Rob Wickings's Blog, page 27
December 11, 2020
The Cut
It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh, you get the idea. As we tumble headlong into the strangest festive season in decades, allow your pals at the Cut to issue perspective in the form of our usual brand of geek-forward linkery. The perfect antidote for those Zoom-party hangovers.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The vaccine is here! People are getting that sweet sweet anti-Covid juice jacked into their veins even as we write this! Sure, you may be a way down the list but, to the tune of the Christmas Coke ad, corona-free is coming. Did you know, though, that the closest thing Earth has to an actual angel is partly responsible for the vaccine. As if you needed another reason to love Dolly…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/dolly-parton-fund-covid-vaccine
Just the one link from those lazy cusses on the film desk this week, but it’s a good ‘un. Our chums at Film School Rejects look at the remarkable Brokeback Mountain as it reaches it’s fifteenth birthday, and examines how the lenses it was shot with help to accentuate the unreachable distance between Jack and Ennis…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/brokeback-mountain-landscape-as-metaphor/
Over at the music desk, a fine retrospective on unsung punk hero Peter Laughner. A haunted genius with a reputation for hard living, Laughner had much more to offer before his untimely death in 1977. Author and musician Adele Bertei offers a very different view on his life and wild times…
http://www.furious.com/perfect/peterlaughnerbook.html
The music desk also wanted to share the latest from Janelle Shae, whose work with AI is equal parts hilarious and nerve-shredding. She’s trained her pet neural networks on the texts of many well-known Christmas carols. The results are, shall we say, not the sort of thing you want the local choir to be singing this year…
http://aiweirdness.com/post/189845472982/the-ais-carol
Oh, look, we couldn’t resist sharing this. Presented with no further context, please to enjoy a drum ‘n’ bass remix of the Are You Being Served theme. Going up…
It’s rare for us to share an obituary, but this one tells the story of a man we really feel should be better known. Mountaineer, photographer, stunt co-ordinator and inventor of techniques still used for mountain rescue today, let us all be grateful that there was room on the planet for the remarkable Hamish McInnes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/world/europe/hamish-macinnes-dead.html
If you’re any sort of bookworm, there is a very good chance that you have owned a Billy bookcase at some point. Ikea’s best-seller is a simple but functional piece of furniture which is easy to dress up or down as you please. Of course, simplicity is difficult to do well, and the story of the Billy is one of continuing technical innovation on a global scale…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38747485
Oh heck, the Ninth Art Desk is at it again…
It’s been forty years since the first strip arrived of one of our favourite daily comics—Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to see new episodes arriving in 2015, and the Berkster (as no-one calls him) continues to crank out the funnies. The New York Times chats to the guy behind Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin as he reminisces and reveals why he decided to pick up the ol’ ink pen again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html
After reading this interview with the great Eddie Campbell, we are saving our pennies to invest in his new book, The Goat-Getters. An irreverent history of early sports comics might not sound like a fun read, but we’re always fascinated by the hidden history of comics, especially in an era which valued graphic story-telling techniques in a very different way to us. As ever, the Ninth Art has much to teach.
http://www.tcj.com/getting-the-goat-getters-a-conversation-with-eddie-campbell/
The year-end best of lists have started to arrive, and we wanted to share this one from The Nerdist on the best comics of 2020. Some of our favourites are not included, sadly (whither Giant Days or Die?) but there is plenty of good stuff to spend your Xmas book tokens on here.
https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2020/
And finally. We had a chuckle at 6 Feet Cover’s socially distanced album covers. It’s a one-note joke, but done exceedingly well. Expect to see some of these pop up as memes on your WhatsApp circles soon.
https://6feetcovers.wixsite.com/6feetcovers
Yes, ok, our Exit Music this week is yet another downbeat tune from a female singer-songwriter. Yes, we know that’s three in a row. We promise, we’ll change things up next week. But we simply couldn’t resist Phoebe Bridgers lovely version of If We Make It Through December… and we believe you’ll thank us for it. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose, but we refuse to apologise for sharing music we like. This will send a chill down you in the nicest of ways.
See you in seven, snowflakes.
