alexsarll | Entries tagged with the 18 carat love affair

Local venues the Archway Tavern and Nambucca have both had refits, but the latter is still the same bloody shambles it always was, with the same misguided belief that this is somehow endearingly rock'n'roll. The Archway's transition to some kind of weird nineties theme bar, on the other hand...well, at least the theme seems to extend to what now constitutes a cheap pint, but in the nineties would still have been a nightmarish three quid. The bands at both were led by Davids, and more an exercise in larking about than anything else; both were a great deal of fun. The supports at both were bloody embarrassments. And both were Hallowe'en events, of course*. Normally I'm adamant about celebrating the great festivals on the actual day...but it's Monday today. Even the restless dead don't rise with any enthusiasm on a Monday.

Speaking of the dead rising - I finally read DC's zombie superhero epic Blackest Night. Which, to my utter lack of surprise, has all of writer Geoff Johns' usual sins - including that unseemly tendency to get all metatextual about how comics used to be so bright and innocent, and why can't they be like that still, while taking a sordid delight in demonstrating the gruesomeness of the modern by repeated graphic dismebowelments &c. He wants to eat his tasty braaaaains cake and still have it, really. In total, Blackest Night sprawls across seven collected editions of tie-ins (for no real reason beyond perversity, I read the core series last). The Exterminators, on the other hand, covers a mere five books. One of the many comics from Vertigo (aka 'the HBO of comics') to be cancelled before it reached its proposed destination, this was a planned 50-issue series which only made it to 30. Largely because, as writer Simon Oliver acknowledges in a rueful foreword to the final collection, it's about bugs, and so at least a quarter of the potential audience would be too revolted to read it. And it is, make no mistake, a revolting series. But also, for all its fantastical elements, one which feels like it's saying something interesting about humanity, and nature, and the poor schmucks who have to hold the line between the two. Whereas Blackest Night, for all that it manages some lovely tricks with colour, really doesn't have much more to say than 'Dude, if Hawkman was a zombie he'd be even more badass!' Which is not only fairly hollow - it turns out it isn't even true.

*Though unlike Christmas creep, Hallowe'en crawl has some limits. On Friday, even in Camden, there was little sign of sexy cats &c. Or at least, not specifically Hallowe'eny ones. The alleged retirement show of Steven Horry, Frontman, with support from Rebekah Delgado and Aurora, was many things, but spooky was not among them.

Current Music: Every Day Is Hallowe'en - Ministry

The headline would have to come out of order, and that's my stand-up/lecture/thing at Bright Club on Tuesday, which seemed to go down pretty well. I'm sort of tempted to put the text on here, because I can't see when I'm ever likely to need to give another comedic talk about Emperor Frederick II, but you never know...

Otherwise:
- Paul Gravett giving a talk at the library about graphic novels, and slightly fluffing it. The guy is very smart, and engaging, and he knows his stuff, but he pitched this wrong. Too much of it was miserable autobiographical project after miserable autobiographical project and yes, that's exactly the way to get a reading group or broadsheet literary critic on board, but not this audience who were already reading comics. It's not the way to get the general public interested, either. Even if you don't want to talk about superheroes (and I can respect that, if only as entryism) then talk about Scott Pilgrim, Shaun Tan, The Walking Dead, the renaissance in crime comics, Bryan Talbot. Talk about the real variety in comics, not just the various settings from which people can extrude navel-gazing yawnfests.
- Runebound, which like Talisman takes place at the exact point where board games start to become simple roleplaying games. Yes, I am a geek, what of it?
- Spending more than an hour in the Camden World's End for the first time ever, and feeling very old, but strangely at home. I love that London, with all its infinitely diversified tribes, can still have somewhere that feels like The Indie Pub in a provincial town.
-

thedavidx's Guided Missile special, with the birthday boy covering Adam Ant songs, and the Deptford Beach Babes, and Dave Barbarossa's new band (nice drumming, shame about everything else), and Black Daniel whom I still don't quite get even though I was in the mood for them this time. Plus, the return of the 18 Carat Love Affair! Now a slightly looser, rockier proposition, a little less eighties. Not a transition of which I have often approved, but it suits them.
- Realising that not only had I finally, definitely found De Beauvoir Town, but I was drinking in it. Then going home to be disappointed by Boardwalk Empire, which I will still doubtless finish sooner or later, but which I am no longer cursing Murdoch for nabbing. Not to worry, there are still plenty of other things for which to curse him.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Damn These Vampires - The Mountain Goats

