// July 2007
John Normington
Strange how sometimes odd little coincidences occur, isn’t it?
Today I learned of the death of John Normington, an actor who has had two parts in my second favourite series (Doctor Who, for the uninitiated). One was as Morgus in the last Peter Davison serial “The Caves of Androzani” - widely regarded as one of the best stories the series ever did. The other was as as Trevor Sigma in Sylvester McCoy’s “The Happiness Patrol” - which in turn is widely (and in my opinion unfairly) regarded as one of the worst.
Strange thing is that last night I watched “The Happiness Patrol” on a whim, enjoying the sheer camp and audacity of it enormously. And I was watching John’s performance and thinking how damn good he was and how wasted an actor of his calibre was in the part he was given. (He owned the screen in his scenes let’s just say that - even when standing up against Shiela Hancock’s eerie Maggie Thatcher impression.)
Today I find he’s died.
Rest in peace, John. I see from the What’s On Stage article you achieved no small recognition and from what little I’ve seen you certainly deserved it.
Posted on July 30, 2007 | Filed Under Film and Television, In Memoriam | 2 Comments
José Galisteo
Hmm. I think I may be in love.
Seems an openly gay, and yet extremely hunky, guy won the Spanish Pop Idol-equivalent and has just released an album of fairly retrotastic cover versions entitled “Remember”.
It’s a fairly solid, dependable set of arrangements (his version of Rick Astley’s “Together Forever” only strays from the original in a few extra bleeps) and done with some nice slightly accented vocals. But uninspiring as that may seem, I think I’m willing to forgive him anything.
Especially since his video for the lead-off single is probably the campest thing I’ve seen in ages:
I am enjoying him enormously, I must say.
Posted on July 27, 2007 | Filed Under Pop Music | 0 Comments
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Well, that was a relief.
Certainly made up for book five in the end (the only time so far that I have preferred the film to the novel).
Lets just say it was very satisfying and tied it all up nicely.
Wooo!
Posted on July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Reading and Writing | 4 Comments
Army of Lovers / Alcazar / BWO @ G-A-Y
I’ve long harboured a dislike for the club / empire known as G-A-Y (not least because of my disdain for the self-appointed saviour of the fay scene Jeremy Joseph - a man whose self-importance grates on me no end). Indeed, I haven’t set foot in the venue for several years. But last night, I was finally lured back for a “one-night-only” reformation of Alcazar and Army of Lovers in order to help launch BWO in Britain.
All three acts have been founded / membered by Alexander Bard and it was ostensibly a celebration of his 20 years of high-campery in pop music. Obviously I’d seen BWO live the other month so I wasn’t too fussed about seeing a cutdown version of that set, although it would have been sing-a-long-tastic. I was, however, quite keen on seeing Army of Lovers and Alcazar, particularly the former since I’ve got heavily into “Les Greatest Hits” of late, so Paul, Chris and I decided to brave it.
I quickly wished we hadn’t. G-A-Y was in some respects the same as ever. There were minty queens - old and young - in crop-tops; the music often veered off fun and cheesy pop into tedious and lengthy remixes; and as ever the acts didn’t come on until 1:30 in the morning and only did a couple of tracks. This, coupled with the bar prices, the overuse of smoke effects and so on made it a level of hell which Dante would have been reluctant to write about.
There were two differences I noted, however. One that it was empty until about 12 (is it’s popularity on the wane?) and the other was that with the smoking ban in place my nostrils were instead belaboured with the scent of poppers and rampant body odour which I’m fairly certain I find more offensive to be honest. Ho hum.
So by 1:30, I was somewhat tired of the place anyway. But looking forward to the show.
Sadly Army of Lovers did one song. And mimed it all. I mean, the performance was camp as tits, surreal and hysterical with it (the black sex doll getting a good flinging round for one thing) so it was a good performance, but they only did “Crucified”. There was no “Sexual Revolution”, no “Israelism”, no “La Plage De Saint Tropez”, just one track from the band I had in fact been hoping would be the highlight of the evening. So already I felt a little deflated.
