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

First weekend of June was very much the first big weekend of the summer. Started early by playing to stereotypical associations of 'Japan', packing out xandratheblue's local sushi place and all being a bit disturbing. Saturday was her official birthday, in Highgate Woods, with a pinata who died too easy. I the interests of keeping the jovial violence going, wrestling ensued, as a result of which I am still nursing a slightly stiff ankle I SAID ANKLE. In between - Nuisance with JOHNNY RUDDY DEAN FROM MENSWEAR fronting the house band for a set of Bowie covers - and, inevitably, an encore of his own material. All of it excellent, except perhaps the rather idiosyncratic choice of 'Crash' among the latter. The final track was a version of 'All the Young Dudes', which also featured Jaime from Marion and the word 'YOLO'. A perfect fusion of seventies, nineties and 2010s, right?
On the Sunday, my Cthulhuson was most impressed by all the diggers and forklifts clearing up after the Stone Roses clusterfucked Finsbury Park. I can't say I was quite so fascinated, but it was certainly more appealing that watching a tuneless homophobe and three hypocrites massacre songs that used to be quite good.

The week after that had little to report here - certainly not our ignominious placing in the Doctor Who pub quiz, which wasn't even the only Whocentric socialising that week, not that I am a geek or anything. Then a quieter weekend, off to deepest Middlesex to see where wardytron lives now he's allegedly a grown-up. Say what you like about the suburbs, and I do, but I will always be likely to approve of any party with a friendly dog. Then home via another party, with me refusing vodka on the train - not because I hold to the laws on that, or had suddenly turned abstemious, but simply because it tasted like Malibu. Ick.

Made my first visit to Finsbury Park's new theatre last night. They've had various exciting new dramatists' stuff already, so obviously I went for the classic - School for Scandal. I've never seen any Sheridan before, and I'm still not entirely convinced that watching Sheridan is as good as reading Cabell's chapter about Sheridan as epitome of the "glorious mountebank" in Beyond Life, but the sheer wit and deviousness and moral vacancy of the whole affair was a delight. Could perhaps have done with spending more time on choreographing the key farce scene, though, and less on the musical interludes they'd added.

London life appears to be cycling up again, the diary filling and the weeks of temperance (through illness or lack of event, not some talismanic fool belief in detox) coming to an end; if doubt remains, then you always know for sure that it's kicking off again once you're stood in the back room of the Wilmington watching giant robots fight off space dinosaurs with the help of indie rock. Back to the clubs and pubs and dinner parties - and back to Kentish Town. Did ever a district combine side street charm with high street horror to such an extent? Four places I wanted to go before Ale Meat Cider - one simply failed me, and three were on unscheduled shutdown (one by the fire brigade). In the meantime, I've been reading, and putting the new Necron list throught its paces on the tabletop*, and relishing Gregg Araki's Kaboom, which mixes his usual polymorphous perversity with apocalyptic conspiracy and creative swearing, and less so Arrietty which is, like every non-Miyazaki Ghibli film I've seen, faintly disappointing. The visual richness, the gardens into which you just want to melt, are present and correct - but the characters and the plot just feel a little...conventional, up until an ending which is at once conventional and not even a logical conclusion of what has gone before.

And, most importantly, I've been to the Isle of Wight with xandratheblue. Yes, it's still definitely England, even if it's not Great Britain, but it's my first time overseas in years, or with her. So we meandered around the island on a bus that seemed to be the equivalent of the Circle Line if it had a view and was faintly reliable, and saw clicking owls and cartwheeling monkeys and a Roman mosaic of a cock-headed man (NOT LIKE THAT), and stayed in a hotel on a lake, and because she's a city girl she seemed almost as excited to have rabbits and sheep pointed out from the train window as to travel on a hovercraft. Though it was noticeable that the other passengers were a lot more subdued on the return trip, presumably because of the Costa Concordia footage on the screens in the waiting room. I don't know why, given we were using a totally different means of transport and the captain wasn't Italian. Though in his shoes I wouldn't have been able to resist a loud 'Mamma mia!' or two within earshot of the nervous travellers.

*With most pleasing results, except against Blood Angels.

