is it art? or sport? or telly?[…]

I think I can trace my love of opening ceremonies back to the ’84 olympics, and, in particular, the bloke on the jet pack, as well as my general love of international sporting competition of any sort. I try to rationalise with phrases such as […]

Politics is boring bcz of Grey Men in Suits blah blah: this is of course a cliche and therefore I disdane it utterly, esp.as I was already anyway avidly watching the IDS-unravels-before-our-v.-eyes saga. BUT NEVERTHELESS: there is a minor player in a[…]

From the ‘PBS’ postbag –
“Are there any geneticists out there who would know what would happen if my sister and I attempted to breed?” – J White, Detroit
‘Professor of Interplanetary Craft’ R Carpenter[…]

AMERICAN SPORTS ALERT!
So, over here, there’s this sport that resembles cricket, in a way, except the ball-hitting implements aren’t as flat, and the hurlers throw differently, and, sometimes, the people playing this sport tend to treat i[…]

Shitebox My god, what am I watching? Some kind of virtual Gladiators? Robot Wars with computer game geeks instead of radio-controlled beardies? Most importantly, WHOSE IDEA IS THIS?
Fightbox, showing right now on BBC Three, is absolutely shocking[…]

You can see why Robert Carlyle WANTED to play Hitler, I think: histrionic carpet-chewing must be tremendous physical fun when you have such a cast-iron historical excuse, and the psychology at least a certain technical fascination, but this two-part […]

Tyrannosaurs Make Funky Dancers: cheap games alert for UK readers – Woolworth’s is selling off Chad Valley toys on a Buy One Get One Half Price offer. Since Chad Valley are already the Kwik-Save of the kids’ games world this represe[…]

Eloquent and angry response to Jim Robinson’s Irony And Its Malcontents piece. I think Jim R’s been slightly misread, though: he’s arguing for irony as a mode of listening, not the mode. In the case of Johnny Cash, eulogists have qu[…]

So the first weekend of the 2003 Rugby World Cup has passed by without a hitch, or has it?
Although it’s certainly true that all the home nations managed to avoid major slip-ups it is hardly encouraging that the Scots struggled to beat Japan, a[…]