Banned Books Week 2010 has come to an end, a week where people all over the internet have been up in (virtual) arms about filth we shouldn’t let corrupt innocent little children / the fictionalisation of things which happen every single day* (*delete according to personal views). Continue reading
Ooh eeh ooh, I wanna be like you-ee-oo…
…Or rather I did, once upon a time, but upon recent contemplation I’ve had second thoughts. Continue reading
Saturday night, the Boyf and I had just gathered all the props for a poached ginger plums cook-up to have noms while watching Dr Who when there, on our twitter streams was 140 characters from @amandapalmer offering another 150 tickets to the previously-sold-out Evelyn Evelyn gig. Dr Who and spiced plums were put on hold until Sunday [where they worked perfectly with each other] and we got on a bus all the way across the city to see if we could get ourselves a pair of these new tickets.
It would a terrible story if it ended there, if we didn’t get the tickets and we took another bus back to where we come from. There is, however, no volcano-disrupted-transport-links between my flat and Oran Mor so we made it and got a pair of tickets. [Extra tickets #3 and #4, if I'm not mistaken].
We also got some beautiful wooden flowers from this beautiful creature:
via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdonia/
While we made it across the city, 50% of Evelyn Evelyn and two of the three support acts were still stuck on the other side of the big cloud of volcano ash; that wasn’t going to stop Amanda Palmer though. With the power of twitter to aid her, AFP got a pair of support acts [Bitter Ruin and Edward and the Itch],the instruments and props needed for the full Evelyn Evelyn show and although she admitted it may be a glorious mess, she did it.
There is no denying that the gig was anything but a traditional gig; her crew were stranded overseas so she roped in the audience to help [apparently I looked responsible enough for her to ask me to help with the webcasting. [Responsible? Me? It's the geeky spectacles, they lure everyone in - even rockstars.] I didn’t actually do any webcasting because some be-hatted boy completely bogarted the Mac].
The show itself was supposed to be Evelyn Evelyn – a darkly humorous musical theatre piece focussing on a pair of stage-shy conjoined twins and their evil showbiz manager. There was also to be three “support acts”, Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley and Sxip Shirey. [The "support act" inverted commas as the conjoined twins are played by Palmer and Webley with Shirey as a their manager.]
We did get the Evelyn Evelyn show – there is no denying that. AFP performed the whole show more-or-less by herself, playing all the roles, singing and playing the instruments.
She did have a little help from a time-delayed Jason Webley skype-ing from her apartment…
via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/satanpolaroid/
…some back-up from Bitter Ruin…
via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/satanpolaroid/
… and an audience-genrated puppet-show.
via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/satanpolaroid
The internet, being the kind of place that it is, has homed a number of people who did not enjoy the show [a minority, but a vocal minority]. Their main complaint seems to be that Amanda Palmer didn’t do an Amanda Palmer show, she did the Evelyn Evelyn show. I don’t understand how this can be a complaint. We bought tickets for Evelyn Evelyn, to hear Evelyn Evelyn songs and to see the Evelyn Evelyn show. That is technically what we got; it may not have been as accomplished or polished as it would have been had the whole band been there along with all their extensive stage set – but there is no denying we got the show that we advertised.
Had Amanda Palmer turned up and done an Amanda Palmer gig playing Amanda Palmer songs, people may not have outright complained because they still got a show, but they didn’t get what they we going for. I think you would be in more of a place to complain if she had done an off-the-cuff Amanda Palmer show.
Sure, it was glorious mess and a part of me would still like to have seen a full all-action Evelyn Evelyn show; but instead I saw something that will never be repeated. I still got the show, I still got the songs, I got and saw more audience-interaction than in every other gig I’ve ever been to before – combined – and I loved every single moment of it.
…and this time nobody got frenched by a puppet.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
- The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, Douglas Adams
According to my Goodreads page [which as statistical reading thingymajigers go is my most reliable] in the past two-and-a-bit years I have only rated 6 books out of the 110 I’ve read the chart-topping five out of five gold stars:
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Plague by Albert Camus
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck
If that list is anything to go by we learn I like kids books, books about Nazi-Germany and contemporary classics which wouldn’t go amiss in A-level English classes. My favourite book, however, doesn’t appear on that list. If my Goodreads stats are right I haven’t actually read this book in the last two-and-a-bit years, but I’m not sure I believe those statistics. Maybe I just haven’t read the whole thing from front to back in the last two-and-a-bit years. After all, I’ve read it that often I’m comfortable enough dipping in and out as I feel like.
