I'm currently in the city of Derby. I use the word city pretty loosely. I've been to abandoned mining towns that are more lively. (It's this whole Cathedral business. If you put a Cathedral up next to an outhouse in the middle of endless tundra, the Queen would declare it a city) I walked the main road from end to end last night, and didn't see a single soul on the streets for the entire journey. ...

Just before my nephew was born, I went over to Dublin for my sister-in-law's baby shower. Part of the party (for which I was mostly wrecked on whiskey sours) was an empty book that was passed around, into which all present had to write a message to Felix (who was of course at the time both nameless and genderless) that he could read when he was older. I contributed two pages: One was Superbunny, a ...

Back by popular demand, it's another edition of the destruct\hour, garunteed to expand your musical horizons whilst simultaneously reducing your stress levels. This time with more music and (slightly) less giggling ...

It's last Sunday. I'm standing at a bar. I'm hungover, so I'm just kind of staring into space, waiting for my Bloody Mary. Two women come up to the bar. One of them turns to the other and says what I swear sounds to me like: "What's a martini?" The other cocks her head and looks up and to her left, in an expression of what I swear looks to me like bafflement. I say: "A martini is traditionall ...

If you listened to the show last week, you'll recall that at one point I joked that one of my fears regarding the London bombings was that there might be a 'militarization' of London's streets; that is to say, that people would start arming themselves and having firefights on buses. I was just kidding. It was an excuse to have Al Pacino say: "Say hello to my little friend!" and then loop some gunf ...

As you may have heard, London's under attack again. Jeez, these terrorists just don't quit, do they? Anyway, the alarming thing about this is that not only have they evacuated Warren Street tube (among others), they've made an enormous cordon around the station, which actually encompasses my entire building. We've just been told we're not allowed to leave until further notice. How am I going to g ...

Like many, I was initally extremely resistant when I heard that the new War of the Worlds movie was going to be set in contemporary America. This was mainly because no-one's ever made a decent version of the original story, set in Victorian england. I can see it so vividly in my head when I read it, I really wish someone would get as excited about it as I am and make a proper movie. The architectu ...

"In later years, he came to appreciate the fact that his role inspired thousands of students to pursue a career in Engineering, something for which the Milwaukee School of Engineering granted him an honorary degree in engineering." ...

The Descent will scare the shit out of you. Let's get that straight right off the bat. I jumped out of my seat at least three times, probably a lot more. The director definitely sat down and said, first and foremost, before anything else, let's give people a few good frights. It's some scary stuff. (You can always tell a good scary film when you're walking home from the cinema in the dark and you ...

This is Grande Cobra. If you've been listening to the show recently, you will have heard them and no doubt discovered how much they rock your balls off. You're probably itching to see them perform live. Feel that itch? It's time to scratch. The Cobras are playing live this Saturday at your favourite pub and mine: The Spice of Life (6 Moor Street). Not only are they being supported by perfect pr ...

Yesterday the heat finally broke me and sent me on an exploratory mission to the Hampstead Heath ponds. Man, let me tell you, if there's anything nicer than Hampstead Heath in the summer, I mean, it's got a special charm all of its own. Absolutely fucking great. As it turns out, what looked to be a day-long legendary journey actually turned out to be a pleasant twenty-minute walk from my house. ...

Ingredients 1 Bottle Pimms 1 Bottle Lemonade 1 Bottle Canada Dry Ginger Ale 1/2 Bottle Rose's Ginger Wine A Cucumber Some mint Some apples A lemon A lime Some mandarins Some grapes (red & white) Strawberries Rasberries A Chocolate Orange Ice. Lots of ice. Dice the fruit. Don't just chuck it in there, the flesh needs to be exposed to the Pimms for full soakage. Now add 1 part Ginger Wine to 3 p ...

