Wednesday 28 May 2008

Looking for truth with a pin

Something only Ivor Cutler would do (2 minutes):

Senior alumna


Glass engraver Alison Geissler, now 101, returns to Edinburgh College of Art for a special exhibition of her work. More here.

Hate your employees?


Now you can keep them jobless for life.

Deep down below


Underground History is an absorbing personal guide to the disused stations on the London Underground - and sundry other nooks and crannies.

Meanwhile…


… the London Tube map inspires a diagram of Oxford's pubs (click to enlarge).

Still in Oxford, prospects have been looking bleak for my beloved old watering hole the Gloucester Arms, though there may yet be hope.

And the pub next door - also a significant place in my life - has, after divers metamorphoses, resumed its original name of the Red Lion. God's in his heaven, etc., etc.

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Lesbians!

Bless 'em all, sings Matt Lucas in the grainiest video ever on Webside Gleanings (1 minute):

A shed is a shed is a shed


A masterclass in how to complete a planning form.

The Vicar's a fascist


But was he?

One little room, an Everywhere


From Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard to Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and ever onward, ever downward; how did anyone at the Colony Room Club stay sober long enough to build it a site?

Here is the Olds


Opening credits from BBC TV News (1982 onwards) and ITN (1970s onwards).

Monday 26 May 2008

Flyboys innit

Armstrong & Miller bring the wartime RAF up to date (six sketches, ten minutes in toto):











The hammer is still




Alasdair Gray and Irvine Welsh commemorate cherished Glasgow author Jeff Torrington.

Four-letter word


Don't call Scientology a cult, say the City of London Police.

Monday 5 May 2008

There goes the neighbourhood, dear boy





The Blairs buy Gielgud's
old home.

Darling, Do You Love Me?

Say yes, it's Germaine Greer in 1968 (3 mins):

William burrows


He spent forty years building a maze of tunnels under his house, only to be evicted and forced to pay for the damage.

From flop to classic


Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party reaches its golden jubilee.

Sinister cherub




If you needed to know about vampires, Montague Summers was your man.

Sunday 4 May 2008

"There are brave lawyers waiting"

Will Blair and Bush be prosecuted? Clare Short - on Al-Jazeera - thinks it could happen:

Click to see video (1 minute)

Dubious


WhiteHouse.org may not in fact be the genuine website of the real, proper White House.

The proto-Prescott






A tribute site for Stanley Unwin, the entertainer who made his living by talking gibberish.

Predictions to remember, #1


Daniel Hannan rhapsodizes:
Under Boris Johnson, our capital city will experience a flowering of artistic and intellectual life. BoJo will be a second Charlemagne, attracting scholars and philosophers from all Europe. You doubt me? Just you wait.

Thursday 1 May 2008

Hillary can still win

…insists this comical video, made before the Pennsylvania primary (90 secs):

Liquidity crisis


A rare opportunity to buy shares in something that has already plunged to oblivion: the liner Laurentic, sunk in 1917.

Shortly-to-be-beside-the-point question


Those guys at Stupid Comics sure know where to find the dross.

What's Chris Morris ON?


One or two readers were puzzled by my earlier allusion to Shatner's Bassoon, so - just to make sure I wasn't misremembering - I checked out Wikipedia's write-up of the Brass Eye "drugs" episode, and found myself laughing hugely; so here's a transcript.