Late of the Pier....

God, how hot is the lead singer?

Late of the Pier is easily the best neo-punk/neo-psychadelia/alt-indie group since... well, MGMT.

Iron Man

Can you say underwhelmed? Ok, so maybe the genius left-field casting of Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark gave me unrealistic expectations, but frankly, this isn't good enough. The annoying thing is that Iron Man, for its first hour or so, is really rather good. Everything up to just after the point where Tony is handed photographs of his own weapons being sold 'under the table' is excellent; well-paced, wittily scripted, intriguing. The aforementioned point made me really sit up and pay attention, because I was certain that 'now things are going to get really exciting'. Unfortunately, for its concluding hour, Iron Man predictably and depressingly reverts to type, with a character 'twist' that is simultaneously obvious and ridiculous. Since when are corporate takeovers the stuff of super-villainity? The resulting smash down between two 'Iron Men' brings back vomit-worthy memories of Transformers (though Iron man is far, far better directed) making what began as different and original increasingly derivative. Through it all though, Downey Jr remains superb, charismatic, extremely watchable. Gwyneth Paltrow is good, though underused and can't seem to decide if her character is all brains or kookiness, and Jeff Bridges is completely generic and brings nothing. That the film succeeds is therefore mostly down to Downey Jr. An awesome music score helps too.

The Ruins

A masterful, fast moving but long and big-on-character-development book, is necessarily stripped to the bare essentials for this 90 minute horror flick. The high concept is a lot more believable in written form - here the 'baddie' is signposted too early, is less shocking, and its true intelligence is not as devastating. Nevertheless, The Ruins is mostly a success thanks to four very committed performances (standout Jena Malone is particularly good); you can almost feel the mutual loathing that comes to the surface when the paranoia sets in, and the shocks are very effective with much gruesome bloodletting and some surprisingly funny lines ("well, thank god we cut his legs off"). There's also some interesting 'realism' to some of the characters; knowing in her heart they're all probalby going to die, one of the characters uses some time to quickly wank off her boyfriend. Though never really scary, this is much better than I was expecting. I'm just pissed that the hugely downbeat, nihilistic ending of the books' original is scrapped in favor of something more ambiguous but less memorable.

"Work sucks, I know"

Urgh, just when I think I've reached the bottom of the barrel, bad work days wise, along comes today. What a fucking awful day.

I hate talking about work as I'm there 80% of my life as it is, but I need to purge. Now that my favorite co-worker, Lucy, has quit, I get the majority of her work too, including a couple of nasty accounts. You would think that on the FIRST day of me getting her stuff (she left on Friday), that the customers would give me a little bit of breathing space and/or give me an easy ride. But no. One particular, loathsome excuse for a human being, who I'll just name 'G', basically yelled at me down the phone, calling the company I work for "Bullshit", because he's upset about a couple of shipments that were handled for him like three months ago. Now, I can (generally) give as good as get, particularly in the moment, but this guy just does something horrible to me. I could feel myself shaking in anger as I spoke to him on the phone. You know that thing that people in any kind of customer service industry say, where if someones being nasty the best thing you can do is be as nice as possible (the idea being is it not only calms you down, but also consequently highlights how much of a twat the customer is being)? Yeah, I can't do that.

So instead, I got more and more stressed as more and more worked piled up. Usually what happens is I do well under the pressure, think "I can't do this" and come 4 PM I've done everything I wanted to do and have time to finish up some other work. But today, something different happened. I almost cried! It was just too much, and so instead I left for a late lunch (i.e., walk to Tesco's and back) and finally found the one thing that calmed me down.... Will Young. Yep, William himself and his new record digitizing away on my iPod actually gave me some breathing space, got me back together and allowed me to carry on. Well, kind of. I still had to write this shitty entry.

The adventures of Joe Pitt...

I'm totally into my reading again, all of a sudden. Just finished the wonderful American Youth, which was not at all what I was expecting. It's a sparsely written but absorbing account of a young teenager's life in a decaying part of the States, and also works as a brilliant polemic on gun control.

