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

Here's a bit of a join-the-dots: sadly I can't make it myself, but on Saturday, Stewart Lee is reading from one of the founding texts of psychogeography, Arthur Machen's 'N'. Which is also a very good horror story. The story is about Stoke Newington, and so it's an appropriate part of the Stoke Newington Literary Festival, which also has an appearance by China Mieville. China Mieville was apparently meant to be reviving Swamp Thing, and work on the comic was well advanced, but has now been binned - because rather than a Mature Readers series, DC want Swamp Thing back in their main superhero universe. Even though most of that universe has lately been telling 'mature' stories anyway, in the sense meaning 'immature', all blood and guts and angst. Even though Swamp Thing going Mature Readers was where America discovered Alan Moore, where the groundwork was laid for Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison going over there, where - to simplify ever so slightly - American comics became worth reading. And they're backing away from the chance to do that again (edit: here's more on what we've lost). Which makes me worry that DC is still on the wrong lines. Which is particularly unfortunate given Paul Cornell (a name Doctor Who fans should know) is apparently about to sign an exclusive with them. I already felt some trepidation - his best comics work all having been at Marvel, most notably the cancelled, glorious Captain Britain & MI:13 - but looked forward to what he was going to do with Lex Luthor in Action Comics. Still, I don't want him trapped in a company which makes such reliably bad editorial decisions lately. On the other hand, his most recent output elsewhere was BBC medical horror pilot Pulse, and that wasn't very good. As a massive hypochondriac, I expected it to make difficult viewing - but because I would be getting freaked out, not because I was so bored by the parade of cliches, played mainly by actors you recall being quite good in something a few years back but not having seen much of lately. I don't know, maybe people who like medical drama - and I know there are plenty - will enjoy it more. I did notice that contrary to advance hype, while Cornell scripted, it was based on an idea by someone else. That may explain it.

Wednesday was always going to be interesting; Dickon's new event, Against Nature, at Proud, with The Vichy Government and the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra on the same bill. Proud's South Gallery turns out to be significantly less vile than the other bit; it could still have done without the staff pointedly rearranging the furniture while Dickon and retro_geek were trying to keep people dancing after the acts, but those who did stay were treated to the unexpected ballroom dance skills of keith_totp. Vichy were distorted to fvck - which is how I like them best - and MFMO were deeply numerous, appropriate given they had two new songs about fleas. Plus, improvisational tales of Empire and derring-do from Jingo & Butterfield, who apparently caused one walk-out, clearly from humourless nitwits. All in all, a good night, which is not something I ever thought I would say about Proud.

A venue I used to love was the Garage, which finally reopened about a year back now, but to which I'd not been until a surprise trip last night. It's disconcertingly clean and shiny now, and has a higher ceiling, but that's probably for the best because it was always a bit of a sweatbox so yesterday could otherwise have been Hellish. I was there to see the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, always a band where I've quite liked what I heard but failed to investigate further. And after last night, I possibly understand them even less - which is not a bad thing. I had them down as, more or less, the slightly less daft Horrors - but at its finest moments, the gig could almost have passed for the Sisters. The singer reminds me of that kid everyone vaguely knew who wanted to be Dave Wyndorf, and almost made it work. The crowd were a real mix - punks, psychobillies, retro chic kids, and one man who looked like Mugatu from Zoolander modelling his new 'scary clown' look. Also, much more mixed-race than rock crowds tend to be. I enjoyed it, but I still didn't entirely feel it, if that makes sense. The best explanation I can manage is that they sound quite Earthbound, something I've only experienced once before, when seeing of all people Eric Clapton (don't ask). I think all the bands who really sing to me are trying to escape the sublunary sphere - whether through traditional transcendence, the reflection in a nightbus window or just via someone else's pants. And here I don't hear that.

I like climbing things. If you've ever been in a park with me, you probably already know that. And while I find all the fuss made about 'parkour' deeply naff, if I'm walking alongside a low wall, I'll as likely as not hop up and walk along it instead. This goes for the middle of the day and sober as much as the evening drunk; it's not a big deal so much as 'why not?'. Similarly, if I'm walking alongside a slope I usually try that thing of running at it and then along it where you don't fall off so long as you keep going.
Last night, I got overambitious and thought I could do this with a vertical wall. While wearing shoes with pretty much no grip. It may come as no surprise to you, dear readers, that I failed, resulting in an ungainly sprawl. But as I attempted it, I was so sure I could do it, the sort of certainty which really ought to be its own guarantee, if the world were as susceptible to will and confidence as they say it is.

