When people talk about toxic masculinity, it's hard to imagine a more virulent breeding ground than the mid-late 90s; a time when men were led to embrace the worst bullet points of their gender stereotype like never before. If you had to portray the era in one of those spinning-newspaper montages, it'd be a whirl of 18-30 holidays, Chris Evans' TFI Friday and Cool Britannia, and lads' ...
2019-03-08 09:59:45 +0000 UTC View Post
David Lynch considered the original Winkie's Diner scene too frightening to be broadcast.
2019-03-03 14:20:12 +0000 UTC View Post
There's a tweet that rolls around Twitter about once a month for people to quote-tweet replies to. It goes “what's the most on-brand story from your childhood?” For me, the first thing that came to mind was of being five, and my school announcing our first class outing, a day at a local amusement park. My tiny ears pricked up at the small print that, though we'd all be going, it wa...
2019-03-02 20:00:25 +0000 UTC View PostSince today is the one year anniversary of this endeavour, I thought I'd do a short State of the Union and see where we're at. Taking the plunge to start a Patreon was a big leap for me. I brushed off the idea for a couple of years, with this fear that nobody would join, and I'd be publicly announcing to the world my literal value as an artist of zero bucks a month.
But I built it, and they came. More specifically, you did, consequently enabling me to write a bunch...
Today's the 1st anniversary of this venture, so I knocked up a little video of our wonderful memories together.
2019-03-01 09:29:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember that time James Cameron, Oscar-winning film director, held a press conference to announce he'd found Jesus's bones? No? Yeah, nobody does. Except me, in my personal Mandela Effect Hell. Every day, I feel like I'm going crazy. You lot out there are just walking around, going to work, or screencapping chat...
2019-02-26 10:10:16 +0000 UTC View Post
After tackling one half of the Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour, with the pleasantly not-that-bad Droids, I figured I should sit through the other show. It's telling that, as Star Wars crazed as I was back then, the young me was not a fan of the Ewoks cartoon. Dear reader, it...
2019-02-16 00:33:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Furthering my quest to actually sit through the oft-named Worst Ever sitcoms that most people have only seen in the same 30-second clip on C5 talking head shows being described to them by someone who once shat themselves during a threesome on Geordie Shore, I'm finally diving into the big one. Curry & Chips is roundly regarded as one of the most badly-misjudged or outright...
2019-02-06 09:42:08 +0000 UTC View Post
There's this notion that Star Wars was born in 1977 and has been incredibly popular with everyone ever since, but it's not true. Kids like me, who were still properly obsessed with SW into the late 80s, were derided as being weird for still liking that old (!) children's movie, and back then, the word 'nerd' still carried weight, as a wholly pejorative term, said only in a moc...
2019-01-27 00:30:56 +0000 UTC View Post
As a British man raised in the eighties, my childhood consisted of a seemingly endless parade of hauntological horrors which imprinted on my subconscious like a baby chick who thinks a shoe is its mum. As attested by the popularity of Scarfolk, the ill-lit dramas, sinister kids shows, and Public Information Films that made much of our formative viewing really left their psychological mark. Ther...
2019-01-17 10:17:37 +0000 UTC View Post
In my previous look back at Cannon and Ball, I made the comparison to an end of the pier Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, with an act that's rooted in antagonism, and every skit laden with the simmering threat of violence. In 1991, two months before the debut of Ri...
2019-01-07 09:30:38 +0000 UTC View Post
What's left to say about Donald Trump? For a moment, let's put aside everything but the propensity to vampirically attach his name to any old shit; that classy Midas-touch, breeding instant success with everything from failed vodka to failed steaks, to a failed 'university' with all the educational legitimacy of Sweet Valley High. The one thing I didn't expect to find stamped with the Trump bra...