But I'm especially excited with Already Dead, the first in a series of books from Charlie Huston, about a vampire called Joe Pitt. It's about as far from Anne Rice as you can get - it's visceral, funny and sometimes hot as hell, and pulls absolutely no punches;

I was born in the Bronx in 1960. By '75 I was on my own, living with a bunch of other punk squatters in the East Village. It was alright. I panhandled and robbed, wore a Mohawk; drank, shot, snorted and sucked anything I could get. I got a rep for being twice as sick as any other punk on the scene. I'd fuck or fight anything that stood still.

In '77 I go to see the Ramones at CBGB. Great show. I get drunk, get stoned, eat speed, and in the bathroom some guy in a suit offers me twenty bucks to let him suck my dick. It was a different time. Suits would come down to slum and check out the scene, and some of them were trolls looking for rough trade. And I like having my dick sucked; the money was icing.

He gets my tight plaid pants unzipped and goes down on his knees with a handkerchief on the floor to protect his slacks. Through the walls, I can hear Joey and the band swing into "Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy" and I come in the guy's mouth. He stands up, pulls out another twenty and offers it to me if I suck him. I say no, but that I'll give him a hand job. He gives me the twenty. My hand is in his pants and he's leaning against me, his face tucked against my neck. I'm jerking him in time to the music pounding through the walls, thinking about the booze and drugs I'm gonna buy with the forty bucks. I'm so fucked up it takes me a few seconds to realize he isn't just trying to give me a hickey. By the time I try to scream he's chewed a hole in my neck.

I'm getting through the book very quickly so keep putting it down in order to make it last. I'll have to go to Borders at the weekend now and find everything else I can that Charlie Huston has written.

It's been far too long...

I think I've reached the point now where I could probably describe myself as unintentionally celibate. It's been... forever. Seriously, I think it's been almost two years since I've been 'properly' laid, to go all teenspeak for a second.

I haven't even really had any potential opportunities, and it's starting to severely, well, affect me. I'm grouchy all the time at work, the slightest bit of flirtation from any guy, regardless of 'fuckability' has me giddy inside, and all I can think about is sex sex sex. I watch films that are shit because they've got cute guys in them. At the train station on the way back from work I stare (stealth-like of course) at guys, looking for those I find attractive and imagine conversations I could have with them which could lead to a relationship. I am sex starved.

I'm so bored....

But staring at hot guys helps.

Pusher III: I Am the Angel of Death

Pusher III is strong stuff indeed, and a great deal more successful than Pusher II, whilst still not nearly as effective as the first film. Concentrating on drug lord Milo, who was a secondary character in the first films, his is a gripping story that takes place over the course of one day. Now aged and seemingly out of touch with the world, he's becoming a laughing stock with his 'pushers' and battling with his own addiction, whilst trying to ensure his (extremely spoilt) daughter's 25th birthday party is a big success. When a deal goes pear-shaped, Milo has to simultaneously 'help out' two would-be sex-slave traders and keep his daughter happy.

I can't decide if this is a good film or not - it's certainly gripping, very well filmed and features an excellent lead performance from Zlatko Buric as the deluded Milo; it feels like he's gradually decaying with each passing minute. The shocking, genuinely sickening final act of violence is jolting and seems to reinforce the point that a criminal underworld rewards in the loss of soul, the loss of self. Not for the faint-hearted.

Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands

Pusher II is another downbeat, dreary and depressing film depicting the hell on earth that is the criminal underworld of Copenhagen. Unfortunately, unlike Pusher, the story isn't especially gripping or involving and things quickly become monotonous. The first hour in particular is heavy going, despite some good camera-work and honest performances. The last 30 minutes or so kick things into a gear as events start to spiral out of control, but there's no real pay-off. The characters are all completely detestable (the nickname of one is, aptly, Cunt) and the plight of protagonist Tonny, recently released from jail discovering he is a father, is completely unsympathetic. Disappointing.

