Going to two free drink events on Thursday night, plus buying drinks on top of that, saw such an influx of alcohol to my system that I'm fairly sure the effects lasted for the next 24 hours. Friday morning I had a Euphoric Hangover. The feeling that I'd been drinking heavily the night before, but feeling strangely okay about it. Perhaps I was still intoxicated even after a night’s sleep. Wandered around Muswell Hill and Archway happily in the December rain (always cheers me up), getting lots of chores done. Booked long-overdue appointments with dentist, optician, scanned the Evening Standard piece, stocked up on Resolve (the UK's most popular brand of hangover cure) for the next time, bought the Christmas Radio Times, and at Woolworths bought more copies of Morrissey's prowling new single "I Have Forgiven Jesus" than I strictly need, to show my hardy approval.
It’s only £1.99 and features a rather excellent b-side: a joyous cover version of Raymonde’s "No One Can Hold A Candle To You", complete with the sort of 80s-indie style jangly guitar that one often hears at the club How Does It Feel To Be Loved.
Wonderful to see him last Sat on CD:UK, the ITV Saturday Morning kids' pop show. Dressed as a Catholic priest. Wonder what the Westlife fans made of him. I could be wrong, but the presenter Ms Deeley gave me the impression she'd suffered all those times of having to smile while introducing some depressing cut-and-paste boy band, purely for the moment when she could say "And now, Morrissey".
I do rather like the idea of A Morrissey Christmas. Perhaps he could do as Cliff Richard or Shakin' Stevens in the past, always relied upon to release a single for the fans in December. Why else release a final single from an album at the hardest time of year to have a hit, unless you like the idea of being a Christmas fixture? Indeed, the last time he released an album, "Maladjused", he quietly put out "Satan Rejected My Soul" as a Christmas single. Again, the last single off the album. Again, a great title to see in the charts.
He's playing Earl's Court tonight, and though I've been reluctant to attend concerts by ANYONE in such cavernous aircraft hangars of venues, I'm now tempted to go along and see if I can afford a ticket from a tout (assuming it's sold out). If anyone reading this happens to have a spare ticket, please do get in touch.
In the afternoon, I wrote up my diary, prepared a birthday card for Ms Jennifer Denitto, then trotted off to Archway Video to do some community service for them.
Very untaxing: the shop was comparatively quiet for a Friday. Must be down to what ambulance drivers call Black Friday – the last Friday before Christmas, and thus the most popular evening for office Christmas parties. People are going out to parties, not renting films. Warnings about police crackdowns on "binge drinking" all over the news today. I'm not sure what the distinction between "binge drinking" and just, well, drinking really is. One of those new buzz phrases. Give it a new name and perhaps we can make people getting drunk sound like a new disturbing trend. Those statistic stories on the news are often amusing. The other day I heard on the BBC that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4073775.stm" target="_blank">left-handed people are more likely to be violent than right-handers.</a> As a sinister southpaw myself who shirks from conflict and has never raised his hand to a fellow human in his life, I find this particularly amusing. Though having said that, I was curiously good at firing a rifle while a Scout, earning my Marksman badge at Colchester Barracks with flying colours. Perhaps THAT'S where my true talent lies: murder. Problem is, far too many names immediately present themselves as targets.
The hangover then mutated from Euphoric to Grumpy and Tired. At 8pm I put on the usual slap and went to the Boogaloo to have my photo taken by the lovely Ms Kim of the staff, for this year's digital Christmas card to my readers. Last year I was at <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/dickon_edwards/2003/12/25/" target="_blank">Somerset House, by the tree at the ice rink</a>. This year it couldn't be anywhere other than by the tree in the Boogaloo.
I posed with a glass of red wine, and chatted to Ms Alex. We discussed Mr Scott’s new magazine, The Mind’s Construction, with its rather good articles and sexy photos of Mr Bookish, Mr Pink Grease and Mr Scott himself, in full Cindy Sherman role-playing mode. Highly recommended.
Then, as I was about to make my way to Camden town for the house party of Ms Denitto and Ms Anna S (<lj user=my_name_is_anna>), I suddenly felt very shaky and broke out in a cold sweat. A reaction to the one glass of red wine? Delayed hangover from the night before? Whatever it was, my body wanted nothing more than to retire to bed early with ice cream, watching Have I Got News For You and Peep Show on TV.
Feel a bit better now. I must be more careful with the wine next time. Still, no ambulances were involved, and my left hand remained distinctly unviolent.
Last night – shame at last. A mention in the Evening Standard, between Mr Ozu the film director and Mr Elton John the pop singer. What bedfellows!
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/jeromestandard.jpg"></img>
I like the comment on Mr Jerome's "daft name" swiftly followed by the words "Dickon Edwards".
