Thursday, December 27, 2007

Christmas in the countryside


Everyone has Edwardian preconceptions of what a nice Christmas in the country is like and, despite having lived there for nearly 16 years, I'm exactly the same.

The news, therefore, that a massive cocaine cartel had been caught up in the woods out by the front of the village was so exciting I went into a spasm of Clarrie Grundy handflapping. The white car we'd seen parked by the bridle path for the last couple of days was apparently part of said cartel, appropriate enough given that every time we passed it reminded me of seeing in Christmas Day with friends and a spliff in that same spot several years before.

Less amusingly, the ancient village church has been repeatedly broken into by junkies over the past months, repeatedly breaking the collection box out of the wall and nicking the money. Any London liberalism goes out of the window here. The village and the church work ridiculously hard to raise money for all kinds of charities, and said junkies should be chucked in the river if it were any more than two inches deep.

Beyond that, most of the ideals match up to the reality, albeit without the Edwardians. There's turkey for roughly five hundred people, cooked in an Aga that throws a sulking fit and cools down on Christmas Day. There's a lovely Christmas tree, covered in decorations of assorted glitter bought over 25 years, and accompanied by a wobbly star limboing into the ceiling by an overenthusiastic branch, and silver rain of indeterminate age.

The dog always gets a present, and despite still clutching last year's squeaky reindeer on Christmas Eve, is so delighted with this year's squeaky mallard that she temporarily remembers she was born a gun dog and starts ripping it to shreds on the carpet. She then sneaks off and plays dollies, putting it to bed on the armchair with a snoring pig that wiggles its ear which my dad and I got a few days before. This is so sweet we all go "Aaaaah", and the dog is so embarrassed that she tries to disembowel the mallard in order to prove her hardcore flat coat credentials.

Eric, my mother's unfeasibly camp gardener statue has been adorned with tinsel and flood lights, and looks permanently poised to break into medleys from Hairspray.

The Saturday before Christmas, my family piles into the car for the pathetically short trip down to the village Court House hall for carols. Over the years, the hall has probably hastened the death of innumerate Alms House pensioners due to its feudal Arctic qualities, so they've since invested in a rocket launcher heater that screams as loudly as the nearest toddler until the doors are shut and the varying degrees of warbling begin.

The 12 decades of Christmas are followed by a pile-up upstairs into the library for hot something or other afterwards, mince pies and competitive cookery ("Those ones are shop bought" hisses Mrs Someone Else, digging her elbows into my side and pointing out Mr Kipling's efforts lurking among the homemade pies). I vaguely recognise some of the teenagers, and a girl I went to sixth form with playing the dutiful future daughter-in-law. The vague recognising comes from my refusing to wear glasses for years rather than my similarly crap memory. There are lots of people I don't recognise

Coming out of the hall to head home for supper, my parents saw police cars outside the Church. Same junkies, same score, only this time round the vicar had locked them in the church and they'd bashed their way into the hall round the side. The vicar's wife and her daughter had clcoked a glimpse of them as they went belting off, and were waiting to be questioned by the police.

Happy Christmas from the countryside! Ballet Shoes was just as fucking disappointing in middle England.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

"Hilarity ensues, with songs"

For reasons that should be very clear to anyone who has even seen a Julia Stiles film, I should like sarcastic-and-wonderful Julia Stiles to play me in the film of my life.

I'm not entirely sure how this film would go, since I have reached the age of 25 without a) developing drug problems b) falling in love with inappropriate boxers c) earning the stalkeringtitude of millions. An Empire workie once asked me for my autograph, but he was mad so I don't think that really counts. I give it an optimistic 15 years before I have achieved sufficient notoriety for it to be worth Julia Stiles dropping everything and becoming me.

Anyway, the similarly divine Kim Newman, presumably bored out of his mind with Christmas parties/updating his Facebook status, has written a pitch for just such a film. I love the idea of having James Marsden almost as much as the toy pig my dad and I picked up in Help The Aged this morning. More on that story another time.

"Okay, so here's my pitch for Kiss Me Kat - the Shakespeare-based Julia Stiles musical version of your life ...

... because 'sarcastic and wonderful' film critic Kat (Julia) always gives mercilessly amusing one-star reviews to wet romantic comedies, Hollywood is on the point of bankruptcy - Richard Curtis has shot himself, Cameron Diaz and Renee Zellweger are having to work as office cleaners, Richard Gere has to make films in which he sleeps with women his own age and Hugh Grant is back on Sunset Blvd on the other side of soliciting charges. Pat Ruccio (James Marsden), an exec who has been counting on a box office returns from a new especially soppy romantic comedy to keep the studio out of bankruptcy, accepts a bet that he can - within one week - convince Kat to give Bubblehead Wins Handsome Zillionaire a five-star lead review with suitably gushing pull quotes for the posters ... hilarity ensues, with songs."

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Totally totally actually the best email ever!

Dear Actor,

Thank you for applying to The 24 Hour Plays: Old Vic New Voices.
Congratulations! – this e-mail is to invite you to the first round of auditions.

Your audition slot is:

[etc etc]

Friday, November 23, 2007

Illness

Last night I spent a great deal of time on my bedroom floor. Not having got around to hoovering it for a good three weeks, it's not the most pleasant place to be. I can think of Western towns that have fewer dustbunnies than my fake-wood floor, but regardless.

I was looking through boxes trying to find old copies of Artslinks in order to grab the reviews of me to add to my application for the Old Vic 24 Hour Plays which I have been procrastinating over for about a month now in trad Kat style. I singularly failed to find the one I was looking for and instead, i found one of my diaries from when I was 18/19 and in my second year of university.

I don't usually go back over my diaries, mostly because they're filled with mopy teenagery and bad song lyrics, but I'd run out of recorded telly to watch on BT Vision and settled down on a plump cushion of tumbleweed to have a giggle.

You know when you've moved on when you don't actually recognise the person in the writing. Even worse, when you actually worry about the person there. I've admitted to being a Vile Teenager and clinically depressed etc etc, but this is the first time I've been distanced enough from everything to realise that the person in that writing is really fucking ill.

The paranoia and side effects from my lies-induced bout of Seroxat earlier this year gave me a sharp and terrifying flash into what it would be like to fall back into that pit again. Reading my diary, the only thing I seemed to have then due to my pathological hatred of offloading onto people, it was like watching someone drowning in their own head. I felt so sad for her, for this person who didn't get any help, who made other people upset through not explaining, and who was utterly terrified of the future and wanted to be anywhere and anything but herself.

Two of my best friends from that time, Cat and Anna, once told me very gently that I was very hard to be around during that time. Reading that diary, it's a miracle anyone was with me at all. I owe them a lot for putting up with someone who was that ill and didn't know how to do any better.

I wonder what would have happened if I had got treatment earlier, maybe left university for a bit and gone away, and been able to grow up without fighting my head everyday. I might have changed course, I might have gone somewhere else, I might have got the first I should have done in a subject I should have done and been somewhere else.

Yet regardless of all this, all I want to do is to tell that person that it's alright. I achieved all the things she was so desperate for, I have wonderful friends who love me and who I love in return. I love my family as well and that matters so bloody much.

Most importantly, I want to tell her that your head is not meant to be like that: that what she is going through isn't normal and life can be so much better, clearer and more human. I'm just sorry that I didn't do anything more for her, but at the same time I feel a guilty sense of relief that I can close the book and leave her behind.

My life fucking rocks. What's nice, is that it means hers does too.

Friday, October 19, 2007

James Blunt - Triangle

While James Blunt's music is enough to make me want to stab my ears with forks, I will maintain forever that the man is one of the funniest interviewees ever. If someone could put together an album of interviews James Blunt has done, I would be very pleased, and possibly cackle.

As pointed in our direction by Popbitch this afternoon, he's topped any previous record of genius with this ode to furry triangles to the tune of "You're Beautiful". The montage of triangles and other soft focus shapes cooing softly brings joy into my heart and hysteria to my lips.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

I am a Times prize-winning photographer!


I won the Community project category in The Times' Cameraphone Photographer of the Year competition! Amazing. I was having a large and unnecessarily indulgent coffee and cake with my old flatmate Ian when this nice chap rings up and says I've won something with a picture I took of Mile End's puny anti-flooding efforts during the July monsoon season. I laughed at him for about three minutes. As well as getting to be on The Times website (swoon) I get a nice new phone and a nice Bluetooth printer which will come in ridiculously handy for my current domestic photoframe fetish. I'll never hear a bad word against my little K800i again. Ever. But more than that, I am very very excited to be in The Times, however dubiously.

