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

Had one of my occasional weekends at places outside the usual orbit - gay pop night Duckie on the Saturday, country at Come Down And Meet The Folks on Sunday. The former would be in my usual orbit if only it were as easy getting back from Vauxhall as it is getting down there; I can't recall the last time I went to a club and they didn't play a single dud song. The same cannot altogether be said of Come Down..., but they did adopt one innovation which would be welcome at other gigs: the opening acts do two songs each. Enough to whet the appetite, not enough to bore anyone. I've seen so many support acts who'd have benefitted from being restricted to that sort of teaser.
I did two numbers myself at Bingo Master's Breakout a couple of weeks back, covering GK Chesterton and Alphaville (and even my apophenia struggles to divine a common thread between those two). Ciccone were there as part of their comeback tour; one of the first bands I ever saw in London, quite by chance, long before I could know I'd end up knowing them, walking the other Parkland Walk with one of the core personnel. It all knits together, one way or another. The other show was at the Windmill, whose gents' is not exactly salubrious, but at least no longer reeks of piss. Likewise, returning to the Rhythm Factory for the first time in a decade or thereabouts, I was pleased to find it no longer full of bad drugs (even if they had been replaced by furries and steampunks; nowhere's perfect). These small tidyings-up, I can forgive; I'm not against all renovation, even all gentrification, but when a once-welcoming boozer like the Noble ends up looking like the departure lounge at a shit airport, something's awry. I try not to worry about London, knowing that every generation is convinced it lives at the end of an era - but sometimes, even knowing that, it's hard to resist.

What else? James Ward, formerly of this parish, seems to be attaining mild celebrity with his Adventures in Stationery; I went to the launch, where he was interviewed by fellow ex-LJ star Rhodri, and it ended up altogether too much fun for a Monday. John Watterson aka Fake Thackray is another for the list of tribute acts I've caught lately, though readier than most to play the hits, in so far as Jake Thackray had hits. The X-Wing habit is proving hard to kick, even if my results remain patchy. tigerpig returned to the other side of the world, her passing marked by events including a noise gig which, perhaps down to the occasion, managed to fit a surprising amount of feeling in amongst those dissonant frequencies. Albeit not quite so emotional a show as Martin Newell's Golden Afternoon; Gershwin's 'Summertime' is one of the first songs I remember, one of the first things to make me feel melancholy, long before I knew the word 'melancholy'. Combine that with Newell's natural affinity for the moment where summer's waving goodbye, turn it into a duet with Lorraine Bowen on that most poignant of days, Sunday...yes. Bless the mad old bastard.

Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland was one of the most impressive comics achievements of recent years. Unusually, it was an actual 'graphic novel' in format terms - but not in content (being part memoir, part psychogeographical carnival, and all wonderful). It was the sort of thing a non-comics reader could appreciate, and many did - broadsheet reviews, massive bookshop sales, all that. So I was somewhat puzzled when I heard that he'd be following it with an anthropomorphic animal story. This is an area of comics I've never really got - and given it's the area which shades all too easily into the fearful land of the furries, I'm OK with that. I don't mind if a story features a funny animal character for a reason, you understand - just handwave 'genetic engineering' and I'm happy. And obviously something cartoony is fine. But if I'm meant to take a story seriously and it's been cast from Sylvanian Families, I just have a disconnect. This is not to judge the form, because I know other people get the same problem with, say, science fiction - and so long as they don't start making canon judgments based on that, leave it as a personal preference, that's fine (nobody's complaining if you only fancy blondes, so long as you don't then start muttering about Aryan supremacy).
But, even knowing Grandville was unlikely to be my favourite thing Talbot had ever done, I still wanted to read it at some point, and fortunately I found one in Tottenham library (to which I took a small detour on my way back from yesterday's walk, of which more anon). After all, it's a steampunk murder mystery and, with the astonishing Luther Arkwright, Talbot was one of the progenitors of steampunk. He draws good valve.
The problem with this, though, is that steampunk settings often don't make much sense. Certainly not this one, where Napoleon conquered Britain; two centuries later, France grudgingly granted Britain independence after ongoing terrorist campaigns. Well, maybe. But while what we see of British country life is an idealised version of British country life, this free Britain is now supposedly a Socialist Republic. The hero's sidekick talks like Bertie Wooster, but apparently he's doing so in French, the English language now being strictly a parochial and rural argot. I don't feel like these elements match up at all. And, of course, this whole society is populated with talking animals. OK, there are a few humans - 'doughfaces' - but uniquely among all the various species, they don't have citizenship. Why? There's no other evidence of a caste system. And in this land where pigs and dogs are people, we also hear mention of bacon, see a man (or rather, crocodile in top hat) walking his pet dog. I can accept that Mickey Mouse is friends with Goody but owns Pluto - but that was a whimsical world, not the setting for a thriller (and besides, I always preferred Warner Brothers cartoons).
The real icing on this cake, though, is that the crime our heroic badger cop is investigating is a thinly-veiled stand-in for a 9/11 conspiracy theory. A version whose transposition to this nonsensical world handily includes a few changes which make it less of a self-evident farrago of paranoid, puerile idiocies (it comes before an election rather than soon after, for one).
So: a world which makes no sense either on a (pseudo)scientific or narrative level, depicted in a form which makes no sense, apparently promoting a conspiracy theory which makes no sense. Scattered around the background are versions of several famous paintings reimagined for this animal world, and well-done as they are, they're reminiscent of nothing so much as those dogs playing snooker. Which is a sadly accurate summary of the feel of this whole thing. What a waste.

