The 20 indignities at English football grounds (featuring Arsenal, Aston Villa, Celtic, Charlton, Fulham, Newcastle, QPR, Spurs and Wolves)

FOOTBALL fans and all decent people everywhere will have been cheered to hear that Fulham Football Club has finally got round to taking down the statue of Michael Jackson that has besmirched Craven Cottage for the past few years. Former owner Mohamed Al Fayed, who erected the statue in 2011, is apparently considering selling it to raise money for charity.

Good news for all those who believe that sporting establishments should be treated with respect and dignity.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment

Black East New Yorkers charge white people $20 to see the Banksy wall

BANKSY, the muralist, has been decorating walls in New York City. The locals can’y get enough of him. For a few dollars they’ll let you see his artwork.

capnyc took a video:

Anorak

Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Money | Comment

Shutdown US Government deems parks and underfed babies less essential than the Congress heated pool and arresting poor blacks with drugs

WHO the hell decides what is and is not “essential”? That’s not a philosophical question about life, the universe and everything; I’m asking specifically about the idiotic “let’s play chicken with the whole country” federal-government-shutdown thing playing out here in America.

The way it works is, “essential” employees of the federal government still go to work and get paid, while everybody else stays home (and will likely get paid anyway, though not until after the shutdown ends). Check out who’s working and who’s not and it soon becomes obvious that, even by the standards of a creepy police surveillance state, the US government has seriously warped priorities.

Essential: the Drug Enforcement Administration, responsible for arresting and imprisoning anybody who uses intoxicants other than alcohol and prescribed pharmaceuticals, is open.

Not essential: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responsible for monitoring and tracking contagious illness, switched to shutdown mode.

So if one of those deadly science-fiction-movie-type pandemic viruses breaks out during the shutdown, the government can’t track the spread of the contagion but will still arrest anyone trying unapproved forms of medical treatment.

Essential: the private gym and heated swimming pool where members of Congress can work out at taxpayer expense.

Not essential: the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program providing food assistance to extremely poor moms with extremely young kids.

Because where “essential use of taxpayer dollars” is concerned, helping a Congressman burn extra calories off his corrupt and flabby ass takes precedence over getting extra calories to hungry babies who aren’t getting enough. (Though perhaps that’s not a fair criticism to make. Cory Doctorow speculated the real reason the gym’s staying open is because so many Congressmen live in their congressional office suites and use the gym’s shower facilities to bathe. Can we really criticize them for that? Trying to cleanse Congressmen of their own foul stench isn’t “non-essential” so much as “a lost cause.”)

Not essential: America’s national parks and all the park rangers who staff them; hence, all the national parks are closed.

Essential: The National Park Service also “closed” the World War Two and Vietnam War memorials on the National Mall in Washington, DC, which are actually open-air monuments in the middle of a large, unenclosed public area.  So the only way to “close” these monuments is to have staff set up temporary barricades blocking area usually open to everybody, requiring far more manpower than simply leaving them open ever would.

Also deemed essential were the Yellowstone park rangers who  allegedly locked tourists in their hotel, and even prevented them from taking pictures of animals. Can’t let people have fun in national parks, but must scare the hell out of those who try. It’s all about priorities.

Jennifer Abel

Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Manchester United’s teenager Adnan Januzaj is just like Tony Dorigo – the Italian-Australian who became English for glory and money

IAN Wright and Jack Wilshere agree that only players born and blooded in England should play for England at football. How Wilshere’s views will pan out with Liverpool and England’s Jamaican-born Raheem Sterling have yet to be established. Manchester United’s teenager Adnan Januzaj should not play for England, they say.

