alexsarll: (crest)
On Friday I watched Saint Etienne's Finisterre film. Which was quite reminiscent of the Robinson film about London I watched a while back, except that being St Etienne's, it was still in love with the city. Not blindly, never that - it reminded me of GK Chesterton's (biased, but not wholly untrue) observation that believers are allowed moments of doubt, whereas sceptics don't allow themselves moments of belief. I'd just read a link [livejournal.com profile] alasdair had posted to Iain Sinclair on the Boris bikes, reading which I'd wondered - does Sinclair never have a day in London - the city that's made his name - where everything goes right, the birds are singing and people are smiling? I do. I had one when I went to the library and Tesco and the park after watching the film which acts as a sort of primer for days like that, in its meandering way. You don't have to be a St Etienne fan to enjoy it, so long as you're a London fan; there are occasional appearances from the band, but just as people in cafes or the like, because the film is no more or less their story than anyone else's. It's the story - or rather, a story - of the greatest city on Earth.
(Something else it had in common with the Robinson film - it wouldn't play properly. One scene in the middle stuck, and once I was past that, it ground to a halt before the end. When I get institutional loan DVDs of feature films, they always play fine. But once it's a meandering art film, glitcharama. Why is this? Are the discs weedier and less resilient, or are the fans more careless?)

Then on to the first tolerably large weekend of the new year: a wonderfully messy Nuisance on Friday and a West Country-style cider party on Saturday (complete with far too much Wurzels on Spotify), then a Sunday of culture/weird sh1t. The Museum of Everything is Peter Blake's collection of oddities, a sort of 20th Century Sir John Soane's where stuffed rats play cards while the rat police sneak up to raid them, miniature circus rides spin far too fast, old dolls and clowns are as creepy as ever, and a three-legged duck gets to look as stupid in death as he did in life. Even the gift shop (£25 for a candle?) and the loo (a door at either end? That would unnerve me even if I hadn't seen Zombieland the day before) are rum and uncanny. I don't think it's around for much longer but it's definitely worth a visit while it lasts. The evening was a Jackson's Way talkshopinar. Achieved! Nor has the week got off to a bad start; last night's bout of Monsterpocalypse was the first game I've beaten [livejournal.com profile] johnny_vertigen at in months. And quite the victory, too: any game where your giant robot can twat the other fellow's Godzilla-type with his sword, and then impale him on a big spiky alien building before a barrage of tank fire finishes the job, is a game of which I would approve even had I not been victorious.
alexsarll: (crest)
Since last posting, I have:
- Kicked arse at the Man who Fell Asleep's bookshop quiz, then wandered home drunk on victory (and possibly alcohol) singing along to the World/Inferno Friendship Society and not realising it was out loud until I registered the funny looks.
- Seen The Melting Ice Caps' new line-up and Mr Solo at the Library, which has stroboscopic loos that make you feel like you're being hypnotised by the KGB, and light-stands which are uncomfortably close to book burning. Fine shows by both, but while some gigs leave you in the mood for a RAMPAGE, others leave you a bit dreamy and more fitted for a slow wander home through the trees with the closing movement of Promenade on the headphones. So I didn't go on to Nuisance.
- Been to various birthday and engagement celebrations. At one, in the park, we celebrated the miracles that are mobile internet access and Wikipedia by seeing how much of the entry for Uranus is funny if you read it out loud (pretty much all of it, obviously).
- At another we made the sad discovery that you really can't go back; even if Ale Meat Cider has rum cask cider, it may not be the same rum cask cider. Sad times.
- Seen a fan club show by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, whose new logo looks a bit like a cock, but whose new songs include at least one which is fit to stand alongside 'Electricity' and 'Enola Gay', which is handy given they played those two as well.
- Got drenched en route to another birthday which was in fact a pub quiz. So it goes.
- Seen Let The Right One In, which is a charming Swedish film about childhood, being alone and finding someone who understands, and Crank 2: High Voltage, which is none of those things except 'film', and even then you could argue that it has more in common with pop video and computer games. Still, they both have a bit of the old ultraviolence, and that's the main thing, isn't it?
alexsarll: (bill)
Stringer Bell is going to be in Branagh's Thor film. And we already knew Titus Pullo was involved, probably as Volstagg. I SAY THEE YAY. And speaking of things HBO, while the final Generation Kill did editorialise a little, while I don't think it's ever going to be as beloved as The Wire, that was an extremely good series - maybe even more so than The Wire it did a brilliant job of humanising the characters you hated, showing why they were such utter dicks, with even Godfather getting his moment at the end.

