'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

I move that, if London does get its own satellite, it should be christened Zone 8.

Buffy's 'Season 8' has started reasonably well; hopefully now Joss Whedon is back on home turf he'll be better able to avoid the pacing problems that have turned his X-Men into such a slog. I like that he seems deliberately to be using effects and plots which fit with the world established on TV, but would have been prohibitively expensive to film; playing to the medium sounds obvious but a lot of transfer writers forget it. Speaking of such, for all that I love Babylon 5 it's becoming increasingly hard to defend Straczynski's comics work - taking charge for the middle stretch of Ultimate Power he gets about half an issue of comedy out of Thor's archaic speech patterns, not allowing himself to be obstructed by any piddling little details like Ultimate Thor not actually talking like that.

Even if you've never heard of Danger: Diabolik you may well have felt its influence, whether through the Beastie Boys' 'Body Movin'' video or Grant Morrison's Fantomex. But neither of them can quite prepare you for the oddity of the original. Filmed in Italy and clearly attempting to cash in on the swinging superspy trends of the period, it's set in a strangely nebulous country where the currency is dollars, the ambience continental (including a Morricone score) and the Minister of Finance played by Terry-Thomas. The action and violence oscillates between the genuinely dark and the knockabout A-Team style, and Diabolik himself is played in a strangely inexpressive manner, perhaps more through the limitations of lead actor John Phillip Law than any conscious decision. It comes across more as a rushed rip-off than a deliberate artistic strike for strangeness - and yet somehow that works. A fascinating curio.

Is anybody actually going to the Billy Mackenzie tribute show on Wednesday? It does look good, but ultimately...it won't be Billy, will it?