Some things that went through my mind at last night’s Horrors gig:

You can’t tell what he’s singing.

All these songs sound the same.

It looks like John Cooper Clarke has joined the cast of Star Trek.

Oh look, they sell pizza at the bar.

kryz:

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment “explained” using superhero comics.

(via)

I had a proper teary moment when Regina Spektor was playing last night. She reminds me of a time when I was at my absolute pinnacle of happiness. My happiness zenith. And so she made me feel really happy, but also made me think about how much has changed since then. And she did an amazing a cappella about eye colour. I want my eyes to be plaid please.

My friend Jessie and I were staying in this cool little hostel that was painted in the most garish colours you’ve ever seen (though not plaid), and when we got in there was an open fire and we had milk and biscuits. I was pretty sure Jessie was talking in German in her sleep, but apparently that was some German girl. Or so she says.

When we got on the train home this morning the sun was just coming up and everywhere was white with frost. The sky went a bit pink at first and then a really cold blue and it looked like a Turner painting, except with container storage places instead of the Thames. Then Jessie left her purse on the train and it went all the way to Peterborough before the conductor found it and sent it on its merry way back to Leicester again.

Me, Jessie, and Jessie’s purse had all been on a jolly nice adventure.

(I love you Regina.)

Regina Spektor - Samson

GOING TO SEE REGINA SPEKTOR IN BIRMINGHAM TOMORROW NIGHT. YES YES YES YES YES YES YES DOUBLE-FUCKING-YES.

I’ve just finished watching Milk and it is the best film I’ve seen since Moon. And if it wasn’t for Moon I reckon it’d be the best film I’d seen all year. It’s a story I knew fuck all about, despite spending time in San Francisco this summer (and boy did this film make me want to go back) but I’m really glad I know a bit about it now. I thought he was some big shot politician dude who just happened to be gay, but it turns out he was this camera shop owner who was sick of seeing the homosexual community beaten up and abused and ignored by the San Francisco police, so he got off his arse and ran for office. Props to you Mr Harvey Milk.

I really respect proactive people so much. My mate Dan lost his job a little while ago, so he’s started his own project (Love & Disaster) releasing compilations by new bands, and is seeking out funding - not just letting his life happen to him. Harvey Milk didn’t like something so he got up and sorted it, and it didn’t put him off when he lost the first three times. Those scenes when he eventually breaks through, with his position as Supervisor and with the Prop 6 stuff just gave me shivers. Gus Van Zant is awesome (I’ve forgiven him for Elephant now, which I thought was a bit rubbish) and Sean Penn is always fucking amazing. Can you believe he was married to Madonna? Fucking Madonna? Whatever was he thinking?

So yeah, Milk is a truly brilliant film, and fingers crossed that my mate Dan gets his hands on some cash to fund his mission to support and promote struggling musicians. And let’s all just be thankful for a moment, for everyone who decides they want to do something or change something or make something better, and just fucking well does it.

Amen.

Went out with my new friend Joe last night, and his housemate and another dude called Colin. Can’t quite remember who suggested going to the late night showing of Antichrist at the new Phoenix Arts Centre, but whoever it was is a sick fuck.

For all the genital mutilation however, there was a beautiful camera angle and slo-mo b&w orchestral bit. And I reckon anyone with more than the vaguest grasp of feminist politics would say that it was a really rather intelligent film. For the most part, I was getting so into the relationship breakdown that was so perfectly acted by Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg that I absolutely shat my pants when the talking fox turned up. (Yep, the talking fox. Don’t let the talking fox confuse you. This is no Animals of Farthing Wood.) The particularly gruesome bits were particularly gruesome, and extremely hard to watch, but I think the fact that Defoe and Gainsbourg (and Lars von Trier’s cinematography) were so awesome meant that none of that stuff appeared to be there to shock. It just kinda felt like it was there because that was simply what happened.

Very very good. I just hope I never have to see it again.

I spent a large part of yesterday writing about how personal wealth and profile led to reduced creativity within Guns N’ Roses. Then I couldn’t find any quantative evidence that Appetite For Destruction is a better album than Chinese Democracy (although it QUITE OBVIOUSLY IS) and had to take it all out again. Bummer.

So, instead, I decided to create my own theory of creativity and disregard all teachings on the subject. Yes, this is the best way forward.

In other news, I am going to see Regina Spektor on Monday and The Fahrenheit Twins on Friday. Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!

This is awesome. A load of villagers in Somerset have set up The Turnip Prize, which they award from the local pub, for really shit art. Apparently they say “you can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish.”

