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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.
Irony overload: Greece follows up arrest of Nazi-loving Golden dawn by seizing immigrants
HOW we cheered when the righteous, freedom-loving Greek police arrested the Nazi-loving Golden Dawn MPs.
Buoyed by that success, and cheered on by the Left, the Greek police went out to nick some more wrong ‘uns. No not violent bigots. Illegal immigrants.
Police arrested 41 people in central Athens on Sunday night during a large operation involving some 150 officers. The arrests were made around Omonia Square and in Aghios Panteleimonas. More than 330 people were detained. The majority of those arrested were immigrants who lacked the necessary paperwork.
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Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comments (4)
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen answer the phones on Efrom Allen’s New York cable TV show in 1978
ON September 18, 1978, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungun appeared on New York cable Tv show The Efrom Allen Show. Also on the panel taking calls from the great unwashed were, Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, and Cynthia Ross of the B Girls.
Viewers were invited to “CALL 473-5386 TO SPEAK TO THE PUNK OF YOUR CHOICE”.
Photo above: Vicious and Spungen outside Marylebone Magistrates court after being charged possessing the drug methamphetamine – 08/02/1978.
Spungen seems to idolise her man, telling one caller who calls him “derivative”:
“He’s as original as you get! He’s not derivative of anything.”
On October 12, 1978 Spungen was dead. She’d been stabbed. The prime suspect in what looked like a suspicious death was Vicious, aka John Ritchie.
Photo: The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street in New York City is shown, Oct. 18, 1978, site of Nancy Spungen’s murder. Her boyfriend Sid Vicious of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols has been arrested and charged with the murder.
Photo: New York police escort British punk rock musician Sid Vicious, or John Simon Ritchie, former bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, shortly before he was charged with murder in the stabbing death of his girlfriend, Nancy Laura Spungen, at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Oct. 13, 1978.
Photo: John Simon Ritchie walks from Rikers Island prison in New York, Oct. 16, 1978 after being released on $50,000 bail. Police charged Ritchie with second-degree murder in connection with the death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
On February 2 , while out on bail, Vicious died of a drugs overdose. His mother told us:
“He knew the smack was pure and strong and took a lot less than usual.”
But it was enough to kill him:
Photo: New York City police carry the body of punk rock star Sid Vicious from apartment in the Greenwich Village section of New York, Feb. 2, 1979.
Photo: Michelle Robinson leaves her apartment in New York, Feb. 2, 1979 after the body of punk rock star musician Sid Vicious was found in her apartment.
Photo: Anne Beverley, mother of the late punk rock star Sid Vicious, sits in ambulance outside the Sixth Precinct police station in New York, Feb. 2, 1979. Police said her son apparently died of a heroin overdose taken the night before at a party given to celebrate his release from prison.
Now the phone-in show:
Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Who’s afraid of adults? Drunk and depressed children listening to their therapist
TWO stories in today’s papers stand out:
The Times leads with news that Under 11s are getting drunk and seeking treatment in A&E departments.
Hundreds of primary-school age children were admitted to accident and emergency departments for alcohol-related problems last year, it has been revealed. The 293 admissions, up by a third on 2011, came after a year in which more than 6,500 under-18s were taken to hospital as a consequence of drinking.
What about drugs?
The numbers, which were obtained through a freedom of information request, also found that 145 children under 11 were admitted to A&E with drug-related conditions, up by 14 per cent on the previous year.
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Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The Clash live in Tokyo 1982 – the full concert of the band’s last original line-up show
IN the first two months of 1982 the Clash stormed Japan. Their tour of the Far East was the last time the original line-up toured together: drummer Topper Headon was soon after rusticated for taking too many drugs.
On the fourth night of eight-date Japan leg, The Clash played Nakano Sun Plaza. It was January 28, 1982. The Japanese crowd were prevented from going truly wild by a local rule: they could only stand up if they remained by their seats.
Here below is the show in full. Look out for Paul Simonon’s wife Pearl Harbor (a.k.a. Pearl E. Gates) arriving to sing Fujiyama Mama.
