Happy 90th, Julie Newmar

One of these days I’m going to turn more of this blog’s attention to the 1960s Batman television show. Obviously, my pop culture loves range far and wide, so it’s hard to squeeze them all in here, but Batman was critical to my childhood, my love of comic books, and my development into a scholar … Continue reading Happy 90th, Julie Newmar →

The Art of the Ad: Sex, Lies, and Video Games, Part III

We’re back with a third installment of shamelessly sexy vintage video game and arcade game ads. Marketers produced so many of these from the 1970s through 1990s that there’s enough for future installments, too. As I’ve said before, it was a very different time. Game makers knew their target audience—adolescent boys and young men—and understood … Continue reading The Art of the Ad: Sex, Lies, and Video Games, Part III →

From the Vault: Video Killed the Rental Store

This post originally appeared at my old blog in 2016 and appears here in slightly sofferent form. Did you appreciate the video rental store while you had it? Probably not. Instead, you simply spent nearly every Friday and Saturday night wandering around inside its walls, looking for VHS treasures to rent. You'd browse intently, as … Continue reading From the Vault: Video Killed the Rental Store →