Andrew Vachss – Safe House
One of the things I like about Richard Stark’s Parker novels is the sense of a man taking care, an expert in his craft; also the sense of a world more or less coexisting with the one I know of which I am complet[…]

Tom’s post below made me think that mayeb an issue here the vanity of the writer; after a time, being a top-class gag crafter just isn’t enough. They wish to be seen as dramatists, commentating on the human-condition through the eyes of n[…]

PAY TV – “Trendy Discoteque” (aka PopNose4): An object lesson in how context can change my reactions to a song. I was recommended this song on a Europop ILM thread by Edward O. I like a bit of Europop, and also it turned out that th[…]

THE BETA BAND – Heroes To Zeros
“What on Eart will they do next?”, Tom asked, on this very site, way back in ’99. If you had told me then that the answer would be “release a straight up indie rock record” five yea[…]

Worst Prize EVER! Woolworths in Tooting (my most-visited record shop, thumbs up for teleworking) had a refit the other week and relaunched with a special Mother’s Day competition. On entering the shop you were greeted by the huge cardboard face[…]

Only Fools And Horses / Best Sitcoms: my views on OFAH are pretty conventional I suspect – very good early on and then getting steadily worse as first Rodney and then Del Boy get hitched. The character of Cassandra at least had comic potential […]

(aka PopNose3): Also in the Fopp £3 only pile was the album I got this from – Songlines Presents World Music: The #1 Tracks From The #1 World Music Albums Of The Year”. It has a very nasty cover on which totally ordinary card has be[…]

June 8th. JUNE 8TH!!
That’s the release date for the first home-video release in any format of SCTV, the classic Canadian comedy series that originally ran from 1976 to 1984. The show never got a VHS release because the producers, not anticipat[…]

And your prize is…
Many hoary old cliches (on that subject, is there much else that gets called ‘hoary’?) have some sort of basis in sense or fact, but one that I saw for about the thousandth time in XXX tonight seems to entirely la[…]

strange geometries ahoy!!
if this “chicago blogmap” works how i think it works, it’s projecting a sector of the blogiverse back onto the stylised planar* real-world projection of the illinois city (move cursor to a station to see w[…]