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

I was getting quite worried about the electoral reform referendum, because at the moment who doesn't want to p1ss on Nick Clegg's chips? But the No campaign's ads are so transparently mendacious and manipulative that I think someone may finally have succeeded in underestimating the British public. Result.

I've finally seen Scott Pilgrim, and it's not bad, is it? Some of the stuff they necessarily lost in the transition from comic to film, I wasn't that sorry to see go - the moping around, the wilderness trek. It lost emotional weight, but it gained energy; the whole story was told with the sugar rush romp feel which in the comics had to be complicated after the first couple of volumes if it weren't to become exhausting. And Michael Cera was a very different Scott (which had been my main objection to seeing the film), but he was still a recognisable one. I was more thrown by the cinema take on Knives (insufficiently psycho) and Envy (insufficiently hot). But on balance I think I prefer the other work to come out of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's temporary split, Paul. It's a charming autobiographical bromance (Early on Pegg and Nick Frost even give themselves lines like "Can you believe it? Us! In America! We've dreamed about this since we were kids!") and a big geeky action comedy all rolled up into one big bag of...joy, I suppose. It's a lot less bittersweet than the Pegg/Wright films, and I don't mind that one bit.

Otherwise, I've largely been thinking about how strange time is (mainly while drinking). There was a Nuisance, of course, and the usual glimmer of surprise that in 2011 the night I attend most frequently plays the same music I was hearing when I first started clubbing. But also seeing Circulus, and being slightly disappointed that a band who come across so temporally alien on record would engage in such standard band-on-stage-at-small-venue activity as making suggestions to the soundman about the monitor mix. They shouldn't even admit they know what the monitors are, dammit! But then, they should probably be playing an enchanted glade somewhere rather than a venue sponsored by an energy drink, and in that case how would they power the instruments? It doesn't quite work, but on headphones on a country walk you can pretend that it does, so long as you don't think too hard about the headphones. Which all tied into al_ewing's latest (and best) book, Gods of Manhattan. It's set in a shared steampunk universe but, being a smart man working in a near-exhausted genre, Al pushes and prods at the boundaries, having realised that "The only rule is no electricity" and even that can be subverted. The main story is great pulp fun - the serial numbers have been filed off, but essentially it's Zorro vs the Shadow vs Doc Savage (except also Superman and living in a menage a trois) in a retro-futurist dream of New York. But the setting is almost better than the story, simply for the way it mixes so many odd little bits of our culture into the new context, and while being funny also makes emotional sense. And within that you've got the beautiful idea that the people in the alternate reality are themselves dreaming of our reality - the ageing Warhol makes models of impossible devices like miniature telephones, too small for steam to ever power, in a movement that's been called 'dreampunk'.

*Though even back in Derby - where you soon realise that Royston Vasey is an accurate portrayal of the county - we seldom had anyone quite so creepy as the guy in the red blazer in. Cross Louie Spence with a new ad campaign for Rohypnol, then picture the result breakdancing to My Life Story...

Oh, Proud. Not content with having crappy photography on the wall and charging a fiver for a small glass of wine which isn't even in a clean glass, you always find a new way to annoy. Apparently even empty water bottles in one's bag constitute terribly dangerous contraband. Bet the tossers don't even recycle the ones they confiscate, either. Bevan 17 were good once exliontamer became audible (their house sound mix always seems to push the vocals down, I suspect because most of the bands who play there have lyrics you wouldn't want to hear), and their alleged name is now even less convincing because if they're not Bevan 17, they're Sex Bob-omb. Speaking of which, en route I read the final Scott Pilgrim. ( mild spoilers ) but I really don't want to see Michael Cera trying to pull it off.

Otherwise, I have been watching a lot of films. One at the cinema: Inception. Which felt more 3D than most of the 3D films I've seen. And which apparently some people have said is difficult to understand. Some people are very stupid. ( spoilers ) Also, Eames is my hero.

The rest, though, were from the library, offering free DVD loans all weekend, presumably in order to get visitor numbers up and stave off the axe. With which aim, and for my own benefit, I was happy to assist. First, Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box. Even if you haven't seen it, you'll know her look, but what surprised me was how innocent she comes across for most of the film. Oh, and that for something so scandalous, it devoted so much of its time to the downward slope; I had expected the tacked-on unhappy ending of a Crime Doesn't Pay flick, but instead it had that slow, second half decline common to pretty much every film ever made about a junkie. Still, the London scenes have a terrible beauty to them - and while I couldn't credit the idea of a streetwalker who looks like Lulu, apparently Brooks did herself end up as an escort for a while after she burned all her bridges.

Continuing with the silent German theme: Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, and if you think the Propaganda song is long, you've never seen the film, of which I only managed Part One (two and a half hours). There's some great glowering from the Dr himself, but too often his schemes are stupidly convoluted even for a master villain, his aims unworthy and his methods silly. Also, his name is Mabuse, right? Which to me suggests self-abuse. And then his adversary is called von Wenk. I don't think this can have been deliberate, but it does still get in the way.

And finally - and with more overtly deliberate self-abuse themes - The Ages of Lulu, Bigas Luna's adaptation of a novel I read years back because it was referenced in a Jack song. The adaptation is fairly faithful, which is to say it's filth - the sort of European film you can only distinguish from p0rn in so far as the scenes between the screwing are more downbeat, and the camera angles show a bit of imagination. Oh, and it features Javier Bardem, looking even more like Till from Rammstein than usual, having lots of gay sex; I know some people who'd watch it for that alone.

I've been, if not quite back to the old house, then just over the wall for it - back outside Southwell with the Southwell crew, and if the route there has changed a bit (with junctions fresh from Mega City One), and if Nottingham's changed a bit (they now have a pub called The Canal House which actually has the canal running into the pub), and if we've all changed a bit (sensible hair, careers or just extra lines), it still felt like we were just a whisker away from our past, almost close enough to touch our old selves. Although, we always used to say that only abstract nouns got broken at those parties, whereas this time poor vivid_blue somehow contrived to both break *and* dislocate her ankle, something I hadn't even believed to be possible. Ouch. But aside from that, a splendid trip, a fine wedding (with me on Nick Cave duties again), and a lovely house (Bag End for the 21st century, with ducks). Plus such other incidental delights as rabbits, butterflies, being twice taken for a third Hewings brother (like the third Summers brother, but with fringes instead of energy blasts), discovering I'm actually better (rather, less awful) at Grand Theft Auto when I'm asleep, and accepting that Scott Pilgrim totally justifies the hype. Oh, and the temporary terror of the street where both sides were even numbers - and the same even numbers at that,

It seems far further from here to Thursday than it does to those old parties, but yes, I went to see Paris Motel. The Good Ship wasn't quite as suited to their ghosts-across-the-delta sound as the Borderline, and I kept headbutting the fixtures by mistake, but they're still wonderful. The band, I mean, not the fixtures - those were moderately painful.

Will Ferrell has already got the film rights to King Dork by Frank Portman, and I can totally see why; it's hilarious. Think along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite but with more rock'n'roll plus a detective story of sorts. I don't usually go much for American teen novels, but I was laughing my head off at this one - which is very handy on long train journeys vis-a-vis keeping the seat next to you empty, so it was ideal for the trip.

edit: I really want to write about the tent - specifically the bit where we thought it was inside out, disassembled it, reassembled it inside out, and realised we'd had it right the first time after all - but Jerome K Jerome handles that material so much better. Which itself reminds me, Ogden Nash edited a Wodehouse anthology - who knew?