Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Mobile phones are the new lighters

I am a completist, so here are the two last festival items I went to:

Russell Brand

This was a fun show at the Assembly Rooms on Friday night.  I'm surprised it still wasn't sold out an hour beforehand: he is the bloke rom one of the Big Brother tie-in programmes (one that I have never seen: Big Brother's Last Laugh?  Last Word?  Smoething like that).  He was, initially, stilted and awkward, and sounded very scripted.  When a couple of rather ugly women near the front started chatting incessantly, however, he got into a confrontation with them, and that seemed to "unlock" him somehow.  The rest of the show was very funny - occasionally hilarious - self-deprecating and anecdotal humour.

The Pixies

First things first: how sweetly did this picture turn out?

I've wanted to see the Pixies in concert for, oh, 16 or 17 years now?  While they were not earth-shattering - perhaps not even as good as the equally-awaited Wedding Present - they were excellent nonetheless.

The first band - My Latest Novel - were just as good as the Teenage Fanclub who followed them.  Better, if anything.  But then they're from Greenock, which explains a generally superior air of intellect, grace and power.  I was pretty sure the Teenage Fanclub would be crap: they had a cd on the cover of the Scotland on Sunday a month or two back, and it was dreadful.  Sure enough, they were positively dreary.  They've become all grown up and mature and adult-oriented.  Sumt lacrimae rerum: tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

Idlewild were better when I saw them in February, but then that was their album launch party, so it was their crowd.  And they really work well in that smaller type of venue.  Still, they did not bad: I enjoyed it, and they have some good sing-a-long stuff.

I thought that the Pixies were great: they were experimental in bits, playing radically different versions of some songs - they played two versions of Wave of Mutilation, for example: one the single version, the other slow and dark and dangerous.

But there were a lot of us there, and opinions varied: Lee, Edwina and I loved it, whereas Penny and some others thought they were disappointing.  If someone was just there for the hits, they'd have been a bit let down, I think.

The title of this post comes from the fact that, from behind and above, the crowd was awash with blue glowing lights, as people held up their mobile phones to record, photograph and video.

Comedy is Cultural too...

...it's just not the sort of culture you can boast about with any great pride when you see it at the Edinburgh Festival.  That said, comedy can be considerably more challenging and thought-provoking than any amount of lazy drama.  And if there is one thing that Edinburgh has at this timeof year, it's an abundance of lazy, badly-acted drama.  As soon as you see any reference to George Bush or Tony Blair in the blurb for a show, you know you're in for an hour of badly thought-out preaching.

Last night I saw Steve Furst at the Assembly Halls on George Street.  Standing in the queue, I said to the nearest person "I think I just saw the sidekick from the Orange ads".  I didn't doubt for a second that this was possible.  It's Edinburgh in August, after all, and that means that you can't set off a rucksack bomb in a city-centre pub without taking down half a dozen minor celebrities.  So although August usually means seeing David Baddiell in every pub, other famous types are visible too.

After some consideration, I announced that if the bloke from the Orange ad did turn up at the festival some year, I'd pay to see him.  Fortunately, albeit unknowingly, I already had.  And he was very good.

His show was a mixture of formats.  He would alternate between live, one-man monologues and half a dozen pre-recorded scenes.  The videoed scenes were based around an aging and incompetent stuntman demonstrating his art: a solid mix of 1980's-mocking pastiche and physical slapstick, it entertained well enough.  The half-dozen live vignettes were, in general, far better.  The premises of each were well chosen, such as a middle-aged lawyer who had had a mid-life crisis and joined a teenage gang of chavs: the Fernside Posse, or a good-natured terrorist suspect placed under house arrest in a flat full of students.  Each character was to some extent fairly grotesque, with dark and disturbing elements in each, but the tone was light and sympathetic, and there were genuinely likeable elements to each.

One thing I found interesting was the fairly naked "televise me!" tone that the format suggested.  The ambitious comedian at the Fringe is always looking at Al Murray, Paul Merton and others who have succeeded at the Fringe and been offered a show off the back of their success.  Actually having half of the show "televised" made such ambition pretty open.  I suspect that he has a fair chance of succeeding, too, although perhaps he needs to find a suitable comic partner.

