Beastie Boys – Sure Shot, Oasis – Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye, Prodigy – Out Of Space, Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again, General Public – Tenderness, The Verve – Lucky Man, Samantha Mumba – Body 2 Body, Nelly Furtado – Turn off the Lights, A.O.S. – History (Repeats Itself), Oasis – Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Sophie Ellis Bextor – Murder On The Dancefloor, Oasis – My Big Mouth, Serge Gainsbourg – Bonnie and Clyde, Bryan Ferry – Crazy Love, New Order – True Faith, Ride – Taste, Mint Royale – From Rusholme With Love, The House Of Love – Crush Me, All Saints – Black Coffee, The Monkees – Porpoise Song, Oasis – Whatever.

• The Big Secret — Steven Levy takes a look behind the scenes at the Palladium Project … ‘Palladium is being offered to the studios and record labels as a way to distribute music and film with “digital rights management” (DRM). This could allow users to exercise “fair use” (like making personal copies of a CD) and publishers could at least start releasing works that cut a compromise between free and locked-down. But a more interesting possibility is that Palladium could help introduce DRM to business and just plain people. “It’s a funny thing,” says Bill Gates. “We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains.” For instance, Palladium might allow you to send out e-mail so that no one (or only certain people) can copy it or forward it to others. Or you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week. In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these policies.’
• I Told You So — Bob Cringely on Palladium … ‘It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That’s taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we’ll all have to buy new computers. This is diabolical. If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn’t choose to be Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh. It’s a militarized network architecture only Dick Cheney could love. ‘
• Palladium Frequently Asked Questions … On MP3’s: ‘With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. But in future, TCPA / Palladium will make it easier to sell music, movies, books and other content packaged so that people can play them on their PCs but not copy them. You might be allowed to lend your copy of some digital music to a friend, but then your own backup copy won’t be playable until your friend gives you the main copy back. Quite possibly you will not be able to lend music at all. (It looks likely that the music publisher will be able to make the rules – and to change them at will by remote control.)’

1. …a smoker and he drank Scotch.
2. …a composite, if he (or she) existed at all.
3. …the shadowy source who haunts the pages and scenes of “All the President’s Men.”
4. …presidential adviser Patrick J. Buchanan.
5. …Pat Gray, FBI director from May 1972 to April 1973.
6. …Earl J. Silbert, an original Watergate prosecutor.
7. …some sort of liberal bureaucrat.
8. …a spook.
9. …in fact, the lead actress in the film of that title.
10. …a well-read but occasionally rowdy man.

‘A few years ago, John Birt came in for lunch. My father approached his table: “Are you John Birt?” he asked.

“Yes,” said John Birt.

“I wonder if you can help,” said my father. “The TV reception in this area can be all crackly and fuzzy. Can you do anything about this?” I think my father wanted John Birt to get on to the roof and fix the aerial.

“We spoke about all sorts,” my father told me on the phone afterwards. “The problems I’m having with my car – he couldn’t believe that it’s been in the garage six times.”

“Oh, and he hasn’t heard of you,” added my mother, on the extension line.’

‘It seems significant that, while this series of Big Brother has seen the most actual sex (that gory little escapade under the covers between PJ and Jade), it’s the ongoing aura of violence (the hostility, aggression and glowering resentment) that has been truly riveting. We might not like to admit it, but it is human nature to crane one’s neck towards an argument – we are all magnetically attracted to trouble, be it obvious (the chair-smashing ruck in the pub), or subtle (the backstabbing feud in the office). While I, for one, found it repulsive and tedious watching idiots like BB 2’s Helen and Paul leadenly flirt with each other, the anger whirling around in BB 3 somehow seems more honest, the resentment intoxicating, the unique misery of Other People impossible to fake.’

‘The fact that the tape contained as many as nine separate erasures contradicts any notion that it was caused by an accidental press of the Record button. The culprit was either very anxious to protect the president or was a mechanical klutz. Both descriptions, Watergate scholars have noted, fit Richard Nixon. The 37th president was laughably inept when it came to technology. Haldeman recounts in his now out-of-print book, The Ends of Power, that Nixon struggled with the most basic functions of cassette recorders. The Army Signal Corps supplied Nixon with the simplest recorder available so that the president could dictate memos in the evening. But even then, the various buttons had to be marked so Nixon could use the machine without mixing things up. Put a man like that in front of a reel-to-reel, and it’s easy to see how a simple erasure could turn into a clumsy mess.’

• The golden rage of Superbrat (retd.) — John McEnroe … ‘Tennis’s long-overdue code of conduct was in no small measure implemented with McEnroe in mind and it duly snared him at the Australian Open in 1990, when he became the first player in 21 years of open tennis to be disqualified at a Grand Slam. By then McEnroe was 30, on the wane and, strangely, gaining in public popularity. “The more I lose, the nicer the crowds get,” he observed.’
• Jack the Lad — Jack Black. ‘…the idea of seeing the D in concert could almost lure me to a Kid Rock concert. Even if someone held me at gunpoint and made me watch the headliner, it’d be well worth it to see Jables (that’s Black’s alter-ego) crooning in earnest the chorus to the tender, Journey-esque ballad, Fuck Her Gently: “I’m gonna hump you sweetly/ I’m gonna ball you discreetly…” ‘

‘…’I’d like to be in a big house in the south of France,’ he decides, staring wistfully up at the stairs that lead towards the pub’s exit, ‘with a deckchair. And the deckchair is outside and I’m in the deckchair just chilling right out. Forever.’ He says he’s looking forward to being 60 in that deckchair in the south of France. Age is not a fear for him. If he’s in that chair outside that house, he says, he won’t even mind going bald. ‘I’ll moan about it, but I won’t be getting a wig. I will not be getting an Elton John. I’ll just get a skinhead and have it large with a goatee, get meself a part in EastEnders where I can shag the barmaid.”

Malcolm’s in the Invisibles classroom, combing his hair in front of a mirror. With only a few little changes, he’s turned his 70s teacher look into Jason King. Shirt open, he picks up a groovy 70s jacket. Checks out the window where a beautiful blonde in a sports car waves up to him. The full Invisibles team is assembled here but they’re little more than vague presences in the scene. Ragged Robin is laying out tarot cards. Tarot trump 20 – the Aeon, which represents the Crowned and Conquering Child of the coming Aeon of Aquarius/Horus. Malcolm slings his jacket on.

MALCOLM : The ball’s in your court now, young man.

KING MOB : These things happen.

He picks up his gun.

KING MOB : When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up and find myself living in a 60s spy series.

Pause. He smiles a dangerous smile.

KING MOB : Funny how things work out, isn’t it ?

Close shot of magazine slamming into the handle of King Mob’s automatic.

Tarot card close up as it snaps down on the table – Trump 16 – The Tower.

• Cho ya by! — Sacre Bleu!
• Za Mar Miro! — Gotcha!