I like The Picture of Dorian Grey. I like it a lot. I have three or four copies of it in English and one in German. I only stopped myself buying a very fancy leather-bound copy in a musty bookshop in Paris by reminding myself that I can’t actually read French and if I were to buy it – no matter how much I wanted it – it would be wrong. Books are for reading, and buying one just because is not acceptable [although it might have spurned me onto learn French, you never know].
The Picture of Dorian Grey is a timeless story: the Victorian Dandy who does as he pleases causing hell and havoc those around him, without so much as a care nor aging a day. He might not be aging, but up in the attic [where all the best secrets are kept] is the portrait which reveals the true extent of his misdemeanours.
Over the past 100 years the Dorian Grey character has become something of an archetype, and familiar enough to Joe Public to not have to explain his back story. He fought alongside Mina Harker, Captain Nemo and Mr Hyde et.al. in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [well, in the film at least, in not the source material]; he became slightly vampyric to cash-in on the Twilight trend in his own film, and Will Self dropped him into the heyday of the 80s and left him to do his thing in Dorian.
Grey is not a character you root for, he is a downright despicable man – and not in the way of the traditional Victorian bad guy [Professor Moriarty, for example] – Grey is much more your typical spoilt brat. He does whatever he wants, not for some all-encompassing evil master plan, but simply because he wants to and if he doesn’t get to he’ll throw his toys out of the pram.
It novel itself isn’t particularly well written [but it's Wilde, it's still better than anything I could ever dream of doing]. It’s barely a novel in length, pedants probably refer to it as a novella – and it’s longer than it needs to be. If you’ve ever read it, you’ll know the chunk in the middle which is pure extraneous filler – the chapter which waxes lyrical about fabrics and colours, jewels and treasures. It’s the kind of thing that any editor worth their salt would have taken a thick red marker pen to.
I think I like it because it isn’t perfect. Grey is neither a hero nor an anti-hero, he’s just a bloke. The book isn’t the best thing ever written, it’s not even the best thing Wilde wrote; it does – if I am honest – get terribly wanky in places. That said, it never get tired or trite; it never plods along nor does anything which seems out of character for the book. As you would expect from Wilde there are amazing turns of phrase: “I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”, “Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner”.
This isn’t the book that could serve as a decent introduction for Wilde-virgins. It does show his weaker areas of writing, Wilde can do conversation like no one, but the prose framing the conversations is weak and lengthy [as my NaNo mentor would say, "show, don't tell"].
Despite The Picture of Dorian Grey being my favourite book, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not a being selfish thing and keeping the good book to myself [for that's the last thing you should do with a good book] but I don’t think it’s a book that can be recommended. I think the pop culture aspect of the Dorian Grey myth is now widely known that those who have not read the book will expect more from the book than is there. Dorian Grey has become a supernatural myth, alongside those other prominent Victorian figures: Dracula, Jekyll, Hyde, Frankenstein’s Monster – but those characters were created and live in their own supernatural environs; Grey comes from a social commentary disguised as a supernatural suspense.
I love it, but I can’t explain why; it’s all every-so slightly wrong and doesn’t quite do what it sets out to do nor does it the way you expect it to [not in a "I never saw that coming way" more of a "what...?!" way]. So there you have it, which if my last 900 words are anything to go by, isn’t very good and isn’t worth reading.
She’s sixteen, blonde and spunky. She’s the new girl at school trying to fit in, she wants to be a cheerleader, to go on dates, to do homework like every other teenage girl – but those pesky vampires keep turning up and making a mess of things.
A tv show about an all-American girl, and English librarian and a ragtag bunch of assorted high school misfits fighting vampires shouldn’t have become the mainstream hit that it did. If history is anything to go by it should have débuted on a sci-fi channel just after everyone had switched off, ran for two seasons then got canned much to the dismay of an ardent bunch of fangirls/boys. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, however, bucked this trend. It made fantasy programming mainstream, it made it intellectual while keeping one fang firmly stuck deep in the pop-culture pie.
Buffy bridged the gap between the fantastical and the everyday; not just by introducing fantasy to prime time programming, but within the programme itself. When Buffy tells her mother that if she doesn’t go out it will be the end of the world, we all know the feeling. Your parents won’t let you go to the party that all your friends are going to, but in Buffy’s case, not going to that party will result in the literal end of the world. Sucks to be the Chosen One.
Buffy has become one of those quotable tv shows, and it’s hardly surprisingly given the quality of Whedon et.al.’s writing. It sounds simultaneously like a genuine teenager and an exceedingly hip thirty year old; it seamlessly blends high and low brow culture. In one episode Buffy refers to Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel then moments later refers to “going all Willie Loman”. Where else would you get a Simpsons reference side-by-side with Arthur Miller riffs?
