Went to Fancy London on Wednesday to catch up with old West End Bookshop era people and instantly remembered why rush hour ‘up west’ is equal to a trip to the dentist (and an evil dentist at that) on my enjoyment-ometer. Tube highlights included almost getting actually shoved down the stairs by an arsehole man rushing down the up steps at Tottenham Court Road and then later being squished against the ticket barriers near the exit at Bond Street where no fucker could get in or out of the entrance/exit due to a complete standstill from both directions. Still at least I got a newish Doom Patrol book (good but nothing compares 2 the Grant Morrison era) and the fourth volume of Terry Moore’s Echo at Forbidden Planet. More on Echo here somewhere, it is a good example of comics for girls or non-comicy types.

Couldn’t resist popping into the old domain i.e. what was Books Etc Lumley Street and is now That Waterstones Opposite Selfridges. Found the Stewart Lee book (all wordy and no drawings or nuffink, how will I cope? Quite well so far actually) and almost left it at the till after paying because I am an idiot who was more concerned with being nice to the woman serving as she had just dealt with a disgruntles refunder. Oh happy memories of the public. Met the cream of the old team in the ‘local’ pub we always used to go to on work nights out and had the same drinks we used to like in those days. A lovely time was had and I amost ordered the ‘veggie fish and chips’ which was battered haloumi instead of fishy bits but the chip butty was irresistable. Thrilling stuff for anyone to read here, I am sure. I was amused that the Evil  Empire HQ aka Borders Charing Cross Road is now a garish red T K Maxx and the side of the road where the Astoria was is now completely demolished so the boards are up on the ‘Borders’ side now. I think London can survive without some kebab shops that also sell internet or somehting if there will be a lovely train station there one day.

Friday was the work wife trip to Not Crossroads Motel aka this place. Jamie had a big meeting for most of the day but as there was evening fun planned I came for the whole day as I like free drinks and planned to hide under a table or something. While the workforce were split into teams in the style of Non-Celebrity Come Apprentice With Me I entertained myself by sitting in  the hotel bar for a bit and listened to a Jehovah’s Witness couple plan their wedding reception with a smiley robotic woman,  read some of the Stewart Lee book which is all about his stand up (transcripts with copious notes, great), found a fellow wife to chat to, ‘gatecrashed’ the work lunch of chippy chips and sandwiches, tested orange coloured sweets to see if they were orange flavoured or just coloured for someone who was allergic to oranges and eventually managed to book into my room despite it not being in my name as I do not work for The Company. I pitied the receptionist as I had been on the caffeine and sweets by this point.

Lamp!

A lorra lorra pillows!

Here is what I learnt by watching daytime television in the room: There is a new boyband who are number one and are not like a normal boyband oh no not at all, according to the boyband. They are however good at walking in slow motion at the same speed together and doing that serious face and an ‘ooh girl’ face too. They were as rubbish as you would expect. I also learnt that everyone is using autotune now even if they can actually sing in tune so was all confused. I heard what Katy Perry sounds like and it is indeed as shit as she dresses. Then I turned the television set off and had a little nap.

I am not anti-autotune though. It is used well in the marvellous Auto Tune The News:

There were no major incidents in the evening for once and I even managed to not turn a chat with last year’s woman who wanted a gay best friend into a drama. Mostly because she was sober. Dinner was nice but I had a peppercorn moment during the tangy ratatouille and then got a bit too drunk too quick so I had a break and buggered off to the room for a while, had a bath, despaired at my uber-paunch (those big hotel mirrors are so unforgiving), watched a bit of a dreadful BBC Three thing where poshos from  Chelsea lived in Peckham with fierce girls in a totally non-exploitative way (shockingly not narrated by Robert Webb) and then  returned to find several people  had progressed from ‘tipsy’ to ‘wankered’ and were ‘singing.’ We decided many things including it is best for people to get married only when they want to and to have the kind of knees-up they actually like, how it is not a great idea to resemble a Quality Street, that team building rarely builds teams in the way that it is meant to and that random drunk men with moustaches are bound to fall over if they are allowed to stagger round a bar for long enough. Good night, even though Jamie was quite boozy and wandering hands-ish. Dirty old man!

Well that’s that all done, again, for the final time. Books Etc was a great little book chain that got bought by the big boys who tried to change it to fit their (flawed) model and then decided they didn’t love it enough to look after it. The big boys went boom shortly after the decision was made to get rid of the remaining stores that nobody wanted to buy. Shame! The Books Etc Wake was a great night out last night and I was glad to hear that quite a few of the managers had new jobs lined up for the new year. Here are some ridiculous photographs:

Industry news magazine/website The Bookseller were apparently there too and I think they took their photo on a camera phone.

Bank Holidays (I don’t even work in a bank and I get a paid day off, how about that?) are weird. We hadn’t exactly done a lot this weekend and I couldn’t deal with any more lectures on tile grouting, how bathrooms work, what the difference between white and off-white is… well you get the idea. I think I’ll have to put finished bathroom photos on here when we get to that stage, just to draw a virtual line on it. So we went off to Old Bookshop Town to buy shirts, a lamp, a wallet (no pigeon) and Nut Hut chocolate covered nuts. No lamp but we did visit the old bookshop of course and said hello to some of the people I like to say hello to there. Some had a day off because they do not work in a bank as well, like we do. I think I am rambling now and getting confused so I should eat more blackcurrants, right?

Riiiighttt…

Other things learnt today:
I had no idea Rashida Jones (from The Office and Parks & Recreation) had been in Freaks and Geeks but then everyone else had so it shouldn’t have been a “huh?” moment.
There is nothing on telly on Bank Holiday Monday. But not literally.

Those Babelcolour Doctor Who YouTube productions continue to entertain.

There’s a new Roisin song that is rather spiffing… thanks XO’s blog.

It’s Sunday and I am trapped in my room while Jamie does more work for work and my dad does more tiling for our bathroom. Occasional banging and drilling (ooer) means my reading of Under The Skin (halfway throught now and it is a proper book and everything) gets distracting so I shift to catching up on the Phonogram comics. Yes real comics not collected editions. Gotta support the indies and so I bought them on my London trip on Friday where I went for drinks and lots of chips & wedges with old bookshoppy people and micro-celeb spotted Denise Black from Queer As Folk in the pub and Rikki Beadle-Blair from all sorts of theatre and TV stuff in the newsagent next to Fopp where I bought a Snickers. It’s a showbiz whirl, so it is.

Stuff of interest this week:

The Saint Etienne deluxe reissues begin and one of them is more of an ‘issue’ as Continental has never been out in the UK. My pirated copy will soon go in the bin when I get the real thing. It’s got some of my favourite tracks on it plus some that have never even been released anywhere ever. Also out at the same time: Foxbase Alpha. That’ll be my third purchase of it (I think the cassette lives in a dusty drawer) but I have deluxe fever and it has new songs called Chase HQ, Sally Space, The Reckoning, Sweet Pea and Winter In America.

If I was drunk I would have bought this in London:

Christopher Eccleston miniature Hero? With wallet, staff and pigeon? Who could resist?

Well me actually. Although I loved this week’s BBC2 episode.

Another week, another last week’s The Apprehensive episode.

Pants. Etc.

Other thrilling events this week include the moment I realised that eating a yogurt whose lid had puffed up and tasted a bit funny was probably not a good idea, the moment where I realised that all the bottles of Kopparberg pear cider in my cupboard were of the previously-unheard-of non-alcoholic variety (why? why? why?) and the moment that this wek’s episode of Dollhouse was rather good and surprising again. Which means of course that it will be scrapped as I am a sucker for those prematurely-cancelled telly shows.

This week I have been to London twice (and not stepped inside a comic shop both times) for work. Once for a sales conference filled with delightfully posh women who said things like “plahstic” and I ended up in a conversation about Twitter because I am the one who understands things like that. Publisher in question has quite a few Twit followers so I wouldn’t worry if I was them. Met some authors, one of which who keeps cropping up at things but I didn’t tell him I prefered it since Ms Toksvig replaced him. Today’s trip was a big stock check mostly involving obscure woodwork titles. My brain dissolved after 4 hours so I went off to buy shoes (plain boring black ones to go with my new suit which is not black but doesn’t suit the current brown shoes) and for some reason the nice man who served me thought I was a teacher and asked me about it. Cue blank face then blagging. Nobody talks to shop workers so I actually make an effort to be friendly. Unlike with most other people, as I am usually a right grumpy (and actually shy) bastard.

XO pointed this out…

The general consensus is hurrah for Tori but cheap typeface. And that hair (wig?) just reminds me of ClaireBear from Heroes. Her un-super wig has almost put me off watching that particular show but I’m holding on in there. This week’s (BBC2) episode showed some promise and the appearance of Movie Donna Hayward might have helped.

Other shocking picture of the day:

I bet this model would never sing the feem tune like the old one.

Currently listening to a sampler of The Bloody Pet Shop Boys new album. S’alright, innit? Royksopp featuring Robyn’s new track beats it but that is Track Of The Month after all.

Why am I still making these LOLyoaks?

I think it’s the only way I can cope with the show most of the time. I like to make myself suffer.

Back to that song…. The Girl and The Robot (i have now upgraded it to Song Of The Year) is downloadable here right now. Click it and play it to death. The album‘s pretty great too….

Did you listen to it?

What a peculiar week, lots and lots of variety in the stuff what I got done:

My first ‘taking an author around loads of shops to sign their books’ (if the bookshop can find the books that is) went well. Could have done without the disgusting rainy weather though, but my psychic shopping powers came through when I bought a big mac (of the coat variety, not the cow in bread variety) a few days earlier.

It stopped raining on Tuesday for a bit and I finally got the office cleared of book debris enough to get a lady in to clean the carpet. Lovely Spanish cleaning lady did make me feel a bit Lucille Bluth but I didn’t traumatise her and I even got to go upstairs in the office building for the first time ever. If the place is so huge how come I rarely see any other humans?

Look at my lovely office space now:

What an exciting panorama.

This week’s new music moments found me finally liking a song from IAMX and playing that Frankmusik song a bit too much:

I think he’ll be on my list of Music 2009 people, even without his giant keyboard.

I escaped into the Other World Of Books on Friday with a trip to Ye Olde Bookshoppe. They have now added a squillion extra staff to go nicely with the new carpets and sparkly Christmasness but thankfully there were still some old faces left there. Not that they look haggard or anything. Hurrah for loyalty cards and early Christmas shopping.

Talking of Christmas shopping, we had a treat on Saturday and went to The Big Tesco in Dead Set Town, as Jamie’s office is just down the road and he had to do something to the WOTAN they have in a special server room. I was disppointed to find no zombies anywhere near the Big Brother studio, just lots an lots of people, some of whom were scary in other ways. Not since Big Tesco (Essex Version) have I been so confused by the locals. Women who looked pregnant but probably weren’t, a chav version of the Milky Bar Kid, too many babies with pierced ears, old ldies wth massive lacquered hair and faces drawn on with felt pens… I was so bewildered that I could not work out how to put the trolley back and get the £1 coin out. Seriously. Jamie had to show me, and my excuse was that I have never shopped anywhere with such a high trolley theft rate that they had to introduce such a system. I had a good mind to write to The Daily Mail!

And before I forget:

Now let’s move over to the play area…

Bloody hell, I’m busy. My ‘half day’ became a whole day and I had to force myself to log off the work machine by leaving a trail of cake crumbs from thre kitchen to the home office. No I don’t work at The Home Office. Anyway… I could waffle about the strange bus people like the randomly-timed-grins man who had a funny walk and a Daily Express or the disappearance of the teenager I named Chinese Yet Tall (one point for comedy reference identification) who used to get on every morning, or the unhilarity of the bus breaking down after only five minutes of the journey, leaving the road blocked and people getting all uppity but that would be boring. I could mention the nice old Polish lady from the 1980s Bakery in the village who gave me the advice of putting a cactus on my desk to absorb the electricity from my computer screen after I mentioned eye strain headaches. But I won’t. I could mention by brother having his 40th birthday and my sister finally leaving home to be a proper student (hurrah for student halls, she’ll love it) but I’ll just do more of the usual expected stuff, with comics to follow tomorrow…

Thom sent me a video clip that startled, amused and disturbed me in equal measures. From the ‘hit’ BBC show Duet Impossible where live modern singers ‘duet’ with dead old ones comes this…

Which disobeys all the rules of the show. I love the arrogance and rubbishness of it, plus the expected banter and wonky hat.

Cover any small person’s eyes, it’s a man in a dress!

David Walliams has a children’s book out and people in the know whose opinions I value say it is a rather nice book. With Quentin Blake illustrations and everything! It’s about a boy who wears a dress and is called, unsurprisingly, The Boy In The Dress. I thought the Daily Mail would love it, especially when David posed in some dresses to ram it down their throats. Or something:

I find his behaviour and these pictures rather sickening to say the least. Is he supposed to be funny ???
- Jan, North Oxfordshire, 8/10/2008 13:22

Ugh. These pictures give me the creeps. And what are children going to think if they see them?
- Sarah, Belgium, 8/10/2008 9:40

It just looks so weird……
- Jacqui Weems, Southampton, 8/10/2008 11:34

A childrens book – wrong, wrong, wrong!
- Lynne, Durham, 8/10/2008 12:33

What if children see pictures of David in a dress? It’s promoting a fucking book for children, you imbecile! Yes, a children’s book! For children!

I had a great spam email the other day from a nice African chap. There are so many of them who have thought of convoluted schemes to give complete strangers money, I am like well impressed. The way he ended the email put him in a class of his own though:

Note I am a man of 49 years old, i’ll not lie to you, please do not do the same to me.

Yours truly,
Mr. Eric Igwe

He’s 49? Why didn’t he say that at the start?

Where’s all my money gone?

I do so enjoy Heroes, it’s like X-Men comics for the masses, you never know what bit is going to be homaged next. I liked talking about it on Facebook and I am a lazy git so here are some thoughts:

Dan liked the Veronica Mars moment in Heroes Unmasked. But they don’t wear masks! and Super Suresh is just wrong. All baby-oil Spider-Man wrong! 10:16pm

Dan Hollingsworth at 10:31pm
I liked that there were several moments where I thought that the writers had spent their strike time watching Hollyoaks.

Dan Hollingsworth at 10:54pm
It was good, in a Hollyoaks-with-powers way! Today’s Hollyoaks was actually more ridiculous than Heroes, wth the bending of time and space, spider-sense and super strength on show.

Dan Hollingsworth at 10:54pm
Why is that awful woman with the killer tears suddenly
A) Not a baddie
B) Glamorous
C) Very American
D) Sampling Super Mohinder’s special black todger tears?

Dan
I love Sylar’s special blend of sinister, eyebrow acting, vests and camp. But why do all future timeline version characters have scarred faces?

Tabloid crap time (again):

At least nobody would be able to tell by looking at her.

Oh dear. It looks like the Grinning Eastenders Gay Man had a bit of a canoodle on Arfur’s bench and upset some people. I wonder if all the violence, murderings, paedophile grooming (that phrase always makes me think of My Little Pony for some reason) and abuse of the English language also got them upset?

Complaints pour into BBC after EastEnders screens gay kiss before the watershed
By Daily Mail Reporter

The BBC has been flooded with complaints after screening a gay kiss on EastEnders before the 9pm watershed.

I hope Pat’s seven year old son who thinks he is gay because he kisses his dad gets taken into care if Pat cannot adequately explain the absurdity of the situation. I don’t think she has done very well so far. Not to mention letting a seven year old watch Eastenders. Surely something more appropriate like the lastest Saw film would have not had any gaiety?

The BBC statement read: ‘We approach our portrayal of homosexual relationships in the same way as we do heterosexual relationships. We believe that the general tone and content of EastEnders is now widely recognised. Parents can make an informed decision as to whether they want their children to watch.’

Whatever next? Not tattooing gay people’s bottoms with ‘Sodomy Kills’?

Mail readers mostly thought Pat was insane (phew) but there were a few of the usual suspects whose brains malfuctioned enough to prompt them to comment:

What’s the point of having a watershed then? Either move Eastenders to 9pm or don’t show scenes like these. I have a 12 year-old and I don’t let him watch Eastenders for this very reason.
- sarah, dorset, 9/10/2008 14:47

I just do not want to see this ever. Forget all the PC crap about it being ‘legal’. If the gay community is 10% of the whole, how come they are constanttly shoving it into our faces? Pensioners don’t and they are a much larger part of our community.
- Bob Baillie, Southampton, 9/10/2008 14:54

There are no pensioners on Eastenders of course, and what is this obsession with “shoving it in our faces”? If it’s not that it’ll be “ramming it down our throats.” Are they trying to tell us something? Actually, I’d rather not know.

What a thrilling day I have had!

Not.

I was glad that I decided to work from home as the world of publishing decided to go to sleep today (maybe in preparation for the bank holiday long weekend?) and I only had a dozen emails. Yes, a dozen, I am an old man who speaks in imperials. So I did some work on paper instead as the teeny tiny words on the screen via my remote access made my brain explode.