To my amazement, the proposed internet laws in the Queen's Speech were even worse than expected. If you've not been keeping up with the minutiae: the Government commissioned a report, Digital Britain, on how to reconcile the interests of the creative industries with those of net users. This report said that while unlicensed file-sharing was indeed rather naughty, internet disconnection was too draconian a penalty even for the guilty, never mind how many innocents would also be punished (Mum and Dad for the kids' filesharing, or a whole town for one illicit movie). So obviously, because we know how the government regards facts as dangerously subversive (just ask Professor Nutt), Peter Mandelson elbowed the relevant minister out of the spotlight, countermanded the report his own government had commissioned (they obviously didn't appoint a tame enough investigator, Hutton must have been busy), and countermanded anything sensible in it to put three-strikes disconnection back on the agenda. And, we now learn, so much more.
This in a world where Rupert Murdoch, until recently New Labour's bestest pal, talks about putting a pay wall around the websites of his various ghastly papers while stealing content from Edgar Wright. But you can bet that even if that happened two more times, even under the new rules, News International wouldn't get disconnected. In spite of how even musicians who don't make nearly as much money as they should would rather be ripped off online than live in a country which thinks disconnection is acceptable. The only consolation is that the relevant bill is profoundly unlikely to make it through before Goooooordon Brooown loses the next election. Not that I expect the other flavour of scum to propose anything better, you understand, but sometimes delay is the best you can hope for. After all, the horse might talk.

The Black Casebook collects a dozen strange Batman stories from 1951-1964, which is the period when the comic was as stupid as the old Adam West TV series, but without having to worry about the limited budget. So, Batman could be turned into a hulking monster, or find himself on an alien world called Zur-En-Arrh - which, if you've read Grant Morrison's run on the character, should explain why this collection has been put out, and why I was reading it. He contributes an introduction (although one which disagrees in some respects with the contents - he mentions 'The Rainbow Batman' when the book instead has 'The Rainbow Creature'. All the campy old elements are here - Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound - and by no sane standard are the stories or the art any good. Even the ideas are not so much "mad, brilliant ideas" as half-formed and hurries, born of desperation. Mainly it serves as a testament to Morrison's own talents, going back over the history of Batman and managing to find resonance even in these stupidest of stories which most modern writers would prefer to forget about.
Also, I know it's hardly novel to suggest Batman and Robin came across as a bit gay back in the day, but this book opens with 'A Partner For Batman' where you really can't avoid it. Robin has broken his leg just as Batman is about to train up a new Batman-type for an unnamed European country. Except Robin is convinced this is just a cover story and Batman wants to drop him in favour of Wingman! Cue such lines as, while Batman carries the injured Robin like a bride, "Batman's doing his best to sound gay. But I can tell his heart isn't in it!". And, from one onlooker, "A man is better than a kid any day!". Poor discarded twink.

Haven't had the energy or the funds to be out and about so much this week; even daytime wanders have been a bit sub-optimal, like yesterday when Highbury was deserted and instead of relishing this, I just wondered if it was anything to do with how very tentacly those red-leaved plants look once the leaves are finally gone. But, this just makes me look forward to tonight's Black Plastic all the more. Makes the weekend feel like a weekend, something which can rather slide when one is away from the habit of the working week.
alexsarll: (pangolin)
Further to the Making Of post, here's me killing zombies in the video for Brontosaurus Chorus' 'Louisiana'. And following up on my Spotify question, which got a lot of very helpful answers from musicians I know, it turns out that even someone at the level of fame of Robert Fripp is not making an acceptable amount of money from the service.

Watching David Attenborough's Life (though I'm an episode behind so no spoilers), one of the main things which strikes me is how stupid creationists are. I'm not just talking about the way in which these animals are themselves evidence for nature as an evolving, changing thing (especially now we can see them learning new techniques, the monkeys in particular so human when they dry seeds before breaking them between stone hammer and anvil). I mean the way that the Argument from Design crumbles because, while there are all sorts of creator you could potentially infer from the nature on this planet, the god of the christians is not among them. That wacky Old Testament guy, maybe, just - he liked his carnage, after all. But no god of love could be responsible for the komodo dragons trailing their poisoned buffalo victim, prodding him with their tongues to see if he's weak enough to eat yet. Or how about the flies which inflate their own heads, and then their eyestalks, for mating display? Some kind of insectoid Tom of Finland might have made them, but that's not who the creationists preach. Hell, their chap seems to like monogamy, so one has to question what he was doing when he made hippos, where one big hippo gets the best bit of the river and all the females, and the other male hippos get sod all. I guess a mormon or muslim creationist might be able to use that, but a mainstream christian? Not so much.

[livejournal.com profile] alasdair drew my attention to something really fvcked up - and we're talking more fvcked up than a pocket black hole here - "My original art has been copied by a manufacturer who is now suing me in federal court to overturn my existing copyrights and continue making knockoffs. I have a strong case, a great lawyer and believe that if I can continue to defend myself, the case will be resolved in my favor. If I run out of funds before we reach trial, a default judgment would be issued against me and could put me out of business." In other words, who dares [sue first], wins, so long as they've got deep enough pockets. Not that I'm in a position to help this guy out but I really hope this spreads wide enough that he gets the support he needs and the thieving, devious wretches who are trying to pull one over on him get taken to the cleaners.
alexsarll: (bernard)
I thought my policy of always giving a new HBO show a chance might have hit its limits with Hung. Especially since it's on More4 on Thursday nights, at an end of the week already overloaded with Sarah Jane Adventures, Wednesday night's HBO double-bill, Friday's comedy options...but much to my surprise, the first episode at least was excellent. The trailers have been going about it all wrong, emphasising the comedy/prurient angle we've all seen before. Whereas the show itself...in much the same way as The Wire used police and drug gangs as a way to examine the decline of the American city, or Deadwood looked at the birth of the nation by way of a psychopathic publican, Hung examines the squeezing of the middle class through the example of a hard-up history teacher with a really big cock. It's more about the way everything seems to be falling apart, and the sense that our working life is not working out like we were given to expect, than Thomas Jane's endowment.