The blonde teenage girl with the glib throwaway lines, however, has become quite the talking point for gender studies academics. Pretty, blonde, petite and the strength of a small army, surely she just kung-fu kicks those monsters into submission then goes back to filing her nails and chewing her gum? This whole thing is really just about subverting the audience’s expectations, isn’t it? We expect the woman to be weak, and if the woman is going to be strong, she’ll look rather more Eastern European shot-putter than Californian beach blonde. Buffy, however, has the strength, the looks and the brains to put it all together. Yes, it’s Giles and Willow that do the academic research but it’s Buffy that takes their facts and turns them into a plan.
As the show progressed, the Scooby Gang grew up, went to college, and we went with them. While the shark circled and the water-skis were lined up on the beach, they never got used. The show didn’t date as easily as it might have because we weren’t expected to believe that they were in high school forever. [Remember Zach Morris? He seemed to be in high school forever, before he finally made it to college by which time he must've been about thirty.] The Scooby Gang graduated high school, some went to college and the storylines and characters developed accordingly and – despite the fact that the frat house was built on top of a über-secret military monster-research facility and next door to the Armageddon-spewing Hellmouth – it didn’t seem ridiculously unrealistic because of the grounding that the non-vampire-staking storylines gave us. And, really, when you’re sixteen who doesn’t feel like that high school is a portal to hell?
For me, Buffy has everything I want in a tv programme: an hour of escapism; sarcastic, witty teenagers; fighting, monsters and kung-fu kicks; nerd jokes; dramas and traumas; and – most importantly – vampires that don’t sparkle.
There are very few films that I really want to watch over-and-over again; that isn’t the say that I don’t watch them over-and-over again – after all I paid good money for the DVD so I’m going to get every last drop out of the shiny disc.
I like light and fluffy 80s films – ideally those directed by John Hughes or, at the very least, starring Molly Ringwald: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off*, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles. They are films you don’t really have to pay attention to; I’ve seen them often enough that I could pop in and out at any moment and almost immediately be up to speed with the teenagery drama that’s unfolding.
*Although why it’s Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off when it’s all about Cameron Frye escapes me.
If I’m sitting down specifically to watch a film, I like ones which hold my attention: if I’m seeing a film for the first time, put me down in front of a heist/crime drama then come back for me 121 minutes later after Clive Owen is done.
Let me pick a film, however, to sit down and seriously watch [not just as background noise], then I do have a particular favourite. I don’t watch it a lot, specifically because I do like it so much [there's a part of me which thinks if I do something I like too often it looses its specialness]. This film ticks all the boxes for me: it’s German, it’s funny, it’s set in two Berlins, it has a heart, it has a story and it’s historically accurate: it’s Goodbye Lenin!
In 1989 as the first cracks appear in the Berlin Wall Frau Kerner – a devout Socialist – falls into a coma. Eight months later when she comes around, the two Berlins are now one and the world she knew is gone. A shock of that magnitude would certainly kill her, so her son [Daniel Brühl] sets about keeping the DDR alive in the 79m2 of their apartment.
The film treads a thin line, while it will probably appeal to those Germans suffering from Ostalgie, the ease with which the now-defunct state could so easily be recreated – simply making up the news – is certainly not too far from the bitter truth. Yes, Goodbye Lenin! is satirical, but it’s an equal-opportunities-satirist, giving both the communist and capitalist sides of the Wall the same treatment. At the end of the film, you have no idea what side of the Wall the writer/director wishes he were on, and that is the mark of a good storyteller.
Ask me my favourite band and it will change from one second to the next; the same with my favourite album. I don’t even think I could have a consistant favourite genre, but there’s no chopping and changing when it comes to my favourite song. There’s only ever been two which have ever had any chance of coming out on top – and it was a close run race. Alas, Steve Harley won’t be Coming Up To See anyone, nor will he be Making anyone Smile because he got pipped to the prestigous number one spot [although the plinky-plinky opening will always make me smile].
This, however, is my favourite song:
It’s 80s, it’s synth, it’s dark, it’s New Wave, it was lightened up a teeny tiny bit for a John-Hughes-Molly-Ringwald film; it is, of course, Psychedelic Furs’ Pretty In Pink.
It doesn’t bother me that the song only shot to prominance in a film which can only be described as vaguely related to the lyrics [In the song Caroline is easy, a bit naïve and used by men; in the film Andie doesn't take shit, sticks to her guns and isn't going to do anything just to be one of the "cool kids". Both girls, however, look - as their titles suggest - Pretty In Pink.]
I could listen to this song on repeat forever. One year I bought the original 7″ single for my birthday – to me, from me [along with Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love and The Undertones' Teenage Kicks]. It’s one of the songs I dance around my bedroom to. It excites me, it makes me stop and listen every single time I hear it and I love it.
