Thoughts on Grant Morrison at the ICA:

He was charming. He pretty much restored my hero worship, actually - he's said some dubious things in print interviews in the last year and it was refreshing to hear him talk in a very relaxed way about stuff which he's covered before but still manages to make sound exciting. Particular highlights included his insight into why comics artist Frank Quitely is so good - that he 'sees' this little 3-D world in his head and then draws it perfectly, rotating it so he can get it right from any angle - ties in with what someone here said about Quitely's characters being like little puppets he can move around... Also the story about how the scorpion gods of the Loa asked him to get a scorpion tattooed on the base of his spine:

Interviewer: "And did you?"

GM: "No! Get to fuck..."

The interviewer was pretty hopeless though, had no idea how to keep the conversation flowing and kept trying to drag Morrison back to fairly prosaic questions after he'd gone off on a fascinating mad rant. He also clearly didn't quite *get* what are some fairly basic ideas that occur constantly in Morrison's work - best example being GM saying that his next big project was an 'interactive' comic - one that would actually have a dialogue with the reader... It was fairly clear that he was referring to using narrative/linguistic/magical techniques for this - the interviewer asked "So, how are you doing that - will it be on the internet?"

But overall, a very good evening. It's coincided with and inevitably boosted my feeling that I should get (back) into magic (for want of a better term). Grant and Kristan's DJ-ing choices afterwards under the name of the Beastocracy included 'Mogadishu' by Baader Meinhof, which has earned them the highest possible place in my estimation, as well as more expected but still classic stuff like Peaches ('Fuck The Pain Away'), Missy ('Work It'), and the Sex Pistols ('Bodies').

And it's always a good Barbelith gathering when I'm not even the second most drunk person there...

fresh ingredients

Because this blog has been missing 2 things: 1) a long political rant (coming once I've finished the email I'm going to hi-jack it from), and 2) a long list of songs that I've been obsessed with lately. So, I've been making mixtapes again, and here are some of the tracks that have or are going to be included on probably more than one tape each...

The Slits - 'Love Und Romance' - "call you every day on the telephone, brrrrrrrreak! your neck! if you ain't home! I'm so glad that you belong to me; oh my darling! who wants to be free?"

Kwest Tha Madd Lad - '101 Things To Do While I'm With Your Girl' - "now he's facin' the floor talkin' bout 'Kwest, you foul!' - hold up, just hear me out now, pal: 'don't take it personal...'"

Clipse - 'Young Boy' - "what's my excuse? CARTOONS was the root! started with Yosemite Sam, with the gunnin'..."

Nas - 'Made You Look' - "who's the sexiest? it's always the nastiest; and I like a little sassiness, a lotta class'"

Avenue D - 'Do I Look Like A Slut?' - actually, I'm not even quoting this... this lyrics thing is played out...

2pac - 'Heartz Of Men'

The Afghan Whigs - 'Honky's Ladder'

Misteeq - 'Scandalous' - how good is this? yeah, they're trying to be an American r&b band now - that's a good thing, dummies!

Justin Timberlake - '(Oh No) What You Got' - I don't actually have this, it's just stuck in my head cuz of the dope Timbaland production and Timbo going "Mister JT, now what you got for me?" over and over.

Winterbrief - 'Trash This Town' - the best band you haven't heard of yet? I only know this song - I need more!

p.s. Links on the left have been shuffled a bit - if I could, I'd have the order changed randomly every week, but until then...

How did I not discover antipopper before now? I dunno, but cheers to the theorybeeyatch for the link (and the e-mail, which was good, nay much-needed, timing).

How can people actually buy that horrible thing Tony [Blair] does where he basically says "Well, you've had your fun, but let's be serious for a minute" like a supply teacher who's looseing control of the lesson?

Apt spelling slips be damned, chris has cheered me up still further. That's *exactly* what he looks like.

death to the angst-blog

Just mine, you understand, and I should have included the caveat the other day that obviously I don't hate the blogs I link to when they're angsty. Only the ones I conspicuously don't link to - blogger paranoia go!

Have decided things are not quitye so ruinous - in that there are lots of good things in my life that I didn't manage to turn to shit on Satuday night, and the ones I did, well, fuck, we'll just have to pick the pieces up and put some work in and hopefully make it right. It's happened before, it can, I think, happen again.

Moving on, moving on.

(And the thing is, the sub-section of friends involved in all this are the ones who I'm pretty sure never read this. That probably explains the sharing, huh?)

Incidentally, I hate angst-blogging most of the time, so if you do too - I'll add your name to the list of people I need to apologise to.

A weekend of ups and downs. Everything up until about 10pm on Saturday was good: out for drinks in ye olde London Bridge on Friday with this one and that one, during which it was established that there are no real Goths, at all, in the whole world - just people pretending to be Goths in order to cop off with Goths who in turn are only pretending, etc. I find this revelation profoundly reassuring, as it explains a lot, and I think it is destined to be integrated into my grand unified theory of subcultures (my life's work, to be published one day as a light-hearted academic romp in five tome-like volumes, as a whole entitled Scene and Not Herd).

Saturday afternoon was also good: sorted out contact lenses for the first time in a year, hooked up with good, good people on their way to and at the Stop The War demo, listened to speeches, sat in the sun, went for drinks afterwards.

And then we had Saturday night - me turning up already mostly drunk to a party I *knew* I needed to watch my drinking at, because of who was going to be there and the potential for events to spiral down into an id-fuelled nightmare of pointless recrimination, unfounded grievances and general ugliness.

It went pretty much exactly as badly as I'd feared. The one exception to this being that another person, with whom I strongly suspect I might have attempted to get into a fight (because I am that much of an asshole), was not present. Suffice to say though, my standing with some people I care about a lot is currently somewhere below that of Jack Straw...

I need to stop doing this. In particular, I need to stop doing it in the company of the exact same people each time, some of whom I know well (and so are more likely to be receptive to grovelling apologies initially, but have also seen it all before and so are more likely to decide that on balance it just ain't worth the hassle), and some of whom I don't, and am now unlikely to if they have a say in the matter.

Even more, I need to stop doing the equivalent of running and hiding afterwards.

"Shame, shame" as they like to mutter in the House of Commons.