I think that went rather well.

Well, after a couple of quiet weekends this one rocked more than a remake of The Rock starring The Rock, Motley Crue and the Rock Lords from Gobots.

Friday: Stay Beautiful. It's been more than a month since my last SB, and more than a year since my last Martin Wallace DJ set. Consequently, I spend almost my entire time out on the floor. In the weekend's first Moment of Visionary Brilliance, I remember how powerful music is. Take 'Mono', by Courtney Love - that song is pure, conentrated ego. You could play that to Buddha, or Aristotle's god, and knock them back into mortality with it. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that, but it'd be a lark, wouldn't it? Or 'Temptation' by New Order - no idea what that song's on about, frankly, but doesn't it just hit you somewhere you didn't know you was there to hit? Anyway. I still have no idea what My Chemical Romance sound like, but the DJ they supply is also bloody good. Also, I now really want a Clockwork Orange icon.

Saturday: Rammstein. The queue is the first queue I have ever seen which is literally 'around the block' - it's the shape of a number 9. And inside - I've been to a sold-out show at the Academy before, but somehow it never felt this *full*. Tonight's Moment of Visionary Brilliance: just as The Two Towers left me feeling that all films should begin with a presumption in favour of 10,000 Orcs, this concert leaves me feeling that all bands should start with a presumption in flavour of flamethrowers for the singer and keyboard stands on Segways. I can feel the heat of the flames from behind the mixing desk, and wonder how Miss Raichu, dunkel_blut et al are managing down the front. I am later told that the temperature was high enough to melt PVC. This is indeed a band who know how to put on a show. But also, of course, one who have the songs, the vision and the passion to fill out such expansive gestures. Now I understand why they inspire quite such passion.

Sunday: Love Your Enemies. We are the top pick in the Guide and I feel the weight of expectation heavy upon me, but I remind myself that nothing can hurt the samurai who goes into battle fully resolved to press pause on the wrong CD deck. In a Moment of Visionary Brilliance, I decide to ditch my planned setlist and DJ using only the 12"/80s compilation which I won at Stay Beautiful. In a second Moment of Visionary Brilliance, I realise that my colleagues are unlikely to share my current high esteem for the Cutback Mix of 'Money's Too Tight To Mention' by Simply Red, and that it's far too early in our glittering careers for the Michael Alig-style disco bloodbath that will ensue. The setlist is rescued.
( These days everybody's a DJ )

Afterwards I bounce around the venue like some sort of deranged human pinball, thanking people for coming and hugging people who'd clearly rather not be hugged, breaking off every now and then to hit the floor as my esteemed colleagues do their stuff. I am still buzzing.

The kisses of the enemy are deadly

People who enjoyed last night, or would like to go another time, or simply have nothing better to do with the Internet: mail loveyourenemies@gmail.com so we can join all the viagra, p0rn and Rolex merchants in your spam folder. And yes, I'm very sorry about getting the venue address wrong.

On Friday I was reading back through my old entries, and increasingly understanding the Urge to Delete (though obviously I was not goth enough to succumb). The worst was that exactly a year before, I had been reading an Iris Murdoch novel. As I am now. There was no conscious decision on my part, I've never particularly thought of her as a 'February writer' or anything - I'm clearly just far more an(nu)al than I'd supposed.
A year before that, of course, 'I' was wondering how to turn tATu.

Thought: the Beastie Boys were once a thoroughly entertaining novelty/party whiteboy hip hop act. Does this mean that in a decade, Goldie Lookin' Chain will be tireless and slightly over-worthy political activists? Man, I wish the Beasties had gone with their original plan and called their first album Don't Be A Faggot. It might have stopped them getting quite so serious.

The Guardian asked a noted blogger to write a diary of blogging. Is that idea worthy of Sterne, or just deeply stupid?

The Line of Beauty is done; strange to think that a novel of the Eighties now counts as 'historical fiction'. I'm also wondering whether it counts as alternate universe fiction if one of your central characters is an MP who didn't exist. But then, that makes all fiction alternate universe fiction. I digress. It's a fine book, and if Hollinghurst's capitalists seem grotesque, his socialists are petulant and naive; I fear that in neither case is there as much caricature as one might hope. My one real objection is that in all three books of his I've read, there is a sense that any straight male (or at least any young and attractive one) can at least temporarily lapse into gayness, but the reverse never happens; insatiable as they are, none of his queers is ever tempted by a girl.
Also, has anyone else ever heard the term 'bumshoving'? I thought a combination of eighties playground, boys' school and Viz had taught me every bvggery euphemism going, but apparently not.

( The Whole Equation by David Thomson )