Wednesday 31 December 2008
Sparkle up the dark
Well, it's been a longish time since I've updated this blog: the usual ho ho ho festive period excuses. Another blog from a train this time, as I'm travelling back to civilisation after three days visiting my and TSB's families in Scotland. It actually didn't go too badly, all things considered; felt like just the right amount of time to see parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and leave 'em wanting more rather than reverting to boredom-induced sullen sniping and picking irresistably at old wounds.
Nearest thing to a spat was TSB's somewhat arsey little nephew (only recently out of his teens) opining of Boris Johnson "at least he has the brains not to be a socialist" and me responding, "well, he doesn't have the brains not to be a racist"... and subsequent awkward "I can't be a racist because..." hole-digging. I really ought to keep my mouth shut more.
(Someone on this carriage has a mobile 'phone text alert that sounds exactly like one of the bleeps from Hot Chip's Ready For The Floor. Everytime it goes off, I get the urge to sing, "I can't hear your voice, do I have a choice?")
Prior to our trip northwards, there was much sparkling up of the dark. I'll probably talk about this over a couple of blog entries, as my attention span's eroded by gewürztraminer bought in the M&S in Edinburgh station. 'Tis good, nicely floral and still good and cold.
December 20th was the last Duckie before Christmas. Having trekked up to Scotland for a funeral a week or so earlier, we were very much in the right headspace for a good, hearty Duckie. We'd also had our usual Christmas argument over the Norwegian spruce (bought at the last minute from Clapham High Street and hauled back home, painfully, via taxi), which I'd decorated in a state of passive-aggression.
Thankfully (thankyou, Baby Jesus) it was just the right Duckie to heal all wounds. Gareth was there, as was Mel, the crowd was sparser than usual (as one might've expected) and the mood convivial.
Ms Lamé looked lovely as ever, in a white fascinator.
First act was Tim Spooner & Matthew Robins (featuring Gavin) - formerly known as The Society of Wonders, dramatic puppeteers supreme - who performed a very Tim Burtonesque little shadow psychodrama, Flyboy and the Haunted Snowman.
It must be said, the fellow manipulating the puppets (clad in a sort of Ashes To Ashes surfsuit of white funfur) was exceptionally easy on the eye.
The Society of Wonders has never disappointed. This show, in their new incarnation, was more contained than their Punch & Judy shows and also, somehow, oddly moving. I talked afterwards to Wee Lee (who later danced to, I think, Hounds of Love - it was Classic Duckie), who agreed that the show made him feel like he was five again. I know what he meant: there was a childlike, dreamlike quality to the plot and an emotionally engaging punch to the finale. Lovely.
It would've been hard to follow that. The second act was Marcus Reeves, who appeared onstage in a frankly terrifying Christmas tree outfit and sang a medley of festive tunes. I liked his substitution of Wham's Last Christmas, "this year, to save me from tears, I'll give it to someone ugly".
He chucked cotton wool snowballs and Roses chocolates into the audience. Very evocative but I ended up picking cotton woolly chocolate gunk off the soles of my shoes for the rest of the night.
It was a good night, though. Made me feel properly Christmassy.
Nearest thing to a spat was TSB's somewhat arsey little nephew (only recently out of his teens) opining of Boris Johnson "at least he has the brains not to be a socialist" and me responding, "well, he doesn't have the brains not to be a racist"... and subsequent awkward "I can't be a racist because..." hole-digging. I really ought to keep my mouth shut more.
(Someone on this carriage has a mobile 'phone text alert that sounds exactly like one of the bleeps from Hot Chip's Ready For The Floor. Everytime it goes off, I get the urge to sing, "I can't hear your voice, do I have a choice?")
Prior to our trip northwards, there was much sparkling up of the dark. I'll probably talk about this over a couple of blog entries, as my attention span's eroded by gewürztraminer bought in the M&S in Edinburgh station. 'Tis good, nicely floral and still good and cold.
December 20th was the last Duckie before Christmas. Having trekked up to Scotland for a funeral a week or so earlier, we were very much in the right headspace for a good, hearty Duckie. We'd also had our usual Christmas argument over the Norwegian spruce (bought at the last minute from Clapham High Street and hauled back home, painfully, via taxi), which I'd decorated in a state of passive-aggression.
Thankfully (thankyou, Baby Jesus) it was just the right Duckie to heal all wounds. Gareth was there, as was Mel, the crowd was sparser than usual (as one might've expected) and the mood convivial.
Ms Lamé looked lovely as ever, in a white fascinator.
First act was Tim Spooner & Matthew Robins (featuring Gavin) - formerly known as The Society of Wonders, dramatic puppeteers supreme - who performed a very Tim Burtonesque little shadow psychodrama, Flyboy and the Haunted Snowman.
It must be said, the fellow manipulating the puppets (clad in a sort of Ashes To Ashes surfsuit of white funfur) was exceptionally easy on the eye.
The Society of Wonders has never disappointed. This show, in their new incarnation, was more contained than their Punch & Judy shows and also, somehow, oddly moving. I talked afterwards to Wee Lee (who later danced to, I think, Hounds of Love - it was Classic Duckie), who agreed that the show made him feel like he was five again. I know what he meant: there was a childlike, dreamlike quality to the plot and an emotionally engaging punch to the finale. Lovely.
It would've been hard to follow that. The second act was Marcus Reeves, who appeared onstage in a frankly terrifying Christmas tree outfit and sang a medley of festive tunes. I liked his substitution of Wham's Last Christmas, "this year, to save me from tears, I'll give it to someone ugly".
He chucked cotton wool snowballs and Roses chocolates into the audience. Very evocative but I ended up picking cotton woolly chocolate gunk off the soles of my shoes for the rest of the night.
It was a good night, though. Made me feel properly Christmassy.
Wednesday 24 December 2008
I like pie
I do love Christmas Eve. Or rather, I do these days, since making the decision a few years back to stay in London with TSB rather than doing the frantic train/'plane trip north to visit parents. Now, it's a time for sitting back and relaxing: everything's done, presents are wrapped and under the tree all seems still and calm. I'm listening to one of my favourite Christmas carols, In The Bleak Midwinter, on TSB's playlist, while updating my own on iTunes.
Here's Frida-from-ABBA's somewhat abbreviated version
and, more traditionally, the whole song:
Dinner this evening was a second helping of what's been one of my favourite presents Of All Time, from our lovely friend Mrs B: on Monday, she presented us with a huge and delicious game pie. Here it is, teasingly wrapped
and denuded!
With the flash:
See the layers! According to Mrs B's home-made label, this pie "might contain" Pheasant, Partridge, Quail, Sparrow, Veal, Wild Boar, Bambi, Pig Foot, Bigfoot, Foie Gras, Sweetbreads, Cock, Cock Robin, Plymouth Dry Gin, Port, Lies, Lice and Mice.
This is why I'd be shit at vegetarianism and why I am shit at anything low-carb. Meat just tastes better in a pastry parcel. I realised, disturbingly, that the two films I can recall which made me think, upon leaving the cinema, "hmm, I fancy a pie now" both featured cannibalism: Titus and Sweeney Todd.
Mmm, pie...
Here's Frida-from-ABBA's somewhat abbreviated version
and, more traditionally, the whole song:
Dinner this evening was a second helping of what's been one of my favourite presents Of All Time, from our lovely friend Mrs B: on Monday, she presented us with a huge and delicious game pie. Here it is, teasingly wrapped
and denuded!
With the flash:
See the layers! According to Mrs B's home-made label, this pie "might contain" Pheasant, Partridge, Quail, Sparrow, Veal, Wild Boar, Bambi, Pig Foot, Bigfoot, Foie Gras, Sweetbreads, Cock, Cock Robin, Plymouth Dry Gin, Port, Lies, Lice and Mice.
This is why I'd be shit at vegetarianism and why I am shit at anything low-carb. Meat just tastes better in a pastry parcel. I realised, disturbingly, that the two films I can recall which made me think, upon leaving the cinema, "hmm, I fancy a pie now" both featured cannibalism: Titus and Sweeney Todd.
Mmm, pie...
Saturday 13 December 2008
Three feet high and rising
There's a storm outside and the gap between crack and thunder is closing in...
