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 […]

My own tale of Notting Hill hipness beyond description — by chance, back in 2000 I was invited to attend the opening night of Alan McGee’s club he started a few months after Creation pissed away the last bits of champagne. What was it ca[…]

A challenge for the research-oriented — this question came up elsewhere but as an answer couldn’t be found, I bring it to you: is there a service or webpage or the like which lets you know what albums are in print? Something like the Al[…]

The closest I got to the Marquee was the pub that took it over — four times been to London, and while I’ve seen a couple of shows courtesy of Meltdown (it was Scott Walker’s year and why yes I *was* desperately trying to get into th[…]

Why the weird dry gulch years of movie trailers? — a general observation here. Trailers in the 1930s through 1950s/60s seem to be a classic mishmash of screen projections (“A CAST OF THOUSANDS! LIONS EATING EXTRAS!”), random colla[…]

London Bridge thankfully not fallen down, news at eleven — I have always loved bridges, partially due to an upbringing near one of the most elegantly lovely examples of same yet created, the gorgeous and skyline defining San Diego-Coronado Bay […]

Food Court London — as is unsurprisingly the case in this our world of everything and anything in one place at one time (if you have the money and access to the right location), there are about eight million restaurants in London that presumabl[…]

The great UCI sandwich wars of 2004 — well, said wars aren’t going to erupt fully for another month or so, probably more. But they are incipient, as there are now three different places within walking distance from my office space that w[…]

“You are a very handsome man.” — yesterday as part of that odd film series I mentioned in this post I ended up seeing the sometimes okay sometimes pretty damned draggy Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (they’re showing the f[…]

And a Nelson reigns over them all — to this day I’m not at all sure what borders Trafalgar Square. I’ve seen the buildings enough times and all, but they just seem sorta there, you know — big slabs of marble that I’m su[…]