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

It may be the night when the boundaries between the worlds are at their weakest, but the main thing I expect from Hallowe'en is a chance to have a dance in my cloak. Which I got, plus the chance to stalk home through Stoke Newington and Brownswood Park afterwards. Although on this of all nights, I find it unbelievable that you can still get catcalls from oiks. It's Hallowe'en, you dreckwits! It's the one night of the year when you're meant to be dressed like this and are not being even mildly controversial by so doing! Also, you know how some people pronounce 'nuclear' as 'nucelar'? There's a reverse one about too, because I definitely heard a few 'Draclua's.
('Count Fvckula', on the other hand, is a perfectly acceptable alternative)
Anyway, Nightbeast - very rocking, but with a name like Nightbeast I fear they'll never find another gig which will live up to a Hallowe'en debut.
On Saturday I went to Feeling Gloomy's Leonard Cohen special. There should be more clubs playing Leonard Cohen.

Execrable hack Jeph Loeb has been sacked from Heroes, so I may give it another go once we get to the relevant episodes. Sadly, Marvel comics have not had the sense to do likewise. Maybe I should fake his voice, ring Sarah Palin and claim to have done her daughter?

In the run-up to the US election, I find myself very receptive to TV touching on the American Dream; I'm misting up at Simon Schama's The American Future: A History, and devouring HBO's John Adams. Which is a peculiar series, every episode seeming to exist in a different genre: the first sees a mild man radicalised, like a Mel Gibson film done right; the second, leading up to the Declaration of Independence, is the one brimming with patriotic pride; when Adams goes to Europe in the third, his hopelessly undiplomatic diplomacy in the structured courts of Europe turns the whole thing into a comedy of embarassment. And through it all comes a sort of higher patriotism - because I am, after all, not American. I'm British, hence one of the bad guys in this story (The American War of Independence - is it the only war it was ever right that Britain should lose? I'm struggling to think of another). But the ideal of America, like the ideal of Greece before it, is part of the shared heritage of humanity's better part - even if, being in the hands of humans, it has shown the human tendency to fall terribly short of the ideal.
It's weird, though - being a young country, America has a national epic where the facts and figures are a matter of record. The rest of us have myths we can recast and reinterpret, but theirs...well, the DVD finds the series accompanied by a feature called Facts Are Stubborn Things. They can play a little loose with some details - the editing of the Declaration of Independence feels like a scene from a student newspaper office, with Franklin distracted by Jefferson's other great creation, the revolving chair. But Franklin still talks mainly in Franklin quotations, and we have yet to see George Washington with an outfit or facial expression other than the one from that portrait.

In the same time period, I've finally finished the Talleyrand biography I've been reading on-and-off for ages. Was amused to read that after Waterloo, various well-meaning English liberals attempted to use writs of habeas corpus to prevent Napoleon's rendition to exile in St Helena. This, remember, is after he has already escaped from one, gentle exile on Elba, left Europe in tatters, caused the death of thousands and even left France in a considerably worse position than it was after his first defeat. And yet, still, some people are primarily worried about the possible infringement of his human rights.
I do love Britain's liberal tradition, but it hasn't half bred some soft idiots in its time.
(Talleyrand himself is a strange figure - a man who prized stability and good governance above all things, but had the misfortune to be born French. Had he lived in Britain, and been able to curb his taste for backhanders, he'd have done very well in the Civil Service**, and his name would now be forgotten. But living in France...he never managed to direct events half so much as he would like or even as much as this adoring biographer contends. Consider, this is a man who felt that among the things France most needed were a free press, the rule of law and lasting peace with England - and yet he ended up intimately involved with the Revolution, at the right hand of Napoleon, and in practice acted as precious little brake on either. And yet, for what little he did achieve, he has attained immortality - albeit by being remembered as a byword for duplicity, vanity and greed. Oh, and his legendary wit? Either it just doesn't translate, or it was rubbish in the first place and people only laughed like they do at any powerful man's jokes. Like Wilde in Stoppard's Invention of Love, he lives in history simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suddenly, obscurity doesn't seem so bad. And if any of that seemed like patriotic chauvinism, I refer you to Talleyrand's own summary - "The English do everything better than we do". This in a letter to a countryman, mark you, not as part of his usual sycophancy)

*Cloaks are so great. I sometimes seriously suspect that as much as I want to set the world to rights, the primary appeal of superpowers is that they'd give me more excuses to wear a cloak.
**"They think I am immoral and Machiavellian, yet I am simply impassive and disdainful. I have never given perverse advice to a government or a prince, but I do not go down with them. After shipwrecks, you need pilots to rescue the shipwrecked. I stay calm and get them to port somewhere. No matter which port, as long as it offers shelter." - that could be Sir Humphrey in an unusually open moment, couldn't it?

As of Thursday evening, I'm heading off to Ireland for a long weekend. I will likely be away from the Internet as well as London; if all goes according to plan, I should be returning to both late on Sunday, and then out on Monday to see Los Campesinos! live for the first time - anyone else planning on attending that? Meanwhile, am mainly emptying bottles of eg bubbles in order to transport <100ml of shampoo, facewash &c. I really would take a slightly increased risk of being blown to smithereens over all this faff.

As with The Sarah Jane Adventures, it was only through iPlayer's 'you may also like' smarts that I learned of the existence of The Scarifyers, in which Nicholas Courtney (basically playing the Brigadier) and Terry Molloy (basically playing a cuddly, ineffectual Davros) ally with Aleister Crowley against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. It's neither as funny nor as thrilling as I think was intended, but still, it does have the Brig! And through its outro I also learned that Paul McGann's Doctor will be back on Radio 7 in a six-part adventure from this Sunday. The title, and whether it's already been released as by Big Finish, were not divulged, but I know from the excerpts that I've not heard it.
And speaking of the Cthulhu Mythos - you might thing that investigating the 'ghost peaks' of Antarctica is about as Mountains of Madness as it comes, but just to make sure, read down the article. Read down to the bit where one of the scientists explains how these mountains should not be, how "it's rather like being an archaeologist and opening up a tomb in a pyramid and finding an astronaut sitting inside. It shouldn't be there." Then lose 1d6 SAN.

Far too often I hear from the semi-literate that a given deck-monkey has "literally blown the roof off the club" or a particular slice of vinyl "literally set the club on fire". Saturday's Seven Inches/Penny Broadhurst/New Royal Family Show did end with the club at least smouldering; even if causality cannot be proven, that leaves them well ahead of the pack.

I didn't think it was possible, but I find myself feeling as if I've had enough Stephen Fry for the moment. Perhaps it's just that his tour around the USA launched over the same weekend as Simon Schama's American Future: a History; I get very picky when multiple things seem to cover the same ground (consider how much less forgiving I am of Heroes now it's not only overlapping comics territory, but screening in the same weeks as No Heroics). This is the sort of stuff Schama does best - big ideas, neither yoked too much to specific camera-friendly events nor floating off into the swamp of spurious Adam Curtis generalisations. It's what first drew him to me back with Landscape and Memory. The only problem is that as he tells us how the US has always had a tension between an optimistic belief in perpetual abundance, and the cautious counsel of realists, he is operating on a BBC far too awed these days by the false idol of 'balance'. So he can select clips which hint that Obama is a wise man and McCain another dangerous snake-oil salesman, but he can't say as much, only make vague references to the importance of this election. It's still worth watching, but I hope that once the good guys win in November (please gods), it can be repeated in an extended, re-armed version.

Kenneth Branagh would appear to be confirmed to direct the Thor film if he's cancelling other engagements. If anyone can handle it so as to make Thor sound Shakespearean, as against the ghastly Renaissance Fair approximation with which the ever-incompetent Stan Lee burdened him, then it's probably Ken. Still, after Stardust I think the loss of Matthew Vaughan remains unfortunate.

