Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
You’ll Blow Your Mind Out In A Car: The Hellish Rolling Stone Mag Beatles Tribute Of 1977 (Video)
THIS might be the world’s worst Beatles tribute. In 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine booked Ted Neeley (Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar), Patti Labelle, Ritchie Havens, Yvonne Elliman (she was Christ’s Mary Magdalene) and more for A Day In The Decade, a rendering of A Day In The Life. The show begins with Neeley (bigger than Jesus?) singing about himself getting out of bed, dragging a comb across his head, looking up, realising he was late…
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Posted: 9th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Keep Your 95 Krone: You Lucky People Can See Marius The Giraffe Murdered And Chopped Up For Free (Video)
MARIUS the 18-month-old giraffe was murdered at Copenhagen zoo this morning. He was shot.
Marius was killed because he was deemed to be useless for breeding. His genes, you see, were too common. Having been killed. Marius was chopped up as a crowd looked on. Bits of Marius were fed to the lions, who gobbled him down.
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Pathetic Students Are Scared Of This Nearly Naked Man Statue
THIS is the sculpture entitled Sleepwalker stood in the snow on the campus of Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Mass. It’s part of an exhibit by sculptor Tony Matelli at the college’s Davis Museum. Says Matelli:
“This is a person who is an outsider, he’s displaced. So I thought the reaction would be empathy.”
It’s the kind of nightmare all of us bar David Beckham have: walking in public in your knickers. But some don’t approve, like the student who old WBZ-TV:
“I don’t know if it’s exactly appropriate for a college campus. I would rather the statue of like Washington or Abraham Lincoln you know something more formal.”
Washington in his undercrackers could work. But what about Bill Clinton in his silk kimono? Or Lincoln in a vest?
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Man Turns His Back Into A Living Geopolitical Atlas
BILL Passman has a tattooed outline of the world on his back. Every time he visits a country he gets that part coloured in. Most recently, he’s visited Russia. The whole land mass was inked a brownish red. But did he go to each of Russia’ 14 Republics? If Chechnya breaks away from the Motherland, as many of its population want, will Mr Passman get a flesh-coloured tattoo for that part of his back art or quickly book a trip there, lest his tattoo look out of date?
And what to make of the colours chosen? Borders move. It might be an idea for Mr Passman to opt for a first rendering in pastels, they being easier to cover over with a deeper colour should things change. Countries least likely to be invaded would be in darker hues; less secure ones marked in a lighter colour. Ominously, Russia is a deeper hue than Canada. The United Kingdom is the same light pinky shade as Bolivia, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That might be symbol of how far the country has slipped in the world order.
Once upon a time, much of the world was the deep red of British Empire. In his book All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To, Stuart Laycock notes that Great Britain has invaded 90% of the world’s other nations. Only 22 countries have not been colonised or invaded by the British. He explains:
“Other countries could write similar books – but they would be much shorter. I don’t think anyone could match this, although the Americans had a later start and have been working hard on it in the twentieth century.”
The country most often invaded by Britain is France. On Mr Pessman’s back, France is purple, far deeper on the colour charts than GB. It bodes badly.
Of course, we might be reading too much into Mr Pressman’s tattoos. But they are conversation stater, and others will surely do likewise.
Spotter: UsvThe3m
Posted: 8th, February 2014 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
The History of Football In Three Minutes (With Billy Joel)
The history of football in three minutes. Identify all the stars and win a free Ralph Coates headband:
Posted: 8th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Sports | Comment
Daily Express Weather: Everyone Dead By Teatime
WE need to talk about the weather. We need to talk about it because a large part of the UK is about to be sucked into a black hole. The Daily Express’s wet finger man Nathan Rao – yep, him – has the chilling evidence:
Rao has facts:
The entire west coast is braced for colossal 75 foot-plus waves to crash inland this weekend triggering unchecked flooding and widespread destruction.