It's mid-afternoon and I'm lying in bed listening to the rain outside. Apparently there's flooding in the southwest, water almost three feet deep in some places. When I lived in Scotland, we used to scoff at this sort of report: bloody English can't even cope with weather. Of course, Scotland's full of pointy mountains. On a flat plain, it's rather a different matter.
I rather like rain, and still get excited by thunderstorms. I've always found James' Sometimes invigorating:
I associate this song with Morocco, a trip from Marrakech into the Atlas Mountains. Returning, with Sometimes on my iPod, I was amazed to find floodwaters waist deep, traffic chaos and kids splashing through the swirling brown puddles.
It's mid-afternoon and I'm lying in bed listening to the rain outside. Apparently there's flooding in the southwest, water almost three feet deep in some places. When I lived in Scotland, we used to scoff at this sort of report: bloody English can't even cope with weather. Of course, Scotland's full of pointy mountains. On a flat plain, it's rather a different matter.
I rather like rain, and still get excited by thunderstorms. I've always found James' Sometimes invigorating:
I associate this song with Morocco, a trip from Marrakech into the Atlas Mountains. Returning, with Sometimes on my iPod, I was amazed to find floodwaters waist deep, traffic chaos and kids splashing through the swirling brown puddles.
Thursday 11 December 2008
Vous êtes jamais seuls
The funeral went well, at least as well as these things go. It's only the fourth funeral I've ever attended and I realised they've all been winter funerals - December, January or February. That's probably a good thing: it feels vaguely appropriate to be chilly, wretched and draped in black.
I felt a little bit sick beforehand but attributed that to the hurried Burger King in the station before catching the train out to the wilds of nowhere. Stilted hellos beforehand, with people I only vaguely knew. I did okay until the hearse arrived with the long wooden box, and then I got a bit wobbly. Then there was the order of service, printed with a really nice photo of B smiling in the sunlight: when I saw that, the tears started to flow. I had to keep it turned over because his picture kept giving me a wrench.
The ceremony itself was unfamiliar but nonetheless reassuring; it did what funerals are meant to do. I sniffled my way through a pack of Handy Andies, trying to avoid a saltysnotty moustache. Best of all was the bit at the end when, all of a sudden, the hall resounded with the chant, "YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO NEEEEDS YOU!" and everyone, myself included, seemed to laugh and cry simultaneously. Kylie's never been my favourite but I like that song and, right then, it was exactly what was needed. Apparently the choice of B's partner. Good choice.
Afterwards, getting a lift to the wake, the car radio played my obsession of the moment, The Killers' Human, and I felt quite uplifted by the daffy-but-fuzzily-inspirational lyrics. Another case of just the right song for the moment. Me and TSB sang along:
I still feel sad but less so now. And I slept well last night, which was much-needed.
I felt a little bit sick beforehand but attributed that to the hurried Burger King in the station before catching the train out to the wilds of nowhere. Stilted hellos beforehand, with people I only vaguely knew. I did okay until the hearse arrived with the long wooden box, and then I got a bit wobbly. Then there was the order of service, printed with a really nice photo of B smiling in the sunlight: when I saw that, the tears started to flow. I had to keep it turned over because his picture kept giving me a wrench.
The ceremony itself was unfamiliar but nonetheless reassuring; it did what funerals are meant to do. I sniffled my way through a pack of Handy Andies, trying to avoid a saltysnotty moustache. Best of all was the bit at the end when, all of a sudden, the hall resounded with the chant, "YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO NEEEEDS YOU!" and everyone, myself included, seemed to laugh and cry simultaneously. Kylie's never been my favourite but I like that song and, right then, it was exactly what was needed. Apparently the choice of B's partner. Good choice.
Afterwards, getting a lift to the wake, the car radio played my obsession of the moment, The Killers' Human, and I felt quite uplifted by the daffy-but-fuzzily-inspirational lyrics. Another case of just the right song for the moment. Me and TSB sang along:
I still feel sad but less so now. And I slept well last night, which was much-needed.
Tuesday 9 December 2008
He's gone 2000 miles
Heading to Scotland tomorrow for B's funeral, second of three trips north this month. I know this is going to be harrowing but necessary.
I cry like a baby at funerals - any funeral - and I've a feeling there's a lot behind the floodgates this time. I've been finding myself getting wobbly at unexpected moments at least once a day. I guess the function of funerals is to get it all out, mutually remember the deceased, drink a lot and otherwise have a sort of emotional radiator-bleed. My radiator needs bleeding.
I don't currently have a good dark suit that's not pinstripey but at least I have a subtle stripe that'll be fine with white shirt and black tie. And funerals are always good for a long, flappy black leather coat.
Je suis superficiel. It's what B would've wanted.
I cry like a baby at funerals - any funeral - and I've a feeling there's a lot behind the floodgates this time. I've been finding myself getting wobbly at unexpected moments at least once a day. I guess the function of funerals is to get it all out, mutually remember the deceased, drink a lot and otherwise have a sort of emotional radiator-bleed. My radiator needs bleeding.
I don't currently have a good dark suit that's not pinstripey but at least I have a subtle stripe that'll be fine with white shirt and black tie. And funerals are always good for a long, flappy black leather coat.
Je suis superficiel. It's what B would've wanted.
Sunday 7 December 2008
The carnivores and the destructors
It's been an odd, doomy week for me. B is still, obviously, in my thoughts and me and TSB have been making arrangements to attend his funeral next week. That'll involve a train ride Up North, the second this month. First was a work-related trip up to Manchester on Thursday, back yesterday. Not bad because I was staying with my sister and caught up with her, my brother-in-law and all the little nieces and nephews. The eldest is just old enough that he's becoming fascinated with the concept of older people having family relationships other than parental ones: he's intrigued that his mother is also my sister, just like he's got sisters. His younger sister's disbelieving that such a thing is possible.
So that was nice. The trip back was annoyingly sluggish, because of scheduled work going on blah blah fishcakes, meaning I had the equivalent of the Slow Train To Euston via Birmingham International. I did, however, have a carriage almost entirely to myself and could stare out at the darkening countryside and imagine myself a lone survivor of some Terry Nation-penned catastrophe... I dozed off (which I usually do on trains) and woke to find the train was motionless with complete blackness outside, no lights at all. I'd no idea where we'd stalled or whether there was now a delay. Eerily disorientating.
Of course, it didn't help that I was nearing the end of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning The Road, a beautifully-written but terrifying piece of postapocalyptica. There's a lot of it about at the moment, what with Dead Set and now Survivors. I guess the recession causes one to consider other scenarios of civilisation collapse, from nuclear holocaust to plague to zombies. As I've remarked before, I find myself drawn to these doom-laden tales and in a weird way they're perversely comforting. The Road, however, is just so unremittingly (for the most part, anyway) bleak that I think that sense of bleakness (struggling to survive in a blackened, lifeless, cannibalistic world of grey ash and dead bones) suffused me for a while, mixing with the more particular ache of B's death.
Anyway, I'd planned to return to London by tea time so there'd be the option of Duckie. Slightly torn between the urge to cocoon at home with TSB (even short trips away make me feel like that) and the desire to get out of the house but be somewhere familiar surrounded by The Gays. A hot bath and the reflection that That's What B Would Want Us To Do saw us tending toward the latter. B not having been unacquainted with excess (wonderfully so), I suspect this won't be the last time he'll be invoked as rationale for getting out and partying.
To be frank, it felt a little like a post-apocalyptic version of Duckie, too. Some of that's undoubtedly carry-over of my general mood but the club itself was the sparsest I've seen it for a long while: Amy remarked on the credit crunchiness of the "smattering of applause" which greeted her appearance onstage and assured us we wouldn't be asked to dig deep for more. Just as well, really, in the case of the first act, Ruby Somethingorother (Nesk? Nesh?), a well-proportioned woman in a black satin basque and marabou-trimmed robe. She came on the strains of the Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby and... well, she walked around a bit, grinning. That was largely it. She said stuff that wasn't quite funny enough to be comedy, wasn't developed or engaging enough to be "character" and wasn't weird/unusual enough to fall into the Intriguing Duckie Oddities category.
