Is That All There Is?

Brit considers a hit song of utterly bleak existential numbness... Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is? must be one of the strangest hit records ever made. Dan Daniels, Guy Lombardo and Tony Bennett all released versions of it, but none managed to match the success of Lee’s recording, which features orchestral ... Read More...

Shots in the dark

If you're back at the office and feeling a little rough after the long Jubilee weekend, take consolation from the Dabbler archives, as editor Gaw recalls a strange night of vodka-fuelled Russian hospitality... A Russian doctor takes the connoisseur's approach to combining vodka and food: Russian men drink vodka shots. They drink vodka with gusto while making ... Read More...

Cosmic Norbiton

Good cosmic gardening weather - where else but Norbiton? I have missed, once again, the Opening of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It is like missing a total eclipse (and so far I have missed all of those): it is a predictable, repeated, attainable happening, but somehow you never go, and ... Read More...

God Save the Queen

On this Jubilee weekend, an eclectic musical mix with a royal theme… “I was there at the Coronation” claims Young Tiger in his 1953 Calypso hit and to back up this claim the Trinidadian lists the things he saw at the ceremony in painstaking detail. There’s a pleasing McGonagallishness to the ... Read More...

The Incal

Apparently this: 'every five thousand years the most capable member of a carefully selected alien race must impregnate the Bergs' beloved protoqueen' - doesn't cue up the most bizarre scene in the book. Daniel Kalder reviews an unmissable bande dessinée... There comes a point in every individual’s lifetime when he or she ... Read More...