The weekend again already, at least if one is using up annual leave, and as per last week it doesn't look to be the most raucous of weekends, but is nonetheless deeply cherished for all that. There are a lot of people moving away from Finsbury Park lately, and for all my science fiction-inspired futurism, on a domestic level I disapprove of change. Still, at least by happening in autumn it's seasonally appropriate (as ever, I prefer 'pathetic truism' to the nonsensical term 'pathetic fallacy' - because weather and human moods do tend to match up).
Often, the moments in life of which one feels proudest aren't really suitable for the internet; they're better held close and secret. But last Sunday, while picking up a book that makes dinosaur noises for my Cthulhuchild, I overheard a customer asking the shopkeeper where he should start with Avengers comics. And un-English as it was, I 'Excuse me, if I might assist'-ed, and explained the situation, and by the end of it the fellow was ordering the first volume of The Ultimates (because it's better than the originals, and much closer to the films, which were what had inspired him to ask in the first place). So I'd supported my local independent bookshop, done some comics evangelism and helped a slightly puzzled shopper, all in one. I fear this may make me part of the Big Society.

Beyond that...well, it's all been a bit science-fictional. Had my first games of Cosmic Encounter, a game which manages both to be very simple to pick up, surprisingly tactical, and completely different each time depending what combination of alien powers the players get. Went to the British Library's Out of this World exhibition, full of manuscripts, old editions, life-size props (though I could tell the TARDIS was a fake - no warmth or hum) of science fiction classics. But 'science fiction classics' as defined by someone who actually knows their stuff - Olaf Stapledon got due respect (they even had the original hand-drawn timelines for the millions of years covered in his majestic Last and First Men), and John Brunner was well-represented too (I never knew he'd come up with the computer sense of 'worm'). So much there that I'd love to go back if only I hadn't come along so late in the run, and a perfect gallery for it too, somehow. If I had one quibble it would be the absence of Simak, but then everyone forgets about Simak nowadays, and in an odd way that fits the backwoods, leaving-the-city-folk-to-do-city-things nature of his work. Seriously, though - melancholy pastoral SF. It's excellent.
Oh, yes, and there was Torchwood. Of which the best that can be said is that about half of the last episode was quite good, and maybe five minutes really kicked arse.

Spent Friday night in the Queens, which I don't recall visiting since its brief stint as the local, a stint ended when missfrost ceased to be its most local local and the centre of social gravity shifted. It hasn't changed, except that it now employs a pirate, something I mentioned just as he picked up my glass from behind. Ooops.
On Saturday, I got the train to Oxford rather than the coach, which also meant using Paddington rail station for I think the first time ever. It has a disappointing lack of bears. I was amongst the dreaming spires for a wedding attended by many people from university who were already married, draped in children or otherwise giving me the fear. What I had thought a rather over-ambitious scheme for the day in fact worked very smoothly, and the river journey in particular was perfectly English - motoring gently along the Thames, gentle meadows to the side and gentler cumulus above, plenty of cava. And, inevitably, the goth boating party coming the other way. One friend of the groom refused to believe that my flatmate could be among them - "How can they have flatmates? They're river gypsies!" West Londoners can be so entertaining. Later, I attempt to scramble up some creepers. This is not a great plan - you can trust trees, but creepers are deceptive. I fall on my arse, and am in a not inconsiderable amount of pain for the rest of proceedings, and onwards. Between this and my cowboy boots (long story, but they really were the only sensible footwear given the itinerary), on Sunday in particular I am reduced to walking at the speed most people walk at. I honestly don't know how they cope - it takes so long to get anywhere! Suddenly I understand why so many people get public transport everywhere or are simply reluctant to leave the house.
On Sunday, fugitivemotel gets his send-off. All associated parties are late to the pub in various degrees, but some other people I know have been there since mid-afternoon, so I hang with them for a bit, then manage to disperse most of them with the assertion (I can offer no sources, but still recall hearing it somewhere credible) that one major omission from Gorillas in the Mist was quite how friendly Dian Fossey got with the gorillas. This means we can get their big table. Result. And have a nice USA, fugitivemotel.

