Essential Daredevil volume 2 by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
This is mainly worth having for Colan’s lovely art. He doesn’t do the most dynamic and powerful action scenes, but he draws beautifully, and the quiet scenes are an absolute joy &#82[…]

White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
He’s an odd writer. I like his ghost stories, none of which seem quite like any other stories I’ve ever read, as if there is an endless series of different ways of handling this old genre. But are these va[…]

Avril Lavigne: Under My Skin
Avril returns with a patchy kind of album, a busy mid ’90’s indie rock affair. The songs are a little difficult to remember, perhaps they should have been allowed to breathe and develop at a gentler pace (Roc[…]

A satire? On the fashion industry? Well that must be pretty redundant.
Yes. It is. Which is exactly why Zoolander is good. Writer/Star/Director Ben Stiller realised that turning a one minute VH1 Fashion Awards (!) joke into a fully fledged film had t[…]

Corporate duty took me to Opium on Dean Street last night. A bar-cum-‘club space’ it was visually opulent but thematically hi-tack, a mishmash of orientalist cliches. Here was some Indian beer; there was some (frankly glitch-prone) &#8216[…]

it’s true because it’s funny (= sad obv)
mainly i’m trying NOT to read bought-media commentary abt the east london warehouse artfire cz i. i have no doubt that abt 95% of it (pro OR con) will be more annoying and lamer even than th[…]

Avril rebellious after all![…]

I used to vaguely agree with the notion that you didn’t actually need to see conceptual art; it was the concept that mattered. Then I did go and see some and of course I realised how wrong I’d been. A lot of Young British Art (& othe[…]

And we end the Round Of Rubbish in the traditional British pub style. Of course you are all welcome back to mine if you bring a bottle and you do not mind sitting in silence as we get down to the serious business of getting sozzled. Silence? Well yes[…]

amazon’s algorithm for working out yr top 105 “recommended” lps (or books or whatever) is a totally hypnotic mystery to me – and i can’t tell you anything formal abt how it makes its choices (well actually i do have two […]