What happens when you assume a shared cultural experience, only to discover it doesn’t exist? In 2020, one man’s frustration that his wife did not remember a 90s pop hit triggered one of the most acclaimed podcast episodes ever. The team at Reply All were eventually able to track down the missing song for Tyler
Greatest Headcanon Hits: 3 singles I believed were massive Read More »
A carpark in Croydon. Speaking to a male acquaintance with growing incredulity, a woman is relaying an urgent phone call that she recently took from a friend. “She said ‘I was repainting my flat, naked.’” The woman pauses, then poses the obvious rhetorical question. “Who paints naked?”. This seems a reasonable line of inquiry to
London Lucky Dip: painting naked and adopting house plants Read More »
Sometimes the ephemera around a movie can become more resonant than the film itself. Maybe it’s a promising trailer, or a score that exceeds its source material, or a single scene that momentarily encapsulates how the whole movie could have played out. I spent most of the 1990s and early 2000s as a die-hard Star
Glimpses of the Force: the proto-Instagram of Star Wars Read More »
I’m in a shabby atrium encircled by a series of strange, narrow rooms. The area is dingy and neglected, like the squat from Midnight Cowboy. These oddly shaped anterooms, which fan out from the atrium, seem to be entirely without furniture. Most of them are fitted with saloon doors to reduce privacy. I’ve arrived in
Dream diary: Panic at the Border Crossing Read More »
Gilbert Arenas is virtually unknown in the UK, where only the most famous and marketable NBA players enjoy any name recognition. In 2021, the Guardian described him as a ‘clownish Steph Curry antecedent turned podcast host.’ I wouldn’t have any idea who Arenas was, but for encountering a strange and memorable magazine profile in 2006:
The Mid-Noughties Ghost of Gilbert Arenas Read More »
The Parable of the Chinese Farmer has been on my mind recently. Though in my case the Parable of the Sleepless Writer would be more appropriate. A couple of years ago I bought an alarm clock. I wanted to sleep without my phone by my bedside, in an effort to reduce my screen time. My
The Good Decision / Bad Decision Alarm Clock Read More »
“Always Be Closing.” If there’s a scene everyone remembers from Glengarry Glen Ross, it’s undoubtedly the one where Blake (Alec Baldwin) briefly materialises to terrorise the jaded salesman of Premiere Properties. For my money, this is not the most unsettling scene in James Foley’s 1992 movie. There is a moment that I’m reminded of much
Glengarry Glen Ross: the rules come from downtown Read More »
Sundays were the reason I fell in love with Peanuts. During my formative years, it was always Sunday in Charlie Brown’s world. My initial impression of Peanuts wasn’t formed by encountering the daily strip in the newspaper or by catching a rare UK showing of a Peanuts TV special. It wasn’t even shaped by the
Peanuts on Sunday: Snoopy’s adventures in liminal space Read More »
We had prepared for the arrival of our first child in all the usual ways. We’d converted the spare bedroom to a nursery, picked out the perfect co-sleeper crib, and stocked up on pristine white babygrows. With my wife deep into the third trimester, there was just one time-honoured task outstanding. We still had to
How to match your unborn child with the perfect Snoopy book Read More »
Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz’s daily comic, ended on February 13, 2000 after 50 years of publication and approximately 18,000 strips. It was an incredible feat of creativity, but did the author manage to ‘stick the landing’? Today that phrase has become commonplace to assess whether a successful and long-running story concluded in a satisfying manner.
Requiem for the Round-headed Kid: how ‘Peanuts’ ended Read More »