Fair enough. He might not want to. But Anorak recalls one foreign-born player who did pull on the England shirt. Australian-born Tony Dorigo, for it is he, played in the same England team as Ian Wright. We can find no record of Wright saying back then in 1993 that victory over Brazil would have been “hollow” with a foreigner in the team. Playing with a non-England born player is “just cheating” says wright.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, manchester united, Sports | Comments (2)

Amanda Knox: ‘Foxy’ Cara Delevingne, unforgiving Patrick Lamumba and Cartwheels of joy

MEREDITH Kercher is not yet at peace. The retrial of Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy, for Kercher’s murder is underway. Knox and her then lover Raffaelle Sollecito were convicted and then acquitted. This time, however, Knox won’t be in the courtroom, opting to remain in the US.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)

Agents of S.H.I.E.LD is terrific – watch it while Simon Cowell licks his eyeballs

Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious.

NO one calls themselves a telly addict any more. Time was, that was a thing. In the ‘80s being yoked to the idiot box was a bad thing. But today? We covet screens endlessly. We carry them around with us all the time. Right now I have two monitors in front of me, a MacBook Air demanding my attention, a Google Nexus 7 chirping away to itself and a smartphone gone the way of a black mirror, its battery worn down by incessant fiddling. The screens are everywhere now. We don’t notice them because they surround us.

And I love it. My name is Mic Wright and I am an addict. I am unrepentant. I was born to be a telly critic but sadly telly isn’t what it used to be. When Clive James – the greatest TV reviewer of all time – was stalking the Palaeolithic expanses of the small screen, a world where Channel 4 was just a glimmer in some priapic executives hungry eye, television meant something. It had Play For Today and hard hitting documentaries. World In Action, Death on the Rock, truly panoramic Panorama. It had drunks and eccentrics. It had George Best, Muhammad Ali, Greta Garbo and Helen Mirren on Parkinson. It had The Tube and TOTP. It had surprises.

Mic Wright

Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment (1)

10 great Halloween party songs that aren’t naff

HALLOWEEN is coming. You want to host a party. This is the music you need to play.

Tam Lin: Fairport Convention

Anorak

Posted: 6th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment

Irony Overload: The Guardian says the Daily Mail is anti-Semitic

WHEN it comes to talking of anti-Semitism in newspapers, who better than the Guardian to bring the Daily Mail to order over its Ralph Miliband hatchet job? The Guardian is the paper in which Richard Imgram told readers:

I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.

The Guardian is subtle in its bigotry, doing down the Jews claims to a homeland.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Edinburgh and Leeds University ban on Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines is racist

Anorak

Posted: 4th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment

The Council of Europe’s purge on circumcision enshrines anti-Semitism and anti-Islam in law

HAS the Council of Europe banned Jewish boys from being Jewish boys? The Council has decreed that circumcision is “a violation of the physical integrity of children”. It says all 47 nations in the Council’s zone will  “initiate a public debate, including intercultural and interreligious dialogue, aimed at reaching a large consensus on the rights of children to protection against violations of their physical integrity according to human rights standards”.

Member stats should “adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted”.

Hey, boys. You’ll get to be circumcised not when very young but when you’re 18. Happy days.

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)

Football’s 10 most offensive pundits

TOM Cowan and Robbie Fowler are the latest pundits to find that a casual remark or a casual prejudice can get you into hot water.

‘Banter’ is no longer an acceptable excuse for inappropriate sentiments however lightly expressed, and woe betide anyone who steps over the line into heartfelt abusive opinion.

BBC pundit Cowan’s crime was to make disparaging comments about women’s football in a column for the Daily Record, headed ‘And Now A Message From the Dark Ages’. In it, he remarked that “Fir Park should have been torched on Thursday in order to cleanse the stadium after it played host to women’s football”.For this, he has been suspended by the Beeb.

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment

The 17 British sports legends and pop stars who owned their own shops

WHEN Huddersfield Giants star Danny Brough (seen here with his bestselling blueberry bonbons) revealed his other life as co-owner of the Hull confectionery shop Sweeet Shack (with an extra ‘e’) some people may have raised an eyebrow or two.

Once upon a time, however, there was nothing unusual about celebrities operating a sideline. Former footballers, boxers and cricketers opened newsagents, sports shops and pubs. And they weren’t the only ones. Even the Beatles got in on the act.

Anorak

Posted: 1st, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts, Music, Sports | Comment (1)

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen answer the phones on Efrom Allen’s New York cable TV show in 1978

ON September 18, 1978, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungun appeared on New York cable Tv show The Efrom Allen Show. Also on the panel taking calls from the great unwashed were, Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, and Cynthia Ross of the B Girls.

Viewers were invited to “CALL 473-5386 TO SPEAK TO THE PUNK OF YOUR CHOICE”.

Photo above: Vicious and Spungen outside Marylebone Magistrates court after being charged possessing the drug methamphetamine – 08/02/1978.

Spungen seems to idolise her man, telling one caller who calls him “derivative”:

“He’s as original as you get! He’s not derivative of anything.”

On October 12, 1978  Spungen was dead. She’d been stabbed. The prime suspect in what looked like a suspicious death was Vicious, aka John Ritchie.

Photo: The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street in New York City is shown, Oct. 18, 1978, site of Nancy Spungen’s murder. Her boyfriend Sid Vicious of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols has been arrested and charged with the murder.

Photo: New York police escort British punk rock musician Sid Vicious, or John Simon Ritchie, former bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, shortly before he was charged with murder in the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Laura Spungen, at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Oct. 13, 1978. 

Photo: John Simon Ritchie walks from Rikers Island prison in New York, Oct. 16, 1978 after being released on $50,000 bail. Police  charged Ritchie with second-degree murder in connection with the death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

On February 2 , while out on bail, Vicious died of a drugs overdose. His mother told us:

“He knew the smack was pure and strong and took a lot less than usual.”

But it was enough to kill him:

Photo: New York City police carry the body of punk rock star Sid Vicious from apartment in the Greenwich Village section of New York, Feb. 2, 1979. 

Photo: Michelle Robinson leaves her apartment in New York, Feb. 2, 1979 after the body of punk rock star musician Sid Vicious was found in her apartment. 

Photo: Anne Beverley, mother of the late punk rock star Sid Vicious, sits in ambulance outside the Sixth Precinct police station in New York, Feb. 2, 1979. Police said her son apparently died of a heroin overdose taken the night before at a party given to celebrate his release from prison. 

Now the phone-in show:

Anorak

Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment

Who’s afraid of adults? Drunk and depressed children listening to their therapist

TWO stories in today’s papers stand out:

The Times leads with news that Under 11s are getting drunk and seeking treatment in A&E departments.

Hundreds of primary-school age children were admitted to accident and emergency departments for alcohol-related problems last year, it has been revealed. The 293 admissions, up by a third on 2011, came after a year in which more than 6,500 under-18s were taken to hospital as a consequence of drinking.

What about drugs?

The numbers, which were obtained through a freedom of information request, also found that 145 children under 11 were admitted to A&E with drug-related conditions, up by 14 per cent on the previous year.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Hey Lulu: The stoned and brilliant performance that saw Jimi Hendrix banned from the BBC

ON January 4, 1969 Jimi Hendrix appeared on Happening for Lulu. Sharing the bill with Pan’s People, Badfinger and Johnny Harris, Hendrix and his Experience would perform a duet with the Shout singer at the BBC’s London studios. Well, they were supposed to. But it never did happen.

Charles R Cross recalls what occurred in his book Room Full of Mirrors. After breaking into Hey Joe, as arranged and introduced by the pop Pixie, Hendrix had enough:

“We’d like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to The Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in, dedicate to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce”.

The band then began playing Sunshine of Your Love.

Hendrix told his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (pictured above in 1969): “I’m not going to sing with Lulu. I’d look ridiculous.”

Noel Redding writes in his book Are You Experienced? The Inside Story of The Jimi Hendrix Experience:

“We cringed,… [tit was] so straight it was only natural that we would try to combat that atmosphere by having a smoke in our dressing room…In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drainpipe. Panic! We just couldn’t do this show straight–Lulu didn’t approve of smoking! She was then married to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d visited and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Maurice started throwing open all the windows. Anyway, I found a maintenance man and begged tools from him with the story of a lost ring. He was too helpful, offering to dismantle the drain for us. It took ages to dissuade him, but we succeeded in our task and had a great smoke.”