Attend book launch among the umpteen works on devilish Mr Crowley at Atlantis Bookshop, Museum Street. Book in question is a fiction anthology called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/190351732X/dickonedwards-21" target="_blank">The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden Of Hermetic Dreams.</a></i> Edited by Gary Lachman. Mr Lachman is an American with glasses, short, slightly spiky hair and a rather nice dark suit and tie. I buy a copy of the book, get him to sign it, and natter to him briefly about Nerval, the lobster-walker I'm emulating on the front of the Dedalus Books catalogue, whom he's included in the anthology alongside Beckford, Balzac et al.
Afterwards, I read the book's author biog and note with interest that Mr Lachman was a founding member of Blondie, as "Gary Valentine". He wrote some of the group's songs including "I'm Always Touched By Your Presence, Dear", plus a memoir, <i>New York Rocker: My Life In The Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop and Others, 1974-1981.</i> He's also taught English Lit and Science, and managed a metaphysical bookstore. What a CV. I can't help thinking of the groovy Dean in the Simpsons episode where Homer goes to college. "I once played bass for the Pretenders…"
Nice man. Looks too young to have been the first bassist in Blondie. Must be the occult studies.
At the event I down free wine and falafels and meet Claudria Andrei, who I haven't seen for some time. She chastises me for being out of action for so long. Well, no more. Second diary entry in two days!
Lots of copies of the Dedalus catalogue on the counter, featuring myself and the plastic lobster. I also chat to my companion in the photo Anne Pigalle, and a young lady called Amelia (not Ms Fletcher) who says she last met me when I was "hanging out with Kenickie".
A lady asks me for my autograph. She wants me to sign the <i>catalogue</i>. I oblige, of course. I really must get an agent soon: this so-called ability of mine must be worth <i>something</i>.
I also signed copies of the Jerome book at the Boogaloo reading I gave the other day, including two for Shane MacGowan, who came up and asked. One for <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0330490087/dickonedwards-21" target="_blank">Ms Victoria Clarke</a>. A great feeling to give an autograph for someone far more famous than oneself, and a lyricist I admire too. He must hear his song Fairytale Of New York quite a lot around this time of year: it's generally considered <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4101207.stm" target="_blank">the one Christmas pop song people don't grow tired of.</a> Wonder if they play it on the radio in New York?
After the Atlantis book launch, I attend the Boogaloo's second anniversary party, also doubling as the pub's Christmas party. Drink far too many free rum cocktails, spill wine on the bar, and eventually find myself in a corner with Kim and Sophie of the bar staff, singing Morrissey lyrics, ranting on about James Joyce and the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical. Bedtime for Mr Edwards.
New diary discipline: shorter, more regular entries. Well, I'll try.
The more I put off writing up the diary, the more I think I can Get Away with it. Just go back to bed, do it tomorrow, the destructive part of me says. Do everything tomorrow, or the day after. Tomorrow doesn't exist NOW. Anything but now.
Mr Therapist is convinced that I am not, as Mr Tom Jones never intended it, unusual. In his professional opinion I'm not autistic or blighted by Asperger's Syndrome, the #1 syndrome <i>de nos jours</i>. Perhaps that's my dictionary fame to come:
<i><b>Dickonism</b>. Noun. A tendency to feel, after reading about the symptoms of an illness in the press, that one is riddled with it oneself.</i>
Mr Therapist maintains I'm an ordinary man with entirely treatable depression, who just needs help. And needs to admit I need help. This is somewhat of a disappointment as I'd like to be able to blame the Trouble With Me on some medical condition. Illness as absolution. Not guilty, your honour. Society's to blame. My parents are to blame. My illness is to blame. Not me. Here lies Dickon Edwards: it wasn't his fault.
Oh, how one is forever a sentence away from sounding like some ill-informed self-righteous newspaper columnist. (Reader's Voice: Why stop now?). I do envy those columnists in the tabloids: they only have to be self-righteous in a fraction of their broadsheet counterparts' word count. And probably with several times the readership for several times the fee. The central difference in style seems to be that in tabloid columns every other sentence is suddenly picked out and put in bold, underlined italics like so:
<b><i><u>And that's the trouble with young people today. </u></i></b>
My GP is more concerned with my hypochondria than anything else. I've asked to be tested for everything under the sun this year. The verdict comes back time and time again: depression aside, I'm fine. Could do with regular exercise and a better diet, but fine. And that I should seriously talk to my therapist about my hypochondria. I'll add it to the list, I reply.
O Mr Edwards. Such contradictions. Ill but perfectly well. A mess in a tidy shell. Childlike yet not suitable for children. Self-obsessed yet a mirror to others. Never quite part of a group, yet responsible for others coming together, whether by default or design. Proud and vain yet self-hating and nervous. Cynical yet anti-cynicism. Arrogant yet meek. Aloof yet desperate for company. Funny but tragic. Famous yet Unfamous. Reputedly Terribly Clever yet incapable of many basic human activities.
I search for an excuse for this, the first (I hope) in a series of entries that will draw on past events long overdue for coverage. Conveniently, one presents itself as a recent film I rented on DVD, much recommended by the Archway Video staff.
