I grow increasingly sceptical regarding this alleged snow

[alexsarll]

A second trip to the Silver Bullet on Thursday to see Electricity In Our Homes, about whom I had heard good things. And I enjoyed them - it's not as if angular post-punk stylings are in short supply these days, but they do it well enough that I was thinking 'this is Joy Division if they weren't miserable'. I had been drinking, admittedly. And I loved that they played a short set, five songs or so, which when I first encounter a band live is about what I want. I imagine that for the established fans it's less good, but the ones I was with didn't seem to mind.
The Vichy Government, on the other hand, I know somewhat better, well enough to be excited when they bring 'Loneliest Man in Ancient Rome' out of mothballs, or mash up 'Death of a Mummy's Boy' with 'Iberia'. cappuccino_kid has a sore throat; Andrew says he sounds like Lee Hazlewood, at which I ask if that means Andrew is Nancy. He's under a red light against velvet curtains like an austerity era Bryan Ferry video, spitting bile with an even harsher tone than usual, when a young lady in massive false eyelashes and a corset enters. Her manner says hen party, not goth, and I instantly know no sale has been made. Indeed, I'm not sure the audience makes it past double figures, and some of that was the next band. They are called Monkey Chunk, and are worse than that sounds. The drum has a cannabis leaf stencilled on the side, the drummer's hat is even more offensive, and two of them have ignored Tropic Thunder's advice and gone full retard. The standing-up cello freakouts at least mean that they are uniquely bad, but this is the best that can be said for them. And finally, Jonny Cola & the A-Grades, who have had an emergency rhythm section substitution which, alongside the reappearance of 'Disappearing Act', has made them a considerably better band. Clearly the previous A-Grades were in fact B Pluses at best. The bum cleavage issue does need to be addressed, though.
I don't stay for much of the club; some good goth tracks are getting aired, but I'm feeling too hibernatory, and need to be up in time to swap books on Sunday. I came away with a good haul, reminded of the happy days of the freebox.

Beyond going out, it was a bit of a Fifth Doctor weekend, and I don't just mean that I'm left with a nagging sense that it could have gone better, though his faint ineptitude was very much on display in The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, where a Victorian urchin nicks the TARDIS. And then, Warriors of the Deep, which I assumed couldn't be as bad as its reputation. How wrong I was. I was under the impression that it was a good story, badly realised, but it's not even that. Yes, the (now inexplicably self-described) Silurians and Sea Devils look dreadful, and their pet monster the Myrka (seen here in its baffling confrontation with Ingrid Pitt) is worse. But beyond and beneath all that tat, the plot is already a series of nonsenses. The Doctor tries to buy time and prove he's not a saboteur, by sabotaging the Seabase's reactor! The Doctor's head has barely gone underwater before Turlough convinces Tegan he's drowned! Nobody seems to have mastered the basics of 'holding someone prisoner'! All one can say in its favour is that the last minute is powerful stuff - and by that point, any viewer will heartily agree with the Doctor that "There should have been another way".

"Every two years [the United Nations] draws up and passes a resolution calling for states to eliminate extra-judicial killings motivated by race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, language or other identifying characteristics.
In the past, sexual orientation has been on that list. This year, the phrase was dropped. An amendment to that effect was passed by 79 votes to 70. It was proposed by Benin, the chair of the African group of nations, supported by Morocco on behalf of the Islamic conference."
Good old international law, eh?

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[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm now one episode in to Assassin in the Limelight, whose villain seems very like the Monk but is not played by Graeme Garden. So it now feels as if even that idea is somewhat threadbare.