The clouds may have rolled in today, but there's no disguising it: Spring has dragged herself up out of the ground after the long, hard winter. With results which are not entirely welcome; I just found myself sharing the living room with the second biggest wasp I have ever met - needless to say, I had the last laugh. Also departing recently, although not under a copy of TV Go Home, were the 18 Carat Love Affair, who like the NRF deemed Guided Missile a suitable final venue - and I don't blame them. The bill also offered Rebekah Delgado (good, but I don't think this was the best environment for songs like these, and suspect I'd enjoy them more at home or on earphones), Zombina & the Skeletones (initially fun, but very samey) and Jamie Clarke's Perfect (I had been listening to the Pogues on my walk down and I still remember almost nothing about this former member's project). But the night belonged to 18 Carat. If not quite a perfect show (real drums! Boo!) it was still a damn fine one, with one last airing for all the favourite tales of capsized nights, imprisonment and whatever the Hell 'Truman Capote' is about. And it ended, as ever, with 'Five Rounds Rapid' - the lyrics now expanded to include 'New mouth, new rules'. Fitting.
(Though I must confess, this week's episode did not convince me. At best it was set-up, 'Long Game'-style, but otherwise it was just full of plot holes. Why set up the Smilers and then basically forget about them? What did all the other countries do and why didn't the UK do that? How come Amy got to do the Doctorvision bit and realise something he clearly should have? There were some nice bits in there, and Matt Smith was excellent - even when delivering lines that made no sense like the 'new name' bit - but it's a shame to realise that even Moffat can't be Moffat all the time)

I'd always been reluctant to read the comics of Brian Wood, simply because years ago his bit of the internet and my bit of the internet had a Fite, and being in the wrong he obviously came across as a bit of a cock. But, I've long forgiven Cameron Stewart for a related incident around the same time, and I was hearing enough good things about Brian Wood from enough people I respect that I thought, maybe it's time to give the guy a chance. So of the library-available material, I homed in on Demo, a collection of 12 stories about young people whose lives are not made any easier by their unusual powers. It seemed to get the best reviews from the most simpatico reviewers, plus - Becky Cloonan art.
And initially, it seemed to be OK, but nothing special. Short stories about growing up in dead end towns where superpowers are used to amplify the alienated situation of youth, make the metaphorical into the concrete. The usual comparison is the X-Men if they were created now, but to me it read more like Buffy without Buffy - think of something like the invisible girl episode but told entirely from her perspective, not as part of someone else's plot. The first one that really grabbed me was the story of a girl who others always see as they want to see her. As happens to us all, of course, but for this poor soul it physically changes her. And then she finally meets one person who sees her as she is...and suddenly she's the one besotted.
But there was still something not quite right, and only with the next story - about a lonley boy and his dog - did I realise what.
For whatever reason, America has never got 2000AD. I think this is the single simple reason Brits write all the best comics. We know about Thrill-Power. We know that you can tell a great short story with a twist ending in six pages, not 26. Even the best stories in Demo would have worked considerably better as Future Shocks.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Do You Swear To Tell The Truth... - Amanda Palmer

In spite of London Transport's best efforts, I made it to the Good Ship last night in time for Lullaby Oscillatrix, and The Icebergs, and The Angry Bees, three very different new musical adventures involving my endlessly creative chums (OK, 'musical' might not be quite the right word in the case of the Bees). And the faff en route did at least mean I could pretty much finish off Anna Minton's Ground Control en route. It's a book I've been trying to read in public not just for the normal reason of it being nicely pocket-sized, but also as my own small rejoinder to the situation it describes in which, as that review is headlined, "they sold our streets and nobody noticed". The current government has encouraged councils to privatise public space, to sell off assets which were bequeathed to local communities in perpetuity (if not legally, then morally, this is clearly theft), to design cities in accord with unproven and pernicious theories. There's so much here I didn't know. Just one example: since 2004, compulsory purchase orders no longer need to show public benefit in any terms other than monetary ones. Needless to say, the idea that said money will benefit the public relies on our old favourite, trickledown economics - because in the short term it's going straight to the developers. Shameful. Also, it would seem, inescapable. This all took place under a nominally Labour government, which is shameful and ludicrous, but it's not as if it would be reversed by the admitted Tories, and I no longer even have any confidence in the Lib Dems.
In 1821, John Hunt was imprisoned for an article describing MPs as "Venal boroughmongers, grasping placemen, greedy adventurers and aspiring title-hunters...a body, in short, containing a far greater proportion of Public Criminals than Public Guardians." Obviously a lot has changed since then; now MPs realise that prosecution only makes martyrs and the system ticks over nicely if you just ignore how much the public hates the whole damn pack of you, so critics can make high-profile TV dramas like On Expenses which essentially advance Hunt's point over an hour of docudrama (the usual disclaimer admitting that some details have been compressed then turns around and reminds us that "mostly, you couldn't make it up") with a fine cast including Brian Cox and Anna Maxwell Martin...and nobody bats an eyelid, and MPs complain that they can't be expected to travel in standard class with the proles, and they use slave labour in breach of the minimum wage laws they passed themselves, and we head towards an election which is once again going to beat all the records for low turn-out because nobody's fool enough to believe any result would accomplish anything, especially not after we saw that even if we had a genuinely inspirational politician like Barack Obama - which we clearly don't - then, like Obama, he would probably be incapable of achieving anything if he got in, not with the system arrayed against him.

