Amory (Mississippi) Railroad Festival, April 15th-18th
1. Barbecue sandwich, Working for my Lord Ministries: well-smoked meat pre-mixed with too much store-bought sauce. Not enough slaw.
2. Chicken fillet plate, First United Methodist: Terrible chic[…]

Private Life Of A Masterpiece
I was delighted to see that this BBC2 show on April 17th was to focus on the Hokusai print generally known as The Great Wave: it’s among my favourite works by one of my favourite artists, but also because I have a […]

Outlaws by George V. Higgins
I’ve read negative reviews at times of books that seem to swing into entirely different directions towards the end, as if it’s a failure of the book, but it’s something I like. Aristotle’s unities […]

POPTIMISM SPECIAL EDITION: Unedited notes on Top Of The Pops, BBC1, 7.30PM, 16th April 2004.
Joe – trad loverman stuff, looks quite saturnine, R&B always a bit hampered by the live thing, cold brit fish like me want to hear the drum sounds[…]

Harsh! Football’s real actual fashion police take a hardline stand. I’m not sure what advantage the one-piece kit could have given Cameroon anyway – it would make shirt-tugging harder, I suppose.[…]

Mars has also just launched its Mars Delight brand extension, which I tried out this afternoon. Two skimpy finger-biscuits in a long wrapper, it’s clearly a light summery kind of chocolate snack, over in four bites, and just as well since even […]

I am still not sold by the name. Bisc & seems like a range made in marketing hell without any real sense of where it sits in the real world. It is a biscuit, the kind of thing which would be nice with a cup of coffee. AND it is a choclate bar. Y[…]

More French toss in the cinema, I don’t know why I still see go and see French films. Les Diables is the latest piece of shocking French cinema trying to titilate and teach us big things. Except the portrayal of an autistic girl is all wrong, w[…]

Simon Reynolds’ Curious Transformation: I’d love to confirm that my pop life is this full of energetic glee but it’s just not so. Actually my Poptimism hides a dirty secret, namely that I never really listen to the radio (aside the […]

Okay, On The Beach is a nice elegaic title for it, but why? There is barely any beach action at all. The point of Shute’s novel is that there is no action full stop, just three hundred pages of post nuclear war fatalism. Emotional speculative f[…]