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.

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?

...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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The greatest party invitation ever.

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.

So 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."