Current Mood: morose
Current Music: Miss Believer - Longpigs

On facing pages of Saturday's paper: competitors in a race complain that it is too fast, and parishioners outraged when their vicar quotes the Bible. For comparison, yesterday I sat down to watch Primer. I did this in the full knowledge that first time writer/director/producer/star Shane Carruth had made it with $7,000, a script more wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey than Steven Moffat's finest, and a commitment to the philosophy of 'fvck the average viewer' which makes David Simon look like a commissioning exec for ITV1. But I knew these things going in, because I am not entirely stupid, and when the film did indeed prove rather hard to follow I did not complain, because I am not a whining tw@t.
(Once you've checked online to see how the plot untangles, though, it is very good - which is more than one can say for the olympics, or christianity. Possibly the best screen effort I've ever encountered to imagine how time travel might begin and work in the real world, using something close to the orthodox physics of the matter)

Otherwise, a weekend for farewells. On Saturday, the New Royal Family abdicated after a typically energetic but strangely elegiac show. And because it was their last, and because the supports included two with social overlap and one who were Proxy Music, a fairly good proportion of 'everyone I have ever met' was there. Some of whom I thought must have known each other but did not, so I was at least able to introduce them and feel there were beginnings to balance out the ending. I think in the end it felt more celebratory than not, but still a sad day. Not least because the previous night had been the end of another era. Not that you can ever definitively pronounce a death in comics, but the last issue of Phonogram for the foreseeable was out, and the creators were dressed for a wake. It's an atypical issue, too, addressing something I had wondered about - in Phonogram's frame of reference, is there anyone who really likes music but isn't a phonomancer? And of course the answer is nothing so simple as yes or no, more like 'magic happens'. It's the counterbalance to last issue and Lloyd's over-intellectualisation, to the point of being almost wordless. It is also wonderful, but by now you probably guessed I was going to say that.
Anyway, that was one issue, but due to overwhelming public demand* let's take a look at the rest of ( the last two weeks' comics. Includes legitimate use of the phrase PIRATE BATMAN! )
And since I started writing all this, I've learned of another exit - The 18 Carat Love Affair will be playing one more show, then bowing out. Sad times.

"I read naturalistic novels and they seem to me to be written by people who read too many naturalistic novels. They just seem to be full of convention, that’s all." - Will Self, from a very good interview which also explores his feelings on cities (more negative than I can agree with, but he couldn't write his books without them), the degree to which the novel's self-definition against film is obsolescent, and his sense of his own work's weakness. I know that the failings of the naturalistic novel are something of a hobby horse for me, but I was reminded just how limited a genre naturalism is the other day when a friend mentioned, quite legitimately, that the film she thought had best mirrored her own recent work experience was Tropic Thunder.

*By which I mean it got one comment, which is more than the entirety of Friday's post, so it's comparatively true.

Current Mood: cosy
Current Music: Stacked Crooked - The New P0rnographers

My hopes were, in all honesty, not high for Are Friends Eclectic? on Friday. It was being held at the Cross Kings (of 'rapey murals' fame) and I've been suspicious of the word 'eclectic' in club names ever since I saw the press for a night which was called simply Eclectic, on the grounds that it played all the different subgenres of drum'n'bass. But

xandratheblue and

retro_geek were DJing within an hour's walk of mine so it would have been churlish not to give it a try, and I'm very glad I did. With the exception of one DJ who seemed intent only on playing fashionable young people's music in remixes which removed all the good bits (why does a version of Wiley's 'Take That' without the buzzing noise even exist?) and had the treble up too high, the music was a good selection, and there were soon enough people in to obscure the walls. Well, except the one which had anime projected on it, that was fine, especially the one about the flying turtle rescuing its friends from inside a giant stone turtle on some island with an ancient turtle civilisation. Yeah, I know it's a bit of a hackneyed plot but they did it with charm. Hightlights included:

exliontamer doing the best gun action I have ever seen to MIA's 'Paper Planes'.

augstone hanging himself from the ceiling with his feather boa during 'She's Lost Control'.

steve586 using the same feather boa for a spot of skipping, which since he's already in The 18 Carat Love Affair, and 'Skipping' is also an Associates track, set me off on the idea of him doing a comedy quest in the manner of Dave Gorman or Danny Wallace (except less sh1t) where he literally enacts other Associates song titles, by eg driving a white car in Germany or playing the spoons in the nude.
We then made the arguably ill-advised decision all to pile back to Aug's for wine, American confectionery and singalongs.

cappuccino_kid was the first to leave, only to find that his door was stuck and nearly have to come back. He managed to kick it in in the end but I was concerned that, being from Belfast, reflex might then take over and he'd try to kneecap the hamster, which would be hard enough sober.
On Saturday, after four hours' sleep, I got up for what was meant to be a lovely walk in the country. Except the member of the party who had suggested this specific walk was 'ill', a story the rest of us soon began to walk. I can hardly complain that the Lea/Lee Valley doesn't even know how to spell itself when I live so close to Har(r)ing(a/e)y, but the directions we had from Waltham Cross station used terms like 'right' and 'left' in ways which didn't really fit the late Soviet concrete feel of the surrounds. Yes, once we found Waltham Abbey it was historically and architecturally lovely, if still rather too actively christian for my liking (even attempting ti claim orthodoxy for the Zodiac on the ceiling). And at first, the riverside walk seemed lovely too. But soon the Tottenham reservoirs were looming on our left (being raised, they essentially look like motorway embankments with the odd life-ring at the top); to our right, a river with no apparent life but the coots, and beyond that, decaying industry. And above us - pylons, diligently following the path. We thought we'd found some signs of rural life with the glimpse of horses ahead, but close up they had upsetting and peculiar growths, which was possibly the last straw (even the horses were out, having moldy bread instead). We bailed at Ponders End - where the only pub seemed to be a Harvester. Cultural tourism ahoy.
Then home via the library for lots of tea, and out again to see the 18 Carat Love Affair, or rather the 14.4 Carat Love Affair, as the bassist was ill (you could maybe subtract further given the fragility of other band members, but the maths would start getting dubious). They were supported by two baffling but keen Japanese bands who had very loud singers; it was perhaps because of this that Steve could barely be heard in the mix when he went for a more subtle/hungover approach. Still not a bad show, though. Headliners Black Daniel were quite something - essentially Har Mar Superstar joining the Dandy Warhols to fill in for a show the Black Eyed Peas couldn't make - but a band like that requires energy, and by this stage I had none. Home again, and bed. Where I pretty much stayed yesterday.

The weekend's viewing:
Anatomy of a Murder: Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick star in the Murder One of its day, with a surprisingly frank treatment of rape for 1959. Coincidentally, the Saul Bass* titles were homaged in Alan Moore's 'The Anatomy Lesson', which I reread this same weekend because, in the library, I found the new Saga of the Swamp Thing hardcover which finally reprints Moore's first issue on the series, rather than starting with said 'Anatomy Lesson'. Some lovely page layouts, presumably Totleben's, but you can see why prior reprints never bothered with it.
Around The World By Zeppelin, a fabulous compilation of archive footage and diary readings telling the story of a 1930 journey which, were it fictional, would seem heavy-handed. Our protagonist - an aristocratic English journalist, junior partner to an American. They had an affair a while back, and it ended badly, but feelings remain. In Germany, there are extremist riots against reparations; in Japan, meetings hailing a new age of German-Japanese friendship. Stalin blusters as they fly over the endless wastes of Russia, and they are feared lost after a great storm over the Pacific. Back in the US, alive, the men ignore the Midwest passing beneath them, too obsessed with the novelty of being the first airborne traders in stocks and shares. Thinking about it, maybe Glen David Gold or Michael Chabon could do it justice - but they don't need to, because this film exists. Do watch it.
Sons of Anarchy, which having come from a Shield writer, now brings in a Shield actor - and it's poor compromised old Dutch, playing an ATF agent who's a lot more human than he'd like to be. Oh, this is going to be good.

*I always get Saul Bass confused with Lance Bass, the former 'N Sync member and thwarted space traveller. Checking Wikipedia to see if there's any connection, I see no sign of one, but it does claim that his mother's maiden name was Haddock. Is this true? Because Haddock marrying Bass sounds distinctly fishy.

Current Mood: listless
Current Music: Our Lovely Afternoon - The Melting Ice Caps

'The Solitary Life of Cranes' is a lovely, strange little programme; the men who operate those towering cranes one sees dotted about explaining their experiences and perspective, over beautiful footage of London from a vantage point most of us will never share - high enough to be silent and detached, but low enough to recognise individual people. They come across quite like Wim Wenders' take on angels.

Two launch parties for

augstone products this week; the H Bird single release and the Oxford Dons premiere. The former was fairly subdued; the latter, I think it is fair to say, got a bit out of hand, culminating in a spontaneous performance by Keith TOTP & His Minor 18 Carat All Star Backing Close-Ups (Featuring

exliontamer), or something like that, which I'm hoping hasn't got us all barred from the N19 because I'm doing my birthday there this year. The show/film/artefact itself is hilarious, and coming soon to an internet near you. And I'm only an extra in this one.
In between launches, went to the Serpentine Gallery for the first time. Which is silly, but I hadn't realised a) it's free and b) one of the attendants is a friend. Small for a London gallery, but it has the advantage of being set in a ruddy great park, albeit one where the squirrels are no respecters of personal space. The current show, Design Real, is simply well-designed items laid out like artworks, and labelled only with a generic - SHOES, KNIFE, ARMOUR. If you want more, you can check the website - or go the central room, where there are Kindles with the same information. And never having used a Kindle before, I did find them very intuitive and pleasant to use, but they're considerably less portable than a paperback so I don't think text's iPod moment has come quite yet. After that,

xandratheblue took me for veggie fish and chips, a matter on which I must respectfully disagree with both her and

hoshuteki. I think the problem is, they both eat fish and expected something along similar lines. Whereas if someone presents me with chunks of deep-fried halloumi, I don't really mind what they call it, I just murmur 'cheeeeeeese' and adopt a blissed-out expression. Cheeeeeeeeese.

Philip Jeays' Christmas shows on the Barge have often tended towards the drunken (not least the time we took a trip to the beach afterwards), but last night still felt unusually tinged with chaos. The first sign was when, after the usual pleasant-but-would-work-better-in-the-background set from Peacock, the annual Speech Painter ordeal began. Except - he had a new poem. A reworking of Phil's 'Geoff', the song in which Phil talks about wanting to kill Geoff for his house, and shagging his wife. The reworking is called 'Phil', and you can imagine the general tone. The natural order is overturned! The Speech Painter is fighting back, and stranger, getting laughs!
From then on, everything feels slightly rackety. The boat is shaking more than usual. The new song with which Phil opens has the chorus "They're all whores!" (repeat x 3). I'm the first person whose number comes up (well, except the berk who requested 'Idiots In Uniform', but they clearly don't count) and when I ask on a sudden whim for 'London' instead of 'The Raj', there's confusion as to which version I mean. Lots of people are claiming tickets they don't have - including, in a moment of Epic Fail, the one Jeays took himself. Busted. One request is actually refused, which I don't think I've ever seen before. One table have to be reprimanded for talking.
And yet, amongst it all, the songs. There are some strange choices made, but also some of the best - 'Here I Am', 'Midnight in Trieste', 'Perry County'. In a world which has embraced Richard Hawley, there really should be broadsheet features for Philip Jeays too.

Current Mood: lucky
Current Music: Jeanette, Isabella - Tori Amos

Not a dream, not an imaginary story, but the episode of South Pacific from two weeks ago (I forget where, reprised in the last couple of minutes but the whole show is pretty awesome). Nature is mental.

Didn't see as many bands/people as planned this weekend, as a combination of late-running gigs and inexplicable (though possibly weather-based) tiredness left two-stage plans looking untenable. So sorry to

catbo and Artery, though if the latter are reading this I'll be surprised and slightly creeped-out. Saturday was the ever-eccentric Barnacles (who, by leaving their sailor hats at the gig, contributed to a later outbreak of camp posing and eventually Benny Hill impressions) followed by an 18 Carat Love Affair whom the sound-mix left rather less shiny than usual - though it seemed to suit the megaphone monster apparently called 'Truman Capote' which has now been added to their set. In between, we hid in the Famous Cock, whose emptiness on a Saturday night can't all be down to the Victoria line having another weekend off, and might instead owe something to it being a contender for London's most character-less boozer (the L*rr*k doesn't count - that has a soul, and its soul is despair). Afterwards, realising the Newington Green plan is no longer going to happen, we danced to Britpop classics, AC/DC and the Inspiral Carpets. Yes, in 2009, though in our defence it was 'Saturn V'.
Sunday sees Jonny Cola torpedoed by equipment issues. Then there are two other bands, one of which has pretty enough personnel that I give them three songs rather than the usual one-and-a-bit to impress me, before deciding instead to hang outside and take a brief trip to Gosh (Beta Ray Bill!). Then the new New Royal Family, playing 50/50 their own hits (I have already forgotten the 'Rules OK' dance routine) and rock'n'roll classics,

thedavidx in an excellent Teddy Boy jacket. Unwisely, I have by this point decided that yes, maybe I do want a drink. I really didn't. Between this and the venue's eau de vomit (thanks, smoking ban!) I only manage two songs of the promising Last Army before departing.

Simon Indelicate on the music industry's woes; probably the best short piece on the subject I have ever seen, and we haven't exactly been short of them these past few years, have we? Contains bonus comment on why 'piracy' is a bloody stupid term to use for the illegal copying of data.

Current Mood: muggy
Current Music: L'Esqualita - Soft Cell

Well, after some pretty half-arsed efforts over the past hour or so, the rain looks to be picking up to a proper bank holiday level now, and any plans of sitting in the park are dissolving nicely in it; a game of Gloom would mark the day better than a dance around the maypole. Yesterday, though, was lovely; after 18 Carat Love Affair's set (including

hospitalsoup's second best 'Pink Glove' cover) we fled Sexy Kid (remarkably, worse than their name suggests) and a definition of Britpop which encompassed Finley Quaye (though also, to their credit, Ultrasound's 'I'll Show You Mine') for Tavistock Square and the sun, from which it's a lovely walk through the backstreets to Fleet Street (why didn't I know London had a pub called The Knights Templar?) to Fleet Street, where Mr Punch serves ruinously tasty West Country cider, the rogue.

If you want to get overexcited about the new Grant Morrison multiverse comic, or just want to see a picture of Batman punching out Rorschach, click here.

Current Mood: sneezy
Current Music: This Joke Sport Severed - Manic Street Preachers

I suppose with Google Streetview available my urban explorations have become even more inexplicable and archaic - but since when was that a bad thing? On Tuesday I took the W3 to the end of the line - the end I don't live at, clearly. All these years of seeing them headed to Northumberland Park, and now I've seen it. There isn't much to see; once you get past Wood Green and into darkest Haringey, through White Hart Lane and Tottenham High Road, it's only the odd name which gives you any clue you're in London - normally you can at least tell that you're in a crappy bit of London, but here you could be on the more depressing fringes of Derby, or even (gods help us) Leicester. I did manage to thread my way through an industrial estate to Tottenham Marshes, but even that...it has herons to disturb, and a canal boat population which seems to be halfway to becoming a pirate kingdom, but I have encountered no London open space so thoroughly littered. And once you start heading up towards Walthamstow (its border with Tottenham coming across as though it could easily be sealed in time of war), there's a uniquely disturbing nature reserve where it's difficult to tell how whoever's set up a makeshift shack in the middle of the thicket establishes boundaries with the cottagers of whom the ground provides copious evidence. I suppose wildlife often does best in environments least welcoming to humans, and this is hardly Chernobyl.