The Center of the World

Depressing as hell and rather self-contained, The Center of the World is a dull, dreary story, shot on the cheap with an ugly, hyper-real aesthetic but a somewhat unbelievable starting point. Richard, a successful but socially inadequate computer engineer, meets Molly, a drummer in an aspiring rock group, iand decides to talk to her. Molly (very) soon tells him that for money, she works in a strip club, and one night he goes there to meet her and gets a lap dance. Apparently under pressure from his friends to 'get laid' (well, there's one scene anyway), he offers Molly a substantial amount of money if she spends a three-day weekend with him in Las Vegas. Of course, eventually she agrees, though inevitably there are conditions: she's only 'his' from 10 PM until 2 AM, there's no kissing on the mouth, and definitely no penetration. Guess what happens? The bleak ending is a bit disrespectful to one of the characters, but is certainly powerful, and the strong sex scenes are far more effective than say, those in 9 Songs.

Though there's really no new ground covered here, writer Ellen Benjamin Wong and director Wayn Wang clearly have good intentions, and what elevates this into watchable, sometimes perceptive territory is the stunning lead performance from Peter Sarsgaard (and to a lesser extent, the performance by Molly Parker). Whenever films are shot on hand-held camcorders/home-video equipment, something about the way it looks highlights that people are acting. It all looks too 'fake' and static, mannerisms become exaggerated and it becomes quickly obvious that the whole thing is, well, fictitious. But Sarsgaard is never anything less than utterly believable; he is supernaturally talented here - there's no artifice, and though the entire film is really quite underwritten, his is the only character here who feels like he has lived before the film starts and will continue to live after it is over.

Wishing Stairs

Wishing Stairs, the third in the Whispering Corridors (or Ghost School) series, is the one I had the hardest time with. Maybe I've been spoiled by the excellent three other films, but I just couldn't get into this one so much. Unlike Memento Mori or The Voice, this is more of a standard horror film and the characterization is a little weak. For example, the 'ghost' in this film becomes quite malevolent and does some questionable things because they seem so out of character given what has come before. Yoon Jae-Yeon is clearly aiming for pathos here but it feels undeserved, and the 'wishing stairs' device itself is just that. The climax is a looong time coming too; the pace here is virtually unremittingly slow, and it's another 'girl with long black hair' film complete with Ringu like odd movements. It is however, beautiful to look at and has some successful shocks. As a standalone film I may have liked it more, but in comparison to others in the series it falls short.

Ghost Voice (aka The Voice)

Ghost Voice (or just The Voice to give it the on-screen title) is the fourth in the Ghost School / Whispering Corridors series of thematically similar films, and for me is the best. Showing us events largely from the ghost's point of view, Voice benefits from having a small cast of main characters and a clear, unmuddled storyline - which given the various twists that happen is a really massive achievement. Unlike the other films in the series, there's less concentration here on the pressures of high school and greater emphasis on relationships, memory and guilt. The lesbian subtext from the previous films is also much more prominent, and there's a brilliant underlying truth here about how we never really know people as much as we think. Writer/Director Equan Choe has a clear vision and effectively builds on atmosphere and feeling rather than pandering to cheap shocks or excessive blood-letting (though there are some gruesome parts), and despite the exposition-heavy climax (which by the way, is totally heartbreaking ad doesn't cheapen what has come before), Voice remains a beautiful character-driven film. Props also to the excellent music score and thoughtful, restrained performances from the four lead actresses. This is great stuff.

Suicide Club

According to the DVD jacket, Suicide Club is a "wicked social critique" and "a study of contemporary morality" that is "darkly comic". Maybe I missed something, but to me any social critique was far too unsubtle and too frequently forgotten to be effective, and the fact that nothing really makes sense hardly makes it a study of contemporary morality. As for being darkly comic? Try hideously all over the shop; the film simply can't decide what it is and therefore has very little identity. All that aside, I did 'enjoy' (endure) much of the film.

The infamous opening mass-suicide by subway train was successfully set-up but the actual execution was shoddy (think the car scene in Hostel, all blood but nothing tangible or believable). Much more successful is a later scene at a school, where pupils on a roof garden discussing the wave of suicides egg each other on to top the record. What starts out as a joke escalates to a group holding hands in a chain and counting to three, whereupon, they promise each other, they'll jump to their deaths from the roof. It's very cleverly edited and the aftermath, where some have jumped and some haven't, those remaining shaken to the core, left me reeling. There are other successful sequences and, occasionally, some biting humor, though nothing is ever quite as memorable as that scene. Unfortunately, the film almost completely derails one hour in, with a ridiculous and horribly prolonged red-herring kidnap scene involving a lip-synching transvestite, casual rape and the bludgeoning of concealed pets that offers nothing and seems to be shoe-horned in, in an effort to 1) stretch out the running time, and 2) give Japanese 'superstar' Rolly a dreadful cameo appearance.

Thankfully, and eventually, things get slightly back on track for the conclusion and explanation, which seems to suggest that a subliminal message has been behind the deaths, but still fails to explain the vast majority of what gone on before. Maybe some stuff got lost in translation, or else I was too pissed off to examine the metaphors (lots of talk about having a connection to yourself, and some weird stuff which seemed to involve some sort of makeshift arc) but I'm still lost as to what writer/director Sion Sono was trying to convey. Still, it looks good, has some occasionally very effective moments and is definitely one of a kind. Oh, and the lead girl (who gets to be the heroine, sort of) is kinda cute.

Scanners

10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can't Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.

Scanners is a more interesting film than it is a successful one, and in fact doesn't always feel like a David Cronenberg film. The basic story - 'scanners', that is people who have telepathic abilities and are marginalized in society - feels very much like the early work of Stephen King; even the way it is filmed, the look of the locations and the characters, remind me of King's descriptions circa Firestarter. There's a tonne of ideas here that are only partially explored; even the Scanners' abilities themselves aren't fully mined (Kim, for instance seems to have a specific gift in unlocking deeply buried memories), and sometimes the film feels like a very well directed, polished pilot TV episode.

Not helping matters is Stephen Lack, who plays main character Cameron Vale. He certainly looks the part (the camera particularly loves him when he's buried in the shadows), but then... he opens his mouth. Seriously, his delivery is appalling and hampers the flow of the film. By contrast, Michael Ironside is superb and quite frightening, and the other performances are decent. It's a shame the story is fairly underdeveloped, because most other aspects of the film are great. The direction is assured, the music score from Howard Shore is a cracker, the design is brilliant (the technology aspect is fascinating) and the editing keeps things moving. The infamous exploding head sequence is genuinely gruesome and unforgettable, and though never really topped, the climatic 'versus' sequence is likewise nicely done.

Whispering Corridors

Whispering Corridors, the first of a series of ghost stories set in all-girl schools from Korea, is aptly enough, a haunting film that builds on atmosphere and emotion rather than any actual scares. Character driven and featuring excellent performances from the majority of the players, the potential from the tense prologue, which features some brilliant camera framing and sound editing, is mostly delivered throughout the remaining running time. Whilst the middle section gets bogged down with too many characters and mini sub-plots that don't conclude satisfactorily, the main storyline is gripping and emotive, and the themes of friendship, isolation, trying to fit in and the general pressures of high-school are just as resonant as say, the early days of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. There's a lot of exposition in the final act of the film, which thankfully doesn't get too confusing, and the ending is, refreshingly, heartfelt and moving, with an actually quite effective twist. The film also becomes clearer and benefits greatly from repeat viewings.

Save The Green Planet!

One of the most unique films I have ever seen, Save The Green Planet! combines science fiction, horror, thriller, comedy and camp in a hugely successful way. Difficult to summarise effectively, it's about a disturbed young man called Byung-Gu who is convinced that aliens are amongst us, and that they are the root cause of the destruction and pain in society. Certain that Earth will be destroyed in a matter of weeks unless he can find the leader of the planet Andromeda, Byung-Gu sets out to kidnap the head of a huge multi-national company, who he is sure is an extraterrestrial in disguise, and torture him for information about the leader's whereabouts.

Tonally all over the place, it's a miracle that so much of Planet not only works, but works so beautifully. The genius is that even as Byung-Gu commits horrific torture against Kang Man-shik (the 'ET in disguise'), he is still absolutely sympathetic. Not only that, our sympathies also shift to the other characters in the piece, all well round people with motivations of their own. Writer/Director Jang Jun-Hwan has a knack for juxtaposition, so that whenever there's a campily funny moment it's segued into something heart-rending or else tense as hell.