In other news, I had been getting slightly freaked out by the total lack of news coverage surrounding the fact that a large chunk of Soho had been cut off on Monday evening due to a chemical and gas leak (as we were told). There were police and firemen everywhere. More importantly, Anna and I missed our screening of Black Sheep so there were many angry film journalists grumbling about being denied the joys of Kiwi genetically mutated sheep, and we had to go off traipsing around cinemas that weren't showing anything remotely good.

This has all been made considerably better by discovering this. Chemical/gas leak my arse.

Friday, September 28, 2007

A Call Girl Responds

Staggering in to the flat after three hours of Patrick Stewart being old and hysterical in Macbeth, I grabbed the remnants of some Diet Coke and collapsed onto the sofa for the first episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, or Billie Piper's Agent Provocateur ad as it should probably be known - infinitely less annoying than that mealy-mouthed tabland Kate Moss. Even though it was barely half an hour long it was great fun. While not as bitingly funny or intelligent as the original blog ("because it's on the telly darling," says one cultural friend dismissively), and later book, by Belle De Jour, was exactly what I needed after a week of Culture with a capital twat.

Now, I don't trust writers who only use one name. It's ridiculous and egotistical, and I know enough writers with two names who fit that bill. Actors just about get away with it (viz Portia currently wowing the West End and Fantasia in The Color Purple on Broadway) but writers aren't covered in stardust and just come across as a bit po-faced and ridiculous.

Which, handily for this sweeping stereotype, is exactly how Bidisha, an Independent columnist, came across on Monday's Front Row. She'd been roped in by Mark Lawson to give a "woman's perspective" (this went unsaid, in much the same way that the Wonderbra ads in the 90s went unsaid) of the new TV show. The poor girl has a voice that would send a speed freak to sleep, and spoke with such grating lack of knowledge that by the end I just felt slightly embarrassed.

"She says she wasn't abused," she says earnestly (paraphrase) "but in the book she describes what is very clearly an abusive relationship with her first boyfriend that she talks about in an almost dismissive manner."

That's not abuse, that's S&M you silly girl. Read the book. I can feel another 300 argument approaching.

Read the amusing and acidic email from Belle De Jour to Radio 4. I wonder if they'll be reading that out on Pick of the Week.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Amazon children

The BBC have reported on findings that having an older sibling can stunt your growth.

My 6'7 younger brother would beg to differ.

Friday, September 07, 2007

How not to quit your job

I handed in my notice today. I’ve never had to hand in my “notice” before. Notice of what, exactly? Intentions of an infidelious nature towards another place of employment? For fuck’s sake. I’ve always been freelance, on a short-term contract, or made redundant by a slowly atrophying magazine company so the responsibility of handing in one’s notice is an alien one.

Despite having a job with about as much use as scrubbing corns for a living, I adore the people I work with and given that I’d expressed sod all hint of upping and leaving beforehand, felt utterly mortified at the prospect of jumping this particular ship, however interminably boring.

Resignation went as follows:

Boss summons me to talk about new update to site. I grab sheafs of letters copied from drafts offered up by helpful Journobiz members and miserably ask him to come outside first in manner of hideous vet about to put down dog in Lady and the Tramp. Tell boss. Forget advice about keeping it simple. Actually use the phrase “it’s not you, it’s me”. Boss totally unfazed by my intention to leave. I hug boss for about three minutes apologising. Boss quite cheered at prospect of leaving party. Me nearly in tears. Office continues as normal.

Am now going to see Atonement and drink many, many cocktails of assorted flavours in Covent Garden, resting pathetically on Guy’s unimpressed shoulder until I feel either less hideous, or infinitely more so depending.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Kingdom of Loathing and 'feely kits', Technobile, The Guardian


Do roleplaying games have to be enhanced by offers of jewellery made from chainmail and 'feelie kits'?

[Kat Brown, The Guardian, Technology section, 23 August, 2007]


Is there a single computer game left untouched by the fetishised psychosis of people who still live with their parents? If so, for crying out loud, give it my number.

When I hung up my roleplaying game (RPG) cap I thought I'd said sayonara to the more obsessive end of the gaming spectrum. A genre with as many wobbly papier-mâché shrines and roleplay fanatics as you can wave a Wii controller at, the continual wading through fan fiction to find an FAQ got to be too much, and I ran away screaming.

In Kingdom of Loathing I thought I'd found my perfect retirement. An awe-inspiringly sarcastic online RPG that drops pop culture, gaming and scholarly references with the flair of a pixellated Pratchett, its intolerance of the usual internet mores is such that you have to pass a spelling and grammar test before you're even allowed to chat.

But there is a downside: as with most freeware, the game's creators make their money from merchandise and donations and an - honest to God - "feelie kit". For a mere $40 (£20), some keys, a participant's certificate and other hastily assembled crap can be yours.

It's the sheer disparity between the game and the merchandise that makes me twitch. Who are these complex individuals who can spend an afternoon laughing disdainfully at Lamz0r N00bs (that's lame newbies to you, auntie), only to lovingly admire their participant's certificate afterwards? You have to hope it's a little joke from the makers, this time more on their obsessive users than the general public.

It gets worse with Zelda, a series so unrelentingly brilliant that fan design should be made an act of treason. One fan makes a tidy sum selling Triforce jewellery made out of chainmail. "Ever wonder what the items and such in Hyrule really look like?" runs the blurb. No, because I've played the game and in fact they look heavily pixellated and a bit rubbish.

You can choose from the Ocarina of Time, the Moon Pearl, and even the potions. "The bottles are 16oz/500ml size and about (sic) the exact same size as the bottles Link carries around." You can just bet someone sat by her screen with a ruler and a calculator for that one.

While I'm slightly in awe of people who can use chainmail in anything other than a sentence, I wish they'd use it for Dungeons and Dragons instead of such dead-eyed kookiness. I know they're just games for children and people with no social lives who are frightened of cheese, but they're also mine, dammit, and I refuse to be lumped in with a load of reverential basketcases just because I like playing them.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Four stars in Three Weeks!

WIT: **** Underbelly, 1.15pm
Wit: A sharp sounding word with connotations of humour and sanity, neatly reflects the qualities of this play's heroine, Vivian Bearing, a fiercely independent academic facing ovarian cancer. Not one to be anticipated by an obvsious narrative device she deadpans to her audience, "It is not my intention to give away the plot...but I think I die, at the end". Like the poetry of John Donne she so reveres, she 'distrusts simplification' and fights fiercely against both dehumanisation and sentimentality. Despite the sparkling erudition of the script, done full justice by intelligent performances all round, this play's most forceful comment is in fact a simple one about kindness. An unflinchingly honest performance of this acutely insightful and poignant play.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Warning: may contain pretentious ramblings

About an hour before the show, I hid in the Jelly Belly bar clutching a vodka and diet coke, my script and trying to assume the expression of one who knows she looks like a wannabe four-year-old in that hat but that’s actually happening to someone else. The vodka helped, if not steady my nerves – vodka? Really? – then reassure me that at least we didn’t have press coming in like our sister show, The Dresser, over at the Baby Belly.

Approximately ten minutes before we gathered beds, straws and Beatrix Potter books and rigged the set, one of the nice boys from the Underbelly press popped his head round the door.

“Three Weeks have asked for a ticket,” he said, managing to be sweet and apologetic at the same time. “They know it’s your first day so I said they asked first. The only thing is they might not come back if they had to reschedule.”

We said yes.

We then realised one of the wings was too small and shunted the set around so that everyone had to do the play mirrored. This was fine up until I ended up doing some kind of absurd tango with Vivian’s IV pole, and my young doctor had to give her a clinical exam with the wrong hand. Nice.

The show was…odd. The amazing flyering done by everyone in their scrubs had obviously done the job: we only had six spare seats apparently. People laughed, a lot, but not always where we thought they would, but then audiences and casts don’t tend to agree very often. It seemed to go brilliantly, and there was lots of clapping and what looked like smeary trails down the cheeks of at least two smiling ladies in the second row.

We treated ourselves to two shows to celebrate, wangling whatever free stuff we could with our company passes. This backfired when we couldn’t get in to see a show called Greedy, which was sold out due to it’s having a reputation for being good. It also backfired when it meant we managed to get into see The Durham Revue, which also had a reputation for being very good, but unfortunately wasn’t. There was one boy who played Popeye in the show’s only slick, smart sketch, the rest had a lack of timing, direction and talent which was frankly bizarre. I know this sounds very mean, but it really was awful.

Afterwards we nipped along to see the House of Windsor, who we’d chatted up yesterday in the store room. Absurdist sketches, blissfully better than the Revue, with lots of deadpan camp about bears hibernating and Tim Henman.

This was all very good until we parted ways, I wen home, read for a bit, then realised that the only two people I actually know in the house and gone out to a cast dinner and forgot I was there. Ordinarily I’d have jumped in a cab and gone over, but I felt utterly disgusting after the show and it’s remained.

Basically, I spend an hour dying. The script is funny, it’s poignant, and the cast are brilliant. This doesn’t prevent the fact that I feel like I’ve lost someone everytime I do it properly. I know that’s unforgivably pretentious, but hey – this is Edinburgh. Also, because my character has so many bloody lines, I feel a bit like a prop who’s been brought in to perform, and because I’ve got that wig most of the morning til after the play, it makes me feel very self-conscious about flyering and also unavoidably stamped to the damned character. That got exacerbated when I got left behind at the house. I feel shaky, and ill and cried horribly and in short, feel like Vivian at her lowest – I just want to hide. I want to curl up into a little ball.

Bricking it like a house of bricks

I am sitting in the Fringe press office in the denim hat I got in the same skewed sales logic of “but it’s 70% off!” that got me a pair of cripplingly small silk shoes, and a bald wig. Wearing the bald wig has turned the cute hat into a Children’s Ward cliché. On the machine next to me here’s an elderly monk with Ming The Merciless eyebrows and a katana case strapped to his back. Nobody bats an eyelid, I rather want to grab his ankles and pledge him my troth.

The rest of the cast trooped up yesterday and took the news of our new and minimalist stage pretty well. We had a run-through in one of the spare playrooms lying around our gargantuan house – this one could have easily housed a Church hall – at which point it materialised that, while we were all dodgy on lines, one cast member was vomiting memory loss in hysteria-causing spades.

Charlotte quietly banished him to learn his lines upstairs. Marco, the cast adult, came back to announce even more quietly that when asked how many lines he actually knew, he reckoned “Um, about 30%?”

Ideas involving lines written on clipboards were bandied about. We ran through as much as we could, then Charlotte took her other cast off to the Baby Belly to have their tech. They got back at 2.30 this morning.

We ran through Wit at 9 this morning. Charlotte and Katie, who’s in both plays, are still somehow conscious. The cast member had miraculously learned all his lines and was absolutely brilliant.

I tried on my bald cap last night. These are not fun to do on your own and require a lot of cutting down before they stop looking like a gimp sock. Last time I had one I had significantly more hair. This time, I chopped it off beforehand, expensively. There was still too much, so I grabbed the kitchen scissors I’d used for chopping up plastic and cut a few chunks out, less expensively. I can’t see what it looks like at the back which is probably wise, but the effect from the front is something that a trust-fund hipster would probably fork out £100 for at Taylor Taylor. It’s DIY, bitches.

After my Royal Tenenbaums moment I went to bed and read children’s books and tried not to die of panic in my sleep.

It’s now about 90 minutes til the first show. I know it’s only a fucking play, but I’ve never had stage fright in my life, and right now I’m rather wishing I’d had practise because I am absolutely terrified.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Wit at Edinburgh - "taking the night bus didn't kill me" shocker

It’s a theatrical tradition that, for a show to go right, everything has to go wrong beforehand. I’ve always rather suspected this to be lies made up by companies blessed with more enthusiasm than skill, but given the endless stream of you’ve-gotta-laugh-or-you’ll-cry-and-never-get-up-again incidents that happened yesterday, I’m inclined to change my opinion.

From Monday we’re performing at Delhi Belly, a bijou space in the vast caverns of the Underbelly on Cowgate. Bijou is a kind word meaning microscopically small. Our director Charlotte – an unflappable genius whose anger/panic/insanity only becomes apparent if you look her straight in the eyes in the afternoon – walked in to find that four feet of the stage was missing.

“We needed a viable fire exit,” said one of the Underbelly techs cheerily. This makes our stage a measly 8ft deep (I am 6’2 and do a lot of lying down) and means we now have to put a large prop on the floor and call it ‘meta’.

Sunday was to be our tech, the first rehearsal since a week-long rush a month ago.

“Wit – um, yeah here you are. 1pm on Monday,” said our techie, Gavin, looking at his clipboard

There was a short pause while Charlotte battled the demons within.

“Gavin, the play has its first run at 1.15 on Monday. We’re supposed to be teching in the morning.”

“Um, well, someone-who-sounds-like-Dave-Michelle has got you down for then.”

Gavin is not thick, just massively overworked. Possibly-Dave-Michelle is also not thick, but definitely numerically dyslexic.After some Charlotte magic worked on the supervising tech, and bribing a reluctant Gavin with tea and donuts to get out bed for 9.30 Monday morning, we set about assembling the props. The NHS hospital bed and office chair are played by Ikea, both being cheap and famously unreliable. We hit a snag when the chair’s last wheel refused point blank to allow itself to be screwed in place. George, Charlotte’s assistant, nearly broke his head falling off it backwards, which will teach him for playing around on swivel chairs when there are beds of minute height to assemble.

The bed is Lilliputian. Alex, who plays one of the doctors, will have to limbo under my character’s pelvis in order to do an exam. Ikea outdid themselves again by making the mattress a good four inches smaller than the bed frame. A sketch group called The House of Windsor eyed our efforts dubiously as we then attempted to make it look a bit less like a horrific metal accident by covering it in sheets and hospital blankets. We lost George, who’d seen the House of Windsor show in London and subsequently turned deep pink and asked reverential questions.

“Wit? I think I’m reviewing that for The Stage,” said one of them horrifying casually. “Acts reviewing other acts.” Charlotte and I turned the full laser beam of our smiles on him. He looked slightly uncomfortable. George was still pink. We’re all probably fucked, but we’ve got a very good play and regardless of Swiftian influence, that should hopefully be enough to engross an audience. It’ll even be all be alright on the night – and it was. We went to Silent Disco. It was the most fun I’ve had in months.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Bad day for baby whales

Whales: stop coming to Britain. Maybe that fake great white could come up from Cornwall and scare him out.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Things that are good and things that are not

- The Bourne Ultimatum
Despite the fact I find myself physically incapable of calling it anything other than the Bourne Ultomato, it was anything but thoroughly stupid. Moving from one beautifully choregraphed and outlandishly plotted chase after another, the action was so snapped down it felt like Matt Damon had been taking dance lessons. The Guardian must be in absolute bits as well - Paddy Considine plays a hardhitting one of their number who Bourne has to mastermind through Waterloo station. My home departure lounge never looked so interesting - Bourne twats a bad guy outside the big Smiths! Amazing!

The sad thing Bourne has to contend with is that every assassin other than him seems to double as a Hot Model. Desh, the guy who trails him around Morocco (and Paul Greengrass certainly includes a lot of nice tourist shots from helicopters) is so pretty you almost forget your're not really supposed to be looking at him as much as you are. Oh yes, and Bourne kills someone with a towel. A TOWEL! And there's no chauvinism! And Joan Allen is the most fabulous nutcracker this side of the real CIA. Move aside Bond, this really is the greatest action franchise of the last 30 years. Even if there's no actual spying in it.

More than that, I haven't been to a screening like it in years: the audience was constantly breaking into applause after setpieces, laughing and wincing and collectively going "Ooh" and "Aah". Now that's amazing cinema. Helen couldn't make it because she was interviewing Josh Hartnett (a phoner! Not even a face to face, the poor lamb) and they're not screening it again for two weeks or something obscene. Yet despite this extremely generous gap between screening and release date, we didn't have to go through the usual rigorous security checks to ensure all phones, cameras and professional recording equipment had been removed. That's Sprite levels of refreshing, seriously.

- The Bratz Movie
Less about the film itself, more about the fun in the foyer. Despite the fact I'd been to an incredibly good party the night before and was thusly still dressed as the Industrial Zone from The Crystal Maze, I was still allowed to have some of the chocolate crispy cakes the PRs had got in, and watch as the little girls and (for reasons known only to the parents) boys got to mess around with the fun.

This is one of the nicest things about multi-media screenings: for the kids films, the PR company organises lots of nice activities for them before the film starts to get them in the mood. Bratz had glitter face painting (I fitted right in - my hair was still vaguely silver), cheerleading classes downstairs and those cake things. Little girls clutching pom poms and spelling out "F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!" while dancing around might be the sweetest thing you'll ever see.

- Elopements
A friend from university sent an email round yesterday announcing the fact that he and his longterm fiancée had eloped to New York and were getting married on Friday. In Elvis style. How is that not the best thing ever? Now Matt gets to put his cherished brown cord flares in the limelight where he thinks they belong. Bless! Also, elopements. Brilliant. Apparently the average wedding costs £18,000. This is rubbish, surely - all you want is a nice summer day, some flowers, a garden and all your friends around you. That and enough gin to drown a city of Dickensian orphans.

- Cultural interchange on Radio 4
Zane Lowe talking about Mark Ronson's Bob Dylan remix on the Today programme. But mostly James Naughtie talking about "fattened up" music.

...and not

I downloaded a French artist before I moved house, namely because I love Camille and Sybille Baier and thought that someone called Katerine must be pretty alright. That and she shared my name and had an album called Robots Aprè Tout which just sounded like the sort of quirky quant fey crap I go nuts over. Fuck no. It's an ageing man with longstanding pretensions to electropop and it makes me want to rampage. Back to Cat Power, Catatonia, or Skatalites if we're being particularly tenuous.

- Coelacanths
Specifically fishing for them. So someone in Asia's picked up the first one in ages - doesn't that basically mean there's one less?

"He took the catch back to the port where it remained alive for 17 hours in a netted pool outside of a restaurant. It was then frozen and is now being examined by scientists."

Wow. They're examining a fish that barely exists to find out why it barely exists and how. Oh come on, seriously.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Flight of the Conchords - 'Jenny'

I've been thinking about Edinburgh a lot recently. Partly because it's pretty, partly because I'm going there quite soon and haven't thought enough about it probably.

Last time I was there I discovered the lovely Flight of the Conchords, a duo called Bret and Jermaine. Bret was an elf in Lord of the Rings. Jermaine is in the rather wonderful-looking 'Eagle VS Shark' which is coming out soon. They're both in an HBO series about them which is alright, but they're better live. They also did a radio show with Rob Bryden. It worked about as well as Mitch Benn's solo show (ie, fell as flat as flat can be without being any flatter.)

They write very funny, deadpan folk parodies about David Bowie and racist dragons and rappers called Hiphopapotamus v Rhymenocerous and other such things, and my absolute favourite song of all was one about a horrendous bit of mistaken identity complete with falsettos and rhyming. The internet didn't have it for years, but some excellent geeks at What The Folk have put pretty much all their songs online.

You should listen to Jenny now though. I am. Over and over. Like Hot Chip with a sense of humour and a lack of miniature cymbals. AMAZING.

Monday, July 30, 2007

My idol, my fallen queen

As one of my chief idols and role models, it saddens me greatly that Paris Hilton has lost her inheritance. I mean, is she going to have to get a job now she won't have that $60 million to sit back on?

The man who cut her off is her grandpa, the only one who actually does something in the Hilton clan. He's nearly 80 and is probably jealous of how serene Paris always looks. While the sex tape was embarrassing, apparently her ending up in prison is worse to him. I don't know about that. I can't think of anything worse than something as intimate as that ending up on the web, but then I've watched five seasons of Oz and lady prison can't be that bad.

"He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris," says some opportunistic mouthpiece who wrote a book about them (and fair enough, the toiletries my housemate brought me back from same were substandard. Arf.)

Poor Paris. What's she going to do? What? How? Why? Wherefore? And whither?

Friday, July 27, 2007

...and how to go "aaaaaah" properly

Waiting for Potter. WTH A DOG.

Ruin Harry Potter for the slow ones

Read the new Harry Potter yet? Well done. Now buy one of these t-shirts and punish the silly bastards who "don't really see what all the fuss is about" and are "taking their time" reading it. No. It doesn't work like that at all. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha!

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Electrical Plug Socket

In two weeks, I disappear up to Edinburgh for another two weeks to do a show called Wit at the Edinburgh Festival. I wrote about it here once, but not really much about it, but don't let that put you off because it is a very good play and I don't have many talents so come and see me do well at something.

All this is why I'm going to write about something else instead. WOO!

Of the few non-mental people to have befriended me on MySpace and who I've befriended in return, Bad Film Club are in my top two favourites. Nicko and Joe are a pair of bad-movie obsessed comedians who screen choice cuts of their 1300 strong film library and get a spare comedian in to join them in doing a DVD style commentary. It's very silly, and often very funny (although more so when they do proper old-school bad films).

Robin Ince's choice of Doctor of Evil: The Mutations will live me forever. Tony Law and Top Gun, not so much. Tony's dog, Cartridge Davidson, was the best part of that. Old films work better, they're genuinely worse, and Dr of Evil had ANGRY DWARVES! And CAULIFLOWER HANDS!

Anyway, they're doing Edinburgh this year, with a show pretty much every night from 11pm - 1am in the Pleasance. I've wangled the list out of Nicko, so pick your likely challenger and go along and see them. Be warned - Nicko's become addicted to checking how many they've sold, so she might have gone slightly insane by the time they start.

BUY BAD FILM CLUB TICKETS!


Top Gun - AUG 3rd

VIVA KNIEVAL - Aug 4th - Tony Law

Jaws 4 - Aug 5th (not as bad as I remembered. Shame.)

Road House- Aug 6th - Brendon Burns

Highlander - Aug 9th - Robin Ince (special show at The cameo)

TBA - Aug 10th

Fire Storm- AUG 11

Die Hard 2-Aug 12th - Christian Reilly

Xanadu - Aug 13th - Josie Long (special show at The Cameo)



Highlander II Aug 17th - Andrew Maclelland

PIRANHA II-THE FLYING KILLERS- Aug 18th - Men with Bananas

Basic Instinct 2- Aug 19th - Glenn Wool & Brendon Burns


Jaws 3D - AUG 24th (motherfuckin' YEAH motherfuckers!)


Anaconda - Aug 25th

Can’t stop the music - Aug 26th

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Welcome, Princess Tiàaii Price Andre

The wait is over. Jordan's announced the name of her little girl, and by the sounds of it she's either a type of doll, or a long-lost Sailor Moon cast member.

Peter Andre said: "Katie always loved the name Princess, but everyone thought it was a bit over the top. I loved it too but I wanted to name her after both our mums."

"Then I just woke up one morning and thought, I know! We'll just put them together!. If people don't like it, that's up to them."

Bless Peter Andre. But what happens when little Princess Tiàaii - "We've put an accent over the first A to make it more exotic and two Is at the end just to make it look a bit different" - decides she'd rather be called Pam? At least she'll have Geri Halliwell and Lowri Turner's insanely named kiddies to frolic with. Start placing your bets on the kids becoming rocket scientists and Nobel prize winners.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Ill/Trailers

I am very bad at being ill. Or rather, I was very good at being ill when I was at school because after I'd passed my mother's stringent lying-tests I'd get to lie in bed with the black and white portable telly and eat soup and sleep and feel safe and cossetted.

Now of course I'm in the arse end of East London, my mother's in Hampshire and I'm not at school in any case. My head feels like a foetus is fast-forwarding through pregnancy and breaking out of the sides. I've got a bona fide temperature and chills. I had to make my own soup for Christ's sakes. If Helen hadn't sent me home from our Gentlemen Prefer Blondes viewing last night armed with enough books and films to educate a school, I'd probably have started smoking again just for something to do.

I don't do ill. I don't have the time or the inclination. Hangover, certainly, sleepy or cold, absolutely, but genuinely illness doesn't enter my dictionary very often. I spent too long in hospitals and dentists as a teenager to waste my time with it now, and as a result, today is probably the most boring day of my life because I can't even go and do my evening plans because I am dripping with sweat and aching like an old tree.

BORING! Fucking boring. And yes, I know I'm boring for being bored, but I'm ill so shut up.

Anyway, before my body decided to keep me away from human company, I watched an awful lot of trailers this weekend. Watch them too, then tell me about them. Seriously. My housemate won't be home til it's dark and I might have fainted of boredom and fever by then. Do you know any good jokes? Are they over an hour long? Brilliant! Bring them on.

The Ten - 10 stories inspired by the commandments. I heart Paul Rudd.

Talk To Me - Don Cheadle and his hair get parole and end up wowing the nation on 60s radio.

Arctic Tale - the greatest thing you will ever see. I cried. Twice. And screamed. More.

The Golden Compass - CGI is rubbish (the bear is almost as bad as post-BBC Aslan) but the books are stunning.

King of Kong - housemate's choice. I didn't believe him. I am a stupid girl. Documentary about two obsessive Kong players battling for the Guinness world record.

