Beyond The Mark Steyn Show:
Columns, poems, tales, music, movies and more from Mark and friends
The Bachman Beat
Tal Bachman: Two Centuries of Rugby, Part IV
See Parts One, Two, and Three to get caught up. The rugby pitch, such as it was, looked vaguely like a re-enactment setting for the Battle of the Somme. There was some grass, yes, but between the ongoing drizzle and the previous days of rain, it was mostly muck. And puddles. Lots of puddles. And rivulets—even mini-waterfalls—between lots of puddles. Above, only gray, drizzling sky. I also happened to notice four or five bodies of water on the so-called pitch which looked to qualify as genuine ponds. Some looked six or seven inches deep. Maybe more. A thought flashed across my mind: Those are deep enough to potentially drown in, if, say, a few guys tackled me, drove me face first into one, and didn't get up quickly enough. This didn't look ...
Mark's Week in Review
A Se'nnight of Steyn: May 28-June 3
In case you missed it, here's how the last seven days looked to Mark:
Rick's Flicks
Beauty, Nostalgia and Betrayal in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love
While we often think of nostalgia as an emotion that helps shape our memories or a longing for the past; a romantic feeling, it has to be remembered that nostalgia was once regarded, like melancholy, as a kind of mental illness, sometimes considered fatal in soldiers and sailors kept away from their homes for too long. Director Wong Kar-wai, talking about his 2000 film In the Mood for Love – regarded today as his masterpiece – said that "the film is about a period that's been lost and actually is like a dream." The specific period he was talking about was Hong Kong in the early '60s, the city his parents moved to when he was five, escaping the turmoil threatening Shanghai with the first stirrings of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Working with ...
A Clubman's Notes
The Mark Steyn Cruise Is Back!
SteynOnline is back in the cruise biz, with Snerdley, Eva, Leilani and more...
Clubland Q&A
Live Around the Planet: Friday June 2nd
Mark answers questions from Steyn Club members around the world...
Laura's Links
Hooligans and Homelessness
Laura Rosen Cohen rounds up the Interenet from the new Trans World Airlines to a chilly dip with the King...
Steyn on the Air
Stating the Obvious
Snerdley & Steyn do their best to find a decent gay bar in Kampala...
Steyn's Song of the Week
My One and Only Love
As Mark discussed on a recent Clubland Q&A, actor and pop singer Ed Ames died a couple of weeks back. Here's what Mark had to say about him: Ed Ames died this week, at the grand age of 95. I spent a very pleasant week with him on a National Review cruise a few years ago, he was a fan of mine and he's missus even more so. And I was a fan of his and his marvelous, rich singing voice, such a beautiful voice. And I just love to hear him sing ballads. You'll know if you listen to my show on Serenade Radio our Song of the Week. A few weeks back, I played his version of "Try To Remember," which I particularly love. He started with his....and I think actually also just the other week I actually played another one of his from his Brothers days, the ...
Steyn's Song of the Week
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport
Rolf Harris died earlier this month - a decade after the total implosion of his celebrity, and with the announcement being held for the best part of a fortnight from his hasty shovelling into the crematorium. He was a "national treasure" on at least two continents - until one day he wasn't. And, notwithstanding two years of headlines about "Paedos at the Beeb!" re Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall, Jonathan King and others, it was still something of a shock to hear that Rolf Harris had been found guilty of twelve counts of indecent assault on young girls in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. As I said when he was charged, it would mark the demise of his small but enduring catalogue...
Tales for Our Time
The Prisoner of Windsor
A remote fantastical kingdom far from Europe's chancelleries of power... An unpopular monarch on the eve of his coronation... A ruling class of plotters and would-be usurpers... ...and a gentleman adventurer on holiday. No, not Ruritania in the nineteenth century, but the United Kingdom in the twenty-first. My new book is both a sequel to and a contemporary inversion of Anthony Hope's classic of 1894, The Prisoner of Zenda...
A Clubman's Notes
The Elphbergs - with a Word on the Rassendylls
Mark's contemporary inversion of Anthony Hope's classic The Prisoner of Zenda: The Prisoner of Windsor...
Ave atque vale
Ball's Bearing
Steyn remembers Tim Ball, hounded into penury and death by the deadbeat Michael Mann...
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