irish times

Pakistan and India: armed and fabulous

The India-Pakistan Wagah border flag-lowering ceremony, as witnessed by the BBC’s Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Suspect is armed & dangerous

Is this the least likely (& most amusing) photo of a youthful Bill Gates you’ve ever seen? Haha… not by long shot it ain’t.

That’s some real conversation for your ass

Top 5 Reasons Why Ben Folds’ Bitches Ain’t Shit is the Greatest Thing Ever.

1. Okay, technically, “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks” is about the most misogynistic statement you could possible make. But for some reason, it’s even more UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLY misogynistic when uttered by a nerdy, middle class white guy (accompanying himself on the piano). This has more than just shock value though. Read the rest of this entry »

SXSW: dispatches from the frontline

Day began @ 6.30 in the AM when a 30-piece Mariachi band in full regalia performed a surprise gig in my hotel bedroom. Advance warning would have been nice, but the set certainly created some buzz in the adjoining rooms and corridor. Read the rest of this entry »

Published: Irish Times, February 13 2010

You can’t hurry love?

THE LIGHTING IS soft. That’s the first thing you notice when you arrive downstairs at the Turk’s Head pub in Dublin city centre. If it were any softer, you might pull up a chair by one of those old flower pots and ask what she looks for in a relationship. The organisers of tonight’s speed dating event asked participants to assemble at 7.45pm sharp. I arrive at 7.49pm, so flustered I almost sign up for salsa dancing lessons by accident. But nothing actually happens until almost 9pm.

The ladies, by and large, have shown up in pairs. They sit awkwardly at the bar, fixing their hair and stealing furtive glances at the latest arrivals. The guys have almost all come alone. But as with any group of men, thrown together in any circumstances, anywhere in the world, we pick up the conversation almost without missing a beat. Robbie Keane to Celtic, huh? How’ll that pan out? Risky move on Spurs’ part. He scores goals, the boy scores goals… Read the rest of this article here.

Catholic Mass: A Critical Analysis

Previously, I reviewed the Nitelink, Brendan Thompson getting his mickey caught in his zip and, of course, your ma. Those all took the piss. This on, the other hand, was written for the Irish Times. Therefore I’ve striven to make my opinions as boring and not insane as possible. The Vatican has, apparently, issued a whole load of guidelines about what a mass sermon should be.

Last Sunday, I was asked to head along to mass and offer up my verdict. I wasn’t hugely impressed with what I found. Read the rest of this entry »

Nitelink 69N: a critical analysis

The sights, sounds and smells of late night urban transportation are all powerfully evoked by Nitelink 69N (Westmoreland Street, 2.45am). The dialogue is crisp and authentic, with some riveting individual performances extracted from a cast of veritable unknowns. Read the rest of this entry »

Your Ma: A Critical Perspective

There has been a tendency in recent times to recalibrate the matriarch by endowing her with glamour, sophistication or sex appeal. Unapologetically bucking this trend, however, is your Ma: a gormless, rotund but ultimately lovable woman, who makes a persuasive case that the best path forward for the Irish Mammy lies not in elegance or refinement, but in understatement and verisimilitude. Read the rest of this entry »

One way around there, folks, one way around.

Your most uncharitable captions, please. Disclaimer: I may alter this post at a later date to make it appear as though you people just started leaving mean comments on here for no reason. Them’s the risks you take, motherfuckers. Them’s the risks you take.

Damien to the rescue

First of all, to anyone who called, emailed or texted me in the last ten days but never heard back, I apologise. I was really, really busy. (Unless you’re a PR person of any description, in which case I probably was just ignoring you.) Anyway, I’m back in the land of the living now. A couple of thing I loved while I’ve been away…. Read the rest of this entry »