Sitting in a deli the other day, having lunch, I was battling with the thixotropic brattiness of a new bottle of Heinz ketchup. I’d shaken it vigorously, and was whacking the bottom, to little effect. A girl from a couple of tables away leaned across and gave some advice. Tap on the ’57’ with the ...
This timely, pertinent, and wholly depressing little piece from LA Weekly about Dick Cheney’s outburst. Hooray for the Guardian, and not for the first time. This Victorian veil that’s drawn over certain good solid words in popular media drives me slightly nuts. It’s even more baffling in this case, since ...
In another life, I’m running a short story contest, and keep being reminded of a linguistic wrinkle that’s most naturally associated with naive arts reviews. The simplest form would go something like this: ‘This was a great story. I really enjoyed it.’ On the surface, there seems to be nothing ...
(Because what the world really needs most of all right now is another Fahrenheit 9/11 review.) To Santa Monica last night, for a (sold out) midnight screening of Fahrenheit 9/11, and I came out slightly disappointed. The edge provided by being in a cinema surrounded by a mostly-young, mostly-very-hip, ...
There’s finally more from the Jim Wightman story, and it’s more of the bizarre same. Wightman responds to a new piece in New Scientist, which says, inter alia: While analysing the transcripts of their conversations, both Webb and Pryke noticed similarities with a program, called Alice, that is free to download ...
Last summer, on the last night of a month-long stay in London, A. & I wandered down to the flagship Waterstones, in Piccadilly — which claims to be the biggest bookshop in Europe. The occasion was the midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I had no idea how many people ...
Are you too stupid to operate your computer? Are you too dim to realise that $19.95 is just 5 cents less than $20? I love infomercials. I love them. It’s the heady, intoxicating delight of a new love, too. I could sit up all night watching them. I have sat up all night watching them. ...
A project which involved giving a variety of different (but equally experienced) film-makers the same screenplay and as much of the same crew and set as possible, then seeing how different their films were, would be fascinating. It wouldn’t just illuminate how different their styles as film-makers were; it would also ...
[A rant I wrote a while ago. Unfortunately, this stuff never stops being relevant.] I’m not a violent person. Trust me, I’m not. A couple of weeks ago, however, I was idly channel-surfing when I happened to land upon something which made me want to reach through the screen and shake someone warmly by the ...
So I was surfing the other day and happened upon ‘Elimidate’, which turned out not to be a programme called ‘Eliminate’ for people with head-colds. Anyway, my spanko radar whoop-whooped, and sure enough, one of the girls competing for the attentions of cute dimbulb guy announced it was her birthday ...