The Jane Austen Book Club - reassuringly lovely girl flick. Not for boys. It has Hugh Dancy in it. I once cornered him at a premiere to get his autograph for my old flatmate. He was not best pleased. I think this might have had something to do with the fact I towered over him by a good foot.

December Boys - Daniel Radcliffe's breakway from Potter role. Four orphan boys, the seaside, precocious girls, men with motorcycles. I cried in this as well. It's probably that time of the month or something. Looks utterly ravishing.

August Rush - Lovely lovely Freddie Highmore plays an orphan who becomes a musical genius guided by Robin Williams in an assortment of odd hats. Jonathan Rhys Meyers turns up to be Irish, Keri Russell turns up to play cello and be divine. Obviously I shed a tear in the trailer to this too. Definitely that time.

...and not so much

Rocket Science
Margot at the Wedding

Yawn. How much more sub-Wes Anderson po-faced indies about bored American families do we have to sit through? They're not funny anymore. Squid in the Whale was a warning to us all. Bloody Baumbach. The casts are great though, so maybe ones for DVD and a bottle of gin next time round.

30 Days of Night
Reading this at the moment thanks to Helen's educational Kew bag. It's still vampires though, isn't it, and there's a bit of a dearth of imagination going on with vampires at the moment so it had better try hard otherwise it's just going to be Insomnia with teeth. On that note, I heard a fantastic vampire story on BBC7 last night: Schalken The Painter. Listen to that instead. Never have I been so transfixed while cooking lasagne.

Lions For Lambs
Just actually the worst-looking thing ever. Robert Redford should have his directing hand cut off.

Right, that's about it really. I'm going to go back to being bored and ill now. Never have I wished I were at work more.

Friday, July 20, 2007

ShoHo Sho Shit

I went to Shoreditch House last night. I can quite honestly say that I haven't looked forward to nosing around somewhere this much since I went to the Soho house library and got lost, and I haven't been so disappointed by something since I saw the clown at my brother's 5th birthday party taking his make-up off.

For a members club that's been launched in a veritable powder puff of fanfare it looked unfinished, unpolished, and un worth it. The lifts are still covered in wood and look like the beginnings of an Ikea sauna. The lift girls had the glazed expressions of sweatshop workers on 36 hour shifts. The female bar staff weren't pretty enough to be this charmless, most of the male staff looked browbeaten and half asleep.

The front desk was littered with people who didn't seem to be doing anything other than get in everyone's way. The large white room our party was in had a bowling alley behind which was probably the only humanising aspect. The white tiled loos were covered in five-year grime, unlike the ones at Soho House which are so sleek they're almost feline. We couldn't be arsed to work hard enough to sneak up onto the roof to see the pool, but given the state of what we saw it was probably still surrounded in builders.

I know there were four other floors than the ones we were on but seriously - £500 a year for this building site? I've heard wonderful, awe-struck things about the rest of it, but given that parties like these are when tipsy non-members start thinking about opening their wallets to join up, it was about as aspirational as stomach cramp. It's £350 to join Hospital, £300 for Milk & Honey and its nice cocktails and elegant house rules. Maybe ShoHo will be worth it in six months when it's actually ready, but not now ta.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Harry Potter and the inevitable internet download

It's only Thursday and already there's a Harry Potter book torrent on the internet! Seeing as I'm entirely against spoilers where HP is concerned and am paying full whack for it at midnight on Friday, I'm not going to read it or even look at it, and therefore don't know if it's true. It's definitely illegal though, so don't look at it.

If you tell me who dies/lives/etc, I will hunt you down and kick you in the shins VERY VERY HARD. Although not as hard as the pious twat going on about JK Rowling's literary pretensions in the Guardian today.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Mercury

So, the shortlist for this year's Mercury Music Prize (sod off Nationwide, you don't roll of the tongue fast enough) consists of actually good bands and albums that deserve it. Be still my beating disappointment. Oh hang on, Basquiat Strings have been nominated whoever they are. I hope they have beards.

Bat for Lashes - Fur and Gold
Fionn Regan - The End of History
New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
The Young Knives - Voices of Animals and Men
Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
Maps - We Can Create
The View - Hats Off to the Buskers
Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Jamie T - Panic Prevention
Basquiat Strings - Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

Bat For Lashes - My favourite album of last year and one of the best I've heard in my entire life. Weird enough to win, those Bjork/Kate Bush comparisons should come in well here.

Fionn Regan - Didn't hear it. Is it any good?

New Young Pony Club - Despite the fact Ice Cream's been bothering the radio since early last year, nobody seemed to notice until they suddenly started being picked up by the TopShop trash as something that might sound cool on the school bus. Not new rave, NYPC are fucking fantastic and straddle enough genres to be cutting edge without boring anybody.

Klaxons - Indie. Good indie mind, but nothing more. Haven't we had enough of indie yet?

The Young Knives - Such jollity and cheeriness in ones so be-spectacled. Graham Coxon has a lot to answer for.

Arctic Monkeys - See Fionn. Sounds exactly the same as the first one, surely.

Maps - No

The View - Christ no.

Dizzee Rascal
- Had his awards allowance plus he's already changed the landscape once and it's someone else's turn.

Amy Winehouse - Much as I adore the Winehouse, Back To Black isn't actually great all the way through. If she had a less amazing voice, we'd all be a bit bored.

Jamie T - FUCK NO. He's from Wimbledon, and for some reason this annoys me more than that fucking Stella song.

Basquiat Strings - See Fionn. Sounds like it should be a lingerie ad.


I'm going to put money on Bat For Lashes, partly because I've been wittering on about the album and keep getting told to shut up for looking like a converted Christian, and partly because I think she has a Helen Mirren/Oscar chance of winning. IE: they don't let her win, they're entirely blind. Go Bat!

Lowri Turner - Mommy Dearest, the racist version

I was at Latitude all weekend and thus missed out on the pleasures of Holy Moly, which is getting less rubbish with every week.

In case you hadn't already had the pleasure of reading the cretinous ramblings of Aryan crone Lowri Turner in the Mail (obviously), here she is wailing about how difficult it is that the baby she's just had with her British-Indian husband looks nothing like her, the please read on.

(You might also like her searing piece on political issues entitled: "However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country", published in last year's Western Mail)

The article is, at best, an attempt at honesty made with all the finesse of an elephant knitting a scarf. At worst, this is going to seriously fuck that poor kid up when she's older. What's even more horrible is that Turner announced the divorce from her husband only a week before and said she felt "Embarrassed, humiliated, hurt, angry, sad, guilty, confused." Eurgh - horrible thought shudder etc - was this article was a way of getting back at him? For fuck's sake woman, boil a rabbit.

Lowri on her third child:

"Into this positively Scandinavian next generation, I have now injected a tiny, dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she stands out is an understatement."

"Don't get me wrong, I love her...But when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me. "

"No more Brady Bunch kids for me."

"My love may not be colour blind, but hers is, and that is truly humbling."

THE WOMAN IS UTTERLY INSANE.

I've got red hair, my mum is fair. I'm transparently white, she's got a permanent gardening tan. We look nothing like each other but share enough neuroses and vocal mannerisms to make it patently obvious that we're related. It's a child, not a bloody handbag.

Even the Daily Mail comments looked askance after the inevitable openers: "Searingly honest maybe, possibly commendably so. But in my opinion Lowri needs to 'get a grip', give herself a damn good talking to, pull herself together, get over herself etc and get on with the business of bringing up the three children she knowingly brought into this world, blonde, brown, black or whatever colour they may be."

Start placing bets on the date when baby Turner mum-divorces the hand-wringing idiot woman.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I read this and was furious. Then I read the comments at the bottom and laughed like a demented coffee maker. Bloody ridiculous idea: yes, English is an illogical and irrationally spelled language but when you've got the hang of it it's the most beautiful thing around. I love the way we have a "eau" which in no way follows the French. Or even itself. Or indeed any kind of rational thought pattern. I love the fact you can mix round all the letters in it and still read it. I just adore its words: vexed, coruscating, flim-flammery, favourite, amazing, blazing, lashes, enzymes, mitochondria. Luscious. Germany apparently tried to rejig their spelling a few years ago and ended up with excess f's. Bleurgh.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Thursday, July 05, 2007

In raging fury and ffs-ness at the sheer inability of a functioning website to hire enough people to make it run, I've started up a new blog chronicling my attempts to give up smoking. Read it, let me know what you think. If you read this blog regularly you will be doubtless thrilled to know that I've already updated the other one with more fervour and dedication than I've ever bothered here. New skills.

http://nobodylikesaquitter.blogspot.com

Also, to anyone else wondering if I got paralysed/killed/bored on the Central line this morning, I was saved from taking my usual train by deciding to get up later and have a shower instead. Cleanliness is next to undeadliness.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Sam, The AnomaliesSo live music is slowly swilling down the plughole of closing venues and crap soundsystems (Spitz! Astoria! Glastonbury Pyramid Stage!). A while ago a petition was started up to express disapproval at "burdensome licensing regulations" that were inappropriate for live music and dance, and were not promoting these activities.

