Dave Stelfox‘ stuff on music and cultural context got me thinking a lot towards the end of last year — since he’s brought the subject up again lately, time to reply. Stelfox’ basic point — more attention to content and c[…]

Underated Vegetable of the Week: Parsnips.
I must admit I was never a fan when I was a kid. It sat on the unpopular side of the Christmas dinner plate, relegated even below the sprouts in my pecking order. There was something unsettling about the sw[…]

Why is it that when mainstream Hollywood wants to show rebellious teenage girls, they are always in punk bands? Jamie Leigh Curtis in Freaky Friday would have been a prime age for punk the first time round, and now her daughter idolises the Ramones. […]

An article in the recent issue of Skeptic magazine researching public reaction to the cringe-inducing, gauche and generally unnecessary “The Brights” campaign. The article (by Skeptic founder/director Michael Shermer) doesn’t come t[…]

To follow up Mark’s post below, there are some special editions of boardgames which seem incomprehensible to me. Having viewed the Betty Boop Monopoly set some weeks before Christmas I am still no closer as to how the standard board has been al[…]

DO YOU DEE? Weighed down by its own “ironic” shtick and dreary self-awareness, DEE CONSTRUCTION: THE SIMON DEE STORY (C4, Dec 29, 10pm) nevertheless contained some gruesomely fascinating moments – almost all directly involving the s[…]

Are there any board games which are actually IMPROVED or AT ALL CHANGED – as opposed to momentarily coloured – by having their own classic scenarios recast to conform to some TV programme or other? My sister was given Simpsons Cluedo for […]

Picture if you will the dying throes of Britpop (the dying bit is unfortunately a metaphor here). The kids, slowly turning off their Oases and Blurs with the feeling the had been robbed, which they had. What did indie music have to throw up? The only[…]

I wrote a short plot treatment for a film course I did about seven years ago called Penis Envy. The premise was two conjoined twins joined at the penis. Finally in adulthood the pair get separated, with the proviso that one of the pair gets all the p[…]

Because without that title you could happily assume that the protagonist are actually supposed to be fifteen or older. The age of the leads is one of the key points, thirteen is teenage but we think of delinquency really kicking in just before adulth[…]