Extended online letters pages rool OK
The Observer featured my letter on penalties in their sports letters pages this weekend. Not in the print version, but it’s a start.[…]

What A Palaver!
I’m going to stay out of debates about pop for a while, I think, because
– I don’t feel intellectually sharp enough at the moment
– (more importantly) I end up unintentionally upsetting or offending people I re[…]

Rikyu
This film, which I hadn’t seen before, has gone straight into my personal top ten. It’s the most gorgeous film I’ve ever seen, by a country mile. The leaflet the NFT gave out with this claim it’s too concerned with the a[…]

Alexander Walker’s bequest to the British Museum
The late film critic left a stack of works, the majority prints, to the British Museum, and they are currently displaying a lot of them in the print room (4th floor at the back) until January 200[…]

GLAMPIRES (by mark s) (Bah but k-punk made up the word ‘glampirism’ when he quoted a bit of this piece, so i am jealous…)[…]

PRESENTERATOR
a new semi-regular thing rating the television presenters of current-day Britain
#1: MIKE “Weapons That Made Britain” LOADES
Mike Loades, according to a brief and slightly half-arsed Googling wot I just done, is a fight chor[…]

AN OBLIQUE AND I HOPE NON-RANCOROUS RESPONSE TO BLISSBLOG’s LONG NON-RANCOROUS RESPONSE to etc (zzz)
While tidying up at Stone Lanes, I reread Teach Mark S a Lesson: Louis Prima. As it’s set long ago, it doesn’t strictly speaking a[…]

WHAT ALIENS MIGHT BE LIKE pt something-or-other [isn’t this a PBS series?]
On the whole science fiction novelists are no more convincing (though maybe more inventive) than science fact dreamers. Frank Herbert is the exception.[…]

POP FACTOR: 839 CONTROVERSY RATING:
“Was I ever in love? I called it love.
I mean, it felt like love.
There were moments when –
well –
There were moments when.”
8 (Tom)
The Streets finally have indie cred here. Painfully hip […]

“I’ll wager xwaxboz quatloos on the newcomer“: [v.long post alert]
Aliens in SF movies are mostly humans in rubber suits for a good practical reason. But since humans read books to find out about themselves, aliens in SF novels are[…]