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

This one's going to get geeky, so let's start by establishing that yes, I do sometimes engage in more socially well-adjusted activities. Well, if you can count going to the V&A (they have so much pretty stuff, but what is it *for* when lots of that stuff would be equally at home in the British Museum?), or attending a Britpop night in a Geneva t-shirt, or hanging out with fugitivemotel and at one stage uttering the phrase "Oz Season 7, starring Wizbit". And OK, at the party I attended on Saturday I did have a conversation about the Sisters of Mercy's much-better-than-other-bands-called-Sisters cover of 'Comfortably Numb'. So yes, it would seem I am in fact a hopeless case. Oh well.

It was September when I last posted a general State of the Comics Union moan. Since when, not much has changed. I've dropped an increasing number of series which, even if I vaguely want to read, I know I'll never want to reread. More are coming - when Astonishing X-Men and Ultimate Avengers reach the end of the current stories, they're out, because they're not bad little superhero romps but nor are they worth more than a quick read courtesy of the library and, if I've mis-guessed what the library will get in, I'll live. Buffy was in line for the same treatment after the sheer galling idiocy both of the identity of the season's Big Bad, and of the manner in which said identity was revealed (online via fake leak, not in the comic itself) - but Joss Whedon wrote the most recent issue himself and reminded me that it was seldom the big stories which made Buffy so much as the little moments, and this was they. Of course, the next arc is by Brad Meltzer and is going to have a Mature Readers warning, between which and his previous work we can doubtless expect some gratuitously rapey mess which gets me right back to quitsville.
But there's just so much coasting going on - and miserable coasting at that. Both DC and Marvel claim that a bright new direction is coming once the grim'n'gritty carnage of current events is done, but I've heard it all before (and I'm barely been reading anything from DC in ages, they're in such a joyless tangle). At Marvel what seemed like a brilliant idea for a while (businessman Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin talked himself out of responsibility for his crimes and ended up effectively running the country, as the very rich always seem to manage - ring any bells, bankers?) has just been plodding on and on and remorselessly on. And now it has finally reached its endgame - Osborn and his forces attacking Asgard, home of Thor and his fellow gods, which J Michael Straczynski's run on Thor had relocated to Oklahoma. But the comic telling this story, Siege, feels from its first issue more like it's going through the motions of amending the status quo than like the epic story it should be. Brian Bendis, the writer, has previously had problems with the pacing in the middle acts of his big event comics, and this one was shorter so should have been better, but it's as if he's cut not the padded kidriff, but the kick-ass opening.
There's still good stuff, of course; of the titles I praised in September, Ultimate Spider-Man and The Boys are still delivering. The Walking Dead gets better and better, and I don't even much like zombie stories. Vertigo, previously responsible for Sandman, Preacher and The Invisibles among others, has become relevant again with Mike Carey's The Unwritten and Peter Milligan's Greek Street, two very different examinations of the unexpected legacy legends and fictions can have in the modern world. But, will either of them last? The economics of comics are so horribly marginal, it can never be guaranteed; both writers have a string of prematurely-cancelled titles behind them. Word of another casualty has just come in; Phonogram's Kieron Gillen has been doing some lovely work on a space-based screwball comedy X-Men spin-off called S.W.O.R.D., but weak sales mean it ends with the fifth issue. Meanwhile, he's trying his best on Thor but the aforementioned Straczysnki run left him with having to pick up from such a moronic start point (Latveria Is So Bracing!)* that he's really swimming against the current.
Another writer I usually think of as reliably great, Grant Morrison, is in more position to be master of his fate and work, but isn't really putting it to best use. His Batman & Robin hasn't maintained its strong start, getting bogged down in themes he's already done better elsewhere; I feel a real lack of anticipation for the imminent Joe the Barbarian; and as for his Authority...well, OK, it's not really his anymore. It's Keith Giffen scripting Morrison's plots, because Grant stormed off in a huff. And Giffen's a competent enough writer, usually, but it turns out that he can't write British. So Morrison's most thoroughly, heartbreakingly British lead since Greg Feely in The Filth now talks about leaving things in his other 'pants', and his first 'apartment'. The issue of The Boys set amidst the baguette-jousting inhabitants of the village of Franglais had a better ear for dialect than this.

And as if that little diatribe weren't bad enough, today the main thing lifting me out of the sense of 'meh' which comes with this horrible sinus-y cold is the storming victory my new-look Tyranid army managed in last night's game of Warhammer 40,000.

*I love Babylon 5 - mostly - but JMS' comics career has been one frustration after another. Either he loses the plot, or he falls out with the publisher and storms off, or in extreme cases, both. People told me his Thor was excellent but having been burned before, I waited. And I finally read the first two collections recently and lo and behold, this was one of the cases of 'both'. There's a lot to love: instead of talking in cod-Shakespearean English as previous writers so clumsily attempted, his Asgardians speak formally but coherently; it's the themes which echo Shakespeare now, with the prince uneasy on his father's throne, the adviser who whispers poison in a good but naive ear. And the abiding question: what do gods do when their legend is over? If they survived Ragnarok, what now? Yes, in a sense it would have been a better theme back in those days when we were told we'd seen the End of History, but it's still a fascinating one.
However. There are scenes in post-Katrina New Orleans and war-torn Africa which demonstrate that Straczynski hasn't learned a damn thing since his legendarily bad Amazing Spider-Man issue where Doctor Doom stood in the wreckage of the World Trade Centre and wept. And, though I've yet to read the third volume which fully explains how he got to where he left the series, I've seen enough to know that yes, what looked like a stupid idea which Gillen was obliged to pick up, was also a stupid idea approached from the other end.