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Posted: 29th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Education for Death: in 1943 Disney taught kids how to be a Nazi
IN 1943, Disney studios produced The Making of a Nazi,. This short film was funded by the US Government. Disney needed the money and the Government’s propaganda machine needed a new avenue. (The US had hired lost of top directors to produce its films, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Frank Capra). In all Disney produced 32 animated shorts. But this one, based on a book by Gregor Ziemer’s book Education for Death was more hard hitting than Donald Duck declaring “Oh boy, am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America!” as a tomato slapped Hitler in the face (even Bambi fought the Axis powers in Disney’s Volunteer Army).
Posted: 29th, September 2013 | In: Film, Flashback | Comment
In praising Simon Schama The Observer falsely portrays Mary Beard as bitter and ‘cheap’
IN 2010, Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, said of Simon Schama, the BBC’s go-to history man:
Declaration of interest: I dont know Prof Schama well, but what I know I like a lot. He is smart, clever, engaging and not — so far as I have any experience — remotely ill-willed. A great cook, a great dinner companion, a wonderful writer and an acute historian.
True. But do we want him advising Mr Gove on the History Curriculum in British schools?
She goes on:
I think not. Actually, what we really need is a group of intelligent British school teachers, calling on all kinds of historical talent outside school, wherever it may be found.
So what’s wrong with Schama?
Well, this is celebrity culture at its most meretricious — Gove playing to the populist gallery. The fact that Schama is smart and has made some good television programmes does not mean that he is the best person (if reports are right) to head up the new drive to revitalise British history.
Schama long ago decided to make his (day job) career in the United States — which gives him maybe a usefully external perspective on the British system, but also means that he is necessarily out of touch with the stresses, strains and demands of what is going on in British schools right now. That makes him an excellent person to consult, but not to head up the new policy.
.. I dont know how much Prof S is getting paid, if at all (and for his sake I hope he has a nice fee). But whatever it is, I am sure that it is less than what it would cost to bring 15 History teachers, plus a few outside “experts”, together for a couple of days… costing up the travel, board and lodging, etc.
Prof Schama is not only glitzy, but also cheap. And appointing him to whatever “job” he now has is also an insult to History teachers here.
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Samantha Lewthwaite: the Atomic bomb, the shop in the mall and the secret husband
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite: a look at the wanted British woman in the news.
The Sun says that Lewthwaite, aka The White Widow, evaded capture at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall by “fleeing in a sewer”.
James Beal is stood in that sewer to tell us:
A SUSPECTED British terrorist dubbed the White Widow may have fled the Kenyan mall massacre through a SEWER.
If she was there she may have. Yes. Any more news from the gutter?
Lewthwaite — the world’s most wanted woman — and other crazed jihadists may have dropped through a hatch into the sewer network.
Lewthwaite was not wanted for any terrorism offences whilst living in the UK. She’s suspected of being an active member in a Somali jihadi group. But we don’t know for certain that she is a “crazed jihadist”. Just as we do not know if the Mail was correct when it reported how she “barked orders” at her “assassins” in the mall. It’s all speculation of a sort that could well prejudice any trial.
Beal then adds:
Gang members could easily have crept along it to evade security forces… They could even have kept going for another two miles… Cops fear it opens up the possibility that many more terrorists could have escaped from the terrifying raid… A source said: “Senior police believe it may have been a route out for some of the terrorists. They could have escaped like sewer rats. If they had changed their clothes…”
Armed with those facts, we turn to the Mail, which reports:
Secret husband of the White Widow who holds key to her terror network: Samantha Lewthwaite wed ex-naval officer and turned their home into a bomb factory… and her 42 calls to a mystery ‘aunt’ in England
How secret?
Samantha Lewthwaite – the ‘White Widow’ being hunted in the wake of the Nairobi mall massacre – is secretly married to a former officer in the Kenyan Navy, a confidential Scotland Yard file on her reveals.
Not secret at all, then.
