The debasement of the European mind
A populist US senator meets an Italian organ-grinder in Rome in 1859.
Tag: christianity
Did the house that Jack built come from Spain?
Or, How to cook the old lady who swallowed a fly without stooping to cannibalism. Cumulative songs (and monstrous nested stuffing recipes) in Quixote and Estebanillo González, with the grossest video you’ll see today.
Christmas carousels
Impossible automata for my street organ this holiday season. Featuring Georg Büchner, Ignaz Bruder, German Christmas pyramids, dancing Hasidim, Lieutenant Kijé as you’ve probably never seen it, Le Tigre, and a crustacean.
Hackney Brook restoration scheme
Iain Sinclair wrote of when “global warming rolls a warm sea [up] the course of the old Hackney Brook.” The flow’s going to be the other way. Let me explain.
Monkeys here, monkeys there, monkeys everywhere
Victor Hugo puts on his black cap.
Mind over mutter: Céline on the challenges of speech production
Other doctor-novelists; why musicians can’t write.
Strength to sweetness
Sandwish
My top 10 boxing songs
All-star bill featuring Dan Mendoza aka the fighting Jew, manly Victorians, Joe Louis and the Dixieaires at the Battle of Jericho, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Rocky Graziano aka the Maharishi Yoghurt, Bob Dylan and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Muhammad Ali and over-reliance on computer technology, Rich Hall and the George Foreman Grill, Wesley Willis and Batman, and Ivor Cutler.
