Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Alex S' LiveJournal:

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Thursday, July 9th, 2009
2:21 pm	Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf Really enjoying Torchwood: Children of Earth, to the extent that I'm even starting to find Gwen and Rhys slightly less annoying. Yes, I enjoyed (some of) the first two series, but they would have looked a little tatty on prime-time BBC1, whereas this doesn't; my family, for instance, were sucked in by watching the first two episodes with me in a way I don't think would have happened before (my dad aside, they're not even that bothered about Doctor Who). Plus, the whole 'We are coming' bit is providing a great playground game for all those children who shouldn't be watching after the watershed. I'm surprised I've not seen more mention of how, in having unknowable aliens who at once control and somehow hunger for humanity's young, it's really echoing the final, John Mills Quatermass (the only one of those serials Who has yet to really rip-off, in spite of existing in the same continuity). Of course, that was set in a dystopian near-future, while this is set now, but how dystopian it still looks; the 456 may not be very nice (although as alien concepts go, so far they've been handled brilliantly) but they seem at least to have more of a commitment to open government than Britain's leaders. Speaking of which, the Whoniverse's recent run of Prime Ministers suddenly makes our lot seem almost desirable, doesn't it? I'd heard quietly good things about hitman-com (and why is there one of those every few years?) In Bruges, but nothing quite prepared me for how funny it would be, and how consistently it would subvert expectations - well, at least until the last twenty minutes, where it makes that ever-infuriating decision to go with one of the Standard Hollywood Endings. Still, why does it not have more of a cult? Does it not telegraph its cult classic qualities quite as much as seems lately to be demanded? I can only hope that history will correct this injustice. My parents, having become as disillusioned as everyone else with the state of 6Music in the hands of George Lamb et al, have taken to Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin) as the standard kitchen music. And while broadly speaking it's not bad, tending to play a wider and less-obvious selection that I would have expected, one thing I did notice: it's pretty rockist. La Roux, Lady Gaga, Little Boots and the like may be in the charts and all over the magazines, but they're not on Absolute. The one exception they made was for the worst of the lot, Florence & the Machine. Proper eighties pop is fine, they'll play Soft Cell as happily as everyone else does - but the modern synth stuff is just not here. In other words; landfill indie may not be as prominent as it was, but don't dare hope that the threat is totally gone. Boys with guitars are still the default new music for a lot of people out there. Unrelatedly, pretty much: I saw a lot more English flags than Union ones flying in the countryside. That can't be good. Current Music: The Age of Revolution - The Duckworth Lewis Method (22 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
11:03 am	Two steps forward, one step back "Chris Bryant, the new Foreign Office minister, who is gay, has started writing personal letters of congratulations to British diplomats who show public support for gay rights. He is praising them for such support even if it draws anger from national governments or local homophobic groups." Which is splendid news I'm surprised I've not seen more heralded, even if it is coming from one of the same ministers who recently tried to score some fairly cheap points with distinctly nebulous accusations of Tory homophobia - particularly weak given that, while Labour may have made progress with civil partnerships and the like, their consistent appeasement of homophobic monotheist scum has dented whatever pink kudos they should otherwise have earned. Of course, if they really want to cement the gay vote, Gordon could always come out. Not that I have any idea whether those rumours were even true, but if not it'd be even funnier watching him try to fake it. I'm in Devon at the moment, wrestling once again with the most erratic cursor of our age. But before heading down here (maugree Sunday's efforts to beat previous records for One Of Those Days), I spent Friday confirming that the Landseer may be considerably more pleasant under its new management, but remains too expensive to be a viable local watering hole, and Saturday listening to country, and then watching the Indelicates. Now, I may previously have mentioned that they're a bit good, but I somehow failed until this unfairly truncated and thus blisteringly, magnificently angry performance to realise that they are, quite simply, the best band of our generation. My only regret is that thedavidx wasn't quite drunk enough to do a Jarvis during their closing cover of 'Earth Song'. Current Mood: tense Current Music: Disco 2000 - Pulp (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
12:19 pm	So far today, I have yet to sweat. So yes thank you, I am happy with the change in the weather. I could just about follow the logic behind the scheduling of this year's Torchwood series; putting the five episodes across the five nights of next week to make an Event instead of just another series, and if people are out, well nowadays there's always iPlayer. I don't know whether it will work, you understand, but I can see why they think it might. What I don't get is then amping that up even further by having three radio Torchwoods too, and putting them on over the last three days of this week. Eight episodes over ten days is surely too much, and it doesn't help that the first one, 'Asylum', (all I've listened to so far) is utter nonsense. Jack is apparently now a slipshod racist and Ianto can quite happily do all the stuff Owen and Tosh used to do, so one wonders why they were ever needed in the first place. Gwen is still Gwen, ie annoying and wet, and all three of them can seemingly be overruled by PC Andy, who goes through about four different personalities in the course of 45 minutes, none of them remotely appealing. Oh, and contrary to what we may have seen over the course of previous episodes, apparently Torchwood has no experience of friendly dealings with non-threatening visitors from the Rift. No, really, WTF? Still, if you want to listen to them (and yes, I know I'm going to persevere), remember that they'll start vanishing from next Wednesday. Went to the Museum of London yesterday for the comedy, getting several blasts from my own past in the progress, but while I really enjoyed Milton Jones and Gavin Osborne, I was rather shocked by what's happened to Simon Munnery, from whose set I slunk away when he started talking about how much he loves his children. Until then there'd still been plenty of proof that this was still the warped genius behind Alan Parker: Urban Warrior and The League Against Tedium, even if he was maybe between flashes of inspiration right now - but just as songs about the artist's adorable children tend to suck, so does comedy. Except when it's about fooling them into eating cabbage, that bit was good. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Shivers - The Boys Next Door (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
