The central line station at Oxford Circus has been lit and decorated to resemble the set of a relentlessly gritty 70s post-apocalyptic nightmare-vision-of-the-future-with-second-world-war-imagery-thrown-in film.
The people using the station appear to have taken this onboard and are very much the faceless, dehumanised survivors crowded together in the barren underground remains of the mostly uninhabitable planet.
Go visit it, if you want to see the most depressing sight London has to offer.
Although from the performance art scene, she is wary of being lumped in with the trendy return of burlesque that has been catching on in London, at least.
“I was aware of it, but not really involved,” Palmer explains. “Most of the acts were really poor. A lot of people in the scene say it’s great to see the revival, but depressing to see a whole slew of girls say, I can take my clothes off, that sounds like fun.”
(From Friday’s Independent.)
…and if the lead singer of the Dresden Dolls agrees with me, I must be right.
A quick word of praise for one of my earliest childhood heroes – yes, going back even before the days of Jason Donovan worship – the great Play School presenter Floella Benjamin.
Where is she? What has she been doing? Questions I have long been musing on, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Well, we need wonder no longer; she has a part in the BBC’s new adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s slightly unpleasant but strangely compelling novel The Line of Beauty.
And to be honest, Floella Benjamin was a bit of a highlight for me. Not that I’m knocking the typically well-cast, well-shot adaptation – Tim McInnerny is absolutely superb and it’s grand to see Dan Stevens looking so pretty in the central role (if he’d bothered turning up to Footlights committee meetings looking so impeccably coiffured my minutes might have taken quite a different direction). But there’s something about the production that feels a wee bit stilted, to me at least. Maybe it’s all the old Tories in it.
Shame they didn’t think of casting Big Ted.
I heard a joke on TV recently – I can’t remember where, and it might have been Dead Ringers – that went something like this:
While controversy surrounds Victoria Beckham over having a tattoo on her wrist of the date she first had sex with her husband, David says he can’t understand it as he’s had a tattoo of that for years. Friends then pointed out to him that that was a watch.
It might have been a tattoo of the time he’d first done something else, I can’t remember. That doesn’t really matter.
Now I don’t want to go all Jane Espenson on you, but the joke doesn’t work, for the following reason: even David Beckham isn’t stupid enough not to notice that his watch tells a different time every so often. The joke is that he’s a little bit less stupid than that, but it’s completely masked by the listener response of “but the time would change“.
Let’s try the joke again, without that problem (while we’re here we can fix the last sentence to flow better; I can’t remember for certain that the original phrasing was as above, but it was pretty close):
While controversy surrounds Victoria Beckham over having a tattoo on her wrist of the date she first had sex with her husband, David says he can’t understand it as he’s had a tattoo of when he last thought of having sex with Victoria there for years. He’s since been told that that is a watch.
It’s still not perfect, but it now makes sense, and there’s an important point here: the funniest joke in the world will only get luke-warm reception if it’s packaged so that people listening to it start thinking of an incongruity just before they laugh. (Unless the incongruity is the joke.) It usually doesn’t take much to fix, although sometimes to sort this kind of problem out means saying more, which is then difficult to get punchy enough to be funny, although (and this isn’t said enough to writers, in my opinion) if you trust your actors they’ll usually find a way of coping.
Normal service resumes…
Currently listening to: Black Cat Bone by Laika.
Laura Branigan: Solitaire. Vive les 80s! Any recommendations for more music from that decade more than welcome. I don’t think I’m likely to say this again, but: someone suggest some more Diane Warren…
Check out this franky hilarious story.
If you are a racist and want to respond to this article, I’m delighted to say there is already a forum dedicated to it.
Have just watched the David Lynch short in Lumière and Company, and was completely blown away by it. If you haven’t seen it already, do so right now. (If you ask nicely you can borrow my copy, although I haven’t watched all the others yet.)
…was, in all honesty, one of the most incredible things I think I’ll ever experience, and quite unlike any ordinary gig.
For a start, not many bands have supporting acts like this:
…or this:
…or this:
Yes, that one was disturbing. But not as disturbing as the guy in a gas mask who serenaded her, which was like The Empty Child but without Christopher Eccleston’s reassuring grin.
