Archive for the 'Culture' Category
Via BoingBoing, comes this great assessment of the state of the world by Bruce Sterling in Seed magazine. As you know, I love a good apocalypse, and I’ve been watching this one coming for a while.
Sterling focuses on seven reasons we should all be panicking: the climate; intellectual property; currency speculation; the insurance market; the [...]
Filed under: Baby Boomers, Climate, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, anxiety, being chippy, climate change, omens and portents, paranoia | Leave a Comment
Tags: apocalypse, panic
In Film Club at school this week, we watched Air Guitar Nation, the 2006* documentary about the 2003 World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland, which were entered that yearby Americans for the first time.
I got three punters, all KS5-ers, and we all enjoyed it a great deal. It’s not only funny, warm, full of [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Culture, Entertainment, Movies, Music, arts, film, heroes | Leave a Comment
Jesus Christ
I was disappointed to see that the atheist bus campaign’s slogan included the word “probably”. Apparently this was at the behest of the advertising agency that produced the posters, who were worried they’d fall foul of advertising rules. What? I thought the whole point of the campaign was that you couldn’t possibly fall foul of [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Culture, Time-Wasters, being chippy, science fiction, weasels | 2 Comments
Best Ever Chorus?
FiveLive Breakfast have been having a phone vote for the best chorus ever over the past few weeks. I missed the bit where they asked for nominations, which they whittled down to a final 9, and then did a 4-day vote for the best, which turned out to be “Delilah”, written by Les Reed and [...]
Filed under: BBC, Beatles, Bob Dylan, Culture, Music, happiness, omens and portents | Leave a Comment
Radcliffe is my Destination
Tift Merritt was late to her gig at the Radcliffe Centre in Buckingham tonight, because the taxi driver tried to take her to Radclive, a hamlet (not worth the name of village) nearby. God bless GPS.
The usual crowd of grey hairs and baldies suited the occasion, which was the recording of a live album in [...]
Filed under: Culture, Entertainment, Music, arts | Leave a Comment
Tags: Tift Merritt, review, gig, radcliffe centre
Whoops Apocalypse: Survivors
Survivors was one of my favourite TV things when it was broadcast lo those many years ago. I liked Abby, the woman who was looking for her son, and felt the life went out of the series when she left it. I believe the actress was fired for being an alcoholic or something, at which [...]
Filed under: BBC, Culture, Entertainment, Nostalgia, TV, Television, The Seventies, acting, arts | 4 Comments
Tags: Survivors
Roll Your Tapes
via BoingBoing, I came across this selection of recordings of Bob Dylan with that overrated charlatan Johnny Cash from 1968/69. Only one song from these sessions ended up on Nashville Skyline. There are also, so it goes, a few quadrophonic remixes of Nashville Skyline tracks – no Johnny Cash required. Regardless of my personal opinion [...]
Filed under: 1960s, Baby Boomers, Bob Dylan, Culture, Downloads, Entertainment, Music, Nostalgia, Songs, arts | 3 Comments
Tags: 1969, country music, johnny cash, nashville skyline, quadrophonic
I am not Paul Weller
I was (re)watching that docu about Paul Weller on BBC4 the other night (didn’t watch the live session) and enjoyed it all over again. It does that thing, though, where it spends longer on a shorter period of his life (e.g. The Jam and Style Council eras) and then skates quickly over a longer period [...]
Filed under: Culture, Entertainment, Music, Television, arts | 3 Comments
Tags: bbc4, NME, paul weller, style council, the jam
Mean and Stupid, Stupid and Mean
You get a flavour of the poisonous atmosphere of the Guardian’s Comment is Free section when you see that it takes just eight (8) comments on the thread about rock drummers (apropos the death of Mitch Mitchell) before someone trots out the old line about Ringo not even being the best drummer in the Beatles. [...]
Filed under: Culture, Education, Entertainment, Music, being chippy | 1 Comment
Peace of My Mind
Cant \Cant\, v. i.
To make whining pretensions to goodness; to talk with an affectation of religion, philanthropy, etc.; to practice hypocrisy; as, a canting fanatic.
When I was growing up, they didn’t make the fuss of Remembrance Day that they do now. Some would say it’s a good thing that we’re collectively giving it the two [...]
Filed under: Culture, being chippy, omens and portents | Leave a Comment
Tags: 11-11, cant, contrarianism, hypocrisy, peace, remembrance, war
