Lo! my soul's chin recedes

[alexsarll]

Lots of comedians this weekend, and I don't just mean the nine-strong troupe last night, fostering a convivial atmosphere even though they were playing a room which also contained chocolate wine. On Friday the Curious Orange came into Gosh, when I was already on a bit of a high from being told that for reasons which remain opaque to me, there's a signed Miracleman print with my name quite literally on it, free of charge*. And on Saturday, at the Ivy, just when we were beginning to think the whole place was people wanting to be mistaken for celebrities rather than the 'real' thing, who should be placed at the next table but Ricky Gervais and companion, both looking miserable as virtue. Should you ever be at the Ivy, incidentally, I can recommend the pumpkin gnocchi.

Also on Friday, well, I suppose you could link this to comedy, because the idea was that I should spin a pop set! Not that I don't like pop, you understand, I just have somewhat erratic ideas on what constitutes a dancefloor classic. I'd brought along a grab bag of ideas, and the preceding set by ursarctous had included three tracks I'd been considering ('Song 4 Mutya', Robyn and 'I Told Her On Alderaan' so that at least narrowed my options to a more manageable level. Specifically:
Accident & Emergency - Patrick Wolf
Never Let Me Down Again - Depeche Mode
All The Things She Said - Tatu
Ready For The Floor - Hot Chip
Dreamer - Livin' Joy
Untouchable - Girls Aloud**
Left To My Own Devices - Pet Shop Boys
Do You Remember The First Time? - Pulp
Up - The Saturdays
The Fear - Lily Allen
Backdoor Lover - DuJour
Time To Pretend - MGMT
Piece Of Me - Britney
Some Girls - Rachel Stevens
Got Ya Money - ODB ft. Kelis
After some early panic (I'd played two Number Ones and the new Girls Aloud single, what more did people want from me, blood?) the slightly self-indulgent PSB choice got people on the floor for the rest of the set. Yay for self-indulgence.

Have finally seen Sunset Boulevard, and the only thing that's stopped me quoting it all weekend is that I also received a book with the tagline "Your Galaxy Is Toast, Monkey Boys!" But what a classic, ahead of The Player and Entourage in getting Hollywood to gleefully skewer its own, and more savage and true and beautiful than either still. I know it's popular on stage too, but for me it has to be a film, and a film with the cast playing themselves - Gloria Swanson the old silent star with Erich von Stroheim reduced to her butler (and isn't Greed still lost, his reputation still a phantom?), watching a film they really made together, him in his own clothes. Buster Keaton and the other 'waxworks'. Hedda Hopper and Mr de Mille as themselves, the latter using his real nickname for her. So much reality, yet so far from the sort of tiresome 'realism' which usually just means 'dullness'. And it put me in just the right mood for some Max Beerbohm today, similarly metatextual hilarity at the expense of the arts, albeit literary ones in his case, read in the park interspersed with bits of the paper, before heading off to see if there are any ducklings about (answer: not yet, but I did see some scruffy young coots, which probably aren't called cootlets, but should be).

*Not a bad comics haul, either - only four issues but each of them a gem. The Walking Dead is too consistently brilliant/horrific for me to have much to say about it. Kieron Gillen's first Beta Ray Bill comic is, well it's Gillen doing the horse-faced alien Thor and, like Mike Avon Oeming in Stormbreaker, finding something to do with him beyond just saying "It's the horse-faced alien Thor!" which, let's be frank, would have been enough for me anyway. The new Moon Knight artist, four months in, finally draws Moon Knight in costume, and does it bloody well, which I don't say lightly given I'm also currently reading the Essential containing the issues where Billy the Sink did the definitive visual take on the character. And Dan Slott turns in another fun Spider-Man issue and even makes some sense of the whole mindwipe business re: his secret identity, although I can't help but feel that making J.Jonah Jameson Mayor of New York is a slightly redundant retread when the Green Goblin is running US superhuman affairs. What next, Doctor Octopus becomes the supervisor at Pete's apartment block?
**angelv later played the Rialto song of the same name; I honestly don't know which of them is better.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed your set a lot! Good call on the Ol' Dirty.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I had suddenly realised that I had played an incredibly white set and that might mean Lex would come and get me if I didn't sort it out pronto.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

I was sulking as no one else was singing the words. Andrew slightly scared me with his joy at hearing DeJour. I will never look at him in quite the same way again.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Dude, did you never witness me and Ewan 'singing' Say My Name at each other?

I deleted all the albums from my iTunes in work after Spotify happened, and then after Spotify was barred I started listening to all the various tracks that I've downloaded from the internet because friends have put them up. I sincerely intend to (IE will never) review them all, as they're all great, and Backdoor Lover is one of the greatest.

I really enjoyed Kat's reaction (she's apparently never seen Josie and the Pussycats!) and also the fact that you seemed to know all the words to everything.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This demonstrates the problem with The Future Of Music Is Streaming TM - you're always at the mercy of the services, the connection and the original content providers.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

if I'm at the Ivy I will definitely NOT have the pumpkin gnocchi (I've had it before, it was AWESOME, also it came in a packet from Sainsburys and was £2, I suspect it would not be considerably better but WOULD be considerably more expensive).

This post to you bought by SOUR GRAPES bcz I have never been to the Ivy, I want to go but no-one will take me. I walk past it (and it's club) every day. Sigh.

SIGH I SAID.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Nobody had ever taken me before and you are still young, not at an advanced age like me!
Pumpkins, though - I have never had nice pumpkin stuff except in places where the ruling classes eat, ie the Parliament cafe and the Ivy. So that was a bit of a gamble to order them, but I feel it paid off. I will concede, though, that for a carnivore like yrself various of the meaty options would probably be more U&K.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Given the amount of lentils I ate over the weekend I'm pretty sure I'm an omni rather than a carni (ha!) but yeah yeah where's the tripe.

I've never had bad pumpkin!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Really? I normally consider it as a wonderful Hallowe'en decoration but one which no more should be eaten than a plastic skeleton would be.

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

I do a very good onion squash risotto, and a chicken, borlotti bean and roast pumpkin stew. Also, pumpkin, ricotta and amaretti tortelloni from Lena Stores on Brewer Street is fantastic (and very cheap, as well as being hand-made fresh every day).

[ursarctous.livejournal.com]

i love that there's somewhere in the world that we can have a three track crossover, given that i never normally recognise more than one or two songs you play.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think it is probably best that other people invite me to play at their more mainstream events - left to my own devices (DYSWIDT?) I would probably have ended up spinning Hold Steady live tracks to a small and baffled crowd.

[azureskies.livejournal.com]

I would actually buy a comic in which Doctor Octopus was Peter Parker's building supervisor. Especially if the Vulture was the creepy old guy that lived upstairs.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And Shocker was the electrician? Well, at this rate it should be coming pretty soon. Probably from Guggenheim.

Oh, and after the next issue, Moon Knight starts a new storyline, so that would seem like an ideal time for your crew to check it out - it's easily the best Marvel title Comics Daily doesn't cover.

[johnny-vertigen.livejournal.com]

That last Slott Spiderman is the first post Brand New Day Spidey comic that's felt *right*.

Did we ever find out what was happening with Hellblazer btw?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Ian Rankin has a graphic novel coming, but it's also part of the launch of the Vertigo Crime imprint, which will clearly die on its arse after two waves of releases like all other such imprints. Remeber Vertigo Voices? Vertigo Verite?
Oh! New DC solicits are up, Milligan has another issue - plus he's launching an 'epic' ongoing called Greek Street. Who knows, maybe he'll even get past 20 issues this time?

Did you not like New Ways To Die? I've liked all the Slott, but that was the one which most had me desperate to find out what happened next.

[johnny-vertigen.livejournal.com]

It was alright, still didn't feel right though. The unmasking in the new ish had me going "about sodding time".

Just one more issue? Might be for the best, that last story was a bit meh. Batman vs Bear though. Hell yeah.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I don't mean, announced as his last issue - just that it's back in the solicits after that puzzling gap. If nothing else he's a safe pair of hands until they find someone else to really take the title somewhere.

The unmasking might have had more impact if we hadn't already had a similar scene in New Avengers (contrary to what Pete says in this story), and one which didn't entirely mesh. But yes, something had to be done about the Mephistophelean elephant in the room.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And, Milligan's doing five issues of Batman Confidential where Batman fights a Russian mobster and a bear.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This just in: the Shade collections *are* continuing! Blow me. Now at this rate, the whole series should be back in print by, oooh, 2045?

[johnny-vertigen.livejournal.com]

Almost bought the issues I found in Oxfam but held off in event of something like this. Ace. Reckon I'll get me some Starman books next though, been meaning to do that for ages.

Hmm, I don't think I've got Bad Company anymore either. To comic shop I shall go....

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Starman hardbacks do look utterly gorgeous, it's true. And there's some related news in the mail I just sent you.

[monkeyssk8.livejournal.com]

Also Sunset B is like the same three songs over and over and over again - and jesus that was a tiny stage, but I liked how they used the instruments and characters - also the main ladee wasn't too shabby, as well as her butler, it was alright - but like all ALW, see once and neva again!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And given I'm not *that* big on musicals in the first place, this is really not selling it to me...

[monkeyssk8.livejournal.com]

whydya go see it?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I saw the film! And said I didn't think stage versions would work so well!

[monkeyssk8.livejournal.com]

ah I missed that - I thought you saw the one in the west end, I need to learn how to read...

Spidey

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Given that Doctor Octopus once nearly became Peter's uncle, there's plenty of form here. It's the Marvel - or perhaps specifically the Spider-Man way.

Re: Spidey

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, but I expect that sort of crap from seventies Marvel - Slott is better than that!

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Greed is "lost" in the same way as, say, The Daleks' Master Plan is lost - there's a tragically small fraction of the original material remaining, but certainly enough left to judge if its reputation is merited. They managed to cobble together a four-hour restoration recently, for a start.

I really need you to point me in the direction of comics I should be buying. Beyond Seaguy #1 and Buffy Season 8 (which I broadly hate, but like Blake in Star One I've come too far to let ethical qualms stop me now), I am completely at a loss about what I'm in the comic shop for these days.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Didn't that four hour version include some stills, or am I thinking of something else? But yeah, not entirely lost, just lost enough that I think of it as lost - Hell, I'd probably say the same about The Magnificent Ambersons, just for the ending.

Buffy has got very variable lately, but I did like the Andrew issue. What else? Well, there's a lot of gleeful nastiness to be had at Marvel while Dark Reign is underway - if you liked Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts, you'll like Dark Avengers and Dark Reign: Hawkeye. Ellis' new one Ignition City is promising too - essentially Deadwood with faded space heroes.
Paul Cornell's Captain Britain is probably the best straight superheroics title going at present. And if you want something which feels like the more outre Morrison stuff, you should definitely be reading Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy.