Reviews Category
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A Field Guide to 1970s Men’s Sweaters
WITH so many “important things” going on the world, why spend time looking at forty year old sweaters? Simply put, the brain needs a break from the barrage of jarring images of a world on the brink. A tour of 70s men’s sweaters is exactly what the doctor ordered.
So, sit back, relax and enjoy a cornucopia of magnificent vintage sweaters. And you’re welcome.
Left: I’m not a fashion connoisseur, but I do have a general rule of thumb: Avoid sweater vests with built in belts.
Center: Add a cape and it’s almost superhero-like. Don’t for a minute think that superheroes are somehow above sweaters when they have no problem prancing around in Spandex unitards.
Right: Looks like he just stole Janis Joplin’s belongings. Poor sap. Her sweaty clothes are probably so saturated with drugs, he’ll be dead soon.
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Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Lisa Adams Remembered By Emma And Bill Keller
EMMA Gilbey Keller’s story on Stage 4 cancer sufferer Lisa Adams has been removed from the Guardian’s website. A message said: “This post has been deleted with the agreement of the subject because it is inconsistent with the Guardian editorial code”. But it’s been updated. It is “pending investigation“.
Keller’s husband, former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, wrote a follow up in. He titled it “Heroic Measures”. The effect is like listening to a dinner party chat between two entitled, narcissistic members of the liberal intelligentsia.
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Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
The Beatles Remastered: Artist Rutherford Chang Plays 100 White Albums Played At Once
Beatles George Harrison and John Lennon, background, sit on rocks by a river in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. They are studying transcendental meditation with their yogi. Date: 01/01/1968
RECORD collector, artist and New York-based Beatles fan Rutherford Chang has collected 918 first-pressings of 1968’s The White Album, the band’s least butchered album in which George Harrison came into his own.
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Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
I’m Glad Hayley Cropper Is Dead: She Never Once Posed In A Bikini
HAYLEY Cropper was dying. Hayley Cropper is not a real person. She’s the work of dramatists at Coronation Street. And she’s dead. No. She’s alive. Hang on… No, Dead. But she could return for a retrospective or Christmas special. That’s the thing with people who aren’t real, they can do things the rest of us can’t. Sherlock can be made to live in today’s London, Tony Blair can be Prime Minister and Hayley can commit suicide rather than die slowly from cancer. It’s something to do with six-month contracts and a prior booking.
The Daily Mail’s paparazzo has “The Last Picture”. But no need to rush out and buy the newspaper because it’s not real news and, in any case, Hayley death is a primetime snuff movie.
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Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comments (3)
Signs That Knock-off Major Brands Hang in a Fake Shopping District in China
AT the foot of the Shimao Skyscrapers in China’s Wuxi City, a fake shopping district has popped up featuring storefronts marked with signs that knock-off major international brands like Starbucks (now “SFFCCCKS”), H&M (now “H&N”), and Apple (now “Appla”).
Hug China reports that there are no actual stores behind the signs, that local real estate professionals have created these phony, but familiar, brands to make the property more appealing to potential buyers.
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Posted: 14th, January 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
And Now The Parisian Taxi Drivers Are Beating Up Limousines
Taxi drivers stop the traffic on the highway leading to Paris, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013 at Roissy airport. Taxi drivers across France were putting on the brakes to clog traffic, slow access to airports and force would-be passengers to find alternate transport in a strike over government efforts to deregulate the transportation industry.
IF only the French could fight their wars as bravely as they fight against markets, eh?
The latest is that several Parisian taxi drivers have beaten up someone driving an Uber limo: this is even after the French Government just passed a, quite probably illegal, law to favour the taxis over the Uber drivers:
It seems that protest turned to guerrilla warfare this morning as one Uber driver, carrying Eventbrite CTO Renaud Visage & Kat Borlongan from the airport to Paris, was attacked by multiple assailants, who allegedly, after smashing one window and slashing two tires (as seen in the photo), as well as defacing one side of the car with glue, attempted to enter the vehicle. Borlongan says their Uber driver manoeuvered the two out of the situation before anything could happen, leaving the three stranded on the shoulder of the freeway.
