This week an anonymous man in Japan parted with about $6,000 on a Yahoo Auctions site so that he could own a small, naked, plastic statue of Mika. The figurine in question was made by some hobbyist. What in God's name is going on? Even a rabid fanbase as dedicated and giddy as Radiohead's would balk at spending thousands and thousands of pounds on a piece of merchandise made by some Herbert in a garage. Even if it was a model of Thom Yorke with his boobs out.
I have never and hopefully will never understand the nebbish world of Japanese figurine collections. They look awful and are extremely expensive. Usually they're vaguely pornographic too. Displaying a whole collection of them is akin to a person deciding to not ever bathe again. An anti-social gesture, designed to put up a wall between them and all other humans. Once you have shelved and polished your brood of plastic anime sex-children you have effectively snuffed out the light of all future social interaction.



What they think it says - ACTUAL SALES BULLSHIT: Shimmering sequins and gold chains surround an Italian calfskin carrying case that keeps your phone safe, while a logo medallion dangles form the front.





Unless you work for a black-interest magazine (
A lot of people will tell you Jews control the entertainment industry. A lot of people will tell you that the Jewish hand hovers above our beloved stars of stage and screen, controlling their every move like the eczema-afflicted appendage of a Hebrew puppet master. A lot of people will tell you that Jewish fixers pay off the Russian police so that when Duncan from Blue gets onto a crowded Moscow subway train wearing his bespoke "frotting shorts" no charges are brought against him. The people who say all of this are correct. The magazine which I worked for may not have had any Jewish people working in it or near it, but let's not fool ourselves: it was dancing to the wicked tune of the Semite. Elders of Zion? More like Elders of Lee Ryan (from Blue)!

Persistent rumblings suggest this is already on the cards. Thankfully I'm too lazy to do even the most cursory of internet searches to find out whether
Good games don't necessarily make good films. What might seem like a stable premise for a Super Nintendo game ("he's a fox that flies in the stars! He's a Star Fox!") will probably not be enough to support a 90-minute feature film.
A long-running series of children's fantasy books revolving around the titular Redwall Abbey - a sanctuary for adventuresome woodland animals. It was a great franchise back in the day - and not only because it taught children to discriminate blindly on the basis of species (all mice, badgers and rabbits were "good", all weasals, rats and stoats were irrecoverably "evil").
How bleak. How predictable. Everybody went mad over
A moderately successful franchise in its time, Visionaries is - in fairness - probably quite low-down on the list of things destined to be remade. Which is of course no guarantee it won't be. Did anyone anticipate Alvin & The Chipmunks becoming a money-spewing super-title? Was there a single right-thinking human who thought they'd see the day that
Oh God, have you seen 
Another title that's been on the lips of film execs for what feels like forever. It's hard to justify a live-action
At some point someone will try and mythologize the 90s Brit-pop scene, either on television or film. They'll look at
Sporadically 


