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

So Doctor Who came back, and 'Let's Kill Hitler' turned out to be a total bait-and-switch, and then Mark Gatiss supplied the closest thing he's managed to a decent TV episode, and while I'm still loving Matt Smith, part of me can't help but feel that just maybe the whole long-arc-storytelling business has got a little out of hand, such that the done-in-ones now feel extraneous. But Moffat has himself said he's scaling back from that next year, and of course we'll still have Matt Smith, so really there's no cause for concern. And it's not as if things have got so horribly out of hand on that front as in Torchwood: Miracle Day, a show which one increasingly feels is dealing with the modern fascination with/abhorrence of spoilers by making sure that nothing happens from week to week. Every point it thinks it's making was already covered much better in Children of Earth. The closest it came to interest was in the flashback episode, where the hackneyed journey to a predictable destination at least mentioned Sarah Jane's antagonist the Trickster, thus providing a brief, happy memory of a TV Who spin-off that didn't suck.
(Speaking of spin-offs, the last couple of Who books I read were an interesting pair. James Goss' Dead of Winter is aimed at kids, more or less - it ties in with the new series. Matthew Jones' Bad Therapy was one of the fabled New Adventures, which started off by filling a gap when the series was off-air in the wilderness years, but ended up creating much of the template for its return. They're both historicals - one 19th century, one 1950s. Both are about alien tech curing people through creating idealised companions for them. And while the adult book can be a little more detailed about stuff like The Gays (though arguably less so than the modern TV show), they both have a real edge of nastiness. There's one scene in Bad Therapy especially which caused a sharp inhalation on my part, where a boy pursued by thugs finds his escape down an alley blocked by the TARDIS, hammers on the door - and dies because the Doctor and Chris are in a nearby caff. Which isn't how things should work when the Doctor's around. But even Dead of Winter finds room for some chilling stuff, in particular the Doctor's line "I'm going to tell you a story about a man who travels, and everywhere he goes, he makes everyone's lives better. I'm not that man. That man doesn't exist. I wish he did. I'd believe in him.")

Unrelated to the blue box, I've also seen the utterly batsh1t mental French-Czech animation Fantastic Planet, and the epically epic Neville Longbottom and the Speccy Emo Kid Who Keeps Stealing Neville's Screentime. And when I got home from the latter, I watched David Hare's Page Eight, in which Michael Gambon has a mission to take down the Dark Lord (or 'Prime Minister') Ralph Fiennes, except he dies, and Bill Nighy has to execute Gambon's legacy. A perfectly competent middlebrow drama, but the Potter films did it all so much better. Band-wise, I'm in the unusual position that none of the acts I've seen lately are my Facebook friends (although Patrick Duff did end up staying at the Maisionette Beautiful). First up, Duff and Andrew Montgomery, each playing one old song ('She's Everywhere' and 'Fall Apart Button', respectively), each still recognisably the same man as in their post-Britpop almost-pomp. Spookily so in Montgomery's case; he still looks and sounds as cherubic as in his Geneva days. Whereas Duff...well, you could tell from the twisted ferocity of a Strangelove show that his life was never easy, and the haunted folk he's playing nowadays may not be as loud, but emotionally it's no easier. All of this works brilliantly in the upstairs of the Old Queen's Head, which previously had never really gelled for me as a venue; with acts like this, who'd have been right at home in the old Spitz, its faded living room ambience is ideal. Then over to Hoxton to see Thomas Truax, essentially a mad scientist who has realised that making music with his mad science is less likely to get him arrested than robbing banks. Mostly his self-constructed instruments manage to steer clear of feeling like a novelty act, though the inevitably metronomic nature of automated percussion doesn't suit a song like 'I Put A Spell On You'. His own material, conceived around his technology's strengths and limitations, is another matter - at its best there's an eerie fairground quality and also a genuine pathos to it. The headliner is Jason Webley, a man who's also navigating a tough course around the jagged rocks of novelty act status. The first time you see Webley, his ability to get the crowd involved is glorious. But then you get hold of the albums and hear some of the brave, fragile, beautiful songs on there which don't work with an audience bellowing along, and realise that he doesn't play them live (even though, as a solo performer with no band to coach, he can presumably play anything from his back catalogue at any time), and understand that like any strength in an artist, that connection with the crowd can also become a trap. Still, he does sneak 'Against the Night' into the set, and then explains how as of November, he's taking a break - not because he's sick of music but because of how much it means to him, and how much he wants to make sure he's doing it for the right reasons, and the speech isn't 100% coherent but I got the feeling that he was maybe struggling towards the same worries about himself as I'm dancing around here. And he finishes with the gorgeous, self-explanatory 'Last Song' ("Maybe the world isn't dying. Maybe she's heavy with child"), and it's a perfect, cathartic climax...
And some berks start bellowing 'More! More!', because sod structure and artistry and rightness, at the end of a gig, shouting 'More!' is just what you do, right?
This is why I mainly go to gigs where I know most of the audience.