Wednesday night: [livejournal.com profile] augstone brings [livejournal.com profile] billetdoux along on a mini-US deputation to the Noble, establishing that even if Obama has more sense than to be seen with Gordon Brown, the special relationship is alive and well at the level of indie pubbing. Thursday: a Brontosaurus Chorus show, the first I've seen since [livejournal.com profile] icecoldinalex joined and the first time I've really heard the song for which I spent two days filming - Johnny and I have to resist the urge to re-enact the video on stage. The gig's in a weird little basement venue on Denmark Street called Peter Parker's; there's no Spider-Man iconography that I can see, but the cocktail 'Peter Parker's Cvm Shot' still makes me think 'thwip!'. The support are a noise duo whose name is never announced (my own guess: Sine Cosine Tangent); they're playing in front of a projection of Akira, the subtitles on which provide a perfect excuse to stare at the girl's fairly impressive cleavage. All told, I probably had enough material for a post on Friday, but I had to dash off to catch Seizure (ignore all the pretentious guff in the leaflet, the key details of this art project are that it is very blue and very shiny and quite magical). However, this is probably for the best as it means I can gently draw a veil over the weekend.

I keep hearing good things about the comics of Matt Fraction, so I keep picking them up when the library has them, and I'm still not convinced that he's anything but Warren Ellis's even more try-hard younger brother. All his characters sound the same: "Let's make out and whip up more plans for mass slaughter", cackles the villain. Whereas Iron Man himself gloats "Your tax dollars pay me to beat the Hell out of people like this. (I decline the paycheck, by the way)". Which is identical in tone, and also completely meaningless - he just came up with a line he liked and deployed it even though it required a caveat that then made no sense. The only way I could persevere was by pairing it with the disappointing Micro Men on BBC4, there being a strange congruence of themes. "My biggest nightmare has come true...Iron Man 2.0 is here...and I'm not the one that made it" - the cheap, easy to use and ultimately disposable new technology as plot driver, all made me start identifying Clive Sinclair as a British comedy version of Tony Stark. I don't know what that says about anything but it says more than Fraction's Iron Man.
(Also read something where he at least tried to ditch the tech fetish and the KEWL! - Secret Invasion: Thor. And that was just horribly characterless, in spite of featuring Beta Ray Bill, so maybe the usual mode is the lesser evil for him. The failure of this one was thrown into particular relief by how funny and characterful and cosmic and generally *fun* Secret Invasion: Hercules could make a story starting from a fairly similar premise)

*Although having made derogatory mention of Ellis, it's only fair I acknowledge that the final issue of Planetary was beautiful - the first comic since the end of Captain Britain to leave me both crying and laughing in public. Even if that doesn't explain why it was so ridiculously late. Or why newuniversal is. Or Doktor Sleepless.

Dastardly

Aug. 14th, 2009 10:59 am
alexsarll: (death bears)
I've spent eight years living in Finsbury Park now, wandering around the place a fair bit. The last eight months of that even more so, what with the whole lack-of-gainful-employment bit. But on Thursday I went in a local park I'd never even quite registered before, though I certainly recall walking past its hedge after hours. And behind that, there's another, even smaller and less noticeable parklet. Truly, London is fractal.
Also observed, later yesterday: a lot of people running around Finsbury Park itself in aid of strokes. As in, several looked like they were about to have one.
On Wednesday, I was up at the lovely Big Green Bookshop for the cheap drink The Man Who Fell Asleep's rather belated but very fun book launch. But on Tuesday evening I was also in Finsbury Park, because [livejournal.com profile] xandratheblue and [livejournal.com profile] charleston both wanted some pointers on climbing trees. And with both of them taking turns up in the branches, it was all going jolly well, well enough to be considered "just like the Famous Five". "So now all we need is a swarthy foreigner up to no good!", I reply, foolishly.
Minutes later, a man of unspecified foreign-ness ambles over, boots in one hand and mini-umbrella in the other. He initially seems confused by the whole business - "Trees? You pretending to be monkeys?" - and asks if he can have a hand into the tree. I demur, because I don't know where he's been. He makes it up into the tree fine because he is, in his somewhat confused way, hustling. He wanted to act like he couldn't climb because he had in mind a plan, a plan on which he now acts. He challenges me - if he can climb higher, he gets "one of your women. Maybe both of them!"
In my best politely outraged Briton voice, I tell him that's not how we do things over here. Charley, more direct, tells him to fvck off. He looks confused at the failure of his cunning scheme. We go see The Nuns.
They are preceded by Strange News From Another Star, of whom I only catch one song, which reminds me of a less-tight McLusky fronted by (My Name Is) Earl, but apparently the rest of the set was tighter, then followed by Fiction (whom I initially think are interesting, but am mistaken) and The Victorian English Gentleman's Club, who would be ace without the singer. But the Nuns themselves...they're quite something. If you don't know, they're an all-female band who cover the work of The Monks, a bunch of GIs stationed in Germany who made one incredibly influential album. Of which I've heard about half, and which didn't really make that much of an impact on me. And...it's difficult not coming over all Paul Morley here, but somehow a tribute band who are not a tribute band, playing that music in light (and sound) of all the music it's influenced, sound more original than the original. Sometimes they sound like a sixties band covering post-punk classics and sometimes they sound like the reverse. And simply by being all-girl, their version of 'Boys Are Boys And Girls Are Choice' is always going to have the advantage. They're not necessarily a band I need to see often, but they really are something unique.

