If not quite my new hero then certainly my new person reminiscent of Heroes, specifically Micah: Adam Dabrowski, who took control of the Lodz tram network with a remote control.

I didn't have terribly high hopes for Thursday night; as much as I love The Indelicates, likely gigging companions were being a bunch of straightlords and staying in, and I was starting to sympathise with them as my energy faded with the day. Still, what the Hell, give it a try, right? So I headed to the Regency to fuel up - and who should I find there but a couple of Pembroke friends, with whom I could then have a pint, filling that awkward support band gap between hometime and showtime. And then from there, down to the show (where being the Windmill, I was of course far too early, but I can never take the risk that this once they'll be running promptly) where again I bump into people I know - one I've known for ages but whom I now consider more part of charleston's cast, and one via punkassqueer. I love London's eddies, the way the flow can always be guaranteed to bring someone along. Even if it is interesting to notice the different ecologies it sustains - I know some people were put off this particular Indelicates show by the Metro recommendation (which didn't seem to have had all that much impact), where of course to some people (and some bands) that would be a deal-maker, not breaker. I understood more about this for a moment, at the show, but only as the sort of evanescent epiphany which, written down, could only ever be a "the smell of petroleum prevails throughout".
The Indelicates were of course excellent, as ever (next single 'America' deserves to make them huge, though if it does it will mainly do so with people who miss the point), and top support Restlesslist (I think?) weren't bad either; as with most instrumental bands, I would rather they played in a greasy spoon, but the use of inflatable elephants as percussion instruments is always to be encouraged.

I was pointed at an interesting but flawed article on music in The Wire (can you spot the generalisation/mistake he makes?), but within it is contained a link to a David Simon interview which all Wire fans should read. Spoiler-free, too, thank heavens - I'm only three episodes into the fourth season myself. I'm resisting the urge to quote as best I can, because it would soon turn into a repost of the whole damn article, but I found his comments on why the show owes more to the Greeks than Shakespearea particularly resonant. Ditto his thoughts on making "the world we are depicting that much more improbable and idiosyncratic and, therefore, more credible", and the mantra "fvck the average reader". Oh, sod it - one more:
"In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed."*
(The interview was conducted by Nick Hornby, of all people. The tragedy is that once he gets outside his lucrative middlebrow comfort zone, he's really not bad - he wrote a horror/SF piece for the McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales which I found properly chilling)

One of the better blogs I've seen on the Guardian site lately: Richard Smith, whose Seduced & Abandoned is one of the few journalism collections which comes close to working as a book, considers the decline of gay clubbing, or at least of a certain generation of gay clubs.

*It is not only America which has no place for heroes, of course. Consider the volunteer cliff rescue coastguard who breached health and safety rules in the course of saving a teenage girl's life; dressed down for this appallingly maverick behaviour, he has now resigned.

I never took to Gaslight on screen (I may have attempted the wrong version), but the Old Vic's stage version was another matter. It's much stronger for observing the unities...well, most of them; for a psychological thriller, once or twice it does come a little close to French farce, at least once accidentally. The Bond girl and Pompey both give excellent performances, but the surprise for me was Andrew Woodall; where Anton Walbrook was far too obviously sinister as the husband, he makes a believable Victorian paterfamilias, much more ambiguous as he infantilises his wife, much more plausible. And the real surprise for me was how much that theme's played up, how strong a feminist statement the play makes - because from the four novels I've read, most of Patrick Hamilton's women are absolute bitches.

After a whole season of Russell T Davies smugly grinning and SFX techs geeking, I abandoned Doctor Who Confidential, but I made an exception for the Stephen Moffat episode because Moffat always gives good interview. I had no idea, though, that we'd get him and Tennant interviewing each other around Television Centre and a generall great documentary out of it. But the most moving bit came, surprisingly, from RTD, when he talked about how, as a kid, he always thought that at any moment you could turn the corner and see the TARDIS there, door half-open.
Which reminded me of the TARDIS-a-like 'phone box in Derby Children's Hospital, and rushing towards that half-open door, and finding only a payphone inside. I wonder if that's where it all began to go wrong?

Didn't make it to Stokefest in the end - my sources informed me of crowding, and summer crowds are not my idea of fun. But the local history...that I liked. Rampaging elephants! Bob Hoskins! Mutant milkmaids! Finsbury Park has had it all. Maybe even Ho Chi Minh, though the evidence there was hazier. Plus, the definitive sources on all this include the work of Ken Gay. Now, you'd think a name like that was hard to beat, right? But you'd be reckoning without his collaborator, Dick Whetstone.

Never mind the stripper vicars - what about a flasher judge?

All the complaints that 300 is propaganda? They're absolutely right. It's a remarkable adaptation in that, while much has been added to the original and a little taken out, it still feels absolutely like the work of the original's creator. And you'd need to add to the comic to make a film - five issues, decompressed avant la lettre, it would make maybe an hour of footage, at most. And since the comic came out, it has become so much more relevant - or at least, so much more *obviously* relevant. I had feared that the expansion of Queen Gorgo's role would be focus group bullsh1t, an exercise in introducing a Strong Female Character because we have to have those. Not at all - she comes across as very much a Frank Miller woman, and gives us a contrast between Leonidas' respect for his queen and the Persians' subjugation of women. And yes, the Persians - they're Muslim analogues, pure and simple. Whether they were in the original, I'm not so sure. But this is quite unashamedly a film about the West standing up for its freedom against a theocratic tyranny spawned in the Middle East. And what, after all, is wrong with that?
(Though it was a little upsetting to see a) McNulty and b) heffalumps on the side of evil)

Is it a sign that one is getting old to watch Skins and think that the fat uncle who's supposed to be spoiling the birthday party with his rubbish old music is actually playing a pretty good set?

Given the Tubewalkers &c on my friendslist, I'm surprised I recall no mention of last weekend's Underground Night on BBC4. Maybe I've just read it while drunk? But did anybody else see any/all of this?

Have been listening to a pretty good Lee Hazlewood tribute album whose sleevenotes take a format I've not seen before - they play the album to the subject and record his reactions. And he comes across as an absolute gent, proud of his compositions without being self-important, praising the vast majority of the versions without coming across as indiscriminate or a suck-up. What a star. But my favourite comment of all, on Tindersticks' contribution - "Is English his first language?"