And I'm going to politely gloss over the abysmal punk band who marred the early stages of Saturday's Glam Racket. They wouldn't even be interesting to insult.

Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures really hasn't been adequately plugged to the non-child demographic, which is unfair given what a push Torchwood got (bus-side ads, for instance), and unfortunate given it's mostly very good. Yes, starting the series proper with Slitheen was unfortunate, and we've all seen the Laserquest-as-alien-troop-recruitment story a hundred times before, but the gorgon tale was quite effectively chilling and moving, and 'Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?'...myfirstkitchen plugged the first part a couple of weeks ago, and sure it was good, but this week's closer was even better. The villain was basically the Black Guardian done right, the moral was 'hey kids, your best friend? They'll screw you over if the price is right, you know', and even the slightly bolted-on parents of SJ's kid sidekick got to do something vaguely interesting for once. And all this in a kids' show whose budget looks to be more like oldskool Who's than the new series'!

In other geek TV news: is everyone aware of the forthcoming Joss Whedon/Eliza Dusku reunion? On a show whose concept sounds distinctly Grant Morrison? Of course, it'll have to wait until the US writers' strike is done. Now, I've been thinking about this strike. There's already been discussion on the comics sites of whether it will lead to more film and TV writers adding a comics string to their bow (consensus: probably not). But given the dollar's current status as the nancy boy of international currencies, wouldn't it make more sense for the writers to get work overseas? Right now, doing one Pot Noodle ad would probably make you a dollar millionaire. So get an episode on a big British TV show, and you're laughing. Now, consider how many British TV shows are run by people who've come up in the shadow of USTV - and it's an understandable attitude, even if I don't always agree with their choice of shows to idolise. They'd feel they were getting bargains, wouldn't they?
I'm ambivalent about whether this would be a good thing - it could be a real kick in the face for a lot of British writers who are just getting a foot in the door, like the better Who contributors. But is there any particular reason for it not to happen?
(Of course, I'm also ambivalent about the whole dollar situation. Yes, obviously there are many major ways in which it is a bad thing that an appalling president and an uncontrolled corporate class have beggared the US and according to the IMF, left bloody China as the main stabilizing force in international economics, thus ending the centuries in which economic power and social liberty have tended to advance hand in hand. But, on the other hand - cheap stuff! The exchange rate makes the new Jason Webley album a bargain. And when I found that Gosh can't get League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier after all (as a result of DC political p1ssing contests of which Alan Moore himself said "it could be an almost unbelievable pettiness and malice that was behind this, or it could be an equally unbelievable incompetence. Or it could be some heady and dizzying blend of the two") - well, it turns out that even with shipping it's cheaper to go via US Amazon anyway, so I can't be too irate.