It’d be good if we good nominate stuff rather than have the artist enter it themselves though. (See you later, Damien Hirst.)

It’s Wednesday and I’ve just been to the theatre, so this is both a theatre post and GPOYW. Here I am pictured with my new Hugh Hughes badge, which says “feeling connected” on it, although that bit’s in pink and the camera flash has bleached it out. Also, it may not seem so from where you are, but I am actually writing this blog post in a Welsh accent, so please be sure to give everything the correct intonation in your heads as you read. Thanks.

Story Of A Rabbit by Hoipolloi is the second show featuring Hugh Hughes (the one before was Floating, and the one after is 360) but it’s the first one I’ve seen. I kinda knew what to expect because I read Hoipolloi’s Edinburgh blog this summer and have read a few reviews. I knew there would be a dude called Aled doing the incidental music. I knew it was about a rabbit who died. I knew Hugh Hughes put a tie on halfway through because that’s what he’s doing on the flyers.

I didn’t, however, know that there would be a potato suspended from the ceiling and we would all have to imagine a world where people were made out of giant potato atoms. I didn’t know there would be a bit where Hugh pretended to be the dead rabbit by holding two bits of plywood against the side of his head. I didn’t know there would be Action Man puppetry. Neither did I know there would be a bit where Aled blew sawdust into a beam of light so we could watch the dust dance about in the air.

(I’m still doing the Welsh accent by the way.)

I don’t want to spoil anything by saying a lot more, because Story Of A Rabbit is a show that needs to retain its surprises, but I will say that it is one of the most inventive things I’ve seen on stage, probably ever (that bit in Black Watch where they cut themselves out of the pool table probably comes close, but I think the Action Man scene might just take the prize) and there is a really beautiful bit near the end when he talks about the journey the soul takes after the body dies. In the case of Hugh’s father, that was Oslo, Moscow, and then Japan. I suppose you’d be quite lucky to watch that part and not be thinking about someone you’ve lost yourself, so I’m sure I wasn’t the only one with a tear in my eye.

I actually can’t wait to work my ushering shift on Friday, because I get to see it all over again.

This looks fucking incredible. It’s a new production of The Trial by Kafka that’s playing in Munich at the moment. The actors are strapped onto a vertical stage to begin with, and it tilts as the show goes on. WANT.

Went to Nottingham this afternoon, because the new gallery there, Nottingham Contemporary, opened this weekend. Apparently it was on The Culture Show this week, which might go some way to explain the massive queue to get in, although it could also have been the dudes in speedos that were lounging provocatively amongst the artworks.

Some of the choices made by artsy places for openings and anniversaries and previews are pretty strange, but recently these places appear to have been actively discouraging families by employing performance artists who are nothing short of frightening. At Curve’s first birthday a few weeks ago, dudes on wheels went screeching up to small children with one of those “warning, warning, this vehicle is reversing” type sirens going off. They were like disabled people dressed in sacks, with long fingers that they probably used for tearing limbs off children in their sleep. Nottingham Contemporary hadn’t gone for anything quite so gruesome (if nothing else, the steps outside the building ruled out wheels), but they did have stilt walkers dressed as butterflies. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? And except for their bulging black eyes, gas mask noses and rubbery legs that they stomped down in front of terrified toddlers, they were pretty impressive.

That was just the queue though. Inside it was much tamer (if you consider men in tight speedos to be family friendly). The David Hockney exhibition was disappointing, primarily because it was early stuff which didn’t quite seem fully formed. There was one painting of a naked dude climbing out of a swimming pool and it was great; the colours were awesome and he’d really got the muscles in the guy’s back just right, but then where his legs went into the water they just kinda tailed off. It looked like he just had little flappy bits of skin where his legs should have been. There were a few nice cartoons though that were lovely and scruffy, like David Shrigley’s stuff if it had been done with a thinner pen. And it wasn’t as funny. Or as good.

On a positive note, I loved the Frances Stark stuff. I’d never heard of her before, but then I’m a bit of a philistine when it comes to art so that shouldn’t surprise anyone. She does a lot of collages though, which gave you lots to take in, and she draws a bit like Aubrey Bearsdley (if less gothic), but the bits I especially liked were made up of text. She’s taken words from poems by Emily Dickinson and others, and turned the words into trees, just be moving the letters to be the trunks and branches and stuff. Really simple, but clever, and the words give it all meaning for me, probably because I’m a big reader who knows fuck all about art.

One criticism of the place though (aside from the butterfly monsters): what kind of a gallery shop doesn’t have postcards? Hmmm?