Funny Ha Ha

The other day a friend asked me to recommend some funny books to him because he was "feeling a bit down". I told him that it was probably better to watch a funny movie or a funny TV show instead but he said that he "really wanted to read a book" which is a rare enough emotion in humans these days that it ought to be cherished; off the top of my head then I came up with a little list of my favourite funny novels. These are in no particular order -...

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Five New JD Salinger Novels

Really interesting story in The New York Times this weekend that apparently five new JD Salinger novels are on their way beginning in 2015. Why 2015? Well that'll be five years after Salinger's death so presumably that was a stipulation of the old boy's will, whose faithful executor is his son Matt......What are the five new Salinger novels about? Well the Times really has no idea but apparently two anonymous sources have revealed to Shane Salerno...

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What Dungeons and Dragons Teaches You About 9/11, Conspiracy Theories And, Er, Real Life

A blogpost from October of last year......As Jesse Ventura might have said conspiracy theories - like religions - are for the weak. I was thinking about this after hearing the news that Martin Sheen and Woody Harrelson are to appear in a 9/11 truther movie in 2014. 9/11 truthers believe that the World Trade Center was taken down not by planes but by a controlled demolition done at the behest of the Bush administration so that they could have a pretext...

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Elysium

Neill Blomkamp's films are beginning to fall into a predictable pattern: 1. A fantastic opening act full of exciting philosophical and visual ideas. 2. A second act where the grinding story wheels begin to wear you down and stretch your patience. 3. A third act that's just as dull and tedious as every other Hollywood action movie from the last twenty five years. Why is it that every young director gets bullied or cajoled by movie executives and script...

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Kill List

the two hit men about to get way out of their depth...one of the few non spoiler pictures of Kill List available on the internetIf you're a sensitive soul like me you should not watch Ben Wheatley's Kill List. I watched it last night and I was pretty darn disturbed. So disturbed that I stayed up for hours watching the utter head pounding banality of the live stream of Mike and Mike on ESPN2 in an attempt to get some of the images out of my mind....

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"There might be blood on the paws of that dog, but it's smug complacency that killed Ian": The Comedic Brilliance of Sightseers

I don't really keep up with the latest trends in cinema so I hadn't heard about Ben Wheatley until a month ago when I began to read reviews of his latest film, A Field In England, which apparently divided the British critics into those who hated it and those who thought it was merely a disappointment. I haven't seen A Field In England but the trailer looks fantastic. On Friday night Ben Wheatley's second feature film (or perhaps third, Wikipedia...

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Creep

my essay from Radio Silence, issue 02, published earlier this year...Even White Boys Get The Blues: Radiohead’s “Creep” One of the late comedian Patrice O’Neal’s most watched videos on YouTube is a short radio interview he did on KITS San Francisco where he dissects the Radiohead song "Creep". He wonders about the strange power “Creep” seems to have over white men of a certain age, speculating that it digs deep into the confusion and...

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If Scotland Secedes Should Shetland Skidaddle?

a post from last year that gets more relevant by the day....If Scotland leaves the UK in 2014, it would make a lot of sense for the Shetland Islands to secede from Scotland. An Independent Shetland would have roughly the same population as the Faroe Islands but it would be much wealthier as most of the UK's North Sea oil reserves would lie within Shetland's territorial waters. Shetland's bonds to Scotland are tenuous. Until the fifteenth century...

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Sinead Morrissey

Last week Belfast Lord Mayor Mairtin O'Muilleoir appointed Sinead Morrissey as the city’s first ever Poet Laureate. It was an inspired choice: Dr Morrissey is the author of five collections of poetry, she has been widely anthologized and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize three times. Determinedly apolitical Morrissey rejects the labels ‘Unionist’ and ‘Nationalist’ as ‘exclusionary’ and devoid of nuance which is precisely the kind of nimble...

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Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin would have been 91 years old today (had he not died of cancer in 1985). Larkin's reputation has only grown since the 80's and especially in the last decade & now, perhaps, most critics consider Larkin to have been the finest English poet of the twentieth century. I think so too in my unschooled opinion. For me WH Auden, TS Eliot, Ted Hughes etc. aren't quite in the same league, or rather, don't seem to get to Larkin's depths. I identify with Larkin to some extent, not with the pervy, racist stuff, but certainly with the gloom....

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Miami Blues

I've been meaning to read Charles Willeford for a long time and when I saw this very attractive Penguin Crime edition for only 9 bucks (one third the price of regular paperbacks in Australia) in my local bookshop I knew that I could resist no longer. I've known about Willeford's bad ass biography for ages: a decorated tank commander with George Patton's Third Army in WW2, a pulp writer, a horse trainer, a bookie, semiprofessional boxer - Willeford...

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The Ned Kelly Awards

I'm really pleased to tell that you my book I Hear The Sirens In The Street has been shortlisted for Best Crime Novel at the 2013 Ned Kelly Awards. This is the Australian equivalent of the Edgars or the Daggers so it's a really big deal for me and I'm very honoured and excited. I've lived in Australia now for five years and this award nomination has really touched me and made me feel like a proper Aussie. Did I celebrate with a VB tinny in my backyard...

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