There was sufficient rain in the world and sufficient tiredness upon me that I very nearly didn't go see Jason Webley after all - but I realised such behaviour really wasn't worthy of me, and persevered. Although I find the name Favela Chic repugnant, exactly the sort of thing Mugatu's Derelicte mocked so well, and in spite of the bar prices, I have to admit that it's rather a charming venue - like Stranger Than Paradise's previous venue, South London Pacific it's actually an interestingly-designed bar with a good ambience, as against the many London establishments which desperately wish to think of themselves thusly but are in fact an embarrassment to all concerned. Webley played a similar set to last time, but that's no bad thing when it includes songs like 'Dance While The Sky Crashes Down' (which gets a conga going over the tables), 'Drinking Song' and 'Eleven Saints', songs which can get even newcomers involved in a singalong without ever sacrificing artistry or submerging the performer in the crowd. Not that he'd be an easy man to submerge; he's Jesus starring in a Tom Waits biopic. He's also playing again on Wednesday, at Camden's Green Note, though I fear I am unlikely to be there this time.
(Classic Shoreditch sighting on the way there; a man whose white jacket was covered in slogans including "Love Is Never Right Wing", and a diamante CND symbol. Suddenly, conscription seems so appealing)

From its framing scene's distinctly family-friendly Romantics - Byron apparently played by David Walliams, and Mary Shelley most ladylike and proper - it is clear that alleged classic Bride of Frankenstein is actually a disastrous mess. Like Frankenstein it suffers from the impossibility of a first viewing, having been referenced and pastiched so often in the intervening years; unlike its predecessor, it also sucks. Frankenstein and his monster are both brought back from the dead in a manner which outraged even this hardened comics-reader, the tone is all over the place, the plot's confused beyond all hope, and even Dr Pretorius (the EVEN MADDER scientist who eggs Frankenstein on, and who has such promising material as the 'gods and monsters' speech) is played so effetely as to undermine the character's potential. There is precisely one good thing about this film - the Bride herself, who still seems truly unearthly, uncanny in a way so little horror (and none of the rest of this drivel) ever manages. The downside being, she's on screen for maybe five minutes tops. The film about this film is vastly superior, and you don't need to have seen this to appreciate it.

Jason Webley fans! Are people planning to see him at Favela Chic in Shoreditch this Sunday, at the Green Note in Camden on Wednesday, or both? Not-yet-Jason-Webley-fans! Fancy seeing the best solo performer since Hawksley Workman, a sort of Tom Waits with an accordion and a closer connection to the human race?

Arguing with 9/11 conspiracy theorists is a self-defeating endeavour; if you refuse to accept what they see as the self-evident truth that an American cabal destroyed the World Trade Centre, then you're obviously part of the conspiracy yourself. The BBC recently showed a documentary debunking the lunacy; inevitably, this has now seen them named as another conspirator*. Not yet realising that the only sane response is to stick your fingers in your ears and start singing 'La La La La I Can't Hear You', the BBC has now defended itself. One item of the defence: "We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy)."
If you look at the comments on that piece, you'll get a fairly good impression of the sort of frothing insanity which characterises the conspiracy mob; you'll also note that not one of them finds this excuse remotely plausible.
Which means that they don't know anything of the history of how much classic BBC programming is missing from the archives.
Which means that not one of them can be a fan either of Peter Cook or Doctor Who.
Which is yet further proof of their general failure as human beings.

The 30th anniversary prog of 2000AD came out today. It's an incredible achievement, but they've taken the nostalgic side of this too far by including an utterly rubbish prequel to dinosaur-farming romp Flesh - and the whole thing would have been so much more resonant if Judge Dredd: Origins hadn't gone MIA mid-story.

The flu epidemic which followed the Great War killed something like 5% of the world's population - but without being followed by social breakdown or general chaos. So if bird flu gets its socks on, and accomplishes something similar - well, that's got to do a lot of good for the human carbon footprint, hasn't it? Which must be vastly preferable to the likely apocalyptic consequences of climate change. Help Us, H5N1 - You're Our Only Hope.

Have just been tooling around Hell as Beta Ray Bill, nicking enormous flaming swords off giant demons and using them to do over their mates. This entirely made up for the upsetting stuff with the clowns and the dodgems earlier, and has left me in an extremely good mood.

*At the last count the number of conspirators required would practically put them in the majority across the US and UK; added to the normal psychological flaws of the conspiracy obsessive, that desperate, childish need to believe that *someone* is in control of the world, the 9/11 mob must now be feeling terribly left out.