The Cut
It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh, you get the idea. As we tumble headlong into the strangest festive season in decades, allow your pals at the Cut to issue perspective in the form of our usual brand of geek-forward linkery. The perfect antidote for those Zoom-party hangovers.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The vaccine is here! People are getting that sweet sweet anti-Covid juice jacked into their veins even as we write this! Sure, you may be a way down the list but, to the tune of the Christmas Coke ad, corona-free is coming. Did you know, though, that the closest thing Earth has to an actual angel is partly responsible for the vaccine. As if you needed another reason to love Dolly…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/dolly-parton-fund-covid-vaccine
Just the one link from those lazy cusses on the film desk this week, but it’s a good ‘un. Our chums at Film School Rejects look at the remarkable Brokeback Mountain as it reaches it’s fifteenth birthday, and examines how the lenses it was shot with help to accentuate the unreachable distance between Jack and Ennis…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/brokeback-mountain-landscape-as-metaphor/
Over at the music desk, a fine retrospective on unsung punk hero Peter Laughner. A haunted genius with a reputation for hard living, Laughner had much more to offer before his untimely death in 1977. Author and musician Adele Bertei offers a very different view on his life and wild times…
http://www.furious.com/perfect/peterlaughnerbook.html
The music desk also wanted to share the latest from Janelle Shae, whose work with AI is equal parts hilarious and nerve-shredding. She’s trained her pet neural networks on the texts of many well-known Christmas carols. The results are, shall we say, not the sort of thing you want the local choir to be singing this year…
http://aiweirdness.com/post/189845472982/the-ais-carol
Oh, look, we couldn’t resist sharing this. Presented with no further context, please to enjoy a drum ‘n’ bass remix of the Are You Being Served theme. Going up…
It’s rare for us to share an obituary, but this one tells the story of a man we really feel should be better known. Mountaineer, photographer, stunt co-ordinator and inventor of techniques still used for mountain rescue today, let us all be grateful that there was room on the planet for the remarkable Hamish McInnes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/world/europe/hamish-macinnes-dead.html
If you’re any sort of bookworm, there is a very good chance that you have owned a Billy bookcase at some point. Ikea’s best-seller is a simple but functional piece of furniture which is easy to dress up or down as you please. Of course, simplicity is difficult to do well, and the story of the Billy is one of continuing technical innovation on a global scale…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38747485
Oh heck, the Ninth Art Desk is at it again…
It’s been forty years since the first strip arrived of one of our favourite daily comics—Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to see new episodes arriving in 2015, and the Berkster (as no-one calls him) continues to crank out the funnies. The New York Times chats to the guy behind Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin as he reminisces and reveals why he decided to pick up the ol’ ink pen again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html
After reading this interview with the great Eddie Campbell, we are saving our pennies to invest in his new book, The Goat-Getters. An irreverent history of early sports comics might not sound like a fun read, but we’re always fascinated by the hidden history of comics, especially in an era which valued graphic story-telling techniques in a very different way to us. As ever, the Ninth Art has much to teach.
http://www.tcj.com/getting-the-goat-getters-a-conversation-with-eddie-campbell/
The year-end best of lists have started to arrive, and we wanted to share this one from The Nerdist on the best comics of 2020. Some of our favourites are not included, sadly (whither Giant Days or Die?) but there is plenty of good stuff to spend your Xmas book tokens on here.
https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2020/
And finally. We had a chuckle at 6 Feet Cover’s socially distanced album covers. It’s a one-note joke, but done exceedingly well. Expect to see some of these pop up as memes on your WhatsApp circles soon.
https://6feetcovers.wixsite.com/6feetcovers
Yes, ok, our Exit Music this week is yet another downbeat tune from a female singer-songwriter. Yes, we know that’s three in a row. We promise, we’ll change things up next week. But we simply couldn’t resist Phoebe Bridgers lovely version of If We Make It Through December… and we believe you’ll thank us for it. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose, but we refuse to apologise for sharing music we like. This will send a chill down you in the nicest of ways.
See you in seven, snowflakes.
The Cut
It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh, you get the idea. As we tumble headlong into the strangest festive season in decades, allow your pals at the Cut to issue perspective in the form of our usual brand of geek-forward linkery. The perfect antidote for those Zoom-party hangovers.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The vaccine is here! People are getting that sweet sweet anti-Covid juice jacked into their veins even as we write this! Sure, you may be a way down the list but, to the tune of the Christmas Coke ad, corona-free is coming. Did you know, though, that the closest thing Earth has to an actual angel is partly responsible for the vaccine. As if you needed another reason to love Dolly…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/dolly-parton-fund-covid-vaccine
Just the one link from those lazy cusses on the film desk this week, but it’s a good ‘un. Our chums at Film School Rejects look at the remarkable Brokeback Mountain as it reaches it’s fifteenth birthday, and examines how the lenses it was shot with help to accentuate the unreachable distance between Jack and Ennis…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/brokeback-mountain-landscape-as-metaphor/
Over at the music desk, a fine retrospective on unsung punk hero Peter Laughner. A haunted genius with a reputation for hard living, Laughner had much more to offer before his untimely death in 1977. Author and musician Adele Bertei offers a very different view on his life and wild times…
http://www.furious.com/perfect/peterlaughnerbook.html
The music desk also wanted to share the latest from Janelle Shae, whose work with AI is equal parts hilarious and nerve-shredding. She’s trained her pet neural networks on the texts of many well-known Christmas carols. The results are, shall we say, not the sort of thing you want the local choir to be singing this year…
http://aiweirdness.com/post/189845472982/the-ais-carol
Oh, look, we couldn’t resist sharing this. Presented with no further context, please to enjoy a drum ‘n’ bass remix of the Are You Being Served theme. Going up…
It’s rare for us to share an obituary, but this one tells the story of a man we really feel should be better known. Mountaineer, photographer, stunt co-ordinator and inventor of techniques still used for mountain rescue today, let us all be grateful that there was room on the planet for the remarkable Hamish McInnes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/world/europe/hamish-macinnes-dead.html
If you’re any sort of bookworm, there is a very good chance that you have owned a Billy bookcase at some point. Ikea’s best-seller is a simple but functional piece of furniture which is easy to dress up or down as you please. Of course, simplicity is difficult to do well, and the story of the Billy is one of continuing technical innovation on a global scale…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38747485
Oh heck, the Ninth Art Desk is at it again…
It’s been forty years since the first strip arrived of one of our favourite daily comics—Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to see new episodes arriving in 2015, and the Berkster (as no-one calls him) continues to crank out the funnies. The New York Times chats to the guy behind Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin as he reminisces and reveals why he decided to pick up the ol’ ink pen again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html
After reading this interview with the great Eddie Campbell, we are saving our pennies to invest in his new book, The Goat-Getters. An irreverent history of early sports comics might not sound like a fun read, but we’re always fascinated by the hidden history of comics, especially in an era which valued graphic story-telling techniques in a very different way to us. As ever, the Ninth Art has much to teach.