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Pervert Cheese Feta-shist At Large In Philadelphia: Chris Pagano Is Smeared
UPDATE: Mr Pagnano has been arrested.
WHO is the Swiss Cheese Pervert? Philadelphia magazine report on the man who takes his own cheese to the drive thru. The Swiss Cheese Pervert is a man. Philly.com reports on the man abnormally interested in blue-veined cheese and biscuits:
According to the group, the suspect, a heavyset white man estimated to be in his late 40s or early 50s, approaches women while driving a silver or black sedan with his genitals exposed. He then displays a piece of sliced Swiss cheese and offers to pay the women to put the cheese on his penis and perform sexual acts on him using it.
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
British Board of Film Classification Gets All Wussy Over Horror Films
American actors Bruce Davison (left) and Ernest Borgnine in a scene from the horror film “Willard”
WITH cinema a feeble force in today’s world of Grab What You Want, When You Want It media, it seems those in charge are determined to make it all even weaker.
Cinema’s make you leave the house, sell you lousy food, half deafen you with badly mixed bass tracks on films, stink up your nostrils with bleach and, worst of all, force you to watch films with dreadful chattering strangers. All for a million pound per viewing.
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Gimme Shelter From Hell’s Angels: Meredith Hunter, Alan Passaro And The Rolling Stones Horror Show
MEREDITH Hunter. He was the 18-year-old stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Free Concert on December 6 1969.
The show took place just four months after Woodstock. This time peace and love did not win out. But it might have done.
Michael Azerrad sets the pre-show scene:
…a scene at a helipad on a pier on San Francisco Bay. The Grateful Dead are there, cavorting in zonked-out hippie fashion, waiting for an overdue helicopter. Jagger comes sweeping in, surveys the unruly scene. and says with amused disbelief to no one in particular, “What is going on?” He gets the lay of the land from a chuckling and ultra-mellow Jerry Garcia, attired in an outtasite lavender wool poncho, and chats warmly with Ian Stewart. The vibe is sweet and playful.
The chopper won’t arrive until 2:00. “Right, film people, let’s do something!” Jagger proclaims. “We’ve got ten minutes.” He pulls some hippie chick aside and imperiously directs the cameraman (probably Albert Maysles) to go “Tighter tighter tighter tighter tighter tighter” on her face, adorned with a groovy beaded headband and massive square shades. He plants a kiss on her forehead and steps away. Then he orders Charlie, poor, long-suffering Charlie, “Do the same thing as I did. Kiss the young lady, please.”
Watts demurs. “Love is much more of a deeper thing than that,” he replies, with mock hauteur, although he clearly kind of means it too. “It’s not flippant, to be thrown away on celluloid. No.”
Jagger laughs at his disobedient drummer. “OK,” he says sheepishly, straight to camera, “we cut.”And then they headed off to Altamont.
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Frankfurt Transport Asks Men ‘Do You Love Children More Than You Should?’
FRANKFURT transport is reaching out to potential paedophiles: “Do you love children more than you should?”
Spotter: Alice Ross @aliceemross
Spurs Balls: Sherwood Gives Jermain Defoe The Gilded Elbow
TOTTENHAM Hotspur have just sold Jermain Defoe to Toronto FC. This is no way means that Defoe has lost his edge and is on a “negative spiral”. It means he is a fantasyic player. Well, so says Tim Sherwood:
“…I can’t give him enough praise. Even when told he is not playing, he is always ready to come on and show he is good enough to start. He’s been a fantastic professional. I think we’ve got to give a little more credit to the MLS, I don’t think it’s a c**p league. Jermain needs to play regular football and that’s where he is going to get it… I’m sure that won’t hinder him getting in the England team because wherever he plays, Jermain will score. His legacy is all about scoring goals – even as a boy, I can remember him going on loan to Bournemouth and he was knocking them in for fun, and he has never lost that sharpness.”