11:22 am	More cunning even than I intended Visited Kew Gardens for the first time yesterday, and it's magical. For somewhere so popular, it still doesn't feel crowded; for somehere so labelled, it doesn't feel lifeless. I suppose it's a combination of two of my favourite things, a mad old-style library manifest as a country house garden. Plus, dragonflies! The day before I'd been worrying that I'd yet to see any this year, but clearly that's because they're all getting busy down in Kew. We also saw some guinea fowl. Even speaking as a vegetarian of nearly two decades, their combination of unflappability and fat-assedness screamed 'lunch'. Then on to see the magnificent Philip Jeays, chanson supergroup in tow, launch his new album (and yes, I'm going to keep linking to him whenever the subject arises until you all become fans, buy his albums and send him straight in at Number One). The Jeays Battersea Barge shows are the social event of the season, but that season is early December; I have seen him here at other times of year before, but not for bloody ages. The usual supports make jokes about this, and it turns out that last December, when I thought the Speech Painter was maybe improving, I was just overwhelmed by red wine and christmas spirit; his presence is once more justified only by the extra piquancy he gives 'Geoff', Phil's song about shagging the Speech Painter's wife. We expect the new album set to be followed by a hits encore, but in spite of finishing early, there are only three old tracks. Stranger still, the new album doesn't include 'Thank You British Airways' - but then, 'Mr Jeays' was being played two albums before it was released. The new stuff is, however, brilliant - and he seems to be playing to his strengths, with fewer 'war is stupid' songs than ever, more lovelorn and timeworn heartbreakers. Thank you, Mr Jeays. For the first time since he died, yesterday I deliberately listened to a Michael Jackson track. Not one of the ones blaring out of every car and shop, but the last one I remember having any interest in, before it became clear how wrong he'd gone: 'Scream'. And it's a bloody mess. In his paranoia, you can tell he's almost approaching that wonderfully dehumanised sound R&B revelled in around the late nineties and early noughties, but perfectionism and endless second-guessing just leaves it clattering and confused. Shame. For a happier Youtube experience, I recommend Nathan Fillion from Firefly as Green Lantern; alas, this is a fan-made trailer for a film that does not exist but still, how good does it look? That was from the mailout of one of the UK's best comics shops, Page 45; the other, Gosh, also alerted me to a gem: Comics creator stopped by Transportation Security Administration for carrying script about writer under suspicion by Transportation Security Administration. Read Poul Anderson's Brainwave on Tuesday - a novel in which the Earth exits the intelligence-dampening field in which it's been stuck for millennia, and everybody suddenly gets a lot smarter. Reading it in the park at least served to keep me posted that no, this was not really happening, but it's still an astonishing book - and one with which I especially sympathise in weather like this, because I can feel the heat making me dumber. It's from four years before Flowers for Algernon, and while I've never read that (science fiction which gets mainstream critical acclaim usually leaves me suspicious), I've read enough things which riff on it to suspect that it got a lot of inspiration here. Poul Anderson is a weird one - my dad is a fan, so realistically I must have read some of his stuff as a kid, but I have no idea what. The only one I could tell you for sure is The Broken Sword, an impressively bleak fantasy novel he wrote before fantasy became entirely codified, set in the real Middle Ages (complete with all the stuff people then knew about but we tend to ignore) rather than an analogue, which always gets me on side. This...this has almost nothing in common with that, except a certain majestic clarity of vision. It's not flawless; it does at times feel like the cosmic vision of Olaf Stapledon forced into a format which looks something a little more like a novel, and suffering accordingly (Anderson's evolved humans, for instance, still all seem to be locked into heterosexual monogamy - because he was more stuck in his ways than Stapledon 20 years earlier, or just because he had less space?). And the idea that the superbrains of future Man find no consolation or worth in any of the species' past achievements...well, I'm as contemptuous of humanity as the next person who'd gladly sell us out to the first civilised species that made contact, but I don't buy that. Anderson's brain-boosted humans abandon TV for magazines, then magazines for books; after the change, one simpleton thinks 'I can read a comic book. Maybe I can read a real book now.' Well, as someone who can happily go from Ulysses to Mighty Avengers, and always hated John Stuart Mill's spurious distinction betweem 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, you can guess how I feel about that. In the end, the advanced humans become something not unlike Iain Banks' Culture - just a bit less fun. But still, that's an awful lot to fit in 160 pages. Plus, you know that thing from...Mickey Spillane, maybe? 'Whenever I don't know what happens next, a guy comes through the door with a gun?' Poul Anderson goes one better. One chapter ends when a chimp comes in with a gun. On an elephant. Current Mood: optimistic Current Music: Surf's Up - The Beach Boys (26 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 29th, 2009