The theory of filth as driver of technological change is fairly familiar by now (though I've yet to see it revised with an explanation for why Blu-ray beat HD-DVD; based on the victory of VHS over Betamax, one would have expected the format backed by the p0rn industry to win out). So I suppose it should have been obvious that the 'adult' industry is even further along the curve of suffering from the rise of free online content than the rest of the entertainment sector. "Business managers for...two of the industry's biggest stars, said their clients were using their celebrity to make money in other ways, like dancing in exotic clubs and licensing their name to sex toys and lingerie" - just like the new model where bands make money from gigs and merchandise, not CDs. But, most interestingly, "The death of the DVD business has been more accelerated in the adult business than mainstream". Now, I think of the DVD as having a certain amount of built-in future-proofing, just because it's such a nice format - you might torrent a film to see if it's any cop, but if you love it, you'll still want the DVD for the extras and such - the only people who are really going to suffer are those too lazy to have any interesting extras on their DVDs, and they deserve it. But even beyond that...there's something pleasing about having a nice shelf of DVDs, isn't there? For people to look at, borrow from, just because it brightens the room. Whereas, except in a frat house, a sizeable collection of w@nk-fodder doesn't really give the same impression.
alexsarll: (crest)
"Chris Bryant, the new Foreign Office minister, who is gay, has started writing personal letters of congratulations to British diplomats who show public support for gay rights. He is praising them for such support even if it draws anger from national governments or local homophobic groups." Which is splendid news I'm surprised I've not seen more heralded, even if it is coming from one of the same ministers who recently tried to score some fairly cheap points with distinctly nebulous accusations of Tory homophobia - particularly weak given that, while Labour may have made progress with civil partnerships and the like, their consistent appeasement of homophobic monotheist scum has dented whatever pink kudos they should otherwise have earned. Of course, if they really want to cement the gay vote, Gordon could always come out. Not that I have any idea whether those rumours were even true, but if not it'd be even funnier watching him try to fake it.

I'm in Devon at the moment, wrestling once again with the most erratic cursor of our age. But before heading down here (maugree Sunday's efforts to beat previous records for One Of Those Days), I spent Friday confirming that the Landseer may be considerably more pleasant under its new management, but remains too expensive to be a viable local watering hole, and Saturday listening to country, and then watching the Indelicates. Now, I may previously have mentioned that they're a bit good, but I somehow failed until this unfairly truncated and thus blisteringly, magnificently angry performance to realise that they are, quite simply, the best band of our generation. My only regret is that [livejournal.com profile] thedavidx wasn't quite drunk enough to do a Jarvis during their closing cover of 'Earth Song'.
alexsarll: (Default)
The new Torchwood trailer is not filling me with hope, to be frank. And if Peter Capaldi is making a second Who appearance, as a government official of some sort, I want this to confirm that Malcolm Tucker is in fact a direct descendant of Caecilius from the Cambridge Latin Course. I don't know why, I just do.

Friday: [livejournal.com profile] renegadechic lends me a data stick the size of a packet of gum, containing multiple TV series and several films. This freaks me out not because of sleep deprivation but just because we are living in the future. Later I go to my first Poptimism at its new venue, and for the first time ever hear 'Put A Donk On It' in its alleged home setting of a club. I have planned to stay only for a couple of drinks but end up as one of the last dozen there, dancing like I'm in Queer as Folk whenever something vaguely handbag comes on. En route I am impressed by the attendance at the Critical Mass bike ride on Westminster Bridge (though is it not slightly excessive to have two bike protests on the same bridge within four days? Combining and co-ordinating them would seem more effective). I also pick up various comics including one which causes confusion among the Poptimists, and the existence of which I admit I find baffling: This Is A Souvenir, a series of short comic stories inspired by the music of Spearmint. The best of which - the Phonogram one - turns on a misheard lyric. It shouldn't exist, but it makes me happy that it does.

Saturday's mass of cyclists didn't disrupt my progress, but on Saturday I am glad I left far too much time to get to my coach, because the Victoria line is shut and the army are blocking roads between there and Green Park for their parade. I didn't even know we had that many cavalry anymore! Or gun carriages - what do you use a gun carriage for in the 21st century? Anyway, make it to Brighton in plenty of time to see the Pier and the Pavillion, neither of which I have ever encountered before having always been up near the crumbling West Pier, because I am 1 x goth. The Pavillion turns out also to be the site of [livejournal.com profile] simon_price's wedding (we are only along for the reception) so we admire the new Mrs Price's quite astonishing dress, and then meet a dog in a tie called Rufus. He wasn't anything to do with the wedding, he just ruled. As does Brighton generally, in spite of all the bad ink; for some reason East Sussex seems to have an unusually high proportion of pretty girls. Or maybe it's just that because they're near the sea, they tend to wear less, and I am an easily-distracted male.
At the reception, when I am not dancing, or falling asleep and then claiming that I was just "bored", I am mainly introducing people off the internet to each other's faces. It is great fun. Later we take gin to the beach, and meet randoms.