Well, ye-es, but then having your hearing buggered to death by cheap soundsystems turned up way past full isn't promoting them in a positive manner either. There should surely be some compromise between people wanting to have music at a volume that really shows it off to its best, and between pissing off the neighbours and people whose good will is relied on for live shows to exist in the first place. Although seriously: if Glastonbury could just make up their minds whether it was a crap soundsystem, an accidental blip by the sound desk or a request from the local council that resulted in The Killers's awful Sunday picnic sound, that'd be just dandy.

Here's the petition and the recent response from the Goverment.



2 July 2007

We received a petition asking:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to recognise that music and dance should not be restricted by burdensome licensing regulations."

Details of Petition:

"The recently introduced changes in licensing law have produced an environment where music and dance, activities which should be valued and promoted in a civilised society, are instead damaged by inappropriate regulation. We call on the Prime Minister to recognise this situation and take steps to correct it."


Read the Government's response

"Thank you for signing the epetition expressing concerns that the new licensing act is restricting music and dance.

"The Government recognises the vital role that live music and dance play in our national life and wants to see it expanded not reduced. So there is absolutely no intention of restricting performances through unnecessary licensing regulations. But it is also the case, of course, that some live performances can impact on the wider community, not least through noise, public safety or nuisance to local residents.

"So the aim of the Licensing Act was to streamline the system which had grown up over many years, reducing unnecessary burdens but giving local communities a greater say in the licensing decisions that affect them. The Act, for example, has removed the need to apply for several different permits to put on events and enabled more venues to put on performances.

"Overall the evidence so far does not suggest that the Licensing Act has had a negative impact on the amount of live music. Research for the Department for Culture, Music and Sport (new window) into the impact of the new rules on smaller venues found that twice as many found the licensing process easy as difficult. It also highlighted the fact that bureaucracy and expense were only rarely mentioned as reasons for not applying licences.

"But the Government does accept that some venues feel unnecessarily constrained by restrictive conditions. While those that have stopped hosting live music have generally been balanced by the emergence of new venues, we do recognise that the loss of an established venue can have an impact on individual musicians and music fans.

"It is in response to these concerns that DCMS has already set out areas where it thinks changes might be made to reduce further administrative burdens. The Government also set up the Live Music Forum in 2004 to monitor the impact of the Licensing Act and to recommend how government might better promote live performances. We expect to receive the Forum's findings and recommendations in the Summer and will look closely to see if action is needed."

Friday, June 29, 2007

'It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Fopp.

Our store chain is profitable, well regarded and loved by our loyal customers
and staff. However we have failed to gain the necessary support from major
stakeholders, suppliers and their credit insurers to generate sufficient working
capital to run our expanding business.

We would like to thank staff and customers for their support over the past 25
years'

ENDS

A fopp spokesperson


*****PLEASE NOTE*****

PRESS COUNSEL HAVE NO FURTHER COMMENT TO MAKE AND AS IT STANDS ARE NO LONGER IN
COMMUNICATION WITH FOPP

___________________________
Well that rather chuffs the idea of Bearded getting a distribution deal there. Where am I going to buy my mid-price books and similar when I can't be arsed to go on Amazon now? Also, what's going on with that Press Counsel statement? Either Fopp's totally disappeared off the radar or they haven't paid their PR bills. Crivens.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

I am going to Glastonbury in less than four hours. Despite the fact I spent the entirety of last summer sleeping in fields accumulating a new and interesting collection of bruises, I am still not remotely prepared. I have to go and buy a tent at lunchtime. I texted my old housemate at midnight last night to ask if he could bring in my old sleeping bag (he is). My dad brought me my ancient wellies in exchange for tax forms and my mum smuggled me in some socks, which my dad then smuggled back on discovering they were his cherished sailing socks. I didn't say it was understandable or, y'know, fair.

Rather like illness or small yappy dogs, Glastonbury has always seemed to me like something that happens to other people. It's big, so obscenely big I can't even imagine. People put such emphasis on having life-changing experiences there that it's actually rather off-putting. It has a huge ethos with it. I know lots of people who are going, all of whom are scattered over 100 acres, which amounts to none. I can't remember what to take. I haven't got any binliners (shit – go and get bin liners). I was in shops buying sunglasses and belts this morning and a very exciting t-shirt and a very exciting short skirt for when I have to start using mud as leggings. I went to my friend Guy's end of year exhibition at St Martin's last night (moment for Guy – he's TOTALLY in Vogue) and after a couple of drinks went home to bake cake and make disappointingly unhippie fudge to share with the people sharing my camping bit.

I STILL DON'T HAVE A TENT.

Oh God, I don't have a tent. How much do they cost? There's a tent shop about 10 minutes from work. It shouldn't cost a load because I'll leave it for the charity appeal at the end of the weekend, but it shouldn't be shit because then the kids eventually using it will have to sleep in a fibrous sieve.

The tent still doesn't exist.

Trousers. Shall I wear my nice black trousers and get them fucked anyway, or just wear my least-favourite eBay purchase all weekend until it's destroyed (coffee-coloured ball dress, too long, deserves to die in a gasping flood of soil). Either way my tent will inevitably drown in a flood.

I almost forgot there was actual music until Olly emailed me for my number to make snap decisions on bands to see. Good grief. Bjork should be very good at least, and I am actually wetting myself at the prospect of seeing Burly Chassey roll those r's around Diamonds Are Forever.

Whinge whinge whinge. Glastonbury happens to other people. It had better happen to me when I get there. Whinge whinge ungrateful ingrate grating whinge. Bloody hell it's like being a toddler again. I'm going to two other festivals this summer which will be fine. Why this one? Nobody (touch wood) is going to rape me. Or steal from me. Or drown me in a vat of good feelings.

I will most likely come back going "Oh my God it was AMAZING." However. If I come back talking about ethics and hemp, please shoot me and scatter my ashes on AA Gill's doorstep.

Friday, June 08, 2007

*Inappropriate insertion of Emily Big Brother-esque joke about leaving job in Soho here*

I've been commissioned to write a blog about giving up smoking. This is obviously brilliant, as I am going to be paid to rant about the pointless minutiae of my life, but terrible in that I really like smoking and don't particularly want to stop.

Also, I've never tried giving up before unless I've had a really horrible hangover or been too ill to even consider the idea of putting anything other than Vicks near my lungs, so I don't really know what to do. I've joined my quitters' group at work (dreadful: I feel like I'm signing up to Pariahs Weekly) and I expect there will be patches and motivational talks, but other than that I'm a bit stumped as to how to behave in the pub, at gigs, drinking cocktails, at parties etc.

I don't smoke during the day but have an almost magnetic fixation to cigarettes when drinking/in pub/at gig/after screening/at friends' houses etc and I'm not stopping doing any of that thank you very much.

The ban, which this blog is in aid of, will be a help, but even worse, that means missing out on the gossip and camaraderie that goes on outside. Damn.

Friday, June 01, 2007


Swishblog Chris's lovely girlfriend Helen has talked about her London marching band on and off for a while now and I kept meaning to follow it up in the mindset of someone who won't because they think that potentially Helen is mad. Helen is clearly not mad, because it turns out her band do amazing things like this cover of Gravity's Rainbow by Klaxons. Sadly it doesn't have a video, but Helen has made a proper slide show to go with it and, frankly, if the sound of a marching band with full brass and the like rocking out to the UK's premier indie-not-dance band doesn't inspire you, then you're a bigger fool than I.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Normally I can count the press releases I get and actually care about on the bones of my little finger, so this was a really lovely treat in my inbox: Amiina, four nice young Icelandic girls who make lush and quirky music that sticks freakfolk in a bowl with a load of bass and fumbles it around awkwardly and probably with pom poms.

It doesn't make sense, it doesn't have to because it's LOVELY. I was slightly worried about not having anything to fall in love with this year, but with Lavender Diamond's album and this, I should be ok for the next few weeks at least.

Wibbles...

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

ohmygodbatmanohmygodbatmanohmygodbatman...




"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

"Why no actually, I turned around and ran away in the opposite direction."