I'm sufficiently behind with Battlestar Galactica that, in the week where most people are still OMG-ing over the finale, I've just watched Razor. Which doesn't suck like some of the one-off episodes do, but has the common problem of retcons - why was this never mentioned before? Partly dodged by the focus on a new character, but again - why should I invest in this character when the mere fact of us being in a flashback is a pretty good clue that she's not going to make it? Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that is not a razor, you twits.
I really should get Season 4 pretty pronto.

Today: the zoo, and 18 Carat Love Affair at 93 Feet East (which works quite well, doesn't it, both starting with numbers like that).

Current Music: The Couples - The Long Blondes

The radio adaptation of Iain M Banks' 'The State of the Art' reminded me how much that bloody story depressed me. Reading the Culture books out of order, because it doesn't really matter, I'd concluded that getting a native writer to introduce the concept of the Culture to a civilisation ahead of formal contact was exactly the sort of thing that wise and wonderful society might attempt. Except then I got to this one, where they find "the place with the genocide", aka Earth, and ultimately decide against contact. And all this set in 1977. I could have lived my whole life in the Culture, you bastards. Anyway. Good adaptation by Paul Cornell, and with the Doctor-who-never-was, Paterson Joseph, as one of the leads. Opposite Nina Sosanya, though race is never specified as an issue; I wonder if that would be as doable on TV? I'd like to think so. All the Who alumni reminded me that before I'd ever read Banks, my first encounter with the Culture was through their Who book analogues, the People. Even then I recognised it as perhaps the first utopia I'd ever seen which really felt like somewhere I'd want to live. Well, that and Miracleman, but if the latter ever does get completed, I now know that Gaiman planned for The Golden Age (where I thought the story ended, with balloons) to be followed by Silver and Dark Ages.

Channel 4 inexplicably scheduled the two things I wanted to watch this week opposite each other - nice work there, chaps. Well, OK, there was that Heston Blumenthal show in which he made absinthe & d1ldo jelly, but for all that I love his mad science, at times I was reminded that I was watching a cookery show, got bored and had to read a book on folklore. Which reminded me about the concept of being 'elf-struck' just as the ads showed that one about stroke symptoms - followed by one for Fairy. Terrifying moment. So anyway, C4 putting perhaps the most heartwarming episode of Skins ever opposite the terrifying Red Riding, a missive from that nasty old England of Black Box Recorder's that I was talking about recently, Life on Mars without the laughs. I had been looking forward to this flush of David Peace adaptations, but while this one (of a book I've not read) convinced me, I no longer have any interest in The Damned United given the producer 'said the film-makers had taken a conscious decision to lighten the book's tone. "We didn't dwell on his alcoholism or his decline. That wasn't the story we wanted to tell. In quite tough times, we wanted to make a film with an upbeat ending - you come out of the cinema thinking it was an enjoyable experience and that Clough was a good guy."'

Drayton Park - a station I've been through plenty of times on the train, but in spite of how near I knew it must be to me, not somewhere I'd ever passed on foot. This week I finally found it, part of a whole area sharing the name, tucked away between Highbury and Holloway with the same sort of tesseract magic as London uses to hide Somers Town away where there really shouldn't be space for a district. I love this city and its labyrinths. Passing through there en route to Shoreditch where 18 Carat Love Affair were playing with fewer bands than expected at the Legion, a venue whose refits have actually worked out pretty well, unusually for the area. Broke off from talking to their singer about Alan Moore to go to the bar, where the barman who served me had SOLVE and COAGULA tattooed down his arms; if the 'elf-struck' coincidence was terrifying, this one reminded me of the happier side of living in a world where magic happens.

More Catholic hilarity as helping a nine year old, raped by her stepfather since age 6, to obtain an abortion is judged excommunicable! No word whether Pope Sidious has personally approved this decision, but I think we can assume so. He's probably offered the stepfather a job too, he seems to have the main skills required for the priesthood.
edit: This Vatican endorsement of the Brazilian church's position just in.

Current Mood: Soul Mole tonight!
Current Music: Desolation Row - Bob Dylan

Citizens of Finny P: anyone got any idea what's happened on Hanley Road? Neither Google News nor shopkeepers has anything. I would say that the Dairy finally got the reaction it deserves, except that it's still open for business and the police/medical presence seems to be concentrated around a red door next to the Chinese takeaway.

Scanning my spam folder for the inevitable victims of Gmail's over-eager gatekeeping, I see mails from earlier this week boasting "Become really wanted by women in 2008!" I'm used to viagra and bank scams, but spam selling time machines? Even only short-hop ones? That's tempting.

