Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
Frank Sinatra
First I was ginger. Then I was bald. Nelson Mandela, are you on Twitter? We have a lot in common.
Erected by Sydney Goldsmith of the Universal Hair & Scalp Clinic in 1962, Georges Street’s “Why Go Bald” sign is one of Dublin’s oddest and best loved landmarks. Rescued from the jaws of the scrapheap in November 1999 (after a campaign by a group called the 20th Century Trust) and restored to its former glory, it is now a cult tourist attraction that has won plaudits from admirers including U2’s Bono. Which is kind of appropriate when you consider… Well, we’ll come back to that later. Read the rest of this entry »
You Belong To Me (1952)
Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #35
How the hell have I never heard about this until now? Johnny Slade’s Greatest Hits is a 2006 screwball comedy featuring virtually the entire supporting cast of the Sopranos in what appears to be an ill-advised, campy gangster romp. It looks absolutely really, really terrible… I have to see it!
MR BOJANGLES (1968)
It’s almost 3am as I sit down to write. I became an uncle for the first time today, and have just returned from toasting the birth of my niece. No doubt, by the time anyone gets around to reading this, Michael Jackson will already have been eulogized far beyond my meager power to add or detract. If you weren’t a child of the 1980s, it’s impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this man’s outrageous talent captivated a generation. There is no contemporary equivalent. No one even comes close.
As an entertainer, in the modern era, his only peers were Elvis, Sinatra and the Beatles. Read the rest of this entry »
TODAY ON THE INTERNET I LEARNED…
1. That Robert Llewellyn from Scrapheap Challenge and Kryten from Red Dwarf are the same person.
2. That Donald Rumsfeld is an even scarier man that had been already suspected (albeit with zero flair for graphic design).
3. And that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jamie Foxx will not be playing Frank Sinatra in Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming biopic.
FAITH ALIVE
1. There aren’t too many websites that save souls or induce seizures. But the insanely brilliant International Congress of Churches and Ministers website does both.
2. Self-harming satanist. This, I believe, is what is referred to on the internet as a: FAIL.
3. One from the archives. Saudi religious police prevent schoolgirls from fleeing a burning building because they’re not wearing proper Islamic dress.
4. Finally, Frank Sinatra: homosexual menace.
[UPDATE: ICCM website was down yesterday, now working again. Well worth checking out, very The Day Today-esque.]
IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING (1955)
Up very late writing up an interview with David Kitt for the Irish Times. Don’t think he likes giving interviews. Don’t think I like transcribing them. Either way this song has been stuck in my head all night. Sublime.
WHY GO BALD?
Erected by Sydney Goldsmith of the Universal Hair & Scalp Clinic in 1962, Georges Street’s “Why Go Bald” sign is one of Dublin’s oddest and best loved landmarks. Rescued from the jaws of the scrapheap in November 1999 (after a campaign by a group called the 20th Century Trust) and restored to its former glory, it is now a cult tourist attraction that has won plaudits from admirers including U2’s Bono. Which is kind of appropriate when you consider… Well, we’ll come back to that later. Read the rest of this entry »