A few weeks ago, Guy mentioned a lovely new discovery in the magazine world called Radar and he has been spruiking its glory to the rafters ever since. Well, I have just finished poring relentlessly over the esteemed document and I must say "You betcha, ya!". Its scarily excellent, and it speaks way too ably and 'knowingly' to our idea of ourselves. But who gives? I am now going to share with you some of the reasons why those of our ilk [or maybe it's just me] are salivating to land a job there. These snippets all hail from the summer movie preview section [and take heed, this edition was released in June]. A review of Terminator 3, includes the blazing opener "Even in these uncertain times there's one thing we can all agree on: Arnold Schwarzenegger needs a hit", and then winds it down with "As John Connor, rakish Nick Stahl takes over for good-time charlie Edward Furlong, who is no doubt lying somewhere in a pool of sick". Great huh? They said "good-time charlie"! Need I say more? Well, I will anyway. The review of Seabiscuit makes mention of the cringe potential of such lines as "Don't you die on me, Seabiscuit!", an early-warning signal for which I am grateful. And the American Pie 3 review contains a perfect distillation of the expectations of audiences everywhere, with "All we're hoping for is Biggs trying to copulate with a piece of wedding cake". Also showed a healthy derisiveness for the word 'quirky' by slamming a movie simply by its just-displyed use, eg. "...and you've got an idea of what to expect from this 'quirky' cringefest". The ways to my heart are many and true.

As I said, I comprehensively perused my issue of Radar. Within it, I could find only one, albeit glaring, instance to reject outright with an unwavering "Nuh". The blip in question is a reference to "the Lofflecks". I mean, the Lofflecks?! This was disappointing. It just smacked of poor judgment and rang like a forced attempt to locate Radar as an arbiter of "nu-bitchy" by its being self-consciously 'pro-active' and proffering cleanskin terms [when Radar's skill clearly lies in its ability to adapt established trashy favourites to its own devilish ends]. Radar needn't go there. It doesn't need to seek the 'status' provided by a line such as, "...or the Lofflecks, as they're known thanks to the linguistic mavens of Radar who coined the term..." etc., appearing in some comparatively ungroovy publication. Radar is just sharper than that. I hope.

Hmmm. Maybe I am being too hard on Radar on this point. It was June after all. Perhaps Beniffer was still a nascent term and there remained the possibility of other contenders? Perhaps it is only the passage of time and a knowledge of the ultimate victor that makes any such attempts seem more try-hardy than they may have been at the time. Still, "the Lofflecks" is pretty sucky.