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

Almost managed two posts in a week again there, then instead decided to wait, consider, compress. Who knows why? Once things like the Spring view over the East juxtaposed with a spot of tabletop WAR, then White Russians the next evening, would have sufficed for a paragraph's worth of pondering, if not a post's. What remains? The Avengers, for one. Not the film - though it is currently monopolising my forthcoming cinema excitement reserves - but the old series which has necessitated its UK renaming, and by that I do mean the *old* series. I'd never seen anything before the episodes with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel before, and Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale feels, for the most part, like her prototype. What's more surprising is the other elements - the plots which are more conventional espionage, even at times faintly CSI, as against the ludicrous carnival of British eccentricity which comes later. In particular, three of the episodes we watched had an obsession with missiles which made the whole thing more Cold War, less Kinks. The one exception, the one which felt like classic Avengers, was 'Intercrime' by Doctor Who mainstays Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke. But even there the quips don't quite work, Steed feels a little too much the secret agent rather than the perfect gentleman, and so forth. They're not bad shows, certainly not by the standards of the time (and I'd still take them over most current investigative TV) - they're just not yet The Avengers.

Underworld was the first Doctor Who story to be shown in my lifetime. And blow me, special effects have improved a lot during that time. There was sod all money available to film it, but whereas the new series approaches that by constructing ingenious plays in lifts like 'Midnight', or just effects-light, small-cast affairs, Underworld tells what's probably one of the TV series' more would-be epic tales - a race disastrously uplifted by the Time Lords, a ship which has been questing for a hundred thousand years, another around which a degenerate civilisation has arisen, never knowing anything is outside. The mismatch between ambition and budget is dealt with by having all the scenery back-projected. Now, some people think this looks dodgy and fake in modern attempts like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but trust me, you've not seen dodgy and fake until you see the seventies version. On the plus side, at least the cast can't bump into the scenery - even if that means their feet are either floating above it or disappearing into it instead.

Gigs: Quimper again, at Nambucca, which has acknowledged its place as the absolute limit by adopting the sign of Omega. If they claimed to be the Ω of live music, wit might be demonstrated; instead, some claims have them as the ohmhm of live music, and others as the ohmme. Nitwits. The bill makes no sense, but at least one of the support bands has one song which suggests they like McLusky. Quimper accidentally headline, which is only right and proper but leaves them pretty much preaching to the choir. 'The King in Yellow' remains my favourite, but then I'm biased.
Also: the DDR of R'n'B down in Putney. Even more than most of the West, Putney reminds me of cities in the first Civilisation; it has a set store of elements, but most of them move around between visits. Once I finally locate the Half Moon, I am not entirely surprised to find that the famous blues venue is now a gastropub. It does still have a great venue room out back, which I would certainly recommend to people wanting to do a night were it not, as I may have mentioned, in Putney. The Nuns are, as ever, electric; and Blindness impress me with their echoes of the good bits of Curve. But even though it's Thee Faction's night, I'm not wholly sold on them in these surrounds. In a crumbling Clapton halfway house, their socialist R'n'B felt urgent and true; there's nothing wrong with how they play this time, but the moneyed surroundings seem to neutralise some of their fire, and leave it feeling like the schtick for which (again, in a fairly posh venue) I initially mistook it.

So yes, hasn't there been a lot happening since one could last log in to LJ? Though somehow it seemed that Russian spammers could post comments even when I couldn't get in to delete same. Not cool. Also not cool: too many deaths, near, far and famous. Unnecessary. Possibly the best bit of Jerry Sadowitz' set this week (first time I've seen him, unless you count his Channel 5 show back when they were what seemed at times like the only TV home for stand-ups, and what a strange thing that is to remember) was the Norway/Winehouse material, because it was where you could most tell that he was a man howling out his anger at an unfair world the best way he knew how, somehow being funny in the process like Elsinore's gravedigger is, and not just Frankie Boyle or some such twerp.
(Other comedians seen: Nick Doody and Henry Packer, both less famous and less wrong than Sadowitz, though the latter was pretty bloody wrong in places by any normal standards. As is hopefully obvious, this is not a criticism. Also Richard Marsh, although that was more of a comedy/poetry hybrid, or a storytelling show, or just a very strange thing for a man to do if he doesn't especially like Skittles, but v.good nonetheless)

What else? London is empty lately, isn't it, or emptier than usual, outside the tourist areas anyway. Some people say they're all on summer holiday, I suspect heat death. Which would be for the best, I mean, what's with all these people I don't know or like who don't even work in sectors of use to me, daring to clutter the place up? I went to some community art a week or two back in the Andover, more normally known for stabbings than experimental dance, and while obviously it's laudable that the denizens were watching the dance rather than stabbing each other up, their understanding of audience etiquette was sadly lacking. Oh, and courtesy of exliontamer's concubine I've been revisiting some classic board games of my youth. Well, first of all I had to visit one that was new to me, Dream Phone, which just felt like a queasy exercise in pre-Internet grooming. But then we got on to the classics. Well, I say classics but it turns out that Ghost Castle is barely better than Snakes and Ladders in gameplay terms - there's precisely one choice in the whole game and nobody ever takes the slower, safer route - and yet it does have a glowing skull tumbling down a chimney causing havoc, and that counts for a lot. But Escape from Atlantis, and Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs - these remain pinnacles of the form. Atlantis in particular is sufficiently spiteful that you wonder if Luke Haines' books somehow omitted a period as a games designer, its mechanisms encouraging needless nastiness and even at times a gleeful suicide drive from any player who knows they can't win. Excellent stuff.