What she did do spectacularly well was misjudge both audience and host to the point of alienation. Firstoff, she referred to Amy as the "compere" (to which Amy took exception) then made some half-cocked jibe about preferring male comperes and wondering whether Amy was a man in drag. That didn't go down well. She then started hassling a man in the front row, asking what he did for a living (worked in a museum bookshop) and taking the piss out of the fact that he had ginger hair and wore glasses. Not a great move, given that
a) the guy in question was really rather cute,
b) within the particular geek-chic beardygay demographic which attends Duckie, ginger hair and glasses are not only not automatically seen as bad/sad/undesirable, they're frequently fetishised as being especially sexy
and
c) Amy's partner is a bespectacled redhead.
So. All things considered, a bit rubbish really; she really lost the crowd. A less polite audience would've booed her offstage (as it was, there was a fair bit of disgruntled not-quite-booing at a couple of points). She wasn't called back to take her applause. Gareth and I wondered whether her act would've been successful in any sort of club setting, gay or straight. It just seemed weak and lacking in substance and, where audience banter was concerned, verging on nasty.
(I should say also that there're no photos of this week's Duckie. I brought my Good Camera along and stupidly left the detachable lens at home. D'oh!)
The second act was better (they'd have been hard pushed to be worse): Stewart Somethingorother (neither act is named on the Duckie website, hence my uncertainty), a naggingly familiar-looking chap who's apparently played guitar as part of David Hoyle's act in the past. He came on in a sort of genderqueer early Bananarama drag, full slap, cap, shirt, baggy slacks and really rather lovely shoes. A kind of mimed finding a guitar, licking it and starting to strum chords. Eventually, he became entangled in the flex, fell over and lay still - only to be dragged offstage by a menacing, portly chap dressed like a football hooligan and snarling song lyrics at the audience. All a little bizarre but at least interesting to look at and deserving of applause.
Thank Gawd for the Readers Wifes. They pretty much saved this week's Duckie: almost despite myself, I ended up jumping and air-punching to the likes of Laid and He's On The 'Phone. Bought tickets for their New Year bash and am in the process of enjoying their annual CD mix.
Oh, and Maur Valance was there, so I got a chance to congratulate her for winning the Femme Realism prize at Liverpool Is Burning. She's lovely.
"Destructors" would, I think, be a fitting description of the last hour or two of KUNST, a couple of Fridays ago. This was my second time (the first being the fabulous night featuring Our Lady J's debut solo performance) and I'd made a token gesture toward the Narnia/History of Art dress code by wearing a black shirt and spidery jewellery, gingering up my beard and sticking a large dressing over one ear. I was Vincent Van Goth, ho bloody ho. No, no-one else got it either but I did receive several concerned enquiries as to my aural health. Halfway through the evening, I got pissed off with hearing everything in mono and ripped the dressing off. Shame sunflowers were out of season.
In the event, the couple of punters who actually paid any heed to the dress code went as Narnians, specifically the White Witch. Our lovely host, Dusty Limits, had gone pale and witchy too (not to say a tad consumptive):
KUNST is, I'm coming to realise, more cabaret-heavy than either Duckie or Vauxhallville. I liked Miss Leggy Pee, who showed us her puppies:
She later did a couple of really rather cute Doris Dayesque lip-synched duets with her little old man-puppet:
There was also a rather pleasing operatic version of Psycho Killer
and some excellent poetry from Salena Godden (seen here with truly goddess-like sun-disc balanced on her head):
Nathan Evans did his Queen puppetry striptease:
It's a clever act but I've seen it before at least twice now and I agree with Gareth that some of the trampled-upon rights mentioned in his critique seem to date faster than others in terms of audience response.
For me, however, the oddest part of the evening was the finale, a live last-ever-performance (well, before they return to the US, I don't think they're splitting up) from KUNST's resident house band, Holy Ghost Revival. Apparently they traditionally come on and play toward the end of each KUNST but presumably Our Lady J took their place the last (and first) time I was there.
I guess I found them odd because it all seemed really un-Weimar Cabaret somehow. It wasn't bad, necessarily - there was something quite exhilarating about all that rawk 'n' roll energy - but it did seem to go on about twice as long as it should've done. When Dusty Limits called for a lock-in and an encore, I found myself thinking, "couldn't we just have the DJ back, playing music I actually like?" It was all a little bit jarringly hetero, too, but queered up a bit by Dusty's tales of snogging various band members, reenacted for us onstage.
Here's some pics:
I dunno, though. I don't really understand the appeal of that sort of rock/metal interface; it really has always seemed to me a peculiarly heterosexual thing, the straight boys' opportunity to strut and revel in glitter, spandex, tight leather and big hair while aggressively proclaiming their rampant desire for the ladeez. I was slightly surprised, at one point, to find myself mouthing the words despite not remotely recognising the tune (or even a tune): it was a cover or a part-sampling of Like A Prayer, probably my favourite Madonna song.
How queer.
So that was nice. The trip back was annoyingly sluggish, because of scheduled work going on blah blah fishcakes, meaning I had the equivalent of the Slow Train To Euston via Birmingham International. I did, however, have a carriage almost entirely to myself and could stare out at the darkening countryside and imagine myself a lone survivor of some Terry Nation-penned catastrophe... I dozed off (which I usually do on trains) and woke to find the train was motionless with complete blackness outside, no lights at all. I'd no idea where we'd stalled or whether there was now a delay. Eerily disorientating.
Of course, it didn't help that I was nearing the end of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning The Road, a beautifully-written but terrifying piece of postapocalyptica. There's a lot of it about at the moment, what with Dead Set and now Survivors. I guess the recession causes one to consider other scenarios of civilisation collapse, from nuclear holocaust to plague to zombies. As I've remarked before, I find myself drawn to these doom-laden tales and in a weird way they're perversely comforting. The Road, however, is just so unremittingly (for the most part, anyway) bleak that I think that sense of bleakness (struggling to survive in a blackened, lifeless, cannibalistic world of grey ash and dead bones) suffused me for a while, mixing with the more particular ache of B's death.
Anyway, I'd planned to return to London by tea time so there'd be the option of Duckie. Slightly torn between the urge to cocoon at home with TSB (even short trips away make me feel like that) and the desire to get out of the house but be somewhere familiar surrounded by The Gays. A hot bath and the reflection that That's What B Would Want Us To Do saw us tending toward the latter. B not having been unacquainted with excess (wonderfully so), I suspect this won't be the last time he'll be invoked as rationale for getting out and partying.
To be frank, it felt a little like a post-apocalyptic version of Duckie, too. Some of that's undoubtedly carry-over of my general mood but the club itself was the sparsest I've seen it for a long while: Amy remarked on the credit crunchiness of the "smattering of applause" which greeted her appearance onstage and assured us we wouldn't be asked to dig deep for more. Just as well, really, in the case of the first act, Ruby Somethingorother (Nesk? Nesh?), a well-proportioned woman in a black satin basque and marabou-trimmed robe. She came on the strains of the Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby and... well, she walked around a bit, grinning. That was largely it. She said stuff that wasn't quite funny enough to be comedy, wasn't developed or engaging enough to be "character" and wasn't weird/unusual enough to fall into the Intriguing Duckie Oddities category.
What she did do spectacularly well was misjudge both audience and host to the point of alienation. Firstoff, she referred to Amy as the "compere" (to which Amy took exception) then made some half-cocked jibe about preferring male comperes and wondering whether Amy was a man in drag. That didn't go down well. She then started hassling a man in the front row, asking what he did for a living (worked in a museum bookshop) and taking the piss out of the fact that he had ginger hair and wore glasses. Not a great move, given that
a) the guy in question was really rather cute,
b) within the particular geek-chic beardygay demographic which attends Duckie, ginger hair and glasses are not only not automatically seen as bad/sad/undesirable, they're frequently fetishised as being especially sexy
and
c) Amy's partner is a bespectacled redhead.
So. All things considered, a bit rubbish really; she really lost the crowd. A less polite audience would've booed her offstage (as it was, there was a fair bit of disgruntled not-quite-booing at a couple of points). She wasn't called back to take her applause. Gareth and I wondered whether her act would've been successful in any sort of club setting, gay or straight. It just seemed weak and lacking in substance and, where audience banter was concerned, verging on nasty.
(I should say also that there're no photos of this week's Duckie. I brought my Good Camera along and stupidly left the detachable lens at home. D'oh!)
