There is a very specific smell that lived inside every dine-in Pizza Hut in America, and I would know it blind. It was baked crust and bubbling cheese, sure, but underneath that it was carpet and salad bar dressing and that faint metallic tang of the drink dispenser. You'd walk through the door under the … Continue reading Things I Miss: Pizza Hut and the Golden Age of Book It!
80s Nostalgia
Welcome to Shermer, Illinois
Before the MCU. Before the DCEU. Before every major studio started scrambling to stitch their films together into a grand shared mythology with its own timeline, its own rules, and its own inevitable crossover event, there was a quiet suburb of Chicago that most people drove right past without realizing it. There was Shermer, Illinois. … Continue reading Welcome to Shermer, Illinois
From Joke Writer to American Icon: The Filmmaking Evolution of John Hughes
I have a specific memory of watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off for the first time and thinking — probably at an age when I wasn't yet sophisticated enough to articulate this — somebody made this movie who actually remembers what it feels like to be young. Not young in a generic, greeting card sort of … Continue reading From Joke Writer to American Icon: The Filmmaking Evolution of John Hughes
