From the Couch Hole: You Can Look at the Menu, but You Just Can’t Eat

Previously on FTCH, the nice Indian boy obeyed the rule of Jenny Pen and met the unquiet dead for Cinnamon Toast Crunch with Mexican Hot Chocolate. The materialist, Beth, wanted cinnamon pistachios instead. This week was a short week for me coming off some extra days I took for Thanksgiving. Now attention turns to a couple weeks from now when Caleb graduates from college and all of my children are in town. This week no one is to blame when the wicked sorcerer is spirited away when they are caught stealing banana caramel Cheerios. Remember, FTCH will rock you.

Pop Culture Ephemera

Buy Wicked: for Good Deluxe Elphaba Fashion Doll

• Wicked: For Good (2025) (Directed by Jon M. Chu): “They need someone to be wicked–so that you can be good.” – Elphaba. I don’t think anyone would argue that this is a Second Act and not a sequel. The first film was full of “wonder” for lack of a better word. It ended on the best song of the show, “Defying Gravity.” After a yearlong intermission, we’ve returned to our seats to tie up the loose ends. This film ends with “For Good” which is a song with more “gravity” (sorry) as Glinda and Elphaba look inside themselves. The darker ending plays against all of our previous assumptions about the story. Viewing the story from a different point of view, it’s a complicated message of “bad is good and good is bad depending on where you are standing.” I enjoyed the film, but the two parts will play better as a single unit in the future.
  
• Stranger Things – “Chapter Four: Sorcerer” (2025) (S.5 E.4) (Netflix): “It’s called visualization. Mom does it when she’s out of Valium.” – Derek Turnbow. When there’s been so much time passed from Season 4 until Season 5, it’s hard to build upon a continuity-driven story like this one. I needed about a 15-minute “previously on” to catch up. By this episode, the story is moving quickly into the peak action of the final season. The last 30 minutes of “Sorcerer” are where 75% of the special-effects budget seems to have been spent. It’s a decent cliffhanger to what was a promising start to the season, but remember how the past few seasons have also shined at this point only to feel stretched over the second half.
  
  The weakness of this episode starts with the title. Continuity is hard enough within a single season, but we are asked here to remember back to Will’s Season Two Dungeon and Dragon’s character. If I had remembered, there would have been more power to the final scenes of the episode. There’s also a major callback to the Season Two episode where Eleven runs away to Chicago. That was such a throwaway episode in an otherwise decent season, it’s almost a cheat to ask us to remember the details. It’s been a good season. The focus on Eleven’s journey needs to eclipse Will’s evolution as we continue. I’m hoping that we move forward for the second half of the season.

Buy Howard Jones – Dream into Action

• Howard Jones – “No One Is to Blame” (1985) (from Dream into Action): “And you want her, and she wants you / We want everyone” – This is Jones’ biggest single for good reason. It was off of Jones’ second album. I remember buying it at Believe in Music on Westnedge in Portage, MI the first weekend it was released. The piano synth sound that starts the song is simple and beautiful. The song just needed a boost, and it came less than a year after release with the Hugh Padham remix that featured Phil Collins on drums. It’s an almost unmistakable sound of the mid-’80s. It was this version that dominated radio throughout 1986. The memories are still fresh after 40 years.

• Spirited Away (2001) (Directed by Hayao Miyazaki): “Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can’t remember.” – Zeniba. This is the #9 ranked film in The New York Times Best Films of the 21st Century. I used this as an excuse to watch it again for probably the tenth time and my first time watching the dubbed version. This film is the perfect illustration that animation is a medium and not a genre. This isn’t a film to be compared to other animated films. This is a fantasy film at heart with elements of adventure and mystery. The production values, including an impressive sound design, are on par with any film on the list. It would be easy for me to argue that this could be the best film of the 21st Century.
  
