Firstly, I just wanted to thank Robyn and Kat for saying such nice things (via comments here and twitter), bucking me up this morning, and basically reminding me not to be such a dope. Speaking of which ...
Why is everyone saying Fail all of a sudden?
Yes, indeed, I've discovered Slate. This essay reads like a lost script for Balderdash and Piffle and would presumably, if filmed, have featured Victoria Coren meeting the likes of Eddie Edwards and some bloke who didn't do the lottery one week when his numbers came up. Or something.
Victoria Coren has a blog
It's semi-regular, but as entertaining as you'd expect. Here she writes about Only Connect and becomes embroiled in a quiz in the comments, which is more interactive than some bloggers I could mention. I can't wait for her to discover Twitter.
"Is Reading a nice place to live?"
I've been thinking about applying for a job in the city (though it might what I want to do after all) and decided to googling the above question to find out how people viewed the city. I found this thread at a gamer forum: "The two kebab shops on Oxford Road with Hot Stuff signs are working brothels. If you go into one, don't for christ sakes ingest anything."
Republican presidential nominee shaking hands Senator Barack Obama presidential debate
... is how the Yahoo URL captions this photo. Well, I think it looks like the kind of photo which turns up at Sorry I Missed Your Party of someone's pissed Uncle trying to be funny at a wedding reception.
YouTube to McCain: You Made Your DMCA Bed, Lie in It
Google responds to the McCain campaign request that their videos should be left up even if they're breaking the very rules their own party set up to deal with copyright theft. Interestingly in explaining this story to my parents last night, I said this was exactly what Google would do.
Roger Ebert retro-reviews Baraka (1992)
... and after I'd read the title explains why Obama's surname has looked so familiar. Ebert's piece perfectly evokes the images from the film and says it's a decent reason for buying a Blue-ray player. I think I'll be waiting a couple more years yet though, until the prices have dropped some more. From what I've seen, this isn't like the jump from VHS to DVD -- the image quality doesn't seem significantly better unless you have a big old plasma screen that can support it.
The New Cult Canon: Irréversible
Scott Tobias of the AV Club investigates what's perversely one of my favourite films, even though like Baise-Moi it's bothersome in so many respects. My appreciation is very much to do with it's photography and editing rather than subject matter however -- I've not seen many films which take quite this many visual risks with what the audience can tolerate.
Ask Parky: The single-letter movie title alphabet
Mostly shorts, but does of course include O, one of the better, somewhat forgotten Shakespeare movie adaptations.
Celebrities that are not lesbians 4.0
AfterEllen dissects a typical Eamonn Holmes slip from This Morning (during one of those mornings when Phil and Ferne are off) a few weeks ago when he misunderstood Salma Hayek and thought she was coming out a lesbian, which is precisely the kind of thing that usage of fail was invented for.
Watch Baz Luhrmann's Tourism Australia ad
.. featuring Sibylla Budd who played Gabrielle in The Secret Life of Us, which I've just noticed has been getting a proper dvd release over here.
1 comment:
The comment in the Reading thread "I know a few people that live in Reading and love it, but they all seem to live in Caversham" made me laugh. But only because I live in Caversham.
I like it here a lot, and certainly find it better than East London, where I spent ten years. Shopping is good, there are some fine pubs, although live music venues are desperately limited (which seems strange for the home of the Reading Festival).
Rail links are incredibly good, with fast trains into London pretty much every 10 minutes during the day. And note that Oxford is half an hour away the other way, which has turned into my party town of choice. I love it here, but as the man says, I do live in the posh bit...
Post a Comment