http://www.tcj.com/getting-the-goat-getters-a-conversation-with-eddie-campbell/
The year-end best of lists have started to arrive, and we wanted to share this one from The Nerdist on the best comics of 2020. Some of our favourites are not included, sadly (whither Giant Days or Die?) but there is plenty of good stuff to spend your Xmas book tokens on here.
https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2020/
And finally. We had a chuckle at 6 Feet Cover’s socially distanced album covers. It’s a one-note joke, but done exceedingly well. Expect to see some of these pop up as memes on your WhatsApp circles soon.
https://6feetcovers.wixsite.com/6feetcovers
Yes, ok, our Exit Music this week is yet another downbeat tune from a female singer-songwriter. Yes, we know that’s three in a row. We promise, we’ll change things up next week. But we simply couldn’t resist Phoebe Bridgers lovely version of If We Make It Through December… and we believe you’ll thank us for it. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose, but we refuse to apologise for sharing music we like. This will send a chill down you in the nicest of ways.
See you in seven, snowflakes.
The Cut
It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh, you get the idea. As we tumble headlong into the strangest festive season in decades, allow your pals at the Cut to issue perspective in the form of our usual brand of geek-forward linkery. The perfect antidote for those Zoom-party hangovers.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The vaccine is here! People are getting that sweet sweet anti-Covid juice jacked into their veins even as we write this! Sure, you may be a way down the list but, to the tune of the Christmas Coke ad, corona-free is coming. Did you know, though, that the closest thing Earth has to an actual angel is partly responsible for the vaccine. As if you needed another reason to love Dolly…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/dolly-parton-fund-covid-vaccine
Just the one link from those lazy cusses on the film desk this week, but it’s a good ‘un. Our chums at Film School Rejects look at the remarkable Brokeback Mountain as it reaches it’s fifteenth birthday, and examines how the lenses it was shot with help to accentuate the unreachable distance between Jack and Ennis…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/brokeback-mountain-landscape-as-metaphor/
Over at the music desk, a fine retrospective on unsung punk hero Peter Laughner. A haunted genius with a reputation for hard living, Laughner had much more to offer before his untimely death in 1977. Author and musician Adele Bertei offers a very different view on his life and wild times…
http://www.furious.com/perfect/peterlaughnerbook.html
The music desk also wanted to share the latest from Janelle Shae, whose work with AI is equal parts hilarious and nerve-shredding. She’s trained her pet neural networks on the texts of many well-known Christmas carols. The results are, shall we say, not the sort of thing you want the local choir to be singing this year…
http://aiweirdness.com/post/189845472982/the-ais-carol
Oh, look, we couldn’t resist sharing this. Presented with no further context, please to enjoy a drum ‘n’ bass remix of the Are You Being Served theme. Going up…
It’s rare for us to share an obituary, but this one tells the story of a man we really feel should be better known. Mountaineer, photographer, stunt co-ordinator and inventor of techniques still used for mountain rescue today, let us all be grateful that there was room on the planet for the remarkable Hamish McInnes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/world/europe/hamish-macinnes-dead.html
If you’re any sort of bookworm, there is a very good chance that you have owned a Billy bookcase at some point. Ikea’s best-seller is a simple but functional piece of furniture which is easy to dress up or down as you please. Of course, simplicity is difficult to do well, and the story of the Billy is one of continuing technical innovation on a global scale…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38747485
Oh heck, the Ninth Art Desk is at it again…
It’s been forty years since the first strip arrived of one of our favourite daily comics—Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to see new episodes arriving in 2015, and the Berkster (as no-one calls him) continues to crank out the funnies. The New York Times chats to the guy behind Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin as he reminisces and reveals why he decided to pick up the ol’ ink pen again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html
After reading this interview with the great Eddie Campbell, we are saving our pennies to invest in his new book, The Goat-Getters. An irreverent history of early sports comics might not sound like a fun read, but we’re always fascinated by the hidden history of comics, especially in an era which valued graphic story-telling techniques in a very different way to us. As ever, the Ninth Art has much to teach.
http://www.tcj.com/getting-the-goat-getters-a-conversation-with-eddie-campbell/
The year-end best of lists have started to arrive, and we wanted to share this one from The Nerdist on the best comics of 2020. Some of our favourites are not included, sadly (whither Giant Days or Die?) but there is plenty of good stuff to spend your Xmas book tokens on here.
https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2020/
And finally. We had a chuckle at 6 Feet Cover’s socially distanced album covers. It’s a one-note joke, but done exceedingly well. Expect to see some of these pop up as memes on your WhatsApp circles soon.
https://6feetcovers.wixsite.com/6feetcovers
Yes, ok, our Exit Music this week is yet another downbeat tune from a female singer-songwriter. Yes, we know that’s three in a row. We promise, we’ll change things up next week. But we simply couldn’t resist Phoebe Bridgers lovely version of If We Make It Through December… and we believe you’ll thank us for it. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose, but we refuse to apologise for sharing music we like. This will send a chill down you in the nicest of ways.