…a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal that her current husband – a man named Abdi Wahid who in his 40s – has been free to travel as he wishes, and is currently in continental Europe. Wahid was arrested in 2011 when police discovered that his house in the coastal city of Mombasa had been turned into a potential bomb factory by Lewthwaite and her associates. He was never charged with any offence. Exactly how much he knew of his wife’s clandestine activities is not clear but detectives now believe he could hold the key to unlocking her network of terror.
And that’s the length and breadth of the Mail’s investigation.
In the Express, Maajid Nawaz writes:
In a sense it is almost irrelevant whether she was involved. Other “widows” are almost certain to follow in her footsteps.
Irrelevant? Well, almost. Still, at least the Star has facts:
Samantha ‘White Widow’ Lewthwaite dished out IT advice at halal pie factory
Mass murder and still time for a pun. Go on:
The Piejoy halal pie company is based in an ordinary-looking residential street in a down-at-heel suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Records show Samantha Lewthwaite, who is suspected of involvement in the Kenya mall killings, worked at the company under the assumed name Natalie Faye Webb in 2009.
She did so while living with her three young children 15 miles away in a grubby, three-bedroom bungalow in the city’s Mayfair area. This week a woman at the Piejoy address denied knowing anything about either Lewthwaite or making pies.
But neighbours insisted the property is the HQ of a pie production firm.
A pie factory in a residential street? There’s a story there.
Back in the Express, James Fielding is wondering:
Did the White Widow plan Kenya attack to mark husband’s birthday?
Her current husband’s birthday?
Investigators believe the date of the shooting spree last Saturday, September 21, may be significant.
Lewthwaite’s husband, Germaine Lindsay, who blew himself up on a packed Tube train near London’s King’s Cross station on July 7, 2005, would have been 28 just two days later on September 23.
While Fielding puts one and one together to make a story, the Irish Indy reports:
‘White Widow’ smeared her face in blood to flee
The Irish-born terror chief dubbed the ‘White Widow’ slipped out of the Kenyan shopping mall after smearing blood over her face, security sources in the country have exclusively told the Sunday Independent. They also revealed how Samantha Lewthwaite, the Co Down-born widow of London suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay, rented a unit at the Westgate Shopping mall months ago, in preparation for last week’s terror killing spree.
She hung up newspapers around the shop unit to conceal what was going on inside, pretending to be stocking up on goods.
The Mirror says it wasn’t a shopping unit. It was a house:
White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite ‘plotted Nairobi mall massacre from secret lair just 100 yards away’ – She rented a house opposite the shopping centre where crazed Muslim fanatics later slaughtered up to 150 people, security forces say
In case you were in any doubt as to the danger Lewthwaite represents, the Mirror’s Matthew Drake has chilling news:
Nairobi attack: White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite the A-bomb enthusiast – Terrorist fugitive led a debate at her school in favour of Hiroshima bombing when she was 15
As we fear for world peace, Dani Garavelli writes in the Scotsman:
Until she is captured, we can only speculate about her motivations, her relationship with Briton Jermaine Grant – arrested in Kenya in 2011 and now on trial accused of possessing explosive material and conspiring to commit crimes – and the identity of her third child’s father. The information vacuum created by her absence is being filled with gossip. Sightings of a “pale-skinned woman with long, dark hair” just like Lewthwaite’s at the mall have been reported. One shopkeeper says she opened fire on her with an AK47, while others insist she pointed out targets for the men to shoot.
There is, for now, no evidence to link her to the attack, yet Lewthwaite is being mythologised. Unedifying though that may be, particularly as it may be diverting attention away from more powerful perpetrators – she looks to have already earned her place as one of the decade’s most notorious women criminals.
Such are the facts…
Hey Lulu: The stoned and brilliant performance that saw Jimi Hendrix banned from the BBC
ON January 4, 1969 Jimi Hendrix appeared on Happening for Lulu. Sharing the bill with Pan’s People, Badfinger and Johnny Harris, Hendrix and his Experience would perform a duet with the Shout singer at the BBC’s London studios. Well, they were supposed to. But it never did happen.
