I tend to be sceptical of the rose-tinted nostalgia which encourages us to regard certain periods of the past as golden ages (reserving particular bile for the entire reactionary ‘Greatest Generation’ construction). I do genuinely fear for the future of the BBC, though. Partly the stakes are so high, so ...
Bill Hicks wasn’t funny. Lenny Bruce wasn’t funny. Okay, some caveats up front: In the absence of any meaningful objective measure of funny, what I mean is that I didn’t/don’t find Carlin funny myself. His stuff — and Hicks’s, and Bruce’s, etc. — doesn’t make me laugh. Also, what ...
There’s something apt-to-the-core about the rebuttal to theists who insist on misrepresenting atheism as a religion, or something akin to a religion, that, if atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby. However, while this identifies the theoretical heart of atheism as the absence of a specific ...
One of those trucks which serve as mobile billboards sat at the kerbside as I went to buy some toilet paper (the Scott 1000-sheet rolls, since you ask – I’m an enthusiastic convert). This one was advertising Silver Reign. It said: Free admission if you mention this truck. Trying to imagine exactly how I would ...
A funny dream last night. Mostly it was guided by a Grand Theft Auto narrative. It was one of those dreams where you’re both observer and participant, both experiencing it and commenting on it. It was exciting and a bit scary. Towards the end, though, it skipped to me watching (or reading about, or both) ...
A nice little piece in the LA Times about Will Self walking in Los Angeles. LAX to Watts is a significant endeavour. I’ve done it by bus a few times and even that takes a couple of hours. It reminded me of a day I walked from the outskirts of London into the West End. ...
A trip to Westwood Village to see Eastern Promises sparked a conversation — over Pinkberry frozen yogurt (with strawberries and raspberries) — during which I tried to describe to A. the viscerally unpleasant reaction I have to films which portray the unrelentingly grim realities of life. The connection is a little unfair to ...
Standing in Barnes & Noble (“Will you be saving ten percent with our discount card today?” trills the girl at the till over and over) at the corner of 3rd Street and Wilshire in Santa Monica, reading through the new Michael Palin diaries. I’m struck by how often something depresses him, and how ...
I find that I don’t actually know what ‘R.I.P.’ means. It’s splashed everywhere today before or after Kurt Vonnegut’s name — along with enough lazily glib trottings-out of ‘So it goes’ to dull the senses. But what do people actually mean when they say ‘Rest in Peace’, ...
Some thoughts about Children of Men (and some spoilers, so caveat lector), which I eventually saw today – though the lateness of things didn’t seem to hurt: the cinema was virtually empty and the print was more than fine. I came out – after listening to Jarvis Cocker singing about cunts still running the ...