Less talking. More kicking.

[alexsarll]

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.

Comments

[kenix.livejournal.com]

*thumbs up*

4's out this week, too.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It is? Splendid. Must remember to get Miriam a copy too, she's still being Antipodean.

[thermaland.livejournal.com]

Which was unfortunate, because otherwise Leonard's was so nearly a very good venue to bear in mind for future events.

Penny told me it was shutting down as of last night!

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

So they told us when we arrived. Though bizarrely the woman behind the bar told Charlie at the end of the night that the bar take was so good they were considering carrying on. I would be disinclined to do anything there again, though, due to the crap equipment and dodgy soundman and their only letting us in half an hour before doors and only telling us this on the day.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I appreciate that this sort of thing is very much less than ideal, but the space and the sound are still so much better than a lot of places - including places which manage to get themselves taken inexplicably seriously as Happening Venues. Fuck's sake, the Guardian just printed a list of London's ten best venues and included that unutterable shambles of a stinkhole that is Nambucca!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

ooh, i missed this list. where else was in?

was intending to make it down to leonards but BROKEN had kicked in due to poptimism and lack of night busses.

incidentally we totally played the associates at p-mism too (cleared the dnacefloor mind ;))

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Here you go. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/apr/03/london.music?page=all) The Windmill at least is a worthy choice, maybe even the Dublin Castle at a push. But some of the others...sheesh.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, initially I was all "Come on, it's a comic about IRON FIST" and then I read it and OMG!

The one in the Avengers could be not the same as the one in Iron Fist - there's supposedly a real Ms Marvel and a skrull one running around, after all.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I have seen this logic applied to Spider-Man and Wolverine, but they appear in so many comics each month that it at least works as some sort of satirical point. And the Danny Rand in this comic reads to me as very much the same Danny Rand in New Avengers - especially the bit where he got his lawyers to bitchslap Tony von Stark.

I was very suspicious of Ms Marvel, but I think that would be too obvious.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, I've just learned that the creative team's changing (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=152812). I have no interest in his Cable run, but the Swierczynski one-shots I've read on Moon Knight and Punisher suggest he'd at least be at home with the urban vigilante stuff.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - I'm not sure that story was true - I was part of one of the first reading groups and knew a lot of people involved in the set up we got free books off the orange shortlist - it all died a death very swiftly and I think genre reading was generally discouraged anyway.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Also, ha - I listened to that Cutler track a week or so ago - it's delightfully spooky.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If "genre reading was generally discouraged anyway", that would suggest to me an intellectual climate which makes the story plausible, even if it was just one dumb line-manager casting around for a justification. Probably the same sort of person who another line of work would probably say 'health and safety' or 'data protection' in that talismanic, irrelevant fashion.

This album is the first time I've ever sat down and listened to Cutler at length. Part of me thinks he worked better as odd tracks here and there on my dad's tapes, but he is good.