Charles R Cross recalls what occurred in his book Room Full of Mirrors. After breaking into Hey Joe, as arranged and introduced by the pop Pixie, Hendrix had enough:
“We’d like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to The Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in, dedicate to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce”.
The band then began playing Sunshine of Your Love.
Hendrix told his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (pictured above in 1969): “I’m not going to sing with Lulu. I’d look ridiculous.”
Noel Redding writes in his book Are You Experienced? The Inside Story of The Jimi Hendrix Experience:
“We cringed,… [tit was] so straight it was only natural that we would try to combat that atmosphere by having a smoke in our dressing room…In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drainpipe. Panic! We just couldn’t do this show straight–Lulu didn’t approve of smoking! She was then married to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d visited and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Maurice started throwing open all the windows. Anyway, I found a maintenance man and begged tools from him with the story of a lost ring. He was too helpful, offering to dismantle the drain for us. It took ages to dissuade him, but we succeeded in our task and had a great smoke.”
Photo: Lulu marries Maurice Gibb of the pop group the Bee Gees at the Parish church, Gerrard’s Cross in Buckinghamshire on 18/02/1969.
Redding adds:
“This was fun for us, but producer Stanley Dorfman didn’t take it at all well as the minutes ticked by on his live show. Short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show. Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it’s the most relaxed.”
Posted: 28th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Samantha Lewthwaite: the Irish and British girl who turned from an ‘angel’ to the devil
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite wasn’t always known as The White Widow. Today the Sun asks in its leader:
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite’s transformation from the innocent, unwitting widow of a 7/7 bomber into a “most-wanted” terrorist is — quite literally — incredible.
Police believed her story after the London attacks in 2005. So did we.
It might well be incredible. Lewthwaite is on the run. She’s not been convicted of committing any crimes. She was not a terror suspect while living in the UK.
An Interpol statement said she was “wanted by Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011”. Frank Gardner, the BBC‘s security correspondent, says it relates to an alleged plot to bomb a number of tourist resorts on Kenya’s coast two years ago.
“This was serious enough for the Foreign Office to upgrade its travel alert for Kenya, and for Scotland Yard detectives to fly out to Kenya to investigate,”
The facts are few. And what we do know about her is mostly what occurred before she headed to Africa. The Sun is so ignorant of the facts if can’t decide what nationality she is:
IRISH terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite was wanted worldwide last night after Interpol issued a “Red Notice” order for her arrest.
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How tabloids work: the Daily Mail’s Scotland Yard Super Recognisers scoop
HOW tabloids work: the headline-story mismatch.
Scotland Yard’s Super Paul NEVER forgets a face:
Unless he does:
More facts to follow…
Benefits winners’ Maggie and Gavin Flisher’s four-bedroom Maidstone home keeps tabloid writers in muck
WHAT are we supposed to make of Maggie and Gavin Flisher and their six children?
On July 12, Kent Online reported on them:
Family of eight sharing one bedroom in Park Wood in Maidstone beg for bigger council house
On July 17, the Express got wind of the story:
‘Super fertile’ jobless parents-of-six on £27,000 benefits demand a bigger council house
While the Express focused on 26-year-old Maggie’s ovaries, the Sun counted rooms:
Jobless couple with SIX KIDS demands four-bed home
Eight into four seems a tight fit. But better than eight into one.
The Sun adds:
Maggie Flisher and husband Gavin have not worked a single day between them since the birth of their first child in 2005.
They receive a total of £27,000 a year in benefits for their family – the average national income is just £26,000.
But, then, six children is not the average family. It is a very large family.
And then we hear Mrs Flisher’s lament:
“Why can’t they just give me a three-bedroom? It would be a damned-sight better than this. The four-bed homes are like gold dust. I’ve been told I’m a main priority but then they are given to someone else.”
So. She’s not demanding four bedrooms. She’s asking for three but hoping for four.
As ever with such stories, there is fun is in looking at the children’s names: Lacieann, eight, Elektra, six, Gavin Jnr, five, Lilyrose, 2, Martinjames and Paris Nicola, three-month old twins.
