ramblin’ – Page 24 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

The Cut Season 2 Episode 19

By the time this episode drops, the Cut Crew will be on retreat, comfortably snugged into a big cottage by the sea, somewhere far from Reading. It will be a time of healing, a chance to regain perspective, a moment to reflect and re-energise as the world swings into whatever it’s deciding to call normal this week. We hope, Readership, you’re able to find your own path through the woods and out into the sunshine.

In this episode—purple Smurfs, Duke Ellington’s tips on creativity and the costumes of Ferris Bueller.

If (time) = NOW and (place) = HERE then (this) = … anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

The Cut Season 2 Episode 18

Welcome to the fiftieth episode of The Cut! Begun as an exercise in sanity-preservation in the height of lockdown, we’re pleased to have kept the momentum going, sending our patent-pending brew of links and commentary without pause to our literally dozens of readers for all this time. Of course this means there’s an even bigger milestone looming up on the horizon in a couple of weeks…

This week, we ask important tongue-related questions, introduce you to The Witch of King’s Cross and sing a song for the man who took the loneliest flight of all.

Time check! Now! Location check! Here! This is The Cut!

The Cut Season 2 Episode 17

There are a few pots of seedlings on a warm, sunny windowsill at Cut Command. Tomatoes and a couple of kinds of chilies. Normally, the gardeneers in the office would simply buy plants to pot out in our little patch of ground out past the back door. This year they decided to try and grow from seed. The progress has been slow, a little worrying when we come in to find the plants have gone floppy for no good reason. But it’s such a nice feeling to see that dot of green on the surface of a pot appear, reach out and stretch into a new life, a new kind of potential.

That’s a metaphor for something, probably.

This week, how you can’t walk away from a memory on the internet (even when it didn’t happen), the trouble with vinyl and a real blast from the past.

See now this right here now, this is The Cut.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 15

Is it sensible to ignore a huge breaking news event, given that any response we give is liable to raise hackles?

Yes, Readership, we believe it is.

In this week’s ep, Britfunk and Prog bump up against a very large synthesiser. We look at the quiet still point of a noir classic and wonder just what the heck is up with Trump and Musk. And is Trump and Musk a fragrance brand we should look to market?

This time is adjacent to the place in which you will find The Cut.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 7

It’s all feeling a bit liminal. Although the news improves around vaccination levels and dropping R rates, life still has the frozen quality of a holding pattern. The streets remain quiet, the shops mostly closed. The pubs… better not to think about that lest we dissolve into a puddle of regretful tears. But hey, as the great seer Steve Miller put it— ‘time keeps on tickin’, tickin’, tickin’, into the future’. Bring on the summer.

Today we check out the fun you can have with explosives, consider how a Mars colony might deal with a pandemic and consider the vexed question of American cheese.

Hey, you there! Now is the time, yeah? This is the place, right? What else could this be but The Cut‽

The Cut Season 2 Episode 5

Hotchie motchie! Another wild ride of a week, eh? We feel as if we’ve been shoved headfirst into the bell of a euphonium which is being enthusiastically but tunelessly played by an elephant with really bad halitosis. If you too are getting the hardcore blasts of bad wind blues, then retreat to your safe, quiet space—here at The Cut we will firmly coddle your mollies.

This week we’ve got dragons, William Burroughs putting a coffee bar into a time warp and the story of how the Emperor got his Groove.

Now be the time. Here be the place. This be The Cut.

The Cut Season Two Episode One

We made it! Welcome to 2021, the year of hope after whatever the hell that shitshow we’ve just endured was. All is reset, we can begin again as if nothing had happened, secure in the knowledge that the world is now a better, brighter place…

Yeah, alright, maybe not. Nevertheless, here we are at the arbitrary start of a new unit of time measurement. Let’s at least start with a positive outlook, yeah?

We’ll have reports from our film, literature, food and music desks who all have a nod for their favourite thing of the year, as well as some more of the random nonsense you’ve come to tolerate over the last months. Shall we begin?

Now be the time. Here be the place. This are The Cut.

The Cut🎄At Christmas

Hail Santa! Ho, furthermore ho, and in conclusion, ho. How fares the day, our delightful Readership? We hope it finds you in an eggnogilicious mood. Ongoing changes to the lockdown rules mean that most of the staff at The Cut have been forced to stay in the office for the season, roasting chestnuts and turkey in an improvised and potentially deadly adapted microwave setup. Oh well, those of us that survive will all be laughing about it this time next year.

Let’s get the festivities started, shall we? Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin’s in a rut. Now is the time, here is the place, welcome to The Cut!

The Cut🩸Issue 32

Christmas in Tier 3, whoop de bleedin doo. Like we needed any more excuses to roll up the drawbridge and set the minefields and robot gun emplacements and fill the moat with shark-infested acid and dig into the booze and grub stockpile and drink and eat ourselves into a hibernative food coma all the while singing SKRU U 2020, ENUF IS ENUF.

Ahem. A shorter film-heavy Cut this week as we consider our options for the ‘festive’ season. Christmas Day is next Friday, and we do intend to have a thing for you. What shape and smell it will have is yet to be confirmed. But we’ll be double-dog-damned if we’re gonna leave you hanging just when you need us the most.

Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it. Strike a pose there’s nothing to now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.

The Cut 🔪 Issue 29

So the Cut Xmas deccoes are down from the loft and in a pile in a corner of the office, waiting for one of us to finally crack, declare ‘sod it,’ invoke the spirit of Noddy Holder and start spreading festive cheer around the joint like a dirty protest at all things Covid. It’s been a hard year and the early start to Christmas is a definite sign we’re ready for it all to be over. This week’s issue doesn’t have a whiff of holly but trust us, it’s coming, and soon. Instead, enjoy film longreads on Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis, considerations on time travel and AI and how the Wotsit came to be.

Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.