Now I know more about 23 than ever before, I guess — by chance, as with the best of my library discoveries, I stumbled across Simon Ford’s 1999 book Wreckers of Civilization, his story of the folks behind COUM Transmissions and Throbbing […]

Terror alert: Gin in peril
Gin drinkers of the world unite.
The juniper bush is in sharp decline across Britain. No juniper, no gin.
People are being encouraged to look for remaining bushes. Their reward? Free gin.
Think not of what your gin can do f[…]

Copybooks
Browsing idly in WH Smiths on Friday a couple of new books caught my eye. One was by Vivian Cook, called Accomodating Broccoli In The Cemetary. This unpleasantly unwieldy title turns out to be a book about spelling, subtitled “Why can[…]

Or maybe: Sir Michael Caine should be a national treasure.
I’m not sure which of these statements I agree with most.
What’s indisputable is that the quality of his acting should not be celebrated. His performances are, almost without exce[…]

Bank Holiday Sounds: I am in a good mood this weekend, and it’s time to share it with you. Download this song (2.5MB) and see how you feel. This is not some kind of evil trick.[…]

Sasha Frere-Jones guest-posts at Fluxblog and raises some really interesting questions about repetition, formula, and ‘badness’ in music. The comments box, delightfully, lives up to them.[…]

THE SQUARE TABLE 13 / The Libertines – “Can’t Stand Me Now?”
Pop Factor: 510
“How can anyone still get it up for this?” asked Blissblog a bit ago. Good question. Listening to this I can’t help thinking of wh[…]

As an attempt at a revisionist account of my mother’s cooking (perhaps one day I will be able to discuss cooking without simultaneously discussing my mother, but this is not that day), today, with some friends, I decided to try to incorporate f[…]

The Legend
I just watched this tremendous Jet Li film again, and it has one absolutely magnificent role, that of Jet Li’s mother, played by Josephine Liao. [um, spoiler alert and all that, if it’s applicable to an old movie that’s b[…]

This month’s Sight and Sound features a review of Takashi Miike’s new film Gozu, and tentatively calls 2001’s Visitor Q his masterpiece. The reviewer’s take on Miike’s prolific career (Visitor Q and Ichi the Killer are c[…]