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

Been on jury service this past week, and while obviously I can't say anything about what happens inside, I can say that it chucks out earlier than work, and closer to home, and while this weather has been a little hot, better now than in the rain, right? So I can stop off in a park to read and bump into the Cthulhuchild and family en route to the slides, or wander via Ally Pally to see the inflatable Stonehenge (though I didn't bounce myself - far too many rules for something called Sacrilege). And I have to admit, the Olympics haven't been the bane I thought they would. Transport has been standing up, there's a certain quiet happiness in the air, and even if I still don't care myself who done the best swim or whatever...it's all very nice. Perhaps because everyone is on the same side, as against that nasty tribalist twinge to the footballism? Even the opening ceremony, which I skipped because a) sport and b) it's a decade since Danny Boyle made a decent film - well, by the sound of it modern masques are more his forte than films now. I was rewarded with the emptiest streets I have ever seen in Finsbury Park or Dalston, though.

Other expeditions:
Peckham Rye, a park I've never quite found before, for the first picnic in too long. I think we got out of the habit of organising them, when summer seemed to have turned traitor. They have been missed.
Camden for a quiet afternoon pint, which turned into a pub crawl home. If nothing else, I have now finally been to Kentish Town's Pineapple. It is quite good.
Devon, to see the parents. Did lots of active, rural things, like hefting logs up hills, and clambering around on cliffs just along from where there was that fatal landslide a few days later. Didn't die, obviously, because I'm not a loser. But I did get melancholy over the way the streams, beaches and fields in the distance always seem so unattainably lovely, and when you get there, they're perfectly pleasant but ultimately just a stream, or a beach, or a field. This point has already been made by better writers than me, of course. I think this feeling was accentuated by coming back on a Sunday, which may have been a mistake - instead of returning to London's bright lights and fun, it just feels like the end of the holiday.

...though at times it still didn't feel all that massive. Saturday night, for instance, seemed to have nothing much doing so we just ended up down the local, where a possibly misguided attempt was made to embiggen proceedings via the medium of pink vodka. And on Sunday, walking down through Islington to see the Deptford Beach Babes, every pub I passed was Sunday quiet not Bank Holiday Sunday busy, and most other venues seemed to be shut. The DBB were playing the Cock Tavern in Smithfield, of which I'd heard but never before had cause to visit. And if I ever do again it won't be in anything like peak time, because as a man who should know observed, the bar staff seemed to be on ketamine. Weird place even beyond that, feeling like it should be hosting a provincial wedding reception rather than a suave rockabilly crowd. The Babes were excellent, and for the first time I was in a position to see their drummer, who can only be described as real horrorshow - not just fun to watch but a proper performer, miming ennui, possession and craze as appropriate. The only other acts I caught, given the dearth of service, were two burlesque girls. I have seen burlesque performers who did something a bit different, every now and then, but these were more at the 'striptease except it's classy because there's no fake tan' end of the bracket. Not that they didn't have nice breasts, but it's still not really art, is it?
(Also: bad form of the promoters to say the night was £6.66 and then actually charge seven quid. Yes, I was wondering what the Hell their float must look like, so I'd brought sixpence in coppers because I'm thoughtful like that. Charge what you like for your night, but stick to what you said, no matter what. There was also a terribly intrusive photographer, but I'm not sure whether he was theirs or an independent)

Before that - Friday, with a trip to see Don Juan in Love at the Scoop. The comedy and the horror worked a lot better than the romance, though I may have been slightly distracted at times by certain people giggling at "an impoverished and corrupt nobleman" comparing himself to Alexander*. Then on to Cheeze & Whine, of which what I remember includes 'Rhythm Is A Dancer'. Oh yes. And on Monday, off to Devil's End (which for security reasons goes by a different name on most maps) for a pint at the Cloven Hoof, titting around Mr Magister's church in a fez and general hijinks, culminating in a small child on the village green getting mouthy about the crack in time and space which could be mistaken for a tear in steve586's trousers. Good times. Especially given we were out of there by sundown.