In the 1920's, Japanese novelist Takeda Rintaro wrote a short story about a young woman which was far more successful than he'd bargained for. Immediately after its publication, hundreds of people contacted him, demanding that he write another story. She seemed so real to them that they needed to know what happened to her "next". I could kind of symapthize with them all coming out of Maria Full ...

As many have confusingly noted, when Bono sings: "un, dos, tres, catorce!" at the opening of 'Vertigo', he's actually singing "one, two three, fourteen!" in Spanish. While some may simply chalk this up to Bono being drunk and/or crap at Spanish, U2 conspiracy theorists have interpreted it as an homage to Steve Lillywhite, the man who produced their first three albums Boy, October, and War and then ...

In my continuing attempt multi up the media of znaddanz.com, may I present the first edition of The Destruct\hour, sixty minutes of music and madness for your listening pleasure. I imagine I'm not the only person who sits at his desk listening to xfm's radiostream rotating their top ten all day, so this will be a brief respite from that. I can't promise you'll like every song, but I can promise t ...

"Excuse me, do you know where Upper Downs Street is?" "Well, Downs Street is over there. I don't know where Up Street is." ...

"It's Memento meets Fight Club!" the posters proudly announce at every possible oportunity. And they're not half wrong. In terms of being a murder-mystery in reverse with a man who refuses to remember the details, it's very much like Memento. And in terms of being the story of an insomniac who slowly figures out he's lost his mind, it's also a lot like Fight Club. However, while it is a decent and ...

I think the primary sensation I felt over Thursday and Friday, and I know I'm not the only person to have felt this, was a sort of blanket confusion about how I should be feeling. I knew I should be in a state of shock, outrage, fear, indignation, sympathy. But I didn't feel any of those. Everything felt horribly normal. I walked home through Regent's Park at about one-thirty. It was raining. The ...

The arrival of a new Chuck Palahniuk novel, while an event that usually happens without any huge PR budget or fanfare, is, to me, an occurance to dwarfs the largest film premiere. Ever since writing the book that more or less defined my generation, Chuck's batting average has been more or less perfect. Yes, he has a tendancy to wander off into the implausible at the end of all his stories, but the ...

...

...

Nothing much to report, it's all pretty confusing in terms of reports on what is happenning. I'm at work, but I'm pretty much by myself. I have a pretty great view of the city from my office so I can report the following: ++ The buses, at least the ones going past my building, appear to have stopped taking on passengers. This tracks with reports that there have been three (three?) explosions on b ...

Every now and then, without warning or expectation, life just deals you an ace card. Wandering through the lobby of my work, looking forward to little more than cooking up a curry and settling in to watch Star Trek and The OC. A quiet Tuesday night. Turning on my phone, you have one new message... "Daan, duude, get back in touch with me, it's Kathy, your mad friend buddy! Uhm I've got tickets, I ...

Well, I'm a happy bunny, because last night UK Gold started re-running The A-Team from the first episode. I love The A-Team. While I loved MacGuyver and Knight Rider more when I was I kid, after having watched them all quite recently, I have decided that, as an adult, The A-Team kicks their asses. Yes, Michael Knight has a kick-ass talking Trans-Am that he's constantly getting inside...but he al ...

...

Click here to read this week's poem! You won't regret it. ...

"Everywhere I look there's bloody Bob Geldof. All the performers taking part are mega-rich, but they're asking us for money? Bleh." "Gah! You're like the tenth person I've had to explain this to. I can't blame you, because the papers are encouraging the impression that this is just another Live Aid. Live8 is not about raising money to give to Africa. Nowhere on the Make Poverty History site is th ...

"You seem different from the last time we met." "How so?" "I don't know, more relaxed, I guess? You seemed quite shy when we first met." "Oh, I am pretty shy, really." "You don't seem too shy now. In fact you seem really confident." "Ah- that's because the stars are with me tonight." "The stars?" "Yeah. Apparently, my love house is throbbing." "Uhm... I have to go, ah...go now. I've got ...