I do not see much of Sunday, but make it out again for [livejournal.com profile] missfrancesca's birthday and associated jollity. Yesterday, because I wanted to get caught up with the Harry Potter films before the new one and [livejournal.com profile] vivid_blue wuvs blokey from Twilight, she hosted a viewing of Goblet of Fire. The films really do improve as they go along, don't they? There's some savage cutting, to the extent that eg Snape barely does anything in this one, but that's a good thing - by being forced to reconfigure the story, it becomes more a film and less a theme-park ride connecting key scenes from the book. Also, I dread to think how much fanfic was launched by the bit where David Tennant licks Alan Rickman's wand.
alexsarll: (manny)
It's a week since I updated - well, except to have an IT spasm* - and I'm not entirely sure why, because it's not like I've been short of things to report. I've seen my first of the new generation of 3D films, Coraline, and been impressed with how well the technology works, and how it doesn't just feel like a gimmick - whichever industry suit it was who said that if it wasn't quite the new sound, it was maybe the new colour, was for once not talking hype crap. I've finally been in a boat on Finsbury Park lake, and am glad to know that I can still just about row. I've found an opportunity to take direct action against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while en route to Richmond of all places, where I then received an eye-opening tour of the local attractions. I've played Necrons. I went to a revivalist goth club where my trousers melted - not that I was wearing them at the time - and it became clear that apparently all female goth vocals of the Batcave period either were, or sounded like, Siouxsie. I've discovered a splendid little venue within walking distance which seems to have a full programme of rockabilly-type stuff, because the Deptford Beach Babes were doing their surftastic thing there. And I've started the new Glen David Gold, which is thus far every bit as thrilling and beautiful and capacious as Carter Beats The Devil, itself one of the very few books I'm happy to recommend to pretty much anyone.

Further to recent discussions of SF writer Alfred Bester, I was surprised to learn while looking up something totally different that not only had he written for comics back in the 'Golden Age', but he created immortal supervillain Vandal Savage, something of a role model of mine. And the only other comics note which springs to mind is that while I don't think Garth Ennis' Boys spin-off Herogasm merits quite the appalled reception it got at yesterday's picnic, it does put one of my reservations about the parent series at centre stage. This is a world where superheroes are, almost without exception, utter bastards behind closed doors - degnerates, pawns of corporate interests, murderers, the lot. Our protagonists are the shady squad who keep them in check. Well, that's a good premise. But these heroes never seem to do anything useful - there are no real threats against which they serve. All we've seen so far is a rather cackhanded attempt to intervene on September 11th 2001. And I think that goes a little too far, and detracts from the strength of the story. If all the alien invasions and such are wholly fraud, spin and cover-up, it becomes rather one-note. I'd be more interested in the story of superpowered individuals who really are Earth's last line of defence, and also complete bastards. More dramatic tension than if they're solely and entirely tossers.

*Speaking of which, I was watching some early Buffy yesterday, for the first time in ages (and don't they all look so young?), and there was a terribly sad bit where Buffy asks Giles whether life gets easier, and he asks if she wants the truth and she replies, as per the episode title, '"Lie to me". And we were discussing this and I concluded that it doesn't get easier per se, but it's a bit like getting used to a horribly buggy piece of software - you gradually learn more of the tricks and workarounds, and get more adept, but of course this just makes it even more jarring when some new glitch arises.
alexsarll: (magnus)
My computer's just a blank background when I start up - no taskbar at the bottom, no icons, no Start button, just wallpaper. I'm online via Task Manager, but obviously this is not ideal. What has happened, and how do I make it unhappen?

System Restore seems to have seen me right.
alexsarll: (bernard)
On last night's Mad Men, did I mishear or were Peggy's nephews called Gerard and Mikey? Never thought I'd catch a My Chemical Romance reference in Don Draper's sixties.

Bionic eye! And apparently one good enough to sort socks, something I only attempt by natural light. Then again, my socks are mainly tiny variations on the theme of 'black'.

I've seen the guy who walks his ferret in Finsbury Park itself a few times, but on Monday, shortly before heading off to explore Tottenham (whatever the view from Harringay station bridge might do to seduce you into thinking otherwise, I can report that it really isn't a whole other London of wonderment hidden away to the side), I saw a woman outside Tesco with an...albino stoat? A mink? It definitely had red eyes as well as white fur, so not just a winter coat on the usual one, and it was very fluffy - you could see how a Cruella type would look at it and see a stole.

Sad news from CMU:
SELECTADISC IN NOTTINGHAM TO GO
More doom and gloom. Nottingham independent record store Selectadisc is to close later this month, after its owner, Phil Barton, decided he can't pump any more money into the company. He told Music Week: "Everyone here has crawled across the field of broken glass to keep this open, but in the end it didn't work. I think it is one of the top three independent stores in Britain. But that doesn't stop it being uneconomic. Everyone here is aware of tough things have been for the last two years". High overheads, declining record sales and the credit crunch have all contributed to Selectadisc's position.
As previously reported, a recent Entertainment Retailers Association report said that there were now just 300 odd independent record stores left in the UK, compared to 408 at the start of last year, and 1064 ten years ago.

