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

Well, it's not great, especially given prior projections of the Lib Dems smashing through and ending two party politics for good, but it's not as bad as it could have been either. Cameron doesn't have the majority to rip off his cuddly mask and reveal Zombie Thatcher underneath; the Greens got an MP and Galloway, the Nazis and the Christians didn't; Brown is giving the distinct impression of an unwanted party guest who has finally realised that he should maybe leave...there are seats still to declare even before the coalitions are hacked out of the rough stone, but I suspect this is liveable. Though it would help if Labour diehards would stop these panicked claims that Clegg has 'endorsed' Cameron. No, he's said he will talk to them first but they "must prove they can govern in the national interest". Could the code be much clearer? Talk of an endorsement just plays into Tory hands, that's the narrative they want to spin.

I'd been given to understand that Iron Man 2 was a bit of a disappointment. Huh? OK, so it wasn't perfect. ( spoilers ) I loved it.

Justified, like Luther, sees a former HBO star back and playing a cop whose relationship to his ex-wife is not calculated to see him keep his badge. It is also, however, rather good. The lawman this time is Timothy Olyphant of Deadwood (also the villain in Live Free or Die Hard), essentially playing the same character (right down - or up - to the cowboy hat), except with slightly less of a stick up his ass. He never draws his sidearm except to shoot to kill. Fortunately, he's very quick on the draw. He's back in the Kentucky mining town where he grew up and chasing a former acquaintance who's now a white supremacist asshole (not exactly a challenging departure in terms of roles for Walton Goggins, either - he was formerly dickhead Shane on The Shield). So far it's nothing radical or new, but it is very well-constructed and thoroughly gripping.

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.

The villain stands triumphant in the House of Commons, bloodied corpses on the benches to either side; comics are done about three months in advance, minimum, so when this was being written and drawn, there's no way anyone could have known that by the time it came out last week, that would not be the mid-story 'oh no, how can our heroes save the day now?' moment. That is no longer a cliffhanger, it's a feel-good moment. And, given the villain in question is the bloodsucker Dracula, one rich with poetic justice.
Marvel's version of Dracula seems to be deeply unpopular with readers of a certain age, but I don't mind him; more than I can say for the recent-ish Marc Warren version, which I foolishly attempted to watch over the weekend (vampirism is a bit like an STD and Victorians are hypocrites, DYS?). And I wish that were where I could leave the vampire topic, but over the weekend, I was cajoled into doing a very bad thing. Having been drinking for some hours, I was convinced to watch Twilight, and for all my ire at the very principle of a True Love Waits vampire story...it's not that bad. Though it left me with far more longing for a) the Pacific Northwest b) vampirism for myself than for that self-loathing pillock Edward Cullen.

Yesterday, a small group of those of us with whose services British industry has inexplicably and temporarily decided it can do without went for a lovely little wander around Bloomsbury, looking at comics and small blue hippos and getting bvkkaked by those fluffy seeds which are everywhere this spring. But in case that left everything too cheery, we finished it off with a couple of episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist, an anime based on a manga which had always looked to me like it was at the fluffy, Naruto end of the market. And yes, it has someone who goes all stylised and cute when people call him short...but it also appears to be a harrowing tale of magical misadventure, fascist government and implied genocide. Which is obviously brilliant. Plus, it has a camp alchemist called Alexander Armstrong, who had better declare it Pimm's o'clock by series' end or there'll be trouble.
And then home for the last ever episode of the police corruption horrorshow that is The Shield. I wasn't satisfied with every beat of it; ( spoilers )

Since I made it back from Devon and a resurgent cold it's been a delightful haze of parties and pubs (and thank you all for a lovely birthday, it made entering the rather characterless age of 31 a pleasure rather than a puzzle). I love these inbetween days - one of my presents was Intermission, a compilation of solo Go-Betweens tracks from the period of their split, and as well as being lovely anyway, the name and the cold sun outside make it a good fit for right now.

