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

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?

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.

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.

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 xandratheblue and 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.

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: 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 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 missfrancesca's birthday and associated jollity. Yesterday, because I wanted to get caught up with the Harry Potter films before the new one and 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 charleston's cast, and one via 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.