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

A few visits this week to remodellings. Around where I used to work, there's a whole stretch along the edge of Pimlico which seems to have suddenly gone up in the world, and most shocking of these gentrifications is the Cask. Formerly a dog rough estate pub, I suppose it always had potential if only because the estate in question consists of buildings called Noel Coward House and Aubrey Beardsley House, and looks like a red brick Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And now the old Tram is a genteel, polished wood affair, more gastro than I normally like a pub but somehow getting away with it, and offering booze that wouldn't be out of place at Ale Meat Cider. Approved.
Similarly, North Library's renovation has worked out nicely. Too often library renovations seem to end up with more 'accessibility' and fewer books, but this is the opposite, and while the old shelves are gone, there's a delightfully labyrinthine aspect to the new ones. And, one of the books in pride of place for the relaunch is a shiny new copy of Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire.
Finally, the Silver Bullet, another rubbish pub reborn; it's now the venue which I'd always felt was the one thing Finsbury Park really lacked. It's been there for a while, I was just waiting 'til it hosted a band I wanted to see. Last night was Performance, and they played 'Surrender', so I was happy. Now all we need to do is see about getting all the bands I know with local members to play a local gig for local people there.

Zowie Bowie's debut feature, Moon, perhaps impressed me less than viewers without a science fiction background, because conceptually there wasn't much new to it - but it was beautifully executed. And if you're going to make a film that's pretty much all one actor, who has to be both versatile and mesmeric, then Sam Rockwell is a hard choice to beat.

Russell T Davies' The Writer's Tale is excellent. I know we all loved nitpicking his Who, comparing his scripts unfavourably to Moffat's and so forth - and we were right to do so, and if you come to this book expecting much in the way of mea culpa, you're going to be disappointed. At times, you'll even be shocked by how close he came to being even worse - it's only his correspondent here, DWM's Ben Cook, and Moffat, who dissuaded Rusty from bringing back the sodding Daleks, again, for David Tennant's finale. But this is also the man who wrote Midnight and Turn Left. Who moved heaven and Earth to bring back Doctor Who, and made of it something which the public and - mostly - the fans could love. And this is the behind the scenes story of how he did it, or at least the bit from Voyage of the Damned onwards. It is also a very useful book for writers generally (anything Who-specific is footnoted), not to mention a hefty 700 pages which can be applied firmly to the head of any luddite fool who says the era of the email and text means we'll no longer get collected correspondences. There are fascinating glimpses of stories as they might have been - Planet of the Dead was almost a Star Trek pastiche, or might have brought back the Chelonians long before Moffat did. Kate Winslet was the first choice for River Song. There's a brilliantly slashy Master/Master scene that was never going to make it to TV, but the script survives here. The title 'Death of the Doctor' floated around the main series for a while before ending up on Sarah Jane, as did the idea of a mysteriously empty London from this week's episode. And so on. But the most exciting bit is that sometimes, as Davies is tapping out an email to Cook, he's basically thinking aloud, and we see the exact moment an idea is born into the world. Here you will find the exact moment when it becomes clear that Wilf knocking will mark the Doctor's end. And for all the things I'd have liked him to have done differently, for all the moments where he comes across as a bit of a daft old queen, the abiding feeling which remains is of a man who loves TV in general and Doctor Who in particular, and good on him.

It only hit me on Saturday, passing a washed-out version of it on the side of a Tufnell Park building, that the Nuclear Power - No Thanks! image is a smiling sun. The sun being, of course, a massive, unshielded nuclear reactor. Nice work there, idiots. In other nuclear news, sort of, I was intrigued by Francis Spufford's piece about a forgotten moment in the Cold War when the West felt it was being overtaken by a forward-looking USSR. I loved the science-fictional details. For instance - in 1961 the Party under Kruschev made attaining what we would now call the Singularity a manifesto commitment. By 1980. Which was obviously quietly forgotten after he was edged out of power but still, it was a statement of intent.
Note also, as Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has, that in the fifties Soviet economic growth massively overshadowed ours, just as Chinese and Indian growth do today, and leading to much the same Decline of the West rhetoric from the more self-lacerating Western commentators. Let us hope the modern version looks just as foolish in 50 years' time, at least as regards China.

