July 2011 was a gripping month in terms of breaking news. In fact, I think news itself ‘broke’ several times, and has since had to be painstakingly reassembled by the often out-of-touch presenters on our screens.
There was the dramatic re-emergence of the phone hacking scandal (with dramatic consequences for Rupert Murdoch, about whom I’ve learned an awful lot), the massacre in Norway and the death of Amy Winehouse.
But these things have already been given blanket coverage already, so I’m picking out five completely unrelated sites that have most satisfactorily intrigued me this month.
 | This collection of miscellaneous mental music made my day by reminding me of a tune from my childhood: ‘Patel Rap’. At the time, my best friend lived above a corner shop and so the lyrics rang true. It’s funny when something so silly causes you to get all nostalgic. It’s full of all the usual unusual juxtapositions: Jim Bowen raps, Arnold Layne is given a disco reworking, and Boon’s Michael Elphick sings a song from the perspective of a predatory male. |
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Alternative Ghostbusters (14th July)
If, as I suspect, we are all learning to be retronauts and hauntologists at the moment, this site really is as indispensable to us as its name suggests. This post re-imagines how the film Ghostbusters would have been advertised in bygone years. |
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‘The Sunscreen Smokescreen’ (11th July)
There is still time left to read this before your summer holiday (or vacation, if you’re in the US). David McCandless’s site Information is Beautiful goes from strength to strength in demonstrating how information can be both informative and beautiful. Here he tackles the proliferation of misinformation about sun cream. |
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‘I Sure Wish He’d Shave!’ (10th July)
A novelty record about a woman obsessed with her man’s facial hair. The site, run by Bob Purse, specialises in vanity records and song-poems. |
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Crack The Surface (10th July)
The first in a series of documentaries on Urban Explorers, who risk it all to access and infiltrate closed or forgotten spaces, abandoned buildings in the like. It’s delightfully amateurish and doesn’t try to mythologise them too much. One surprise is how urban explorers are often middle class. As one of the contributors says: “If you live in a situation that resembles an abandoned building, why the hell would you go and explore another abandoned building?” |
See the Links of the Month for June 2011.
See the Links of the Month for May 2011.
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