10:03 am	What's the opposite of subversion? Although these days he's more frequently seen in his guise of mediocre political journalist, John Harris doesn't want us forgetting that he started out as a mediocre music journalist. Apparently he edited "the now-defunct Select, a title that floated on the tide of Britpop and sank when it receded". Which is interesting, because I remember Select as being at its best just before Britpop, dealing with the bands who wouldn't quite fit into the grand narrative to come. And what does this rewriting of the past remind us of? That's right - Harris is a retromancer. Bemoaning how obsessed we all are with the past, he then goes on to rehearse the familiar old stories about how Lester Bangs and Nick Kent are the best music journalists ever (for the record - Kent was OK, but Bangs hated Roxy Music and as such, is never going to have anything to tell me. Or consider the Bangs quote Harris uses, of the mawkishness around John Lennon's death, Bangs wondering what "'the real - cynical, sneeringly sarcastic, witheringly witty and iconoclastic - John Lennon" would make of it all. If that's the real Lennon, who was responsible for 'Imagine' and 'All You Need Is Love'? Tosser). Obviously print dates are such that the article couldn't respond to the death of Steven Wells (for me, the saddest of last week's demises, even ahead of Sky Saxon). But consider all the other omissions. An article about the state of music writing which fails even once to mention Paul Morley is de facto worthless right there. But nor does it find space to mention any of the contributors to Melody Maker's nineties golden age. It bigs up a Mott the Hoople autobiography as "the best book written by a British rock musician" - well, I've not read it but if it's as good as Marianne Faithfull's first memoir, I'll be amazed. And recent years saw classics by Alex James and Luke Haines. Do they get a mention? They do not. The frequently-insufferable Pitchfork is cited as a good example of modern music writing; the consistently brilliant Popjustice is as absent as its predecessor, Smash Hits. I'm a fan of music journalism, and I don't recognise the field Harris is talking about. Friday: Poptimism is less Jacko-heavy than expected, which is good given I only ever liked a handful of his songs. I inadvertently get far drunker than intended. Saturday: friends are drinking in my 'downstairs garden', and it would be rude not to join them en route to getting the paper, right? We end up cackling incoherently about eggs and realise that yes, we are no longer above this, we are drinking in the daytime in Wetherspoon's and we belong there. Although there is a break for Finnish bowling (actually just throwing a stick at some other sticks) and apocalyptic tempest, I proceed to get far too drunk, again. Sunday: Tubewalk day. I plan not to drink, but forget the sheer soul-shredding horror of the Edgware Road, End up drinking, on and off, for something like ten hours. Today I really am not drinking. (It's weird, though, almost as soon as you're off the road itself, the area is lovely, all odd little bookshops interspersed with I Saw You Coming-type establishments. Whereas on the road, you get girls proving if ever proof were needed that Rihanna's look only works on Rihanna. Also: the pub in Paddington station? It worries me. They have lightbulbs which are melting the picture frames beneath them, not to mention the clientele) In other news: http://www.explosionsandboobs.com Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: I'm A Cult Hero (27 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
2:59 pm	Come on Frederick, it's time to rock and/or roll Went to watch some free opera last night, and the key word there is 'free', followed maybe by 'in that ampitheatre arrangement next to the Mayor's HQ, and yes we saw Boris wandering home behind the stage'. I've only ever seen opera twice before: an experimental production of The Magic Flute to which my parents took me as a tiny, where they probably weren't expecting the evil henchman to be wearing rubber and brandising a whip with a cock-shaped handle; and Nabucco in Verona, which we went to mainly for the ludicrous scale of the Roman theatre there, and the staging (giant chariots! Five harps!) and during which one of my friends still managed to fall asleep and nearly go over the back wall. Comic opera, I know even less about. So yes, I could just about work out that The Barber of Saville Row was going to be The Barber of Seville updated, but who it was by in the first place? Needed cappuccino_kid to tell me Rossini. That it features Figaro and furthermore has the 'Figaro' song I know from cartoons? Well, I always thought that was in The Marriage of Figaro (the sequel, apparently). But...well, after 15 minutes or so of set-up, it was rather funny, in that same farcical sort of way the TV Jeeves and Wooster was. There was a policeman character doing topical gags, leading audience participation and the like, and apparently such panto borrowings are not normally part of comic opera, but sod it, I like panto. And I like plots motivated by wideboy Mercutio-types in Teddy Boy jackets, and nuns who owe more than a little to Jake Thackray's Sister Josephine, and ludicrously convoluted romantic deceptions, all played out under a purpling London sky. So I enjoyed it. It's still on tonight and tomorrow and while the stone steps aren't the comfiest of seats, you're in the open air and can take your own food and drink, so I'd definitely recommend it. I've also seen Hazel Blears - the Movie. Well, sort of. I'd always taken Dolores Umbridge - quite the most hateful character in the whole Harry Potter series - as a type, bureaucracy and 'not rocking the boat' incarnate. But watching the fifth film, they play her as Hazel Blears and not once does it go against the books. Well, Blears with a few dashes of Thatcher, maybe, and even in a fantasy film that weird, waxy complexion would be too implausible for fiction. But otherwise, the tittering condescension, the terror of facing someone who is convinced that they and they alone are reasonable...it's an astonishing resemblance. All the major new characters in Order of the Phoenix (or at least the film) are female, come to think of it. Bellatrix, aka Helena Bonham-Carter playing basically the same character as in Sweeney Todd. Luna Lovegood, aka Cassie from Skins. And lovely, lovely Tonks who is barely in it but still adorable. Current Mood: hot Current Music: As I Rise - The Decemberists (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
