“Don’t tell Mom.”
As a ten year-old, when your older brother walks into your room and utters those words, you not only take heed, you also immediately get excited. Younger siblings instinctively want to be included in whatever the older kids are doing, even if they rarely understand it. I was no different.
For most of us, life is not like a sitcom. We don’t meet up with our friends every single day at Central Perk or MacLaren’s or Cheers, but we do have our spots that we prefer over all others. We may not go there all the time, but we feel most comfortable there. It is where we are in our element, where we invite everyone to join us. It is our home field, as it were.
Mine was Memphis Taproom.
So I was quite dismayed a few weeks ago when I read the news that it would be closing its doors for good.
Film adaptations are tricky. How can you boil down 400 or more pages of story, themes, and character development into a two hour film without losing the impact of what was on the page?
Anyone that has had their favorite book turned into a movie knows the feeling of being simultaneously excited and anxious, hopeful and terrified, at what the outcome will be.
Now it’s my turn, as the film adaptation of The Tender Bar, the book that completely changed my life, is set to be released in theaters and on Amazon Prime Video.
“Got me behind the pot again”
The odds were stacked against him.
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust
In a world of fake news, alternative facts, skewed polls, and misremembered anecdotes, it can sometimes be difficult to know what is real and what is not.
I’ve been known to have unpopular opinions when it comes to pop culture and this is not a new phenomenon.
Everyone knows that an epic hip-hop battle that took place in late 2001, when Jay-Z and Nas brawled for the throne, but far too many people forget that another classic rap clash began that year as well.
Since 1995, there has been a connection between Nas, Mobb Deep, and Raekwon.
Like many ’80s babies, I was a huge card collector when I was kid. I bought, sold, and traded baseball, basketball, football, and even some hockey cards with my friends. We’d have card collecting parties where everyone would bring boxes of the cards with which they were willing to part and we’d act like we were in an adolescent version of Boiler Room.
Today, Kobe Bryant is one of the elder statesmen of the NBA and next weekend his career will be celebrated at his 18th and final All-Star game. Like Peyton Manning, he now relies on his intelligence and guile rather than his athleticism to keep competing against the young upstarts.
Things were very different in 1997.
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik 