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.