The second act was better (they'd have been hard pushed to be worse): Stewart Somethingorother (neither act is named on the Duckie website, hence my uncertainty), a naggingly familiar-looking chap who's apparently played guitar as part of David Hoyle's act in the past. He came on in a sort of genderqueer early Bananarama drag, full slap, cap, shirt, baggy slacks and really rather lovely shoes. A kind of mimed finding a guitar, licking it and starting to strum chords. Eventually, he became entangled in the flex, fell over and lay still - only to be dragged offstage by a menacing, portly chap dressed like a football hooligan and snarling song lyrics at the audience. All a little bizarre but at least interesting to look at and deserving of applause.
Thank Gawd for the Readers Wifes. They pretty much saved this week's Duckie: almost despite myself, I ended up jumping and air-punching to the likes of Laid and He's On The 'Phone. Bought tickets for their New Year bash and am in the process of enjoying their annual CD mix.
Oh, and Maur Valance was there, so I got a chance to congratulate her for winning the Femme Realism prize at Liverpool Is Burning. She's lovely.
"Destructors" would, I think, be a fitting description of the last hour or two of KUNST, a couple of Fridays ago. This was my second time (the first being the fabulous night featuring Our Lady J's debut solo performance) and I'd made a token gesture toward the Narnia/History of Art dress code by wearing a black shirt and spidery jewellery, gingering up my beard and sticking a large dressing over one ear. I was Vincent Van Goth, ho bloody ho. No, no-one else got it either but I did receive several concerned enquiries as to my aural health. Halfway through the evening, I got pissed off with hearing everything in mono and ripped the dressing off. Shame sunflowers were out of season.
In the event, the couple of punters who actually paid any heed to the dress code went as Narnians, specifically the White Witch. Our lovely host, Dusty Limits, had gone pale and witchy too (not to say a tad consumptive):
KUNST is, I'm coming to realise, more cabaret-heavy than either Duckie or Vauxhallville. I liked Miss Leggy Pee, who showed us her puppies:
She later did a couple of really rather cute Doris Dayesque lip-synched duets with her little old man-puppet:
There was also a rather pleasing operatic version of Psycho Killer
and some excellent poetry from Salena Godden (seen here with truly goddess-like sun-disc balanced on her head):
Nathan Evans did his Queen puppetry striptease:
It's a clever act but I've seen it before at least twice now and I agree with Gareth that some of the trampled-upon rights mentioned in his critique seem to date faster than others in terms of audience response.
For me, however, the oddest part of the evening was the finale, a live last-ever-performance (well, before they return to the US, I don't think they're splitting up) from KUNST's resident house band, Holy Ghost Revival. Apparently they traditionally come on and play toward the end of each KUNST but presumably Our Lady J took their place the last (and first) time I was there.
I guess I found them odd because it all seemed really un-Weimar Cabaret somehow. It wasn't bad, necessarily - there was something quite exhilarating about all that rawk 'n' roll energy - but it did seem to go on about twice as long as it should've done. When Dusty Limits called for a lock-in and an encore, I found myself thinking, "couldn't we just have the DJ back, playing music I actually like?" It was all a little bit jarringly hetero, too, but queered up a bit by Dusty's tales of snogging various band members, reenacted for us onstage.
Here's some pics:
I dunno, though. I don't really understand the appeal of that sort of rock/metal interface; it really has always seemed to me a peculiarly heterosexual thing, the straight boys' opportunity to strut and revel in glitter, spandex, tight leather and big hair while aggressively proclaiming their rampant desire for the ladeez. I was slightly surprised, at one point, to find myself mouthing the words despite not remotely recognising the tune (or even a tune): it was a cover or a part-sampling of Like A Prayer, probably my favourite Madonna song.
How queer.
Tuesday 2 December 2008
Another man has lost a friend
I was going to post about last Friday's KUNST but I'm not in the mood for it. I've been feeling numb and cold and a bit unreal since hearing yesterday evening about the death of a great friend of both me and TSB. Today it's sinking in a little more.
B died suddenly over the weekend. He was in his early 40s, apparently in fine health, recently (last couple of years) moved in with a good partner after many not-so-good partners. The partner came home from work on Friday and found B slumped dead in front of the computer. Presumably something cardiac; I don’t think anyone knows yet.
B was my partner’s friend for years before I met him. At that time, he was a nurse. He’d moved to London a while before and the summer me and TSB got together (1995) we came down for Pride and spent a couple of weeks in the city (B insisted we lodge in his bedroom while he took the couch). I think it was that summer that convinced me I wanted eventually to move south: in my memory, it's a haze of sunlight (on the strikingly sunflower-gold walls of B's small flat; we later stole the colour when we painted our living room), the smell of baking pavements, a hugely exotic (to me) gay scene, Britpop at its height and glorious daytime boozing in Soho and Camden and King's Cross with B's seemingly vast and diverse social butterfly network of friends, neighbours, admirers, ex-shags, future shags and acquaintances. All of it tinged, naturally, with the rush of my being in the first giddy flushes of love.
B was the first gay Londoner I’d met and initially his combination of metropolitan archness (at times, frankly, screaming campness), gregariousness and fearless confidence intimidated the hell out of me. He was HIV+ve too, that was acknowledged but only ever talked about obliquely. As far as I know (and I don’t know much), he must’ve been diagnosed in the early ‘90s. I always got the impression he was faintly surprised - but delighted - at having lasted so long, and embraced life accordingly. He certainly seemed to do phenomenally well on whatever therapy he was taking. I’ve no idea whether his HIV status is anything to do with his sudden death.
Talking about him in the past tense is strange. It’s still difficult to believe I won’t see him again. His Facebook page mentions his November trip to Berlin with his partner, and his most recently-tagged pics are all cosy domesticity, watering plants and dozing on the settee with his large fluffy cat sprawled beside him. His latest status update is “[B] is bolloxed”. I reckon he’d probably have liked that.
B died suddenly over the weekend. He was in his early 40s, apparently in fine health, recently (last couple of years) moved in with a good partner after many not-so-good partners. The partner came home from work on Friday and found B slumped dead in front of the computer. Presumably something cardiac; I don’t think anyone knows yet.
B was my partner’s friend for years before I met him. At that time, he was a nurse. He’d moved to London a while before and the summer me and TSB got together (1995) we came down for Pride and spent a couple of weeks in the city (B insisted we lodge in his bedroom while he took the couch). I think it was that summer that convinced me I wanted eventually to move south: in my memory, it's a haze of sunlight (on the strikingly sunflower-gold walls of B's small flat; we later stole the colour when we painted our living room), the smell of baking pavements, a hugely exotic (to me) gay scene, Britpop at its height and glorious daytime boozing in Soho and Camden and King's Cross with B's seemingly vast and diverse social butterfly network of friends, neighbours, admirers, ex-shags, future shags and acquaintances. All of it tinged, naturally, with the rush of my being in the first giddy flushes of love.
B was the first gay Londoner I’d met and initially his combination of metropolitan archness (at times, frankly, screaming campness), gregariousness and fearless confidence intimidated the hell out of me. He was HIV+ve too, that was acknowledged but only ever talked about obliquely. As far as I know (and I don’t know much), he must’ve been diagnosed in the early ‘90s. I always got the impression he was faintly surprised - but delighted - at having lasted so long, and embraced life accordingly. He certainly seemed to do phenomenally well on whatever therapy he was taking. I’ve no idea whether his HIV status is anything to do with his sudden death.
Talking about him in the past tense is strange. It’s still difficult to believe I won’t see him again. His Facebook page mentions his November trip to Berlin with his partner, and his most recently-tagged pics are all cosy domesticity, watering plants and dozing on the settee with his large fluffy cat sprawled beside him. His latest status update is “[B] is bolloxed”. I reckon he’d probably have liked that.
Friday 28 November 2008
Looking like a true survivor
Feeling like a little kid: Galashiela's 'phoned this evening, four times without leaving a message, at 10.16, 10.17, 10.18 and 10.23; it feels exciting but a little scary having her trapped in my 'phone, like when I was 5 and caught a bee in a jar. It hummed furiously until I was sure I could feel the glass vibrating with its anger and I started to worry that, when I let it out again, it'd exact a painful revenge upon me. Galashiela in my 'phone feels like that...
So far, I'm loving Survivors, to the extent that I'm considering getting hold of a boxed set of the original series (it was a little before my time) for comparison. It's exactly the kind of slightly down-at-heel British apocalypse I like, what Brian Aldiss (in a spot of SF authorial bitchslapping of John Wyndham) termed "cosy catastrophe".
I like the cosiness - and occasionally clunky dialogue, the hint of twee (even Dexter, this week's gun-toting New Warlord is basically a minor Mad Max baddy in zip-up Fred Perry), the hovering spectres of Tom and Barbara Good. I quite like the fact that the lesbian doctor isn't out about being a lesbian or a doctor. I'm even tolerating the Lost-like tendency of this particular bunch of survivors to maintain immaculate make-up and/or clean-shavenness weeks after the catastrophe itself.
The only thing that's annoying me is the repeated montage of Alim and Najif unconvincingly "bonding" over football and chickens. Let's hope the sentimentalised Irresponsible Playboy Redeemed By Lovable Orphan (which, let's face it, began and ended with Annie) doesn't become a weekly fixture...
So far, I'm loving Survivors, to the extent that I'm considering getting hold of a boxed set of the original series (it was a little before my time) for comparison. It's exactly the kind of slightly down-at-heel British apocalypse I like, what Brian Aldiss (in a spot of SF authorial bitchslapping of John Wyndham) termed "cosy catastrophe".
I like the cosiness - and occasionally clunky dialogue, the hint of twee (even Dexter, this week's gun-toting New Warlord is basically a minor Mad Max baddy in zip-up Fred Perry), the hovering spectres of Tom and Barbara Good. I quite like the fact that the lesbian doctor isn't out about being a lesbian or a doctor. I'm even tolerating the Lost-like tendency of this particular bunch of survivors to maintain immaculate make-up and/or clean-shavenness weeks after the catastrophe itself.
The only thing that's annoying me is the repeated montage of Alim and Najif unconvincingly "bonding" over football and chickens. Let's hope the sentimentalised Irresponsible Playboy Redeemed By Lovable Orphan (which, let's face it, began and ended with Annie) doesn't become a weekly fixture...
Tuesday 25 November 2008
Band of gold
Bit of a panic today when, arriving at work, I realised my wedding ring (the word "wedding" sets my teeth on edge a bit in this context but "civil partnership ring" sounds more wrong somehow) was no longer on my finger.
A little over two years ago, shortly after we got hitched, I wrote the following:
Jewellery. Possibly more of an issue for men than women, but that's largely speculation and may be bollocks. I'm sitting here twirling the civil partnership (okay, wedding) ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. It's a simple band of white gold, slightly convex. Most of the time, I'm acutely aware of its presence: I feel like my finger sweats more underneath it and, in the shower, I worry that the little band of skin underneath won't get properly soaped/cleaned.
I'd love to put a psychological spin on this - ambivalence about partnership, fear of committment, etc - but I think it's largely about feeling uncomfortable with stuff on my body. When I sleep, I have to take everything off - clothes, watch, any jewellery - and the wear-it-alwaysness of my civ... wedding ring is still impinging upon my consciousness. I was hoping that, as with cats and their collars, I wouldn't notice it after a while. It's been a week, and I'm still acutely aware of it. It cost so much, though, that I daren't take it off; I know I'd lose it.
In the intervening time, I've got used to it to the extent that I feel acutely conscious of its absence. I wear it in my sleep. When my hands are cold, it seems looser (possibly it's the micro-stickiness of sweat that holds it in place) and can rattle up and down, sometimes slipping over the knuckle. When it's like that, I keep my fingers slightly crooked to stop it dropping off - but I worried today that it'd happened without me noticing.
The other possibility was that I'd forgotten to put it on again after this morning's shower. Heading out the door, I 'phoned TSB and asked him to check the bathroom... then promptly found it inside one of my gloves. I'd pulled it off my finger when I'd removed it.
Phew.
A little over two years ago, shortly after we got hitched, I wrote the following:
Jewellery. Possibly more of an issue for men than women, but that's largely speculation and may be bollocks. I'm sitting here twirling the civil partnership (okay, wedding) ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. It's a simple band of white gold, slightly convex. Most of the time, I'm acutely aware of its presence: I feel like my finger sweats more underneath it and, in the shower, I worry that the little band of skin underneath won't get properly soaped/cleaned.
I'd love to put a psychological spin on this - ambivalence about partnership, fear of committment, etc - but I think it's largely about feeling uncomfortable with stuff on my body. When I sleep, I have to take everything off - clothes, watch, any jewellery - and the wear-it-alwaysness of my civ... wedding ring is still impinging upon my consciousness. I was hoping that, as with cats and their collars, I wouldn't notice it after a while. It's been a week, and I'm still acutely aware of it. It cost so much, though, that I daren't take it off; I know I'd lose it.
In the intervening time, I've got used to it to the extent that I feel acutely conscious of its absence. I wear it in my sleep. When my hands are cold, it seems looser (possibly it's the micro-stickiness of sweat that holds it in place) and can rattle up and down, sometimes slipping over the knuckle. When it's like that, I keep my fingers slightly crooked to stop it dropping off - but I worried today that it'd happened without me noticing.
The other possibility was that I'd forgotten to put it on again after this morning's shower. Heading out the door, I 'phoned TSB and asked him to check the bathroom... then promptly found it inside one of my gloves. I'd pulled it off my finger when I'd removed it.
Phew.
Knee deep in the hoopla
Hmmm. You can tell it's been a good (or at least an alcohol-soaked) Duckie when it takes me several days to pen the comedown post.
Me and TSB undoubtedly drink more than the somewhat arbitrary Government-set Recommended Maximum Number Of Units. We went through a period not so long ago of not drinking at all during the week: this was all well and good but, come Friday, we were practically bursting forth from our respective workplaces like Bart Simpson on his skateboard, hurtling o'er bridge and under tunnel for Soho. Set the controls for the heart of the pub!
This weekday/weekend distinction's been relaxed a little and we sometimes break open the wine or G&T of an evening. We've yet to completely lose the Friday pub-scramble, though. We likes our booze, we does.
After the exotica of Liverpool Is Burning and last week's more cabaretastic pleasures, we were hankering for a chunk of ye olde original Readers Wifes. Kim Phaggs awol this week but Chelsea Kelsey ably assisted by Jock (with both Cloths on the door plus Amy and Simon, making a healthy five out of six) did the business, tickling our aural G-spots to perfection.
There's usually something visually engaging playing onstage at Duckie before the cabaret starts. We found ourselves increasingly engrossed in an evocative little black-and-white film about two apparently deaf-and-mute grafters in a grotty bedsit in 1950s London. The industrial landscape was all-encompassing, making both me and Mel (sporting the black version of her teardrop necklace) think of a host of Smiths songs. It occurred to me that the basic message of many (most?) of this kind of British drama of the period was Life Is Grim, Don't Get Ideas Above Your Station. In this case, there was a "moral" dimension too, as one of our hapless deaf-mutes canoodles, post-pub, with a young woman who's clearly No Better Than She Should Be - and subsequently dies, pushed off a wall into a canal by some feral children. With horrible irony, his friend passes by but doesn't see him and can't hear his cries. So he dies. The End. Life's a bummer. Don't Have Sex (With Tarts-With-Hearts).
We were all, including Gareth, briefly traumatised by this abrupt and rather shockingly downbeat ending. TSB later discovered the film is called Together and features the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi (designer of the Tottenham Court Road Tube mosaic!) as the surviving main character.
Amy was working a vaguely '80s silver-and-black look, including a chunky pendant fashioned from what appeared to be a tea strainer.
Starting cabaret act was the first of two turns by Probe, a duo who performed a Fred 'n' Gingeresque dance in vintage evening dress. Very swish. As Theo, the handsome male half, stood at the front of the stage at the beginning, a voice to my left said thoughtfully and appreciatively, "quite big bulge" and we all tittered like big ol' gays.
They made it all look sooo easy.
Their second act was a more contemporary piece that took the piss out of po-faced contemporary dance ("and then I did this... and suddenly the gap between here and here became significant"). Quite a few Duckie virgins around (I'd found myself becoming Mr Crankypants Thirtysomething around them, particularly when they squawkily invaded the stage between acts and I felt compelled to tidy away a pint glass that seemed permanently on the verge of being knocked into the audience) and their attention seemed to drift a little during this part.
At one point, Antonia, the female Probe, put a foot wrong and fell backwards off the stage. There was an audible gasp of maybe half a second but she was caught in the arms of someone standing in the front row and sprang immediately back onstage as if on elastic. Impressive.
