Nik Kershaw Simple Minds Status Quo, Queen and U2 (I was at Live Aid, alright?) Stone Roses, but for The Second Coming I have a feeling I saw The Woodentops?

becca@boodleoops.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Everyone is trying way too hard to be cool with the ten bands thing. Let’s hear the ten least cool bands you’ve seen live, cowards

No, I’m sorry, this is nowhere close to the reckoning Labour needs. I remember reading the passages in Campbell’s diaries about airline stewardesses. I remember the bit in ‘A Journey’ about how funny it was when Prescott bullied Harman in cabinet meetings. Labour, at the very top, has a problem.

Tim Bale@timbale.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I know anything he says and does is infra dig as far as many are concerned, but I thought this was very good, actually.

Just had a lovely time watching Christmas Eve in Millers Point. Hit me right in my childhood feels about holidays with a large and rowdy extended family. Be warned though: it has absolutely homeopathic levels of plot (think Dazed and Confused.) variety.com/2024/film/fe...

With ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,’ Director Tyler Taormina Reinvents Cinema’s Most Old-Fashioned Genre and Makes an Instant Holiday Classic

In an interview, 'Christmas Eve at Miller's Point' director Tyler Taormina explains his holiday movie's expansive cast and arthouse inspirations.

variety.com

‘There is something of the April Fool about most comic songs: it’s comedy for children, and for people who know, in theory, that humour is a thing. But every now and then, you get someone can truly pull it off.’ RIP Tom Lehrer, you were one of the good ‘uns. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

An Evening (Wasted) with Tom Lehrer

The best time

open.substack.com

Apparently (according to Mumsnet) single women on nights out are covering themselves in glitter to repel attached men and/or send a silent message to an attached man’s partner. Absolute trebles all round.

I’m not claiming this is a dispositive insight, but I once asked an NHS England manager for an NHSE org chart* and he threw his head back and laughed for really quite a long time. *It was for a good reason, I don’t collect org charts

It’s some sort of unwelcome marker of my Oxbridge Reject identity that I *do* know (contra this piece) of one extremely eminent (literally) reject: Roger Penrose, who only won the Nobel

James Tarry@northamptonian.bsky.social · 2y ago

The second Oxbridge rejection piece I’ve read in the last fortnight. When I was looking for a university, I expected to be rejected if I applied, so didn’t apply. How the experience changes you, not as much as failing the 11+ did, but still. www.newstatesman.com/politics/edu...

Re-reading Smiley’s People, which is just not as good as TTSS is it? But there’s that long passage in the middle, when Smiley is having a little breakdown in Bywater Street; an unending, circuitous, anxious, drunken night. It’s a perfect invocation of mental and physical unease, and I hate it.

We’re considering the social effects of social media this week, so it’s worth brushing up on the history of the medium with Tess Dixon’s piece on how we got here https://buff.ly/4eYW3FJ

Immensely interesting piece.

Iain Mansfield@igmansfield.bsky.social · 2y ago

Twenty-two years ago, I was one of fifteen Year 13 pupils who qualified for the final of the British Physics Olympiad. With the cohort now entering our 40s, where are we all now? And was does this say about the role of intelligence in life success? www.edrith.co.uk/p/whatever-h...

I wrote about website flame wars, being mad online and the obstructiveness of young children, and I only mentioned Bluesky/X a couple of times: open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Freaks and Geeks

A flame war veteran writes

open.substack.com

I wrote about Paul Simon’s 1986 album ‘Graceland’ this week and was slightly surprised to find, forty years later, that I am still a fan. I was even more surprised to find, judging from the response, that everyone else is too. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

1986: Graceland

There goes sanction-bustin’ Simon

open.substack.com

The problem with the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall is that all Cromwell’s interior dialogue has been dumped into direct speech, meaning that he maunders around various National Trust locations offering unasked-for opinions like an early modern Billy Bleach