Left to my own devices on V-Day - Richmond's across the international date line or something - I contented myself with gigging and the (very full) Prom. The Sex Tourists and 18 Carat Love Affair both on fine form, the latter covering 'The Look of Love (Part 1)' which, while not the Lexicon of Love track I'd have chosen for Valentine's Day, is still clearly ace. Steve, having by now come to recognise me as an enthusiastic shouter-along on 'Five Rounds Rapid', got a bit overenthusiastic while sticking the mic in my face and chinned me, but hey, that's showbusiness.

All the crisp blogging lately has been about those new Walkers flavours, but for me the overlooked story is the pickled onion renaissance. The old-style Monster Munch got some attention, but as well as the return of the cyclic, yummy Pickled Onion Walkers Crisp, corner shops have lately started dangling a new challenger, Pickled Onion Crunchy Sticks, which I can strongly recommend. PO used to be my second favourite flavour, but salt & vinegar's not what it was - presumably because the saltiness necessary for a decent bite is anathema under new health agendas. Oh Walkers Max Salt & Vinegar, thou shouldst be living at this hour - but in your absence, increasingly I find pickled onion is where satisfying crisping is at. The downside being, the effect on one's breath is a lot more pernicious than with S&V.

Have abandoned Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian 100 pages in, about the latest I ever quit a book. Yes, the savagery, yes the prose, but...there was no through line. I suspected I was just going to get another 230 pages of the same and when the 'plot' is murderous picaresque, and the central character essentially a cypher, why would I want to do that? I can handle blank leads if it's, say, an early Angela Carter, because the book is shorter for one thing, but also because the incidents through which they travel have a dream-like logic, and a wonder to them. But for an atrocity exhibition like this, I need someone to follow.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Creep - The Afghan Whigs

Mark Twain wrote that "Dollis Hill comes nearer to being a paradise than any other home I ever occupied", and given I like exploring the far reaches of this great city anyway, that mandated a visit.

augstone fancied some daytime drinking - so let's combine the two, we thought, and go for a Dollis Hill pub crawl!
First problem: Dollis Hill has no pubs. Seriously. At its heart, Gladstone Park, and around that, pleasant London suburbia, not dissimilar to the quieter and less exotic regions of Highgate, but less spooky. Gladstone Park, likewise, is a sort of Waterlow or Alexandra Park disrupted by a railway through its midriff - perhaps absent in Twain's day. Maybe those other lands of which Dollis Hill reminds me were also as yet unbuilt, and learned from Dollis Hill's example? My historical sense of London's expansion is patchy, given I tend to regard anything which belongs in London as having always been here*. There are pubs near Dollis Hill, but always just over a road into industrialisation, proletarianism or Irishness. Our original plan was "meet in the pub nearest the station" but, under expert advice, I had checked Fancyapint, just in case, while worrying that Aug might feel this compromised the expeditionary spirit. Thank heavens I did. Its favoured suggestion was full of old Irish soaks, which is fine, and in the midst of some carpentry, which is allowable, but was also playing 'The Wind Beneath My Wings', so we didn't stay. Everything else the web had suggested would be heading back down towards Kilburn, so instead we investigated the Ox & Gate, which had nice leather chairs. The gents here had a huge stash of empty sleeves for hooky p0rn DVDs; clearly these are purchased alongside boy films the mrs would never think to investigate, and then secreted inside the actioner's sleeve. Cunning. We cross the North Circular a bridge too early, passing a supplier of sex equipment on one side and a purveyor on the other. This doesn't seem a particularly libidinous area, but perhaps there's nothing else to do? The reservoir is unusually birdless, having fewer than the tiny pond in Gladstone Park; maybe the ducks really like the naked statue in the park pond, Maybe Mark Twain did too.
We head back via Willesden Green, hoping that not being Dollis Hill proper, there may be pubs. We pass two carpet shops and two auto parts shops before we see anything even faintly resembling one, instead contenting ourselves with Crazy Cock - a Bulgarian restaurant rather than another fleshpot. They have folk music TV playing - does Britain, with all its music channels, have anything of the sort? There are forests and fine jackets, and Aug wants a residency. I knew nothing of Bulgarian cuisine before, in spite of an ancestor helping to underwrite the country's foundation, but can now tell you that they do very fine things with cheese.
Then, via a brief stop at a gastro affair which is at least visible from Willesden Green station, back to the centre. I have always steered clear of the Old Blue Last before, suspecting that anywhere owned by Vice magazine would probably be full of tossers. I am slightly wrong, in that the crowd are not so much hipsters as their larval form. I am reminded of the old moral dilemma - if you could go back in time and kill Bloc Party when they were as yet innocent of their crimes, would it be justified? Not that I could ever see the dilemma, mind. Even in the version which substitutes Hitler, the only worry is the practical consideration of whether that might have given Stalin a freer hand. Anyway, the Old Blue Last still manages its own spot of Pub Fail; they have at least three draught pints off with no glasses over the pumps, the felchratchets. First act on is one Kit Richardson, who looks like Imelda Staunton dressed as Little Boots, and sounds like a third-rate Tori Amos. Do Not Want. The 18 Carat Love Affair, however, are excellent as ever even in this terrible place; there's a song I don't recognise called 'Eleanor' which is every bit as good as the rest of their material. Aug says he doesn't really know who to compare them to, sound-wise, and I know what he means, and I think that's a good thing.
The next band on feature a former member of Special Needs. We don't stay.

