Tunnel Of Love

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No Lucky Town, No Human Touch.

In 1987, Bruce Springsteen released Tunnel Of Love, an often overlooked personal collection of songs that examined his failing marriage and his decision to go solo instead of putting the E Street Band on the album billing.

In 2014, Charles Babinski approached me backstage of the United States Barista Championship and asked me what the best Fleetwood Mac album was. After I said Tusk, he said, “Okay, tunnel of love Fleetwood Mac.” And then he explained the rules of Tunnel Of Love. Tunnel Of Love the game is played by someone naming an artist of some type, and then your answer having to find the equivalent of that artists’ Tunnel Of Love is. That means you’re searching for the piece of work in their catalog that is usually overlooked, usually has some critical appeal, and generally doesn’t have much popular support.

It’s a great game for blowhards who read too many IMDB entries and Wikipedia articles, and that encapsulates me and Charles quite well. It also encapsulates the rest of the 1987 Movie Group, which includes Charles’ twin brother Paul, Maureen, Natalie, and Jackson. Often on the text thread, there will be a ToL tossed out when picking which movie of the week will be the group watch-a-long, where someone might say “Tunnel of love Shane Black scripts” and someone might respond with "Monster Squad” while another might make a more dramatic case for “Iron Man 3.” Though there’s no official points tally system, if you can convince the group that Iron Man 3, a pretty widely reviled Marvel installment amongst Shane Black and Marvel fans, is a better Shane Black script than Monster Squad, you definitely earn some admiration amongst the group.

The 1987 Movie Group is also something Charles invited me to join in on, and is a re-watch of as many of the wide released 1987 movies as possible in 2021 while following their release date chronologically. The group has given me a much, much bigger appreciation for the quality of movies being made and a much bigger scope of how truly bad most movies really are. It’s also seen me through getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, selling our condo in Chicago, trying to and eventually buying a house in Madison, and living with my parents for three months in between. I can measure some very dramatic weeks in my life by whichever movie was released 34 years prior. I remember watching Outrageous Fortune during my MS flare up, just another thing I put on the screen so I wouldn’t have to leave the couch. We had just watched My Demon Lover when I found out our bid on our house got accepted.

The 1987 Movie Group is the most welcome distraction of my week — the text thread is ongoing, and includes al watch-a-long messages even for those who aren’t able to make it, but it’s also a great discussion thread about the art we just witnessed and what that makes us think about for the other visual art we have been engaging with. It’s essentially a book club, only one that often challenges you to name the best Fleetwood Mac album that is often overlooked, has some mild critical appreciation, but didn’t take hold with the wider audience.

The answer is of course Tango In The Night, which, of course, was also released in 1987. Go figure.

I’ve been thinking about both the movie group and Tunnel Of Love a lot today, because I didn’t have a good concept hashed out for today’s Good Ones. I’ve been working on an idea, and I’ve been able to interview a comedy writer I’m a huge fan of for it, but the core concept hasn’t been flushed out yet.

I’ve also been working on a longer piece of fiction, and I’m currently in the home stretch of a novel’s length work. I’m not sure what that means. If I read it back, and it’s somewhat good, I suppose that means I start working on re-writes and editing it, but even if that’s so, you don’t see a lot of fellas these days being able to sell a novel, especially if they’ve actively avoided participating in the literary world since they graduated with a Fiction Writing degree and especially if they don’t even read that much and spend more of their time watching movies from 1987 and trying to suss out which Bangles cover single is the one to bring up in case the Bangles cover singles ever get a Tunnel Of Love.

As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday night, and I don’t have a deep or interesting amount of research about something media that I’ve been obsessing over for this week, and I feel like I’ve given in to my almost always centered around 1987 media diet. But then, why are these considered distractions? They’re perfectly valid ways of keeping my brain active and working on analysis, narrative, and structure. Yes: watching the mediocre political Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out is, more or less, homework for these writing projects of mine.

And if that’s the case, then this steady drip of antiquated media and surrounding Tunnel Of Love challenges aren’t really distractions, they’re bits and bobs of content and intellectual property that I’m mining. Even just talking about that process has given me yet another triumphant newsletter.

Also, if you haven’t listened to Tango In The Night, it really is the best Fleetwood Mac album, and if it weren’t for this convoluted one-upmanship competitive streak amongst us all, I probably never would have listened to it.

So here’s cheers to Charles, Paul, Maureen, Natalie, and Jackson: this dumb newsletter probably wouldn't have been able to evolve into what it was without us all developing strong opinions about Making Mr. Right, and with that, all I have to say, is Tunnel of Love Malkovich.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.