I recall Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel being widely dismissed as another underwhelming British comedy film, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway, and you know what? It's really good. The only feature film of the late Gareth Carrivick, who also directed the similarly underrated TV series The Smoking Room and the iconic TMwRnJ plus a load of old rubbish but de mortui nil nisi bonum &c, it puts three slackers (two of them SF fans, the other one not and so a handy recipient of expository dialogue) in that great British location, the pub - and then locates a time leak in the loo. Pleasingly ornate and generally very funny time-travel shenanigans ensue. It looked especially good seen soon after one of old Who's more timey-wimey stories,Mawdryn Undead. Which may feature the return of the Brigadier and the debut of Turlough, but is nonetheless a bit bobbins. The first episode especially has incidental music to make one utter the hitherto inconceivable words 'Come back Murray Gold, all is forgiven' - it's like a maniac with a keytar is following the cast around. Nyssa has a dreadful new outfit and make-up such that she no longer even serves as eye-candy, she and Tegan are required to be quite unaccountably stupid in furtherance of the plot, and the villain-of-sorts is dressed like some sort of half-arsed harlequin except that his brain is falling out. It's all rather unseemly. As for the conclusion...I can take a certain amount of coincidence, but when you get the hero out of the concluding deathtrap just by a happenstance of timing, that's too much.

Went to see Artery over the weekend. If you've not heard of Artery, they were contemporaries of Pulp in the early Sheffield days, and on songs like 'Into the Garden', they have some of that same mystery and menace which Pulp passed through for a moment on their way to the pop years and beyond. Artery now...not so much. With time, their frontman has picked up the waterproof and the hectoring masculinity seemingly unique to a particular sort of Northern man. Jamie was reminded of a third-rate John Lydon, but to me it was what would happen if the Gallaghers ever got political. Most disappointing. Far more entertaining was Mr Manners' turn on the decks, where freed of any responsibility to the dancefloor he out-Love Your Enemies'd LYE, going from recent Luke Haines into 'The Rhythm Divine', mixing Kajagoogoo's 'Too Shy' into Wyngarde's 'Rape'.

I've got a suede jacket which I love but hardly ever wear, because it needs really specific conditions - a fairly cold day, but also one with no chance of rain. Which would appear to be exactly the conditions you get if Spring is interrupted by a massive volcanic eruption. I hope we don't get a reprise of the Year Without A Summer, but for now, I'm rather enjoying this little apocalypse.

Went to see a band called Thee Faction last night; the backstory appealed to the Devant/Kalevala fan in me. They say they were a socialist R&B band who, in 1985, ended up trapped in the collapsing Soviet sphere - they can't reveal the full details under the 30 Year Rule. They have onstage ideological arguments, and the photocopied fanzine interview handed out on the door (worth the price of admission on its own, even if said money hadn't gone to an MS charity) has them getting into a punch-up over Althusser. The only problem is, I'm not sure if the schtick is quite enough to sustain a ten song set (including the bourgeois pantomime of an encore). Which is a pity because the best of the songs - especially 'I'm The Man' and 'I Can See The Future' - are very good indeed.

Obviously any film which the Mail described as featuring "one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema" was going to be worth seeing. And even while I was reading the comic, I suspected Kick-Ass was going to work better as on screen. But then I started hearing about various changes they'd made and thinking, hang on, I'm not so sure about this. Turns out that with one exception, I had nothing to worry about - and it feels great finally to have a film of a specific comic - as opposed to a character, distilled - where rather than telling people that they should read the original, I can instead honestly tell them that they needn't bother. Because the changes aren't random, or based on some studio exec's supposed wisdom; they were made carefully and with an agenda. The comic shows you why nobody's tried to be a superhero; the film asks instead. Which is a much more dangerous message, but also a stronger one. Audience sizes aside, the comic was never going to inspire a real Kick-Ass; I think the film just might. ( spoilers ) Hell, if I'm going to pick one hole in the tech, it's that a film set in late 2007 has the main online communication be via Myspace.