So no, I didn't make the Tubewalk. But I did get new song 'Psychogeography' dedicated to me (well ok, Steve Brummell and me) at the shamefully underattended Swimmer One gig, so, um, in your face Iain Sinclair. Or something. Which reminds me, have I mentioned that Steppas' Delight is the perfect accompaniment to London - City of Disappearances? But yes, Swimmer One. One of the best bands in Britain. The best band in Scotland. Followed by...British Broken Class? Some order of those words, anyway. Whose bass you could feel through your feet. And then lots of dancing to indie and Bruce Springsteen but no, everyone was staying in watching another Eurovision fiasco instead. Even Sparks next door was sparse, apparently - though it was only Introducing Sparks.

Interview with Snoop Pearson, the actress who plays Snoop Pearson on The Wire. Which would already be pretty interesting, but for me the real jaw-dropper was that Jamie Hector aka Marlo is going to be in Heroes. Someone else is coming back too, it seems. This renews my interest in the third season somewhat, and after the second (though I've still not seen the finale) that was needed.

Still reeling from John Crowley's 'Great Work of Time'* when I headed out yesterday, not quite into the past but into a nineties night. Some quibbles over what counted as Britpop, but Hell, they made better My Life Story selections than My Life Story did on Thursday. And Spearmint! Younger Younger 28s! The really rubbish stuff like OCS for which I fled the stage but it wouldn't have been the same without it! I do hope they have another one soon, I like pretending I'm still young.
(Though I'm convinced my Geneva t-shirt slowed down my service in the pubs beforehand, presumably because I looked like a tourist or a footballist rather than because London's barstaff are all still bitter about the second album)

Weird watching Near Dark again post-Heroes, seeing Nathan Petrelli as a hot young cowboy. Or after Big Love, given I now think of Bill Paxton as Mormon paterfamilias rather than a punky vampire. Lance Henriksen, though - well, I don't think I've seen him in any new roles since I first saw this, and I think he came out of the womb looking like that. It does remind me that at some point I should watch more Millennium, though - another good show screwed over by UK schedulers, just as I note Entourage, having been pushed back and back in the schedules lately and losing its repeat, is now disappearing mid-season (over christmas? We don't know, the continuity announcer was waffling on about unconnected programmes rather than telling us when this one would be back) lest it show up the rest of ITV's output as the dross it is.
But yes, Near Dark. Stands up very well, on the whole, aside from the sappy undercurrent of the family plot. And I don't think I noticed the first time I saw it that it doesn't once use the V-word.

Another V-word: Vegemite. I may have mentioned before how the health food shop where I normally get it is hopeless, only ever getting two pots at a time and almost always selling out before resupply, when it's not as if this is a perishable item. Well, Tesco now has whole trays of the stuff, and for about half the price, while also being much more convenient for me. Note to small local shops: the reason supermarkets are massacring you is that they don't suck.
(Similarly, even though I prefer to do my christmas shopping in the flesh - in the (apparently forlorn) hope that it might get me into the festive spirit - when I'm looking for a pretty recent, pretty big SF book, and one big central London bookshop doesn't have it at all, and another only has a slightly knackered copy, and I'm being sent vouchers to discount it online where it is already cheaper than in the physical shops, well then yes, I'm going to buy it online, aren't I?)

*"I have seen the real world gradually replaced by this other, nightmare world, which everyone else assumes is real"? I can sympathise with that. I wasn't going to buy a paper yesterday - I didn't need the TV listings, I've got a Radio Times. Should have stuck to the plan.
ETA: and with that thought fresh in mind, what should I find but a plug for a pseudoscientific modern restatement of 'everything for the best in this best of all possible worlds'. Note to self: never underestimate the human desire for consoling lies, even ones that absurd.

