Less talking. More kicking.

p_dan_tic's birthday Kaput gets extra points for the skeleton DJ, but I'd have approved anyway. I don't recall any songs I actively dislike, and while there was lots I didn't know, what I did included 'Short Skirt Long Jacket', Associates, Johnny Boy, Big Black, Magazine and Pulp's 'Party Hard'. More Of This Sort Of Thing (Outside Caledonia), basically.
The next day, I was a little disappointed that the British Bonving Championship was called off on account of the cold - there were even some snow spectators by the pitch, and the pastime was invented in Scandinavia! But on balance, the world would be a better place if more sports were liable to the governing body sacking off the national championships and going down the pub instead. The pub, though...amuchmoreexotic had it about right when he classed Highgate's Woodman as "a remedial pub. If you pull a really bad pint, they send you here". Then on to Pennfest for an increasingly assured Brontosaurus Chorus and the sharp-suited, Kinks-y (but not Britpoppy), suave sound of Friends Of The Bride. But not, alas, myfirstkitchen's own set, because the second room was too well-hidden. Which was unfortunate, because otherwise Leonard's was so nearly a very good venue to bear in mind for future events. Ditto Saturday's London Stone, really - there was one bad feature, one (admittedly well-decorated) pillar blocking the dancefloor off too much, or I'd tell everyone to start putting stuff on there immediately.

Among the various unseemly details grudgingly revealed about MPs' expenses, the one which interests me most is that "Gordon Brown seems to have charged for a Sky sports subscription". Not so much because it means Gordon's been giving public money to Rupert Murdoch - we all knew Brown was his prag. But because it illustrates once again his fascination with sport which, lest we forget, is what left him half-blind and wonky of face. I usually admire bloody-mindedness, but there are limits.
(I have a lot of respect for Heather Brooke's determined campaign to get the expense information in the public eye. But am I the only one to also find her kinda hot?)

A letter in the current edition of The Bookseller:
"Regarding Kate Mosse's rejoinder to critics of the Orange Prize, here's a story I was told by the wife of a man who used to work for Orange. Apparently it used to provide staff interested in running reading groups with a room, coffee and biscuits, etc. One day the mail employee suggested that he'd like to organise a science fiction reading group. He was told this wouldn't be possible as "only men read SF", and that to start a reading group focused on the genre would be sexist."

I was unimpressed with Matt Fraction's much-praised Casanova; loved the art, sure, but find the artist better employed on Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy where the script isn't so try-hard. But I decided to give him another chance, and read Punisher War Journal. Which was better, but still not great; he was still being a bit too self-consciously cool, and that resulted in narration that was too much Matt Fraction and not enough Frank Castle. And this time he didn't even have an artist who could save him; Ariel Olivetti looks like a poor man's John Bolton*. Not dire, but just sort of...there. So, final chance: the first collection of The Immortal Iron Fist.
Wow.
Obviously, it helps that it's a co-write, but then Brubaker's not a writer I love either - it's just that they work perfectly together. Brubaker's grit and noir smarts tones down Fraction's hip excesses; Fraction makes Brubaker more fun. The result is a time-spanning pulp romp, sort of Doc Savage crossed with a Bruce Lee film if Bruce Lee films were anywhere near as good as their cultural cachet suggests, plus dragons. I definitely want to read more than this, and it makes me hope I'm wrong about Iron Fist being a Skrull, because this is one story where I can't see how that angle would do anything but undermine it.

*If you only read one comic this year about bored British teenagers discovering Faerie, read Suburban Glamour. But if you want a second, Carey & Bolton's God Save The Queen is very pretty.