Ever the kids’ names are cramped. Laceiann, Lilyrose and Martinjames haven’t enough room to swing a hyphen.
Carole Malone then tells her Daily Mirror readers:
If ever there was a family that sums up everything that’s wrong with “Benefits Britain” it’s Maggie and Gavin Flisher.
For 10 years they’ve been living in a squalid one-bedroomed flat. Neither of them works yet still, they’ve churned out six kids in eight years all of whom have to live in the most brutally appalling conditions because their parents can’t be bothered to take proper precautions.
If they were Catholics who did not use birth control would Carole take the same tone? And Kent Online told us:
Mrs Flisher, who has six siblings, said she had not intended to have so many children – but had been let down time and time again by various different contraceptions. She has even asked to be sterilised, but doctors refused, saying she was too young.
Carole says the family gets £25,00 a year from the State. The Sun said it was £27,000. Carole adds:
They reckon it’s all Maidstone Council’s fault because they haven’t given them the four-bed house they insist they deserve.
Not deserve. Need.
Carole then says Maggie’s claim at super-fertility is “bullshit“, that the parents are guilty of “child abuse” – presumably Dear Carole thinks the six children would be better off living in care homes while their parents are imprisoned – and that they all live in “filth“. For an untrained medic who has never met the Flishers, Carol can tells lot from a few photos of the family posing for sympathy and council help in their too-small home.
Carole then puts the tin lid of her story by inviting us to hate the kids:
They’ll grow up to be just like their parents – state dependant for ever.
Maybe they can be sterilised before they mate in Carole’s world where having a family is a form of national service?
In the Express. Loe McKinsky sees this family as the epitome of a tend:
The mother of this subsidised brood, Maggie Flisher, claims she cannot work because of mental health problems. Her husband Gavin argues that he has to stay at home to look after the family. But far from showing any gratitude they are indignant at the way they have been treated…
This offensive saga embodies everything that is wrong with the system. Most couples in work do not have more children than they feel they can afford. But the Flishers have no such sense of personal responsibility and keep on reproducing regardless of the consequences, knowing that the state will pick up the tab.
Indeed, in the insane world of welfare Britain, indiscriminate reproduction brings its own financial gain in that every extra child leads to more benefits. In the case of the Flishers, they are estimated to be making around £1,400 a month from their offspring through child benefits and child tax credits.
In the insane world of tabloid hacks, one family’s story is symptomatic of an entire demographic.
Back to the original story in the Kent Online, then:
Now the hard-working mum, who moved into the property alone in 2003, says she fights a never-ending battle trying to keep the home clean and tidy.
And then we get to hear from the council:
A Maidstone council spokesman said: “Housing associations do not accept nominations for houses where applicants would be classed as overcrowded so applicants with a four-bed need are advised not to bid on three-bed houses. Social housing is scarce and bids made through the Kent Homechoice website are considered by the waiting time on the housing register. Where families have a need for large homes, they are offered support with looking for a house in the private sector and given information on a mutual exchange swap.”
So. Are there any council houses for the family who must move into a four-bed home, if they move at all?
Social housing provider Golding Homes has 176 four bed homes, one five-bed home and six-bed home on its books. All are occupied.
No.
But there is news. The Mail reports today:
Jobless couple with six children handed four-bedroom home to go with £27,000-a-year benefits after claiming their council flat wasn’t big enough
It wasn’t big enough.
Tom Gardner writes:
A jobless couple with six children living on benefits have been given a spacious four-bedroom home after complaining their council flat was too small.
Says Mrs Flisher:
“We are very pleased to be in… I had to pay for the move myself, so it took us three weeks.”
We hear from a Maidstone Borough Council spokesman:
“We maintain a housing register for homes offered by Kent Homechoice. People can apply. They bid for a house and some are successful. All our social housing is in short supply and there is only a small number of four-bedroom houses.”
So. There are four-bedroom homes for those who need them, such as the Flisher family.