See you in seven, snowflakes.
The Cut
It’s beginning to look a lot like… oh, you get the idea. As we tumble headlong into the strangest festive season in decades, allow your pals at the Cut to issue perspective in the form of our usual brand of geek-forward linkery. The perfect antidote for those Zoom-party hangovers.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The vaccine is here! People are getting that sweet sweet anti-Covid juice jacked into their veins even as we write this! Sure, you may be a way down the list but, to the tune of the Christmas Coke ad, corona-free is coming. Did you know, though, that the closest thing Earth has to an actual angel is partly responsible for the vaccine. As if you needed another reason to love Dolly…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/dolly-parton-fund-covid-vaccine
Just the one link from those lazy cusses on the film desk this week, but it’s a good ‘un. Our chums at Film School Rejects look at the remarkable Brokeback Mountain as it reaches it’s fifteenth birthday, and examines how the lenses it was shot with help to accentuate the unreachable distance between Jack and Ennis…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/brokeback-mountain-landscape-as-metaphor/
Over at the music desk, a fine retrospective on unsung punk hero Peter Laughner. A haunted genius with a reputation for hard living, Laughner had much more to offer before his untimely death in 1977. Author and musician Adele Bertei offers a very different view on his life and wild times…
http://www.furious.com/perfect/peterlaughnerbook.html
The music desk also wanted to share the latest from Janelle Shae, whose work with AI is equal parts hilarious and nerve-shredding. She’s trained her pet neural networks on the texts of many well-known Christmas carols. The results are, shall we say, not the sort of thing you want the local choir to be singing this year…
http://aiweirdness.com/post/189845472982/the-ais-carol
Oh, look, we couldn’t resist sharing this. Presented with no further context, please to enjoy a drum ‘n’ bass remix of the Are You Being Served theme. Going up…
It’s rare for us to share an obituary, but this one tells the story of a man we really feel should be better known. Mountaineer, photographer, stunt co-ordinator and inventor of techniques still used for mountain rescue today, let us all be grateful that there was room on the planet for the remarkable Hamish McInnes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/world/europe/hamish-macinnes-dead.html
If you’re any sort of bookworm, there is a very good chance that you have owned a Billy bookcase at some point. Ikea’s best-seller is a simple but functional piece of furniture which is easy to dress up or down as you please. Of course, simplicity is difficult to do well, and the story of the Billy is one of continuing technical innovation on a global scale…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38747485
Oh heck, the Ninth Art Desk is at it again…
It’s been forty years since the first strip arrived of one of our favourite daily comics—Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. After a long hiatus, we were delighted to see new episodes arriving in 2015, and the Berkster (as no-one calls him) continues to crank out the funnies. The New York Times chats to the guy behind Bill the Cat and Opus the Penguin as he reminisces and reveals why he decided to pick up the ol’ ink pen again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html
After reading this interview with the great Eddie Campbell, we are saving our pennies to invest in his new book, The Goat-Getters. An irreverent history of early sports comics might not sound like a fun read, but we’re always fascinated by the hidden history of comics, especially in an era which valued graphic story-telling techniques in a very different way to us. As ever, the Ninth Art has much to teach.
http://www.tcj.com/getting-the-goat-getters-a-conversation-with-eddie-campbell/
The year-end best of lists have started to arrive, and we wanted to share this one from The Nerdist on the best comics of 2020. Some of our favourites are not included, sadly (whither Giant Days or Die?) but there is plenty of good stuff to spend your Xmas book tokens on here.
https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2020/
And finally. We had a chuckle at 6 Feet Cover’s socially distanced album covers. It’s a one-note joke, but done exceedingly well. Expect to see some of these pop up as memes on your WhatsApp circles soon.
https://6feetcovers.wixsite.com/6feetcovers
Yes, ok, our Exit Music this week is yet another downbeat tune from a female singer-songwriter. Yes, we know that’s three in a row. We promise, we’ll change things up next week. But we simply couldn’t resist Phoebe Bridgers lovely version of If We Make It Through December… and we believe you’ll thank us for it. Sure, it’s a bit on the nose, but we refuse to apologise for sharing music we like. This will send a chill down you in the nicest of ways.
See you in seven, snowflakes.
December 4, 2020
The Cut ⛸️ Issue 30
And we hit December. Or December hits us. The Year That Never Ends seems finally, inexorably, to be coming to a close and a vaccine is flying in to bring back a hot dose of normality. Pints and scotch eggs all round, we think.