11:00 am	We have lost what is Random, we have banished the Arbitrary Finally seen No Country For Old Men and...well, OK, it's not actively awful like most films which win loads of Oscars lately, but I don't quite understand the fuss. But then, The Big Lebowski aside, I never did quite get the Coens - they make films I watch once and enjoy, but then feel no urge ever to revisit. I will concede that, in Anton Chigurh, the film has one mesmerising performance, and that its reluctance to go for one of the standard thriller resolutions is commendable. I'll further admit that their sense of whimsy does a lot to leaven the relentless, slightly monotonous bleakness which put me off Cormac McCarthy when I tried to read another of his - this is as much a film about bad service and dumb questions as heists gone wrong. But at no stage was I either as gripped, or as amused, as I was watching Psychoville. At no stage did I find myself thinking that yes, this is what film-making is about, which I felt plenty during last week's Ghostbusters marathon (and how had I never twigged before that the Warden from Oz = Winston the black Ghostbuster, aka Ernie Hudson?). Also: while finding that No Country For Old Men link above, I learned that next year will see a Clash of the Titans remake. As much as I hate moaning about remakes - so predictable, so lacking in historical sense, so selective in its examples - I do feel fairly confident that this one deserves to be stopped by rampaging stop-motion monsters. Michael Moorcock interview in which we learn that he doesn't read SF, and feels something of the same rage towards the steampunk he helped birth as his mate Alan Moore does towards the grim'n'gritty trend in comics. Bless the old curmudgeon. If nothing else it got me to dig out some more of his End of Time stories - possibly my favourite of his work, given they concern near-omnipotent immortals heavily inspired by the 1890s, who live out Earth's twilight in a round of parties and fads. My people, in other words. I've already bemoaned the cancellation of Captain Britain and MI:13, but the new issue suggests that it's not even going to go out with its standards intact. By which I mean no slur on the writing or the art, but someone in lettering and/or editorial has let through a 'your' for a 'you're', a 'corps' for 'corpse' and a couple of other, lesser infelicities. Poor show. Phonogram, on the other hand, came through with my favourite issue so far of the second series, because after sweet little Penny and normal Marc, now we have an issue devoted to the first series' Emily Aster, a vain, damaged and in many ways quite annoying young woman. ie, just the kind of person who it's great to have around because she keeps you on your toes - and doubly so in fiction where she's can't really cut loose on you. I'm also left intrigued as to whether, for instance, we'll ever find out what that townie girl was doing at an indie night like Never On A Sunday. Although, I do slightly dispute Emily's test for whether a club's indie (is she more likely to hear a record which sold eight copies in 1977 than whatever's Number One now?). The rules are: if the flyer lists bands - whatever those bands are - then it's an indie club. If it lists DJs, it's a dance club. And if it lists drinks promotions, it's a pop club. Current Mood: unsettled Current Music: Alone - Heart (29 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
11:08 pm	Smiling Spent today in Valentines Park, which I barely even knew existed before this week, but which is big and beautiful and contains a rather odd mansion full of art and fancy dress and the odd Victorian fixture, as well as being home to baby frogs (one of which some small children inadvertently squashed after we pointed them out; that's the problem with trying to share the joy of nature). Then ate pizza and watched The Little Norse Prince, an early Ghibli animation by the guy who isn't Miyazaki, and who hadn't found his style yet when he made this, and which frankly made no sense whatsoever though we think it *might* be a figurative biography of retrosoup. And walking home afterwards in the solstice gloaming, I was already thinking about how the sky gets so unbearably beautiful at this time of year that it's almost tragic, when the fireworks started. Maybe reading Donleavy's Darcy Dancer on the Tube helped, but I realised on my journey's final stage that I was ablaze with that pure and synchronised misty, mysterious clarity that I got the first few times I drank, all without having touched a drop today (though who knows what effect that orange squash might have had? I don't normally touch the stuff these days). Whereas what I get from booze these days is more...comfort, maybe conviviality?* Not sensations to be scorned by any means, but it helps to remember these specifics when one is in the business of emotional engineering, and aren't we all? *It varies further drink by drink, of course. Consider Saturday when, between a picnic on the pink wine (and horror stories) and a Prom on pints (and mainlined eighties), I had a couple of bottles of a cider called Green Goblin, and found myself suddenly wanting to go to bridges with blondes and/or subvert the intelligence institutions of the USA. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Small Change - Lodger (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
1:32 pm	I feel like I've died and gone to indie If you like Seth Rogen films, Will Ferrell films, basically any of the good comedies that have been coming out of America lately, you must see The Hangover. Went into it somewhat uncertain - against all those interlocking sets of funny guys, I didn't really recognise anyone in this except the dad from Arrested Development. But it is hilarious. There's little I can say without spoiling it, and you probably know whether you'll like it from the set-up; four guys go for a stag night in Vegas. They wake the next morning to find the room trashed, a tiger in the bathroom, and the groom missing. They have no idea what happened in between. Raced through the last season of Battlestar Galactica this week and can't help but feel disappointed. ( she was a grand old lady - spoilers below and likely in comments ) Finally succeeded in seeing the Wellcome Collection yesterday. I had expected something more thoroughly medical in theme, but between the sex toys and torture implements and pictures of Wellcome himself in fancy dress with the 'tache to end all 'taches, I conclude that it's not that far from Sir John Soane's, just with a little more pretence towards being something other than one rich bloke's collection of crazy stuff. Current Mood: optimistic Current Music: Down In The Subway - Soft Cell (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