My reservations about that BBC4 series on fantasy have been strengthened now that I've made a start on ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, a book to which The Lord of the Rings was compared at its launch. It's at once recognisable as part of the same tradition, and a bizarre vision of an alternate track fantasy could have taken. Not so much in the style - although it makes Tolkien look like a dirty realist at times* - as in how it lays out the toolbox. Eddison does much what Tolkien did to people Middle Earth - he takes the names of spirits from folklore, and then ascribes them to human-like races in his imagined world. But after sixty years of Tolkien-derived fantasy, we're used to elves and dwarves and goblins. Eddison, on the other hand, calls his races witches and demons and imps, and from those names we don't expect solid, human-like races, even if the demons do make the concession of having little horns. There are also the foliots, whose name baffled me entirely until I then also started the deranged encyclopaedia that is The Anatomy of Melancholy and learned accidentally and almost at once that they are visitors to forlorn houses who make strange noises in the night. Except here they're not, they're a rather sappy bunch who live on an island and remind me faintly of the Dutch.

Have fulfilled the first of my definite plans for the life of leisure, with a one-sitting reread of All-Star Superman. Which is at times even more perfect than I remember - I especially like how fractal it gets, with lines like "I always write the Superman headlines before they happen" encompassing the whole - but I remain uncomfortably certain that the Bizarro story didn't need to cover two issues.

Finally got round to seeing The Last King of Scotland, and while I was almost as impressed as I expected to be - the central performances are stunning, Forrest Whitaker possibly even excelling his turn in The Shield (whose first series is a tenner on DVD in the HMV sale, and strongly recommended to anyone feeling a Wire-shaped gap in their viewing) - the ending left a little of a nasty taste in my mouth. Clearly the film is massively engaged with the idea of white exceptionalism, but it still seemed to fall slightly into it at the last.

*'"I like not the dirty face of the Ambassador," said Lord Zigg. "His nose sitteth flat on the face of him as it were a dab of clay, and I can see pat up his nostrils a summer day's journey into his head. If's upper lip bespeak him not a rare spouter of rank fustian, perdition catch me. Were it a finger's breadth longer, a might tuck it into his collar to keep his chin warm of a winter's night."
"I like not the smell of the Ambassador," said Lord Brandoch Daha. And he called for censers and sprinklers of lavender and rose water to purify the chamber, and let open the crystal windows that the breezes of heaven might enter and make all sweet.'

Technically adept types: would it theoretically be possible to make an Oyster card virus?

When I first saw that Virgin 1 was on Freeview, I was mainly excited about The Riches. Then I saw a trailer, and...I'm meant to take that accent of Eddie Izzard's seriously? Like I am Hugh Laurie's in House? There's no punchline? Yeah, maybe not. If I couldn't bear My Fair Lady or The Lady From Shanghai, no way can I take it in an ongoing series. So then I was excited about Battlestar Galactica until I realised it was the crappy original, and while I'd love to see Boston Legal, they've scheduled it against The Sopranos. But just before I dismissed this new channel as a bust, I remembered why I was recognising the name The Unit. It's the collaboration between Shawn "The Shield" Ryan and David Mamet about a US covert ops group (I would say Delta Force except these guys appear to be competent, so maybe think of them just as a US SAS), starring President Palmer from 24 as the operational commander and the T-1000 running things back at base. Tense and manly decisions are made, and stuff blows up. The other plot strand is basically Desperate Housewives except not achingly sh1t, with the unit's wives attempting to maintain both a semblance of normal domestic life, and the pretence that their husbands are in some boring logistics division and certainly not off about to get themselves killed in deniable ops behind enemy lines.
It is on Wednesday evenings. Thus far I have only seen one episode (the second of the first series), but I strongly recommend it.

Phonogram readers and the more-or-less sane will note that everyone interviewed in this piece about the Britpop revival is one of the era's war criminals. Why aren't Menswear touring? Why wasn't the return of Marion met with this sort of mainstream coverage?
(Still, even reading a Northern Uproar interview in 2007 can't be as sure a sign of the End Times as a really rather witty piece appearing in Observer Woman magazine)

Am more excited about Black Plastic later than I've been about a club in a while. I think it helps that this month's cover is the front of John Foxx's Metamatic, an album I somehow only discovered this month.

