What The Force Does Next

The Force awakens, drags a comb across its head, finds its way downstairs and drinks a cup, and looking up it notices that it's late ...

The Best Thing on TV

Welcome to Underhand Productions' 'Master Surgeon'.

You six amateur surgeons must choose from a selection of twelve surgical instruments.

Surgeons, you have one hour to perform a cholecystectomy. Good luck!

You are now about half way.

Five minutes.

Time is up. Surgeons put down your scalpels and step away from your tables.

Put down your scalpels!

Hardboiled Sentence of the Week

Hardboiled sentence of the week: 'I usually drink for good reason -- Immanuel Kant's birthday, the anniversary of my third paternity suit -- but I was just trying to pass the time while I waited for the client.' 

Jay Russell, Celestial Dogs

Setting Your Teeth On Edge

So there I was in the dentist's office, waiting for my appointment, reading Arthur Conan Doyle. Which book? 'Tales of Unease'.

Wedged between Kingsley Amis and Will Self

Oh look, here I am rubbing shoulders with Kingsley Amis, Alexander Baron, Al Alvarez, Bernice Rubens, Frederic Raphael, Clive Sinclair, Howard Jacobson, Harold Pinter, Zadie Smith, Naomi Alderman & Will Self ... but do I get even a penny extra in royalties? Fuhgeddaboutit. 

Jewish Quareterly 60th Anniversary Collection 

Foreskin's Lament

A high school English teacher once reprimanded me for my excessive use of irony. I wonder what she would have made of this ...

Ode to my Foreskin

Oh, foreskin, oh

Oh, foreskin

Oh, socially circum –

scribed foreskin

Oh, you’re not there

where

I like to rub

Oh, if I should forget thee

oh, foreskin

let my right hand

lose its cunning

But don’t think it’s cause I’m a prig

I’ll still have

my left left

with which to frig

Oh, foreskin, oh

I am like a polo neck sweater

without a polo

neck, so

merely a sweater

The kind a beatnick would not dare

to wear

Oh, despair!

Oh, foreskin, oh

Though I rub and rub

my poor old nub

remains a stub

Oh, there’s the rub

Oh, there’s the rub

Inglorious Bastet

The Cat Creature (1973)

Watchable made-for-TV movie directed by Curtis Harrington, based on a Robert Bloch script, featuring a Bast-worshipping, ancient Egyptian variant of a vampire who turns into a terrifying embodiment of pure evil—a black housecat.

Why put yourself through this anodyne, predictable exercise in cosy horror? The cast, that’s why. There’s Kent Smith (Oliver Reed in Val Lewton’s chiller, Cat People) as an antiquities appraiser, Keye Luke (Mr Wing from Gremlins) as a cat burglar, Gale Sondegaard as a louche occult store owner, velvet-voiced David Hedison (I could happily listen to him read the telephone directory … for at least ten minutes) as an amorous professor, Peter Lorre Jr as the gurning pawnbroker who gets it in the back, Milton Parsons as the creepy coroner, John Abbot as a know-it-all, and John Carradine as a sleazy hotel clerk sharing screen space with a sauced, sassy, scene-stealing (sadly uncredited) dwarf prostitute named Mabel. Oh, and Meredith Baxter from Family Ties is in it, too.