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

Went with some chums to a young persons' rock club this week. It was meant to be an anti-Valentine's masked ball, but most of the young persons seemed to take theirs off as soon as they got in, and the burlesque, being aimed at an audience composed largely of young males, was perhaps not at the more finessed end of the spectrum. But, they were all very friendly and what impressed me most of all was, how catholic their tastes were. In amongst the Offspring and Metallica and Green Day, they were playing dance tracks. The Prodigy, sure - even in the nineties you'd get away with that at an indie club. But also drum'n'bass and dubstep - stuff which sounded right at home between metal and ska, but which ten years ago you really wouldn't have expected rock kids to *admit* sounded right at home there. Good work, rock kids.

If Ashes to Ashes weren't doing so well (I am incredibly glad about the period title sequence, one of the more glaring omissions in Life on Mars) then I could be worried about systemic flaws in BBC drama. This week's (terrestrial) Torchwood and the Phoo Action pilot both had the same very obvious problem - they were rush jobs. Yes, Torchwood's plot had been done before in Buffy, but ruling out plots Buffy has used would leave genre TV looking pretty starved. It's a good plot; you can do it as a stand-alone (Mike Carey and Jock's Faker), or in an ongoing series it's a good way of doing a character piece without being very dull and obvious about being The Character-Driven Episode. And yet, for all that potential, for all that it had some stunning moments (especially from Ianto) and the first real indication that Ryan Gorman can act, it didn't quite hang together. Bits were missing, bits were here that shouldn't have been, other stuff didn't quite link up right. Another draft of the script, a little longer on the shoot, and you'd have had something really rather good. As is...a misfire. And ditto Phoo Action. I've never knowingly read the strip on which it's based, but knowing Jamie Hewlett's work, I could infer how it was meant to go. I couldn't see it on screen, though. Imagine if Sin City had been done on a budget of about a tenner, with a director who was OK but no Rodriguez, and no time for rehearsals or extra takes. You'd have ended up with something this peculiarly leaden, this almost-fun-but-hamstrung. And it would be a real shame, as this was.

So what if "more quango members live in four London boroughs than the whole of the North of England"? I imagine those four London boroughs probably contribute more tax revenue to the Exchequer than the whole North as well, so it's only fair they have a greater say in how it's spent. And speaking of revenue, consider the neo-puritans' next anti-smoking proposal. Charming as ever, I'm sure you'll agree; the alcohol license will doubtless follow in about 20 years.

If you only know Howard the Duck via his film incarnation, then you don't know Howard the Duck. Like the Judge Dredd and Tank Girl films, if it's not quite as bad as its reputation suggests, it nonetheless missed the point of the exercise pretty thoroughly, and even having Grant Morrison's Invisibles Archons in can't fully excuse that. The point being, Howard's creator died this week. His name was Steve Gerber, and in amongst the usual interchangeable obituaries was one which said some stuff worth reading about him, and about comics in general.