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Otl Aicher: The Olympic Designer Who Shaped Your Journey To The Toilet
WHAT did the Olympics ever do for you? Otl Aicher was the true star of the 1972 Olympics? Who he? Was he member of Black September, the murderers who attacked the Israeli team? No. Was he seven-time gold medalist Mark Spitz’s coach, the man who swam just in front of the Californian dipper, a gold medal pinned to his trunks beneath the hand-stitched legend “C’mon Mark, Reach for the prize”? No.
Otl Aicher designed these, the Games’ pictograms, the figures that pointed the way to the Games’ events, told you where smoking was forbidden and where the toilets were located. His simplistic design would become the universal standard.
Aicher had no small task. As Michael Burke, a designer who worked on the project with Aicher, tells it:
…they wanted it to become much more open. The problem was that in the 1930s, the last time Germany had held the Games – obviously, the wanted to develop a completely new feel to it. Although it’s very typically German, in the sense that it’s very rationalised and very structured it’s got a soul to it. If you notice, there’s no red or black used.
No red or black. When the Germans had last hosted the Olympics, red and black had been very much in vogue:
This Associated Press photo shows the Swastika, during rehearsals at Berlins stadium, June 20, 1938, Berlin, Germany. The stadium will again will be filled to capacity when the Hitler Youth and the SA are celebrating summer solstice day in the Olympic Stadium, June 21, 1938, Berlin, Germany. Hundreds of SA men will form a torchlight sun wheel in Germany on June 28, 1938. (AP Photo)
Was Aicher chosen to lead the design team by accident? He had considerable talent, having co-founded the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm) and worked for German mega-companies Braun and Lufthansa. But better than that, in 1937 Aicher had been arrested for refusing to join the Hitler Youth. He was not one of them. He was one of the winners. He had said ‘no’.
Blood stains and bullet holes mark the place where the Israeli weightlifter Moshe Romano was killed Sept.7, 1972 by Arab commandos inside the Israeli Olympic team’s quarters at the Olympic Vilalge in Munich,West Germany. Photo shows the room where eight Israeli athletes were kept hostage for 18 hours. (AP Photo/str)
And then…the massacre?
One of the brochures was the break out point where it all started to move into the rainbow colours. I can remember very vividly, after the Arab attack on the Israeli’s, where we all felt totally shattered – we’d seen all the police around – the decision was, what should we do, should we carry on at all? It was then decided that the colours would be used even more so – one discussion was that we used black, or that we stopped – then the idea was that the Rainbow Games would suggest an optimism…
The pictograms were used everywhere in Germany – at sports complexes, in schools and that was the objective. Normally all the marks are copywrited and such but these could be used by different people.
Cycling Inquisition realises how right it all feels:
Like a paperclip, we don’t think of Aicher’s pictograms as designed objects per se, but rather as the objects themselves. The chairs we own are someone’s take on a chair. That’s not the case with the average, everyday paperclip. It is what it is, a paperclip. That’s it. Objects at this level of comprehension are simply there. They feel as though they have always been there, and did so from the moment they were presented to the masses. In every country, in every city, they are simply there. In the case of Aicher’s icons they’ve become shorthand that everyone can understand, a set of simple shapes that successfully tells us where to go when we need to use a bathroom.
Burke again:
The thing Aicher was really interested in, in the whole of the Olympics, aside from the products we see here, was the souvenirs. He said we must get control of these souvenirs – so that was the big problem; how to structure them so that there wasn’t all the usual kitsch coming out. The mascot, Waldi, is very typical design approach and there’s even a cuddly toy version! But you remember those Bauhaus toys? Well that’s the link through again.
So. Typography and design matters.
Beatrice Warde addressed the British Typographers’ Guild
Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.
Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-pages? Again: The glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of “doubling” lines, reading three words as one, and so forth.
Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The “stunt typographer” learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
The trick is to be seamless…
Posted: 7th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Sports | Comment
Watch Joanna Lumley Explain Her Workout In This 1968 Video: ‘I’ve Never Been A Skinny Bird’
23 year old actress Joanna Lumley starts work on the film ‘The Breaking of Bumbo’. Date: 26/01/1970
IN 1968, a 21-year-old Joanna Lumley told us about her keep-fit regime. “I’ve never been a skinny bird” – not like Twiggy – says Lumley. The “Duffy” she references is Brian Duffy, the “short, fat heterosexual” photographer of what came to be known as Swinging Sixties.
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British Jihadis Build New Syria With Asda Muesli Bars, Pot Noodles And ‘lol Pizza’
JIHADIS are using social media to recruit British fighters. Hear the call to arms for Syria’s ISIS and their subgroup the Muhajireen Brigade:
“Brothers, what are you waiting for? There are plenty of weapons here waiting for you to play with, plenty of food and plenty of women waiting to get married.”
The jihadi duly poses with the promised sweetmeats, proving that he is true to his word. Can any anyone doubt the quality of the brides when you see the ASDA Smartprice Strawberry Flavoured Cranberry Muesli Bars and chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle?
It wall-to-wall birds, bars and instant meals. It’s like backpacking in Rhodes with a modified paintball gun and your grandpa’s’s hat
And that’s not all.
“we got Internet, phones, cheese burgers lol pizza, markets, schools for children, classes for adults, shariah courts and all sorts!”
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Weasels Ripped My Flesh! 10 Awesome Pulp Headlines
IS there anything better than a mid-century men’s action magazine? They were chock full of lurid stories and provocative artwork depicting female biker gangs, nympho pirates, Gestapo dominatrices, etc. If it fulfilled a macho fantasy, it was fair game, and the headlines beckoned men to go along for the ride. Here are ten worthy examples.
THE MAN WHO TOUCHED OFF PHILADELPHIA’S GREAT BOSOM RIOT
Male, Sept. 1959
I’m a mild mannered, peaceful kind of guy – not much into protests and insurrection. That being said, a “bosom riot” is something I could get behind.
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Posted: 7th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (2)
50 Years Ago, The Beatles Landed at JFK: 10 Great American Beatles Rip Offs
The Beatles face the media on arrival at JFK airport in New York City on Feb. 7, 1964. The British rock and roll group was also greeted by a screaming crowd estimated at 5,000. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)
OF course, The Fab Four’s time in America is very well documented. No-one needs to know more about the whole Bigger Than Jesus thing and George Harrison’s ‘spotty youths’ comment when he visited the hippies on the West Coast.
However, less well documented are the mop-top knock-offs that The Beatles created. Garage bands and frat beat groups sprung up all over America after the mop tops played Ed Sullivan.
So, here’s 10 of the best American Beatle Bands or Fab Four rip-off records… and by the way, being a Beatle rip-off band is no bad thing at all! Feel free to chime in with your own!
1. The Byrds
The Byrds hit the jackpot when they took Dylan’s folk music and turned it into a Beatle beat. Perfect for the US market – homegrown lads (not like those British Invasion swine!) making Dylan’s nasal drawl more palatable. ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’ is the choice here, but in fairness, it could’ve been picked from two dozen songs!
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Childhood’s End: The Five Most Terrifying Movies Made From A Child’s Perspective
ALFRED Hitchcock once remarked that every person understands fear, because everyone was once a child. “After all,” he declared, “weren’t we all afraid as children?”.
According to the authors of Monsters under the Bed and Other Childhood Fears (Random House; 1993, page 1), “childhood is a time of many fears” and children between the ages of six and twelve “experience an average of seven different fears.”
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (4)
Putin’s LGBT Pogrom: Hunted And The Horror of Vladimir’s Anti-Gay Crusade
THE Russian man who told me about the police who burned him with cigarettes, broke his phone and extorted money wasn’t poor. That’s why he was telling me in the hipster comfort of an East London drinking den, the temporary home of the Silicon Drinkabout tech networking event. He wasn’t poor. That’s why, he said, his family could make the leap from Moscow to the Czech Republic. That’s why he’s now a Czech citizen, able to live and work in the UK and free from the village where the police sold meth and ignored a dead man on the stairs of his apartment block.
