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

So that was the last two day weekend for a while, but it still managed to be large in spirit if not duration. Pulp hits from the Nuisance band, a leaving party in East 17 and then picnic action in Finsbury Park where, pleasingly, those horrid itchy white fuzz things are off the trees, meaning a wider range of climbing options for the season. Lovely. And I managed to fit in a viewing of Day of the Locust, one of Tinseltown's periodic bursts of self-flagellation, which starts out as a meandering slice of 1930s Hollywood life ("less a conventional film than it is a gargantuan panorama", said one wise critic), culminates in apocalypse, and yet never feels like it has betrayed its own inner logic. It also features a young Donald Sutherland as an uptight, spineless fellow called Homer Simpson. Which comes as quite a surprise the first couple of times his name comes up.

The American Library Association's list of the books the most people want banned is, as ever, composed largely of books which threaten to teach young people that sex is fun and homosexuality is perfectly normal. There is, though, one interesting anomaly: Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, which exposes the truth of life in the minimum wage, showing how big employers screw people and how, contrary to the corporate and political lies, a McJob will not improve your life. Apparently its 'political viewpoint' offended people; its 'religious viewpoint' also, presumably in that it emphasises what damage the Protestant work ethic has wrought. I wonder how many of the busybodies who objected to it were simply concerned private citizens, and how many were Wal-Mart managers, politicians keen on cutting benefit 'scrounging' and other interested parties?
(Continuing on the theme of 'USA WTF?', the finale of Sons of Anarchy's second series was a beautiful, brutal piece of television - until the very end, when it suddenly veered into utter silliness. And worse, silliness of a stripe which suggests that next season will see even more abominable attempts at Oirish accents. Foolish Sons of Anarchy!)

In the run of Neil Gaiman books, Interworld seems to be one of the ones people forget. Perhaps this is because it's co-written with someone other than Terry Pratchett? But I liked the one book I read by co-author Michael Reaves, and it was dirt cheap on Amazon, and so I thought I might as well take the plunge. And it's OK. The set-up: a kid finds that he can walk between parallel worlds, as can the versions of him on all the other parallel worlds. So most of the major characters are versions of the same person, teamed up to protect the multiverse. This means that Interworld joins Ulysses and China Mieville's 'Looking for Jake' on the short list of books I was planning to write before discovering that someone else had saved me the trouble. It's not as good as either of those, mind - and I was surprised not to find the twist I expected (ie, the one which my version would have had), in that the arch-villain didn't turn out to be yet another version of the protagonist. Still, it's a perfectly serviceable young adult romp, and now that story is out in the world I no longer feel any responsibility to it.

I'm not especially into signings. I'll go along if it's a mate who might not be drawing a massive crowd, to show support, but queueing for hours just to be in the Presence...why? But, Gosh's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen signing was going to have copies of Century: 1910 weeks early, and that's another matter. Except, you could buy them in the shop, and the signing was around the corner. Well, since I was there, and my immediate agenda was to read '1910', and then read the Guide and the main bit of the paper, and since I was there, and since I could do all that reading while queueing...might as well hang around.
Two hours later, they're all read. I could make a start on the review section, but I wouldn't be doing that anyway. The question 'Why am I here?' no longer has a solid answer. I depart, and by the bus stop find that the Hawksmoor church has a deeply surreal exhibition in its basement, which I wander in perfect solitude. Alan Moore's From Hell turned me on to Hawksmoor; I feel more sense of communion with him down in that crypt than I would awkwardly saying 'Hiya!' in a crowded signing room. And then as I board the bus, a perfectly-timed text tells me there's a picnic in the park. If nothing else, the queueing means that relatively speaking, I'm one of the sober ones.
As for the new volume...well, I know there's been talk of each third of Century being a satisfying read in itself, so that the inevitable delays aren't a problem. But this is very much an opening chapter, and it's one whose animating spirit is Brecht, meaning that like him, at times it's rather heavy-handed for my tastes. But it's still Alan Moore, and it's still the League, so the intricacy of the patchwork is still staggering, the story still has more heart than it's sometimes given credit for, and the Iain Sinclair riff is absolutely hilarious - if you've read him, anyway. Whenever they turn up, I'm very much looking forward to the rest of Century, not least because the promised crossovers include Vincent Chase and David Simon's Baltimore. Speaking of Baltimore, there was a drunk perv getting thrown out of Power's on Friday who looked like an uglier Frank Sobotka, but who insisted he was a police officer. It wasn't until his attempts to taunt the bouncer expanded to include moonwalking that I realised, this must be what Michael Jackson looks like nowadays, whiter than ever (or indeed, red); minus the hat, mask and shades; and after the doctors' instructions to bulk up ahead of his London shows. I was there to see Borderville, whose singer weirdly turns out to have done the same course as me at the same college, while really reminding me of Jesse from Flipron. Extremely good band, but while they're great showmen, part of me wonders whether some of the subtlety and structure of the songs doesn't get lost live. They're also, I think, the sort of band who would benefit from a smart producer, as opposed to the sort who just spaff a load of money on one so's to have something to talk about in interviews. Other acts are Rubella (very pretty, shame about the lack of songs), and Alvarez King(?), who at least realise that they are 'freshwater fish in salt water'.