On another note, I finally saw the film festival program last night, and I am truly annoyed: I would happily have gone to about ten of the movies that are showing.  And unlike certain peoples' wish lists, none of them were genre.  Well ok, Firefly is, but that was pretty low on the list.

Rural Idyll

This pic was taken a couple of weeks ago, when we were in St Andrews at my parents' house.

It's various people from my family in the orchard, surrounded by the wildflower meadow which constitutes my parents' back garden.  I'd name people, but Gary and his sense of paranoia has instilled an irrational reluctance on my part to use even nicknames.  So all i can say is that my Mum and Dad are on the right.

Miscellaneous things

Courtney Love pregnant by Steve Coogan.

I just wish that I could have hear that telephone conversation.  In a perfect world, Coogan would have paused, and said (before hanging up):

"...and on that bombshell."

---

In other news, I was in Starbucks yesterday.  As I left, I spotted a wallet on a seat which had been occupied a few minutes before by one of a Japanese couple.  A quick perusal showed some 500 pounds in twenty-pound notes, as well as cards and stuff.

Obviously, I turned it in upstairs: I can't imagine how horrible it would be to be on holiday and lose that much of your spending money.  The next couple of days would be miserable.

But when I asked today, they hadn't even been in to reclaim it.  They'll get it in the end: the police have it now, and their bank details will allow them to be traced.  But who doesn't care enough to walk round retracing their steps for an hour or so for a full monkey in fresh twenties?

The Aristocrats

As a resident of Edinburgh, it is extremely fashionable to treat the festival - and particularly the festival fringe - with a degree of disdain. Others prefer to adopt a different line: the "It's such a shame, I've been to virtually nothing this year" lament, which suggests that, given time, one would have spent the month, fringe guide in hand, scurrying from avant-garde naked trapeze-dance show, via Shakespeare updated to show Romeo and Juliet as scions of rival herring fisher families, to a 2am Kabuki version of West Side Story performed by the Disabled Theatre of Khazakstan.

It is therefore quite acceptable for me to say that I have been to virtually nothing this year. The Wedding Present was the first show, over a fortnight through the festival. But over this week I plan to immerse myself in low-grade festivalities.

Accordingly, I went see The Aristocrats at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last night. It's a documentary by Penn Gillette (of Penn and Teller fame), which addresses one joke over the space of an hour and a half.

Clearly, this is no ordinary joke. And it doesn't last an hour and a half in the telling, though some could stretch it out that far. In the film, twenty or so comedians discuss it, and many tell their versions.

If I say that it is, quite intentionally, the most repulsive, repugnant, horrible and shocking joke ever imagined, you may doubt me. But that is the very essence of the joke. There is no fixed version. Indeed, one is supposed to improvise. And the nature of the improvisation told, as some participants in the documentary pointed out, as much about the comedian as anyone else.

And there is no punchline. There are a few words at the bit in the joke where the punchline would be, which are spoken in the form of a punchline, but they are intentionally flat and unfunny. Part of the challenge of the joke is merely getting the audience to listen. The other part is getting them to laugh at the end.

If you have headphones, go to http://www.lnreview.co.uk/media/journal/001842.php and see the South Park version of it. Note that this does not apply to members of my family. Please do not follow that link. You would not appreciate it, nor find it funny.

I think that Cartman's version is probably the best.  I was disappointed that Chris Rock didn't tell it: I thought he might have given the South Park team a run for their money, just as the combined talents of the Onion's editorial staff did.

Terrible Albums

The worst albums I have ever bought.  No particular reason.  No particular order.

Murder Inc, Murder Inc.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you how unlistenable this was.  A spin-off of Killing Joke, they had an Adam and the Ants-style two drummer setup.  This usually means that the band have a couple of mates and don't want to let either down for a gig.

Anyway, the two drummers were not the problem.  It was the fact that Murder Inc. had a pub karaoke singer.  It pains me to admit this, but he was Scottish, and he sang in that Glaswegian, Frank-Sinatra-meets-Billy-Connolly style, where most words sound like "herry-haaaaw'.

Of course, Murder Inc. had, on the album Murder Inc., one good song: the single (you guessed it) Murder Inc.  This lured in the punters with the cunning ruse of having the lead singer do a spoken-voice job on the lyrics.  Sneaky.