While I think Popjustice may have gone slightly overboard as regards Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad, it really is a lot closer to being consistent and consistently very good than most R&B/pop albums. And when you've got something like 'Umbrella' which could so easily make even pretty good tracks seem like irrelevances by comparison, that's no small achievement.

I used to draw images of tanks and bombers all the time as a child, but I recall no international court taking that as evidence of war crimes in the Midlands. And mine had robots, sorcerors and Cthulhoid entities to boot.

When The Shield returned a month or so back, I was worried that it might suffer by comparison with The Wire after my recent binges on the latter. I needn't have; their moral universes are sufficiently different, the violent disorder and brutal corruption of LA is more than the width of North America away from the inertia and decay of Baltimore - even the hopelessness has a different flavour. But there remain, inevitably, points of connection. I have to avoid watching them too closely together simply because the gang slang of one tends to throw my ear for the gang slang of the other. And in last night's Shield ( spoiler, also for Wire s3 ) Absolutely staggering.

Relaxing at the moment, in the knowledge that I have a real flurry of activity coming - Paul St Paul & the Apostles at Stay Beautiful tonight, then two Tubewalks tomorrow running straight into the free New Royal Family/Low Edges/Luxembourg show at the Bloomsbury Bowl tomorrow.

That line makes more sense now the charts mean nothing much, doesn't it? And David Devant's show on Friday...it was only an inchoate feeling until someone else put it into words for me, but it had an air of finality. Ten years on from the debut album, which was meant to make them stars, they played it in order. First track of the encore, the track which came as a free 7" with the vinyl version. And then apparently thrashing through every other song that came to mind...they did say that they'd see us in three years for the Shiney on the Inside anniversary show, but I'm not especially expecting to see them before that. I don't know, maybe it was just the hearing-album-in-order thing that got me. I've only seen that done before at launch shows, not commemorations.
As first support, the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra were as delightful as ever; I especially enjoyed watching their effect on the uninitiated. And Boogaloo Stu was entertaining enough, even if his outfit was a little *too* tight. But The Reality (edit: apparently these were They Came From The Stars I Saw Them, lying)...I can only surmise that they're sponsored by tobacco industry, because they had the non-smokers heading out on their mates' fag breaks, just to get away. The 100 Club itself, it should be noted, *stinks*. Not the gym fug of the Borderline, more the hospital corridor smell of cheap industrial cleaner. David Devant did provide card Fantasy Fags, but they never got round to enacting whatever magic might have empowered them. And on top of the smell...I saw a psster for a George Melly show. And this set me thinking, a little later, all we need now to sum up everything that's made this past week so abysmal is a Fopp poster. Turn around, and there's an ad for an instore right behind me. From that point on I was just surprised by the absence of Catherine Tate.

The Purple Turtle, on the other hand, doesn't smell at all bad; surprising, I know. But the evening...in terms of the music and such, I still like Stay Beautiful. I find Client fairly boring, but inoffensive, especially since they seem to have laid off the faux sapphism. But the clientele, my dears! So many very ugly people. And I mean that in terms of behaviour as much as anything, though be assured, many of the faces and outfits definitely qualify too. I'm sure it's not normally like this, but it has really rather shaken me.

Bear in mind, I couldn't (until now) investigate people's objections to the end of Heroes in any depth for fear of spoilers - but I get the impression that it was widely loathed. Whereas I'm just vaguely disappointed in the way I often am at the end of big superhero stories by the decisions taken with too much of an eye on the franchise's value and too little on the story. Some bits, though, just don't make sense. ( Queries, incorporating spoilers )
As ever, it is Hiro's arc whose development interests me most.
Still, at least The Shield is still on top form. I've meandered enough before about the bleakness of its moral universe, to general disinterest on here, but this week's episode found another marvellous way to play that.

"Speaking in Hull, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said..."I'm hoping that the central government will match up to what the council is trying to do. The response should be quick, fast and swift.""
Is there even a word for going past tautology and using *three* synonymous terms? Perhaps we should just file this as further evidence for Hitchens' argument that, where once the finest minds had nowhere to go but the clergy, times are very different now.