After going back on the ventolin last night I decided I am either getting allergic-ized by dust mites from the Book Mountain and manky carpet in the office or am reacting all funny to cow’s milk (but this idea was not infuenced by Heather Mills and her pus obsession, honest) as I have prickly skin so as I needed some exercise (my belly droops now, like other parts of my body) I went to the local shop for soya milk. On the way I saw lots of egg shells on the pavement, a man having an argument with some pigeons (“come on now pigeons, be quiet please!”) and the umpteenth child arrive at our childminder neighbour’s house. As it was quiet out the back during the day I assume the dungeon beat the garden as their destination of choice.

Anyway…

Soya milk is peculiar as it is mostly water, but it felt okay after a few cups of tea. I was haunted by images of one-legged smug women while drinking but that will soon pass. Let’s see what happens as Bad Milk is supposed to make asthma worse and I have a huge collection of dodgy genes that must be due for a food allergy soon.

My old bookshop is being sold, along with most of the other branches, to the rival chain. The rival chain are must more professional and organised (I now see things from the other side of the industry) so it’s a good thing but still a bit traumatic. The last day of trade before the Bookshop Menopause is also the anniversary of that massive terrorist attack on a certain other country, which is a bit sinister. Or something.

I need to do some exercise because I am office-bound now and no longer running about all day long. But I am lazy and have bad knees. So sod it.

Today’s Express is a classic:

Invasion time! Is this the BNP news? No, they don’t have Tragic Brunette Corner, Weather Nonsense or Competition shit.

The one from Wednesday was also quite mad:

Random Health Nonsense, a famous paedophile and The Express being nice about a black woman! What’s going on?

As was Tuesday’s:

Express turns into sulky teen, some Competition Shit, Random Health Obviousness and Weather Nonsense.

The World’s Greatest Newspaper. And it really is.

I escaped the office today and went out ‘on the road.’ The road was the tube where I bumped into one of my old booksellers and the first port of call was The Imperial War Museum who have a bookshop hidden behind the big tanks. After a slight delay while the burly security guard had to use his walkie-talkie thing to get us in (no he didn’t do the crackly radio noise over it) we sold loads of military books about wars and stuff to a nice man who knew my friend Adam who knows everyone in the world of books. I think he might be famous… Next was my friend Adam’s bookshop but he was on holiday so I saw other familiar people and ended up using their computer system to add most of the titles on as they ran out of time and we had lots of nice things for them. It’s like I never left. But I have. Then onto my friend Helen’s bookshop for more of the same titles and then off to a tiny specialist shop in the west end for more military historyness. My celebrity spot of the day was TV (My So-Called Life) and film (Requiem For A Dream)’s Jared Leto looking pretty near the Avenue Q theatre. I think I stared a bit as I used to have a schoolboy crush on him. Too much coffee was drunk, yummy cakes were eaten, sugar rush was endured. Tomorrow is Office Day and Friday might be Work From Home before the Super Duper Bank Holiday Weekend…

This week’s book purchases:

I gave in and bought Volume 1 of Angel: After The Fall. It works better as a book instead of monthly comic instalments but is nowhere near as good as the similarly-marketed Buffy comics.

Tori Amos’ Comic Book Tattoo is big and heavy and in paperback as the hardback version would have snapped my puny wrists. It’s lots and lots (over 80) of Tori songs interpreted via the medium of graphic novelisms and creators include David ‘Kabuki’ Mack, Mark ‘Fables’ Buckingham, Mike ‘Sandman’ Dringenberg, and Pia ‘Y:The Last Man’ Guerra so that might tempt you.

The new Who Mag is out.

I want to go read it right now.

Bye!

What a crazy week… I could go on and on about it but I still have loads of housework to do…




One Batman film,
Two leaving events,
Three ‘bring your friend to work to take over the bookshop’ days,
Four smutty ‘magic wand’ jokes at the expense of all those gaywise magic men,
Five fizzy drinks over the limit…

I need to sleep for a week but there is a lot to do. I start at the office on Monday but thanks to my fantastic bookshoppy folks I have an iPod speakers thing, a mini fan and a frame full of silly photos for my desk. What more do I need? Loads of new Doctor Who figures? A new mini Tardis? A useful notebook amusingly from the evil nemesis company? Chocolate nuts in a posh wrapper?

Plus, due to busy hectic times:
New comic books? New Doctor Who Brain Of Morbius DVD? New Big Finish Doctor Who Sisters Of The Flame CD? Freddie Mercury hardback graphic novel? Neil Gaiman future novel proof edition? French Chick remixes CD? Series 4 of Mr Show DVD?

And there’s more. But I shall shut up now.

Thanks, book folks.

Next week:
The spin-off show begins! But am I Angel or merely Cordelia?