There are two especially brilliant sequences later on in this film that deftly pack in a tonne of information and exposition into five minutes of screen time, without overloading or confusing. The first shows the life so far of Byung-Gu, as violence erupts all around him and on top of him, and it becomes quickly clear how he has arrived at where he is and come to his bonkers conclusions. The second sequence wittily and movingly shows a possible history of our planet - from dinosaurs to current evolution, using stock footage of atrocities as well as material from 2001: A Space Odyssey to inspired effect.

There are a few problems which occasionally threaten to derail the film: sometimes Planet is frankly too out-there for its own good (the sequence showing the investigate detective shooting bees out the sky for instance), the lurches in tone are sometimes a little difficult to swallow and the ending isn't ambiguous enough for my liking. These are small complaints though, and over-ambitiousness is hardly a serious fault. What I will take away from this is the laughs, the thrills and the unexpected poignancy, which extends to the final credits.

Three... Extremes

Three... Extremes is an anthology of three 40 minute films, unconnected aside from the fact they are all from talented directors and could all be classified in the horror genre.

First up, and best of the three is Dumplings from Fruit Chan, which concerns a cook, Aunt Mei, who is renowned in close circles for her home-made dumplings which may or may-not have rejuvenating properties. The secret ingredient? Aborted foetuses - eww!! That's no spoiler by the way either, since unusually/ingeniously, we discover the secret at the very beginning. Dumplings is definitely icky but it's also blackly funny, and has two cracking performances from Bai Ling as the demented chef Aunt Mei, and Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as the (almost equally demented) former soap actress Mrs Lee, desperate to look younger and to regain the attentions of her (unfaithful) husband. Sound design is arch but very effective, the camera framing is very inventive and the photography is stunning. The ending is a little unsatisfying just in that it seems rushed, but is also quietly disturbing and memorable. Four Stars.

Next comes Cut from the inimitable Chan-wook Park, which is a self-reflexive and somewhat clever tale of a film extra who takes hostage the director of the films he works on, as well as the director's young, trophy wife, and proceeds to torture them in ever gory ways, apparently without much motive. There's little plot to Cut and the short running time plays to its strengths (Dumplings, by contrast, feels a little rushed and has been released separately as a feature-length film), but the hysteria gets weary after a while and the ending feels somehow both too obvious and a bit weak. For most of the running time though, it's a tense and funny ride that's worth the watch. Three and a half stars.

Finally, we come to Box, from Takashi Miike, a director who seems to have a very inconsistent output. Box unfortunately, is not one of his good films. A pointless, unmemorable and incoherent story that is too boring to even summarise, I really wish I had skipped this part. Personally, what I found most annoying was that it wasn't a complete pile of crap that I could watch for fun; Box is tedious but it also looks stunning and the sound design is faultless, so I kept watching in the hopes that something would happen. But no, it ends with a ridiculous non-twist that is just plain laughable and adds nothing. By proxy, it makes the first two instalments look like masterpieces, but it also means the film as a whole ends on a very bad note. One and a half stars.

Lady Vengeance

A stunning film that together with predecessors Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy presents a massively important, vital body of work. Some spoilers ahead.

I have to admit that I initially found Lady Vengeance to be heavy going. The stylised flourishes and the apparent coldness of the lead anti-heroine didn't hook me immediately, and it's a much more complex film than the first two parts of Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy. But I persevered, and am very glad I did because this is every bit the masterpiece I was hoping for. Once again, Chan-wok Park has a knack for saying so much with so little words. The human condition is laid bare and it's ugly and it's beautiful. Rarely do you get to see a film that tackles the subjects of vengeance/revenge and redemption/atonement so well and with surprising subtlety, even amid all the fancy camera techniques, graphics and bloody violence. Speaking of the violence, it's interesting to note that, as if often the case, what is not seen is what most lingers; here the most uncomfortable sequence involves the reveal (or non-reveal) of home-video footage. As the story concludes its pivotal, edge-of-the-seat act of group vengeance, it's clear that although there may be an initial catharsis for these characters, they have become shells of themselves, forever haunted or dead inside, or else deranged and trying to occupy themselves with small talk. Vengeance has not been the answer, a conclusion strengthened by the 'fade-to-white' version of the film, and the final act of seemingly self-sacrifice (tinged, as much of what has come before, with biting black humor).

