There are two types of salads in this world, as far as a I have noticed. There is the leafy, chunky, lotsabits but mainly lettuce types, and then there is the chopped to bits swilling in dressing kind. I can only make the first kind, mainly due to an[…]

SENSES OF SHAME – Smells Like Teen Spirit
In 1991 rock was at its lowest ever ebb. Forget the ironic reappraisal of hair metal: it stank. Little did I know things would soon get even worse. The title of “Smells like Teen Spirit” com[…]

Jonathan Miller’s Brief History of Disbelief
Jonathan Miller is a very clever man, but I don’t know why this documentary is on TV. Does digital channel BBC 4 really have a wider audience than Radio 4? Maybe he knew that I at least was mor[…]

Five Things About Michael Chabon’s
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY
1: Clay doesn’t have any amazing adventures
Okay, he maybe has the amazing adventure that many of us have, living in a big city, doing work you like, doing wor[…]

Bernardo Belloto
Slaughterhouse Five is a book I read every couple of years. It is strange and horribly beautiful and I’m not sure I understand it all. More civilians died in Dresden than in both nuclear attacks on Japan combined. I don’t[…]

DARE YOU SEE SAW
I’d like one ticket to see Saw please
I saw Saw last night.
The film is as sophisticated as the gleeful half jokes made out of talking about it. Ie not very, but wonderfully direct. I do not think that I have seen a more narrat[…]

Retracing long worn away steps without going anywhere — of course the advantage of travel literature in many ways is the joy of being able to visit places in the comfort of an armchair, but then there’s also trying to find spots that just[…]

The World of Pop According to Smash Hits
Top Trumps – you remember, those stato-geek touchstones of the eighties playground – has produced a Smash Hits! deck, and, as always, its the killer cards and dismal failures at the top and tail of[…]

POLL: BRITONS FEAR SPIDERS MORE THAN TERRORISTS[…]

LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY
dir. Miyazaki Hayao
Then again the film should be more accurately called Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta in at least one transliteration, but anyway: Miyazaki is turning into one of those pleasureable ‘catch-up’ experien[…]