2018-12-28 11:30:12 +0000 UTC View Post
About twelve or thirteen years ago, you couldn't avoid Chuck Norris. Not that he was getting much work, but as a meme, Chuck Norris Facts were inescapable, both to internet users, and the man himself. Tired of being asked about it, Norris finally opened up, penning an op-ed on conservative news aggregator, World Net Daily; one of the big promoters of the Obama birther conspiracy; where he rebuked a ha...
2018-12-18 12:42:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Eastenders was better back when it was recorded in front of a studio audience.
2018-12-11 12:43:18 +0000 UTC View Post
The very concept of a milkman is one of those indicators of being old as shit, as nobody under the age of twenty has any idea what you're talking about. But more than the outdated job of delivering milk to your doorstep at 5am, the strength of the milkman archetype was their other reputation. Roughly half of all jokes in the 1970s were based on someone resembling the milkman, and until the in...
2018-12-09 00:04:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Some images are so overloaded with festive sense-memory that a mere whiff, no matter the time of year, sends you tumbling through a blur of green and red, back to the Christmases of yore. Victorians skating on frozen ponds on the front of a biscuit tin; a Radio Times so thick, you could concuss an elephant with it; and in particular for those who grew up in 80's Britain, great big fellas with...
2018-11-29 09:43:36 +0000 UTC View Post
A Christmas Carol must hold the record for the single most adapted piece of literature, with countless feature films, and TV episodes, borrowing the premise for Christmas specials. While many, particularly the most well-loved, pull their take straight from the page for that Victorian nostalgia of the id, Dickens' moral fable is often updated for the modern era, giving a twist that demonstrate...
2018-11-19 00:14:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Trope-wise, Happy Days has been very generous, giving us the phrases Jump the Shark, and Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, named for the sudden, unspoken disappearance of Richie's older brother. It also popularised the way a show's wacky nice-guy character will always refer to 'grown-ups' by the initial of their surname, “Eyy, Mr. C!” That last one's hugely popular wit...
2018-11-09 00:01:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Without equal, Michael Jackson remains the oddest figure in all of pop culture. Inciting the screaming and fainting we see in every generation of fandom, from Beatlemania to One Direction, albeit with an oddly asexual tone, the undying worship of Jackson loyalists is closer to religious fervour. It's not surprising that such a noted oddball loner, who spent decades being hounded and pilloried by the p...
2018-10-30 09:17:44 +0000 UTC View Post
I first heard about the so-called 'lost Carry On' at one of those fan conventions where you pay £20 to get a photo with the evil dojo guy from Karate Kid, or an actor who played some sort of sentient turd in Doctor Who back in the seventies. Funnily enough, I was in line for Fenella Fielding when I overheard a conversation between a couple of lads ambling past. I wasn't in costume m...
2018-10-22 08:29:46 +0000 UTC View Post
I was in two minds whether or not to post something so dumb, but it is precious content I have made, so [shrug]
2018-10-16 10:05:42 +0000 UTC View Post
The Waltons, you ask? Wasn't that boring as shit? Let me stop you there. Yes, it was, which makes the sudden appearance of crazy occult doings all the more wild. Forming somewhat of a cultural double-act with Little House on the Prairie, both were tales of olden-days people living through hard but good times at the family homestead, with a supporting cast of bumbling townsfolk and st...
2018-10-12 23:02:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Absolutely disgusting. Monster Mash singer Bobby Pickett disgracing himself on Live TV.
2018-10-04 16:48:55 +0000 UTC View Post
It's a welcome return to this series for Shaun Ryder, who's joined by Happy Mondays bandmates, Bez, and... two of the other ones? In this case, drummer Gary and singer Julie. We know Shaun's got an interest in the paranormal, while Bez seems like he is paranormal, and for the research p...
2018-10-03 12:28:10 +0000 UTC View Post
As a companion to the Noel's House Party piece, I realised each episode, when broken down to its component parts of Yewtree cameos, Noel pretending it was all going wrong, and moments of Partridge gold, was so hauntologically fertile, I had to preserve them.
2018-09-24 08:30:04 +0000 UTC View Post