  The film manages to hit upon any number of themes, including love, gluttony, acceptance, sibling rivalry, and parenthood. There isn’t a hierarchy in the world of Spirited Away; the different animals and creatures exist on equal levels as the human characters. Miyazaki understands how to craft a film that has lasting impact. He knows that it should be a little scary, have some sad moments, and that love is at the heart of every story. What speaks to me are the moments where he just lets the movie sit, when a character will just pause and look out over the ocean. This film isn’t in a hurry, but you never feel bored by it. The dubbed version isn’t as terrible as I feared. I think you lose a bit of the subtlety of the original language, but nothing that took me out of the story. This needs to be see on the big screen, and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s one of the best of the past quarter century.

Buy Spirited Away

• Caught Stealing (2025) (Directed by Darren Aronofsky): ” If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth.” – Bubbe. Darren Aronofsky is a top-tier director. There’s a small cadre of directors like Aronofsky and Soderbergh who have the talents to work both art and mainstream. He flexes his mainstream action-film muscle in this delightful thriller. Austin Butler continues to impress as an actor. He’s in every scene, and even though his coming to terms with the loss of his baseball career in his past is a little forced, he proves he can carry a film (and a cat for the whole film). The movie is buoyed by an excellent supporting cast including a punk rock Matt Smith and Hasidic gangsters, Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio. The late ’90s setting was fun (superb cinematography makes you believe this is New York City in 1998), and it works for the plot for characters not to have Smartphones to track each other. This action picture is easy on the eyes, and it’s another impressive entry for Aronofsky.
  

Buy Caught Stealing

Best of the Rest

• I’m familiar with the name Rachael Sage, as it appears on Indie music lists that I frequent. I don’t believe that I had heard a song of hers until this cover of “No One Is to Blame” came across my playlists some time around 2019. This version takes out the drums that I love, but the female voice lends a little less exasperation to the lyrics for some reason. I can almost hear a bit of what it would have sounded like for Cyndi Lauper to cover this song.

• The holiday ads are coming at us fast and furious now that we’ve hit December. The cute puppet ad is refreshing when we know that in a year or two this would have been completely AI. Apple is always brave enough to include a little dark humor within the commercial, knowing that the full ad will only be online, and the more kid friendly version will air during NFL football games. This gets two thumbs up from me.

• I didn’t have Uber on my potential list of Best Holiday Ads for 2025. But here we are with an excellent tearjerker story called “Closer” set to James Blake’s haunting cover of “Landslide.” The mini-story of a fraught relationship between father and daughter is going to have me close to tears just a few minutes into the ad. It’s a well-edited piece that tells the story of a difficult year as a daughter takes an Uber ride home to the suburbs from the airport at Christmas. This is the second time I’ve noticed Uber this year. I am almost ready to declare them a player in the ad market.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• Sunday Morning Tuneage from 1/10/2010, I came out of my Holiday Best Of pause just as my schedule was picking up again for January. I would be working almost every day through the end of the month, and the boys would both have tons of basketball through the month too. The weekend was most notable probably because the Cowboys actually won a playoff game. I was back to some new lists for the new year. This one was definitely influenced by what I was watching that year.
  
  My #81 Top TV Show of All-Time was Sanford and Son (NBC) (1972-1977): It’s hard to separate this from the other contemporary, All in the Family (CBS) (I like “big dummy” even more than “Meathead). This was consistently a #2 rated show, amazing for a Friday-night sitcom. It was good enough to drive The Brady Bunch off the air. It was edgy, but it didn’t make me as uncomfortable as All in the Family. You can’t mention this show without giving credit to one of the best theme songs of all-time, Quincy Jones’ “The Streetbeater.”
  
• BEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE ’80S (2010)
  • 10. Tenebre (1987) (Directed by Dario Argento)
  • 9. The Evil Dead (1981) (Directed by Sam Raimi)
  • 8. Near Dark (1987) (Directed by Kathryn Bigelow)
  • 7. Demons (1986) (Directed by Dario Argento)
  • 6. Videodrome (1983) (Directed by David Cronenberg)
  • 5. Creepshow (1982) (Directed by George Romero)
  • 4. An American Werewolf In London (1981) (Directed by John Landis)
  • 3. The Shining (1980) (Directed by Stanley Kubrick)
  • 2. Poltergeist (1982) (Directed by Tobe Hooper)
  • 1. The Thing (1982) (Directed by John Carpenter)
    
• BEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE ’80S (2025)
  • 10. An American Werewolf In London (1981) (Directed by John Landis): A stellar entry in the horror comedy genre that shows just how to balance the two. The Rick Baker special effects are why it vaults into my Top Ten of the decade.
  • 9. Creepshow (1982) (Directed by George Romero): My obsessions with Stephen King, George Romero films, EC Comics, and horror anthologies all came together when I was 14 years old. There are just some things that you are destined to love.
  • 8. Friday the 13th (1980) (Directed by Sean S. Cunningham): I mentally think of this as the last horror film of the ’70s, but it’s also a great launch of the ’80s. Arguably the most recognizable villain in the genre, I appreciate all the aspects of this film more today than when I first saw it around 1982.
  • 7. The Evil Dead (1981) (Directed by Sam Raimi): The remake just made me love the original more. The low budget has usually been a feature of the best horror film, but here it’s an integral part of the film and Bruce Campbell’s performance. This is a film that should be in every horror fan’s watch list.
  • 6. Re-Animator (1985) (Directed by Stuart Gordon): Gordon wrote and directed this, and most importantly, he loves and respects the source material from H.P. Lovecraft. He took the material to the natural evolution of the ’80s, soaked in sex and violence. In the mid-’80s, this film defined “cult horror.”
  • 5. Poltergeist (1982) (Directed by Tobe Hooper): Even if you think this was ghost directed by Steven Spielberg (I see his influence much deeper on the production level), this is an important entry in the mainstream-horror genre. Rarely has a film aimed at a broad audience ever packed this level of scares. It’s still one of my favorites to see on the big screen. It probably is tied with a later entry here as the most times I’ve seen a horror in theaters.
  • 4. Videodrome (1983) (Directed by David Cronenberg): In 1982, the television kidnapped a child in Poltergeist. The next year the television becomes a tool to transform anyone who watches it. The more removed we get from broadcast television, the more younger viewers that might not get that the conceit works just as well for our phones.
  • 3. Tenebrae (1987) (Directed by Dario Argento): This is proof that the giallo genre didn’t die or really change significantly for almost 20 years. By the late ’80s, Argento was interested in challenging viewer expectations. I would call this film closer to a murder mystery with horror elements.
  • 2. The Thing (1982) (Directed by John Carpenter): This is the horror film that I have probably watched in theaters the most times (Poltergeist and Halloween being in the running too). Carpenter understood that he had the advantage of a smaller cast to make the viewer actually know and care about the body count. The setting, score, and production values make this still one of the most effective at scaring viewers before they ever see the monster.
  • 1. The Shining (1980) (Directed by Stanley Kubrick): I’ve been able to see this film as a different entity from the book. I think that’s mostly a defensive mechanism to be able to love both. Kubrick cannot compete with the depth of the interior monologues of the book. King could not begin to have a setting that reeks of creepiness that the visuals that Kubrick brought to the film. The viewer is already knee deep into the mood of the film before the credits finish rolling.

Buy The Shining

1975 in Review

• November – Detective Comics #454 (DC Comics): Cover by Ernie Chan, Tatjana Wood. Written by David Vern Reed. Art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. The lead Batman story and the backup Hawkman story have the superheroes fighting more everyday criminals. These issues never interested me as a youngster.
• December 3 – Jacques Cousteau located the HMHS Britannica (a younger sister of the HMS Titanic). It had been sunk off the coast of Greece in November 1916 by a German submarine. The Britannica was to be commissioned as a luxury liner after the war.
• December 13 – NBC had a series called McCoy that was influenced by The Sting (1973). CBS had their own Sting-inspired show called Switch starring Robert Wagner, Eddie Albert, and Sharon Gless. Created by Glen A. Larson, an episode that aired in December, “Death by Resurrection” was later deemed to be a rewrite of a Rockford Files (NBC) episode. The series would last three seasons without ever being considered one of the signature shows on the network.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“You can see the summit but you can’t reach it
It’s the last piece of the puzzle but you just can’t make it fit
Doctor says you’re cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain” – Howard Jones