Five Thoughts On The Popularity Of Steampunk.

As much as I love Bill Murray, I'd always put off seeing Groundhog Day because it is a film in which he finds love with Andie Macdowell, and (except in the grossly underrated Hudson Hawk), I loathe Andie Macdowell. Watching the film, though, it becomes clear that we're not seeing every iteration of Bill Murray's looped day. As such, it becomes easier to reconcile yourself to the horrific idea that he can only escape by romancing the vile woman. Clearly he has already killed her in every manner for which Puxsatawny can supply the materials - only to find himself waking up on the same morning. Similarly, he has also slept with every other inhabitant of the town, including the groundhog - and still not escaped. From which it becomes clear that even though she's unaccountably the hardest work of them all, even though the idea is repugnant beyond all measure, the malign forces which have trapped Murray will only be satisfied with the most abject act imaginable - he has to get with Macdowell.
So yes, he may wake up next to her, smiling. But it is the smile of a broken man. He has now known the true horror of the cosmos, the depths to which the secret rulers of the world will drive a man. The only question is which comes first for him now - catatonic insanity, or one final, mercifully-permanent suicide.

The Beautiful And Damned is not the club it was with Dickon at the helm, and you can take that in the broadest sense. The night as I knew it was a pub where strange and wonderful things happened, with dancing; now it's more a show. It has found itself a new audience who seem happy with that, but one gets the unhappy impression that certain elements here are that little bit too keen on The Mighty Boosh; I can forgive the compere introducing Martin White & his Mysterious Fax Machine, if only because that does sound like an act I'd like to see, but when he fluffs the name of the night (that pesky second 'the' creeps in, which is so easily done but entirely destroys the point of the phrase)...I can only take so much cheerful incompetence.
Martin White & his Mysterious Fax Machiney Fax Machine Orchestra, who seem still to have more members every time I see them, are worth the trip nonetheless; I especially enjoy their new Bond theme, undoubtedly the best song called 'Quantum of Solace' to be released this year by a man named White.

Looks like tomorrow's the final Fosca show; a shame not only in itself, but because that's a second band this year with whom hospitalsoup won't be playing a London farewell show. Which said, I can definitely appreciate Dickon's reasons, and if anything the knowledge of an ending makes me look forward to it even more than I already was.

Which reminds me, the final episode of the show I'm at last prepared to call Jekyll was possibly the best of the lot (especially the really-quite-obvious-once-you-realise-it-take on what emotion Mr Hyde represents; I think it was only having Alan Moore's LoEG take on the character in the way that stopped me spotting it sooner). And The Shield, as ever, managed to find a whole new level of Hell to which it could descend. But the Take That Star Stories? I wasn't convinced. I think the mistake was in having Gary Barlow do the voiceover, as against a generic voiceover guy with a pro-Barlow agenda. I can't see how that change alone was enough to kill it for me; perhaps the ensemble had changed too, or they lost a writer? But as if a switch had been thrown, I just wasn't amused anymore.

If puritanism really had no part in the smoking ban, and it was purely a public health issue, I look forward to the imminent ban on the relevant printers in all workplaces.

There are plenty of depressing periods in world history, but the worst are the ones which manage to be incomprehensible as well as miserable. I've just been reading up on the Hellenistic Age; like the Carolingian era, it basically consists of a great emperor's heirs squabbling over his legacy like particularly vicious jackals - and all having the same bloody names while they're about it. So various Philips, Alexanders, Ptolemys and Antigonuses make alliances with one against the other, shift allegiance the first time they see an advantage in it, and generally make one despair for coherence as much as humanity. Things reach a low point - by any definition - when one particularly obese and unpleasant Ptolemy throws over his sister-wife (and brother's widow) Cleopatra for her daughter Cleopatra, this union producing three further Cleopatras, who soon get into the family spirit with a rare enthusiasm for sororicide. This is all a couple of generations before the Cleopatra (VII) with whom we chiefly associate the name, of course - and before we get there we encounter the charmer Mithridates, responsible for the Rwanda-style massacre of 80,000 Romans in Asia, and who managed by practice to render himself so immune to poison that he eventually found himself with difficulties committing suicide. Oh, and did I mention that all those famous slave revolts - you know, Spartacus and company - well, whatever you may have heard, they weren't actually against slavery per se. Hell no, however would society function without slaves? They just didn't feel that they personally ought to be slaves.
Frankly, the whole bloody mess makes Rome feel like an especially restful outing for the Mr Men.