Final act was Marawa, hula hoop artiste extraordinaire. I've seen her before at Duckie (I think - Amy seems to have a particular love of hula hoopery and there've been a few hula girls over the years) and was excellent this time too, really working the crowd. Her calypso outfit, moves and some of her expressions (exaggerated by enormous fake eyelashes) reminded me of the bit at the beginning of Belleville Rendezvouz featuring the Josephine Baker caricature.
(Armwavey pint of beverage not photographer's own.)
'Twas a bit of an odd night for me, as I kept glimpsing an ex-colleague of mine in the middle of a moderately rowdy group of people (one of several birthdays in the RVT that night) and wondering if I should go over and say hello. At one point, I turned around to find him directly behind, looking right at me without a hint of recognition. I said (shouted) hello. Still no recognition. After a minute or two, I was reminded that my ex-colleague had a twin brother; it was he I was talking to. Heh.
Another in-house arts installation thingy, this time "being photographed taking poppers for free" (as Amy put it) in the Tavern's upstairs bathroom. At 1.30am, the results were projected onto the onstage screen and I was moderately glad I hadn't taken part.
Me and TSB undoubtedly drink more than the somewhat arbitrary Government-set Recommended Maximum Number Of Units. We went through a period not so long ago of not drinking at all during the week: this was all well and good but, come Friday, we were practically bursting forth from our respective workplaces like Bart Simpson on his skateboard, hurtling o'er bridge and under tunnel for Soho. Set the controls for the heart of the pub!
This weekday/weekend distinction's been relaxed a little and we sometimes break open the wine or G&T of an evening. We've yet to completely lose the Friday pub-scramble, though. We likes our booze, we does.
After the exotica of Liverpool Is Burning and last week's more cabaretastic pleasures, we were hankering for a chunk of ye olde original Readers Wifes. Kim Phaggs awol this week but Chelsea Kelsey ably assisted by Jock (with both Cloths on the door plus Amy and Simon, making a healthy five out of six) did the business, tickling our aural G-spots to perfection.
There's usually something visually engaging playing onstage at Duckie before the cabaret starts. We found ourselves increasingly engrossed in an evocative little black-and-white film about two apparently deaf-and-mute grafters in a grotty bedsit in 1950s London. The industrial landscape was all-encompassing, making both me and Mel (sporting the black version of her teardrop necklace) think of a host of Smiths songs. It occurred to me that the basic message of many (most?) of this kind of British drama of the period was Life Is Grim, Don't Get Ideas Above Your Station. In this case, there was a "moral" dimension too, as one of our hapless deaf-mutes canoodles, post-pub, with a young woman who's clearly No Better Than She Should Be - and subsequently dies, pushed off a wall into a canal by some feral children. With horrible irony, his friend passes by but doesn't see him and can't hear his cries. So he dies. The End. Life's a bummer. Don't Have Sex (With Tarts-With-Hearts).
We were all, including Gareth, briefly traumatised by this abrupt and rather shockingly downbeat ending. TSB later discovered the film is called Together and features the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi (designer of the Tottenham Court Road Tube mosaic!) as the surviving main character.
Amy was working a vaguely '80s silver-and-black look, including a chunky pendant fashioned from what appeared to be a tea strainer.
Starting cabaret act was the first of two turns by Probe, a duo who performed a Fred 'n' Gingeresque dance in vintage evening dress. Very swish. As Theo, the handsome male half, stood at the front of the stage at the beginning, a voice to my left said thoughtfully and appreciatively, "quite big bulge" and we all tittered like big ol' gays.
They made it all look sooo easy.
Their second act was a more contemporary piece that took the piss out of po-faced contemporary dance ("and then I did this... and suddenly the gap between here and here became significant"). Quite a few Duckie virgins around (I'd found myself becoming Mr Crankypants Thirtysomething around them, particularly when they squawkily invaded the stage between acts and I felt compelled to tidy away a pint glass that seemed permanently on the verge of being knocked into the audience) and their attention seemed to drift a little during this part.
At one point, Antonia, the female Probe, put a foot wrong and fell backwards off the stage. There was an audible gasp of maybe half a second but she was caught in the arms of someone standing in the front row and sprang immediately back onstage as if on elastic. Impressive.
Final act was Marawa, hula hoop artiste extraordinaire. I've seen her before at Duckie (I think - Amy seems to have a particular love of hula hoopery and there've been a few hula girls over the years) and was excellent this time too, really working the crowd. Her calypso outfit, moves and some of her expressions (exaggerated by enormous fake eyelashes) reminded me of the bit at the beginning of Belleville Rendezvouz featuring the Josephine Baker caricature.
(Armwavey pint of beverage not photographer's own.)
'Twas a bit of an odd night for me, as I kept glimpsing an ex-colleague of mine in the middle of a moderately rowdy group of people (one of several birthdays in the RVT that night) and wondering if I should go over and say hello. At one point, I turned around to find him directly behind, looking right at me without a hint of recognition. I said (shouted) hello. Still no recognition. After a minute or two, I was reminded that my ex-colleague had a twin brother; it was he I was talking to. Heh.
Another in-house arts installation thingy, this time "being photographed taking poppers for free" (as Amy put it) in the Tavern's upstairs bathroom. At 1.30am, the results were projected onto the onstage screen and I was moderately glad I hadn't taken part.
Tuesday 18 November 2008
Motherfuckers gonna drop the pressure
Saw Oedipus at the National Theatre this evening, starring dear dear old Ralphie Fiennes as the titular (and, frankly, tit-u-titter-at) Theban boy who loved his mother.
First time I've actually seen a Greek tragedy performed, and possibly the last. Not a great many laughs - not intentional, anyway - and little suspense. I spent much of the play thinking "oh for fuck's sake, how many hints do you need?" in response to Oedipus's phenomenal slowness on the uptake. Mind you, the clue's in the name, innit? I might as well criticise Shakespeare for being full of clichés.
The set was beautiful, a big, slowly revolving disc of tarnished bronze with an enormous set of double doors in the same verdigris. The all-male chorus was good too, vaguely reminiscent of a Welsh male voice choir when they burst into song. I liked the way the three shepherds (well, two shepherds and a messenger) echoed the three ages of Man, the answer to Oedipus's earlier answering of the Sphinx's riddle.
Ralphie himself was okay, possibly a touch hammy. For some reason, I've always found it difficult to warm to him as an actor and bits of Oedipus seemed overdone to the point where the audience was giggling. He had a tendency to leave odd ac-torly gaps in his phrasing and the bit at the end where he crawled around, blinded, seemed to go on forever. Clare Higgins as Jocasta was subtler in her mumsy grief; I found myself watching her quieter but somehow more expressive gestures. Mind you, she'll always stick in my mind as Julia, the blood-smeared yuppie from Hellraiser.
Our homeward Tube was stuck in a tunnel for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes because the driver of a train in front had felt unwell then collapsed. Considerate of him to do it in a station. A substitute driver had to be called. I twiddled my thumbs, while TSB commented loudly on which colours of nail polish might suit me rather than the coppery apricot I sported for Liverpool Is Burning.
First time I've actually seen a Greek tragedy performed, and possibly the last. Not a great many laughs - not intentional, anyway - and little suspense. I spent much of the play thinking "oh for fuck's sake, how many hints do you need?" in response to Oedipus's phenomenal slowness on the uptake. Mind you, the clue's in the name, innit? I might as well criticise Shakespeare for being full of clichés.
The set was beautiful, a big, slowly revolving disc of tarnished bronze with an enormous set of double doors in the same verdigris. The all-male chorus was good too, vaguely reminiscent of a Welsh male voice choir when they burst into song. I liked the way the three shepherds (well, two shepherds and a messenger) echoed the three ages of Man, the answer to Oedipus's earlier answering of the Sphinx's riddle.
Ralphie himself was okay, possibly a touch hammy. For some reason, I've always found it difficult to warm to him as an actor and bits of Oedipus seemed overdone to the point where the audience was giggling. He had a tendency to leave odd ac-torly gaps in his phrasing and the bit at the end where he crawled around, blinded, seemed to go on forever. Clare Higgins as Jocasta was subtler in her mumsy grief; I found myself watching her quieter but somehow more expressive gestures. Mind you, she'll always stick in my mind as Julia, the blood-smeared yuppie from Hellraiser.