Who'da thunk this was Heath Ledger?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Three confusions: the unexpected fact that the last and very sad Ugly Betty I watched turned out to be the last one I get until the leaves start falling again; whether or not I fell asleep and forget about the little girl in Heroes; and Pirates 3, just in general.

It's released on Thursday, but the big media hoo-ha screening was only last night. Generally studios do this if a) the film is crap and they don't want the press flexing their vitriol much before release or b) the film is going to make squillions anyway and they don't need to care. This was a b moment, as made obvious by the bored-looking men standing around holding screens showing clips from the trilogy.

It was actually really nice to be able to walk into the Empire without having to hand over every electrical item in your bag and thus sharpen your elbows in preparation for the post-credits scrum later on. At the same time, it seemed curiously empty. Nobody was very excited, only a handful of people in the gigantic auditorium were wearing their Pirates bandannas, and expectations in the Empire camp were low to middling. Pirates 2 was smug and safe, in the way a lot of pictures get once the characters have their own action figures. Pirates 3 was...well, it's out in three days, you can see for yourself.

Having experienced the delights of a friend being blitzed by someone on the internet the other weekend, and then been slightly less delighted when I scrolled down to find that a bunch of his friends, me included, had been brought into the middle of it, it's only now that the whole sorry affair has been removed from the internet that I can snigger gleefully at this. Actually that's a flagrant lie, I'd have laughed anyway. Although I love paintball, and if my skin was tougher and I wasn't such a mimsying pansy I'd totally take it up professionally.

"So many memories, shared and archived…

…the day I met him, and I told all of you, “This could be THE one, or the NEXT one.”

…the night he proposed, and the morning he forgot he proposed.

…Great America… Hedonism II… Camping (I still have the scar!)… Meet the Parents (more scars, only on inside! LOL)… Hedonism III…

…the time he cheated on me with my own cousin but I forgave him because she had cancer and he was just making her feel good about herself but then it turned out she never had cancer and I still forgave him, even though a lot of you wrote a lot of thoughtful comments advising me not to."

"If anyone sees Dave, please inform him he owes me 32 thousand dollars."

Mother of god, I don't care that it's not real.

Also, some lessons in how not to make a flaming website. These include:

- Building it, and alternative flamers from your own IP address. If you're going to fork out for it yourself, you could at least sneak off to an internet cafe. Which brings us on to...

- Don't pay for it with your own credit card. Seriously, if you want revenge, at least plot it out properly. However outraged your friends are on your behalf, they need security details.

- Get your facts right. If half of it is going to be an anguished call of love, then putting in lies the (admittedly incredibly stupid) boy in question told one of your friends and calling them fact just makes you libellous.

- Don't put in stuff about their friends. Especially not if one of them is me and you've just written them an incredibly well thought out email explaining why you are not insane. Actions like this rather negate that.

- Spell and punctuate properly. Emotional turmoil is no excuse for abusing the lower case.

The thing that pisses me off most in the world, being wrong about people. Thank god I've got coffee.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

I don't really think about withdrawal very much except in connection with a) my horrific overdraft b) nicotine and c) heroin. I don't do heroin. I'm not Socttish enough. I gave up chocolate for Lent when I was 16 and was so upset after two hours of the prospect of 30 days without it that I ate three Snickers.

Nobody likes withdrawal because it reminds us that we need stuff and that's wholly at odds with the idea of being free-thinking and choosing our own path down the yellow brick road. At the moment, I'm stuck slap-bang in the middle of chemical withdrawal and it fucking sucks. Rather than writing Trainspotting via Clapham ("We've run out of organic limes!") I would just like to warn you about something you probably know about already, being more interested in life/medicine/stuff that happens outside of fiction than me.

It's called Seroxat and it fucking sucks. Before I found this out, I thought it was called Paroxetine which it is, to give it its less glamorous Tesco's Value equivalent name. The three evils of job hunting, panicking about losing any grip on writing I'd made in the last two years and whether anyone would ever employ me for longer than 9 months made me even more anxious than usual, and given my brain had a tendency to self-destruct until three years ago, my doctor went all American and thrust pills at me, ones that incidentally have the highest incidence rate and severity of withdrawal of any similar pill. Like, score!

On Friday, after a month of numbness, yawning and general meh, the pills ran out. Yesterday I burst into tears within ten minutes of getting out of bed and didn't stop for 8 hours. I wrote a furious and outraged email to a friend that was way over the top however annoyed I was, and I haven't bothered checking my inbox to find her inevitably furious and outraged reply. My boyfriend thought he'd done something wrong, but nobody had – it was just my brain suddenly realising it wasn't being zapped into numbness by suicide-enhancing anti-anxiety tablets and throwing a massive wobbler in the process.

Today I just feel sick. The sort of sick where you can't see any way of getting through it because you're about to cry anyway. Everything is misted up in a grey veil of panic and upset, about absolutely nothing, about tears and the fact my head is being denied this horrendous drug. I've taken it for a month for fuck's sake, this is utterly absurd. There's a reason people go on this for so long: coming off it is exactly that – coming off. Ironic when none of the myriad tablets I was prescribed when I was actually ill did anything other than give me something to do every morning.

I absconded to BDQ headquarters in Windsor last night and for a blissful 12 hours felt safe and happy. Then I got the train home this morning and hid behind the Style section of the Sunday Times quaking in a hot puddle of saline surrounded by burly men and yummy mummies in Wasps shirts.

Depression isn't my illness anymore and hasn't been for years. I'm no happier or sadder than anyone else in London. What I am is at the mercy of my body, and it absolutely sucks. Screw Seroxat, Paroxetine, and doctors who'll throw drugs at anything that moves because the NHS gives them sod all support to do otherwise. Don't take this drug. Don't let anyone give it to you. Eat coconut and lemon meringue ice creams instead. And smile lovingly at your Pirates 3 screening ticket for tomorrow evening. Aces.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Best Holy Moly Duty Log ever...

(If you don't know what a duty log is, it's where Disgruntled from Lancaster write in to express their concerns with their television stations. Apparently. I'm sure people write in with praise as well, but it's considerably less fun.)

"My favourite programme on TV is and always has been Heartbeat. It's one of the few programmes I allow time for. THAT IS UNTIL NOW! 8.07pm I HAVE JUST SWITCHED OFF (AND WON'T BE SWITCHING BACK ON - I DO KNOW WHERE THE OFF BUTTON IS).

The reason I have switched off is the shooting and killing of the dog. We have two similar dog's and they both had seen the dog on the TV and were barking at it. My family were all laughing 'the dogs like the show too' we said.

Then a gunshot and the dog lay DEAD. My grandchildren who were watching started to cry and I switched the show off - FOREVER. AND IT WAS BEFORE THE 9PM WATERSHED.

Everyone connected with the show is a DISGRACE."

Friday, May 11, 2007

Thirteen pups for Beethoven! It's like 101 Dalmations, only marginally more physically possible. Bless. I want a puppy. Immediately.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Yawn. Patrick Wolf has changed his mind about retiring from music and is celebrating this fact by going on a massive tour just to show how not retiring he is. Good grief. If you want a publicity stunt he could have just slept with someone. Or worn a suit.

"For me to say I was going to quit music is like saying I'm going to commit suicide," he says. "It's the most extreme thing that could happen in my life." Bless the silly chump.


From Ananova via the DJourno:

"A TV worker has been sacked for mocking the French presidential favourite in English subtitles.

"A plea by Nicholas Sarkozy for voters to join his campaign before the Sunday poll was interpreted as "rally my inflated ego".

"The subtitles were broadcast across the United States in the English news bulletins from public broadcaster France 2.

"Channel chiefs blamed it on freelance workers."

Hilarious. I'm waiting to be paid by a firm based in Spain. Apparently Spain works several weeks behind the actual world, so I sympathise with freelancers who are bored out of their wits, and rather admire their ability to crowbar a joke anywhere near the region of Sarkozy, a man who probably had a sense of humour once but decided it was spoiling the lines of his suit.

I admire anyone who has actually managed to hold on to their languages. I had to interview Marion Cotillard from the excellent Edith Piaf biog La Vie En Rose on Monday and having spoken to the PR in French had a mad crazy panic when asked if I wanted to do the interview in French.

Waiting for the next (ludicrously supercilious) PR to get her, I had horrible flashbacks to what happened when I interviewed Daniel Auteuil in French at the Hidden LFF screening. I was so nervous that I not only got my words the wrong way round but made an enormous clanger caused by having missed the only screening that week. There is no scorn like Gallic scorn or worse, pitying scorn.

