Round-up of the week
Good god, for some of you, it’s finally pay day, which means a week of feast and three weeks of famine. Again.
The Scoop
We did our first liveblog of Mayor Questions on the budget on Wednesday. It’s the best.
Other features in The Scoop:
1. Will Boris’s credit card deal repeat Oyster mistakes?
2. Mobiles on the Tube – Boris wants them, but do you?
3. Lambeth’s Labour rebel left out in the cold
We’ve also set up a tipline: email the Scoop team at scoop@snipe.at if something in your Borough needs the harsh light of a moderately-trafficked website upon it.
In Art, Lauren Down has a week’s worth of amazing art picks.
In Books, Jon Davis takes on that scourge of our time, the libraries
In Film, Rebecca Sear is unimpressed with unscary theological thriller, The Rite and Declan Tan tolerates West is West and The King’s Speech.
In The Metropolis, we take a look at the awesome work of London’s Awesome Foundation, and watch an actual working Angry Birds Birthday cake.
Michael Pollitt rounds-up the best Internet memes of the week, then stokes the war between the sexes with his Things girls wear that guys secretly hate.
Finally, we’ll play you out with Tom Jenkin’s lovingly curated MPFree’s.
MPFrees – 25Feb2011 by snipelondon
25 Feb 2011
Milk It by the Palpitations
South London’s The Palpitations release second single Milk It/Love Is True (That’s Why It Hurts) on March 28th, through CLUB.THE.MAMMOTH. Danielle, Davey, Nicolas and William make the sort of menacing, bluesy, indie-rock so beloved of The Duke Spirit. Big guitars, clattering drums, tales of misguided, romantic posturing: ‘You used to walk to mine and stay up late/Watching movies, hoping you’d get laid/But I would always fall asleep/You’d tell yourself it was sweet’, spits Danielle.
Head over to the band’s website to download a free Bobarella remix.
The Palpitations – Milk It by clubthemammoth
Follow MPFree editor Tom Jenkins at TomJenkinsLDN
25 Feb 2011
West is West
As the long-awaited sequel to the 1999 breakout hit that was East is East, comes scribe Ayub Khan-Din’s West is West, a continuation of the Salford-set story of Sajid (Aqib Khan), jumping us forward five years to 1976. Except this time the plot moves the family (or at least 2 members of it, initially) out from the bleak chip chop and terraces of Greater Manchester to father George’s motherland, Pakistan.
25 Feb 2011
The Rite
If there was an Oscar for most misleading film trailer, then my money would be on The Rite. Of course that’s an absurd award category, and I don’t have any money. But you get the idea. What the trailer promises the viewer is a supernatural horror film possessed by the spirit of Hannibal Lecter, which tantalises our obsession with the macabre. What we’re given is something quite different.
25 Feb 2011
You have only three days to apply for a £1000 Awesome Grant from the Awesome Foundation. Yes, the Awesome Foundation.
The London branch of the Awesome Foundation is looking to give £1000 to an awesome idea. But you have only until 28 February to apply.
The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences was created two years ago by Tim Hwang in Massachusetts, where he enlisted ten trustees to put US $100 per month in a paper bag.
The London chapter opened last year, founded by a bunch of Internet luminaries such as Jane ni Dhulchaointigh of Sugru and Richard Moross of Moo.com who, as financially solvent people, can afford £100 every second month.
London micro-trustee and spokesperson ni Dhulchaointigh says the shortlist is drawn-up in two rounds. First, all applications are reviewed 1 March at an open meeting at a Shoreditch pub and shortened to three. The three applicants are then invited to pitch their awesome idea at a second open meeting on 3 March. The trustees hand over £1000 to the best proposal.
Since May, three Awesome Grants have been awarded.
The first grant was awarded to artist Oscar Lhermitte, who proposed the Big Dipper project. (That’s him with his giant cheque, at the top of the page.) As it has been decades since the stars were clearly visible over London, Lhermitte proposed an installation using LEDs and, I think, balloons, to recreate the constellations.
The Big Dipper project from Oscar Lhermitte on Vimeo.
The second grant was awarded to the Hoxton Street Monster Supply Store. Selling such staples as ‘different types of fear, a complete range of edible human preserves and everyday household essentials like Fang Floss and Zombie Mints,’ the Monster Shop has a side business in writing workshops for kids, kids who may be reluctant to go to a writing workshop but stoked to go to a Monster Supply Shop.
The third, and last awarded grant, was to the People’s Kitchen at Passing Clouds in Haggerston. Every Sunday, a free dinner is provided to 60 – 70 people followed by an evening of music. The first 20 people who show up are the cooks.
