Michael Macrone
Articles & Essays
Since the late 1970s I've been an occasional contributer to various magazines, beginning with the student-run Providence alternative weekly Fresh Fruit. In the second half of 1982, The Mad Peck and I wrote the "Video Week" TV column for another Providence alternative weekly, The NewPaper.
My first real job was editing Key Magazine: This Week in San Francisco, where my duties included churning out restaurant, theater, cabaret, and comedy reviews. This job drove me back into the arms of academia. While earning a Ph.D. in English at U.C. Berkeley, I wrote a few papers that might still be worth reading; they're posted here and at academia.edu.
Shortly thereafter, in the early 90s, something called the Usenet, and things called protocols, began to introduce the world to the Internet. I thought I could sell a column on this new phenomenon, but never got anywhere with it. Sample columns are linked hereunder.
Simultaneously, I resumed my freelance career, notably as a reviewer, columnist, and contributing editor for InterActivity, a now-defunct magazine for multimedia authors. I also conducted a brief interview with Larry Page for Wired; provided record reviews to Music & Sound Output and Creem; reviewed a Shakespeare biography for the San Francisco Chronicle; and did perhaps my best work for High Times.
viewing:
 

Reviews & criticism

  1. Disarmed Forces (record review, Radio Radio, 1979)
  2. George Harrison: George Harrison (record review, Fresh Fruit, 1979)
  3. Jonathan Richman: Back in Your Life (record review, Fresh Fruit, 1979)
  4. Talking Heads: Fear of Music (record review, Fresh Fruit, 1979)
  5. At Home with the Residents (record review, with Adam Bresnick, Fresh Fruit, 1979)
  6. Todd Rundgren Comes Around (record review, Issues, 1981)
  7. Macrone's Consumer Guide (parody, xerox, 1982)
  8. Uptight, Short-Sighted, Narrow-Minded Hypocritics (book review, Issues, 1982)
  9. TV Tidbits (with The Mad Peck, The NewPaper, 1982)
  10. Hither and Yon (with The Mad Peck, Video Week, The NewPaper, 1982)
  11. Cable and Suds (with The Mad Peck, Video Week, The NewPaper, 1982)
  12. But Will the Antichrist Guest-Host The Tonight Show? (with The Mad Peck, Video Week, The NewPaper, 1982)
  13. Vidluxe Mailbag (with The Mad Peck, Video Weak, The NewPaper, 1982)
  14. Side by Side by Sondheim at the Plush Room (Key: This Week in San Francisco, 1984)
  15. Lou Reed & John Cale: Songs for ’Drella (record review, Creem, 1990)
  16. Too Much Joy: Cereal Killers (record review, Creem, 1991)
  17. Boogie Down Productions: Live Hardcore Worldwide (record review, Creem, 1991)
  18. Prince:  D (letter, Uptown, 1993)
  19. Was Shakespeare Catholic? (book review, The San Francisco Chronicle, 1995)

Interviews & profiles

  1. 12 o’Clock High: B-52’s Flight Talk (Fresh Fruit, 1979)
  2. Interview with a Rock God: Johnny Ramone (Radio Radio, 1979)
  3. The Time Has Come for the Kronos Quartet (Key: This Week in San Francisco, 1984)
  4. Two Generations of Weirdos: An Interview with Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge (The Comics Journal #106, 1986)
  5. The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy: Butcher Shop of Horrors (Music & Sound Output, 1987)
  6. Jr. Gone Wild: Like Fathers, Like Sons (Music & Sound Output, 1987)
  7. Rob Wasserman: Bass Is the Place (Music & Sound Output, 1988)
  8. Google’s Compromising Position: Interview with Larry Page (Wired, 2002)

Topics of interest

  1. Bound for Nowhere (with Bill Magavern, Brown Daily Herald, 1979)
  2. Dannon vs. Colombo: Thrilla in Vanilla (Fresh Fruit, 1980)
  3. The Fourth Dimension: A Dream About Time and Space (Issues, 1982)
  4. San Francisco Comedy (Key: This Week in San Francisco, 1984)
  5. When North Beach Was a Beach (Key: This Week in San Francisco, 1984)
  6. Straight Up & Con Panna: Guide to North Beach Bistros (Key After Dark, 1985)
  7. The San Francisco Search (High Times, 1985)
  8. Underground Comix Redux (High Times, 1985)
  9. Punk Magazine Revisited (Weirdo, 1986)

Internet history

  1. Clueless Newbies Flood Net: UNIX Weenies Grab Virtual Sledgehammers (History of the Internet #1, 1994)
  2. Cascades & Smilies (History of the Internet #2, 1994)
  3. Arizona Lawyers’ Spiced Pork Product Hits the Big Fan; Net Sets New Flaming Record (History of the Internet #3, 1994)
  4. Down with Money; Up with Hugs (History of the Internet #4, 1994)
  5. Case Study: HotWired (InterActivity, 1996)
  6. XML, Access, and the Hypertext Holy War (InterActivity, 1998)
  7. Blame It on the Cookie (InterActivity, 1998)

Scholarly essays

  1. How J.R. Got Out of the Air Force and What the Derricks Mean (with The Mad Peck; Conference on New Directions in Television Research, 1983)
  2. Naturalizing Culture : Riffaterre, “The Sick Rose,” and the Principles of Textual Production (1986)
  3. The “I’s” Have It : Reflections on Edmund Burke’s Reflections (1986)
  4. The Making of the Modern Body (book review, The Berkeley Graduate, 1987)
  5. Hoo! Namoore! : Theseus Stynteth al hir Grucching and Maketh hem Pleye (1987)
  6. Disinformation, Please! : Systems, Networks, Simulations, Bleak House, Gary Hart, Iran-Contra, and Gravity’s Rainbow (1987)
  7. To Choose and Choose Not : Why Man Falls in Paradise Lost (1987)
  8. Do Texts Have Selves? : Paul de Man and the Consciousness of Language (1988)
  9. Sour Nothings : Seeing and Being Seen in Shakespeare’s Much Ado (1989)
  10. The Theatrical Self in Renaissance England (Qui Parle, 1989)
  11. Fate, Character, and Narcissism in Euripides’ Hippolytus (Tutti gli Dei Vanno Onorati conference, Siracusa, 2010)
home