Directed with vision, scripted with economy, beautifully photographed and featuring a memorable music score, this is a resounding success. All of this would be for nothing if the viewer was unable to connect (eventually) with the lead character (the alternate title is Sympathy for Lady Vengeance after all), so thankfully Yeong-ae Lee is pitch perfect as the outwardly blank but internally complicated and multifaceted Geum-ja Lee.

Flixster

I love Flixster.com, the movie review sit that's like a cross between IMDB and Facebook, with a passion. But lately, I've discovered that some of my reviews (and some of the reviews my friends have written) have gone AWOL. So, in the interests of preservation I'm going to start posting them here as well.

No other news, life's a big suckfest at the mo'.

Loads of tiny bits...

"I look around me. I don't know anything. Where I am, why, what happened, how to escape. My name. My life."

I'm amazed at James Frey. I'm reading "A Million Little Pieces", and it's a sort-of a memoir (there's been some controversy about some minor fabrications) of someone who, at 23, has been addicted to alcohol and drugs for the best part of 10 years, and wakes to find himself on a plane, not knowing how he got there. From there, James enters a rehabilitation facility to try and clean up, but Pieces is not a bog-standard, 12 steps, life-affirming novel. It's raw, insightful, resonant, deeply personal, and full of self-loathing but without the self-pity. I can't recommend it enough.

In other news, I just bought tickets to Ryan Adams' next concert (already sold-out). Yee-haa!!! November 20th is a long way away yet but if this year has been any indication it'll be here before I know it.

Guilty pleasures...

I hate the term "guilty pleasures". As Stephen Fry points out, they're actually usually the things people are very proud of liking/enjoying/following or whatever. I'm so over the term now, so here's some stuff that I am happy to admit I love right now;

1) Daniel Powter.

Yes, the "Bad Day" guy. I bought his first CD, and loved pretty much every track, and Bad Day isn't even in my top five favorites from the album. The album will forever be in my mind alongside Hong Kong, because I had it on my iPod when I was over there on a business trip, and listened to it everyday. As if that isn't enough, not only are his songs insanely catchy, but he's sporting a new look on the video to his latest pop release "Next Plane Home". Now, not only do I like his music (which really isn't my *usual* kind of thing), but I also find him extremely fuckable. The cap, the hair, the black tie/white shirt/black jacket combo..... Phwoar! Etc.

2) Big Brother.

I've yakked on about it before, and I completely realize of course that it's trash TV, full of fame-grabbing unlikeable douches and not all the "Reality" it's cracked up to be. But, I can't stop watching it, and what's particularly encouraging, I think, is that (generally speaking) the UK viewing public usually ending up getting the winner right. At the moment (Stu, Dale & Luke having been evicted), Sara is really the only genuinely nice person in there (unless you count the dull Rachel), and to be honest much of her appeal is down to empathy/sympathy, after been treated like a piece of shit by a few of the more loathsome characters. Though the situation is forced, and people who have nothing in common are all thrown together in the hopes of creating tension/dramatic situations/conflict, there's something fascinating about this program. I do however, draw the line at "Celebrity" Big Brother, or any of the BB magazine shows. Also, in my defense, BB is pretty much the only 'reality' TV show I will tolerate: X Factor, Pop Idol, American Idol, Wife Swap etc. can all fuck off.

3) Jamie Oliver.

Ok, so he's a bit of a twat, the Sainsbury's adverts are a mistake and he needs to turn down the whole "best mates!/pukka!/dead simple!" faux-Essex lingo. But he knows his stuff - his recipes are simple to follow, inexpensive to make, and he has done more to raise food awareness in schools and food welfare in general than any other celeb-chef or government official I can think of. When he doesn't talk, he's (kinda) hot too.

More to come...

Applying moisturizer in the microwave window...

The title is lyrics from the song "Can't Have It All" by Jay Brannan, who I saw last night live at Bush Hall in London.