So, who should apply? Ni Dhulchaointigh says that the foundation is wants to ‘look at anything that is awesome.’ But there are two rules to the Awesomeness.
First, it must be new. The Foundation is there to create awesomeness, not be a regular funding agency for something already existing.
Second, the project must be capable of being implemented with the £1,000 awarded. The micro-trustees won’t award the grant to anyone that must fundraise further.
If you want to apply, the deadline is drawing near, 28 February.
25 Feb 2011
25 Feb 2011
Interpretation of Memes: Boycott's sandwich, a vintage LOLcat and the rest of the week's internet
It’s been a week of seismic and lasting geopolitical change which will impact upon us all, so here are some links to things of no significance whatsoever.
Words of the week
“I don’t eat curries, which is what they normally give you. So I bring sandwiches. Anything which is spicy just burns. I said, ‘I want to speak to the general or the brigadier, whoever’s in charge, ‘cause I’m taking my bloody sandwiches in.’”
In a week where we can’t even get our folks out of Libya without massive embarrassment, who else but Geoff Boycott to prove we can still pack a punch on the world stage. Faced with officious security in Delhi, did he back down and meekly surrender? Did he go squealing for help to the Americans? No he did not, and he damn well got those salmon sandwiches inside the ground. What a hero.
Literary game of the week
Pick the most depressed author out of this series of jacket photos for Penguin’s great looking new Mini Modern Classics. Our selection: Hans Fellada. Come on guys, you got published! So why is Saul Bellow the only one smiling? Ah Saul Bellow, y’old dog.
Internet monolith news of the week
We were grateful that a new Breakup Notifier App, which promised to send an email to you if one of your stalkees changed their relationship status, has been blocked by Facebook. But not until 3.6m sorry individuals had downloaded it.
But we were frankly a little miffed that Google decided to roll out its new Recipe View feature to the US and Japan only. Apparently ours is on it’s way.
Sundries
We resolved to go to the V&A Reading Rooms the next time we want to swank about London reading gorgeous books and sipping overpriced wine in a congenial atmosphere. [Via @_loveliness]
Is the Wikileaks merch shop a valid exercise in fundraising for an unjustly persecuted organisation, or a cynical and dispiriting capitulation to the dark forces of globalised commerce? Either way the t-shirts are hideous.
And finally, because anyone who does an online round-up has to sign a contract with the internet promising to include at least one cat a month, here is a 1960’s LOLcat. Aren’t cats great?
25 Feb 2011
London agenda for Friday 25 February
1. Watch the a modern Lord of the Flies in the ace Japanese classic Battle Royale
2. Wander in Highgate Wood [Tired of Life]
3. Hoxton it up with James Holden + Luke Abbott + Dollop DJs [Spoonfed]
4. Spend the next 72 hours wallowing in free non-stop live art, performance, music, films, installation, workshops, theatre and parties with Shunt [Alan Hindle]
5. Listen to looped, psychedelic images flickering against rich layered audio recordings at Mark Dean’s installation [Lauren Down]
6. Technopunk with Juan Maclean (DJ set) + Matias Aguayo and Daniel Maloso + The Hundred in the Hands + Stopmakingme [Flavorpill]
25 Feb 2011
Queen Of Hearts
It seems Snipe favourite Dreamtrak has been working away in his neon primary-coloured audio lab, both producing and remixing an interesting new protege in Queen Of Hearts. Many switched-on sets of eyes are keenly focussed on the elegant hooks and sharp looks of this emerging pop starlet. Keep ‘em peeled… and whet your appetite on Dreamtrak’s own characteristically shiny remix of “Freestyle” below.
Freestyle (Dreamtrak Remix) by Queen Of Hearts
Photo: Jenny Brough
24 Feb 2011
Laws Of Gravity by Rubik
Today’s MPFree is another slice of ace, 80s inspired, Scandinavian pop music, this time from Finland’s Rubik. Current single Laws Of Gravity starts calmly enough: Artturi Taira’s falsetto twists and turns over a tumbling drum track, before synth strings signal the arrival of a monster chorus – ‘soundtrack to the final scene of an 80s teen movie’ type monster chorus. Basically, if this had been released in 1984 Simple Minds wouldn’t have had a career.
Debut UK album ‘Solar’ is released May 2nd, via Fullsteam Records. Stream Laws of Gravity below.
Rubik – Laws Of Gravity by snipelondon
Follow Tom Jenkins on Twitter at TomJenkinsLDN
24 Feb 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Diary of the shy Londoner
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