11:36 am	what possible book could be derived from Homer's Odyssey and the Dublin Street Directory for 1904 So it's precisely 105 years since the day on which it's set, and I've just finished Ulysses. Which in places is precisely as obscene and as incomprehensible and as up its own (and other) arses as the haters ever claimed - a particularly trying section for me being 'Sirens', which felt like trying to read a ringtone. But which is also so rich and so full and so alive. Whenever people bug me to write a novel, I tell them that I've only ever had two ideas for one, and I got beaten to them both. One was about a city in a state of existential collapse, citizens caught in the fall-out from a war they couldn't even comprehend - and just as I was starting to work out how that might play, three other people produced it (two of them called Jeff, which left me suspicious of Jeffs for a while). All very good, though, so if anything it just saved me some trouble. The other didn't even have a plot, so much as a style - the idea of a story which was perfectly in every moment, protean, shifting its form to follow the defining mood of each incident. Well, it turns out James Joyce beat me to it 55 years before I was even born, even if he left out the full-on action adventure chapter I think might have made it even more complete. I suppose in expressing the infinite richness of a single day, Ulysses might have inspired my favourite album ever, The Divine Comedy's Promenade, and that was always going to incline me in its favour. But still I thank heavens that I read it for pleasure rather than studying it. With something like this, or Gravity's Rainbow, I have to get into the flow of the prose, let it wash over me, appreciate it like music rather than trying to make sure I have the full measure of each individual word. If I'd run into it during my degree, I'd have managed maybe two chapters of notes, quit and bluffed, like I did with Henry James (to whom I've never returned). And I was going to say now that this was the last book I felt any obligation to read, that now I'm truly free...except I just caught sight of that copy of Don Quixote on the shelf. Not just yet, though, eh? (I forget - has League of Extraordinary Gentlemen referenced Ulysses yet? If not, the obvious point of contact would be M'Intosh. We never do find out who he is, so I think maybe Quartermain) Of course, because I had to finish this on Bloomsday, and didn't really want to get underway on any other big reads in the meantime, I was rather kicking around for shorter stuff to read these last few days, having got to the end of the penultimate chapter on Friday. So I very nearly finished Saturday's paper on Saturday, and have been getting through a lot of short stories, and yesterday I went to the park to read about two outsiders who rose to lead great empires - Benjamin Disraeli and Conan. Somehow I don't think those points in common would have seen them become great friends, though. Anyway, there was some canine event in the park, but I didn't notice any more dogs than usual - just bigger dogs. At least three which were bigger than most people I know, each of a different breed and each with a different owner. Also, I noticed grave goods. I'm used to floral tributes and pictures when someone has died young, but on a tree in the park it was instead a birthday of the deceased being marked, and as well as photos, notes and flowers, the friends had left vodka and Red Bull. Primeval cancelled; should have known ITV wouldn't want to spoil their record by continuing to produce a decent show. You can't leave Danny Quinn stuck at the dawn of man, you sods! Current Mood: Blooming marvellous Current Music: Hand On Your Heart - Kylie Minogue (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
11:04 am	baby penguins that live in a volcano and have a fight with a crab. Not a dream, not an imaginary story, but the episode of South Pacific from two weeks ago (I forget where, reprised in the last couple of minutes but the whole show is pretty awesome). Nature is mental. Didn't see as many bands/people as planned this weekend, as a combination of late-running gigs and inexplicable (though possibly weather-based) tiredness left two-stage plans looking untenable. So sorry to catbo and Artery, though if the latter are reading this I'll be surprised and slightly creeped-out. Saturday was the ever-eccentric Barnacles (who, by leaving their sailor hats at the gig, contributed to a later outbreak of camp posing and eventually Benny Hill impressions) followed by an 18 Carat Love Affair whom the sound-mix left rather less shiny than usual - though it seemed to suit the megaphone monster apparently called 'Truman Capote' which has now been added to their set. In between, we hid in the Famous Cock, whose emptiness on a Saturday night can't all be down to the Victoria line having another weekend off, and might instead owe something to it being a contender for London's most character-less boozer (the L*rr*k doesn't count - that has a soul, and its soul is despair). Afterwards, realising the Newington Green plan is no longer going to happen, we danced to Britpop classics, AC/DC and the Inspiral Carpets. Yes, in 2009, though in our defence it was 'Saturn V'. Sunday sees Jonny Cola torpedoed by equipment issues. Then there are two other bands, one of which has pretty enough personnel that I give them three songs rather than the usual one-and-a-bit to impress me, before deciding instead to hang outside and take a brief trip to Gosh (Beta Ray Bill!). Then the new New Royal Family, playing 50/50 their own hits (I have already forgotten the 'Rules OK' dance routine) and rock'n'roll classics, thedavidx in an excellent Teddy Boy jacket. Unwisely, I have by this point decided that yes, maybe I do want a drink. I really didn't. Between this and the venue's eau de vomit (thanks, smoking ban!) I only manage two songs of the promising Last Army before departing. Simon Indelicate on the music industry's woes; probably the best short piece on the subject I have ever seen, and we haven't exactly been short of them these past few years, have we? Contains bonus comment on why 'piracy' is a bloody stupid term to use for the illegal copying of data. Current Mood: muggy Current Music: L'Esqualita - Soft Cell (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 12th, 2009
