Lead In My Pencil / July 27 2008
I had some oysters yesterday. Fresh and big and full of the taste of the sea.
My actor friend Hamilton Bentley paid Audrey and me a visit. He came to boast about his part as an extra in the new British film Donkey Punch. He recounted how he had asked the director for a line and [...]
He Wants To Believe / July 24 2008
There was a knock on the door half an hour ago. Standing there was Reg, breathless and sweating profusely. His tiny Jack Russell was trying to urinate on every vertical surface within three feet of my front door.
‘Here, I’ve come to show you this again. Amazing, eh?’ He thrust an object into my hands whose [...]
More Secrets and Pies / July 21 2008
Reg collared me again today. He was coming out of the Blockbuster store on the High Street with an arm full of DVDs. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked.
‘What’s that, Reginald?’
‘I said to the bloke in there,’ he pointed behind him, into the shop, ‘Can I have Batman Forever?’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Do you know what he told [...]
Gills On Film / April 9 2008
I was accosted by an oddly-dressed, dribbling fat man outside the Salvation Army shop this morning. He began tugging excitedly at my sleeve while pointing at something in the shop window. ‘Lobbilob!’ he exclaimed.
‘Pardon?’
‘Lobbilob!’
‘I’m sorry, I – ‘
‘Lobbilob!’
Why does this kind of thing keep happening to me? In the window was a video of shark [...]
Space Oddities / November 8 2007
An actor friend of mine has been telling me that he has a part as a ‘background Vulcan’ in the new Star Trek movie.
According to him, his odd appearance gave producers the idea to hold open casting sessions for people with ‘unique’ features to appear as extras in the film. The studio said it was [...]
28 Pints Later / May 10 2007
A zombie was desperately trying to affect entry into the house this morning at 2am.
It was Nelson. He was very much the worse for wear because he had obviously been drinking all night again. (I think he had been celebrating Tony Blair’s imminent announcement of his plans to stand down as Labour leader and Prime [...]
The Return of Tap / April 25 2007
How delighted I was to learn today that seminal rock band Spinal Tap are to reform. They will play the Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium in London in July. The group were created for Rob Reiner’s cult 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap.
I have worked with Rob Reiner’s famous father Carl, who directed my erstwhile [...]
Kurt Vonnegut RIP / April 12 2007
How sad I am to learn of the death of Kurt Vonnegut.
One of the outstanding figures of modern US literature and of 60s and 70s western counterculture, the writer has died aged 84 in New York.
He has long been one of my favourite authors and indeed, my erstwhile band Slaughterhouse 5 was named for his [...]
Bye Bye DRM / February 7 2007
All Big Arena Records’ releases are available without any form of copy protection software.
We believe that the abolition of such software – known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) – is good for both consumers, artists and music suppliers.
Major record companies are afraid of ‘leakage’ where one person illegally copies a track for somebody else. This problem [...]