I returned this album to Virgin, claiming that my (non-existent) brother had bought me it as a birthday present, so I had two copies.  The person behind the counter, clearly aware of the album, looked sceptical, but had pity and did the exchange.

Tori Amos, Boys For Pele

"Hello, Mr. Zebra, can I have your sweater?"

On a Travolta rating scale, this album was the Battlefield Earth to "Under the Pink"'s Pulp Fiction.  Like Battlefield Earth, it was typical gifted-artist-takes-control-and-proves-need-for-strong-producers stuff.  It needed someone to say "Tori: this is pretentious, self-indulgent nonsense.  Stop it."  The same voice of sanity should also have taken Ms Amos aside and pointed out that a picture of her suckling a pig was going to put off the crossover male audience who liked her for her legs-akimbo, sideways, piano-playing posture.

I make an exception for "Professional Widow", especially once Armand van Helden got hold of it.  And "Not the Red Baron" has its moments.  But this album has eighteen tracks, and most of the other sixteen were as enjoyable as eating potting compost.  I actually snapped this CD rather than ever feel tempted to listen to it again.

Ministry, Work for Love

If you're aware of Ministry and their mighty works, but haven't heard this album, then you'll think I'm taking the mickey.  It's an easy-listening, electro-synth pop number that would sounds more like Haircut 100 than you would believe.  I thought track one was going to burst into guitars and samples at any point, but it didn't.  It paused, etased, then continued with backing singers that sounded like Bananarama.  "Much kudos", I thought, "for keeping a straight face throughout that one."  But the next track was, if anything, cheesier.

Just think, if the the record company (Black Box or Waxtrax, I imagine: I forget) had done the right thing and dropped them there and then, Ministry would be miming PA spots in gay clubs to this day with Sonia and the Human League.

Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nah, just kidding.

Babylon Zoo, The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes

Oh, I know, you shouldn't ever buy music from a jeans advert.  But *everyone* was talking about this track ("Spaceman"), as soon as it aired.  The sales for Jas Mann's album rocketed.  And then everyone discovered that the advert sounded like less than one minute of the forty-five or so that made up the album.  The rest of the record was, with the exception of the title track, rank poop.  And that includes the trudging bulk of the Spaceman single itself.

And the lyrics.  Oh, the lyrics.  Even Duran Duran would have choked at lines like:

"Electronic information, television takes control,there's a fire between us,but where is your god?"

Umm, he's over there.  Why, exactly?

Incidentally, this was a classic example of the Titanic syndrome: when people said "even God himself could not sink the Titanic", I picture the Big Fella idly flicking an iceberg southwards towards the Grand Banks.  When Wendy James of Transvision Vamp claimed that an Oscar awaited her, her future career as secretary was determined.  And When Jas Mann said that he would be bigger than the Beatles, his pop career was already over.

The Wedding Present in Concert

If I go to a concert these days, I invariably end up feeling a little sad.  This is not a declension narrative, where I bemoan the decline of rock.  I think that there is more good music available to me now than at any other point in my life so far, and I have trouble keeping up with the cd purchases I constantly want to make.

No, I simply mean that I wish I had a mobile phone with camera back at some of the old gigs I went to back in the 80's and 90's.  I wish I had been able easily to take pictures of Fields of the Nephilim, Public Enemy, the Cure on their Disintegration tour, Pop Will Eat Itself and more.  I never worry that I will forget things that I have enjoyed in my life.  But I do worry that I will forget to remember them once in a while.  Photos act to me as aides-memoire: they prompt me to remember.

Anyway, the point is that I took pictures last night.  And I love the New, the Modern, that many old people and ecologists find so threatening.  I adore the fact that I am posting, only a dozen hours later, about a gig I went to last night, and that I am able to add pictures I took.  To those who didn't grow up before the internet gave a platform, and before digital photography put instant iconography in the hands of everybody (and not just a few newspaper professionals), this is unremarkable.  To me it is a dream.