Undecided on nu-Skins as yet, though given how much more the first two series were than the first episode let on, I'm certainly planning to keep watching. The new male leads seem more irksome, though, consisting as they do of a lout, a hairstyle and the OCD kid who appears to have escaped from The Big Bang Theory. Still, we have lovely lovely Effy (and I believe I'm now allowed to say that without going on the Register), and scatty Pandora, and the twins and Naomi Campbell seem promising. As does the new teacher, although having Ardal O'Hanlon playing a cross between Roy from The IT Crowd and Dylan Moran strikes one as a sort of mad science experiment in concentrated Irishness.
(Am also watching the third series of Oz, and idly wondering whether there's any possibility of a crossover)

*For instance, that scene in A Knight's Tale with the Eye revolving beside the mediaeval Thames? Perfect.

Current Mood: not bad
Current Music: Lips Are Unhappy - Lucky Soul

The weather has been very extreme lately, hasn't it? By which I don't just mean the obvious cold, though that has at times been too much even for me, and that's rare in London. I mean how on Wednesday night the moisture in the air turned each streetlight into a little sun, so bright and burning I had to keep my eyes low. I mean how yesterday from the Crouch End rail bridge, the clouds in the sky over Archway looked like the work of one of the better 18th century landscape painters. I mean how yesterday was so Victorian-ly foggy that seeing Steve 586 with a copy of From Hell under his arm at the 18 Carat Love Affair gig gave me a brief flash of genuine fright before I started grinning.

Am three episodes into the third season of Battlestar Galactica (yes, late, I know), with the brave human insurgents finding they have no other option but to launch suicide bombing campaigns against the Cylon oppressors, and the Cylons finding their good intentions fraying as they realise the humans don't want the salvation they're offering, and I'm wondering why non-genre fiction and TV so seldom manages anything this relevant. Like, when I read this fairly nothing article about how more modern fiction should be engaged with debt, I knew the guy was missing things, but I've just read the most perfect example, and it's something he's never going to read - Brubaker's The Death Of Captain America, in which the USA's crippling level of debt is part of the Red Skull's plan as surely as the assassination of Steve Rogers. Then tie in to that the debt Cap's old partners feel to him, the debt of politicians to those who paid for their campaigns...it's wonderfully done, and I say that as not that big a Brubaker fan in general. But even the sort of literary bod who's just open-minded enough to read black and white autobiographical crap and maybe even Watchmen is never going to read a Cap comic, so they'll never know.

There's a new shop opened on Stroud Green Road, with a discordant flashing red light loudly proclaiming
Acupuncture
Herbmedic
Massage
This disruptive establishment's name is Pure Harmony.

Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Williams' Blood - Grace Jones

Had various things which I knew I'd remember to blog, and have now of course forgotten. So, the basics - am now redunded, exiting to tears, Prosecco and the best Christmas card ever (a 3D Santa's workshop!). Went for tea and Erte and then on to a young people's indie disco, an experience made enjoyable only by the young people, although this being a free night in Kilburn they were sharing the space with non-young Irish drunks, who to their credit were mostly exhibiting a confused tolerance of the event. Last night, the debut concert by The 18 Carat Love Affair, starring Steve 586 (who now looks like Matt Berry, and that's a compliment), Jim Rhesus and the newly de-Fosca'd

hospitalsoup because otherwise she would find the number of bands of which she's member dropping to dangerously low levels. Way, way more together than any band has a right to be on a first gig, starting off with two songs sufficiently pop that I already felt I knew them just from having been there in time for the soundcheck, and then topping them with the set closer. Because being named after an Associates song is good, but why not then have a song whose lyrics all come from Doctor Who classic The Daemons too?
And then on to a Christmas party where I may conceivably have drunk too much.

Oh, and has anybody else been getting passive-aggressive mails from store cards which seem to have gone a bit bunny boiler?
( Read more... )

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: I Want Snow! - Adekola Sound

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December 2017

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Page Summary

For the dead
That was the week that was
Last night I had one of the best titles ever. Is it in my head today? Ha.
A rant
It was a fine affair but now it's over
How I tired myself out
Running the ripples from shore to shore
baby penguins that live in a volcano and have a fight with a crab.
Parenthetical
almost blatantly immemorial
I happen to like heterosexuality; it's just funnier.
Love In The Time Of Funk
Running up that Hill
Give me wine, and noon-day vices, and brazen-browed iniquities.
Gentleman of Leisure

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

Entries tagged with the 18 carat love affair

For the dead

That was the week that was

Last night I had one of the best titles ever. Is it in my head today? Ha.

A rant

It was a fine affair but now it's over

How I tired myself out

Running the ripples from shore to shore

baby penguins that live in a volcano and have a fight with a crab.

Parenthetical

almost blatantly immemorial

I happen to like heterosexuality; it's just funnier.

Love In The Time Of Funk

Running up that Hill

Give me wine, and noon-day vices, and brazen-browed iniquities.

Gentleman of Leisure