Finally I can get stuck into all those festive songs I've been quietly amassing on here but unable to play...

Sat on the Tube reading Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road, I'd already looked up from one character's visit to the rejuvenation clinic to see the headline "Scientists Close To Elixir Of Youth" (only the Telegraph's take on this, alas - but what really grabbed me was that the font was slightly off, as in a film where you see a newspaper and they've not quite designed the one plot-relevant fake article right). So I was already in a signs and portents mood when I saw that the chap next to me had what looked like a yellow passport, with which he was fumbling around as he rearranged his pocket. Keeping a subtle eye on it, I saw that it denoted membership of the Order of the Secret Monitor. Hang about - that sounds important, and esoteric, and is surely not something one should be letting slip on public transport!
Turns out they're just a soppy subdivision of the Masons, albeit one with the entertainingly homosexual alias 'the Brotherhood of David and Jonathan'.
Speaking of mysterious documents letting you down, the idea of finding the Question's notebook would be GrantMorrisontastic, if only it weren't tying in to another bloody Countdown comic in which I have absolutely no interest.

Other recent disappointments:
- The Heroes comic. How can you make a comic which is officially canon, and yet still have most of it feel like you're doing a no-account licensed project? The Wireless stuff has its moments - we know from how little of her we saw on screen that there's more to tell - but even that doesn't quite satisfy, and the extra scenes of the others...this isn't stuff that couldn't be told on TV, just stuff that didn't need to be. And even if it is official, an awful lot of it simply doesn't ring true.
- Burial. Ever since Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman, I've wanted to hear another dance record that captured the feel of cities by night that well. When I heard there was an outfit called Future Sound Of London who'd done an album named Dead Cities, I thought I might have found one - but no. Same when I was hearing about Burial; alas, the record all those reviews and raves that were everywhere for a week or two created in my head was a lot better than the one I actually found.
- It's not so recently that I was disappointed by the Spice Girls' dead dog of a comeback single, but it was only on Thursday night that the full enormity hit me: they'd made a significantly worse comeback single than All Saints. How was that even possible?

Garth Ennis' Dan Dare relaunch is, as expected, utterly wonderful - and respectful too, which might surprise those who've not encountered his straight war stuff before. I think as his Punisher run winds down, he might just have found his next long-run character (though this is only a miniseries for now).

I'd never really considered the state of Japan in the forties, but David Peace's Tokyo Year Zero makes a plausible case for it not being very much fun. The characters are more damaged than those in Peace's The Damned Utd; the police system in which they operate makes The Wire look decadently overfunded and The Shield feel like a community relations masterclass. Unusually for a politically-engaged historical work these days, no contemporary resonance seems intended - perhaps because to do so would imply support for the Iraq war, although the relentless, incantatory squalor of it all reminds us all how much is sacrificed in the short term during even the most justified regime change. The one thing that has briefly managed to throw me out of the moment depicted is the presence of characters named Miyazaki and Nakamura. Common family names they may be in Japan, for all I know - but to me they have very specific holders.

Being intrigued by the glimpsed red-top headline "MUM OF 5 IS FIRST LESBIAN BIGAMIST" (and frankly, who wouldn't be), I felt obliged to investigate the story, which turned out to be rather desperate. But one of the participants being called Beddoes reminded me of the poet of the same name - "'Twas in those days
That never were, nor ever shall be, reader, but on this paper; golden, glorious days" - (himself less than entirely straight), whose aunt turns out to have been Maria Edgeworth. Of whom one contemporary divine said "I should class her books as among the most irreligious I have ever read ... she does not attack religion, nor inveigh against it, but makes it appear unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue without it ... No works ever produced so bad an effect on my mind as hers". Which even within the inglorious field of believing religion to be key to morality, must take some kind of biscuit. And to bring us back from there to the modern news - more fun with islamic dress. Which reminds me, can we maybe make Salman Rushdie a Lord? Or a secular saint? Please?