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Reviews, Sports, TV & Radio | Comments (2)
Madeleine McCann: Three Years Later Portuguese Police Got A Call About An Intruder
PIERS Eady has a Madeleine McCann scoop in the Daily Mirror:
Madeleine McCann: Cops probing claims a kidnapper tried to snatch another British tot from holiday flat in Portugal
A British tot! Like the missing child… Go on…
A mum has told Scotland Yard how she chased an intruder away from her Algarve apartment after she found him heading towards her child’s cot
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
Bullshit, Bastards & Bylines: What To Learn From Tumblr, Buzzfeed, HuffPo And Upworthy…Yes, Really
The Daily Mail newspaper in operation in room 55 at Carmelite House, Fleet Street.
Date: 01/01/1913
Buzz me, Huff me, make me up Worthy
What to learn from Tumblr, Buzzfeed, HuffPo and Upworthy…yes, really
Which media organisations have mastered making the web jump to their own sick tunes? Buzzfeed and The Daily Mail. The rest of the media runs like pissed wolves behind these lean beasts. The Daily Mail turns its enemies into obsessive readers. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool of liberal mung bean-munching Guardian readers find themselves stumbling over to the “Sidebar of Shame” to read about a revolving cast of celebrities about whom the Mail writes bizarrely detailed dispatches.
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Technology | Comments (27)
Read The Document That Caused A British Magistrates’ Court To Demand Mormon Church Prove Adam And Eve Were Real
President Thomas S Monson, center, and his daughter, Ann Dibb walk off following the morning session of the 183rd Semiannual General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013, in Salt Lake City.
THIS is incredible. The Telegraph reports on a criminal case that is utterly nuts. The head of the Mormon Church movement is being summoned to prove the religion is based on facts that can be proven by science. If he can’t prove it’s based on facts, then it’s a lie. Anyone donating money to his religion is a victim of fraud. He is a criminal. That’s the thinking.
But why pick on the Mormons and their books? Why not pick part the Koran, the Talmud, the Bible or any other religious tract? Is this a test case. Mormons are less likely than others to kick up a stink and bomb your house. Start with them and move on. Maybe one day even Scientologists will be ask to prove it.
The Telegraph sums up the matter:
A British magistrate has issued an extraordinary summons to the worldwide leader of the Mormon church alleging that its teachings about mankind amount to fraud. Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been ordered to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London next month to defend the church’s doctrines including beliefs about Adam and Eve and Native Americans.
Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Groovy Vintage T-Shirt Adverts
MY MOST BELOVED possessions in the 1970s were my T-shirts. They were my identity. My Kiss concert shirt was proof that I’d witnessed the greatest show on earth. My Pete Rose shirt was proof of my allegiance to the Big Red Machine (the Cincinnati Reds). My Mork & Mindy shirt was proof that… well, I guess that I was a complete and total nerd.
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Fracking Hell: The Police V Dr Steven Peers Puts Belligerent Coppers In The Frame (Video)
AH, the police. They like filming us but what when we film them? Fresh from the Mark Duggan stop and search killing (all stop; little search) and the Andrew Mitchell farce, the police are filmed arresting a man for being Non-Compliant Whilst Walking.
This incident was taped at the anti-fracking protest on Barton Moss Road, Irlam, Salford on 14/1/14. The man with the camera is Dr Steven Peers, an Electronic Engineer. On Linked In we learn that his interests are “Electronics, Jiu Jitsu, Aquaponics”.
The officer telling Peers he can smell booze on his breath is Sgt David Kehoe.
There are a few moments in his tape that stand out:
* The man with the camera does say he has had a couple of drinks. But says they were tea.
* The officer moves another man on, implying that “mithering”an officer is an offence.
