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BLOG LINKS:
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BIO:
I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Swarthmore College and a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Feel free to email me at patrick@runkle.info.

From 2000 until 2004, I was the editorial director for ArtistPro, a music-industry trade publisher in the Bay Area. I also was editorial director for ArtistPro's short-lived national magazine, which was distributed to all the members of the GRAMMY organization. (That includes Phil Spector.)

Current activities include my band, Ganymede, my trips to Canada, and various other things I do. (See above for links.) I also have a large collection of oversize video boxes from the early 80s.

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September 21, 2005

For some reason, a few thoughts have sprung into my head recently about the lunacy of several 90s movies. For instance, I was driving around one day and realized that Kevin Costner directed a movie in which the unveiling of a statue of Kevin Costner serves as the denouement. It just seemed stupid at the time, but the addition of eight years has made it somehow more remarkable. I am talking about the much-maligned (and three-hour long) The Postman, which I'm very proud to say that I sat through in the theater in 1997. Wait, let's recap that: At the end of the movie the grateful citizens of the reconstituted United States dedicate a statue ... of Kevin Costner.

Also, one that has definitely slipped through the cracks is the preposterous 1992 Mel Gibson vehicle Forever Young, in which Mel plays a cryogenically frozen and thawed World War II fighter ace who must adjust to life in the 90s. That's all fine and good, but I recall the ending being beyond the pale: His sweetheart from the 40s turns out to be like 80 years old and living on a beautiful beach or something. Mel races to meet her, and, in the process, is subjected to rapid aging so that he's an old man when he arrives to fall in love with her all over again.