Dastardly

[alexsarll]

I've spent eight years living in Finsbury Park now, wandering around the place a fair bit. The last eight months of that even more so, what with the whole lack-of-gainful-employment bit. But on Thursday I went in a local park I'd never even quite registered before, though I certainly recall walking past its hedge after hours. And behind that, there's another, even smaller and less noticeable parklet. Truly, London is fractal.
Also observed, later yesterday: a lot of people running around Finsbury Park itself in aid of strokes. As in, several looked like they were about to have one.
On Wednesday, I was up at the lovely Big Green Bookshop for the cheap drink The Man Who Fell Asleep's rather belated but very fun book launch. But on Tuesday evening I was also in Finsbury Park, because xandratheblue and charleston both wanted some pointers on climbing trees. And with both of them taking turns up in the branches, it was all going jolly well, well enough to be considered "just like the Famous Five". "So now all we need is a swarthy foreigner up to no good!", I reply, foolishly.
Minutes later, a man of unspecified foreign-ness ambles over, boots in one hand and mini-umbrella in the other. He initially seems confused by the whole business - "Trees? You pretending to be monkeys?" - and asks if he can have a hand into the tree. I demur, because I don't know where he's been. He makes it up into the tree fine because he is, in his somewhat confused way, hustling. He wanted to act like he couldn't climb because he had in mind a plan, a plan on which he now acts. He challenges me - if he can climb higher, he gets "one of your women. Maybe both of them!"
In my best politely outraged Briton voice, I tell him that's not how we do things over here. Charley, more direct, tells him to fvck off. He looks confused at the failure of his cunning scheme. We go see The Nuns.
They are preceded by Strange News From Another Star, of whom I only catch one song, which reminds me of a less-tight McLusky fronted by (My Name Is) Earl, but apparently the rest of the set was tighter, then followed by Fiction (whom I initially think are interesting, but am mistaken) and The Victorian English Gentleman's Club, who would be ace without the singer. But the Nuns themselves...they're quite something. If you don't know, they're an all-female band who cover the work of The Monks, a bunch of GIs stationed in Germany who made one incredibly influential album. Of which I've heard about half, and which didn't really make that much of an impact on me. And...it's difficult not coming over all Paul Morley here, but somehow a tribute band who are not a tribute band, playing that music in light (and sound) of all the music it's influenced, sound more original than the original. Sometimes they sound like a sixties band covering post-punk classics and sometimes they sound like the reverse. And simply by being all-girl, their version of 'Boys Are Boys And Girls Are Choice' is always going to have the advantage. They're not necessarily a band I need to see often, but they really are something unique.

The theory of filth as driver of technological change is fairly familiar by now (though I've yet to see it revised with an explanation for why Blu-ray beat HD-DVD; based on the victory of VHS over Betamax, one would have expected the format backed by the p0rn industry to win out). So I suppose it should have been obvious that the 'adult' industry is even further along the curve of suffering from the rise of free online content than the rest of the entertainment sector. "Business managers for...two of the industry's biggest stars, said their clients were using their celebrity to make money in other ways, like dancing in exotic clubs and licensing their name to sex toys and lingerie" - just like the new model where bands make money from gigs and merchandise, not CDs. But, most interestingly, "The death of the DVD business has been more accelerated in the adult business than mainstream". Now, I think of the DVD as having a certain amount of built-in future-proofing, just because it's such a nice format - you might torrent a film to see if it's any cop, but if you love it, you'll still want the DVD for the extras and such - the only people who are really going to suffer are those too lazy to have any interesting extras on their DVDs, and they deserve it. But even beyond that...there's something pleasing about having a nice shelf of DVDs, isn't there? For people to look at, borrow from, just because it brightens the room. Whereas, except in a frat house, a sizeable collection of w@nk-fodder doesn't really give the same impression.

Comments

[charleston.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I feel about The Nuns! I'm so glad you got them in the way that I do. They're usually a lot louder than they were the other night so I wasn't sure how well it would come across to someone new. But yeah, somehow more real than the real thing.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Maybe just because it's *now*, and an old band you've heard about is never going to affect you quite the same way as a new band playing a little basement venue. Even if the new band are playing the old band's songs, so long as they're not songs you already know to death it doesn't feel like a covers act.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I've heard of the Monks. Maybe I'll check out the next Nuns gig, wheneverthatis.

Maybe people aren't quite so proud of their DVD pr0n collection and prefer it not to be on their shelves and coffee tables?

