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RUN SEAMUS, RUN

Rampaging bull in Ballinrobe precipitates lame joke free-for-all in the RTE newsroom. Very amooosing etc. etc. (With thanks to Rob.)

CHRIST, I’M HAVING THAT DREAM AGAIN…

‘DEAD CHILD COULD LIVE AGAIN AS CLONE’

Okay this story freaks the shit out of me. A ten year old girl who died in a car crash is about to be brought back to life by controversial fertility expert Panayiotis Zavos. The American doctor froze some of the girl’s blood cells after her death in August, 2002, and combined them with cow eggs to create a human-animal hybrid embryo.

Forget the thorny moral issues. People should be a lot more concerned about potential creepy child issues…

SWEET AND DANDY (1972)

Scene from the film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff. Read the rest of this entry »

I PREDICT A PRANK WAR

Interviewed Lisa Hannigan yesterday for the Irish Times. A friend of mine who knows her vaguely tipped me off that she’s a very devoted member of some obscure sect of born again Christians. She hasn’t spoken about it publically before, he said. But if I raised the topic delicately, and pressed her if she at first denied it, then she might just go on the record about it.

And rather foolishly, I believed him…

STEVE APPLETON: EMBLEMATICALLY, TRANSCENDENTALLY SHIT?

Last week I wrote about acoustic/funk/pop/light-hearted drum n’ base/yeah? wunderkind Steve Appleton, and noted the very real possibility that – if his debut single (released May 3rd) is a hit – the 19-year-old will become the most colossal knobjockey to crash the charts, if not since records began, then at least since Vanilla Ice in 1990.

Here my friend Mark offers this exclusive analysis of the Trilby-wearing troubadour, whom he denounces as “emblematically and transcendentally shit”. Read the rest of this entry »

THOSE LAST MINUTE LEAVING CERT TIPS IN BRIEF…

The countdown to Leaving Cert 2010 is into its final weeks now. When 138,000 nervous students sit down for their first examination at 9.30pm on June 6th, they’ll know their chances of securing a coveted university place, well-paid job, desirable home, attractive sexual partner and prospect of siring anything other than ugly, unintelligent children depend entirely on how they perform in the fortnight ahead. Read the rest of this article.

IN DREAMS (1987)

OBSCURE SIXTIES GARAGE ROCK TRACK REFERENCED IN TABLOID NEWS HEADLINE SHOCKER!

A front page article in the Guardian today, concerning lingering resentment on Merseyside over The Sun’s coverage of the Hillsborough tragedy, hardly told us much we didn’t already know. Briefly, sensational tabloid news reports aren’t always true and, despite their protestations to the contrary, Liverpudlians really do have a tendency to wallow in victimhood. (Comparing a slanderous twenty year old newspaper article to the holocaust? Really?)

What did grab my attention though was The Sun’s Hillsborough tribute headline this week. As any garage rock aficionado will tell you, ’96 Tears’ was the title of a 1966 hit single by ? & the Mysterians. (In 2006, it was voted no. 120 on Pitchfork’s 200 Greatest Songs of the Sixties list.) A random Scouser contacted by Tripping Along the Ledge for comment fumed “This is a slap in the face to the people of Liverpool… It’s no different to what Pol Pot did to the Cambodians… etc. etc. etc.”

MISCELLANEOUS AMUSING ITEMS I’VE COME ACROSS#5

With thanks to the lovely Elisa.