alexsarll: (menswear)
Courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] alasdair: Nick Clegg aggressively positions the Lib Dems properly in favour of gay rights, and promises a crackdown on faith schools where homophobic bullying - surprise, surprise - is more common. I don't like the positioning as anti-Tory - because Labour have been guilty of major dereliction of duty on these topics too - but this is the first thing he's done since that pathetic, stupid me-three-ing on the deficit at last year's conference which has made me feel good about his party again.
(On a related-ish note, had our first pub quiz outing in a while on Wednesday under the name Quizlam4UK. Drew the main round - because the Queen's has a fair policy of docking one point for each team member past six - and then missed out on the tiebreak by one measly year. But it's the muffled PA and the music still faintly playing over it during the first half of the quiz which mean we probably won't be going back, not the failure to win. Honest)

The French agency charged with policing online copyright infringement and three-strikes disconnection of filesharers, HADOPI, has a logo which manipulates a copyrighted font without permission. Further evidence (as if any were needed) that these schemes (see also our own Digital Economy Bill) are nothing to do with protecting the rights of creators, they're just about protecting the revenue streams of big business. Although in this instance, they've managed to infringe the copyright of exactly the sort of communications giant they should be protecting, which demonstrates that cluelessness still outweighs conspiracy.

And sticking with France, Alizee's 'Mademoiselle Juliette' video, overlaid with an English translation of the lyrics. I've liked this song and video for ages, for reasons which should be obvious, but I'm still pleasantly surprised by how smart those lyrics are. This is the problem with listening to music in other languages; because there are none where I'm fluent enough to fully follow lyrics (Hell, it's often hard enough in English), I think a buried strain of rockism surfaces in me, so that I'm prepared to take it on trust that Edith Piaf or Serge Gainsbourg's lyrics are terribly witty and wise and passionate, but I presume that Alizee's will just be bubblegum.
alexsarll: (bernard)
Finally saw Daniel Kitson last night, after having been raved at about him by at least three mostly separate sets of comedy chums for, what, a couple of years now? It was a self-confessedly shambolic preview of his new show, 66a Church Road, and one which will probably bear scant resemblance to the finished product, but yes, he is very funny. I am, however, more mystified than ever as to how come so many girls I know have crushes on the guy.
I went to see him at Battersea Arts Centre, of which I've similarly been long aware - but that utilitarian name never filled me with enthusiasm. I hadn't expected something so grand, murals of burning skies behind a grand staircase down which people sweep to the strains of Mono because someone who works there knows exactly what incidental music sets their space off to its best advantage. I'm now kicking myself that I never went to see The Masque of the Red Death while it was there - but that's London for you, isn't it? The man who is tired of London is tired of life, but look at that the other way round and it's a reminder that in London, you always end up missing out on something.

I know I'm not the first to say this, but who would ever have thought that a Doctor-free, Donna-heavy Doctor Who episode, and one flashing back to her debut in The Worst Who Story Ever at that, could be as good as 'Turn Left'? I still worry, though - the over-egged ending was its weakest moment, and while the Next Week trailer was arresting...well, on paper and even on clips, 'Doomsday' looked arresting, and look what a pig's ear that was.
I worry even more about the point that Lawrence Miles made - we watch this bleak vision of what would happen in a world without the Doctor, and we forget that there's another parallel without a Doctor, one all too close to home.

'Freebooter' and 'freelancer' are pretty much synonyms, aren't they? So why does 'freebooter' sound so much more dashing when boots are, in and of themselves, far less exciting than lances?
(This thought occasioned by doing the Salisbury quiz for the third time, with the third totally different team. And less than spectacular results, but that's by the by)

I've liked most shows I've seen James Lance in, and ditto Nicolas "Nathan Barley" Burns. They've worked together before, to great effect, as support in the Stephen Fry PR-com Absolute Power. So surely I ought to be glad that they're reunited in a sitcom about a bar for off-duty superheroes, particularly given what a rich source of comedy such settings have proved in comics?
Well, I would be, but it's on ITV. And given the near-infallibility of ITV's reverse Midas touch lately, that pretty much guarantees that it will make My Hero look like JLI.

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