I've also found the first new London venue I like since, what, the Silver Bullet? Namely Native Tongue in Smithfields, where the Soft Close-Ups played on Tuesday. An underground bar in the Buffalo Bar sense, but a little airier, a little more choice at the bar. Definitely to be encouraged. And I've been watching Torchwood, of course, though addiction aside I couldn't necessarily tell you why. The science fiction side of it all is being handled very well, in terms of the ramifications of death just...stopping. So's the horror, with that basic uncanniness and revulsion of a thing that should be dead or even more simply immobile and yet refuses to stop moving. But as drama, it's nonsense - and as evil as I am prepared to consider Pfizer et al, buying their stand-ins as villains for something like this just doesn't gel. So inevitably it's going to be aliens behind it all, but if so, why bother with the false reveal? Why, in general, is it all taking so long?

On Friday I watched Saint Etienne's Finisterre film. Which was quite reminiscent of the Robinson film about London I watched a while back, except that being St Etienne's, it was still in love with the city. Not blindly, never that - it reminded me of GK Chesterton's (biased, but not wholly untrue) observation that believers are allowed moments of doubt, whereas sceptics don't allow themselves moments of belief. I'd just read a link alasdair had posted to Iain Sinclair on the Boris bikes, reading which I'd wondered - does Sinclair never have a day in London - the city that's made his name - where everything goes right, the birds are singing and people are smiling? I do. I had one when I went to the library and Tesco and the park after watching the film which acts as a sort of primer for days like that, in its meandering way. You don't have to be a St Etienne fan to enjoy it, so long as you're a London fan; there are occasional appearances from the band, but just as people in cafes or the like, because the film is no more or less their story than anyone else's. It's the story - or rather, a story - of the greatest city on Earth.
(Something else it had in common with the Robinson film - it wouldn't play properly. One scene in the middle stuck, and once I was past that, it ground to a halt before the end. When I get institutional loan DVDs of feature films, they always play fine. But once it's a meandering art film, glitcharama. Why is this? Are the discs weedier and less resilient, or are the fans more careless?)

Then on to the first tolerably large weekend of the new year: a wonderfully messy Nuisance on Friday and a West Country-style cider party on Saturday (complete with far too much Wurzels on Spotify), then a Sunday of culture/weird sh1t. The Museum of Everything is Peter Blake's collection of oddities, a sort of 20th Century Sir John Soane's where stuffed rats play cards while the rat police sneak up to raid them, miniature circus rides spin far too fast, old dolls and clowns are as creepy as ever, and a three-legged duck gets to look as stupid in death as he did in life. Even the gift shop (£25 for a candle?) and the loo (a door at either end? That would unnerve me even if I hadn't seen Zombieland the day before) are rum and uncanny. I don't think it's around for much longer but it's definitely worth a visit while it lasts. The evening was a Jackson's Way talkshopinar. Achieved! Nor has the week got off to a bad start; last night's bout of Monsterpocalypse was the first game I've beaten johnny_vertigen at in months. And quite the victory, too: any game where your giant robot can twat the other fellow's Godzilla-type with his sword, and then impale him on a big spiky alien building before a barrage of tank fire finishes the job, is a game of which I would approve even had I not been victorious.

Club Popular tonight. Have I ever mentioned how a whole evening of Number One hits is like looking into the face of a god and realising you've known him all along/the end of DC One Million before? I believe I might have done. Still.

All urban foxes and Michaelmas daisies these past few days, and drifts of leaves in the cooling sunlight (well, except Tuesday when it was a summer heat again, as I strode around to find various bits and pieces including Turnpike House, only to realise that the 4 goes past it anyway so I'd already seen it plenty of times. Must remember to wander the Barbican at some point too while I'm on my St Etienne rambles. But I also found time to try Settlers of Catan (a beautifully constructed little boardgame which plays a little like a minimalist Civilisation, minus the overt warfare, and which I am possibly biased towards because I won) and Munchkin (a feast of backstabbing hilarity at which, on initial results, I suck).

I'd been meaning to see Breakfast on Pluto for ages, but kept not getting round to it. I didn't know much beyond it having Gavin Friday in and being about a transvestite. Turns out he's not the half of it - you also get Stephen Rea,
Ian Hart, Liam Neeson, all playing roles you'd normally think too small for them to bother with, but then it is a Neil Jordan film and I suppose that counts for something. Also, Bryan Ferry and Brendan Gleeson playing ( spoilers? ), respectively. Being Neil Jordan, yes there are IRA elements to the plot but otherwise it's basically a kitchen sink Velvet Goldmine - a confused young man chases a lost vision of glamour. Cilian Murphy is very pretty in the lead, if a little too mumblecore at times - though, for all his eyelashes, I'm not sure he ever quite passes as female to the degree the plot sometimes seems to want.

In The Loop, which I should also have seen long before now, is rather less of a fairytale. The basic Thick of It-goes-to-war set-up is confused slightly by having everyone except Malcolm Tucker and Jamie play similar characters to those they did on TV, but not the same people, and there are one or two missed opportunities. For instance, when Malcolm confronts James Gandolfini as a US general, they get most of the way towards the key point - Malcolm may threaten to kill people as a matter of course, the General literally has - but then don't quite press the point. Still, we do get a wonderful scene where Malcolm realises his place in the scheme of things and is, for a moment, a broken man, which acts almost as a bridge between Peter Capaldi in The Thick of It and his apparently very different government advisor in Torchwood: Children of Earth
These are minor quibbles, but they are the most I can really say about the film, because I believe some of my readers still have workplace filters that don't like swears, and as with The Thick of It the film spin-off is magnificent and hilarious, and as with The Thick of It much of that magnificence and hilarity lies in the wonderfully inventive swearing.