And about those £27,000 in benefits?
In July, the family said they received an annual total of £22,900 in benefits, including £540 a month in jobseekers allowance; child benefit of £85 every week; and child tax credit of £1,000 a month. They have also been receiving housing benefit of £270-a-month to pay the rent on their flat
So. The child tax credit they get like everyone with a child does. Knock that off, and what do they take in benefits? Just under £13,000.
On September 18, the BBC reported that the failed attempt to upgrade the NHS computer system has cost the taxpayer… £9.8bn.
Give til it hurts, dear taxpayer.
The debate should not be on who claims but whether the system is working for any of us..?
Wonderful art: Kyaik-Hti-Yoe (the Golden Rock) pagoda in Myanmar
IN this photo taken on Sunday, Sept 8, 2013, Buddhist devotees offer gold leaves to paste on to Myanmar’s famed Kyaik-Hti-Yoe (the Golden Rock) pagoda in Kyaik Hto, Mon State, about 210 kilometres (130 miles) from Yangon, Myanmar. It’s incredible how painting an ordinary object can turn into into something marvellous.
Wikipedia has more.
Mothers are all swear-filled monsters: kids repeat the most horrible things (video)
MOTHERS are such paragons of virtue aren’t they? They say things like: “Well, if you were a mother yourself, you’d understand.” They all say a shitload of swear words, echoing down their little offspring’s earholes.
Jimmy Kimmel, having heard about sweary moms, decided to test this out and sent a camera crew out to ask America’s children about the worst words their mothers have used when they’re angry.
This all comes on the back of a report that suggests women are more likely to indulge in a bit of road rage than men.
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Larry ‘Romeo’ Busby will pay you to find him a non-fat, non-black, non-slut female to marry
LARRY Busby, 38, is looking for a girlfriend who must not be black, short-haired, jobless, fat or a slut. Find this elusive creature and Larry will give you $1,500 to spend on, well, fat black sluts. If Larry marries the chaste, thin, non-black dream boat he will give you can extra $1,000.
Larry issued his call to arms on his Sleepless in Austin website, where he writes under the name Romeo Rose. Says Larry:
“I don’t care if she looks like Halle Berry. I will not ever date a black girl”.
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Posted: 27th, September 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Samantha Lewthwaite: it’s like Robert Murat and Chris Jeffries never happened
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite is the world’s most wanted woman. Well, so says the Daily Mirror of the white woman who married a brown man who went on to murder 26 people in the 7/7 attack.
Interpol, who have issued an arrest warrant for the British fugitive. But they might not have to look that far. On September 23, the Mirror asked:
Is White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite dead? Woman terror suspect killed as troops storm Nairobi shopping centre
And it must be her because the Mail said there was only one woman on the attack and she was Lewthwaite, who “barked orders at gunmen in mall massacre”. (The Mail then set about swooning at her knickers.)
If Lewthwaite is ever proven to be not-guilty of whatever crimes she has been linked to, she’ll be in for the kind of payment that makes monies paid to media monsters Robert Murat and Chris Jeffries look paltry.
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Dating Dos and Don’ts – a 1949 film that helped millions of American boys get a date their mothers would like
HOW do you choose a date? Whose company would you enjoy? Why not consider looks..? Why not consider good-looking Janice? Well, she is attractive but acts superior and makes you feel small. A boy want to know he’s appreciated. Choose Anne. She’d be fun. But how to ask? Well, in 1949 boys like Woody had help.
In Dating Dos and Don’ts, the helpful fellows at Coronet Instructional Media had tips on 16-millimetre film.
The artist as spambot: Daily Mail Reporter is brains behind horse_ebook
THE Twitter feed @horse_ebooks is not a spambot but a blog created and written by humans.
It may also turn out that the Daily Mail is not written by computers but humans deciding that Jan Moir (64% human) should be upset by the paper’s countless pictures of Miley Cyrus twerking. The super busy ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ might well be an actual person. He/She might one day mate with @horse_ebook and save the publishing industry a fortune in staff.
