Patrick Smith

Thinking about this recently, I think the killer app for time machines might be babysitting your own children.

New parents are really busy, but who wouldn't love to go back and spend an afternoon with their children again?

A clue from the Guardian crossword reading "8 down: Like Pagliacci touching female star on date (3-5)"

Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great cryptic crossword is in Guardian today. Go and solve it. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...

Recent series have forgotten 2 things:

- it's not SF, it's moral philosophy. The space setting is how you get away with it
- it has to be monster-of-the-week for the tonal shifts. You can't interleave "Lwaxana fancies someone LOL" with "is torture ever justifiable?" That's mental

“What’s the charge? Eating a seal?”

I haven't read Barthes. Did he have an opinion on whether all giants probably sound a bit like Bernard Bresslaw?

Woe betide any ambitious parent who tries to individually characterise all the dwarfs in The Hobbit

Have compared notes on this subject with other parents. I tried to do the mouse in The Gruffalo as a sort of David Niven. Given the lack of a strong trickster archetype in Britain, that at least - I felt - conveyed his sangfroid.

Try to imagine how awful the cover might be, then look it up

YouTube video by Classic TV Zone The Wombles - Season 1 Opening credits - 1973/1975 - BBC1

Mike Batt's Wombles theme is a clarinet isn't it? For me it's between that and Mozart's clarinet concerto

youtu.be/wTKMqPg4hM8

Smokey IS The Bandit

Future me, stepping out of time machine in 1996: "...in 2005, and it will surprisingly good. OK, it's going to get weird from 2016. Then in 2026 there's going to be this celebrity fall-out, and you won't believe which side you're on..."

edited comic panel. Batman is breaking a lump-with-handle cow tool over his knee and saying "this is the tool of the cow. we do not understand it. we will not use it."

it's not FOR us

There would be some poetry in the giant Aryan golden robot boy eliminating the USA with Sibelius ringing in his ears

Roughly the inverse of Jesse Owens in 1936 Berlin

The Cygnus spaceship from Disney's The Black Hole. A sprawling Art Nouveau palace that is inexplicably flying through space

The Grand Palais in Paris lit up at night

Just look at it. The Cygnus invented Belle-Epoque-punk and no-one was brave or mad enough to follow

The Black Hole is three or four films mashed together. There's a Doug McClure adventure in there, for example.

But the sheer bleakness of the existentialist sci-fi one that's running underneath... it's like Disney Does Solaris

Plus, best spaceship design ever

Oh was The Pillow Book afterwards? I must have forgiven him

The meta makes it more upsetting, which is interesting I agree. Having a "more real" layer of the fiction really makes the unpleasantness hit. Once was enough though

I was a Greenaway freak until I saw this film. I did get through it but was pleased to get back out into fresh air afterwards

I may be alone in that I used to regret an impulse purchase of an I, Ludicrous LP

But on reflection - while it's still not exactly listenable - I'm glad to have once been so light of heart that I went out and bought an LP by I, Ludicrous

...and now we are, in the Irish parlance, giving out

Give Out But Don't Give Up by Primal Scream

Yeah, turns out Screamadelica was an Andy Weatherall album

I think she really suits the PSB deadpan

The album also has Claudia's covers of Julee Cruise (not as good, IMO - it needs to be ethereal) and Stina Nordenstam (really good: unlike Stina, I can believe she has a human boyfriend)

YouTube video by Claudia Brucken - Topic Kings Cross

Claudia Brücken sings PSB
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sOS...

I was not aware

Jeff is a regular at Davos and Bohemian Grove where he obtains IR funding for the year

The rescues are a demonstration of his power and reach, should that ever dry up

Ad for French aperitif Byrrh showing a family at the beach. The father is wearing a singlet bathing suit and smoking a pipe

Men, what's stopping you from dressing like this

Craven's boss in Edge of Darkness? Among a craggy cast he stood out as the craggiest

A flyer for a French tourist attraction called Parc du Thot

Parc du quoi?

Harpo Speaks!

3 Screenshots from the movie "Rush" (2013): First, two race cars speed down a track with the text "Grand Prix of the United States, The Glen, October 5 1975" overlaid. Second, a smiling man in racing gear is doused with champagne, wearing a laurel wreath, with American flags in the background. Third, two men converse in a lively racing pit area, with one man holding a cigarette, and subtitles reading, "With a car like that, the rest of us never really stood a chance, did we?"

Oct 5th 1975 - A malfunction with James Hunt's Hesketh forced him to retire mid-race, handing the 1975 U.S. Grand Prix title to Niki Lauda.

📽️📅 Depicted in Rush (2013)

They should have a chat with Asif Aziz, sounds like they're on the same page

Can relate. Spending too much time in the early career room is like filling up on bread at a restaurant