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.
Photos: Northern Ireland’s panoramic Lough Erne Hotel gets ready for the G8 summit
NOW that Northern Ireland is more peaceful place, it’s encouraging to see it being picked to host the laste G8 bunfight. The great and good (and look out for Mr G9 Bono in attendance) will mass at the Lough Erne Hotel resort in Co Fermanagh:
The Resort is the ultimate expression in old world heritage and new world luxury, set on its very own 600 acre peninsula, between Castle Hume Lough and Lower Lough Erne, just outside Enniskillen, with stunning panoramic views from almost every vantage point.
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Posted: 13th, June 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Murder case jury discharged because rude juror said another juror stank
TO the Old Bailey, where a juror on the third day of a murder trial has penned a note for the judge’s eyes. The juror says she is unable to focus on the case of those accused of killing 20-year-old Jamie Sanderson at the in Oceana nightclub, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey, because another juror smells.
Judge Wendy Joseph considers moving the man into the press box. But away from the other jurors she worries that he may feel ostracised.
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Posted: 13th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Teacher suspended after showing 11 year-olds Saw
REMEMBER the thrill of your teacher telling you that classwork was going to stop in favour of watching a film? Well, one teacher in France decided he’d do that with his class of 11 year-olds and showed them violent horror flick, Saw.
He’s suspended now. Of course he is.
Apparently, Jean-Baptiste Clément told his students: “This will be your first horror film.” It goes without saying that at least one pupil ended up at home looking distinctly unwell.
“He returned from school on Monday evening, visibly in some discomfort, not well,” said the father. “I asked him and he told me his maths teacher had shown them a horror film during class. At the moment the teachers are having staff meetings and parent-teacher meetings, so their classes are cut short and interrupted a bit.”
The father then went to the authorities.
Clement was suspended on Tuesday while the school investigated and will probably face further punishment. “We’re in the process of seeing what sort of legal measures we might be able to take in this case,” said a spokesperson for the school in Hauts-de-Seine.
If you haven’t seen Saw, it involves a masked serial killer who makes people perform gruesome acts on themselves as part of some dreadful sadistic ritual. If you ever went to Cambridge University law school, you’ll know the kind of thing…
Moonwalking pony in paternity battle
REMEMBER that terrible commercial with the moonwalking pony, where a team of marketing ‘creatives’ got together and tried to make something that looked like an internet meme? They melded hipster approved music (Fleetwood Mac) with ironic dancemoves (moonwalking) with a cutesy animal (a tiny horse) and put it all together in a bid to get down with the yoof.
Well, regardless of whether you were the kind of sap who liked it or not, there’s trouble with the star of the show.
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In 1989 The Stone Roses Ian Brown and John Squire were interviewed by Music Box – it was brilliantly awful
IN 1989, Ian Brown and John Squire of The Stone Roses were interviewed for Music Box. It was awkward. The interviewer comes across like a therapist or headteacher talking to naughty teenagers. Brown smiles warmly:
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Posted: 12th, June 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comments (4)
World’s oldest man dies at 116: Creationists suspect foul play
JIROEMON Kimura has died in his native Japan (see photo above). He was 116. His death is not being treated as suspicious. The official verdict is that the world’s oldest living human died of natural causes.
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Male train drivers decide skirts are answer to shorts ban
IT is hard to know what to wear when the weather has been as hot as it has been. Going to work in sweltering heat is no fun, especially if you work on a stuffy train. And so, if you’re a train driver, you might want to work in your shorts because, as everyone knows, the length of your trouser has no influence on the quality of your train driving.
However, drivers on Sweden’s Roslagsbanan have been banned from wearing shorts, even though they were allowed to in previous summers.
The answer? Protest skirts.
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Nottinghamshire couple upset by uneven grass lengths
LOCAL news special: The Nottingham Post reports:
Couple return from holiday to find grass by their street cut to different lengths
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The Choir Boy Grooming Room and gym opens in Scotland
Choir boys of the Queen’s Chapel in procession to the church of Marlborough House in London.
WHY did Stephen Wilson name his garage gymnasium at East Calder, West Lothian, the Choir Boy Grooming Room? Is he hoping to attract the key and as-yet-untapped clerical keep-fit market? Is the venue more Jim Savile than gym fit?