1:34 pm	He was a whiz with the cricket bat, but he never used to talk like that Krod Mandoon's biggest problem is that if you have five lead characters, defining three of them by the key trait 'incompetent' and two by 'slutty', and then relying on gender and race to differentiate further...well, it looks rather lazy, doesn't it? Still, it's being held together admirably by Matt Lucas (a shocking reminder that, before Little Britain got run into the ground, he used to be really funny) and the Thick Of It alumni - even if it looks like we won't be seeing that much of Supermac from here on in. Mitchell & Webb, on the other hand, was more consistent than ever - they've clearly got into the hang of writing for TV, not adapting from radio. I especially liked the doorbell replacement. And why has it taken this long for any comics to address the trees that smell of come? Managed to brave the rather ineffectual strike and get down to London Bridge fine on Wednesday night. The first band on were so generically young person's indie that it's not even worth naming and shaming them, but Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer would have justified a considerably more difficult journey. I had faintly feared that the thoroughly-English-chap-does-rap schtick might not sustain a whole gig's worth of interest, but as with Goldie Lookin' Chain, it works because as well as being funny, he's good. Could probably have made it as a 'proper' rapper if, like his old prep school chum Timothy, he were a little less concerned with 'keeping it real'. Hadn't realised that headliners the Arndales were friends-of-friends, but they were pretty good too; I suspect the Fall might be an influence, but to me they sounded quite reminiscent of Delicatessen, and to the resident young person's ears, the Horrors. Good stage set-up, too - the keyboardist, who looks a bit like the T1000, sits centre stage, not singing but occasionally miming drinks orders to obliging fans. Went to a party full of babies yesterday. I concluded that my main problem with babies isn't the things themselves - even if a fair proportion do have the cold, dead eyes of a killer. It's the parents. I mean, if I was out walking and I found a herd of wild babies, I probably wouldn't have a problem. But when I'm around the owners, I'm terrified that every hayfever sneeze is going to be taken as evidence that I'm about to infect the little ones with swine flu. OK, these were all nice, calm parents so that didn't happen. But then one of them headbutts my knee and another one starts trying to burrow under my legs and I'm thinking, this doesn't look good, even considering we are in Haringey. Too, too stressful. Current Music: Dimestore Diamond - (the?) Gossip (28 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
11:52 am	Bolly! Bols! Well that...that was unexpected. Having heard earlier in the day that a third series of Ashes to Ashes was confirmed, I was expecting a cop-out ending to the second series last night, and fearing that the third was going to be marking time with formulaic episodes like so much of the second series of Life on Mars. ( spoilers ) The ending of Primeval, on the other hand, was horribly hit by pacing. I'm used to this in comics, where delays can turn an undemanding but fun adventure series into an interminable so-what? And while I like the bonkersness of what Primeval has become, it couldn't sustain me over a two week. Still, I suppose on the intervening week ITV1 were showing the big footballist thing and Susan Boyle; another programme with subhuman apemen and hideous monsters might have been overkill. (Speaking of monsters, here's me as a minotaur) So those two being done would leave me pretty much without anything to watch on TV bar South Pacific (I can haz middle age?), except that on Thursday Mitchell and Webb are back, preceded by the potentially promising fantasy spoof Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. Followed next week by League of Gentlemen successor Psychoville. Still, looks like I might be getting my drama digitally for a while. On Friday, renegadechic showed me a Youtube clip which has been stuck in my head ever since and keeps randomly giving me the giggles when I remember bits of it: 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' with the lyrics amended to describe the video. Sacrilegious but brilliant. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Vs Children (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
10:53 am	What do they know of England who only England know? So we're sending two Nazis to Europe. On the plus side, at least the christians don't have any seats - though aren't there some still to declare? That would put the sour cherry on the carrot cake and no mistake. And I see this news just after reading the Captain Britain and MI13 annual. This being the best new superhero comic in years, one which took a character even Alan Moore couldn't make sing, and made him into the national icon he always should have been, our own Captain America as opposed to a cheap knock-off. The series hit around the same time as Garth Ennis' Dan Dare reboot, and they shared an attempt to build a sense of a British patriotism which was strong and unashamed, but which gave no quarter to the racist scum who profane the flag and the history they so tattily invoke. And the annual? Well, that's the first issue to come out since the news that Captain Britain and MI13 is cancelled. There's just not enough of a market for it. And as above, so below. It's not that I feel any shame over how this will make us look in Europe's eyes, you understand - enough other countries are sending their own fascists, and as per last century, I'm confident that ours are hardly the biggest threat of the bunch. Besides which, the European Parliament is a bad joke in the first place. I'm more embarrassed over how this makes us look to ourselves, how much it exacerbates the national mood of bemused decline. Hopefully, it'll at least be enough of a wake-up call to improve matters, but it could as easily be another step down that sorry road. In the meantime, yesterday's jokes about "ask David to bring The Final Solution" (which worked better verbally, italics and capitals being silent) and the unicorn lynching seem slightly less amusing. Othergates: I don't normally mind waits at the doctor's; in accord with Sarll's First Rule, I always have plenty to read about my person. Except my surgery has now installed a TV broadcasting inane health programming, noisily. Desist! Unusually old-school Stay Beautiful this weekend, both in terms of those attending, and in not having a live act. "This is how we used to do it in the olden days!", I tell bemused youngsters for whom the night has only ever been at the Purple Turtle. The playlist is less old-school, which is a shame as such a direction might have saved me from accidentally dancing to La Roux. Two Grant Morrison comics out last week, and while Batman & Robin was a great, straightforward superhero story with art by the ever-impressive Frank Quitely, it wasn't a patch on the glorious, tragic, yearning final issue of Seaguy's second act. Guess which one sells about ten times as much as the other? Current Mood: sad Current Music: Point Me To The West - The Indelicates (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
