Thom Yorke is dancing again (plus some other classic crazy dancing in rock)

Here is Thom Yorke dancing again in Atoms For Peace’s new video, Ingenue: 

Reinspired to close at end of March

It’s been an interesting three years.

6 Reasons why Nine Inch Nails reforming could be fun

Nine Inch Nails are starting again from scratch and touring from summer 2013 into next year, according to an announcement by Trent Reznor: 

#musicmonday : Nick Cave and the Stool Pigeon’s guide to music journalism

Bugger! Is that the time already? Sorry, I have been too busy laughing my assorted menagerie off at this piece from The Stool Pigeon someone’s just passed to me:

Bastard lovechild — Is sex out of wedlock still considered edgy? So why would anyone still be writing that albums ‘sound like the bastard lovechild of X and Y musicians’? I mean, there’s a good chance your parents hadn’t gotten round to tying the knot by the time you were conceived. But so what? It doesn’t make you a latter-day Edmund from King Lear. Hell, it doesn’t even make you Jon Snow off Game Of Thrones. And he’s f***ing boring.

Ghost World and the problem with nerd culture

The minute I saw Thora Birch in Ghost World, I thought she looked familiar. Not because I remembered American Beauty, or because she resembles Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games. I recognised her because I saw myself at that age – belligerently “different”, sneeringly aloof.

Later on, I realised that she was nothing like me at all – just like in Mean Girls, there isn’t much difference between the cruelty of the alternative kids and the snooty jock set, except that here almost everyone is trying desperately to please her and she throws it all back in their faces. 

Why don’t women say ‘I’m pretty?’ Here are ten reasons

I’ve often thought about blogging about this because it’s something that has fascinated me: the last taboo among women. You can never think you’re pretty. This column by Tracy Moore at Jezebel answers the question, and it’s a welcome relief to know that it’s not just me. See, I thought I had great self-esteem. I reveled in knowing that I secretly think I am pretty – not stunning, not a head-turner, but commonly quite attractive – until I hit the knock-out blow that my friend posted: “Tell me how awesome YOU are!” and I couldn’t respond. Overlooking those pounds I swore I was going to lose by January, I have a good smile … but my teeth are crooked. My calves are a good shape … but my skin is pale and blotchy and I have thread veins from pregnancy. My eyebrows aren’t symmetrical, and my nose turns up slightly more on one side than the other. I can’t think of anything about myself to compliment without slapping some huge caveat over it.

As Tracy writes:

In response to a piece called “Why Can’t Women Think They Are Pretty?” — a thoughtful look at how rare it is for women to simply admit they are pretty, when instead they are armed with a laundry list of their flaws at the ready — I was all prepared to write at length about the fact that it would do us well to focus on anything but the pursuit of beauty, so tenuous and undependable it is.

But then I put the question to four of my twenty- and thirty-something friends instead, and discovered that rather than hand-wring about the issue, every one of them had a totally figured-out narrative about their own prettiness and prettiness in general, full of exceptions and asterisks and rules, honed over a lifetime.

Banksy arrested; identify revealed – best comment on the internet

Maverick artist Banksy has been arrested on charges of vandalism, conspiracy, racketeering and counterfeiting and his identity revealed, according to Jezebel. Police Chief Wayne Leppard said:

We received word that around 2am a group of individuals left a flat speculated to be one of Banky’s art studios. This group was followed by agents and once vandalism had occurred, we then arrested the group, 5 men total. These individuals all had ID on them except for one, and that is the one we believed to be Banksy…We then raided the studio where this group was last seen leaving from. Inside we found thousands of dollars of counterfeit money along with future projects of vandalism. We also found a passport and ID of a Paul William Horner who matched the description of the man that we are currently holding.

PS4 real? Making sense of the Playstation 4

The future of gaming is just around the corner, or so they say: the Playstation 4 has finally been announced. Yesterday, Twitter and the wider web was buried under an avalanche of excitement and speculation (well, the bits of it not already knee-deep in the BRIT Awards) – so much information, it was just too much to take in. Especially when the console itself was nowhere to be seen.

Luckily the commentators of the gaming world were on hand to interpret the hyperbole and give us a realistic impression of what to expect. 

Most horrifying fan art ever

This made me laugh a lot. See, I can sympathise. My own attempts at fan art have suffered a little in the execution. For example

Stream that Radiohead-Chili Peppers-Ultraista album: Atoms for Peace – Amok

Remember Atoms For Peace from a couple of weeks ago? That collaboration between Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich and a few others?

.