Our homeward Tube was stuck in a tunnel for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes because the driver of a train in front had felt unwell then collapsed. Considerate of him to do it in a station. A substitute driver had to be called. I twiddled my thumbs, while TSB commented loudly on which colours of nail polish might suit me rather than the coppery apricot I sported for Liverpool Is Burning.
Monday 17 November 2008
Sunday girl
It's Galashiela again, Sunday evening 10.02pm:
"Leanna, 'phone the shop and get off the house 'phone. Bye."
The plot thickens. No way am I 'phoning back and explaining it's a wrong number. That'd put an end to future voyeurdrama.
Relaxed Sunday, which is euphemism for Did Nothing Constructive Sunday. TSB and I react to boozy nights in completely different ways: I sleep late; he wakens early and wants to do stuff. Him still being on the current gym kick, he heads uptown, goes through his routine of cycling and rowing and sweating and showering, then 'phones me to plan lunch. I'm usually still dozing (this morning, I was phasing in and out of an alarming dream set in an exaggeratedly brown ITV version of the 1970s, in which I'd survived some kind of event that had turned almost everyone else into monsters-to-be-avoided but, I told myself within the dream, not zombies). I used to feel really guilty at my relative lack of exercise but, over time, that wash of guilt has faded to the merest twinge.
Leaving Duckie last night, we noticed that a Kennington hostelry, The Oval Lounge, seemed to be doing a special promotion for frequenters of the RVT (presumably because so many gayers schlep up and down Clapham/Kennington Park Road on their way to and from Vauxhall) so we decided to head there for Sunday lunch. Here's a pic from their Facebook group:
We found ourselves seated near a couple of appealingly camp black guys loudly discussing sexual technique (that all-important relaxing of the sphincter muscles) and a pair of vaguely Sloaney twentysomething women who were, bizarrely (because they really didn't seem the type), talking about the Bible. We decided one was inducting (indoctrinating?) the other into some sort of religious cult. I reckoned it was a cult with weird dietary restrictions because both of them were stick-thin and had been toying with glasses of water since we arrived - but they surprised us again by suddenly ordering the same main course that we'd plumped for, a towering roast-beef-and-veg based creation in an enormous soup bowl, drenched in red winey-tasting gravy and topped with a Yorkshire pud. A bulimic break, perhaps.
Anyway, lunch was delicious and there was plenty of it. We were just finishing up when the sound system - which had hitherto been playing inoffensive background muzak that sounded a bit like Air - started playing Return To Oz and we both went a bit melty. It was always my favourite Scissor Sisters track but never a single and they only rarely played it live. Realised I hadn't listened to it - or indeed, much of the first album - for aaages.
Here's a rather good fan video:
"Leanna, 'phone the shop and get off the house 'phone. Bye."
The plot thickens. No way am I 'phoning back and explaining it's a wrong number. That'd put an end to future voyeurdrama.
Relaxed Sunday, which is euphemism for Did Nothing Constructive Sunday. TSB and I react to boozy nights in completely different ways: I sleep late; he wakens early and wants to do stuff. Him still being on the current gym kick, he heads uptown, goes through his routine of cycling and rowing and sweating and showering, then 'phones me to plan lunch. I'm usually still dozing (this morning, I was phasing in and out of an alarming dream set in an exaggeratedly brown ITV version of the 1970s, in which I'd survived some kind of event that had turned almost everyone else into monsters-to-be-avoided but, I told myself within the dream, not zombies). I used to feel really guilty at my relative lack of exercise but, over time, that wash of guilt has faded to the merest twinge.
Leaving Duckie last night, we noticed that a Kennington hostelry, The Oval Lounge, seemed to be doing a special promotion for frequenters of the RVT (presumably because so many gayers schlep up and down Clapham/Kennington Park Road on their way to and from Vauxhall) so we decided to head there for Sunday lunch. Here's a pic from their Facebook group:
We found ourselves seated near a couple of appealingly camp black guys loudly discussing sexual technique (that all-important relaxing of the sphincter muscles) and a pair of vaguely Sloaney twentysomething women who were, bizarrely (because they really didn't seem the type), talking about the Bible. We decided one was inducting (indoctrinating?) the other into some sort of religious cult. I reckoned it was a cult with weird dietary restrictions because both of them were stick-thin and had been toying with glasses of water since we arrived - but they surprised us again by suddenly ordering the same main course that we'd plumped for, a towering roast-beef-and-veg based creation in an enormous soup bowl, drenched in red winey-tasting gravy and topped with a Yorkshire pud. A bulimic break, perhaps.
Anyway, lunch was delicious and there was plenty of it. We were just finishing up when the sound system - which had hitherto been playing inoffensive background muzak that sounded a bit like Air - started playing Return To Oz and we both went a bit melty. It was always my favourite Scissor Sisters track but never a single and they only rarely played it live. Realised I hadn't listened to it - or indeed, much of the first album - for aaages.
Here's a rather good fan video:
Sunday 16 November 2008
Keep keep bleeding
After last weekend's jaunt up to Liverpool, me and TSB were all up for taking it easy this weekend: not straying too much from the pleasantly familiar routine of lunch, alcohol, Duckie, bed, lunch, alcohol, bed. In that order, obvieusement.
Saturday evening, though, we paid a flying pre-RVT visit to the Bread & Roses in Clapham, for our friend S's 30th birthday drinks. Getting off the Tube surrounded by slightly braying white boys in shirtsleeves, I was reminded of that tendency of straight people to band together in large, loud, underdressed packs the better to wander the High Streets of Britain. Hadn't seen S for ages and he'd put on weight but in the right way: always a looker, he now has an appealing upper body solidity. Yum. He'd been in the pub since 5pm but amazingly wasn't trashed. I remembered turning thirty and actually feeling quite good about the whole thing - like suddenly the pressure was off me to pay lip service to fashion or know what was Number 1 or whatever. I was free to indulge my incipient fogeyness.
Got to Duckie a little after 10. Only two of the Six there, Amy and Simon, making us somewhat apprehensive. Simon lovely as ever, though (his Movember 'tache noticeably bushier), chatting to us about Liverpool Is Burning and asking after the "beautiful woman" who'd accompanied me there, ho ho. Later, Amy acknowledged us from the stage as "hardcore" for having trekked up north and back. We felt duly smug. Our hostess was looking particularly good, in a long floaty blue-and-white ensemble, the Virgin Amy:
DJ Lush was standing in for the Wifes. I've said it before but it's true enough to bear repetition: the Readers Wifes really have spoiled us for other DJs. Lush is better than most and, if I'd never heard Kim Phaggs and Chelsea Kelsey, I'd probably be an enthusiastic, committed fan. She plays pretty decent stuff really, last night's selection a distinct improvement on the last time she DJed at Duckie, but her timing was wrong, somehow. With the Wifes, there's a sense of momentum steadily building throughout the evening - some songs are unfamiliar but consistent within the whole - whereas DJ Lush's choices seemed more random and, at times, misjudged. She played Starman really early in the evening and it was wasted on a not-yet-drunk-enough-to-sing-along audience. Ditto The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. There was a tendency toward recent indie rather than the from-any-era oddities characteristic of the Wifes, and she had a greater tolerance for longer, atmosphere-sapping tracks like Siouxsie & the Banshees' Monitor, which seemed to go on for a thousand years. I wouldn't even have known what it was if Gareth hadn't cheated by using Shazam. Suffice to say the pacing didn't really work for me.
I dunno, it feels a bit unfair to criticise a DJ for not being the same as the Wifes. On the other hand, Gareth left early and we followed shortly afterwards, around 1.15, only the second time ever we've left Duckie before the end. It just wasn't happening with the music and the crowd was an unusual one, too. A brace of scary blonde women had dumped their coats on the activity island (the new cloakroom?), a group of directionally-hairdoed Baby Gays were crowding us from the direction of the stage (for reasons which will become apparent in a moment) and the throng seemed more difficult than usual to push through to bar or toilet.
But! But but but! The cabaret was really rather good, with a thematic consistency uncommon to Duckie, that theme being mess. Ick. Gunk. Stickiness. Eww.
First up, one John Joseph Bibby, auburn-tressed beauty in an intricate frock apparently made entirely of paper. White paper had been taped over the whole stage, too (some tit spilt their drink on it earlier and several sheets had to be replaced with fresh ones).
Bibby began to sing, while an attractively monobrowed Frieda Kahlo lookalike daubed him with various colours of poster paint.
She finished up by tipping whole pots over him. By this time, we were being pinned against the activity island by the cowering Baby Gays. Paint is a nightmare to get out of one's Abercrombie & Fitch.
Act No.2 was a couple of Duckieites turned performers - according to Amy, a not uncommon trajectory - Justin Sweets and Caramel Miranda. The stage was set with all manner of sugary sprinkles, chews, hundreds & thousands... and a beeyoootiful high-calorie titfer was contrived:
The ickiness? Well, the tower of sundae glasses was glued together with liberal applications of lurid technicolour goo, squeezed from an icing bag. As with Bibby's paint, it went all over her hair. TSB, who's mildly phobic about such things, shuddered by my side.
There were occasional pauses to throw confectionery into the audience. I felt my tummy rumble and my fillings squeal.
"What," teased Amy, "could possibly follow that?"
A genuine(ish) beauty queen, Miss Teen South Carolina:
Apparently this was the burlesque performer Gypsy Wood, doing a word-perfect pisstake of this famous moment in beauty pageant history:
Poor (real) Miss Teen South Carolina...
A quick costume change later, our own Duckie version then proceeded to launch into her own dance interpretation of Whitney Houston's high Glycaemic Index gloopathon, The Greatest Love Of All (before she discovered crack, one assumes):
This in itself would've been funny enough - she managed to hit just the right note of hilarious almost-sincerity, without lapsing into all-out slapstick - but, all of a sudden, the crotch of Miss Teen South Carolina's pristine leotard began to well crimson...
... and blood seeped out and down her legs. This would've been shocking in any context (blood-red on white just is, presumably tapping into some ancient OMGbleedingtodeath reflex) but, happening in a roomful of (mostly) gay males, there was a collective gasp of horror as we were all reminded of womeny bits that bleed. Misogyny? Perhaps, but at least this act made me examine my own instinctive gay male "urgh" and it did so in an amusing way.
Miss Teen South Carolina slopped around in her own menstruum, finishing up blood-streaked and triumphant, Carrie-turned-cheerleader, to huge applause.
I was reminded of Amy's occasional scary headmistress persona, though, when a drunken arsewipe from the back of the room threw a piece of ice up onto the stage. Amy looked daggers into the audience, identifying the culprit; after the act's conclusion, she publicly invited him outside. Barred? Presumably. Throwing stuff at the performers is a definite Duckie no-no. Unless they invite it.
So... yeah. A Duckie where the cabaret was markedly better than the music. Not often that happens.
Saturday evening, though, we paid a flying pre-RVT visit to the Bread & Roses in Clapham, for our friend S's 30th birthday drinks. Getting off the Tube surrounded by slightly braying white boys in shirtsleeves, I was reminded of that tendency of straight people to band together in large, loud, underdressed packs the better to wander the High Streets of Britain. Hadn't seen S for ages and he'd put on weight but in the right way: always a looker, he now has an appealing upper body solidity. Yum. He'd been in the pub since 5pm but amazingly wasn't trashed. I remembered turning thirty and actually feeling quite good about the whole thing - like suddenly the pressure was off me to pay lip service to fashion or know what was Number 1 or whatever. I was free to indulge my incipient fogeyness.
Got to Duckie a little after 10. Only two of the Six there, Amy and Simon, making us somewhat apprehensive. Simon lovely as ever, though (his Movember 'tache noticeably bushier), chatting to us about Liverpool Is Burning and asking after the "beautiful woman" who'd accompanied me there, ho ho. Later, Amy acknowledged us from the stage as "hardcore" for having trekked up north and back. We felt duly smug. Our hostess was looking particularly good, in a long floaty blue-and-white ensemble, the Virgin Amy:
DJ Lush was standing in for the Wifes. I've said it before but it's true enough to bear repetition: the Readers Wifes really have spoiled us for other DJs. Lush is better than most and, if I'd never heard Kim Phaggs and Chelsea Kelsey, I'd probably be an enthusiastic, committed fan. She plays pretty decent stuff really, last night's selection a distinct improvement on the last time she DJed at Duckie, but her timing was wrong, somehow. With the Wifes, there's a sense of momentum steadily building throughout the evening - some songs are unfamiliar but consistent within the whole - whereas DJ Lush's choices seemed more random and, at times, misjudged. She played Starman really early in the evening and it was wasted on a not-yet-drunk-enough-to-sing-along audience. Ditto The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. There was a tendency toward recent indie rather than the from-any-era oddities characteristic of the Wifes, and she had a greater tolerance for longer, atmosphere-sapping tracks like Siouxsie & the Banshees' Monitor, which seemed to go on for a thousand years. I wouldn't even have known what it was if Gareth hadn't cheated by using Shazam. Suffice to say the pacing didn't really work for me.
I dunno, it feels a bit unfair to criticise a DJ for not being the same as the Wifes. On the other hand, Gareth left early and we followed shortly afterwards, around 1.15, only the second time ever we've left Duckie before the end. It just wasn't happening with the music and the crowd was an unusual one, too. A brace of scary blonde women had dumped their coats on the activity island (the new cloakroom?), a group of directionally-hairdoed Baby Gays were crowding us from the direction of the stage (for reasons which will become apparent in a moment) and the throng seemed more difficult than usual to push through to bar or toilet.
But! But but but! The cabaret was really rather good, with a thematic consistency uncommon to Duckie, that theme being mess. Ick. Gunk. Stickiness. Eww.
First up, one John Joseph Bibby, auburn-tressed beauty in an intricate frock apparently made entirely of paper. White paper had been taped over the whole stage, too (some tit spilt their drink on it earlier and several sheets had to be replaced with fresh ones).
Bibby began to sing, while an attractively monobrowed Frieda Kahlo lookalike daubed him with various colours of poster paint.
She finished up by tipping whole pots over him. By this time, we were being pinned against the activity island by the cowering Baby Gays. Paint is a nightmare to get out of one's Abercrombie & Fitch.
Act No.2 was a couple of Duckieites turned performers - according to Amy, a not uncommon trajectory - Justin Sweets and Caramel Miranda. The stage was set with all manner of sugary sprinkles, chews, hundreds & thousands... and a beeyoootiful high-calorie titfer was contrived:
The ickiness? Well, the tower of sundae glasses was glued together with liberal applications of lurid technicolour goo, squeezed from an icing bag. As with Bibby's paint, it went all over her hair. TSB, who's mildly phobic about such things, shuddered by my side.
There were occasional pauses to throw confectionery into the audience. I felt my tummy rumble and my fillings squeal.
"What," teased Amy, "could possibly follow that?"
A genuine(ish) beauty queen, Miss Teen South Carolina:
Apparently this was the burlesque performer Gypsy Wood, doing a word-perfect pisstake of this famous moment in beauty pageant history:
Poor (real) Miss Teen South Carolina...
A quick costume change later, our own Duckie version then proceeded to launch into her own dance interpretation of Whitney Houston's high Glycaemic Index gloopathon, The Greatest Love Of All (before she discovered crack, one assumes):
This in itself would've been funny enough - she managed to hit just the right note of hilarious almost-sincerity, without lapsing into all-out slapstick - but, all of a sudden, the crotch of Miss Teen South Carolina's pristine leotard began to well crimson...
... and blood seeped out and down her legs. This would've been shocking in any context (blood-red on white just is, presumably tapping into some ancient OMGbleedingtodeath reflex) but, happening in a roomful of (mostly) gay males, there was a collective gasp of horror as we were all reminded of womeny bits that bleed. Misogyny? Perhaps, but at least this act made me examine my own instinctive gay male "urgh" and it did so in an amusing way.
Miss Teen South Carolina slopped around in her own menstruum, finishing up blood-streaked and triumphant, Carrie-turned-cheerleader, to huge applause.
I was reminded of Amy's occasional scary headmistress persona, though, when a drunken arsewipe from the back of the room threw a piece of ice up onto the stage. Amy looked daggers into the audience, identifying the culprit; after the act's conclusion, she publicly invited him outside. Barred? Presumably. Throwing stuff at the performers is a definite Duckie no-no. Unless they invite it.
So... yeah. A Duckie where the cabaret was markedly better than the music. Not often that happens.
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