PAs and featured dancing used to always be the way the real money came in for most US lady pr0n stars. (See Jenna Jameson's autobiog). There's only a few places at the top where you got really decent money for doing DVDs.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Next gig is at Offset festival with charleston on bass!

And isn't your second line pretty much what I said in the last line of the entry?

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

Lock ins in book shops are the best! :D

Maybe everyone has just realised that the majority of mainstream pr0n is rubbish?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If so, it has taken them long enough to notice!

The bookshop lock-in was great, but just having a lock-in at a bookshop which had not prepared with many wines would be a bit less satisfactory.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

True. I dunno, rhysy and liz showed me the cover of some bad gai pr0n and it was pretty laughable. I find it hard to take it seriously.

Also there were ladybug cushions. I wish I had realised about them earlier.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

I don;t think that kitten is suitible for talking of gai pr0n is it? :D

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure this kitten is either though, sadly.

Ladybug cushions? were they in bookshop? I missed those.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

No! I have a collection of kittens but none is suitible. It was a pr0n about lumberjacks. Only one lumberjack was the bottom but he did not seem massively bothered by this.

Did you not see? I was excitedly showing them to people!

Also: re your comment below, I have def seem pr0n star merch in sechs shops. I got very confused recently about a plus sized pr0n star who 'lauched' her own 'fat vagina' (a mold of her own fat vagina one assumes) but I was massively confused because I have been with girls of many differing sizes and there was not really much corralation. I really hate fake ladyparts though (though admittedly it is not me they are aimed at) because they always make the hair with something akin to the hair on the heads of tiny tear dolls. Not Appropriate.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Artificial vaginas are terrifying and wrong, though tbh even d1ld0s alarm me a bit when they strive too hard for verisimilitude and just end up in the uncanny valley.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

Did I ever tell you about the mermaid vibrator? That was amazing. The dolphin and worm ones make me sad though.

I could talk on this topic for far too long, which will probably not surprise you. *shuts up*

[xandratheblue.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got around to documenting the "Swarthy Man incident" as I wasn't sure Charley did and I didn't. You tell it well.

I keep on hearing about Adult Star merchandise and never seeing it, save the stuff Katie Price has done, and I find it debatable whether to call her an "Adult Star" in the same way a porn star is (because it seems that girls can take off their clothes and it will be shameless, cuz' everyone knows that's how you get famous.)I would quiet like to see some!

DVDs do have a nice format, but I'm still rather frustrated, like with CDs, how only half of them play on a PC because of copyright proofing and as people move away from having separate entertainment units, it's going to encourage downloading. Case in point - "Yes Virginia" by Dresden Dolls did not work in my PC because of copyrighting issue, so I had to go download the album, causing me slightly more trouble and effort, and making me feel like a criminal whilst supporting one of my favourite artists. I understand why companies do it, but like itunes limiting how many times you can copy a song, I think they're gonna have to trust that people are doing the right thing, but on the "wrong" format, or will end up downloading it anyway for other usage.

[charleston.livejournal.com]

Yes I mentioned it in the comments but even so held back from the full "I say, there's a swarthy fellow, we'd better call the police!" treatment - am v glad Sarll has recorded it for posterity.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Let's face it, of our three journals the borderline racism was always going to be most at home on mine.

[xandratheblue.livejournal.com]

I dunno. My ex called me a racist when I told him the man who sexually assaulted me when I was 16 was black, and this had made me generally suspicious of foreign guys I'd never met before coming up to me in the street.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where one would see such merchandise - presumably the stars' own websites and maybe the odd sex shop? Katie Price...I don't even know what to classify her as, beyond Do Not Want.

iTunes can piss right off, that sort of thing is one of the reasons I refuse to use it. And yes, region-locking and similar shenanigans are massively self-defeating moves which help to reinforce the impression of an industry in its death-throes. Like, one Tori Amos album a few years back came in a massively ornate and wonderful box with maps and all sorts, exactly the sort of thing it was worth owning rather than stealing (and I'm not even a huge fan of hers like some people are) - and yet the copy-protection was so annoying that even my stereo wouldn't play it until I'd done the technically illegal work-around.

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

One of the tiniest parks I ever came across is in the FP area - Stationer's Park, somewhere over the Crouch End side of Ridge Road. I used to live round the corner from it, and it was fascinating, a sort of bonsai Hyde Park.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Staioner's Park, but it's positively Royal Park-sized compared to these little fellows, which are smaller even than Wray Crescent Open Space, the lack of pretension in whose name I shall always love.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

Parklet! Wonderful term.