Photo: Lulu marries Maurice Gibb of the pop group the Bee Gees at the Parish church, Gerrard’s Cross in Buckinghamshire on 18/02/1969.

Redding adds:

“This was fun for us, but producer Stanley Dorfman didn’t take it at all well as the minutes ticked by on his live show. Short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show. Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it’s the most relaxed.”

Anorak

Posted: 28th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment

Things that exists: Japanese butt pudding

IN Japan you can buy butt pudding. Expect much spooning:

Anorak

Posted: 25th, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment

The 18 most unforgettable team photos of all time

DAVID Cameron has played down rugby international Manu Tuilagi’s ‘bunny ears’ gesture as ‘a bit of fun’, and accepted an apology from the player after his impertinent gesture during the British Lions’ photo call at Downing Street.

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment

The Daily Mail returns to leer at ‘leggy’ nine-year-old Leni Klum

THE Daily Mail continues to leer at young girls.

Back in January, thy Mail said that Heidi Klum’s daughter was a “leggy beauty”.

Heidi Klum’s daughter is eight years old. She is the Mail’s “lovely Leni”.

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment

The Top 10 masked bands of all time (volume 1)

SINCE time immemorial singers have coloured their faces or hidden behind masks. The masks enable the singers to be freer, take on news personas and cut loose. We’ve flicked through the record archives here at Anorak Towers and now bring you the Top 10 masked pop stars and groups of all time:

Gwar

Without doubt, the funniest masked band of all time, are the might Gwar. In their time, they’ve cut off limbs, given birth to ghouls and wheeled out giant menstruating beasts on stage. Their warty, demon masks are almost as important as their brand of schlock rock and god bless the lot of ’em.

Mof Gimmers

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)

In 1983 Dennis Hopper performed this Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act in Houston

IN 1983 Dennis Hopper went to Rice University in Houston, Texas. Students piled onto buses. They followed Hopper to Houston’s Big H Speedway. His arrival was announced thus:

“Stick around folks and watch a famous Hollywood film personality perform the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act. That’s right, folks, he’ll sit in a chair with six sticks of dynamite and light the fuse.” 

Rice News reported:

Dennis Hopper, at one with the shock wave, was thrown headlong in a halo of fire. For a single, timeless instant he looked like Wile E. Coyote, frazzled and splayed by his own petard. Then billowing smoke hid the scene. We all rushed forward, past the police, into the expanding cloud of smoke, excited, apprehensive, and no less expectant than we had been before the explosion. Were we looking for Hopper or pieces we could take home as souvenirs? Later Hopper would say blowing himself up was one of the craziest things he has ever done, and that it was weeks before he could hear again. At the moment, though, none of that mattered. He had been through the thunder, the light, and the heat, and he was still in one piece. And when Dennis Hopper staggered out of that cloud of smoke his eyes were glazed with the thrill of victory and spinout.

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment

The world’s most famous politicians who painted

POLITICIANS are gentle souls who like to create. Some make art. We’ve noticed a few of them:

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I have a lot of fun since I took it up, in my somewhat miserable way, your hobby of painting. I have had no instruction, have no talent, and certainly have no justification for covering nice, white canvas with the kind of daubs that seem constantly to spring from my brushes. Nevertheless, I like it tremendously, and in fact, have produced two or three things that I like enough to keep.” – DE

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Retro toys: Donny And Marie Osmond action figures, TV studio and adoption kit

DONNY and Marie Osmond were the stars of their eponymous TV show. Between 1976 and 1979, kids tuned in to see the beaming Mormon siblings singing country-style songs. They also performed skits with star guests, performing parodies of hit films, like Star Wars (1977) and Battlestar Galactica (1978).

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment