Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

tbf Burchill was saying exactly the same thing back in the NME in '83.

I've never known the Observer not to be a carbuncle of rightwing douchebaggery but Graham Norton did a similar rant on his radio show last week. I suppose it saves having to think about inconvenient things like causes.

(Actually, Norton's a totally reactionary old queen; yesterday he carpeted guest David Baddiel for daring to ask for a relatively obscure track from the BBC archives. He was all "how dare you, that's not what we're about, RIGHT?" Actually, Graham, that IS what it's all about, otherwise Radio 2 might just as well be LBC or Magic FM and take advertising rather than protection money from licence payers, decimating your music library to subsidise Mr Norton's lifestyle)

p bad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2012/jun/07/ridiculous-name-jay-electronica?newsfeed=true

serious question: is Tim Dowling the most infuritaingly unfunny 'funny' writer in the UK?

what 'funny' writers are actually funny though?

Marina Hyde obv (though she's not a LOL writer in any case)
Caitlin Moran (though - whisper it - less and less these days)
I guess Grace Dent but I don't care about TV so rarely care about her writing
and uhhhhh

basically there's no excuse for anyone to act like a comedian or a FOOL as they were once known

i really like tim's pieces, tbh. alex, yr nutso!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jun/22/glastonbury-2012-live-coverage?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9383&CMP=EMCMUSEML1647

a ha hahaha ha ha hah ha ha oh dear.

Lucy Mangan might be twee as hell but I still get a smile more often than not from her writing. Marina Hyde is such a fantastic writer that it seems unfair to compare against her.

I can never understand why people rate Marina Hyde.

Is Barney Ronay strictly sport still? He can do lively-funny writing better than almost anyone there. Dowling the worst of comic hacks.

xp you don't actually rate ANYONE as far as i can tell

i like lots of things, you just assume that anyone who doesn't share your microscopic and demented world view is as hate-filled as you actually are.

Is Barney Ronay strictly sport still? He can do lively-funny writing better than almost anyone there. Dowling the worst of comic hacks.

― woof, Friday, June 22, 2012 3:13 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Dunno, but his piece on Milner today was v enjoyable.

do u have any opinions about barney ronay

hes alright but he doesnt really understand football very well

oh i'm preparing myself right now for the onslaught of people writing about wimbledon who can turn out good sentences but have no idea about the sport

really good interview with petra kvitova in the grau today...and then right in the middle "surprisingly, she lost in the 1st round at eastbourne"

LITERALLY EVERY TENNIS FAN PREDICTED THAT UPSET AAARRRGHHHH. Kvitova is in mediocre form and Makarova is great on grass/at Eastbourne. "surprisingly" kmt kmt kmt

Haile Gebrselassie set world records – honestly – on Scatman John. Apparently the 1994 novelty techno track, Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop), had the exact time signature that the Ethiopian athlete needed to pace his 10,000 metre runs.

Must have spent an age experimenting with 19/4 and 13/8 until he found some solid 4/4 beats.

19/4 is the time signature for power walking IIRC

what exactly are they "Guarding" anyway

Manchester.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jun/29/a-to-z-of-pop-genres-2012

"Indielectual" eh?

Indiegestible morelike

There is a band called Alt-J ???

I like how it starts off pretending to genuinely help the confused uncles with 'Afrobeats' and then slowly descends into hardcore trolling.

Hardcode Trolling?

What kind of music is that then?

what is EDM?

Epileptic Dance Music

they've been very lucky with the distribution of initial letters there...

Not to mention

Is guitar music on the way out?
Are guitar bands becoming a thing of the past, as dance and rap groups become more popular? Readers share their thoughts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jun/29/readers-panel-guitar-music

lol

In theory, "Night Bus" would be the most awesome genre in the history of music.

But I always imagined it to sound a bit like drunk girls singing the Specials' Nite Club along to tinny mobile phone beats.

Why give such a great genre name to such terrible music?

they've got Night Bus wrong in fairness

It's a pretty clever way to highlight lots of good new music while simultaneously winding up the kind of people who take these lists too seriously. Hats off.

hmm yeah im sufficiently estranged from what steve lamacq once described as 'new music' to learn something from the guardian

and a taxonomy of stupid names is often useful

interesting to see how the premises formerly trading as wonky are now operating under the name lazer funk which is even an improvement

I don't think that one is accurate either. The term "lazer bass" was knocking around in the wonky days along with aquacrunk etc.

aquacrunk was the kerlon of post-nuum genrenames, quality dismissed as pretention by the coarse and unthinking masses

also purple wow iirc

RIP

http://www.factmag.com/2012/06/27/various-artists-purple-legacy/

joker was the one that got away

Rather annoyed with the Guardian app for bunging a whacking great medal table in the middle of the home screen, with no option to remove it in the settings. I emailed them, and they just said it'll be taken down when the Olympics are over. No response about spoilering, or annoying people who don't give a toss about the Olympics.

is there an equivalent of http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian (i.e. just the articles that appeared in the print edition) that doesn't look terrible ON IPHONE?

(note: i do not want to give the guardian any money until they stop publishing martin robbins)

http://m.guardian.co.uk/ ???

thanks, but that's the current home page. i want the print edition, i.e. the page that changes once per day, not rolling news + commentbait like http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/24/harriet-harman-wrong-conservatives-feminists

This should do the job for you, caek (third-party thing produced using the Guardian API)

http://guardian.gyford.com/

perfect! thanks!

Outdoing themselves here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/11/devastated-by-my-sons-tattoo

Whoops just noticed someone's already posted that to the not Onion thread.

Can see the value in their US coverage having a range of opinions but employing this guy isn't a particularly good look:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/aug/16/2011-gaza-flotilla-tweet-clarification