4:09 pm	Who says democracy's in crisis? So I went to do my democratic duty by sitting in the park reading a so-so X-Men crossover - sorry, I mean by voting for whichever seemed like the least worst option in today's European elections, just by way of keeping the christians and the Nazis out. Went en route to signing on, round about school hometime; left extra time because I assumed a lot of mums would be there as part of the same trip, some with kids in tow, which always slows things down. And hey, even this close to the Andover Estate most mums are old enough to vote (I'm joking, of course - the Andover Estate has its own polling station). There was precisely one other voter in there. And the ballot boxes looked worryingly reminiscent of shredders. Current Mood: appalled Current Music: Arma-Goddamn-Motherfvckin-Geddon - Marilyn Manson (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
2:09 pm	Warriors, monkeys and wolves, oh my Finally saw cult 1979 New York gang classic The Warriors last night and dear heavens, was ever a film this side of 300 so stunningly homoerotic? All the gangs in their little uniforms - and the baseballers in Boosh make-up look positively hetero next to the Warriors themselves in their lovely little leather waistcoats. Any attempt to dally with girls instead leads to danger - and any resistance to the idea of eg pulling a train on a lone girl is taken to mean one is "turning faggot". Because we all know how straight it is for lots of men to share one girl, right? See also: footballists. Then made the mistake of trying to watch My Monkey Baby, about Americans who treat monkeys as their children. Sounded cute, if fairly TV Go Home; was in fact deeply distressing. One woman who looked like every enveloping mother an insecure male author ever created to be feared talked about how, if she could, she'd have given her real children a pill to keep them babies forever - and now she had a monkey to dress up and make up, and that was the next best thing! A couple newer to the practice went to pick up their 'daughter' - and took her out through the breeding cages, where her real mother flipped out and ate the poffle from the microphone. And they were surprised. They were surprised that she didn't want her baby stolen by lunatics. Still not quite sure what to make of the new Patrick Wolf album. Each of the others was a thing unto itself, a world entire - and I could see how people might like one album by him but not him as an act, which interested me. But the new one, for all the talk of how he had more creative freedom now and could do exactly what he wanted...well, it's mainly just a harder-edged Magic Position interspersed with Wind in the Wires ballads. Which doesn't make it bad by any means, because those are great templates of which I'm certainly not bored yet, but does make it less of a revelation than any of its predecessors. I've still yet to have an album really knock me over this year. Current Mood: frustrated Current Music: There But For The Grace Of God - Machine (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
10:58 am	I don't think it's pumpkin juice The new Torchwood trailer is not filling me with hope, to be frank. And if Peter Capaldi is making a second Who appearance, as a government official of some sort, I want this to confirm that Malcolm Tucker is in fact a direct descendant of Caecilius from the Cambridge Latin Course. I don't know why, I just do. Friday: renegadechic lends me a data stick the size of a packet of gum, containing multiple TV series and several films. This freaks me out not because of sleep deprivation but just because we are living in the future. Later I go to my first Poptimism at its new venue, and for the first time ever hear 'Put A Donk On It' in its alleged home setting of a club. I have planned to stay only for a couple of drinks but end up as one of the last dozen there, dancing like I'm in Queer as Folk whenever something vaguely handbag comes on. En route I am impressed by the attendance at the Critical Mass bike ride on Westminster Bridge (though is it not slightly excessive to have two bike protests on the same bridge within four days? Combining and co-ordinating them would seem more effective). I also pick up various comics including one which causes confusion among the Poptimists, and the existence of which I admit I find baffling: This Is A Souvenir, a series of short comic stories inspired by the music of Spearmint. The best of which - the Phonogram one - turns on a misheard lyric. It shouldn't exist, but it makes me happy that it does. Saturday's mass of cyclists didn't disrupt my progress, but on Saturday I am glad I left far too much time to get to my coach, because the Victoria line is shut and the army are blocking roads between there and Green Park for their parade. I didn't even know we had that many cavalry anymore! Or gun carriages - what do you use a gun carriage for in the 21st century? Anyway, make it to Brighton in plenty of time to see the Pier and the Pavillion, neither of which I have ever encountered before having always been up near the crumbling West Pier, because I am 1 x goth. The Pavillion turns out also to be the site of simon_price's wedding (we are only along for the reception) so we admire the new Mrs Price's quite astonishing dress, and then meet a dog in a tie called Rufus. He wasn't anything to do with the wedding, he just ruled. As does Brighton generally, in spite of all the bad ink; for some reason East Sussex seems to have an unusually high proportion of pretty girls. Or maybe it's just that because they're near the sea, they tend to wear less, and I am an easily-distracted male. At the reception, when I am not dancing, or falling asleep and then claiming that I was just "bored", I am mainly introducing people off the internet to each other's faces. It is great fun. Later we take gin to the beach, and meet randoms. I do not see much of Sunday, but make it out again for missfrancesca's birthday and associated jollity. Yesterday, because I wanted to get caught up with the Harry Potter films before the new one and vivid_blue wuvs blokey from Twilight, she hosted a viewing of Goblet of Fire. The films really do improve as they go along, don't they? There's some savage cutting, to the extent that eg Snape barely does anything in this one, but that's a good thing - by being forced to reconfigure the story, it becomes more a film and less a theme-park ride connecting key scenes from the book. Also, I dread to think how much fanfic was launched by the bit where David Tennant licks Alan Rickman's wand. Current Mood: full Current Music: One Step - Killah Priest (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