* The second officer addressing Peers says police have seen the man driving. And that is key. The police can detain you if they saw you driving and then suspect you of having had had a drink before or during that journey. Did the first officer see him driving? He seems to know the man, calling him Steven and asking him if he arrived in his blue Mercedes. But did this officer actually see him driving his car? He has to have done so in order to demand a breath test.
Dr Peers says he had not arrived at ‘Camp Barton’ in his car because he had stayed there the night before. So. Did the officer see him drive up?
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Posted: 6th, February 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (9)
World War One: The Bible That Saved Pte Hacket in 1915
THIS is the bible that saved Pte Hacket in 1915.
This Testament saved the live of Pte W. Hackett 1st Wor Regiment at Armentieres. Aug-20-1915 – Now In 2nd Gen Eastern Hospital Dyke Road Brighton. Bullet passing through outer cover and all the leaves and stopped on the last page.
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Vintage Sexism: BALLS – ‘Candy To Give You Courage’
VINTAGE sexist advert presents Balls.
Who says women don’t have balls?
Women do?
INTRODUCING BALLS – the candy to give you courage
Women do!
In 1978, women has BALLS by the barrel load.
There was a time when it took a heavy dose of spunk for a woman stand up and be counter. Joan of Arc hid her gams in a suit of armour to defend Louis’s honour. Amelia Earhart donned a sexless jumpsuit to fly into the wild blue yonder. Madame Curie wore whites and gazed longingly at test-tubes.
These days, women have finally come into their own – with pants and permanents, muscles and makeup. But there still are a couple of things we can’t lay claim to right?
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Baby Giraffe Could Have Fallen Into Bexley Sinkhole
THANKS to the Bexley News Shopper’s Khaleda Rahman we have a new unit of measurement; baby giraffes.
A MASSIVE crater the size of a baby giraffe in a Bexleyheath road has revealed only an inch or so of tarmac is supporting the street to the horror of residents.
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
12 Stupendous Movie Tagline Fails
THEY had one job. Just write a single sentence about a movie. It’s not quantum physics. After millions of dollars spent and many months of filming and editing, it comes down to the humble tagline writer to simply scrawl a few words together. Alas, this task is often too much to bear, and a movie poster is forever besmirched by a woefully inadequate blurb which undercuts all the hard work. Perhaps it’s not so easy to condense an entire film into a few words; whatever the case, here are a few examples where tag lines fail.
Loose Shoes (1980)
There won’t be a dry seat in the house.
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)
Three Hats For Lisa: Swinging London And Sid James Gives The Greatest Musical Performance In Cinema History
IS this the greatest musical performance in cinema history?
Joe Brown, French-born Sophie Hardy (who played the eponymous Lisa Milan), Sid James, Una Stubbs and Dave Nelson hit the big screen – in colour – with the 1964 release of Three Hats For Lisa.
YouTuber RetrunerMan reveals the plot:
It’s a Swinging London romp as Joe (Johnnie) tties to help Lisa Milan, played by Sophie Hardy, to find three typically British hats for her collection. Probably not too difficult, only she wants to steal them instead of buy them. Oh, and one is a coppers helmet!
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Posted: 5th, February 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Brendan O’Connor Scores The First Interview With Pussy Riot ‘Girls’ And Then Makes A Complete Hash Of It
AFTER the furore caused by their incarceration, Pussy Riot are free to travel and to talk. Irish talkshow host Brendan O’Connor has the scoop. To him the first interview with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.
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Inside Woody Allen: When The Comic Was A Syndicated Cartoon
Up for several Oscars in connection with ÂAnnie Hall, Woody Allen plays clarinet with band at New YorkÂs MichaelÂs pub Monday, April 3, 1978, as the academy awards ceremonies were getting underway in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine)
BETWEEN 1976 and 1984, Woody Allen was the 2D star of Stuart Hample’s comic strip Inside Woody Allen.
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Posted: 4th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