In this week’s issue, we break down the creation of a couple of iconic movie scenes, take a turn around food and music in two different Georgias, listen to the sound of cities during a pandemic, and enjoy a potter round the garden in comics form.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
The Film Desk observes:
This desk is of the opinion the last good Bond movie was Casino Royale. It featured a Bond actor who had something to prove and wasn’t yet bored of the role, one of the best foils for his toxic masculinity in the character of Vesper Lund and, at the film’s core, arguably the most exciting poker sequence ever filmed. Polygon breaks down how it was conceived, built and brought together.
https://www.polygon.com/21623336/james-bond-casino-royale-poker-scene-breakdown
A very different kind of tension was captured for William Friedkin’s Sorcerer. The bridge sequence is the sweaty, febrile heart of a sweaty, febrile film. As four drivers try to get their trucks filled with nitroglycerine across a very rickety bridge, the nerves build in a powerful but utterly believable way. Our pals at Film School Rejects take us through the hurdles Friedkin and his crew had to jump to get the scene in the can. Let’s just say there wasn’t much CGI involved…
https://filmschoolrejects.com/how-they-shot-the-bridge-scene-in-sorcerer/
In case you’ve never seen it, take ten minutes. Prepare to have your toes in knots by the end.
Scraps From The Food Desk:
Down the way From Cut Command lies one of Reading’s lockdown success stories. GeoCafe pivoted from a Georgian cuisine-led joint to a brilliant grocery store which is selling all sorts of wonderful grub, including their own khachapuri, a stuffed flatbread which will have you rethinking the humble sandwich. The generosity of Georgian food culture is summed up in the feasting tradition of supra and the spirit of shemomechama…
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20201124-shemomechama-the-word-for-when-you-cant-stop-eating
Who doesn’t love a good french fry? Get the right ratio of crisp to fat to fluff to salt and you have a recipe for a little bit of fast food heaven. For a golden time in the early days of the franchise, the best place to get your fix was McDonalds. Hard to believe now given the limp greasy noodles they pass off as fries these days. Luke Fater for Atlas Obscura goes back to basics and tries to recreate the original and greatest…
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/original-mcdonalds-french-fry-recipe
Ditties From The Music Desk:
You may have Sugababes down as just another generic manufactured early-oughts girl band, in which case you are wrong, you hear us, wrong! The first iteration of the threesome matched brilliant songcraft and cool delivery to a fearsomely DGAF presence which has never properly been matched since. It’s weird and horrifying that 20 years has passed since the release of the debut album One Touch. Still, for this desk, a high water point in twenty-first century pop…
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/one-touch-of-love-20-years-of-sugababes-debut-album
Athens, Georgia in the late seventies and early eighties would prove to be a hotbed of musical creativity and invention, with two iconic bands bursting out of the confines of the college town and onto the worldwide stage. R.E.M. and the B.52s may have been the names of note, but another lesser-known group had as much influence. As a beautifully packaged retrospective of their collected works hits the shelves, allow us to introduce you to the best band you don’t know–Pylon.
http://www.estheticlens.com/2020/11/05/artist-talks-tara-key-antietam-pylon/
What are the sounds of the city? Traffic and people and the general mad hubbub of human occupation. What happens when that occupation no longer takes place? Artist Stuart Fowkes made field recordings of cities around the globe during lockdown, to find anything but the sound of silence…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-22/the-changing-sounds-of-cities-during-covid-mapped
The Book Desk notes…
We never tire, however much you beg, of reminding our Readership of how comics are a fantastic educational medium. Down The Tubes takes advantage of the launch of a graphic guide to growing your own food to run down the history of gardening comics, which have been going in the UK at least since the nineteen-forties. Who remembers Mr. Digwell?
https://downthetubes.net/?p=123410
We offer the next link with a big fat spoiler warning and exhortation, if you haven’t done so already, to read Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb books. Amped-up gothy sci-fi lesbian horror with sword-fighting and bone magic. What’s not to like? However, there have been sniffy reactions to the relationship between the two main characters, witch-queen Harrow and her cavalier Gideon. Put shortly, some commentators look on it as a slave narrative. Tor looks more deeply into the controversy…
https://www.tor.com/2020/12/01/gideon-harrow-and-the-value-of-problematic-relationships-in-fiction/
And finally, as it’s coming up Christmas, we thought we’d give some air to last year’s WROB festive special. All your favourites and more, along with guest appearances from a screed of X&HTeam-mates. Go on, you know you want to…
https://wrobradio.wordpress.com/2019/12/16/wrobxmas/
Last week was Thanksgiving, of course. While the closest the holiday gets to recognition in these parts is the merry joy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we took a moment to think about what we can be thankful for in the year of The Situation. We’ve been a lot luckier than many people in 2020, to the point where we could expand our random internet wandering into this continuing tirade of nonsense.
With that in mind, we dedicate this week’s Exit Music to you, Readership. If you read, have shared or recommended anything we’ve done over the past thirty weeks then seriously, thank you. It means more to have you around than you think.
See you in seven, sweethearts.
November 27, 2020
The Cut 🔪 Issue 29
So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare ‘sod it,’ invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. It’s been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign we’re ready for it all to be over. This week’s issue doesn’t have a whiff of holly but trust us, it’s coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Not long ago, writer Bisha K. Ali was sofa-surfing and wondering where the next pay cheque was coming from. Now, she’s the show runner on a hotly-anticipated Marvel series and riding high as she brings the first Muslim superhero to a wider audience. This is a great, inspirational story, and we’re really looking forward to her take on Ms. Marvel.
The Magnificent Ambersons should have been the film which truly cemented Orson Welles’ reputation as a master of cinema. Instead, studio meddling tore it to pieces and led him into a downward spiral from which he never really recovered. Cinephilia Beyond digs into the story behind the making of the movie, and how it’s still well worth a look in whatever version you find…
It’s a rare person that won’t cheerfully get their fingers caked in salty yellow dust at the offer of a bag of Wotsits or Cheez-its. The airy texture, the way they fizz to mush in the mouth, oh boy, there are few finer culinary experiences. The creation of the cheese curl has a fascinating history. It’s one of those delightfully fortuitous accidents like penicillin or gravity. Only cheesier.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-cheese-curl-junk-foods-happiest-accident
When considering artificial intelligence, most writers tend to jam the gas hard towards lurid horror stories—the monster in the machine, considering its creators as obsolete and treating us as surplus to requirements. The fact is we don’t know how AI will look at the world. We simply don’t have the terms or reference points to form a relationship with a being which is building itself from the fragments we choose to feed it…
Some more on the reappearance in the SF news cycle of the great lost anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions. Author Jason Sanford looks into the way editor Harlan Ellison kept the book on a low simmer for decades and could never quite let it go.
http://www.patreon.com/posts/44148051
If you’re interested, Christoper Priest’s essay on the subject is also well worth a look. He makes a beautifully analytic case as to why the book could never be published in the form Ellison imagined…
It’s tough to know what to make of this rediscovered portrait of Jerry Lewis by O’Connell Driscoll, first published in 1973 while the comedian was working on his unseen magnum opus, The Clown That Cried. It almost feels like fiction, a horrorshow of unbound but desperately fragile ego and monstrous ambition wrapped in a twitchy, paranoid bundle of nerves. But Driscoll’s strength was in the way he slid into the background and let his subject do all the talking. From a Stacks Reader overview of his work—
Driscoll’s stories were all about access. He was a purist in the mold of Lillian Ross. He didn’t offer analysis or exposition or as much as a dollop of biography. He didn’t ask questions. He just wrote what he saw and heard.
This is a long read but totally, totally worth it.
http://www.thestacksreader.com/jerry-lewis-birthday-boy-the-day-the-clown-cried/
A recent interview with Michael J. Fox noted his agreement with the theory that Trump is a loosely fictionalised version of Biff Tannin, the boorish villain of the Back to The Future films. We offer further thoughts on the subject in another excellent piece from writer and pixie Laurie Penny. She looks at temporal paradox, dystopian fiction and darkest timelines in a winning piece of what we like to call speculative journalism.
http://www.wired.com/story/timelines-of-our-lives/
Fan theories on TV and film franchises often lurch wildly into implausibility or collapse at the first hint of examination. They’re always fun, though. Our new favourite comes courtesy of Mel Magazine, who pitch us on the notion of the Star Trek universe being more than a little influenced by three Jewish B-Boys from Brooklyn…
http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/star-trek-beastie-boys-explanation
There are a few songs finding constant rotation on the office stereogram in 2020–tunes which seem to sum up The Situation while not explicitly being about it. We’re thinking of Frank Turner’s Recovery, This Year by The Mountain Goats—and this week’s Exit Music, Hands Of Time. Written and performed by the brilliant Margo Price, it matches a lush Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell arrangement to simple, direct song craft. The result is, to our minds, utterly beguiling. ‘Turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time’? Hell, yeah.
See you in seven, buckaroos.
The Cut
So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare ‘sod it,’ invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. It’s been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign we’re ready for it all to be over. This week’s issue doesn’t have a whiff of holly but trust us, it’s coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Not long ago, writer Bisha K. Ali was sofa-surfing and wondering where the next pay cheque was coming from. Now, she’s the show runner on a hotly-anticipated Marvel series and riding high as she brings the first Muslim superhero to a wider audience. This is a great, inspirational story, and we’re really looking forward to her take on Ms. Marvel.
The Magnificent Ambersons should have been the film which truly cemented Orson Welles’ reputation as a master of cinema. Instead, studio meddling tore it to pieces and led him into a downward spiral from which he never really recovered. Cinephilia Beyond digs into the story behind the making of the movie, and how it’s still well worth a look in whatever version you find…
It’s a rare person that won’t cheerfully get their fingers caked in salty yellow dust at the offer of a bag of Wotsits or Cheez-its. The airy texture, the way they fizz to mush in the mouth, oh boy, there are few finer culinary experiences. The creation of the cheese curl has a fascinating history. It’s one of those delightfully fortuitous accidents like penicillin or gravity. Only cheesier.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-cheese-curl-junk-foods-happiest-accident
When considering artificial intelligence, most writers tend to jam the gas hard towards lurid horror stories—the monster in the machine, considering its creators as obsolete and treating us as surplus to requirements. The fact is we don’t know how AI will look at the world. We simply don’t have the terms or reference points to form a relationship with a being which is building itself from the fragments we choose to feed it…
Some more on the reappearance in the SF news cycle of the great lost anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions. Author Jason Sanford looks into the way editor Harlan Ellison kept the book on a low simmer for decades and could never quite let it go.
http://www.patreon.com/posts/44148051
If you’re interested, Christoper Priest’s essay on the subject is also well worth a look. He makes a beautifully analytic case as to why the book could never be published in the form Ellison imagined…
It’s tough to know what to make of this rediscovered portrait of Jerry Lewis by O’Connell Driscoll, first published in 1973 while the comedian was working on his unseen magnum opus, The Clown That Cried. It almost feels like fiction, a horrorshow of unbound but desperately fragile ego and monstrous ambition wrapped in a twitchy, paranoid bundle of nerves. But Driscoll’s strength was in the way he slid into the background and let his subject do all the talking. From a Stacks Reader overview of his work—
Driscoll’s stories were all about access. He was a purist in the mold of Lillian Ross. He didn’t offer analysis or exposition or as much as a dollop of biography. He didn’t ask questions. He just wrote what he saw and heard.
This is a long read but totally, totally worth it.
http://www.thestacksreader.com/jerry-lewis-birthday-boy-the-day-the-clown-cried/
A recent interview with Michael J. Fox noted his agreement with the theory that Trump is a loosely fictionalised version of Biff Tannin, the boorish villain of the Back to The Future films. We offer further thoughts on the subject in another excellent piece from writer and pixie Laurie Penny. She looks at temporal paradox, dystopian fiction and darkest timelines in a winning piece of what we like to call speculative journalism.
http://www.wired.com/story/timelines-of-our-lives/
Fan theories on TV and film franchises often lurch wildly into implausibility or collapse at the first hint of examination. They’re always fun, though. Our new favourite comes courtesy of Mel Magazine, who pitch us on the notion of the Star Trek universe being more than a little influenced by three Jewish B-Boys from Brooklyn…
http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/star-trek-beastie-boys-explanation
There are a few songs finding constant rotation on the office stereogram in 2020–tunes which seem to sum up The Situation while not explicitly being about it. We’re thinking of Frank Turner’s Recovery, This Year by The Mountain Goats—and this week’s Exit Music, Hands Of Time. Written and performed by the brilliant Margo Price, it matches a lush Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell arrangement to simple, direct song craft. The result is, to our minds, utterly beguiling. ‘Turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time’? Hell, yeah.
See you in seven, buckaroos.
The Cut
So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare ‘sod it,’ invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. It’s been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign we’re ready for it all to be over. This week’s issue doesn’t have a whiff of holly but trust us, it’s coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Not long ago, writer Bisha K. Ali was sofa-surfing and wondering where the next pay cheque was coming from. Now, she’s the show runner on a hotly-anticipated Marvel series and riding high as she brings the first Muslim superhero to a wider audience. This is a great, inspirational story, and we’re really looking forward to her take on Ms. Marvel.
The Magnificent Ambersons should have been the film which truly cemented Orson Welles’ reputation as a master of cinema. Instead, studio meddling tore it to pieces and led him into a downward spiral from which he never really recovered. Cinephilia Beyond digs into the story behind the making of the movie, and how it’s still well worth a look in whatever version you find…
It’s a rare person that won’t cheerfully get their fingers caked in salty yellow dust at the offer of a bag of Wotsits or Cheez-its. The airy texture, the way they fizz to mush in the mouth, oh boy, there are few finer culinary experiences. The creation of the cheese curl has a fascinating history. It’s one of those delightfully fortuitous accidents like penicillin or gravity. Only cheesier.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-cheese-curl-junk-foods-happiest-accident
When considering artificial intelligence, most writers tend to jam the gas hard towards lurid horror stories—the monster in the machine, considering its creators as obsolete and treating us as surplus to requirements. The fact is we don’t know how AI will look at the world. We simply don’t have the terms or reference points to form a relationship with a being which is building itself from the fragments we choose to feed it…
Some more on the reappearance in the SF news cycle of the great lost anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions. Author Jason Sanford looks into the way editor Harlan Ellison kept the book on a low simmer for decades and could never quite let it go.
http://www.patreon.com/posts/44148051
If you’re interested, Christoper Priest’s essay on the subject is also well worth a look. He makes a beautifully analytic case as to why the book could never be published in the form Ellison imagined…
It’s tough to know what to make of this rediscovered portrait of Jerry Lewis by O’Connell Driscoll, first published in 1973 while the comedian was working on his unseen magnum opus, The Clown That Cried. It almost feels like fiction, a horrorshow of unbound but desperately fragile ego and monstrous ambition wrapped in a twitchy, paranoid bundle of nerves. But Driscoll’s strength was in the way he slid into the background and let his subject do all the talking. From a Stacks Reader overview of his work—
Driscoll’s stories were all about access. He was a purist in the mold of Lillian Ross. He didn’t offer analysis or exposition or as much as a dollop of biography. He didn’t ask questions. He just wrote what he saw and heard.
