That list of discontinued olympic events in full.
My favourite, cruelly missed out of the OSM list, is still the swimming obstacle race. Apparently Frederick Lane, the Australian winner, had grown up around Sydney harbour and was thus used to clambe[…]

Practical Criticism III
Yesterday’s back-and-forth focussed on the prospects for paid, printed music writing. I like the magazine format because it gives me something to read on the tube, and because a good editor can make already talented writ[…]

Dave Q conquers the world, part 4154145 — in which quite probably the Greatest Living Critic has his say about one Metallica and a recent movie of theirs. The tears of laughter are still rolling down my face.[…]

It was actually the head and upper chest they saved — the ridiculous joy of They Saved Hitler’s Brain isn’t just the title, of course, but damned if that doesn’t have a lot to do with it. It’s a perfect time-killer movi[…]

“If you wish to see your son thoroughly depraved, send him to a Judge and Jury Club”: forgotten menace of bygone London! The Victorian London site as ever illustrates but does not interpret: as far as I can tell the notion was a drinking […]

last python alive
i can’t really tell if terry jones’s constant reversion to his old shtick in terry jones’s medieval lives is i. tactical, ii. just kneejerk, or iii. semi-sheepish.
you can hardly accuse jones of dumbing down or s[…]

A History Of Beer Commercials:
Enjoyable article, wish there was a UK equivalent. I particularly liked this story:
Among the earliest, and certainly one of the most successful, ID characters put to work on television for a brewery was “Mabel,&#[…]

“and if the devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack!”
“Even before Family Christian started selling its karaoke music line, its store in Augusta, Ga., was holding monthly karaoke nights that really weren’t karaoke ni[…]

The only living American boy in New Cross (not necessarily true) — as I mentioned yesterday, I had reason to be in New Cross for two of my London trips, and while I can’t say I got to know the entire area or anything like that, for me, fo[…]

A LONDON SONGBOOK
SHAM 69 – “Red London (Live)”: Did you know that in their first ever review Julie Burchill wrote “Sham 69 play rock’n’roll in the manner that American negroes fight, not for fun but for existence&[…]