Technically, I have half a degree in French. It shouldn't be a problem but for the fact that it's a degree I got three years ago, I've spoken French about six times since and mostly in Beaujolais on Litchfield Street asking what wine they'd recommend to cheer up the sad person sitting next to me.

Beaujolais is a happy place, the flipside to Ed's Diner where only bad things seem to happen to the people who end up eating their grotesquely smiley burgers. I took my dad to Beaujolais last night: it's packed full of oddly-shaped tables that don't quite fit, has ties dangling from the ceiling, blues blaring out of the speakers, over-priced bar snacks, a massive cellar, assorted cheery Frenchmen hanging around the bar and an incredibly vivacious manager who waves you off to your seat to "Rrrrrelax!" while he brings your your bill.

We had a bottle of Fleury and chatted over cigarettes and pistachios. I realised a couple of months ago that a half hour phone conversation in February was our first proper chat in about five years. My dad is brilliant and it was lovely to hang out with him, more so now that I am no longer a Vile Teenager and can actually hold a conversation without blaming my parents for something.

I nipped off to the shop to get some Sluts (Silk Cuts rather than Charing X giftshop) and was chatted up by the smooth operator behind the checkout. "Are you drinking next door? Are you drinking with your friends?" he asked.

"No, with my dad," I smiled sweetly, walking out the door. You never saw a face fall so hard.

Great piece on the BBC: French voting turn out is in the 80%s - in the estates as well as nationally, and more and more young people are voting. Depressing to think that's never the same over here, even more depressing to think I've been so focused on France I totally forgot about local elections over here. I have a horrible feeling I'm still registered in Wales...

Friday, April 27, 2007



New Harry Potter in trailer in not looking shit shocker. The Phoenix was such a lumbering dreadful disappointment that it'll be a relief for it to be slashed down into less than three hours. I'm getting excited now: last book, new film. Amazing.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Patrick Wolf's live show at the Astoria was one of my favourite things about the 11th April, but mostly of this year. So it kind of sucks that he doesn't love the press trail that goes along with music and has decided to quit (although he'll still be playing Latitude, hurrah.)

He says...

"I don't think when I was 16 and dreamt of releasing records there would ever be so much crazy speculation about the person I am and what you want me to be.

"I have become so tired of this behaviour, sometimes I wake up and have to do six hours of interviews before doing a show, then go straight to bed to sleep a couple of hours then fly to a new country to be cross-examined in the same way...I don't know what is left of me".

He adds:

"I have made a decision, my final concert will be this November, a retrospective with an orchestra in London.

"I am not sure whether there will be anymore public communications after that, in fact I am pretty sure there will be none.

"Of course, this has nothing to do with my drummer, but a creative clock is ticking and I have many many projects to be creating with my time left on this earth. I hope to share my last shows with you this year".

Hmph.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Why didn't I have a birthday party like this? It was clearly invented just for me.

"Our parties are recommended for children ages 4-13, but emotionally stunted 24-yera-olds are given priority."

Monday, April 23, 2007

I'm going to be in a play on the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.

Blonde Drama Queen texted me a couple of weeks ago to see how much holiday I could feasibly take off without getting fired.

"We're going to do W;t. Come and do it with us." she said. It's a play about a social rockface called Dr Vivian Bearing who analyses her horrific cancer treatment in much the same way as she analyses John Donne poems until it all becomes too much. It's funnier than it sounds, although it clearly doesn't end well. I played her in my last year at Durham and it was amazing.

BDQ made a "serious offer" today, which given my flathunting of late makes me feel like I'm a house. Maybe a maisonette. Or a duplex penthouse apartment overlooking the Spitz.

Other than saying "like, duh" I don't quite know what to say really because I'm actually really nervous. I'm nervous because I've only done two versions of the same play once before, for that time in Edinburgh, and then there was only a three month gap between goes. This one has a totally different cast, a sporadic rehearsal schedule and I'm worried about fucking up, partly because it's very affecting, partly because Vivian doesn't leave the stage, and partly because I'm worried about doing something retarded in front of BDQ's beady-eyed cast from Eton.

"Old Etonians I hope," said Opera Cat, who's singing at the grown-up International Festival around the same time.

"No. Proper little ones." I'm the token old person who's been wheeled in because 50's pushing it for a 16-year-old. Also, technically everyone is little to me.

"This is like your Mrs Robinson moment," she helpfully pointed out. "Only Benjamin's richer than you are."

"Awesome. So if I fuck up that's in front of someone who could buy me in 10 years time?"

"Well look on the bright side. You could end up staying in the castle."
Sheryl Crow, a woman with presumably the tightest sphincter this side of space, has turned her attention to stopping global warming by telling us to use less bog roll. Rather than foisting horribly smug charity concerts on us, she plans to restrict the amount of toilet paper people use, although quite what that's got to do with carbon footprints and fossil fuels escapes me.

She says, "Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating," (like, duh Sheryl Crow, if you don't think that who the hell else is going to?) "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Under the Crow regime you'll be allowed "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required". This had better be Andrex Triple Quilted otherwise that's not just pesky but bordering on masochism. How does she plan to do this monitoring? Someone send her a copy of Monkey Dust for tips.

Paper napkins are also on Sheryl Crow's hitlist as the "height of wastefulness", so just to show how cross she is, she's designed some clothes in protest (Sleb dating forms must run along the lines of design clothes, stop poverty/global warming/orphan crisis.) They have a detachable dining sleeve which can be replaced after you've wiped your mouth after eating. Is this not the most repellent thing ever? Apart from the fact you're essentially a step away from sitting back in a high chair, it's quite hard to get a good clean grasp on your sleeve and do it without making everyone at your table feel a bit ill.

Bad Sheryl Crow. Bad.
Sheryl Crow, presumably with the tightest sphincter this side of space, appears to have got bored of failing to write any more songs and turned her attention to stopping global warming by telling us to use less bog roll. Rather than foisting horribly smug charity concerts on us, she plans to restrict the amount of toilet paper people use, although quite what that's got to do with carbon footprints and fossil fuels escapes me.

She says, "Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating," (like, duh Sheryl Crow, if you don't think that who the hell else is going to?) "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Under the Crow regime you'll be allowed "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required". This had better be Andrex Triple Quilted otherwise that's not just pesky but bordering on masochism. How does she plan to do this monitoring? Someone send her a copy of Monkey Dust for tips.

Paper napkins are also on Sheryl Crow's hitlist as the "height of wastefulness", so just to show how cross she is, she's designed some clothes in protest. They have a detachable dining sleeve which can be replaced after you've wiped your mouth after eating. Is this not the most repellent thing ever? Apart from the fact you're essentially a step away from sitting back in a high chair, it's quite hard to get a good clean grasp on your sleeve and do it without making everyone at your table feel a bit ill.

Bad Sheryl Crow. Bad.

Friday, April 20, 2007

I've no idea what this is, other than lyrics to a song a friend of mine is using to make her mind work better and transport her back to being 15. It mostly transports me back to feeling useless and panicked at university about the unlikelihood of my ever doing anything with my life, failing my degree, and ending up living in a gutter because I'd get thrown out of everywhere else. Which is cheering. Anyway. It reminds me of things being far more clear-cut. You know when you think that the world only existed in black and white and the shades of grey that my friends and I had battled out over drink and endless, stretching time. It didn't feel like it was endless though, things never do: rather like standing on a treadmill and watching the bit where you drop off coming closer. It's nearly summer now which always reminds me of being at university, idling around doing a play, singing, going for picnics and late-night jaunts. Happy, but terrified at the same time.

Kick the sheets off get out of bed
Good morning, de ja vu
Is this the best thing in my head?
Good morning, now what to do
Look at my day
What's the first appointment?
Lunch in heaven
What a disappointment

I could run away with Captain Courageous
I could live on fruit in Montego Bay
I could run a bar in a war torn front line
I could do it all
But just not today

Good morning T.V what's been said
Around the world whilst I'm in bed
Nothing changes cos we're still being fed
On little white lies and stale white bread

The latest soap show misery
Four hours, every day
I live for them and they live for me
For hours and hours every day

I could free my mind
become a rich man's guru
I could take the time just to feed the world
I could drink all day until I find all the answers
I could do it all
But just not today .....
I meant to mention this yesterday - some fucking fuckers are planning on closing down The Spitz.

This is rubbish.

I've seen some of my favourite people play some of my favourite gigs there, and been introduced to some of the worst support acts ever along with some of the best.

If you're remotely bothered, sign a petition. It probably won't do shit, but if people can get het up about the Astoria, they should certainly get het up about The Spitz.