Defoe will score where he plays. He knocks them in for fun. He is as sharp now as he was in 2000-2001. Which is why he’s, erm, leaving mid-season…
Letter Of The Day: The Financial Times Is Best For Keeping Champagne Cold
LETTER of the day: why did you read the Financial Times:
Spotter: @jimallthetime)
Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Francois Hollande Ruins The Economy And Proves The French Can’t Even Have A Decent Affair
This Sunday, May 6, 2012, file photo shows French president-elect Francois Hollande kissing his companion, Valerie Trierweiler, after greeting crowds gathered to celebrate his election victory in Bastille Square in Paris. Hollande is threatening legal action over magazine report saying he is having a secret affair with a French actress. The magazine Closer published images Friday Jan.10, 2014 showing his bodyguard and a helmeted man it says is Hollande visiting what it says is the apartment of the actress. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)
FRANCOIS Hollande, the French president, says Closer magazine’s exposure of his alleged affair with Julie Gayet, an actress, is outrageous. (Always the actress.) The details are not especially juicy. The highlight is that Hollande arrives for trysts in a borrowed flat on the back of a scooter.
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Peculiar Fun for the Whole Family: 20 Odd and Interesting Board Games
THERE have been thousands of boxed games (board games and their ilk) published over the years. For your convenience, we’ve pulled together twenty of the most peculiar (in no particular order). Don’t say you weren’t warned.
1. GAY MONOPOLY (1983)
Alas, “The Parker Sisters” company was sued by Parker Brothers, and is subsequently with us no more. Thankfully, copies of their games still remain, including this gay themed Monopoly game featuring such real estate options as Castro Street and bath houses. In the place of the familiar boot and iron is a stiletto heel and blow-dryer. Naturally, there are $3.00 bills.
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (3)
Checking The Mail: Sherlock And Bashing Benefits Claimants
A misspelled sign on the house of ‘Fungi’ on James Turner Street in Birmingham, as residents of the street appear in the Channel 4 series Benefits Street.
CHANNEL 4’s documentary Benefits Street has been an absolute boon for The Daily Mail. The sound of the boners popping up must have been audible in the office as the hate-filled shitstirrers of The Daily Mail’s crack Poor People Hating unit grew aroused at the thought of some easy targets. And lo, as it was foretold, the stories of “odious” benefits ‘cheats’ have been spewing out of the Mail’s collective maw faster than crumbs flying out of Paul Dacre’s gob at lunchtime.
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
Madeleine McCann: Met Wants To Arrest 3 Burglars As Soon As The Portuguese Police Can Find Them
MADELEINE McCann: Anorak’s look at the missing child in the news. These are the first front-pages of 2014 to feature the tabloids’ ‘Our Maddie’.
Both the Express and Mirror lea with news of impending arrests.
The Mirror:
Madeleine McCann cops to make first arrests: Three burglars who ‘made many phone calls’ after her disappearance wanted
What will they be arrested for?
The Crown Prosecution Service has sent an International Letter of Request to Portuguese police seeking permission to arrest the trio
For…?
The Met want to quiz three burglars who carried out raids in the Portuguese resort when the three-year-old vanished…They hope to speak to the thieves after mobile phone records showed the men made numerous calls to each other in the hours after she disappeared.
Have these men be id-ed?
A spokesman for Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry said: “The letter is a significant development. It is necessary for British police to request the Portuguese authorities allow them to operate on their turf. It means they have the intention of arresting and interviewing X, Y or Z. We don’t know who they have their sights on but it’s likely it is the burglars. Whether the Portuguese will co-operate remains to be seen. It is a very sensitive issue with differences they have had. Police want to be given a chance to arrest key suspects. It doesn’t prove they have Madeleine but it will rule them in or out of the investigation and that is important. Kate and Gerry don’t want to build up their hopes too high but they realise it could be a significant new lead.”
Or as the Express puts it:
Madeleine: Police identify burglars as prime suspects after phone calls clue
Leading to:
THREE alleged burglars have been identified by Scotland Yard as potential major suspects in the hunt for Madeleine McCann.
There is no news.
Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
Fear of A Fat Planet: Billy Bunter Is Now An Enemy Of The State
FAT is bad. The top-down message is consistent. The Mail leads with news that Obesity is “worse than we first feared”.
