Thursday lunchtime is the new Tuesday morning

[alexsarll]

I was getting quite worried about the electoral reform referendum, because at the moment who doesn't want to p1ss on Nick Clegg's chips? But the No campaign's ads are so transparently mendacious and manipulative that I think someone may finally have succeeded in underestimating the British public. Result.

I've finally seen Scott Pilgrim, and it's not bad, is it? Some of the stuff they necessarily lost in the transition from comic to film, I wasn't that sorry to see go - the moping around, the wilderness trek. It lost emotional weight, but it gained energy; the whole story was told with the sugar rush romp feel which in the comics had to be complicated after the first couple of volumes if it weren't to become exhausting. And Michael Cera was a very different Scott (which had been my main objection to seeing the film), but he was still a recognisable one. I was more thrown by the cinema take on Knives (insufficiently psycho) and Envy (insufficiently hot). But on balance I think I prefer the other work to come out of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's temporary split, Paul. It's a charming autobiographical bromance (Early on Pegg and Nick Frost even give themselves lines like "Can you believe it? Us! In America! We've dreamed about this since we were kids!") and a big geeky action comedy all rolled up into one big bag of...joy, I suppose. It's a lot less bittersweet than the Pegg/Wright films, and I don't mind that one bit.

Otherwise, I've largely been thinking about how strange time is (mainly while drinking). There was a Nuisance, of course, and the usual glimmer of surprise that in 2011 the night I attend most frequently plays the same music I was hearing when I first started clubbing. But also seeing Circulus, and being slightly disappointed that a band who come across so temporally alien on record would engage in such standard band-on-stage-at-small-venue activity as making suggestions to the soundman about the monitor mix. They shouldn't even admit they know what the monitors are, dammit! But then, they should probably be playing an enchanted glade somewhere rather than a venue sponsored by an energy drink, and in that case how would they power the instruments? It doesn't quite work, but on headphones on a country walk you can pretend that it does, so long as you don't think too hard about the headphones. Which all tied into al_ewing's latest (and best) book, Gods of Manhattan. It's set in a shared steampunk universe but, being a smart man working in a near-exhausted genre, Al pushes and prods at the boundaries, having realised that "The only rule is no electricity" and even that can be subverted. The main story is great pulp fun - the serial numbers have been filed off, but essentially it's Zorro vs the Shadow vs Doc Savage (except also Superman and living in a menage a trois) in a retro-futurist dream of New York. But the setting is almost better than the story, simply for the way it mixes so many odd little bits of our culture into the new context, and while being funny also makes emotional sense. And within that you've got the beautiful idea that the people in the alternate reality are themselves dreaming of our reality - the ageing Warhol makes models of impossible devices like miniature telephones, too small for steam to ever power, in a movement that's been called 'dreampunk'.

*Though even back in Derby - where you soon realise that Royston Vasey is an accurate portrayal of the county - we seldom had anyone quite so creepy as the guy in the red blazer in. Cross Louie Spence with a new ad campaign for Rohypnol, then picture the result breakdancing to My Life Story...

Comments

[wardytron.livejournal.com]

I don't want to piss on Nick Clegg's chips, or any of his foodstuffs, potato-based or otherwise. I voted Conservative in the last election, but I'm glad there's a Liberal Democrat element to the Government, although I'd oppose the Lib Dems in any sabotage they might attempt towards the Tories' plans to get net immigration back down to a non-disastrous level. In principle I approve a significant reduction in public spending, and am sympathetic to the view that Labour-led councils are making politically motivated headline cuts in order to fuck up the Coalition's attempt to clear up the mess left them by Labour's sailor on shore leave approach to public finances.

Also, that nice Lynne Featherstone sounds like she talks a lot of sense.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I suspect that last line of being simple trolling, but it's amusing nonetheless.

Labour's approach to public finances was foolish, but not so foolish as the speed and depth of Osborne's cuts. The man doesn't understand basic economics - or rather, he does. Very basic, household economics, which are not the best sort to apply when you're running a country. Hence Paul Krugman's frequent and fair condemnations of him.

I broadly agree on immigration, but while their hands are tied by the EU, the most any British government can do about it is huff and puff and then make things harder for Australians, Americans and other people who aren't the problem.

[wardytron.livejournal.com]

About dear old Lynne, I read something on Livejournal about some people from up your alley being angry with her, but didn't fully understand why. I did wonder, though, if her surname was pronounced as about 70% of "Featherstonehaugh", and if so how you'd say it.

Anyway, one other offence I'd like to have taken into consideration is that I fully enjoy Norman Tebbit's blog on the Daily Telegraph and agree with most of what he says.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's not something I read often, but there were some amusing moments a few years back where he was attacking the New Labour government of the day for being unfeeling rightwing bastards. And indeed, most of the Coalition's more unpleasant policies are simply accelerations (or in some case, mere continuations) of things the Red Tories were already doing. ie, I like a bit of nineties nostalgia, but not enough to go on another march after being betrayed by an incoming party over tuition fees.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

"Fans"?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

The claim that under AV, votes that transfer to other preferences are "worth more" or are "counted twice" is the one that's really got me wondering why they're running a campaign based on the hope that no-one looks too hard at what they're saying.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I believe there are a small number of hypothetically possible scenarios where injustices can occur under AV. As against the vast number of all-too-real scenarios where they have happened under FPtP.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

They are fairly clearly counted twice. If they weren't counted twice, you wouldn't know where to transfer them to.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I believe due to context, some of which I included, that rather than the literal meaning, it was intended to suggest that the votes were in some sense given more than equal weight against the untransferred.

And anyway, you don't have to count them twice if you remember what they were the first time.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I liked what I saw of the film, read book 2 upstairs after I gave up on trying to watch, which was a little confusing.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, wasn't that the bit we'd just seen?

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

Well, I think we'd seen up to the twins, so it was quite a way back, even.

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Re Nick Clegg's recent travails, I was amused by this:

http://www.jasperfforde.com/toad/flak.html

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think it's always easier to hate someone where you feel in some sense shocked by the betrayal. For most of the country, hating the head of the Conservatives is barely worth mentioning, simply the natural order of things.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I'm about halfway through Gods of Manhattan now, and you're totally right about the good story being outdone by the great setting. I don't know that it has to be only pulp of the classic era that's the source for all of it though - when I see Doc Savage + Superman + Monkey Butler, I'm happy to call it Tom Strong.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I certainly got echoes of Tom Strong, but generally when the pastiches start feeding off each other things have reached a sorry pass, so I didn't want to mention that example lest people drew unflattering inferences I didn't intend.