Most incredibly of all, this:
They sure as hell know how to put on a show. Essentially, it is what I feel burlesque, at its very very best, ought to be like.
(If you want to read about previous terrible experiences I’ve had with burlesque shows, look no further than Fringe, which is published on 7th July.)
Not just that, but no less than two supporting bands, plus a drumming group they’d picked up in Edinburgh (apparently) which Phil Stott would have hated.
(If you want to read about my personal views on drumming ensembles, look no further than Fringe, which is published on 7th July.)
The first supporting band wasn’t anything special, but they were named “Conscious Pilate” which I thought was pretty inspired. Bizarrely, the lead singer and guitarist looked like the Mitchell Brothers, and the guy twiddling knobs to make weird electronic sounds looked like a slightly more sulky version of David Mitchell – as if they’d got together and said “hey, we all look like famous Mitchells, why don’t we form a band? And call it Conscious Pilate?”
The second supporting band was considerably more interesting, the unusual and rather wonderful Devotchka. You’ve got to love a band with a tuba player.
There was a wonderful coup de theatre when the Dresdens themselves emerged to perform with Devotchka, and there they were in the wonderful wonderful flesh being absolutely bloody brilliant.
I won’t post any blobby mobile phone pictures here, as there are beautifully focussed professional photos of them on their website. In any case, I didn’t want to be thinking about getting my blobby mobile phone pictures less blobby when I wanted to be fully enjoying such a fantastic show. Though the way some people were carrying on, you’d think the only way they knew how to watch a concert was through a grainy digital screen.
And it has to be noted, there were a lot of twats in the audience. Including the tall guy with long hair who ought to know not to stand in the middle of an audience because he is always going to stop at least three people from seeing anything. Also he should know that long hair looks crap on him, especially from behind, and I know this because I spent much of the gig watching it.
But these are minor gripes. How a single singer with keyboard and drummer with drum kit can make such a broad, noisy, even orchestral sound, I have no idea, but they did. They were also hypnotic to watch (when the tall guy wasn’t in the way), particularly Brian who is no mere drummer but an insane drumming mime stroke comedy act.
And because there were so many acts, performing all around the space, the whole four hours was so slick that there wasn’t time to pause for breath. Or go to the toilet. As I said, they sure as hell know how to put on a show.
If you haven’t bought their new album (Yes, Virginia), do so. I’d say it pales in comparison to their live performance, except there’s nothing pale about this album – but it’s worth remembering that it’s not the result of a slick, engineered, studio sound – what you hear is what they do on stage. Just the two of them.
I dreamt that I had finished my Britten biopic and it was being made with Philip Madoc playing the young Benjamin Britten, and I remember thinking how he looked just perfect for the role, even if he was a little old. I mean, you can see where my sleep-deprived brain was coming from:
Madoc was wearing a long wig and 18th century clothing for the role, and I had decided to reinstate a scene (even though it was not strictly speaking from the correct part of Britten’s life) in which Britten commanded his housekeeper Mrs Grose never to see a boy called Mal, or possibly Miles, (though he was known as Edward) again.
The implication was that Mal/Miles/Edward had been having some sort of relationship with the aging housekeeper and Britten was jealous. I dunno…at the time it seemed like a really good scene.
A quick “congratulations” to Dr Who for its success at the Baftas. If it keeps up the standard set by The Girl in the Fireplace then it’s well-deserved indeed.
I realised that the fannish prudishness which made me have a spasm when Paul McGann kissed Grace back in the 90s has all but evaporated – I honestly don’t care if the Doctor wants to have a bit of fun, especially if it’s with a very attractive French lady.
On the other hand, I feel he’s maybe morally responsible to tell people just how old he is before he gets going. I mean, otherwise he’s hiding behind his youthful appearance in the same way as an internet pervert hides behind a computer screen to pretend he’s much younger…surely?
Perhaps he should just show potential suitors a photograph of each of his previous regenerations, spelling out very clearly that’s me, that is.
Talk To Rex 