Jay Brannan is easy for me to love: introverted, shy, dripping with sarcasm, gay, and very gifted lyrically (his songs are funny, painful, depressing, hopeful and massively original - often all at once) - he's also, industry speaking, a total underdog. A small part in the film masterpiece that is Shortbus led to thousands of admirers subscribing to his YouTube page (one of his songs was chosen as the video of the day on the YouTube home page), leading to him selling a sold-out CD of his self-penned songs through indie store CD Baby, each copy of which had a one-of-a-kind Polaroid stuck to the cover, and then on to releasing a full album (again independently) which entered the US iTunes chart at Number 25. He's still pretty much broke, despite his success including his sold-out tour in the UK, and has lost none of his insecurities, vulnerability or likeability. Blase he is not.

In between songs, Jay would talk about the lack of air-conditioning and the peculiarities of the London Tube system, and frequently paused to tell the adoring crowd how much he appreciated them coming. Performing songs from his album, his 'EP, some new material plus a brilliant mini-cover of current number 1 bubblegum pop piece "I Kissed A Girl", it was hard to believe that it was just one man and a guitar on stage, such was the power of his voice and the surprisingly versatility of the instrument.

Aside from the gig itself, I enjoyed just looking at the crowd - some of whom were *very* good looking [Why is it that in London, everyone is so much better looking?]. My straight female best friend, who I went with and whom I (slightly funnily/scarily) share the same taste in men with, was also 'enjoying' the view and spied a guy wearing a yellow t-shirt and typical dark brown wavy hair that she liked. She said their eyes sort-of met, and the next second he was pulling a guy toward him and they were making out. "Yeah, cause otherwise you would've been right in there!" I said to her afterwards. We're both really tragic.

Starting over again...

Like the diary you start in the New Year and write in for like, a week, before the novelty wears off/can't be fucked to keep writing in it/have depressingly nothing to write about/are too busy to have time to write in it, I wrote on my original blog maybe... four times. OK, it was only two.

So, I'm going to try and start this junk over again. I'm not going to bother with introductions, or goals, or any of that shit for several reasons:

a) I'd be surprised if anyone really reads this, even more surprised if anyone reading it leaves a comment, and extremely fucking surprised if anyone reading it actually finds it interesting

b) The goals thing, which I started the blog with last time, makes me look like a complete and total cunt. Reading back my last entries - now permanently deleted - everything felt horribly transparent, shallow, annoyingly self-deprecating in the worst possible way, and completely and totally naive and unrealistic. I'm going to try and stop the self-deprecating thing especially because I know in my own head why I do it, and it's not pretty. As this is my fucking blog, here comes the first of many tangents: it occurred to me that I share a kind of self-awareness thing with Sara from Big Brother 9 (UK) which is coming to a close soon. I'm not going to bother discussing the pros and the many more cons of BB here because it's irrelevant, but when Sara was in the diary room discussing how she perceives herself it struck a chord. I'm of course paraphrasing, as it was aired over a fortnight ago, but she said something along the lines of: "I know that I can be irritating. Like, I can see how other people must be viewing me or thinking of me and I'm not deluded. Like, my voice for one thing, and how I react to certain situations. Sometimes when I say something and think back on it later, I think like 'why did I say it like that' or whatever and I can completely understand why people would dislike me". Consequently, this made me really root for Sara, so I'm more than happy that she's in the final and just survived eviction last night by what is reportedly the closest winning vote in the programmes history. Maybe some other people out there connected with her too. Oh jeez, Ive written far too much about fucking Big Brother, and didn't intend to. But I think the stream of consciousness method of writing is the one that'll work best for me and will hopefully have the effect of my shit not feeling too 'edited' or calculated or whatever. Moving on...

c) I don't want to define what I'm going to use this space for. Last time, I was all like "this is where I'm going to write about the stuff that's happening that I think about, that I need to write down in order to stop obsessively thinking about". Good self-advise, I guess, but it was limiting and I'm going to try and be less uptight and more loose and just post random shit every now and again or do reviews or write about crushes or bad days or some funny shit I just saw or a song I can't stop thinking about.

That's all for now for this bit I think, and I don't want to re-assess to much, which I something I do like ALL the fucking time, so I'll move onto something else.