Nice day out today which didn’t include the following scene excactly…
We went to the belowzero (lower case like famous lesbian singers who are a little bit country) ice bar place in Fancy London where it was rather cold but at least we were given gorgeous blue capes with lovely gloves attached on strings… I didn’t fancy getting vodka’d in the afternoon so had a non-alcoholic ‘cocktail’ of fruit juice which was very nice. Nice capes. But is it art? I lost most of the feeling in my fingertips after 25 minutes but it was a good place to visit. Got stuck talking to a random old lady who told me that she had avoided the expensive ‘refill’ prices by having several drinks elsewhere before arriving, which was nice. Old ladies love me for some reason.
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.
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.
I had left a blog post half-written on my Notepad document thing, about Tori Amos and Plushgun but then I forgot I hadn’t wrote it and only remembered after deleting all the words. So instead here are some mostly poor (the out takes are either blurry non-flash or whiteout flash shots) pictures of Cheryl’s 13th birthday at Ben Crouch’s Tavern* * Ben Crouch not actually pictured, same as the Crayola Pony Makeover Kit, Flight of the Conchords DVD, Barmaid Who Couldn’t Make Coffee From A Machine But Was Nice Anyway, the lovely food, the funny toilets, some shots in test tubes and various oddities including a blond man with dyed black hair that didn’t match his face. * She was 24 actually.
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….
I went to London today and felt old, not in a “woe iz me I iz old” way. Got off at Tottenham Court Road and saw the Zavvi had gone… I remember when it was a Virgin Megastore that had a comics section on the first floor which must surely have been in the 80s. Bloody hell! Walked around the corner to find the top part of Charing Cross Road had now all been closed to make way for the new Super Station thing so no more Astoria (in a ’seeing indie bands’ sense, never a ‘fun night at G.A.Y’ sense) , no more Orbital Comics with funky stuff in that basement next to the kebabby place, no more useless cybercafe that used to be the bookshop where I got all those Preachers (the graphic novels, not a shouty fire & brimstone man) in the mid-90s. Added Murder One to the list of deceased indie bookshops (I still miss Comic Showcase and its funny smell) but we paid a visit to the new Orbital Comics (in what was The Photographers’ Gallery! What?) which made up for all the melancholy. It was like being in a Saint Etienne song or something.
What a busy week! I had a (working) day out yesterday and a 10 hour madness shift back in the office today to catch up. Nothing of today would be blogworthy, even receiving my complimentary Jade Goody book. Tuesday was more fun, what with stupidly fiddling with my iPod before going into the bank and letting my cheque blow away, leaving me to chase it around a small park just off the main road. I doubt 1980s Village has seen such fun since that timethe dish ran away with the spoon. Loving the £2.50 Lunch though: Crusty bap, large coffee and some kind of cake or pastry. It’s like Ashes To Ashes without the “hilarious” sexism and racism.
The trip to London included lots of bus rides that could have been beaten by walking. I hate the place and am glad I’m mostly rid of it. I wouldn’t dare complain about one of our delays which was due to a road being cordoned off by police looking at a big red smear in the road. I later found out that a poor cyclist had been knocked down by a lorry and killed. That was my first experience of a death scene and the Daily Mail readers didn’t let that stop them having a typically friendly discussion on the story:
“Do not know details of this terrible accident but all i know is that most cyclists ignore all road signals and lights.”- Mike, London,England, 25/9/2008 10:33
“A tragedy for sure…but what’s the betting she was one of the majority of London cyclists who blithely run every red light they come across?”- Spencer, London, UK, 25/9/2008 12:11
What nice people!
Soundtrack tip for bad commuting on the tube: Antony and the Johnsons. Listening to Hitler In My Heart, The Atrocities or Bird Guhrl while getting sardined is strangely refreshing. Any other trannsexually songs with lots of religious iconography will also do the job.
I think whoever made the new Morningwood video has been to see a certain musical with puppets. Oh yes.
I had some very nice but very tiny yummy finger food last night at a certain famous Indian chef’s book launch. Is it rude to take three mini paneer on tiny toasts at once from the waiter? I did a bit of schmoozing and had a few cocktails but was tired after sales meetings at Tate Britain, Waterstones, WHSmith HQ (mostly gays), Foyles, another Waterstones and, oh you get the idea. We also went past my old old bookshop which is also being regenerated into a bookshop with a big W on it. I sneaked off to Forbidden Planet and bought the newly-released first hardback of Gotham Central, the latest issue of Manhunter and volume one of Terry Moore’s Echo. All very good I am sure. Also nipped into HMV for the Saint Etienne singles and Zavvi where Juno was on the 3 for £20 DVD deal. Next was Fopp where I found myself staring at Patrick Wolf browsing DVDs with his friend. Weirdly enough, I had been after his first album but instead found the Magic Position for a fiver. As I am actually quite shy I left him alone. He is very tall and had funny trousers.
I am so upset about Ruth Kelly pissing off*.
Tomorrow is the grand re-opening of my old shop as it has now fully regenerated. I wonder if it now owns a flute and occasionally wears a pointy hat?
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.
