What Would Wolverine Do?

[alexsarll]

I've not been to the Rhythm Factory since it got trendy. In the meantime their drinks have got worse, and so has their clientele. The place was full of Shoreditch scum, one of whom managed to get my jacket even more wrong than the so-called 'Libertines' did. And what's worse, these Hoxtonites then started watching the footballism. This belongs in a forbidden realm of nightmare hybrids alongside the spider-mice from Spaced, the Alien/Predator hybrid, a Nazi made of radioactive bees or a chinchilla made of Smash. But in fact, the only realm forbidden to us is the venue proper; an hour after generalkhaki are meant to have started, there's still no sign of us being let in. General Khaki have always struck me as supreme professionals (not to mention bloody nice people) but somehow they've fallen among the elements of the London live scene who seem to take pride in their own incompetence; the February date I attended was bumped early, and now they're being bumped late to such a degree that we begin to wonder how the promoters are planning to fit five bands in. Meanwhile, violentbec, hazyjayne, insecuregoddess and I are trapped with far too many of the Scum Squared hybrids in far too small and airless a space. Eventually, it's just too much and as much as we want to see some rock'n'roll, we have to flee. My apologies to the General.
Dear The Rhythm Factory: you've made my sh1tlist.

I eventually lead my tribe to the safety of the Blind Beggar. Yes, a pub famous for gangsters shooting each other in it is preferable to the Rhythm Factory. Especially when it has two cats and a football-free zone one is actually allowed to enter.

As much as I like David Tennant, I really hope Eccleston's just doing a Gandolfini-style bluff for more money, because we're fast running out of regenerations.

Comments

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

I was talking about the spidermice to someone this weekend.

I <3 those cats. They were beautiful. I want a cat.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

They'd best stay away from my cheese, or they'll get swatted...

Which reminds me, my flatmate's guest wasn't eating my bread - but he did drink my orange juice. However, she apologised for this before I even noticed.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

I think every living creature knows that your cheese is sacred!

Awww. nice flatmate. And she paints almost rude pictures! :D

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of them as 'sensual'.

Perhaps we could frame Eccleston for attempting to eat my cheese, and then threaten him into keeping the role?

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

That would be ace. He isn't allowed to go, I love him. He is my new big nosed fictious husband. Mmmm noses...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Move house! You can search on loot for "must love cats" i have discovered.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

I am moving house. If I find one with a cat my life will be complete!

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Seriously, go to loot.com, type 'cat' in the search thing, and then click property. Alternatively, there's someone who hasn't got back to me, and I think it's because they want a woman. 2 cats. That's if you want to pay 500 a month for a (big) room in Bermondsey.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

Can there ever only be one Doctor then with one lot of regenerations...

Or it could be something has happened behind the scenes to piss him off?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, there have been hints that the Doctor is More Than A Time Lord - but I very much doubt the BBC want to go back there. Otherwise, he's limited to 13 incarnations.

I think Eccleston's just taken aback by how popular it has been, and how many people who've never seen him before now know him as the Doctor.

I just got a badge of the new logo from our film critic. Yesterday, I'd have been so chuffed with that. Today, it's tinged with too much melancholy.

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that I was overcome with melancholy at the news? I love Eccleston, for not merely fancypiece reasons, and he makes an excellent Doctor.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Not wrong at all! I spent about the first hour after seeing the news on the verge of either crying or flipping out. Only now am I starting to see possible up-sides, and to believe that this may have been planned for a while.

Eccleston's great in the role, but I think Tennant will be too. I just hope the public can handle regeneration so soon, and agrees.

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

I hope the public keep watching! For a Time Lord, Ecclestone's got lousy timing.

It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Play this right, and the public will love it. Though they may then get hooked on novelty, of course...

Change, my dear. And not a moment too soon.

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

Not that that'sever happened before.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

As in a Higher Power?

Oh, and of course Mr. Eccleston has never been typecast before!


... At least this version is a little more cheerful...

Is the badge the shine enamel type?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It has all been left very vague, but the phrase Time's Champion is significant, as are hints that he was somehow around or involved when Rassilon and Omega first made the Gallifreyans into Time Lords.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Doctor Versus Mawdryn Undead Onna Gallifrey Tip, or something.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

OK, this time your meaning escapes even my Braneology. W to the T to the F?

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Well basically my original thought was that they could return to the plotline of Mawdryn Undead where the Doctor accidentally takes some of their regeneration juice or whatever it was, which affects his Gallifrean phiziology in some bonkers way which will be explained to us BY SCIENCE which reverses the effects of his previous regenerations and starts him off again from the beginning. But instead of saying that, I chose to express it using a phrase that sounded a bit like a young people's raving music song. My reasons escape me now.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There are ways around it, true (Hell, it began as a get out clause for the departure of decrepit racist William Hartnell) but I'd sooner we not get to that point too soon. I mean, he managed hundreds of years in one incarnation, and now he's going through them like Pringles!

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I say it's a good excuse to start playing regeneration bingo drinking games. You know me, always the optimist*!

*world implodes in sheer implausibility

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

Well, he keeps doing dangerous stuff, doesn't he? If he'd stayed put on Gallifrey and repaired Tardises like a good little Time Lord, he'd still be William Hartnell.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Then again, wouldn't you want to regenerate if you were William Hartnell?

(I always liked the New Adventures' suggestion that the nascent Seventh Doctor engineered the death of the Sixth in that time storm nonsense, simply because the Sixth was a useless tw@t)

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

Fits in with the nature of the 7th Doctor, doesn't it? I really must get around to seeing some of the McCoy stuff sometime... I stopped watching after they cast Bonnie Langford.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Ignore his first season (except *maybe* Dragonfire, which introduces Ace). Go straight to the last two seasons:

Remembrance of the Daleks
The Happiness Patrol
Silver Nemesis
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Battlefield
Ghost Light
The Curse of Fenric
Survival

Of those, I'd say Happiness Patrol is the weakest. But a friend whose wife grew up in Ceaucescu's Romania reckons it's one of the best portrayals of totalitarianism he's ever seen.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

It'd be unwatchable (obviously not just because he probably can't act), but I think Chris Evans is suited to the role in many ways...his personality traits (childish, playful, irritating, egocentric) seem to be similar to that of the Doctor, I thought.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The balance of those traits varies massively, though. And frankly, the last ging Doctor was bad enough.

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

Jesus, I knew that was the Swarm you were talking about without even clicking the link. My ability to remember utter rubbish about nonsense truly is wonderous.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

C'mon, it's pretty much the best supervillain concept ever!

(Though apparently in the third book of Sleeper there's a woman who was bitten by a radioactive homosexual)

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

Ah, but what of Batroc the Leaper? French chap that jumps a bit. And that's it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

During the Disassembled hoo-ha, I very nearly bought an issue of Captain America simply because it had Cap being kicked in by Batroc on the cover.

Needless to say, that would never happen to Captain Britain.

[simon-price.livejournal.com]

Last time I was at the Rhythm Factory, a then-unfamous Pete Doherty was present, but wasn't allowed to play cos his mummy Bernard wouldn't allow it. I laughed at him for looking like Rodney Bewes trying to be Julian Casablancas.

That venue was an incompetent shithole THEN. I dread to imagine how it might have deteriorated since.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You've managed not to go back since, even for work to see all the fashionable young junkies? Lucky you.

At least they did pints of cider back then, and started Pierrot Lunaire approximately when they claimed they would.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

We did get to play eventually, we had no idea there was such faff going on outside, sorry. And Mikey from David Devant said he liked our set! Bonus!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, sorry again, and I'm glad the Vessel made up for our flight!

See you somewhere less scene soon, hopefully.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Marna and I would have come out while people were (still) soundchecking, but we weren't technically on the guestlist and wouldn't have got back in. Marna was trying to sell merchandise, but we left a song or two into the band-after-GK's set because there were too many people in there. We'll get you to a well-organised gig soon!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Yes, def. I might pop along to LYE after our gig on Sunday, depending on knackeredness and drumkit maneouvres.

[diamond-geyser.livejournal.com]

aaah, Swarm, Marvellous.
Limitations: Swarm is vulnerable to insecticides.
Features: He's made of friggin' bees!
Shall now spend a portion of my afternoon looking up entertaining supers. Well done you.

I predict Boris Johnson, Bruce Forsyth, Martin Clunes, William Hague, Anne Robinson, Charles Kennedy, Charlotte Church and Jeremy Clarkson as the new Doctors - the BBC have highly developed replacement skills by now - with the first episode being taken over by a bemused looking Paul Merton with a giddy kipper Ross Noble as sidekick.

Aaah, and the polari episode of 'Dr Who' is 'Carnival Of Monsters'.
(I checked with the Daily Telegraph, then Johnny, then Google. All surprisingly helpful.)
More information on much Who based gayness here, the reason I know now one show features the lines: "Barbara, could I have your cardigan?" "What, again?" "It's for the Dalek, not for me!"
Aaaah, I sense a post coming on...

[diamond-geyser.livejournal.com]

Or even here.
Apologies for the basic inference that your journal is a gay Who repository.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's OK, I know that for some people this is a one-stop gay geekery shop.

Carnival of Monsters is bobbins.

Another entertainingly daft Marvel villain is the teleporter The Spot, though he recently got turned into a zombie assassin while trying to pay his wife's credit card bill.

eeeexcellent

[diamond-geyser.livejournal.com]

Ohnn stepped through another space warp, and announced himself to Spider-Man as The Spot. Spider-Man collapsed on the roof, laughing at the name.

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

Is McGann considered canon?

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

No. Neither is Peter Cushing.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Don't be daft. Cushing's stories were retellings of Hartnell stories. McGann's film followed on from Lungbarrow and, the novels featuring his Doctor (many written by authors working on this series) lead up to the War referred to in 'Rose'.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I've not seen any clear statement on the matter, but the references to the War suggest they're running from after the Eighth Doctor books, for which series many of the new series' authors certainly wrote.

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

I have always said it should be John Hurt, but he and the BBC are not on the best of terms after his outbursts about the lack of spending and promotion on Alan Clarke Diaries.

Re The Rhythm Factory: I've never been and I've not been tempted to since I first saw the pics of the parties there in the NME. They go on and on and on about how the scene around the Libertines et al is 'about the kids', how it's 'inclusive' and 'street level'... BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS... just looking at the pictures in that stupid rag I instantly spotted the same old suspects that I'd seen ligging around the 333 ten years ago: a bunch of old music industry lags, wannabe Sean McCluskeys, dealers and egomonsters all louching it up, sneering at each other and especially at anyone younger or less outre than them, and giving it the big "hey look at me, standing around here, it's the centre of the universe, the coolest place in the world because I am standing next to some Japanese fashion student with blue hair and a little bo fucking peep costume". Aresholes. Life-hating, intellect-hating, music-hating vacuous arseholes.

Aresholes arseholes arseholes.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Also, the NME et al act like the Rhythm Factory is all about the bands who've shared a needle with Pete Doherty - is it b0ll0cks. At the weekends, where the real money is, it's house, breaks and drum'n'bass.