Enough meandering.  The long and the short of it is that I went to see the Wedding Present in concert last night.  I tend not to see bands from the 80's and early 90's that often when they tour: I saw most of them at the time and have no desire to remember them later as glorified pub bands, belting out their three singles to balding nostalgites.  There are exceptions: I went to see Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Pogues and the Wonder Stuff over the last couple of years, and all were enjoyable, to greater or lesser degrees.  But usually I see new stuff.

The Wedding Present, however, I did want to see.  Partly because I missed them at the time.  Partly because I've found their recent work to be excellent.  And partly because Dave Gedge was always a fairly awkward, uncompromising character:

The venue - the Liquid Rooms - is an atmospheric little place.  Being in an Edinburgh Old Town basement, the task of supporting several thousand tons of 16th century high-rise building means that the space is limited and awkward: massive stone pillars take up about 20% of the space, but they bring the crowd forward and make a really claustrophobic, bear-pit atmosphere that even support acts can make feel full and busy.

Lee, Jenny, Lee's bf and mate and I turned up in time to catch the first support act - how unfashionably early! - who were suprprisingly good. The lead singer was from the highlands, and frankly sounded a little too much like Brian Molko, the lead singer of Placebo. But their drummer looked like he would go far in rock and roll, with extensive tattoos and a face that suggested heavy heroin use.

The second support act were well suited to the gig, since they sounded like a (consistently upbeat) version of the Wedding Present, complete with semi-spoken asides in a dryly sardonic style.  Perhaps a little too similar for me, but they were popular with the crowd.

Then it was on with the Boy Gedge and the main attraction.  We headed up to the front, and some of us stayed there the whole time, thus the Extreme Closeup(tm) photography:

What a set.  I have the problem that I come away from most concerts sweatily exhilarated, enthusing wildly.  But I was really suprised at how much I enjoyed the Wedding Present.  They didn't come across as 15-year veterans of the circuit, other than a complete sense of relaxation and confidence in Gedge's dealings with the crowd.  Of course, judging by the average age and the exchange of banter, the relationship was a long-standing one, and had every right to be in the comfortable phase.

The setlist was wisely chosen: rather than throwing in any of their truly slow tracks, the band merely interspersed mainly their trippier, more Sonic Youth-ish songs to alter the pace between the rawer, fastpaced numbers that they do so well.  I appreciate this strategy, since I have to like a band a lotto wish to hear some sort of slow jam mularkey at a gig.

The full list of songs was:

1. Interstate 5
2. Crawl
3. Drive
4. Don't Talk Just Kiss
5. Queen Anne
6. Go Go Dancer
7. Spangle
8. My Favourite Dress
9. Venus
10. It's For You
11. Queen of Outer Space
12. I'm From Further North Than You
13. Kennedy
14. Perfect Blue
15. Ringway to Seatac
16. Dalliance
17. Dare
18. Flying Saucer

As usual for the Wedding Present, there were no encores.  Why bother doing a planned encore, anyway?  It's just Ritual de los Habitual...  And yes, my memory is incredible to remember all of those.  Or maybe I got Dave's setlist at the end, complete with notes to dedicate Perfect Blue to Hugh and Pascaline's anniversary.  You decide.

The real high points for me were My Favourite Dress (obviously, I admit), Kennedy and Dalliance.  Kennedy in particular had the crowd in a real frenzy.  No really, look:

Trust me, they were really a bit frenzied.

The tracks I mention were from the Reception and RCA periods: 87 to 91 in fact.  I admit that this makes me a bit of a stuck-in-the-past early era fanboy.  But Interstate 5 and I'm from Further North... were both released in the last 12 months or so, and were also excellent.  I had a vague hope they would play Come Up and See Me, but it was, unsurprisingly, not to be.

Cracking show. Shame about discovering this morning that Eminem had cancelled the Edinburgh gig.  You just know that Gedge wouldn't have baled on the fans... tsk.  Oh, and there were other band members as well.

Confessional

For the past two and a half months I have been nursing a terrible, shameful and guilty secret. In times gone by, I would have acted in true British fashion: suppressed the truth, maintanied a brave face, and sublimated the nervous energies generated thereby into some sort of hobby: running a boy scout troop, for instance, or hacking up pensioners.