Back in the days before London, before the internet, Selectadisc - or back then, the three Selectadiscs spread along Market Street - were my shops. Derby eventually got in on the act with Reveal, but really, you wanted Nottingham - with those three, Wayahead and Arcade you'd always find at least one thing of which you'd vaguely heard, or which just looked intriguing, and which was cheap enough to take a punt on. OK, the staff in the singles shop were surly dance snobs, but that was forgivable when you'd find all the singles that had been raved about in Melody Maker two weeks previously marked down to a quid each.

Contrary to previous reports, apparently Grant Morrison's Authority is still happening: "It'll come when it comes. He's working on it." But no word on his WildCATS which, as of that last interview, was the one which was still happening. I'll believe them when I see them solicited. Maybe not even then, given what happened to The Boys and Micah Wright's Stormwatch, both also at Wildstorm.

WWVMD?

Feb. 18th, 2009 11:52 am
alexsarll: (bernard)
Anyone know how to find the Search toolbar in Mediaplayer? I didn't even know there was one, but having seen it in action I want it, yet am experiencing IT Fail in finding it. Hurrah for pressing random buttons.

I was unaware until I happened past it on Tuesday, but there's a new Book & Comic Exchange branch in Soho, just up from the MVE on Berwick Street. Which isn't quite so bursting-at-the-seams as Notting Hill yet, but I still got a pretty good haul - the Spider-Man's Tangled Web collection with the Garth Ennis/John McCrea and Peter Milligan/Duncan Fegredo stories for £3, the one issue I was missing from the Morrison/Millar Flash run (a rather lovely Jay Garrick one-shot, 'Still Life In The Fast Lane'), and an issue of Warren Ellis' Doctor Strange run. Except it turns out he only did plot, not script, and what's the point of a Warren Ellis comic without inventive insults? The whole thing is a bit of a mess, though, even with some of the art coming from Mark Buckingham; it was part of the Marvel Edge line, which was Marvel's attempt to get some of that Vertigo action, which is here represented by such cringeworthy details as Strange's cloak being replaced with an Overcoat of Levitation...
I was in that neck of the woods because I'd been invited to lunch at a health food place in Covent Garden. Accepting which, and then being off the sauce all day, was clearly foolishness, because last night I was quite as ill as I've been in years. TMI ) And of course, when your time's your own then sick days lack even the compensatory charms they hold for workers.
Before this kicked in, though, I also had chance to make my first visit to the Wallace Collection, which I think maybe made a better home than it makes a museum. The stuff they have is generally the sort of stuff which makes for a good background, rather than something I wish to stand and contemplate - although the gender balance amuses me, rooms of arms and armour balanced by all that froofy Rococo stuff.

Won the pub quiz jackpot on Monday, but only just - we were exactly as far off the tie-break as one other team, and then in the tie-break tie-break, which was essentially guessing a random date, we were only one day closer than them. Perhaps it was the tension of that which undid me last night? Nah, I'm still blaming the so-called healthy living.

edit: More comics news just in - DC Announces 'After Watchmen - What's Next?' Program? And it has been amazing me how the Watchmen trade is now *everywhere*, although that is a mainly happy amazement as opposed to some people's reaction, so this is a smart move. So what comics are DC suggesting as the next step?Read more... )Whenever I think DC might be regaining some small fragment of the plot, they pull a stunt like this.
alexsarll: (Default)
Fireworks and Remembrance both seem to have been a little overshadowed for me this year by the election - like we have something even better to celebrate than the takedown of a theocratic terrorist, like we might finally be getting around to making the better world so many sacrificed themselves for. On the Fifth of November itself, I was just sat outside the Noble as per, though London being London still obliged us with a fox, a unicyclist and a flaming balloon.

A biomechanical race devoted to the destruction of all life, whose adversaries supposed weaknesses often turn out to be their salvation (but then, the stories are being written by humans, so they would say that, wouldn't they?). First appeared in a 1963 story. The Daleks, right? But this could all equally be applied to Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers. For all that I'm usually ready to diss Terry Nation at the first opportunity, I'm not accusing him of ripping off Saberhagen - just observing that as with the two Dennis the Menaces, or Swamp Thing and Man Thing, it was clearly biomechanical exterminator time.
(This correspondence perhaps struck me so forcefully just because it was while watching the current Sarah Jane Adventures, Mark of the Berserker (otherwise completely unrelated), that it suddenly occurred to me to pause iPlayer and check out Saberhagen's stories, of which I knew only blurbs in the back of other SF books of that era. Within moments I had a free, legitimate online text of one of the novels. Which begins with a prequel short story, if you want to try, and see how like a Dalek story it feels. I love modern technology, at least up until the point where it decides to eliminate the puny fleshy ones)

