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Founded in 1998, one of the 50 most powerful blogs in the world in 2008 named by The Guardian.
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Johnny Cash Covers Personal Jesus

2025-04-19 05:12:53

While not nearly as popular as his amazing rendition of NIN’s Hurt, Johnny Cash’s stripped-down cover of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus is fantastic. Both songs are from Cash’s sixty-seventh studio album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (Spotify, Apple Music), which was the last one to be released before his death.

In case you want to listen to Johnny Cash all morning, here’s that version of Hurt and Bridge over Troubled Water (with Fiona Apple):

Oh, and his cover of The Beatles’ In My Life:

Tags: Depeche Mode · Johnny Cash · music · remix · video

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In the wake of Alex Ovechkin surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record,...

2025-04-19 04:30:28

In the wake of Alex Ovechkin surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, here are a selection of other seemingly unbreakable sports records, from LeBron’s career points to Flo-Jo’s 100 meters mark.

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Wonderful photos of Broadway legends reprising their most memorable roles, including Idina...

2025-04-19 03:37:09

Wonderful photos of Broadway legends reprising their most memorable roles, including Idina Menzel (Rent), Matthew Broderick (Brighton Beach Memoirs), Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), and Dick Van Dyke (Bye Bye Birdie).

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The Goalkeeper Who Got Lost in the Fog

2025-04-19 02:45:44

This is a fun story about Sam Bartram, a goalkeeper who was accidentally left on the field when a 1937 game was called off during the second half due to heavy fog.

On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. “Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.

“I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. ‘The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,’ I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.

“After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he gasped. ‘The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field’s completely empty’. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter.”

London fog is no joke.

P.S. BTW, the photo that frequently accompanies other online accounts of this story is not of Bartram. kottke.org: carefully fact-checking internet fun facts since 1998. 🤷‍♂️

Tags: Sam Bartram · soccer · sports · weather

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Stephen King used to “grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers to...

2025-04-19 01:54:02

Stephen King used to “grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for $1”. He called them his Dollar Babies. Frank Darabont made one of these $1 films and later directed The Shawshank Redemption.

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Don’t Let the Days Go By…

2025-04-19 01:12:51

This is a lovely cover of Bush’s Glycerine by Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, set to a poignant series of very short videos of everyday life. Give this 20 seconds of your complete attention and you’ll watch the whole thing, I promise. (via @mariabustillos.com)

Tags: Allison Lorenzen · Bush · Midwife · music · remix · video

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