This is a long read but totally, totally worth it.
http://www.thestacksreader.com/jerry-lewis-birthday-boy-the-day-the-clown-cried/
A recent interview with Michael J. Fox noted his agreement with the theory that Trump is a loosely fictionalised version of Biff Tannin, the boorish villain of the Back to The Future films. We offer further thoughts on the subject in another excellent piece from writer and pixie Laurie Penny. She looks at temporal paradox, dystopian fiction and darkest timelines in a winning piece of what we like to call speculative journalism.
http://www.wired.com/story/timelines-of-our-lives/
Fan theories on TV and film franchises often lurch wildly into implausibility or collapse at the first hint of examination. They’re always fun, though. Our new favourite comes courtesy of Mel Magazine, who pitch us on the notion of the Star Trek universe being more than a little influenced by three Jewish B-Boys from Brooklyn…
http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/star-trek-beastie-boys-explanation
There are a few songs finding constant rotation on the office stereogram in 2020–tunes which seem to sum up The Situation while not explicitly being about it. We’re thinking of Frank Turner’s Recovery, This Year by The Mountain Goats—and this week’s Exit Music, Hands Of Time. Written and performed by the brilliant Margo Price, it matches a lush Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell arrangement to simple, direct song craft. The result is, to our minds, utterly beguiling. ‘Turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time’? Hell, yeah.
See you in seven, buckaroos.
The Cut
So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare ‘sod it,’ invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. It’s been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign we’re ready for it all to be over. This week’s issue doesn’t have a whiff of holly but trust us, it’s coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Not long ago, writer Bisha K. Ali was sofa-surfing and wondering where the next pay cheque was coming from. Now, she’s the show runner on a hotly-anticipated Marvel series and riding high as she brings the first Muslim superhero to a wider audience. This is a great, inspirational story, and we’re really looking forward to her take on Ms. Marvel.
The Magnificent Ambersons should have been the film which truly cemented Orson Welles’ reputation as a master of cinema. Instead, studio meddling tore it to pieces and led him into a downward spiral from which he never really recovered. Cinephilia Beyond digs into the story behind the making of the movie, and how it’s still well worth a look in whatever version you find…
It’s a rare person that won’t cheerfully get their fingers caked in salty yellow dust at the offer of a bag of Wotsits or Cheez-its. The airy texture, the way they fizz to mush in the mouth, oh boy, there are few finer culinary experiences. The creation of the cheese curl has a fascinating history. It’s one of those delightfully fortuitous accidents like penicillin or gravity. Only cheesier.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-cheese-curl-junk-foods-happiest-accident
When considering artificial intelligence, most writers tend to jam the gas hard towards lurid horror stories—the monster in the machine, considering its creators as obsolete and treating us as surplus to requirements. The fact is we don’t know how AI will look at the world. We simply don’t have the terms or reference points to form a relationship with a being which is building itself from the fragments we choose to feed it…
Some more on the reappearance in the SF news cycle of the great lost anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions. Author Jason Sanford looks into the way editor Harlan Ellison kept the book on a low simmer for decades and could never quite let it go.
http://www.patreon.com/posts/44148051
If you’re interested, Christoper Priest’s essay on the subject is also well worth a look. He makes a beautifully analytic case as to why the book could never be published in the form Ellison imagined…
It’s tough to know what to make of this rediscovered portrait of Jerry Lewis by O’Connell Driscoll, first published in 1973 while the comedian was working on his unseen magnum opus, The Clown That Cried. It almost feels like fiction, a horrorshow of unbound but desperately fragile ego and monstrous ambition wrapped in a twitchy, paranoid bundle of nerves. But Driscoll’s strength was in the way he slid into the background and let his subject do all the talking. From a Stacks Reader overview of his work—
Driscoll’s stories were all about access. He was a purist in the mold of Lillian Ross. He didn’t offer analysis or exposition or as much as a dollop of biography. He didn’t ask questions. He just wrote what he saw and heard.
This is a long read but totally, totally worth it.
http://www.thestacksreader.com/jerry-lewis-birthday-boy-the-day-the-clown-cried/
A recent interview with Michael J. Fox noted his agreement with the theory that Trump is a loosely fictionalised version of Biff Tannin, the boorish villain of the Back to The Future films. We offer further thoughts on the subject in another excellent piece from writer and pixie Laurie Penny. She looks at temporal paradox, dystopian fiction and darkest timelines in a winning piece of what we like to call speculative journalism.
http://www.wired.com/story/timelines-of-our-lives/
Fan theories on TV and film franchises often lurch wildly into implausibility or collapse at the first hint of examination. They’re always fun, though. Our new favourite comes courtesy of Mel Magazine, who pitch us on the notion of the Star Trek universe being more than a little influenced by three Jewish B-Boys from Brooklyn…
http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/star-trek-beastie-boys-explanation
There are a few songs finding constant rotation on the office stereogram in 2020–tunes which seem to sum up The Situation while not explicitly being about it. We’re thinking of Frank Turner’s Recovery, This Year by The Mountain Goats—and this week’s Exit Music, Hands Of Time. Written and performed by the brilliant Margo Price, it matches a lush Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell arrangement to simple, direct song craft. The result is, to our minds, utterly beguiling. ‘Turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time’? Hell, yeah.
See you in seven, buckaroos.
