I’m a huge podcast fan.

I’m such a podcast fan I travelled to the other side of the world to attend a festival dedicated to them. I love them because they’re such an intensely personal experience. I can disappear into a conversation with total strangers about a topic that I’m interested in that maybe none of my real world friends want to chat about and have that need fulfilled in the privacy of my own car, my bedroom, or through a set of headphones while walking down the street.

For the most part, my jam has been comedy podcasts – but I, like many others, went down the rabbit hole that was Serial in 2014, and I continued even further down the Adnan Syed path by listening to Undisclosed which was an in-depth legal analysis of this case (and if you loved Serial Season One, I can’t recommend it enough). Unlike a lot of people, I was really captivated by the story of Bowe Berdahl in Season Two of Serial, so I was quite excited when I heard that the team behind Serial were releasing a new podcast, specifically produced for binge-listening where all seven parts would be dropped at once. I am, of course, referring to S-Town, which has well and truly topped 10 million downloads at this point. I’m going to put the rest of this behind the cut for those who haven’t listened and don’t want to have any details revealed to them.
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We can probably all agree that there’s more supposed ‘quality television’ out there than anyone with any semblance of a job or an attempt at a social life could possibly try to watch. I know I certainly have this problem – I’m in season two of Game of Thrones. I know. Try not to judge me too harshly.  If a series has passed a certain number of seasons it’s going to be pretty hard to sell me on it, because, to quote an overly quoted meme:

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The Hollywood Reporter recently surveyed a range of their industry readers about their favourite movie quotes of all time, and all the usual suspects were included; ‘You complete me’, ‘You can’t handle the truth’, ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’. All solid choices but maybe a little bit cliche.

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I wrote a little while ago about villains and how for as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by the antagonists in films, book, TV etc and I mentioned that I was part the way through having a portrait of Alex from A Clockwork Orange tattooed on my leg.

Well, as promised, this seemed like a good place to share the finished piece and perhaps write a little about why I chose to get an image of such a divisive character on my body in a pretty permanent fashion. Continue reading →

I’m thoroughly uncool.

I mean that in the sense that I rarely love something ‘before it’s cool’ (Taylor Swift being the exception) and I’m pretty sure that enjoying Taylor Swift does not make me cool. On the other hand, I’ve always just loved what I’ve loved, unashamedly. I mean, I’m a KISS fan, for fucks sake. There ain’t nothin cool about that.  Continue reading →