Insane in the Ukraine

Woah, check out the Ukraine's Got Talent winner. She's no Stavros Flatley, of course, but good stuff nonetheless. Outsanding, you could say, if you liked dreadful puns, which we don't.

(via Holy Moly)

The Goose honks elsewhere

A bit more extracurricular writing for The Quietus from me, by way of the new Brendan Benson album over here. By the way, did you ever read their fantastic interview with Sir Patrick Moore? I wish I had his reviewing skillz. "This song did make an impression on me. A negative one. Ha ha ha!"

Well-chosen numberplate

We were up in Sandbach, Cheshire, for a wedding, and spotted this outside our hotel:

Pictures of the bride and groom never come out right anyway.

All Quietus on the Richmond Font

I'm sure you're all dying to know what I thought of Richmond Fontaine's new album, We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River... Stop panicking: I reviewed it for The Quietus, so you can find out here. Ironic last line, given length of article.


PS Yikes, it's been over a month since I last posted here. Sorry, that's probably a new record. Um, I've been away on holiday, you know, cut me some slack. Well, since Saturday, anyway. The other three weeks were just really busy. Why? Tune in to find out. Maybe.

Last orders at Borders

Had half an hour to kill on Thursday, so I dropped into the Borders closing down sale on Oxford Street to see if there was anything left. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty cleared out. But then I wandered over to the £1 shelves, which initially looked pretty scanty...

...and snapped back to reality 10 minutes later to find myself holding a sizeable stack of books.

Not one of them's on the vague "to read" list that sits somewhere at the back of my mind - yes, Sales 8, Will 0 - but all good authors, and new hardbacks at £1 each are pretty hard to put back on the shelf. From another point of view: I saved £99!

Going round in circles

First, it was this.

Then, a few months later, this.

Now, it's time for a bit of this.

Look who just shook up the spherophile top 5. UPDATE:

1. The Coen Brothers
2. Me
3. The guy who invented basketball
4. Kim Kardashian's fan club
5. Everyone else

BALE blog

Zigzagged home to my old ends a few weekends ago. Saw a field of hay bales; felt like I was in a Constable painting, sorta; sneezed heartily. Achoooooooo.

It's a popularity contest

We had my iPod's 20 most-played songs about three years ago on the Goose, but having just understood the beauty of Spotify-iTunes-Last.fm scrobbling (I've just started Last.fm-ing here) and because I could be on the brink of doing an earth-shattering system-wide play count reset, it's clearly time for another list.

This one's completely different to its 2006 counterpart, since the listening game had to effectively begin afresh with the arrival of my new iPod about a year and four months ago. It's odd the songs you accidentally become obsessed with - rather embarrassingly, I've listened to the one at the top of this list 30 times.

1. You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast - Spin Doctors
2. Troublemaker - Weezer
3. Represent - Nas
4. Me in Honey - R.E.M.
5. Leave the Scene Behind - The Wave Pictures
6. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom) - Tom Waits
7. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
8. Mutha'uckas - Flight Of The Conchords
9. Yesterdays - Guns N' Roses
10. Takeover - Jay-Z
11. Way Down in the Hole - The Blind Boys Of Alabama
12. Devil Tricks For A Bitch - Lightspeed Champion
13. Timothy - Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer
14. Needle In A Haystack - The Velvelettes
15. Let Me Take You There - Betty Boo
16. I Wish That I Could See You Soon - Herman Düne
17. California Girls - The Magnetic Fields
18. 52 Girls - The B-52's
19. MJ - Mystery Jets
20. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend

And, of course, here's that list Spotified for your listening pleasure (minus the Wave Pictures, Mr B. The Gentleman Rhymer and Tom Waits tracks, which you'll find at the other end of the links featured earlier in this sentence).

Lessons learned from... Brüno

Cage-fighting is romantic.

I can't believe I'm not watching Big Brother this year

From the Channel 4's press release highlights of tonight's show:

1.22pm
Halfwit and Marcus are in the living room. Halfwit says: 'I think I might bust some reps today.' Marcus stares into space.