At times like this I am reminded why I was so excited about Obama: "A landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

It's remarkably civilised of ITV to put all their halfway-watchable shows in the same 90 minute block. Secret Diary of a Call Girl was always borderline, and now they're deviating from the book even more, not just normalising Belle but embroiling her in lamely generic plots about proteges and politicians - plus, the director seems increasingly inept at hiding the use of body doubles. Nonetheless, it's better than anything else ITV squeeze out, or would be if tomorrow it weren't followed by the debut of No Heroics. I haven't seen it yet, but it stars Nathan Barley and James Lance and is set in a pub for off-duty superheroes where the drinks include V For Vodka and Shazamstell, and thus even with ITV's reverse Midas touch in the equation, it basically can't fail. Then after that, Entourage, which is still ludicrous fluff, and still utterly wonderful. No need to check the rest of the schedules! And no need to bother with ITV1 at all, thank heavens.

How can people say there are no good band names left in a world with Adebisi Shank? If you don't agree, you presumably haven't seen Oz, and if you haven't seen Oz, that's between you and your conscience.

As much as I love Saint Etienne, neither of the times I've seen them before convinced me. But context counts for a lot; they're the sound of London on a good day, of the retro-futuristic spirit that gave the city things like the South Bank. So walking down from Bloomsbury and through the Thames Festival, with its gay Aztecs and giant butterflies and Lithuanian folk-dancers, and the show being in the Queen Elizabeth Hall (where Sarah incites quite the most polite insurrection I've ever seen, encouraging dancing in the aisles)...it helps them make sense live like they do on record. And well done Heavenly for managing to turn the foyer into a plausibly clubby space, too.
It was a strange weekend; even more than usual I was beset by the mutterings of whichever church father it was who lamented "Oh, that we had spent but one day in this world thoroughly well." Not that I think his idea of time well spent would have much in common with mine, but that line haunts me nonetheless. And this in spite of participating in a sitcom read-through accompanied by experimental booze science, getting some sewing done which I'd been putting off for months, a wonderful birthday dinner for a dear friend on Saturday...not such a wasted weekend as all that, but at my back I always hear, &c. There's a thought - the Marvell expert was out on Saturday, maybe it was his fault.
Oh, and sun dogs! Perfect examples, on the very day when I'd been reading the chapter of The Cloud-Spotter's Guide about them. While admiring which I was accosted by two antipodeans who wanted to borrow my mobile in exactly the sort of scenario which could have been a scam - but wasn't, thus restoring some fragment of my faith in humanity.

Speaking of faith in humanity - I enjoyed John Scalzi's future war novel Old Man's War, but thus far I like the sequel The Ghost Brigades even better. Partly this is because it answers some niggling questions I had about the setting - questions which weren't explicitly set up as mysteries and could simply have been inconsistencies. But more than that for its sheer ruthlessness, its recognition that when faced with a populous and implacable galaxy, humanity's greatest resource is that we are utter bastards. Of course, this is also why in reality, and even in my very favourite fiction, I would much rather we were just used as attack dogs in a galactic civilisation run by something halfway civilised, because the idea of trusting us to run the show is terrifying. But for the odd pulp thrill, Humans Versus The Galaxy has its charms.
(You might not expect a segue from that to the Lib Dem conference. But when Nick Clegg, name notwithstanding, says "most people, most of the time, will do the right thing"...I wonder whether he's grown up with the same human race I have, and even more than with his plans for tax cuts, I fear that his party is just too far away from anything I believe nowadays for me to vote for them in good conscience. On the other hand, he's dead right about the zombies and the Andrex puppy)