One can point to plenty of templates for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's stitching together of different fictions into one grand tapesty - Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton series is often mentioned, or there are Kim Newman's Dracula books. In one sense it's a foolish endeavour, because back before copyright started messing intertextuality up, myths would always mingle - look at the way the Matter of Britain incorporated other chivalrous myths, previously self-sufficient characters like Lancelot being brought into Arthur's orbit. Nonetheless, I've found another work on the same theme which I'm rather enjoying, David Thomson's Suspects. Thomson is probably best known for his gleefully partial Biographical Dictionary of Film, though I only know it through the entries the Guardian sometimes runs; I was turned on to him by his experimental Orson Welles biography Rosebud, and then confirmed as a fan by The Whole Equation which explains all those bits and pieces you never quite knew you didn't know about how Hollywood works. Suspects started as an outgrowth of the Biographical Dictionary, except instead of actors and directors it addresses the characters, telling you what happened before the film starts and after the credits roll. In the interests of a coherent world, it limits itself to film noir - but Thomson defines this term pretty widely, taking it out to borders like It's A Wonderful Life and Taxi Driver which, if not canonical, become inarguable the way Thomson tells it. So in the style of a reference book, we learn how Noah Cross from Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond were lovers, say - and the identity of her child - and yet as it goes on it becomes clear that, non-objective as Thomson has always been, the narrator here is not Thomson, but someone involved in this noir-verse. I'm hampered by only knowing about a quarter of the films referenced, and none of them all that well, but still love it; if you're a film noir obsessive I imagine it's even better.

A moment of unexpected beauty: walking to the dole office, hardly the highlight of my week, I find myself striding through a rain of blossom just as, on my earphones, the Indelicates' 'Unity Mitford' peaks. I've just found a lovely map of fairy places, but can't help but feel it has slightly missed the point when enchantment lurks around every corner if you get the moment right. And so often this week, the moment has been right - spring just starting to feel confident that it's here to stay, the grass going mad to get as close to the sun as quickly as possible, everything alive. Everything possible.

Gigging galore over the past week; last night was the first full Soft Close-Ups show, in the Vibe Bar. Does Brick Lane have more curry houses or complete tossers? It's a close-run thing. The Vibe Bar seems to acquire new rooms every time I visit, and now has an atrium, a giant eagle, a postbox and what looks like a hotel. The set was hampered by the poor sound quality one comes to expect at multimedia art happening experiences, but otherwise wonderful, and I'm not just saying that because augstone took my advice after the last show about resurrecting the axe god moves, pedals and feather boa. Or feather boar, as I just typed.
On Tuesday at the less up-own-jacksie Lexington, Jonny Cola & the A-Grades and Glam Chops, both as stylish and pop as ever, the latter with a new jumpsuit for Eddie, whose new Art Brut album came out the day before but who was still here playing small shows with two of his side-projects. The other being Keith Top Of The Pops And His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band, a poorly-recorded version of whose excellent show you can see here. I can't decide whether the highlight was 'I Hate Your Band', with thedavidx and James Rocks playing each other's guitars while Keith sings "you could swap members, you could swap songs", or Fvck The MSP, with its rousing final chant of "Nicky Wire can suck my cock", something I hesitate to mention on the internet lest someone write the slash fic where Nicky Wire does exactly that to all 16 members of the band, including the girls.

Listening to the new Decemberists album, I wonder, as I did with the last two, why the same band who can sound so genuinely...unearthly is the wrong word, because I think of our Earth's past, or at least our Earth's past as it should have been, so say 'out of time'...on most of the songs, manage to sound so like a pedestrian indie outfit on the rest. The one which appears to have escaped from a poor PJ Harvey album in particular. Still, all considerably better than the new Bat For Lashes, which I don't even know why I bothered stealing - it doesn't even have one delightfully eerie single like the first album, it's just boil-in-the-bag kookiness for dull people.

Outside my window the sun is slowly sinking behind an enormous mountain range of snowcloud, with the peachy glimmers of its light just flowing around the uppermost edge, and most of the cloud left totally opaque. I say 'slowly', but you can very nearly see the sun move - think London Eye speed - and because the cloud is so thick you can look straight at it. It's an old light it gives, but not a tired light, and that's so reassuring. It's not snowing here right at the moment, but my walk earlier took me through a couple of flurries - happily, as when that first lot came I had wet hair, so couldn't go outside to play in it. Worrying over missing things is usually unnecessary, and always unhelpful.