Sep 12, 2010 By James Milne Web Exclusive

On those aimless beautiful ’80s Friday evenings when I wasn’t left under the control of some dreaded babysitter, there was a genre of television show that never failed to stir the nagging martial passions of boyhood. Playing at the dangerous and exciting hour of 9:30 p.m., and coming with warnings of violence and requirements of parental guidance, this genre was the Man-Alone-Against-Formidable-Forces-of-Evil-Aided-Only-By-Unimaginably-Cool-Piece-of-Technology-(or-Remarkable-Skills-In-the-Employment-of-Regular-Household-Goods-to-Defeat-Aforementioned-Formidable-Forces)-Action-Show.

Sep 10, 2010 By Andrew Rieger of Elf Power Web Exclusive

Growing up in the small town of Greenwood, S.C. in the 1980s, it was a challenge to seek out and discover strange and new music. The local radio stations played either Top 40 or classic rock, and the record store at the mall was stocked with the same. More

Sep 08, 2010 By Maria Taylor of Azure Ray

Ever since I can remember I have been an investigator. I always feel that people are “up to something” and can’t sleep at night until I get to the bottom of it. Sometimes I think it could be categorized as paranoia, but I like to attribute it to having good intuition and an understanding that all people are weird. Anyway, as a young girl my case studies were limited to mostly family; my parents to be more specific, as I pretty much had the mystery of my little brother and sister figured out. More

Sep 08, 2010 By Blaine Harrison of Mystery Jets

Nostalgia is both a perilous and a wonderful thing. The past is a bottomless closet which we fill with things we miss and things we wish to bury forever. Its contents define who we are and why we are. Some things we romanticize over to the point of delusion. More

Sep 03, 2010 By Josephine Olausson Web Exclusive

I have a feeling that as I child I was much more into the idea and aesthetic of something than the actual thing itself. I played football (or soccer, as you might know it) just to be able to wear knee-high socks and shin-guards. I think my favorite thing about horseback riding might have been wearing that rounded soft helmet and those impossible to get off boots. More

Aug 29, 2010 By Johan Angergård Web Exclusive

The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy was the very first indie-pop album I bought. This was probably in 1987. We had a music room at school where you could bring your favorite cassettes and play them for everyone to hear. I loved bringing in Psychocandy, turning the volume up, and seeing people's surprised faces. More

Aug 17, 2010 By Hutch Harris Web Exclusive

One of my first indulgences/addictions as a child was collecting, trading, and racing wax pack trading cards, the kind made by Topps or Fleer. I started out on Pac-Man cards.  These were amazing-each card was a game of Pac-Man you played by scratching off a silver film with a coin. It was basically like a lottery ticket, except you never won shit. More

Aug 11, 2010 By Kathryn Calder Web Exclusive

When I was around five or six years old, my family and I would go up to my maternal grandparents' house on the weekends to visit. It was in the country and so we really had to entertain ourselves. My brother and I would hang around and play this game we called Knight Rider, which was (very) loosely based on the TV show of the same name starring Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) and his rad, black, talking car named KITT. More

Aug 09, 2010 By Michael Benjamin Lerner Web Exclusive

The Sandlot was my favorite movie as a youngster, and continues to be my favorite movie to this day. I guess I was watching it at a time in my life when I was playing baseball myself, and having lots of sleepovers in the backyards of friends' houses in the summer, and just feeling so carefree and happy. More