Last night's Skins: I'm not saying it was my favourite episode ever, or even of the new series so far, but it was nonetheless brilliant. Without once becoming A Very Special Episode, or the sort of didactic slop a US teen show would usually give us, we get something which I'd wager will make at least a few kids up and down the country think twice before they parrot their Mail-reading parents' line on immigrants. And while the scum might object to Skins because it's all sex and drugs and electro-indie, how many of them realise that it's not only undermining their anti-fun stance, but also their intolerance? Heroic.
In other scandalous but socially conscious TV news, by finishing the third season of Oz I've caught up to where I started. No more left for me to watch - well, except the musical episode, for which C4's scheduling went from merely wasteful to actively hiding an episode in a slot previously announced for something else, but I'm not sure I want to watch through all the intervening bits again just yet.

"Londoners escape heavy snowfall", apparently. Yeah, so rather than a winter wonderland outside my window, it's the sort of formless and apparently infinite muddy grey which makes me wonder whether it's even worth leaving the house today. What an escape!

As if recent reactivation of my old Warhammer 40K habit weren't bad enough, last night I learned how to play Heroclix. I know that geek is cool these days, but I still can't help but worry whether I'm going too far. Speaking of cool geeks: Scott Pilgrim! The new instalment is strangely downbeat in places, but also a thing of wonder. I only bought it on a whim because it was a slow comics week, and yet I still got the limited edition bookplate. This is because I am wonderful.

Mark Twain wrote that "Dollis Hill comes nearer to being a paradise than any other home I ever occupied", and given I like exploring the far reaches of this great city anyway, that mandated a visit. augstone fancied some daytime drinking - so let's combine the two, we thought, and go for a Dollis Hill pub crawl!
First problem: Dollis Hill has no pubs. Seriously. At its heart, Gladstone Park, and around that, pleasant London suburbia, not dissimilar to the quieter and less exotic regions of Highgate, but less spooky. Gladstone Park, likewise, is a sort of Waterlow or Alexandra Park disrupted by a railway through its midriff - perhaps absent in Twain's day. Maybe those other lands of which Dollis Hill reminds me were also as yet unbuilt, and learned from Dollis Hill's example? My historical sense of London's expansion is patchy, given I tend to regard anything which belongs in London as having always been here*. There are pubs near Dollis Hill, but always just over a road into industrialisation, proletarianism or Irishness. Our original plan was "meet in the pub nearest the station" but, under expert advice, I had checked Fancyapint, just in case, while worrying that Aug might feel this compromised the expeditionary spirit. Thank heavens I did. Its favoured suggestion was full of old Irish soaks, which is fine, and in the midst of some carpentry, which is allowable, but was also playing 'The Wind Beneath My Wings', so we didn't stay. Everything else the web had suggested would be heading back down towards Kilburn, so instead we investigated the Ox & Gate, which had nice leather chairs. The gents here had a huge stash of empty sleeves for hooky p0rn DVDs; clearly these are purchased alongside boy films the mrs would never think to investigate, and then secreted inside the actioner's sleeve. Cunning. We cross the North Circular a bridge too early, passing a supplier of sex equipment on one side and a purveyor on the other. This doesn't seem a particularly libidinous area, but perhaps there's nothing else to do? The reservoir is unusually birdless, having fewer than the tiny pond in Gladstone Park; maybe the ducks really like the naked statue in the park pond, Maybe Mark Twain did too.
We head back via Willesden Green, hoping that not being Dollis Hill proper, there may be pubs. We pass two carpet shops and two auto parts shops before we see anything even faintly resembling one, instead contenting ourselves with Crazy Cock - a Bulgarian restaurant rather than another fleshpot. They have folk music TV playing - does Britain, with all its music channels, have anything of the sort? There are forests and fine jackets, and Aug wants a residency. I knew nothing of Bulgarian cuisine before, in spite of an ancestor helping to underwrite the country's foundation, but can now tell you that they do very fine things with cheese.
Then, via a brief stop at a gastro affair which is at least visible from Willesden Green station, back to the centre. I have always steered clear of the Old Blue Last before, suspecting that anywhere owned by Vice magazine would probably be full of tossers. I am slightly wrong, in that the crowd are not so much hipsters as their larval form. I am reminded of the old moral dilemma - if you could go back in time and kill Bloc Party when they were as yet innocent of their crimes, would it be justified? Not that I could ever see the dilemma, mind. Even in the version which substitutes Hitler, the only worry is the practical consideration of whether that might have given Stalin a freer hand. Anyway, the Old Blue Last still manages its own spot of Pub Fail; they have at least three draught pints off with no glasses over the pumps, the felchratchets. First act on is one Kit Richardson, who looks like Imelda Staunton dressed as Little Boots, and sounds like a third-rate Tori Amos. Do Not Want. The 18 Carat Love Affair, however, are excellent as ever even in this terrible place; there's a song I don't recognise called 'Eleanor' which is every bit as good as the rest of their material. Aug says he doesn't really know who to compare them to, sound-wise, and I know what he means, and I think that's a good thing.
The next band on feature a former member of Special Needs. We don't stay.