3:17 pm	The Empire never ended It's a week since I updated - well, except to have an IT spasm* - and I'm not entirely sure why, because it's not like I've been short of things to report. I've seen my first of the new generation of 3D films, Coraline, and been impressed with how well the technology works, and how it doesn't just feel like a gimmick - whichever industry suit it was who said that if it wasn't quite the new sound, it was maybe the new colour, was for once not talking hype crap. I've finally been in a boat on Finsbury Park lake, and am glad to know that I can still just about row. I've found an opportunity to take direct action against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while en route to Richmond of all places, where I then received an eye-opening tour of the local attractions. I've played Necrons. I went to a revivalist goth club where my trousers melted - not that I was wearing them at the time - and it became clear that apparently all female goth vocals of the Batcave period either were, or sounded like, Siouxsie. I've discovered a splendid little venue within walking distance which seems to have a full programme of rockabilly-type stuff, because the Deptford Beach Babes were doing their surftastic thing there. And I've started the new Glen David Gold, which is thus far every bit as thrilling and beautiful and capacious as Carter Beats The Devil, itself one of the very few books I'm happy to recommend to pretty much anyone. Further to recent discussions of SF writer Alfred Bester, I was surprised to learn while looking up something totally different that not only had he written for comics back in the 'Golden Age', but he created immortal supervillain Vandal Savage, something of a role model of mine. And the only other comics note which springs to mind is that while I don't think Garth Ennis' Boys spin-off Herogasm merits quite the appalled reception it got at yesterday's picnic, it does put one of my reservations about the parent series at centre stage. This is a world where superheroes are, almost without exception, utter bastards behind closed doors - degnerates, pawns of corporate interests, murderers, the lot. Our protagonists are the shady squad who keep them in check. Well, that's a good premise. But these heroes never seem to do anything useful - there are no real threats against which they serve. All we've seen so far is a rather cackhanded attempt to intervene on September 11th 2001. And I think that goes a little too far, and detracts from the strength of the story. If all the alien invasions and such are wholly fraud, spin and cover-up, it becomes rather one-note. I'd be more interested in the story of superpowered individuals who really are Earth's last line of defence, and also complete bastards. More dramatic tension than if they're solely and entirely tossers. *Speaking of which, I was watching some early Buffy yesterday, for the first time in ages (and don't they all look so young?), and there was a terribly sad bit where Buffy asks Giles whether life gets easier, and he asks if she wants the truth and she replies, as per the episode title, '"Lie to me". And we were discussing this and I concluded that it doesn't get easier per se, but it's a bit like getting used to a horribly buggy piece of software - you gradually learn more of the tricks and workarounds, and get more adept, but of course this just makes it even more jarring when some new glitch arises. Current Mood: determined Current Music: Longing for Lullabies - Kleerup ft. Titiyo (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
1:34 pm	Computer Fail My computer's just a blank background when I start up - no taskbar at the bottom, no icons, no Start button, just wallpaper. I'm online via Task Manager, but obviously this is not ideal. What has happened, and how do I make it unhappen? System Restore seems to have seen me right. Current Mood: worried Current Music: 24 Hours To Live - These Animal Men (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
11:41 am	Uncute machine freak The villain stands triumphant in the House of Commons, bloodied corpses on the benches to either side; comics are done about three months in advance, minimum, so when this was being written and drawn, there's no way anyone could have known that by the time it came out last week, that would not be the mid-story 'oh no, how can our heroes save the day now?' moment. That is no longer a cliffhanger, it's a feel-good moment. And, given the villain in question is the bloodsucker Dracula, one rich with poetic justice. Marvel's version of Dracula seems to be deeply unpopular with readers of a certain age, but I don't mind him; more than I can say for the recent-ish Marc Warren version, which I foolishly attempted to watch over the weekend (vampirism is a bit like an STD and Victorians are hypocrites, DYS?). And I wish that were where I could leave the vampire topic, but over the weekend, I was cajoled into doing a very bad thing. Having been drinking for some hours, I was convinced to watch Twilight, and for all my ire at the very principle of a True Love Waits vampire story...it's not that bad. Though it left me with far more longing for a) the Pacific Northwest b) vampirism for myself than for that self-loathing pillock Edward Cullen. Yesterday, a small group of those of us with whose services British industry has inexplicably and temporarily decided it can do without went for a lovely little wander around Bloomsbury, looking at comics and small blue hippos and getting bvkkaked by those fluffy seeds which are everywhere this spring. But in case that left everything too cheery, we finished it off with a couple of episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist, an anime based on a manga which had always looked to me like it was at the fluffy, Naruto end of the market. And yes, it has someone who goes all stylised and cute when people call him short...but it also appears to be a harrowing tale of magical misadventure, fascist government and implied genocide. Which is obviously brilliant. Plus, it has a camp alchemist called Alexander Armstrong, who had better declare it Pimm's o'clock by series' end or there'll be trouble. And then home for the last ever episode of the police corruption horrorshow that is The Shield. I wasn't satisfied with every beat of it; ( spoilers ) Current Mood: awake Current Music: Fancy Cover - H Bird (8 Comments |Comment on this)