The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 1: The Cross Kings 8 Jul 2010 Not really. Really not, with that mural downstairs. But nevertheless this is here as a placeholder until the real number one turns up for a reason. Namely that The Cross…
“The Eleventh Hour” Reviewed By Lytton, Age 3 1/4 3 Apr 2010 As ever, BEWARE SPOILERS! "There was a little girl. The policewoman went into the scary room and she saw the shark, it went round and round. There was a man…
911 – “A Little Bit More” 4 Sep 2014 The formation of minor boyband 911 is a telling vignette of how pop in the late 90s was working. The general boyband narrative is one where a managerial Svengali recruits…
NARNIA WEEK: He’s not a tame lion 8 Jan 2011 But he can cha-cha-cha with the best of them! See also: Eustace the dragon makes a sandcastle while he's waiting for a lift and Reepicheep advertising sun lotion.
NARNIA WEEK: Infinite Quest 10 Jan 2011 David Foster Wallace vs CS Lewis. Or at least here is a few pages of Wallace's copy of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe replete with inky marginalia. The…
The Curse Of The Cross-Dressing Heroine 6 Oct 2010 It may be a hackneyed old plot which is rarely dragged out today (bar tomboyish starring teen movies*), but cross dressing women trying to pass as men has been around…
About the Author
Duke of the Rotten Underfelting of All Culture, Marquis of the Mothed Marches, gorgeous as the fifth moon and terrible as a tummy with hammers, i bind your gnomes to slake my bed: ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR
1 Jun 2002
1 The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re […]
23 Mar 2014
#773, 13th September 1997 “Whenever we played that live there would be rows of grown men crying. It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big rock concert.” – Richard […]
1 Jan 2003
This article was the author’s working notes for his since published book “Adorno: A guide for the perplexed”, available from Waterstones, reputable booksellers, and Amazon Introduction, by Alex Thomson In many ways Adorno exemplifies the image problem faced by critical theory today. Adorno is not a sexy figure. He comes over in his writing as […]
8 Aug 2008
#426, 23rd September 1978 On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica – he gets mugged for his silver chain and returns to the comfort of his hotel where a woman […]
9 Jan 2004
Independence Day. Isn’t it marvellous? Hurrah hurrah let’s kill the stripper and those hippies! That’s the kind of morals I WANT from my films! Until the aliens bugger up by deciding just to kill EVERYBODY. Where’s the subtlety, the art, the je ne sais quoi indeed about that? Who cares when we have plucky heroes […]
30 Apr 2000
April 2000, Piccadilly The sun comes out over London and the Summer starts: everywhere you look you see people in love, snogging on the tubes and holding hands on the escalators so you can’t get past them. Baggy shorts and halter tops all over the place, kids sitting together on Eros and choking on the […]
21 Nov 2013
So here we are. The 32 qualifiers for the football World Cup have been decided, which means it’s time, once again, to get ready for the POP WORLD CUP. The point of this post is very simple. If you want to be a manager in the Pop World Cup, put your name in the comments […]
