Despite being raised Catholic, I have been an atheist since I was around nine years of age. I had read enough about the world and the universe by that point to figure out that the idea of an anthropomorphic deity that simultaneously cared whether or not you ate fish on a Friday, while at the […]
What’s so great about “The Big Lebowski”?
The title sounds a little provocative, as if I’m questioning the Dude’s greatness. I’m not; “The Big Lebowski” is one of my favourite films of all time. But I’ve heard a lot of crap over the years about why exactly it’s so great, so I feel the time has come to set the record straight. […]
Werner Herzog and my Chicago Connection
One day, almost exactly ten years ago, a friend of mine whom I will refer to only as the Chicago Connection and I were hanging out near the Franco-Spanish border. We had come to a town called Puigicerda on the recommendation of a random bloke we’d met in a Barcelona bar (how all of the […]
The greatest motion picture in the history of cinema: Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”
Watching the World Cup on TV and hearing Ary Barroso’s “Brazil” at every ad break has reminded me, in a strange way, of what I used to adore about cinema, back when I did. You see, I sort of fell out of love with movies. The reasons for this are complex and I won’t bore […]
The Turner Prize, the Queen’s speech, and football’s main event
Art is a hard thing to define. Technically, anything can be counted as art. Frank Zappa once said it was all about framing. If a guy is standing around drinking carrot juice, that’s not art. But if he announces his act of carrot drinking as a piece of art, and others proceed to buy into […]
One Direction, smoking weed, “Game of Pricks”, and the death of rock n’ roll
As everyone in the universe is by now surely aware, two members of the boy band One Direction have been caught on video smoking what they refer directly to as marijuana. In the wake of this incident, there has been a fury unleashed the likes of which has not been seen since Beatles records were […]
The top five failed political coups in British history
In the wake of Lord Oakeshott’s epic failure to unseat Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, I thought it might be fun to look at the top five failed attempts at unseating someone in a position of power in the history of our great nation. 5. Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (1605) […]
“Working Girl” and Gender Politics in 1980’s American Cinema
Before becoming a father, I had assumptions about gender equality that have since been somewhat dashed. This first came about via an NCT class my wife and I enrolled in to prepare us for parenthood. It was a private class and in Nunhead, so I figured it would be a very upper-middle class gang of […]
Vladimir Putin as a Butthole Surfers Album
Given the weekend is almost upon us, I thought I’d lighten the tone a little and talk about autocracy. And couple it with what Spin magazine once described as “the worst indie band in the world” in 1993. I should declare in an interest here. In spite of, or perhaps partly because of, the fact […]
The 40th Anniversary of Kiss appearing on the Mike Douglas Show
This article is one that contains almost 2,000 words on the admittedly execrable 1970’s hard rock phenomenon from New York known as Kiss, so those who normally tune in for my finely honed snapshots of Westminster should look away now. I apologise in advance for my lack of brevity; I just started writing on the […]