Day three of holiday@home involved going to London again and pottering about in The Tate. No, not Donna Noble, the other one. It was a bit rubbish actually, unless you like hordes of French students with bloody rucksacks and badly-behaved English kids wrestling each other to the ground in the cubism room. I had a lot of art history deja vu when looking at the funny pictures and was reminded why I really couldn’t be bothered with all the arty-fartiness of the olden days life. We took some pictures on the bridge previously known as the wobbly bridge but it was rather sunny so they were mostly squinty, except this one: After that we went off to ye olde docklands to visit Peter and Jeremy in their swanky flat which is probably called an apartment these days. The views included that bloody dome, city airport, the DLR and an enormous pile of junk, which sounds rubbish but it was very nice indeed. We had a barbecue (although mine was ovened as I am one of those funny vegetarians) and lots of posh squash, some rambles about the old days when we (me, Pete and Kate) were students with varying degrees of studiousness (in the 90s), a disagreement about Madonna’s status as anything other than a woman with mediocre talents and a good eye for marketing, and some more posh squash. Then we eventually went home, which took a while…
… We had to watch The Apprentice before going to be of course. It was nice to see the sneaky horrible Chin Bint get fired (although her Environmental Awareness greeting cards idea the other week was genuislike) and then Other Jenny went too, just in time fot the B*Witched reunion. Probably. Her lipstick scared me anyway, giving me Una Stubbs Aunt Sally flashbacks every week. Shame it wasn’t Michael “I am 100% arrogant” Sophocles too, with his random Jewishness that only appears when it suits the ‘plot’ and not when he has to know what a kosher chicken is. As a vegetarian non Jew I thought everyone knew about those things. Siralan wasn’t having any of that bloody nonsense but three “you’re fired!”s in one show would be a bit much. To tie these bloggy events together, I avoided Apprentice spoilers at the barbecue that afternoon when our friend Pete revealed that he had been filmed for a forthcoming episode involving the Apprentices attempting to convince people to hire expensive cars. Now that’s something I look forward to seeing, if he survives the edit. Stay tuned…
After pottering round the house all morning and some of the afternoon (spent watching Sea Devils emerge from the sea and squawk at landmines while The Doctor eats all the sandwiches) it was time to go to London. Again. This time was in the car and not on the tube, which was nice, and it didn’t take as much time too. Marvellous! After parking and buying a panini we wandered to The Drill Hall (yay!) to lurk around outside with other rebrobates before they opened the doors, or so we thought. As we were on the guest list because I have the necessary connections from my Mitchell And Webb fansite-ing (thank you James Bachman) we had guaranteed seats but still wanted to get there early to enjoy the Drill Hall Experience. We actually mean this, no sarcasm intended, and we love the slightly fizzy drinks, the rubbish music (Janet Jackson instead of the usual Five Star, still acceptable) and free gay papers. It beats the BBC Radio Theatre hands down for these special treats and Cheryl in particular was pleased to be there. See?
As we were on a list that wasn’t yet in the hands of the man who ticks the list off when the people on it appear we had to lurk in the foyer for a while and admire the posters, which I sneaked another look at on the way out and had to appear in a photo with. We lurked outside while the people with tickets all went in and Cheryl decided she needed a drink and sulked like a child, but only slightly so. We were eventually let in and relieved to find the place hadn’t changed all that much even though they had bought new tables and put nice pictures on the walls: It was still uncomfortably sweaty in there! Hurrah!
After a drink and a mooch about and finding the third of my ‘+3′ people we all went into the theatre and sat in the bit near the back, trying not to point at people we recognised and failing ever so slightly. David Mitchell looked like he was enjoying himself and Frank Skinner certainly did as he was very nearby and had a loud laugh. The show starred (and was written by) James Bachman and Mark Evans, with acting also done by David ‘David Soul’ Soul as their slightly mental but nice neighbour who knows too much about ways to kill people, Carla ‘My Parents Are Aliens’ Mendonca as their evil neighbour who has a phobia of oompah music, Nicholas Parsons as Nicholas Parsons From Just A Minute, and Jon ‘Spitting Image’ Glover as everybody else. The sound effects woman, whose name I forgot, was also bloody marvellous and a joy to watch in the corner with all her noisy props around her. The show itself was just the perfect amount of silliness and cleverness and readers of this here blog will knopw that I do like a nice bit of silly comedy. I could spoil the plot but I shall not, saying only that it is about a man named James and a man named Mark who share a flat and have strange neighbours who are warlike in different ways. With a bad joke about tactics/ Tic-Tacs. It’s highly recommended and bound to get a series commissioned by the powers-that-be at Radio 4 because it made lots of people laugh a lot and that is the best way to judge a comedy’s success in my eyes. And ears. (Un)expected odd face from me as usual. Sorry.
So keep an ear out for Zoom. I’ll mention it again anyway, as I will mention Jamie having a chat with his comedy hero Nicholas Parsons at the bar and our brief hello and well done with the very nice James Bachman who got us tickets in the first place. Bonus mention for Emma’s enormous handbag. Just what was in there?
The final day of Birthday Week involved wearing my Doctor Who pyjamas after finally getting out of bed, making a mix CD for friends who were visiting London, going to London to see them, having pizza, wandering around shops, buying geek supplies, taking stoopid photos and forgetting to give them the mix CD. Need address please! Chris and Kylie have never seen illuminated signage before, they’re from the midlands. Hamleys was very fun, except for the crazy staff doing demonstrations by throwing stuff. I became slightly obsessed with these horrible stuffed toy frogs and think they must be popular in the town where I work, innit? It’s very hard to fit three people into one self-portrait without a wide angled lense.
Royksopp featuring Robyn’s new track beats it but that is Track Of The Month after all.
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