Just returned from the Bankside 12th Night celebrations - unfortunate that the thing which best gets me in the relevant festive mood is the one marking season's end. It's vastly more popular than last time I went (I think I missed last year), but I still managed half-decent views of the Green Man's arrival and the wassailing, and was in a pretty good position for the mummers' play. There's a nagging sense in my mind of a half-formed connection between this and Popular last night - the Number One single as a British folk tradition, perhaps? - but I don't want to force it. Suffice to say, both were great fun. Highlight of Popular: 'Welcome To The Black Parade' into 'Boom! Shake The Room' (it may have a 100% strict concept, 'God Save The Queen' controversy aside, but how many nights can honestly equal that variety?). Highlight of 12th Night: the blithering arses next to me as the Green Man sails in justify their yapping by noting what I would otherwise have missed - there's a fragment of rainbow in the sky above us, and it's on a curved cloud. In other words - the sky smiled.
Post-mumming, took a look at the Tate's crack. I've seen better. Still, rather that than Catherine Tate's crack.

Don't know why I never got round to seeing Die Hard With A Vengeance sooner, given I love the first two, but the delay has made parts of it queasily prescient. Shots of the twin towers looming as New York is attacked I could have expected, but the real shocker...you know the plan Jeremy Irons and his accents are supposed to be undertaking, to beggar the USA? Dubya's pretty much managed that, hasn't he? And done it all while speaking in almost as silly a voice. Still, with Barack Obama's campaign regaining momentum, for now there's still hope. And in the Andes, two of the USA's hyper-rich are helping to fund an eye on the sky which will not only increase the sum (and accessibility) of human knowledge, but could well save us all from apocalyptic meteor impact. Isn't it odd how the merely super-rich seem content with vulgarity like diamond-studded mobiles and £35,000 cocktails, but the hyper-rich seem to rediscover altruism and vision? See also Warren Buffett.

A pretty quiet week for comics, but there were excellent new issues of Buffy (the first slow, character-centred episode of Whedon's Season Eight, but worth the wait) and Moon Knight. I still don't know what part of writing Entourage has equipped Mark Benson with a knack for brutal vigilante thrillers, but between his Punisher annual and this, I'm impressed. Just a shame about the art. Otherwise, it's Warren Ellis' week; Ultimate Human may not be the obvious title for a series marketing would probably rather have had as Ultimate Hulk Vs Iron Man, but fits the story Ellis has started telling, one of the happier vehicles for his recurrent fascination with the nature of posthumanity. Thunderbolts, on the other hand, is leaving the smart politics aside for the moment and concentrating on insanity, treachery and Venom eating people. Which also works.

Why do I persist in giving each sorry reanimation of the Manics cadaver a try? I suppose this time I have the excuse that JDB's solo album was pretty good (even if that was precisely through its distance from the Manics template), and Nicky's live show amusing in its way. But 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough'...for all that the 'back to what they do best' talk is even more desperately emphatic than usual this time around, this single is clearly Simple Minds covering 'Help'. It is, quite simply, a disgrace. Please, chaps - stop while we can still just about remember that you meant something once.

Full details on the Parkland Walk plans here - I found the URL on a discarded letter beside the Walk, so clearly it's letting me know not to worry. They seem both sensitive and sensible; I'm just a little miffed that I've never been privileged to see any of the slow-worms which apparently live along one stretch.

I know there's been a bit of a retro crime revival recently - witness all those neo-mediaevalist protests about 'blasphemy' last year - but I was still surprised and almost touched to receive a European lottery scam by post. How delightfully old-fashioned!

Right, so Mars is warming up alongside Earth - but for demonstrably Martian reasons, namely dust storms, rather than because the same solar activity is affecting both planets. Doesn't that seem slightly odd? Let's be quite clear, I'm not saying that human-culpable carbon dioxide et al aren't warming the Earth, because I'm not insane and/or in the pay of Big Oil. Nor do I have any reason to suppose that dust storms and consequent colour changes aren't warming Mars - it reminds me of Daisyworld, but that's no objection. It's more that if two adjacent planets are both warming up for totally separate reasons...well, that's the sort of thing which makes me wonder if something Big Picture is going on, like when two totally different characters published by the same comics company start being taken grim'n'gritty in separate ways by their writers.