Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
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“Who were your influences, hair-wise, back in the day?”
“My influences, my influences… Bobby Charlton…? No, not him. I can’t think of the guy’s name now. Hold on, your mother might remember…” Read the rest of this article here.
Yo, can we crash in your pad for a couple of days?
Hi Kevin, how’s the IT business..? Wow, that’s very interesting… Zzzzzzz… Are you wearing fake tan, Evan? No, no… I don’t want a makeover, but its sweet of you to ask… Hell-ooo Gail… How you doing? Read the rest of this entry »
Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #27
From today’s Guardian. As I’m sure Darragh would want me to put it: EPIC FAIL. Read the rest of this entry »
90mph… Down a Dead End Street
ON A COLD, CRISP morning in the winter of 2000, 19-year-old Richard Gilligan stood on the banks of the Kenmare River, his feet muddy and camera poised. A hundred metres away, his friend Bruce Kelliher was nervously clutching his skateboard and swaying slightly in the breeze. It was just after daybreak, and Our Lady’s Bridge, outside Kenmare in Co Kerry, was deserted. Read the rest of this entry »
Mexican Wine (2003)
I can think of no other album as badly showcased by its lead-off single as Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers was by the execrable Stacy’s Mom. If you can see beyond that stinking pile of horse manure (and, to be honest, I don’t blame you if you can’t) the album is a sprawling affair, a sort of power-pop White Album. Not every track works, but the ones that do are mini-masterpieces. To whit…
“The most likely explanation, I correctly surmised, was that the bank had simply made a mistake…”
I’d like to say that I agonised about what to do next. But that would be an utter lie. When a friend, over breakfast, suggested contacting my branch, I laughed so violently that a Rice Krispie and a trickle of milk exited my left nostril rather abruptly. Read the rest of this article here.
You can’t hurry love?
THE LIGHTING IS soft. That’s the first thing you notice when you arrive downstairs at the Turk’s Head pub in Dublin city centre. If it were any softer, you might pull up a chair by one of those old flower pots and ask what she looks for in a relationship. The organisers of tonight’s speed dating event asked participants to assemble at 7.45pm sharp. I arrive at 7.49pm, so flustered I almost sign up for salsa dancing lessons by accident. But nothing actually happens until almost 9pm.
The ladies, by and large, have shown up in pairs. They sit awkwardly at the bar, fixing their hair and stealing furtive glances at the latest arrivals. The guys have almost all come alone. But as with any group of men, thrown together in any circumstances, anywhere in the world, we pick up the conversation almost without missing a beat. Robbie Keane to Celtic, huh? How’ll that pan out? Risky move on Spurs’ part. He scores goals, the boy scores goals… Read the rest of this article here.
Creative Whiting
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Tabloid newspapers have a dubious habit of using speculative commentary by unnamed “sources” to pad out their stories. No matter where the celebrity transgression takes place, it seems, there will always be some Joe Public type on hand to weigh in on the controversy in suspiciously proficient tabloid-ese. Today’s News of the World story on John Terry (‘It looks fishy, but Toni’s fallen for JT whopper’) is a really hilarious case in point. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah jeez, don’t make me get up there…
Late last year, Vodafone offered me some dirty, dirty money to perform a stand up comedy gig for some online ad campaign they’re doing. Corporate whore that I am, of course, I lapped it up. I posted the stand up routine in its entirety shortly before Christmas. But I forgot to put up the link to the ad itself (sorry Vodafone!) Read the rest of this entry »
Top 10 Things That Make Me Cringe So Bad I Want to Curl up in a Ball and Pretend They Don’t Exist
There are some things I don’t like. And there are some things I kinda hate. Then there’s a weird category of things that make me cringe so bad I want to curl up in a ball and pretend they don’t exist. (Kinda like the way your laptop, in a similar predicament, will default to a blue screen to prevent irreversible damage to system integrity.) Maybe I’m too sensitive, or maybe these are the most embarrassing phenomena known to man.
They are, in no particular order: Read the rest of this entry »