Whose afraid of a fat planet? As the BBC reported this year: “Obesity quadruples to nearly one billion in developing world.” In the report “Implications for agriculture and food prices”, Sharada Keats and Steve Wiggins, note:
Over one third of all adults across the world – 1.46 billion people – are obese or overweight.
Overweight is bad? Don’t moderately chubby people look better and outlive the skinny? If we are all getting dangerously fatter, why are we living longer?
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Posted: 13th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
In 1933 Helen Keller Wrote This Open Letter To German Students Planning To Burn ‘Un-German’ Books
Miss Helen Keller, probably the most famous blind woman in the world, photographed in New York City on Oct. 29, 1931 with a bust of herself sculptured by count Hans-Albrecht Hafrach of Munich, Germany. The bust was presented to the American Foundation for the Blind by M.C. Migel, president of the American Foundation for the Blind, to pay a tribute to the work of Miss Keller for the organization.
IN 1933, German students planned to burn “Un-German” books. Helen Keller wrote this open letter to the students:
“History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas…”
As Hitler’s Boxer Said To The Actress: Silent Anny Ondra Was Hitchcock’s Star Of Britain’s First ‘Talkie’
IN1929 almost everyone in the British film industry was convinced that the newfangled talking films would be nothing but a flash in the pan. But as the director Michael Powell once said of that time, “some flash, some pan”. Hitchcock knew before most that the era of silent films was over – “nobody wants ‘em,” he said to the aforementioned Powell, “they’re a dead duck”. So Hitchcock borrowed some German equipment and halfway through directing Blackmail he started to make a sound version of the same film and this, subsequently, became Britain’s first ‘talkie’.
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Posted: 12th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Singers and Swingers In the Kitchen: The 1967 ‘Scene-Makers Cookbook’
ROBERTA Ashley’s 1967 Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen is the “scene-makers cookbook”. The cook book features “The Scene Makers Cookbook Dozens of Nutty Turned On Easy-To-Prepare Recipes From The Grooviest Gourmets Happening”. Ready for “hip, mod, delicious recipes”.
Theses cats were the original celebrity master chefs. With recipes from The Rolling Stones, Leonard Nimoy, The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Omar Sharif (Southern Fried Chicken), Barbra Streisand, Peter Tork, Liza Minelli, Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas & Papas, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Paul Anka, Party Spaghetti and The Buckinghams (if you have to ask, you just weren’t there).
As Roberta noted: “Give it a try, the recipes are mostly easy ones and remember a year ago, Barbra Streisand couldn’t cook at all”.
Not all stars are into Extreme Dieting, like The Who’s Keith Moon was.
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Posted: 12th, January 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Free Tony Miano: If You Love Free Speech Let The Anti-Gay Christian Preacher Talk
OUR increasingly intolerant society, which seeks to be offended by anything and then whine about it until the offender is shamed into conformity, has seen to it that a preacher has been arrested in Dundee.
American street evangelist Tony Miano had been talking about sexual sin. Mr Miano – a former policeman in Los Angeles – was in fully cry, telling passers by about which sins Jesus could save them from – adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality – when a woman took offence. She said that as the mother of a gay man she was offended.
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Posted: 11th, January 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (9)
Barry White’s Animated Thoughts On Making Love And Not Blowing Up A Nation
American singer Barry White at his first London concert at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, last Friday.
Date: 22/02/1974
THIS animated interview with late great 1970s singing love walrus Barry White, throbbing growler of such bedroom-of-kitchen-sofa- you-name it-friendly hits as Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby, You’re the First, the Last, My Everything, It’s Only Love Doing It’s Thing, Love Theme and the puntastic Love Making Music is a soothing appeal to our loving souls. Says Barry: “When a man is making love, the last thing he thinks about is war! The last thing he thinks about is ‘how can I blow up a nation?’.”
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Elizabeth Cotten Plays In The Cotten Picking Fashion
ELIZABETH Cotten wrote Freight Train, the song for which she is best remembered, in her early teens. Libba” Cotten (January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.
A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar (usually in standard tuning), not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed guitar upside down. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”.
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Enid Blyton’s Least Popular Novel
ENID Blyton didn’t just write for children. She wrote this Famous Five pot-boiler about four felons and a devil dog:
