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

Had a startlingly punctual appointment at the doctor's yesterday - but then I was the first patient, so while they could (and did) open the doors ten minutes late, there was little further opportunity for delays. So I had time to go for a wander in the afternoon sun while I gave the George Pringle album its first listen on headphones. Which is where it belongs, really, because these aren't so much songs as diary entries to music, and having them drift through your head like a sudden but structured burst of telepathy while you come across a discarded French horn case, or a rat in comedy 'iz ded nao' pose, or a doormat by a brick wall in such perfect alignment that you have to stop and knock, just in case - that's perfect. I wasn't sure how her Buffalo Bar show in the evening would compare, whether she'd even work lie, but at oleast I was finally going to get chance to find out.
Except she cancelled because she was ill. The first time this year I was going to attend a gig where none of the acts are people I know, and this happens. You just can't trust strangers, can you? So we say in Highbury Fields drinking cans and laughing at dogs instead. Which, again, seems more like a George Pringle song than attending a George Pringle gig could.

Watched No Distance Left To Run, the Blur documentary. It makes for quite the horrifying contrast seeing Damon as he was next to Damon now, whereas time has been strangely kind to Dave who seems finally to have grown into his face. Alex remains the best, obviously, while Graham Coxon will only ever be a pale imitation of the Rock Profile Graham Coxon (he starts 2:40 in).

I recalled Hollywoodland getting fairly good reviews in general, and for me it had the extra attractions of being awash with Deadwood alumni, and being about Superman. I've never seen George Reeves as Superman in the old serials, and don't really want to, but a film about the man who played the Man of Steel and his suicide (or was it?)...I expected something like Steven Seagle's It's A Bird, an autobiographical curio about being asked to write Superman and how that affected his live, and a meditation on the character. There are moments of that - in the best scene, Ben Affleck as Reeves is making a public appearance as Superman and has to talk down a kid who wants to shoot him (it'll bounce off, right?) without dropping the act. Too much of the film, though, is the standard LA noir which I've seen before and better from Chinatown to James Ellroy.

Well, that Heroes finale was even more of an anticlimax than the first season's. I suppose I should hardly be surprised, I did spot the writer's name at the beginning. Jeph Loeb could write, many moons ago, but nowadays his name serves more as a biohazard warning than a credit. I suspect that unless I hear extremely good word on the third season - among it, that Loeb has taken an enforced sabbatical - then I'm out.
I don't think it helps matters that the BBC are screening it on Thursdays, the day when those of us who still go to the source for our superheroics are coming home with an armful of stranger, better, truer stories in the same vein.

Chris Morris on CERN; as against certain strands of celebrity journalism, he is at once entertaining and (for the general reader) enlightening. I like this sort of polymathic behaviour; Stephen Fry is the obvious example, but one of the joys of Alex James' Bit of a Blur is the way he loves space exploration every bit as much as cheese, champagne, beautiful girls and all the other splendid things in the world. A lot of autobiographies would do well to take a lesson from Alex James; he can admit that he's moved on in life to the extent of a total volte-face, without feeling the need to retrofit a load of moralistic wangst to the days of debauchery. Drink, drugs and shagging are the right thing for a rock star to do; "All happy endings imply gardens." There is no contradiction between these two statements.

Other links of possible interest: missing scenes from butchered silent classic Metropolis have surfaced - sadly without colour-tinting and Queen soundtrack, but I'm sure that can be fixed - and Iain Sinclair on 'The Olympic Scam'.

Tomorrow doesn't just mark the anniversary of some silly colonial insurrection - it'll also be 106 years since the election which returned Britain's first Labour MP, Kier Hardie. He must be so proud of Tony, Gordon and chums.