The weekend was especially welcome because last week had been so thoroughly quiet and wet and dreary. Spent most of it watching films, many from another DVD rental free trial but one I'd taped years back (and the property show trailer beforehand was more of a blast from the past than any of the wartime setting). Contraband was an early Powell & Pressburger which initially seems like a forgettable flag-waver about how important the decency of neutrals can be. But then their strangeness and charm take hold, especially once we hit blackout London, and like everything else they did, it becomes very special. Not something one can say of another war/espionage film, GI Joe - The Rise of Cobra, which I watched mainly to see prima donna prick Christopher "too good for Who" Eccleston as Destro. Also with tax bills due when they got the call were Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Jonathan Pryce, and Adebisi from Oz who at least gets to cradle a bazooka in each arm and be a hardass. It's really not very good, but I am of the demographic that is always going to find some appeal in a film where ninjas Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fight in a pulse cannon generator in an undersea base beneath a polar ice cap. Oh, and the Team America comparisons you may have heard are unfair - well, except in the Paris scenes.

Sillier still is Frank Miller's take on The Spirit. This is not the charming action-adventure strip which is about the only early comic I can read with enjoyment; instead we get a brooding Central City which looks uncannily like Sin City, a Spirit who wear's Dwight's Converse and is generally somewhere between Miller's Batman and Looney Tunes. So yes, it's Miller's spirit not Eisner's, but what are the alternatives? Another unnecessary panel-to-screen transition of a comic which, even more than Watchmen, was designed to work precisely as a comic? Or another Spirit comic in which Miller does his take? At least this way we kill two birds with one stone, and probably up the sales of the Eisner collections into the bargain. And one thing Miller and Eisner do have in common: they like the girls. So Sand Saref is here, out for "the shiny thing to end all shiny things", and Silken Floss is Scarlett Johansson in a Nazi uniform, smoking, which excuses a lot in a film (and makes a Hell of a lot more sense than Samuel L Jackson in a Nazi uniform) "Is every goddamn woman in this goddamn Hellhole out of her goddamn mind?" asks a very Frank Miller take on Commissioner Dolan. Well, yes, but that's what Frank Miller does.

Oh yes, and I finally saw The Hurt Locker - accidentally good timing given this was the weekend of America's withdrawal from Iraq. The basic idea is brilliant; so often the climax of a film is a ticking time-bomb, so why not make a film about bomb disposal teams where the whole damn film is like that? And Kathryn Bigelow films violence like Oliver Stone on a good day, than which I can offer few higher compliments. A rare film to win big Oscars without being preachy middlebrow dreck.

*Finally watching Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes the next day, I am amused to see that film also mentions a performance of the tale, albeit in its Don Giovanni version, as Holmes and Watson pass Tower Bridge, or at least its beginnings. It's heartening that, when either Guy Ritchie's version or the BBC's could so easily have become Sherlock Holmes in Miami, neither did, both Cumberbatch and Downey sharing an essential Holmes-ness with Brett and Rathbone. Also - age suits Downey a lot better than I'd ever have thought.

Spent the first half-hour or so of Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull not really feeling it; the fifties colour was laid on too heavily, the conviction seemed lacking...it felt like watching a tribute act. A good tribute act, sure, but not the real thing. And it didn't help having Ray Winstone along; it really was just that one role as Beowulf where I liked him, although I guess here he was playing a venal berk rather than anyone we were meant to respect. But then there's that map/'plane bit one always needs in an Indy film, and we're in the jungle, and yes, it all fits into place. I stay on the edge of my seat for the rest of the film, except when I'm cracking up at the sheer audacity of it all. I'm not entirely sure I'd want a fifth but yes, this is a worthy addition to the series.

On Saturday the song 'Jolene' became linked in my head to Joe Lean of rubbish indie combo Joe Lean & the Jing Jang Jong, aka Sophie's brother in Peep Show. I have not yet been able to decouple them, so I might as well share the misery.

The Guardian's redesigned Review section announces "Starting next week...52 - a novel in weekly instalments by Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, AM Homes and Jackie Kay". A novel called 52, in weekly instalments, with four authors? What a terribly original idea.
(Although, one strand of the first 52 did concern two lesbian lovers hounded by an evil religion, so Winterson at least would have been right at home)

Now if you'll excuse me I need to get some breakfast, clean out my cupboard and watch the season finale of Mad Men. I'm glad that the weather is not of a sort to make me feel like these are bad uses of my bank holiday.

