Editorial.

Extra extra. Read all about it.

I’m a regular contributor for several web and print publications, including The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Urban List, Frankie, Red Bull and Adventure.com.

 
 
Frankie Magazine

The wine snobs

Don’t let the glass sniffers make you feel inferior: it’s OK to not know heaps about wine. To never have considered that a glass of vino could be ‘cheeky’, ‘flamboyant’ or ‘chewy’. If you’d like to know more about choosing a good drop, and think ‘terroir’ is a type of small dog, this article is for you: our ultimate no-fuckwittery guide to wine.

READ ON: FRANKIE

Being Nakhane Toure

Being Nakhane Touré

It only takes Nakhane about thirty seconds to drop something weirdly profound. “I’m in Lisbon at the moment. I wanted to be lonely and write some songs, and Lisbon’s beautiful in a post-grandeur, dilapidated, cracking sort of way. There’s something sad about it. Although coming from a country once colonised by Portugal, I don’t know how sad I can be.”

READ ON: BEAT MAGAZINE

the bigger luke hypothesis

The Bigger Luke Hypothesis (or BL or BgL for short) is perhaps the most beautifully absurd fan theory of all time. The basic premise is that there are, in fact, two Luke Skywalkers that appear in the original Star Wars trilogy, one about 2 to 3cm taller than the other one. So is this a real thing, or just an elaborate meme?

READ ON: THE GUARDIAN

 

up shit creek

I move cautiously to the lip of the canal and peer over, expecting some turgid river of nameless sludge. Instead, there’s a briskly moving stream of…yeah, water. Not particularly attractive water. It’s grey and cloudy, the colour of an old cataract, and with occasionally familiar objects (let’s call them ‘objects’) floating in the current. But definitely water. 

READ ON: ROLLING STONE

Fake Shamans

Turning up the volume

Nice evening in the Punjab, Pakistan. The sun’s going down behind the spires of Badshahi Mosque, settling into a hazy purple twilight, and on the roof of an ice cream parlour in downtown Lahore, two guys are installing a turntable and complicated mixing gear. Down on the streets, the city’s red-light district, Heera Mandi, is starting to flicker...

READ ON: ADVENTURE.COM

this guy sits better than you

If sitting is the new smoking, then Robby Silk—a journalist who’s pioneering the sport of ‘extreme sitting’—has a pack-a-day habit. But in our hyper-connected, on-the-go, tech-addicted world, could simply sitting down be the most hardcore test of physical and mental endurance? Turns out there’s more to sitting than you might think.

READ ON: ADVENTURE.COM

 

Is political satire dead?

The day reality jumped the shark, some say, was November 7th 2020. That’s when former New York mayor and Trump lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani faced the waiting cameras in front Four Seasons Total Landscaping in northeast Philadelphia, just down the road from a sex shop and a crematorium (two separate businesses, it should be stressed). 

READ ON: ROLLING STONE

Battle of the Oranges

BATTLE OF THE ORANGES

The ancient Roman town of Ivrea is like every other town in northern Italy. Tourists come and take pictures of the castle. Old Italian men do old Italian men things, like nap and play draughts. But for three days every February, Ivrea’s quiet, hardworking people gather into nine tribes, don helmets and body armour, and hurl fruit at one another with extreme aggression.

READ ON: RED BULL

Forests that Will Feed the World

forests that will feed the world

In 1975, Geoff Lawton was 21 years old, surfing with friends on the west coast of Morocco. It was something they did every year. Get seasonal jobs, rent kombi vans, camp on the wild beaches near Agadir and ride the rolling North Atlantic swells. Then one day, the waves went flat. Geoff and his friends decided to head for the mountains.

READ ON: ADVENTURE.COM

 

Rage against the machine

The man who invented the Web is on mute. I can see his mouth moving, but no sound comes out. It’s nice to know this sort of thing happens to once-in-a-generation geniuses, too. “Ah, there we are,” he says, “I’m back.” This is the story of how Sir Tim Berners-Lee is trying to save the world wide web. And everyone in it.

READ ON: ROLLING STONE

The people who read to animals

Choosing a book for a sheep is no easy task. I’m sitting on the floor in front of my bookshelf, assessing the options. Joyce and Melville seem a bit highbrow and esoteric for the average sheep. Maybe The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks? A little on-the-nose. Inspiration suddenly strikes. I reach for Orwell…

READ ON: THE GUARDIAN

Chew your toothpaste

I’ve always enjoyed that scene in The Fifth Element where Milla Jovovich puts two tablets in a bowl, places the bowl in the microwave – there’s an instant ping! – and out comes a perfectly cooked roast chicken. Well, imagine the same thing. But for toothpaste. Welcome to the brave new world of oral hygiene.

READ ON: THE GUARDIAN

 

The New New Media

In the wake of 2023’s so-called ‘media apocalypse’, a plucky band of resistance websites has decided to fight back. On the outside they look like the old guys, but under the hood it’s a different story (so to speak). Have journalist-run co-operatives finally cracked the content code?

READ ON: THE STORY

ROAD TEST: MILK

I’ve always had this recurring fantasy where I buy a 2L strawberry Big M, sit on the couch, and just drink the whole thing. As a kid, skulling an entire 2L Big M somehow represented a mysterious but significant passage into adulthood. Let’s put Australia’s flavoured milks through their proverbial paces.

READ ON: FRANKIE

THE POET OF AMAZON

He was one of Amazon’s most prolific product reviewers. But when poet and author Kevin Killian died in 2019, he left behind something more profound than shopping advice. He left behind an artistic legacy. For what it’s worth, I give Selected Amazon Reviews five stars.

READ ON: THE STORY

Print isn’t dead. It’s just sleeping.