My favourite bit of the Quietus interview with John Foxx is his thoughts on our city:
"London is the centre of The Quiet Man's universe. Also of mine. It has a new emergent form of nature - Grey Nature - this is Nature unconfined by the world outside cities. We will begin to see the emergence of startling and subtle forms of highly specialised life forms from now on. Alligators in the sewers are just a daft beginning. The next generation are swift and subtle and almost undetectable. They live on momentary intersections and coincidence, and have learnt to take sufficient advantage of these to predicate entire new ecologies. The tabloids will have a field day. So will any agile biologists. Just watch. The next generation of Attenboroughs will investigate The Cities - The Grey Planet Series."
Reminds me somewhat of those fantasy Above Ground graphics on the Piccadilly Line. The problem is, if John Foxx were involved in urban planning at all, even in such a fantastic capacity, then everyone would start asking leading questions about how to get across certain features, because a bridge would ruin the aesthetic, so maybe we'd need to get under it via some kind of...[pregnant pause]. And he'd finally give in and say 'Underpass?' and then everyone would shout 'UNDERPANTS!' and then he'd be obliged to press the red button on his synth and cause the sonic destruction of the Earth.
alexsarll: (magnus)
Yesterday I was handed a flyer for Czech mail-order brides, "unspoiled by feminism". Which is not just sleazy, but baffling. If you want the loaded and lonely, surely you flyer on Friday night as the City bars are chucking out, or in Knightsbridge tobacconists, not in Victoria on a Wednesday lunchtime?
Then again, this was shortly after I learned that Cardinal Place has a wind consultant called Professor Breeze, so it may just have been one of those days when plausibility goes out the window. Consider also the state of the Comedy that evening, where they had hybrid Hallowe'en/Christmas decorations up - so there's a werewolf menacing the tree, for instance, which has been decked with a string of skulls. I was there to see The Melting Ice Caps, aka Luxembourg's David Shah solo. And that is *solo* as in a one-man show, just him and a backing track (except for the two songs where he's joined by a flipbook wrangler). It can't be easy to stand up there and perform with no band, no instrument, no Dutch courage, not even any of the overacting and performance art techniques you'd get from someone like Simon Bookish, but he does it - stands there and sings his songs, beautiful songs about love and time and making the best of it all. Lovely, if heartbreaking - both for the songs in and of themselves, and that this is happening at half eight in a pub basement, rather than in the grand setting it deserves.
So of course because it's an implausible day, why wouldn't he be followed by a band with Foxy Brown on vocals, a total Shoreditch refugee on rhythm guitar and one of the From Dusk 'Til Dawn vampires on histrionic lead?

Newsarama are running a pretty revealing ten-part interview with Grant Morrison about All-Star Superman, one of the best superhero comics ever. I post this for the fans but seriously, even if you're only a casual/Greatest Hits comics reader, even if you think you don't like Superman, I don't blame you but this is the exception.

I finally remembered to check for an update on the story about the pirates stealing 30 tanks, which has been driven from the news by the small matter of the world's economy falling over and bursting into flames. Apparently:
"United States warships have surrounded the Faina for weeks to prevent the pirates from trying to unload the weapons, and a Russian guided missile frigate is traveling to the area."
It was seized a month ago! If the Russian navy is always this slow, we have so little to worry about from Putin.

For anyone given to complaining about txtspk as part of the decline of modern literacy &c, I give you 1880s emoticons.
alexsarll: (magneto)
Well, that Heroes finale was even more of an anticlimax than the first season's. I suppose I should hardly be surprised, I did spot the writer's name at the beginning. Jeph Loeb could write, many moons ago, but nowadays his name serves more as a biohazard warning than a credit. I suspect that unless I hear extremely good word on the third season - among it, that Loeb has taken an enforced sabbatical - then I'm out.
I don't think it helps matters that the BBC are screening it on Thursdays, the day when those of us who still go to the source for our superheroics are coming home with an armful of stranger, better, truer stories in the same vein.

Chris Morris on CERN; as against certain strands of celebrity journalism, he is at once entertaining and (for the general reader) enlightening. I like this sort of polymathic behaviour; Stephen Fry is the obvious example, but one of the joys of Alex James' Bit of a Blur is the way he loves space exploration every bit as much as cheese, champagne, beautiful girls and all the other splendid things in the world. A lot of autobiographies would do well to take a lesson from Alex James; he can admit that he's moved on in life to the extent of a total volte-face, without feeling the need to retrofit a load of moralistic wangst to the days of debauchery. Drink, drugs and shagging are the right thing for a rock star to do; "All happy endings imply gardens." There is no contradiction between these two statements.

Other links of possible interest: missing scenes from butchered silent classic Metropolis have surfaced - sadly without colour-tinting and Queen soundtrack, but I'm sure that can be fixed - and Iain Sinclair on 'The Olympic Scam'.

Tomorrow doesn't just mark the anniversary of some silly colonial insurrection - it'll also be 106 years since the election which returned Britain's first Labour MP, Kier Hardie. He must be so proud of Tony, Gordon and chums.
alexsarll: (seal)
Well, I may not be happy about RTD OBE series finale spoiler if you haven't already heard it which I doubt ), but 'Midnight' was a reminder of quite how good he can be. I love plays in lifts, and SF done with hardly any special effects, and Lesley Sharp. Absolutely chilling. As for the next week trailer...bloody Hell.