There was something on the roof in the small hours of the morning. I don't mean the pigeons (I'm used to them), or the crows (I rather like them) - something heavier, and I think wingless. The problem being, especially when I'm still mostly asleep, I have no idea of the relative sound patterns caused by a fat rat, a cat, a particularly agile fox, an urban explorer, a cat-burglar or the killer doll thing from Terror of the Autons. Let's just hope the issue doesn't arise again.

Sighted at Nashville-on-Thames; a suedehead in a Trojan jacket, watching a bunch of cult indie types playing bluegrass cover versions. They talk about the end of youth tribes with a certain nostalgia, but I like seeing the boundaries this blurred.
About that band - they're essentially Hefner and Tompaulin - The Hillbilly Years. And I doubt they'll ever eclipse 'I Stole A Bride' or 'Slender' in our hearts, but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
(I was going to head this post "I shot a man in Neasden just to watch him die", one of the Nashville-on-Thames slogans. But given there was gunfire round my way last night, I don't want to inadvertently frame myself)

Continuing with the theme of London disturbances, I know I'm not alone in finding myself upset by the Cutty Sark fire, but what really struck me was...that ship's in 28 Weeks Later. London may be infested with the undead, whole areas aflame, but the Cutty Sark stands tall. Just like when I saw AI (not a good decision in itself, but that's by the by) in Autumn 2001, there were posters in the cinema warning that the film had scenes with the World Trade Centre which might upset some viewers. They flood New York, they freeze it...but still the twin towers stand sentinel. We envision these apocalypses, tearing down our cities on screen - but some things seem so permanent they survive almost as part of the bedrock. And then along comes some dickhead with a box-cutter, or a can of accelerant, and we realise we weren't thinking dark enough.

Newsarama has a very good Garth Ennis interview, mostly about Hitman (a series of which I've read far too little). But the line that really caught my attention, since I think it may still be my favourite of all his many impressive works - "Hellblazer, it sounds bizarre, but half the time I forget I even wrote it."

It's not often that I enjoy a club where I barely know any of the music, but it's lovely when it does work. Computer Blue used to be one, all those strange electronic sounds forming an alternate track of pop history which at the time was a total closed book to me. And Nashville-on-Thames last night was another. I recognised the Johnny Cash song and 'Walking After Midnight', and that was it. But the great thing about country is the stories; if you don't know the song then you don't know the ending, so you get a new drama every four minutes. The live band were great too; The Blazing Zoos are travel/music journalist Andrew Mueller, two of Jesus Jones and two other blokes gone country, with a repertoire ranging from the self-referential ("Always wanted to write a country song but I never had a girl who done me wrong, no I never had the material 'til now") to the outlandish - as I say, I'm no expert, but I'm guessing there aren't many country songs about Albania.

I taped the first Primeval, but I was pretty sure I'd abandon it before the end of the episode. Unusually, I was wrong. I'm not saying it was the best thing I've ever seen, but unusually for a modern ITV programme, it didn't seem to have been aimed at an audience of retards. Ben Miller aside (and oh, how he has fallen) the actors were actually *acting*! The script only occasionally collapsed into imbecility! The effects weren't risible! And while I was initially sceptical about the creatures they were using, turns out that even the improbable winged one was real - so extra props to them for using obscurities rather than the usual suspects. Scenes which could have been hammered home were instead left to speak for themselves - cf the dinosaur-obsessed kid terrified by a real dinosaur, a well-made point you could equally play out with vikings, knights or pirates. The anomaly and the Permian were done vastly better than I'd expected (and comics readers - is it just me or does the anomaly look a lot like Wildstorm's Snowflake?) - oh, and Hannah S Club, of whom I'd never taken much notice before, appears to have become incredibly hot. I approve, and shall be continuing with this (although I'm still glad that it's only running six episodes, rather than 13 - not least so as Who clashes won't be an issue).

Is the Olympics really not enough sports-related waste and misery for one decade in one country?