“When Susan Orlean (of all people!) revealed in the New Yorker (of all places!) that for at least the last two years, @Horse has actually been authored (shepherded? overseen? THERE IS NOT A WORD TO DESCRIBE THIS) by Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender two employees of Buzzfeed (seriously) and that the account was coming to an end today, with a culmination in a performance art piece (ouch) at a New York gallery (fuck), it felt devastating.”
[Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender] have been working on the project for almost four years, keeping their identities secret from just about everyone, including their colleagues at BuzzFeed, where Bakkila is a creative director, and Howcast, where Bender, until about a year ago, was the vice-president of product development.
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Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Katie Holmes: Quite mental without Tom Cruise
EVERYONE worried about Katie Holmes when she was married to Tom Cruise. Everyone assumed that she had been kidnapped by Scientology and that she was going to be all weird, like Cruise was going to use her like a puppet.
However, everyone was wrong. That’s because Katie Holmes is quite capable of being a bit weird all by herself.
See, Holmes – once an A-Lister – has landed a role as the face of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise’s 100th birthday celebrations. Read that back. Katie Holmes, the face of century old mayo.
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First commercial ship to try the melting Northwest Passage will be carrying coal – oh, the irony
THE first commercial ship to try the Northwest Passage (due to melting Arctic ice) will be carrying… coal.
Local News: Kent thief had BBQ on Nectar points
THE Kent and Sussex Courier has news from Tonbridge, Kent:
“THIEF HAD BBQ ON MY NECTAR POINTS”
Princess Diana was murdered by Robin Cook and other claims that clear the media
IT’S been pretty well established that paparazzi and the papers had a role to play in the death of Princess Diana. The Daily Mail was so contrite it famously stated that it would no longer buy paparazzi photos. And then it realised readers could see the crashed car all over the web so it went mad and bought up every paparazzi photo in the world and started ogling kids.
Today the Mail says the media had no part to play in Diana’s death whatsoever. It was the SAS wot dunnit.
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Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comment (1)
Willie Nelson on the Ernest Tubb show
SOME singers discover god and politics as they age. Others, like Willie Nelson, grow their hair long, find that smoking weed is agreeable to them and speak out on matters of real importance. Here’s Willie on same-sex marriage from Texas Monthly:
Texas Monthly: For better or worse, you’ve also grown into a reputation as something of an authority on marriage itself.
Willie Nelson: I’ve been there and back a few times. It’s not perfect, so why should we expect it to be perfect for everybody?
Texas Monthly: But to be clear, you think everybody should be able to get married?
Willie Nelson: Absolutely. I never thought of marriage as something only for men and women. But I’d never marry a guy I didn’t like.
Texas Monthly: A lot of people think this battle echoes the fight for civil rights in the sixties.
Willie Nelson: It does. It’s about human rights. As humanity, we’ve come through so many problems from the beginning to here. I guess it finally had to come around to this. This is just another situation, another problem. We’ll work it out and move on.
Texas Monthly: And what do you think they’ll say when they look back on this?
Willie Nelson: We’ll look back and say it was crazy that we ever even argued about this.
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Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
1960s Space Age fashion – a retrospective
IN the 1960s, fashion designers looked to the stars for inspiration. The Space Race was well underway. Fashion would harness the spirit of the rocketeers with sleek lines, shiny fabrics and the chance to see the world through visors.
Will Kane
Never get lipstick in your eyes ever again.
You say, cutting-edge fashion. We say, best to check the machine for red socks before washing your Star Wars Storm Troopers armour.
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Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Fashion, Flashback | Comment
Samantha Lewthwaite: getting inside the knickers of ‘Pubic Enemy Number 1’
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at the British widow of a 7/7 bomber in the news. The media has been speculating that Lewthwaite was the mastermind of the attack on the Nairobi shopping mall that saw scores of people murdered by Islamists.
Daily Mail: “Sexy lingerie found at home of ‘White Widow’: Officers ‘uncovered colourful underwear in search of Kenyan safe house'”
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Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