I like climbing things. If you've ever been in a park with me, you probably already know that. And while I find all the fuss made about 'parkour' deeply naff, if I'm walking alongside a low wall, I'll as likely as not hop up and walk along it instead. This goes for the middle of the day and sober as much as the evening drunk; it's not a big deal so much as 'why not?'. Similarly, if I'm walking alongside a slope I usually try that thing of running at it and then along it where you don't fall off so long as you keep going.
Last night, I got overambitious and thought I could do this with a vertical wall. While wearing shoes with pretty much no grip. It may come as no surprise to you, dear readers, that I failed, resulting in an ungainly sprawl. But as I attempted it, I was so sure I could do it, the sort of certainty which really ought to be its own guarantee, if the world were as susceptible to will and confidence as they say it is.

Five Thoughts On The Popularity Of Steampunk.

As much as I love Bill Murray, I'd always put off seeing Groundhog Day because it is a film in which he finds love with Andie Macdowell, and (except in the grossly underrated Hudson Hawk), I loathe Andie Macdowell. Watching the film, though, it becomes clear that we're not seeing every iteration of Bill Murray's looped day. As such, it becomes easier to reconcile yourself to the horrific idea that he can only escape by romancing the vile woman. Clearly he has already killed her in every manner for which Puxsatawny can supply the materials - only to find himself waking up on the same morning. Similarly, he has also slept with every other inhabitant of the town, including the groundhog - and still not escaped. From which it becomes clear that even though she's unaccountably the hardest work of them all, even though the idea is repugnant beyond all measure, the malign forces which have trapped Murray will only be satisfied with the most abject act imaginable - he has to get with Macdowell.
So yes, he may wake up next to her, smiling. But it is the smile of a broken man. He has now known the true horror of the cosmos, the depths to which the secret rulers of the world will drive a man. The only question is which comes first for him now - catatonic insanity, or one final, mercifully-permanent suicide.

The Beautiful And Damned is not the club it was with Dickon at the helm, and you can take that in the broadest sense. The night as I knew it was a pub where strange and wonderful things happened, with dancing; now it's more a show. It has found itself a new audience who seem happy with that, but one gets the unhappy impression that certain elements here are that little bit too keen on The Mighty Boosh; I can forgive the compere introducing Martin White & his Mysterious Fax Machine, if only because that does sound like an act I'd like to see, but when he fluffs the name of the night (that pesky second 'the' creeps in, which is so easily done but entirely destroys the point of the phrase)...I can only take so much cheerful incompetence.
Martin White & his Mysterious Fax Machiney Fax Machine Orchestra, who seem still to have more members every time I see them, are worth the trip nonetheless; I especially enjoy their new Bond theme, undoubtedly the best song called 'Quantum of Solace' to be released this year by a man named White.