Tom Lennon • Freelance Writer: comedy and pop culture

Freelance writer specializing in comedy and the geekier end of the pop culture spectrum.

Latest Stuff

This is why I like Tom Waits

I've never made a secret of the fact that my all-time favourite recording artist bar none is Mr Thomas Alan Waits of Pomona, California. My all-time favourite album is a Tom Waits album, my all-time favourite concert was a Tom Waits concert and my all-time favourite song about inebriated pianos is a Tom Waits song about an inebriated piano. You get the drift.He'll be touring soon, which is good news for me. Assuming I get a ticket, that is. Getting hold of a ticket for a Tom Waits concert is a fiendishly difficult business. The last time he played in [...]

The Howling

So there I was, sitting on the sofa last night with Clare by my side, indulging in a late night telephone conversation with Brother Younger. The conversation was predictably unpredictable, a tangential soup that included Napoleon Bonaparte's exile on St Helena, the inherent wankiness of certain city centre bars and the amount of facial hair in the film Iron Man (which, we agreed, was one of the most heavily-bearded Blockbusters in recent memory). For some reason - God only knows why - we moved onto the topic of John Hughes' films. Rob was a bit confused by the term, so [...]

No, I’m Iron Man…

Rol liked Iron Man, too:Finally we have the world's undisputed Greatest Living Actor in the role of Stark's backstabbing father figure, Obadiah Stane. I couldn't have been more excited when I heard they'd cast The Dude himself in this role, though I was also a little concerned that they'd try to make him too much of a cartoon baddy. Not the case - though only given a few crucial scenes to work with, Jeff Bridges alternates between sympathetic and chilling throughout. And it's refreshing to see a villain in a comic book movie totally devoid of the OTT histrionics that [...]

Nyman

While we're on the subject of the Latitude Festival (and, let's face it, I have been banging on a bit about it as of late), I was pleased to see that the minimalist composer Michael Nyman (he of The Piano soundtrack fame) will be "curating a programme specifically for the intimate environment of the Music and Film Arena." That sounds like my kind of shit, that does.I do like Michael Nyman. It's not so much because of his score for The Piano, which I didn't care too much for as a film, to be honest. (For one thing, the protagonist [...]

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