Undecided on nu-Skins as yet, though given how much more the first two series were than the first episode let on, I'm certainly planning to keep watching. The new male leads seem more irksome, though, consisting as they do of a lout, a hairstyle and the OCD kid who appears to have escaped from The Big Bang Theory. Still, we have lovely lovely Effy (and I believe I'm now allowed to say that without going on the Register), and scatty Pandora, and the twins and Naomi Campbell seem promising. As does the new teacher, although having Ardal O'Hanlon playing a cross between Roy from The IT Crowd and Dylan Moran strikes one as a sort of mad science experiment in concentrated Irishness.
(Am also watching the third series of Oz, and idly wondering whether there's any possibility of a crossover)

*For instance, that scene in A Knight's Tale with the Eye revolving beside the mediaeval Thames? Perfect.

A quiet weekend there, especially yesterday when I barely left my room, and didn't even click until afterwards how suited that was to an afternoon of gaol-based viewing. Having finished off the second half of Oz season 2* I settled in with my Guardian freebie disc of Kiss Of The Spider Woman. I'd always wondered why William Hurt kept getting acting roles when he manifestly wasn't able to act; I knew he had an Oscar but I assumed it must have been a precursor to Halle Berry's - perhaps people made of wood were the Academy's desired tokenistas that year and Pinocchio didn't have a film out? Turns out I had him wrong - he's more a Vin Diesel, a man who acted extremely well, once and then realised he didn't need to bother, he'd still get paid. But let's not allow his subsequent decline to sully that one magnificent performance. Let's pretend that he died like James Dean, maybe even got the Oscar posthumously...what a star! What a performance, what a film, what an opposite number in Raul 'Gomez Addams' Julia! I'm not even sure what I took away from the film - something beyond its slowly reconciled opposition between dreams and revolution, for sure, but something somehow formless and at once poetic yet inexpressible. A film about films that don't exist, from which I take away a message I can't verbalise - apt, I suppose.

I wouldn't like it thought that I won't give credit where it's due on those rare occasions when something good comes out of christianity. this computer game, for instance. Or, more timelessly, GK Chesterton. I've read his poetry and fiction before, and been very impressed by the quality of his mind and the facility with language which models it so well upon the page. Orthodoxy is the first I've read of his essays, and even if I don't agree with his ultimate agenda, every page has gems of phrasing and logic:
"Shakespeare is quite himself; it only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else."
"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
And so forth. I must always concede that he at least presents a case to answer, which is more than can be said for most thinkers. Ultimately, I think he and I could rally together behind Planetary's slogan: It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way. He wants a mystery and a grandeur to life, but also a welcome; if we would both guarantee those inalienable rights by reference to different gods, well, heavens know it's a lot closer than I feel to most of my nominal co-religionists.

NME Hack Throws Ill-Informed Strop is not, in and of itself, newsworthy. When features editor James McMahon grunts that "Today's Observer Music Monthly feature on 'the new eccentrics' has left me dizzy, shaken and above all furious at what my beloved rock music has become. For one thing it was seemingly written by an idiot whose politics and ideology have been formed by books rather than life experiences and emotional toil"...well, that's just the sort of wilful ignorance one expects from the strand of music journalism which loves illiterate oiks for their own sake, and that was ever with us (it was the Stud Brothers who epitomised it back when I followed the Melody Maker, but Garry Bushell's probably the most famous exponent). What interests me is that among the acts which this apparently appalling document of prole-hate champion are...Foals and Lightspeed Champion. Both acts which the NME cannot currently do enough to rim.
Also from the Department of Huh?: the shooting component of the accursed Olympics is to be held in Woolwich. The games are taking place primarily in East London. And what part of London goes more iconically with 'shooting' than 'Hackney'? OK, maybe Peckham or Brixton should also be in with a shot, but Woolwich? OK, it has the Arsenal, but a better way to honour that would be to move Arsenal back there (probably in the first hundred Things I Would Do If Super-Rich, that). Then again, we are talking about sportists here, so probably shouldn't expect too much evidence of brainpower.

Are Tube announcers going to keep mentioning the East London Line closure for the next 2 1/2 years (plus however much longer it takes in reality)? Because if so, it's going to get very boring.

*Not quite the first season's equal, I think, perhaps because Tom Fontana was only co-scripting many episodes. A few of the plotlines feel a little forced, harbingers of the whole 'ageing drug' fiasco when s4 was overstretched. But certainly there is still much to love and more to be impressed by. And less of Poet's Speech Painter-style performance poetry, which has to be a bonus.