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

Lots of comedians this weekend, and I don't just mean the nine-strong troupe last night, fostering a convivial atmosphere even though they were playing a room which also contained chocolate wine. On Friday the Curious Orange came into Gosh, when I was already on a bit of a high from being told that for reasons which remain opaque to me, there's a signed Miracleman print with my name quite literally on it, free of charge*. And on Saturday, at the Ivy, just when we were beginning to think the whole place was people wanting to be mistaken for celebrities rather than the 'real' thing, who should be placed at the next table but Ricky Gervais and companion, both looking miserable as virtue. Should you ever be at the Ivy, incidentally, I can recommend the pumpkin gnocchi.

Also on Friday, well, I suppose you could link this to comedy, because the idea was that I should spin a pop set! Not that I don't like pop, you understand, I just have somewhat erratic ideas on what constitutes a dancefloor classic. I'd brought along a grab bag of ideas, and the preceding set by ursarctous had included three tracks I'd been considering ('Song 4 Mutya', Robyn and 'I Told Her On Alderaan' so that at least narrowed my options to a more manageable level. Specifically:
( Beautiful robots, dancing alone )
After some early panic (I'd played two Number Ones and the new Girls Aloud single, what more did people want from me, blood?) the slightly self-indulgent PSB choice got people on the floor for the rest of the set. Yay for self-indulgence.

Have finally seen Sunset Boulevard, and the only thing that's stopped me quoting it all weekend is that I also received a book with the tagline "Your Galaxy Is Toast, Monkey Boys!" But what a classic, ahead of The Player and Entourage in getting Hollywood to gleefully skewer its own, and more savage and true and beautiful than either still. I know it's popular on stage too, but for me it has to be a film, and a film with the cast playing themselves - Gloria Swanson the old silent star with Erich von Stroheim reduced to her butler (and isn't Greed still lost, his reputation still a phantom?), watching a film they really made together, him in his own clothes. Buster Keaton and the other 'waxworks'. Hedda Hopper and Mr de Mille as themselves, the latter using his real nickname for her. So much reality, yet so far from the sort of tiresome 'realism' which usually just means 'dullness'. And it put me in just the right mood for some Max Beerbohm today, similarly metatextual hilarity at the expense of the arts, albeit literary ones in his case, read in the park interspersed with bits of the paper, before heading off to see if there are any ducklings about (answer: not yet, but I did see some scruffy young coots, which probably aren't called cootlets, but should be).

*Not a bad comics haul, either - only four issues but each of them a gem. ( comics stuff, some Spidey spoilers )

**angelv later played the Rialto song of the same name; I honestly don't know which of them is better.