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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
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...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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?
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.
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.