Recent content by Matimus

I think they're referring to the fact that Led Zeppelin practically strip-mined Lord of the Rings for lyrics and song concepts and whathaveyou.

What I think is a bit of a travesty is that it's pretty clear that a lot of hard work's gone into this pub, and the result is a genuinely wonderful place to go to in order to imbibe perception-altering substances. But godawful, ham-fisted, lazy, evil cack like Bored of the Rings and The Soddit...

If they did, it'd probably be a cold, focus-grouped corporate monstrosity with as much personality as a granite accountant. It does seem a bit unfair. There're more Sherlock Holmes-themed pubs in London alone than you can shake a slipper full of tobacco at, but they get a free pass because...

I just want to see The Battle of Helm's Deep being run on Tom & Jerry rules.

I main thing I liked about the Timothy Zahn Star Wars books set right after the original trilogy is that the New Republic is having to try and work out how to make the astro-trains run on time and make sure everybody's space-rubbish is being collected every other Thursday, and the Empire in...

I submit to you that any fantasy story ever written would be improved if you replaced every single sword in it with a frying pan.

Depends on the sword. Anything European before the late 16th century is pretty much an iron bar with a pointy tip for sticking in folk after you've finished pulverising them. That's probably due to the fighting Bishop Princes they had in the Holy Roman Empire. Clerics were forbidden to spill...

1) Though I tend to take them with not so much a pinch as the entire annual output of the salt mine, stories set in an American high school in which pretty, athletic people are treated like some sort of golden demigods, and anyone else is a blundering, graceless serf. I just hate it when they...

On a chain, in me weskit pocket.

Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves Shut up, I liked it.

One of the main things that turn me into a scowling, muttering misanthrope is that if a science-fiction or fantasy book does any bit of business or gets a film or TV adaptation, it tends to migrate into Your Actual Fiction, so we end up with a book like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, an...

If it turns out that everything Kenny says is a quote from Mein Kampf, we can totally say we called it.

Well, Cartman is. I'd kind of debate a show being anti-Semitic if it ascribes those views to a character we're clearly not supposed to like or approve of. They've made the odd Cartman-unrelated one, like Jews possessing no rhythm or actually carrying small bags of gold at all times, but I very...

I've worked in a bookshop for a few years, and I've never seen a MBP-winner that a) didn't appear to be groaning under its own ponderous, weighty societal relevance and b) I ever would consider reading. What gets me are the people who seem to think the term 'literature' means 'things I...

I tend to ignore the things I don't like so I can pretend that I live in a world in which Mitch Benn is the most famous musician of all time, and that they televise RPGs instead of poker. But there are a few things worthy of mention: Football - The lynchpin of my theory that the social...