Living in a current climate of 'Social Stats' - there's this need to have everything measured and rated particularly on Social Networks like Facebook etc. Interesting geeky times which I don't mind, though when it comes to the often-asked, "Name your top 5 favourite" (add 'Films', 'Albums', 'TV Programmes' etc.), I hate to, as there's just too much good stuff in the world of Pop-Culture and so much evolves/relates to what's gone before.
When Andy, Amber & I were hanging out with Tarantino the other week at the after-party for Sky's Celebrity Banger Rally Racing, QT had a good rapid response for all those "All time / fave lists" type questions when I asked him his "Top 5 Horror Films". He quickly began a top rant with, "Well, today it would definitely include 'The Exorcist' for its immaculate cast(ing), alongside "Carrie" and John Carpenter's "The Thing" with terrific tension that trickled through the screen onto the audience, though tomorrow, alright, it may be totally different, alright!".
One definitive top ten I could probably finalise and have actually wanted to pen (at some stage, time permitting), would be Top 10/all-time favourite magazines, seeing as I've derived some much pleasure from them over the years. Some titles have changed from over a quarter century of collecting and rampant reading but core publications still include: 2600, Wired (even made it my homepage recently!), Fortean Times, Record Collector, Mojo & Rolling Stone.
Recent firm favourites from this century (!) and likely to remain so: Vanity Fair, Vice, The New Yorker, Fast Company and numerous specific supplements from newspapers e.g Mondays for Media in The Guardian & same day for The Independent too.
Anyway, right up there, probably in the top 3 is 'Time Out'. Since, breaking away from the celebrity obsessed culture of slapping someone famous (for the sake of being famous) for their brief '15 minutes', the brilliantly quirky 'Time Out ' is one of my weekly essential reads. Packed with tantalising tit-bits of London life, thorough 'Music', 'Film', 'Nightlife' and 'TV' listings (to name but a few), 'Time Out' also holds my interest on practically every page from hilarious well-written readers' letters, 'The Big Smoke' that encompasses cracking snippety features such as 'On The Buses' where a ride is taken on every number bus, having started at no.1, counting upwards (!) Shouts to 'Time Out Classics' a quick dip into the mag's archive for a class cover and what the mag back then contained. Yes, you get the picture, 'Time Out's running tings from cover right through to the final back page column, 'My Favourite Londoner' where a worthy celeb waxes lyrical about a Londoner who they rate (& why etc.)
Roy Bartholomew summed it up well in his "TO die for" letter (issue 1934, September 12-18) succintly saying, "I had spent years watching Time Out turn into a flabby monster, seemingly interested mainly in food and TV. Now it's just great to see a magazine, that, once again, knows and loves London - every mile of its multi-ethnic self. If London is an aromoa, TO is the bottle they keep it in. Great Work: a great magazine for a great city."
Typically on point extract from this week's Time Out:
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