Neighbours are not happy at the naming and the sign he put up. They called the police.
But Mr Wilson says it’s all a joke:
“I came up with the name because choir boys are seen as quite weak, and grooming, although nowadays is seen as sexual and associated with paedophiles, is also a training term meaning preparing your body and mind for something. I just put a different slant on the name.”
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Posted: 12th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Photos: Police smash Soho squat to ruin G8 protests
TODAY, hundreds of Metropolitan Police officers stormed a Soho squat to break up a planned G8 protest. The police smashed their way into a squat in Beak Street, Soho. A police chopper hovered overhead. The 200-odd residents of a group called StopG8 had been planning Carnival against Capitalism, an anti-capitalist protests planned for this afternoon.
On Piccadilly, police encountered more protestors. The police blockaded the doors to Fortnum and Mason. Loads of coppers stood about on Regent Street. The protestors had planned to picket nightclubs like Annabel’s and Mahiki, and 100 addresses of “power and tyranny” where the rich hang out.
Police were only rivalled in number by the ranks photographers and journalists.
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Posted: 11th, June 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Photo: June 17, 1986 – Boy George appears in an episode of the A Team
FLASHBACK to June 5 1986: Boy George is on the A Team.
The original AP caption runs:
Boy George on the Range in The A-Team. British pop star Boy George, left, guest-stars as himself at Saugus, California near Los Angeles, United States, when Faceman (Dirk Benedict, center) inadvertedly books his Culture Club band into a town or rowdy cowboys hankering for some down home music and Hannibal (George Peppard, right) tries to give ’em what they want, in ‘Cowboy George’ which will be broadcast on NBC/TV’s The A-Team on Tuesday, June 17, 1986. Mr. T., second from right.
Posted: 11th, June 2013 | In: Flashback, Music, TV & Radio | Comment
Dunkin Donuts bigot Taylor Chapman becomes a hero of US lawyers (video)
RIGHT now a US donuts Rights lawyer is drawing up litigation to sue the arse off Dunkin’ Donuts for breach of glaze. The woman making this video of herself insulting employees of a Florida Dunkin’ Donuts store might look like a lazy, thick, bigoted, pathetic, delusional, self-important arsehat. But in reality she’s just pushing the envelope of the US legal profession.
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Posted: 11th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Man mistakes dildo for gun
A MAN showing off his collection of toy guns in a video has made the kind of error the internet thrives on. He demonstrated a peculiar toy rubber gun, never once realising that it is in fact, a it is in fact a sex toy.
Henrik Ball was showing off toy weapons from the 1980s when he presented the dildo to the camera, displaying the battery pack and the barrel that swivels in a circular motion.
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Smurfing: how the US war on drugs makes criminals of tourists
THE USA’s attitude to marijuana is mixed. Brannon P. Denning, Samford University – Cumberland School of Law, considers the problem of one American’s rights being another man’s crime in a paper called: One Toke Over the (State) Line: Constitutional Restrictions on State ‘Pot Tourism’ Restrictions:
Among the myriad legal issues confronting states like Colorado that are experimenting with the legalization of marijuana is the need to regulate “pot tourism” by persons from other states where marijuana is not legal. In Colorado, the final recommendations from the Amendment 64 Implementation Task Force included a proposal, “to limit purchases by state residents to an ounce at a time and to a quarter of an ounce for out-of-state visitors.” The lower restrictions for nonresidents are designed to deter pot tourists from “smurfing” — visiting a number of different dispensaries to accumulate larger amounts of marijuana with a view to illegally reselling the pot. Colorado’s legislature adopted the Task Force’s recommendation in House Bill 1317, recently signed into law by Colorado’s governor, which established the regulatory framework for the legal sale of marijuana. Among its provisions is a quarter-ounce purchase limit for nonresidents.
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Video of a rotating supercell forming over Texas
MIKE Olbinski is an Arizona photographer who recorded this rotating supercell forming over the northern Texas plains. He writes:
One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.
He’s right. Amazing.
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Posted: 10th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch as newsreaders HATE each other
AS we know, everyone who appears on our TV screens is a preening, bitchy git. And so, let us gaze adoringly at a news anchor and a weather presenter who clearly hate each other.
Nicole Brewer and meteorologist Carol Erickson have been seen sharing snide exchanges live-on-air at their Philadelphia station.
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Posted: 10th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Jesus and Mohammed weep: The six would be EDL killers are as stupid as they look
EDL leader Tommy Robinson and his deputy Kevin Carroll were in the public gallery to see six Islamists jailed for a bothed attack on their group.
“God save the Queen” shouted Robinson as sentenced was passed.
Someone else shouted “Allahu Akbar”.
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In photos: The Party at Serralves art festival
IN photos: the Imaginary Friends project from British company Whalley Range All Stars and the Dutch company Babok at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal. Party at Serralves is contemporary art festival that hosts over 200 events simultaneously on a non-stop 40-hour period, in the Gardens and in the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.
A performer and a life-size puppet presents the Imaginary Friends project
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In photos: the 2013 Appleby Horse Fair
IN photos: the 2013 Appleby Horse Fair. It’s the annual gathering of gypsies and travellers in Appleby, Cumbria.
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The best local news photo of 2013? There’s a live rat in my toilet what am I gonna do?
THIS is a new contender for the greatest local news photo of all time. The picture illustrates the story of Margaret Woods, 59, whose home in Sutton has an unwelcome visitor. A rat she’s named Roland lives down the toilet. As she says:
“Thursday morning at quarter-to-one I went to the loo and I could hear scratching – I jumped up and thought – this time I’m going to watch. I flushed the toilet straight away and went back into the toilet leaving the light on. It was rearing its ugly head. In March I gave [Thames Water] two weeks to sort it out. We kept hearing scratching and we’d put the lid down. We are petrified to go to the toilet. We flush the toilet and run the tap to be able to go to the toilet.”
Anyhow, great photo. But is it as good as this one?
Wife attempted to murder husband in fight over remote control
TO Aiken, South Carolina, where Cynthia Pruett Siau, 60, is accused of stabbing her husband of two months standing Louis Harrell Siau III, 60, in the head and back with a kitchen knife at about 10pm on Tuesday during an argument over the remote control.
Lt. Turner and Cpl. Comer adds:
“While these three officers were trying to place the suspect under arrest, she defecated on two of the officers, Lt. Turner and Cpl. Comer.”
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In 1979 Philip Glass taught Sesame Street viewers the Geometry of Circles
Our undated picture shows U.S. composer Philip Glass. (AP-Photo/HO)
CONTINUING our occasional look at Sesame Street, arguably the greatest ever children’s TV show, we look back at Philip Glass’s appearance on it.
Geometry of Circles is a series of unnumbered animation pieces created for Sesame Street in 1979. Cathryn Aison commissioned Philip Glass to write music for animation based on her storyboard which had been submitted to and approved by Edith Zornow of CTW.
The shorts consist of the movement of six circles (each with a different color of the rainbow) that are formed by and split up into various geometric patterns. Glass’s music underscores the animation in a style that closely resembles the “Dance” numbers and the North Starvignettes written during the same time period as hisEinstein on the Beach opera.
The film has featured in public screenings and museum exhibits. In October 2012, the third movement from the film was included in the “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Posted: 7th, June 2013 | In: Flashback, Music, TV & Radio | Comment
Man breaks into bar, steal and drinks beer, passes out on floor
STUPID criminals! Hurray! One dumbass broke into a pub and was found passed out on the floor after stealing and drinking too much ale.
Adam Bell helped himself to so much booze that he konked out on the pub floor and was found by the landlord the next morning.
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Who photobombed the Queens BBC news photobomb?
TODAY the Queen officially opened the BBC’s rebuilt Broadcasting House. At one point she photobombed the newsreaders:
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Posted: 7th, June 2013 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comment
Photos and video: The Coronation Review of The Fleet at Spithead, 1953
THE Coronation Review of The Fleet at Spithead. On July 14 1953 the newly crowned Queen was piped onboard:
These photographs include snaps of the Queen carrying out the Coronation Review of the Royal Air Force, at RAF Station, Odiham, Hampshire.
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Posted: 7th, June 2013 | In: Flashback, Royal Family | Comment