Thankfully Alcazar did a good turn. Andreas is a damn good little mover - and hot as hell to boot - and despite the eneregctic dance moves they all sang live which was quite an impressive feat. Tracks such as “This is the World We Live In” (Yay!), “Start the Fire” (Meh!), and “Crying and the Dicotheque” (Yay!) made an appearance and things hotted up quite nicely for BWO’s entrance.
There was a slight uncomfortable moment when Jeremy Joseph tried to persuade Andreas to commit to Alcazar permanently reforming. Perhaps unsurprisingly given he’s trying to work on his solo career, Andreas was having none of it, but seeing Joseph trying to bludgeon him into it was a bit squirm-inducing.
The BWO set was predictably good, if a little less energectic than its predecessors by comparison. “Chariots of Fire” got two airings to bookmark the set (well it is out on Monday), and the current Swedish single “Save My Pride” and an old favourite “Temple of Love” were all well recieved. Martin Rolinksi is an enthusaistic performer it must be said and played happily to the audience by covering himself in water and stripping to the wait during the course of one song, which was certainly welcome.
But all told I couldn’t help but feel, as I queued with aching feet and ringing ears, that the mere fact it was G-A-Y took rather too much of the joy out of it really. Given how run-down the venue has become and how obnoxious the club itself actually is I can’t help but feel that attempts to save it from demolition by the Crossrail project would be better off failing.
So an odd evening all round.
Internet Enabled?
Well… sort of.
It’s been a long process getting the internet enabled in our new flat. Battles with AOL (getting them to relinquish control over the broadband on our phone line), BT (getting them to put their own flag on their own line) and then getting the Broadband Hub and Phone and everything in and working.
Still, it’s all there now.
Chris and I have, this time, decided to go wireless. This is mainly because the size of the flat means we’d need an entire IT department’s output of cabling and besides, the technology’s matured a bit now and I feel confident about setting it up and securing it etc.
First task: wireless adaptors for the PCs. My new all-singing all-dancing Dual Core 64 bit Vista powerhouse hasa warranty forbidding me opening it up so I thought “external will be fine” and Chris and I went and got some adaptors to plug into USB ports.
Only of course, the ones we got didn’t work with Vista so only Chris could use it. More interstingly the ones we got didn’t exist according to the Philips website so updated drivers for Vista seemed a bit unlikely somehow. Twenty quid down the drain but hey.
So after much research and cross-checking I finally realised that actually the only truly 100% natively Vista compatible way to get wireless networking was to buy an internal card and screw the warranty (another twenty-five quid down the drain, but hey). I duly got one which all documentation says works with Vista 64-bit editions and yesterday morning opened up the PC to slot it in a PCI expansion slot.
Only to discover there weren’t any left. The PC people had given me a motherboard with two slots. And promptly filled them with sound-card and additional USB-port card. Admittedly I had asked for these items, but it was galling to find that there was no room to add anything else.
So I spent some time yesterday morning researching the possibilities and found that Amazon could provie me with a compatible motherboard for my chipset with four slots instead (leaving me one more if I need it later) and that is on its way now (hopefully I should get it in the next forty-five minutes).
But of course all this means that I have, effectively, now got to build the PC again with all the components. Now, since I wanted a custom PC that someone else had to go through the trouble of putting together, that means I’m currently a bit irked.
I suppose it proves that if you want something doing, you should always do it yourself.
But in any case… bugger. (And it’s at least another £70 down the drain. But hey.)
Posted on July 20, 2007 | Filed Under Battles with Technology, My So-Called Life | 0 Comments
Girls Alound - Sexy? No, No, No…
… has been on constant repeat on my PC since it recieved its first airplay this morning and - inevitably - found its way onto Edison’s All Electric Interweb.
Frankly it’s another winner from the guys (and girls) of Xenomania: another pounding, funky, glorious mess of hooklines that shouldn’t work by any standard rules of songwriting and yet, somehow, does.