I seened a movie. ‘Twasn’t the movie we really wanted to see but a big FAIL! on my part in reading cinema times meant we arrived at about the only time in the day when (500) Day Of Summer wasn’t about to start. So the choice was District 9 or Dorian Grey. Despite my unadulterated love for all things Wildean, the trailers are not doing it for me. I get the feeling that it’s not a cinema film, it’s a £3-DVD-out-of-the-bargain-bin-to-sit-next-to-Queen-Of-The-Damned-on-the-shelf-film.
The eponymous District 9 is a ghetto in Johannesburg where a race of stranded aliens [derogatorily referred to as prawns] have been living for the past twenty years. However, recently the good people of Jo’burg have been getting a bit fed up with the aliens being around and decide they want to ship them off to the arse-end of nowhere so they don’t have to look at them anymore. Of course, the aliens don’t particularly want to be evicted from their slums into an even worse area so they’re going to put of a little bit of resistance.
The problem with District 9 is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be, it’s shot like a documentary, it starts off down the path of social commentary, but it doesn’t really stick to the path for that long – after all you can’t really have lots of fugitive-style-running-about with a straight up social commentary. Then, for a moment or so, it looks like we’re going down the buddy film route, complete with a cute little kiddie, but no, again that was nothing but another ploy to keep us viewers on our toes. All it really wants to be, after all the flipping and flopping, is a shooty, bang!, bang!, guns’n'trucks’n'blood’n'gore alien-fest. There are some pretty heavy-handed indicators early on as to what is going to happen, and yes, what you think is going to happen is what is going to happen.
In short, if you happen to show up too early for (500) Days Of Summer then you might want to hang out for a while playing with the swinging grabby cuddly toy machine or eating ice cream or any of the other things you can do in the cinema foyer.
Standing in the queue for the Amanda Palmer gig The Boyf turns to me and says “Last one to spot Neil Gaiman pays the bus fare”. Sounded like a plan. In the end I didn’t pay for the bus fare, the scraggly-haired writer was swiftly spotted while we were still in the same spot in the queue. We were both surprisingly restrained, neither of us ran after him shouting We luvz yoooo, instead we both just did a double triple quadruple take and probably stood about mouths agape. That wouldn’t be the last time we were to spot Scary Trousers that night, but first we had some music and nudey dancing to get through.
Last year I loved The Indelicates debut album, I think I ranked it my favourite album of oh-eight with good reason: they’re a slightly more politicised and orchestral version of Art Brut but with an extra girl on vocals. Simon was vitriolically, angrily bitter; Julia was gorgeous – as ever – and other three…well, the guitarist is more than reminiscent of Pete Wentz [which is not a good thing, the leaping, gurning fool], the drummer looks familiar [JJ72? Grange Hill?] and they’ve got a girl wielding a bass that’s nearly the same size as her.
Fall-Out-Boy-alike aside they were good, better than good, although I do fear I was that one weirdo at the gig who’s there for the support band. I have the album, I have another copy of the album on vinyl, I knew all the words, I was the one who geeked out when they played the b-side Waiting For Pete Doherty to Die.
Of course, if The Indelicates were good, then given Amanda Fuckin’ Palmer was still to come, the evening was only going to get better. But before then we had Zen Zen Zo who are a naked contemporary dance troop. I think they’re best summed up by the girl acting like a twelve year old boy standing behind us: “Boobies, boobies, boobies”. Maybe I’m just a contemporary dance philistine, but it didn’t do anything for me.
Amanda Fuckin’ Palmer: theatrical darlin’, cabaret punkette, legs to die for, att-i-tude and yet, still there’s something coyly sweet about her. Who Killed Amanda Palmer? is a bombastic album, from the thuddering in-your-face of Astronaut, Runs In The Family, Oasis and Leeds United to the melancholia of Have To Drive And Ampersand. It’s a hard line for a show to deliver the both grandeur and intimacy, but AFP did. The horn-section-led euphoria of the opening Missed Me, Astronaut and Runs In The Family almost seamlessly led into Amanda, alone at her keyboard lamenting.
Then Neil Gaiman showed up again to read us a story, which I shouldn’t say was the best thing about the whole show but it was pretty damn amazing: Neil Gaiman reading us a story which he’d written about Amanda Palmer. Awsum.
The round things off we came full circle bringing back The Indelicates and the horn section to blitz through Leeds United, Oasis and then finally Let The Sunshine In.
What more could you ask for from a show? I mean it had a ukulele two ukuleles. Let me reiterate: Awsum.
