In one ear - July Edition

Books
The Bald Trilogy Ken Campbell
The House on the Borderland William Hope Hodgson
Inside Mr. Enderby Anthony Burgess
The Maximus Poems Charles Olson

Music
First utterance Comus
Microcastle Deerhunter
Giantism Circulus
Monoliths and Dimensions Sunn 0))))

Films
The Shining Dir. Stanley Kubrick
The Great Silence Dir. Sergio Corbucci
The Cremator Dir. Juraj Herz
The Spanish Apartment Dir. Cedric Klapisch

Published, damned etc

Just a quick note to say that those charmers are 3AM have published my story, 'The Long Drop.'
Terribly exciting. I've been reading them for ages - even have a sometime gig as co-editor - so it's nice to have made it up there. viddy

In other news, I saw Crank 2 this week. Not so good.

Phaedra, luv

Last night I was there. Well, thousands of us were. The National Theatre broadcast it's new production of Phaedra, fluffs and all, live across the country. Luck on my side, I snagged a rebound ticket for a sold out screening.

Thus, your honourable reporter slunk off to Didsbury Cineworld, a multiplex hell fixed in South Manchester. Usually catering to the blockbuster crowd, for one night only the audience had been dipped in blue rinse. The unease was palpable; wall-eyed receptionists squirmed as a theatre audience, all slacks and self-regard, descended on this bastion of bad taste, marching past hoardings for 'Ice Age 3' on the way to their classical fix.

So. A first. 'Live' theatre, like the television of old. Did it work? Heck yes. The stagey acting took a while to adjust to, and the volume fluctuated as technicians at the NT end fretted over all that back row projecting. BUT this was exciting, raw stuff. The tension bound fast, mounting industrial roars meeting each new melodrama. Theseus had a voice like Kendall cake, Northern and rich as Thames slurry. Dominic Cooper was a walking pout. Dame Mirren? She delivered the neediest, wailiest queen since...well, the last one.

A bold, succesful experiment and one I'd like to see fast repeated.

Lies

Oh, I don't know. Sometimes the grip slips and I lose the urge to type. The blogging gene can be surpressed, you know, by coffee and curry and youtube films in bitesize chunks ('Quatermass and the Pit', since you ask). So in the meanwhile - fast outstripping the 'while' - developments, as they stand are

- A blossoming Krautrock obsession. 11 minutes x driving beats + teutonic yelps = bliss.
- The novel has shifted. From rust and madmen to crusts and old men.
- Summerisle Tweed. We're going to be medium.

More to follow.
Cease communication.

The Relentless self-promotion continues

So, I polished and tightened up an old piece and whaddya know - ABCtales have gone and cherry picked it again. Well, a chap does smile. That and my shiny new tank top (well. Not shiny. Wool doesn't shine.) have made this a jolly old week, yessir.

Goggle thus

Hungover, squire

Sometimes I think a hangover is pure validation: a chemical albatross you never shake until sundown. There's no escaping them, right? Yuh yuh, paracetomal cleans the pipes, but it won't skale the rest of it - you know, the sweats, the shakes, the 'not-quite-being-all-there.' It all rather clings to your day like rice to your ribs post take away.

Well, I wish I were hungover right now. It'd give me a little fire under my backside. All I've got is the pale, ghost grey sense of something I shouldn't have done and all the attendant dread.

Bummed, is the word.
All out bummed.

Problem solv-ed

Well, I've only done it, haven't I? I've only solved the world's problems in an afternoon.
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What we need in this time of crisis, when the seas do boil with blood, the heavens rain pigs etc, are a few more films where people wearing monocles let them fall into their drinks with shock.
Does anything funnier exist?
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Job done.