Absolutely love it. It’s going to be stuck in my “d-d-dirty mind” all day, I can tell.
Posted on July 20, 2007 | Filed Under Pop Music | 0 Comments
Accident Prone
I have, it seems, become somewhat clumsily prone to injuring myself of late. I suppose a certain amount of straining and bruising was inevitable during the great house-move but I did seem to get more than my fair share.
Indeed one arm cultivated a sizeable colour-changing patch that, particularly when it was purple, was most impressive.
Also in this collection of injuries were a series of small paper-cuts from boxes (but they were barely noticeable) and a few scraped knuckles and crunchy back and neck muscles. Not bad for a couple of days’ work.
So until yesterday I thought I’d got off fairly lightly. But yesterday I unpacked a box of books (not mine - the flatmate’s, all mine are done), folded up the box and stacked it next to another one waiting to go for recycling.
At which point I cleverly managed to arrange for a side of a corrugated cardboard box to slice up and under my fingernail.
The volley of swearing and yelping which followed was quite vivid and pained I thought. But apparently it was only just enough to raise the attention of my flatmate who, when a momentary pause in the diatribe appeared as I shoved my finger in my mouth and ran to the kitchen, enquired from the safety of his room whether I was alright.
This slightly redundant question was later compounded by the observation that “those are nasty, there’s a lot of sensitive nerve endings under there”, a view I could only agree with, albeit through gritted teeth as I numbed my hand under the cold tap.
My God did it bleed. And my God did it throb.
Thank God for Tramadol I say. It’s only because of that I was able to cope with the pain until I went to bed. And an unexpectedly pleasant side-effect of the drug was that I slept incredibly soundly.
Based on this combination I think that serious opiates should be freely available. Nytol just doesn’t have the same clout.
Posted on July 17, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 2 Comments
I’ve been Groeninged…
Courtesy of my friend and colleague Olivier, I present me as a Simpsons character:
It’s uncanny isn’t it?
Posted on July 6, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 2 Comments
Greetings from Sunny Brixton
Well… we’re in.
Sunday arrived (as is its wont), and with the morning came the frantic packing of stuff and the inevitable realisation that however many boxes you have, you will always need precisely two more (it’s a law of the universe, I’m certain of it).
Sunday afternoon itself was, as you’d probably expect, fairly back-breaking work. and I don’t think I’ve ever sweated quite as much as I did as the move took place. (To be honest I’m surprised that at the end of Sunday my clothes didn’t leap into the laundry basket of their own accord.)
Of course, removing yourself from one place isn’t half as bad as installing yourself in another. The big decisions regarding what furniture goes where are fairly easy, but it’s the little bitty stuff that takes most of the time.
And of course all the best laid plans are usually stymied by something unexpected. When the new sofa and the new fridge-freezer arrived, for example, they did so simultaneously. The doorbell was rung by the bloke from Argos and so, when the wrapped up object was carried in we assumed it was the fridge we’d ordered from said firm.
But no, what we actually put in the corner of the kitchen turned out to be our nice red sofa, brought by the people from Tesco who slipped in whilst Argos bloke went back to his van after ringing the bell. Chris and I therefore had swap them round ourselves with much cursing, crushing of fingers and painfulness of feet.
And of course after said deliveries and unwrappings we couldn’t move for the polystyrene packaging which ended up in bits and covering the floor like a bouncy carpet of snow.
Still, it’s getting there slowly, thanks for asking. Currently I am more or less sorted in my own room, and I am now waiting for Chris to empty some of the remaining boxes from the living room so that there is a habitable area for visitors.
Or, perhaps more importantly, an area in which I can build the additional bookcases we will need. (As it turns out most of what we seem to have brought with us appears to be DVD shaped and there just isn’t enough shelving in the world for our collection.)
It’s tough at the moment, but once it’s all sorted it’ll be fabulous I can assure you.
Posted on July 6, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 2 Comments