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Monday, May 31, 2004
Ah, glory, glory - Big Brother is back. Long-term readers will remember that last year we went to the studio to watch a Big Brother eviction (see the menu on the left), an evening which Butter declared 'the worst of her life'. (Her best evening was her first night with me; it was all downhill from there.) After last year's BB-snoozefest, the producers have gone to the opposite extreme by rounding up a bunch of freaks and show-offs. There's Kitten, the radical anarchist feminist animal-rights-activist socialist anti-corporate what-other-labels-you-got lesbian who keeps trying to get the others to, like, buck the system and refuse to obey the rules as laid down by The Man. Then there's Marco, whose squeals have been known to shatter glass and distress dogs. Victor calls himself The Milkman because 'he always delivers'. Emma wants to be Jade. Michelle wants to be a glamour model. Ahmed seems completely out of his depth. And Stuart got 4 A grades in his A-levels and he's not afraid who knows it. Fantastic stuff. Oh, and I forgot to mention Nadia, who I've got a fiver on at 20-1 which are, I reckon, pretty good odds. I can picture the headlines: Portuguese Transexual Wins BB. Go Nadia! Butter has been visiting the Butterfamily oop north this weekend, so I've been alone, ratsitting. This gave me the opportunity very nearly finish SB. Just a final read-through to go now. I helped my sister, who has never touched a computer before, to buy one for her kids yesterday. Of course, I got her to buy a Mac - a rather nice and shiny eMac, a snip at $549. I've just been on the phone to her, trying to see how she's getting on. Remind me never to get a tech-support job. Actually, I'm too stressed out to write about it. I think I need to go and watch BB for a while, calm myself down. And prepare for Butter's return... Sunday, May 23, 2004
On Thursday evening I went to the BBC's Waterloo studios to watch former male model, TV presenter and DJ Vernon Kay film his new quiz show, Head Jam. Now some might imagine this to be a glamorous occasion. I was certainly hoping it would be glamorous, but it was actually very cold and very long. The aircon was cranked up - to stop Vern sweating on camera, I assume - and to make us even more chilly they served up ice cream (as paid for by your licence fee) during the interval. One strange chap in the audience had an enormous tower of ice cream tubs beside his chair. 'He's eaten seven tubs,' someone said. 'Eight, actually,' he yelled in his nerd-voice. Perhaps he should be given his own show - we could watch him stuff down various flavours of ice cream until he explodes on screen. Vernon is very charismatic and entertaining, and the show itself is pretty good - a pop quiz with a very tricky final round in which the winning contestant is asked eight questions in a row and has to store the answers in her head. She then recites the answers in order. Bloody difficult. I wouldn't be able to do it, what with my encroaching senility. Trying to play along in the studio gave me a headache. We were hoping for some exciting celeb guests. Mike and Matt both wanted Kylie. I was hoping for Morrissey. Although Kylie would have sufficed. We got DJ Spoony and some bloke off BBC3 called Patrick something-or-other. Not even z-list. Speaking of telly, I'm very excited because there's only five days till Big Brother 5. Rumour has it that this year's series will include not one but two lesbians - lipstick lesbians, no doubt, for the edification of the male viewers - a stripper and an asylum seeker. Why not combine them all and have an asylum-seeking lesbian stripper? This asylum seeker thing is very dodgy. Will they be evicted all the way back to Kosovo? God, I can't wait. Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Every month or two a little voice in my head starts telling me I ought to go to the dentist for a check up. I usually tell this little voice to put a sock in it then go and eat some sugar. On Friday, though, while I was cleaning my teeth one of my fillings fell out. It's one of those front fillings that sits between your tooth and gum to protect the nerve, if your gum has receded. Without this filling, eating drinking and even breathing are agony. 'Ha ha ha-ha ha,' said the little voice in my head. One of the reasons I was so reluctant to be stuck in that chair, staring up the dentist's nostrils while he stuck needles in my gums and drills in my teeth was...oh, it's self-explanatory, isn't it? But on top of all this, I really hated my dentist. For one, he wouldn't accept NHS patients and therefore charged an arm and a leg for a tooth - not a fair exchange. And while ripping me off and causing me immense pain, he liked to talk about his Porsche. And how he couldn't afford NHS patients. A total wanker. But I'm registered at his clinic so I didn't have much choice. I had to go back. I'd have to grin and bear it and bite the bullet. However, when I got there, to my great relief I found that Mr Porsche has been replaced by a nice Iranian dentist who doesn't drill your teeth after not injecting enough painkiller, and who takes NHS patients. Hurrah. I drooled a bit afterwards, though. Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Very exciting Suede news - Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler are back together. It's official! New stuff coming out next year. I am very excited! Blogger have just relaunched and added lots of new features, so I should be able to post here simply by sending in an email. If you're reading this, it works. Which means I'll be able to update this site a lot more often, without having to fiddle around. Of course, fiddling around is one of my favourite things, but that's another story. I've just booked tickets to see Belle and Sebastian at Somerset House, on the banks of the Thames, in July. Butter has agreed to come despite her loathing for all things B&S. She dislikes them almost as much as she dislikes Morrissey. Well, she can't have good taste in all matters. Moz's new single is glorious. Which leads me on to the gig in LA. I'm going to have to do this California thing in fragments. Darren and I went to see Morrissey in the rather splendid Wiltern Theater (it's on Wilshire and Western, hence the name) in Los Angeles. I know - gig of a lifetime or what? Don't say 'or what'. The crowd was made up of a mixture of thirtysomething nostalgics, like us, and teenage girls. It's quite strange seeing young women screaming for Morrissey - but then Des Lynam and Sean Connery are always winning sexiest man polls, so being an older man clearly has some benefits. And Morrissey has amazing stage presence, bowing and sharing jokes with the audience, tearing through a mixture of songs from the new album, old solo stuff and, blissfully, a number of Smiths songs, including 'There is a Light...' Fantastic. And at the end, when he tore off his shirt, the young foxtresses beside us squealed with delight. On the way home, we were chatted up by three American girls and a man with a handbag. Only one of the girls was paralytic. They wanted us to accompany them to an 80s club but I explained that our girlfriends were waiting for us at our hotel. 'You should ditch them and get American girlfriends,' they said. Which would sort out my green card problem. But, like good, loyal blokes, we went home to our Brit-birds. Who didn't seem particularly grateful when we told them about the sacrifice we'd made the next morning. Saturday, May 08, 2004
No, I still haven't got round to writing up the California trip. Perhaps it will take on mythical status: MarkCity's great, lost entry, and people in years to come will talk about hearing a rumour about what was going to be in it. "I heard he actually danced onstage with Morrissey, and then there was the bit where he rescued his girlfriend from a great white shark..." Or perhaps not. I have, however, been to two gigs since I've been back so thought I'd better write about them. First up were Duran Duran at Wembley Arena, "our spiritual home" according to Simon Le Bon. Calling the vast, soulless warehouse of despair that is Wembley Arena your spiritual home is a bit like saying your favourite restaurant is McDonalds and you want to go to Hell when you die. Or maybe he was just referring to how happy he is that they don't have to physically drag people to their concerts these days. I was the first of our party to arrive at the venue and was delighted to discover that we were seated in the very back row. You couldn't have got any further back. At least this meant we didn't have to worry about blocking the view of people sitting behind us. Yes, there were people sitting down at the gig. All the way through, not just during the boring new songs that Duran insist on playing. I don't get why people go to rock - alright, pop - concerts and park their arses for the duration. Why not just sit at home and watch MTV? Or rather, VH1. Duran Duran are a great band who've written tons of great songs, but this doesn't stop Simon Le Bon from being an absolute berk. His between-song pronouncements about the state of the world - and how we are in fact a decent "species...of organism" - made me want to pull my skin off with embarrassment. Then there was the cover of Grandmaster Melle Mel's 'White Lines (Don't Do It)' in which Simon raps. In the same way that Victoria Aitken raps. Still, 'Careless Memories', with its manga video, and most of the other old hits, especially 'Planet Earth', 'Save A Prayer' and 'Ordinary World' were excellent. Oh, and they played that hilarious 'erotic' (if you find topless girls dancing like chickens in car parks sexy) video for 'The Chauffeur' in the background. This Wednesday I saw Franz Ferdinand at the Astoria, which has to be the best venue in London, unless you go on a Saturday when the bands have to be off stage by 9.30 to let the G.A.Y. hordes in. The Franz were fantastic - a short, sharp set made up of the whole album plus a few b-sides. We bounced, sweated and sang along. Of course, being brilliant made it far less bloggable than the Duran gig, because nothing funny happened. Perhaps I should make something up: The singer announced that he had a sore throat and they needed a volunteer to sing in his place, so I stepped up and blew everyone away, even making up my own lyrics which the band told me were better than the originals. Ah, yes, it was great. Saturday, May 01, 2004
I've been back 3 days and have been meaning to update this blog to let y'all know about the rest of our Cali trip - but first I had jet lag and now I'm not well and have spent the entire day in bed. Well, apart from when Butter dragged me around Tesco and I thought I was going to die. Tesco wouldn't be the most glamorous place to draw your last breath. I'd much rather snuff it in Orange County or at San Diego zoo, where I could donate my body to the polar bears. Oh dear, I've become slightly obsessed with California... I want to live there. Anyone got any spare green cards hanging about? Anyway, I will write up the holiday but in the meantime I've out the best pics online. Just click on the relevant links to see 'em: Las Vegas San Francisco Los Angeles & Highway 1 San Diego San Diego Zoo |