I have never felt so Jerome K Jerome as I did yesterday, stood by the Thames at Marble Hill Park.

Last night I dreamt that I accidentally beat both Kelvin MacKenzie and David Davis to become the new MP for Haltemprice and Howden, after my friends put my name on the ballot for a joke.

For a Friday 13th, that one was replete with good news. A cloak of silence looks to be possible, the RAF's fine tradition of moustaches has been defended, and the Irish wisely used the chance our leaders denied us to give the EU not-a-constitution-honest the trashing it so richly deserves (not that the Eurocrats will pay any attention, obviously, but the gesture's still important). Plus, my favourite film writer, David Thomson, chose the day to go off on one of his more spectacular reveries, this time about lovely Angelina Jolie. Of whom I should also note - apparently Wanted isn't going to be the total travesty I was led to expect.
alexsarll: (crest)
As if The Wire weren't emotional drain enough (two episodes left now), last night I finally watched last week's Skins. I think it was when they played LCD Soundsystem's 'New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down' that I really fell apart. That had come on my MP3 player in the morning, and then been with me again in the evening as I wandered along and around the South Bank in much-missed company and was reminded that, for all my occasional daydreams of New Zealand or Canadian wilderness, for all that the city's in a precarious place at the moment on a knife-edge between developers and decay...I'm not done with it yet.

Woken up by road resurfacing again this morning. They only do it on weekends, because obviously the regular transport of drones during the week is more important than the rest of the temporarily free at weekends. You might say that I shouldn't complain so vociferously, given I have the week off - but the 21st century was supposed to be the future. Every week was supposed to be pretty much a week off. I suppose the self-replicating 3D printer is one small sign that we might still be on the way there.

Complaining that if you search suicide-related terms, you're more likely to find pro-sites rather than anti-...well, so what? It's an argument with two valid positions. Inevitably, in any such argument one side has to rank highest, unless you want every results page to be split into For and Against halves. Which is not necessarily a bad idea, but I imagine that most cities (for instance) would then whinge if when you searched them, you were with equal prominence offered a list of reasons why they're rubbish. My Gmail ads keep trying to sell me on Ken because they've obviously picked up on the various anti-Ken links I've got saved in Drafts; I find this mildly amusing, but I'm not going to complain about it.
alexsarll: (bernard)
If not quite my new hero then certainly my new person reminiscent of Heroes, specifically Micah: Adam Dabrowski, who took control of the Lodz tram network with a remote control.

I didn't have terribly high hopes for Thursday night; as much as I love The Indelicates, likely gigging companions were being a bunch of straightlords and staying in, and I was starting to sympathise with them as my energy faded with the day. Still, what the Hell, give it a try, right? So I headed to the Regency to fuel up - and who should I find there but a couple of Pembroke friends, with whom I could then have a pint, filling that awkward support band gap between hometime and showtime. And then from there, down to the show (where being the Windmill, I was of course far too early, but I can never take the risk that this once they'll be running promptly) where again I bump into people I know - one I've known for ages but whom I now consider more part of [livejournal.com profile] charleston's cast, and one via [livejournal.com profile] emofringe. I love London's eddies, the way the flow can always be guaranteed to bring someone along. Even if it is interesting to notice the different ecologies it sustains - I know some people were put off this particular Indelicates show by the Metro recommendation (which didn't seem to have had all that much impact), where of course to some people (and some bands) that would be a deal-maker, not breaker. I understood more about this for a moment, at the show, but only as the sort of evanescent epiphany which, written down, could only ever be a "the smell of petroleum prevails throughout".
The Indelicates were of course excellent, as ever (next single 'America' deserves to make them huge, though if it does it will mainly do so with people who miss the point), and top support Restlesslist (I think?) weren't bad either; as with most instrumental bands, I would rather they played in a greasy spoon, but the use of inflatable elephants as percussion instruments is always to be encouraged.

I was pointed at an interesting but flawed article on music in The Wire (can you spot the generalisation/mistake he makes?), but within it is contained a link to a David Simon interview which all Wire fans should read. Spoiler-free, too, thank heavens - I'm only three episodes into the fourth season myself. I'm resisting the urge to quote as best I can, because it would soon turn into a repost of the whole damn article, but I found his comments on why the show owes more to the Greeks than Shakespearea particularly resonant. Ditto his thoughts on making "the world we are depicting that much more improbable and idiosyncratic and, therefore, more credible", and the mantra "fvck the average reader". Oh, sod it - one more:
"In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed."*
(The interview was conducted by Nick Hornby, of all people. The tragedy is that once he gets outside his lucrative middlebrow comfort zone, he's really not bad - he wrote a horror/SF piece for the McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales which I found properly chilling)

One of the better blogs I've seen on the Guardian site lately: Richard Smith, whose Seduced & Abandoned is one of the few journalism collections which comes close to working as a book, considers the decline of gay clubbing, or at least of a certain generation of gay clubs.

*It is not only America which has no place for heroes, of course. Consider the volunteer cliff rescue coastguard who breached health and safety rules in the course of saving a teenage girl's life; dressed down for this appallingly maverick behaviour, he has now resigned.

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