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

Not been feeling too lively the past week or so, for no particular reason. I did make it out for the last wedding of the season, of course, and was very glad of it too - I love when the friends massively outnumber the family instead of vice versa, when the day feels like a ritualisation of joy rather than an obligation, and there can be no finer reading than the toast from Frida Kahlo's wedding. And the night before there was gigging - Bevan 17 with light reflecting from the metal on the bass keys to the mirrorball then back, Gyratory System ("This is great! They're so obnoxious!" - xandratheblue) and The Vichy Government playing like they were in the club scene from It Couldn't Happen Here. Otherwise, leisure time has largely been spent catching up with films. Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch got some dreadful reviews, but of the video game-influenced films I saw last week, it was vastly preferable to Zowie Bowie's Source Code. Seriously, if Jake Gyllenhaal's whiny prick of a character in Source Code is any kind of accurate representation of the modern US military, then no wonder they've been getting such underwhelming results lately. Every twist is visible at least ten minutes away, and the overall effect is of a very nicely-shot episode of Quantum sodding Leap, even down to the sciencey-but-wildly-misapplied title. Whereas Sucker Punch exists in the same genre - call it 'video game psychological/combat musical'? - as Scott Pilgrim. It's darker, more flawed, slightly alarming in places, but for all that, it feels personal, *necessary*, more than extruded Hollywood product, in a way that Source Code never does. And tonight it's Attack the Block, although obviously any Adam or Joe-directed take on London's vicious youth is going to have a hard time competing with Speeding on the Needlebliss.

In spite of X2 being my favourite superhero film ever, I had an utter absence of plans to go see X-Men Origins: Wolverine - but when a friend invites you along for free, to a cinema that's a pleasant walk away on a nice evening...well, that's a different matter, isn't it? Plus, I was in a position to empathise, given I am currently in the midst of a procedure to bond metal to my skeleton (I have a temporary filling) performed by someone I don't entirely trust (a dentist) and which is likely to affect my memory (she also prescribed me some antibiotics on which I can't drink). And...it's OK. If you want a big dumb action film, or a film with naked Hugh Jackman scenes, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. ( spoilers )
On the way back, I realised that while I'd walked that route home dozens of times, I wasn't sure I'd ever done it sober. And on my MP3 player I was listening to two new loads, added before the antibiotics were prescribed, but which I realised were both by straight edge artists - The Streets' new stuff, and The Melting Ice Caps. Which, sat by the war memorial listening to 'A Good Night', helped reassure me that this week off liquor isn't a chore, it's a novelty. Because frankly, I am better than Duck Phillips.

I read Alfred Bester's Tiger, Tiger* years ago, and didn't really appreciate it; I suspect I may have been too young. Certainly it would have been before my Babylon 5 phase, so while I appreciated that it was the source of the name for Walter Koenig's sinister psychic, I didn't really grasp *why*. Now I'm finally reading The Demolished Man, in which one man attempts to get away with murder in a world where telepaths are a fact of life, and it makes perfect sense. The whole Babylon 5 treatment of psychics, from the oppressive Psi Corps in which they're all obliged to be members, to their interactions with each other and the rest of humanity - it all comes from here. In terms of predicting the future, well, this does so a lot less well than most of its fellows in the (excellent) Masterworks series. But as an evocation of paranoia, and of what telepathy might feel like both for the gifted and the blind, it's astonishing - and the increasingly outlandish stratagems by a killer and a detective who both know the truth, but can't yet act on it, remind me of nothing so much as Death Note. Less sexually charged, though, in spite of one key scene being set at an orgy.
I think I may have been driven to investigate by Michael Chabon mentioning that Howard Chaykin adapted The Demolished Man in his introduction to Chaykin's own American Flagg!. Which, again, I should really have investigated sooner. Deranged pulp futurology, it's the closest I've ever seen an American come to the early days 2000AD, except unlike 2000AD back then, the 'thrill power' here encompasses sex as well as violence, nihilism and insane technology. Something 2000AD has picked up on since, of course - even down to Nikolai Dante appropriating Reuben Flagg's 'Bojemoi!'

*So my father's edition called it, but the battle of the titles seems, in the intervening years, to have been comprehensively decided in favour of its alternative, The Stars My Destination.

...which is probably for the best given the state of the Victoria line. I know they've stopped early closing, and thought they were supposed to have pretty much finished the 'upgrade', so why on two nights of three this week has the Northbound had a seizure?

I am worryingly certain that that bit on Screenwipe where Charlie Brooker threatens to fvck Anthony Head will have been found arousing by some people I know.
(Didn't Head look weird in those Gold Blend ads, though? Sort of undead, but not in a good way. If ever there was a man who aged into his looks...)

I've no idea whether the Survivors remake is actually any good, but watching it while wobbly slightly hallucinatory with a freak super-flu a bit of a cold certainly inclined me to take it seriously. And it's doing the idea of Paterson Joseph as the Doctor no harm at all, not with him playing a well-prepared loner reluctant to get emotionally involved*. That second episode, though - ( spoilers )
Coincidentally, the last Who book I read was Lance Parkin's forthcoming The Eyeless, in which the Doctor, alone, encounters the few self-sufficient survivors of a global cataclysm amidst the crumbling relics of a depopulated world. Not that I've read that many of the new series books, but as one would expect from Parkin, this is by far the best - it has that sense of mattering which they've tended to lack, perhaps because it can be set between seasons and story arcs, perhaps because it implicitly ties in to the Time War stuff which seems destined never to be addressed head on.
And by way of John Simm's stint as the Master, and Peter Capaldi as Caecilius, I reckon I can just about allow a segue from that to The Devil's Whore, the first part of which didn't quite convince me. It felt too much like a dramatisation for the benefit of history lessons, as against a genuine drama - even if the budget was somewhat higher, and a schools project might have omitted the Satanic tongue-waggling. I've not yet seen Our Friends In The North, so I don't know whether Peter Flannery's projects are always quite this polemical; rumour has it that this was meant to be 12 episodes long but funds only stretched to four, which would certainly explain some of the infelicities, because thus far we seem to be getting rather clumsy Cromwellian propaganda, and I'm not buying that even with Dominic West as Cromwell. Tell me, why is it that aside from playing wonderful Jimmy McNulty, he so often seems to get lumbered with History's Biggest Gits? If he's not selling out Sparta to the Persians in 300, he's this warty hypocrite war criminal...

Those of you who expressed an interest in Self Non Self last time I mentioned it, be aware that it returns tomorrow. I intend to be there, drinking away any remains of my cold.

*Although he never shared the screen with Rose's dad, or Martha. Possibly for the best.

Now, bear in mind that I think The View are atrocious, and I don't like the way that cocaine is produced, distributed or makes most people act. But still, I read this letter in the NME pursuant to The View's Kyle being busted:
"Kyle mate, wouldn't you get a better high by donating the money you spend on coke to drug agencies in the Dryburgh area of Dundee, who are there to pick up the pieces of the misery and damage caused by that shit?"
And I think: No. No, he really wouldn't.

By way of a reminder, it's The Beautiful & Damned at the Boogaloo tomorrow night. It has an earlier start now (8pm), which should benefit those of you who have made the unaccountable decision not to live in North London. Whether I shall be there myself I do not yet know, as I have what feels like my seventh cold of the year so far; updates on the matter will be available by text or email to interested parties.