But we're all Americans now. So I must confess to all and sundry (although I admit that the fullest of extent of all and sundry was only 28 people when I last wrote this blog): for the last 10 weeks I have been dabbling in a tawdry passtime: Big Brother.

I'm not about to defend it: no, seriously. I don't feel I have to, since I can barely stand for it to be on in the same room as me, and when Nicole sits down to watch it at 9, I am often driven from the room in frustration at the sheer repulsiveness of most of the people involved. All I need to hear is a Geordie voice saying "Day thoorty-sevun. It's 12:28, and Makoosi, Youjeen, Ant'uny, Cree-auge and Science are in the bedroom. The rest u' the houseme-ates ur in the gard'n" and I feel the urge to be somewhere else.

And if any of you watch Big Brother Live, you are very stupid. End of story.

But my inability to actually watch it on a day-to-day basis is utterly unrelated to my intense interest. I read the website every day. I watch the eviction shows, and have even had Nicole record them for me when I have been out on a Friday night. I like seeing good things reward the few likeable individuals (such as Eugene and... erm...). I adore seeing horrible things happen to the unpleasant individuals, amongst whose ranks Makosi and Craig reign supreme.

I have firm, well-informed opinions: I love that Craig was voted off before even Kinga. That will rankle with him for the rest of his shallow, closeted life. I would pay to see Kemal gradually run over by a steamroller.

I find the balance of individuals interesting. After several bland series of tedious personalities and stupid people the producers wisely chose a variety of very smart and/or cunning people. There were plenty of extroverts among them, and very few non-alphas to glue the group together. The result was conflict, of course, with shifting webs of allegiance throwing up short-lived sub-groups based - explicitly - on race, sexuality and age.

But I am very unhappy with myself for liking it. Even without the hour-long shows that I avoid, it is still a terrible waste of time. I could spend the wasted hours writing, or reading, or running, or a variety of other virtuous activities. I tend, quite intentionally, to assess my pastimes on Platonic grounds of virtue and arete, and in those terms it is very hard to justify watching something that may actually rank below Eastenders. It also annoys me since it reminds me of my suspicion that I am only two accidentally-watched episodes away from being addicted to some sort of soap opera.

Plus, it makes me feel slightly guilty every time I taunt Gary about his tendency to watch the O.C., and similar... umm... Whatever a non-perjorative term for that sort of thing is.

Back, minus content

Now *that* is annoying.

In January, the community server beta I was running unexpectedly timed out.  Unpleasant.  Last night, before installing the version 1.1 release, I looked at the content in the database.  It was stored in an odd, binary format, and rather than write a browser to get at it, I checked google.  Sure enough, all the content was cached happily on there, so cutting and pasting seemed easy.  Stupidly, at that opint, I went to bed, after deleting and recreating the database (necessary - there was no upgrade and it complained if objects existed).

Fifteen hours later, google has thrown away the cached items.  Four months of diary, effectively, gone.  And nothing on the wayback machine, either.

Count to ten...

Update: Sweet.  Feeddemon - my rss reader - cached the lot.  Colour me double-plus undismayed.

I'll regret this if another shuttle throws a double one

So the shuttle is staying up there another day. Official line is that "the guys are just loving it so much they asked to stay on a while longer." Personally, if I was up there I'd be all "I'm not bloody well coming down... I'm waiting for the Russians to turn up in one of their flying armoured personnel carriers."

The guy they sent outside to fix the outside of the ship should get a new nickname. I would soooo call him "R2".

BBC in hilarious or worrying page link scandal

The BBC today had a page on muslimyouth.net, which is about the usual bunch of well-meaning, middle-aged, publicly-funded Guardian readers "listening to yoof", and "providing a forum..." blah blah, down with the kids, etc etc...

You can see it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4735127.stm

Anyway, the point being that, despite any mentions in the text of any of the organisations in question, the BBC's "Related links" on the right ranged from the hilariously offensive (The Metropolitan Police), through the *painfully* hilariously offensive (The British Transport Police), through the far side to the surreal: "Eurostar". This third link worries me. Is someone at the BBC trying to warn us? Are they offering helpful suggestions to the terrorists: "Here, mate, you like tunnels and stuff, eh?"

Eurostar... it would be laughable if I wan't already working on just such a scenario for a novel.