<b>21 Grams.</b> Essentially an episode of Casualty re-edited by a madman. A traffic accident and heart transplant result in characters getting upset, lives changing, relationships at crossroads, secrets revealed, convictions brought to a head, the ingredients of any hospital-based soap opera. Added to which are musings on what Life really means, and what really matters. The title refers to the weight apparently lost by every human body at death – regardless of their own weight, age, gender and so on. All very well. Except that this story is also told in a jigsaw of flashbacks and flash-forwards, cutting between perspectives and time. Some scenes last mere seconds. Blink, blink, blink.
The director is a Mexican gentleman, Mr Iñárritu. He is Foreign, and is therefore a Genius.
Now, the above was admittedly yet another attempt at a quotably arch but glibly offensive epigram to add to my Greatest Hits collection. You'll forgive me for being a creature of habit. I hasten to add that just because a film is made in a language other than English doesn't necessarily mean it's automatically brilliant. But I'm aware this is often an unspoken assumption with some people, particularly guilty monoglots.
Subtitle-phobes may be comforted to know that my German friend Ms Andrei says she can't stand most films made in her native language, and would far prefer to watch Mad Max 2 than anything by Mr Fassbinder or Mr Wenders.
On the DVD making-of documentary, Mr Iñárritu explains that the narrative of 21 Grams is fragmented "because we view LIFE in fragments". It's the sort of statement unquestionably aided by a foreign accent and its attendant hand gestures. For someone with English as a first language to say such a thing may invite accusations of pretentiousness. Or worse, risking an appearance in Private Eye Magazine's Pseuds Corner, an honour to which I secretly aspire. At least two Guardian reviews of the London band Selfish C**t have enjoyed mentions there this year. I also maintain that Ms Tracey Emin would get less criticism if she were from Iran. It's easier to be artier when you're a foreigner. Write that one down too, please.
21 Grams invites comparisons with another favourite recent film of mine, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Both films are made with Hollywood money, Hollywood actors and Hollywood distribution, but have a heavy-accented foreign director and a very art house, indie-flick, world cinema sense of style and narration. Again, it sounds enormously patronising to refer to a non-English language film as "world cinema" or an "indie flick", but while the default movie remains a Hollywood movie (will it ever be otherwise? a subject for a thesis or eight), one has to acknowledge the reigning perspective. My own life is a Cute British Indie Flick rather than a Proper Hollywood Movie whether I like it or not. Thank goodness: I couldn't cope with all the gratuitous explosions and car chases. I couldn't be a non-UK World Cinema film either: all that sex looks like hard work. The Dickon Edwards version of "Y Tu Mama Tambien" would have a U certificate and be translated as "I Get On Terribly Well With People's Mothers."
I rather like the idea of Eternal Sunshine and 21 Grams, two carrot-cake-in-popcorn-clothing movies, being the equivalent of sneaking a foreign film past the eyes of those who scoff, "I don't go to the cinema to READ."
But there's a risk: both have had customers at Archway Video delivering their verdicts as either "Absolute Genius", or "Pretentious Arty Drivel – I like Proper Films." It's a shame, but one has to be careful when recommending such titles. Some people are just popcorn fans through and through. I've also heard of customers who won't watch anything in black and white.
I once went with a very erudite man to see The Dreamlife Of Angels at the Finchley Phoenix. He walked out halfway through and waited for me in the lobby.
"I just remembered I really don't like French films," he said.
"Because of the subtitles?"
"No. Because of the French Film-ness."
21 Grams risks accusations of being Gratuitously Arty more than Eternal Sunshine, as there's no sci-fi element to the story to justify the narrative tricks. Likewise Memento using the protagonist's own amnesia as a stylistic device. Why is 21 Grams cut-up and fragmented like this? The only real answer is because it makes for a thoughtful, gripping film. For the first half-hour, the viewer is all at sea, trying to work out which bit goes where in the narrative. Then the film starts to settle down, and the satisfaction of finding out how the pieces all fit together is so great, I have to declare 21 Grams a work of supreme craftsmanship, and ultimately a downright engrossing experience.
It did remind me a little of the Love & Rockets comics by the similarly Mexican Hernandez brothers, which also tell soap-opera-like tales in disjointed narratives. Often a single panel will be a flashback for no apparent reason. It's the sort of thing that delights me but can infuriate others.
The movie features great performances from the three leads: Mr Del Toro is so good at Acting he converts it to Being. Ms Watts's part is pure melodrama: she spends the film either crying, kissing or snorting drugs. Incredibly, she does all these things without forcing the viewer to look at their watch once. The goofy Mr Penn is an actor I am normally not at all keen on, and I still tend to think of him as Mr Madonna From "Shanghai Surprise". Here, though, he is excellent, managing to bring a black comedic stripe to the proceedings, constantly smoking despite having a messy heart condition. His wife can't understand how he manages to keep his stock of cigarettes replenished while wandering around attached to tubes from a drip-feed apparatus. Neither can the viewer. And this is what gives 21 Grams and Mr Penn's performance that extra appeal.
The casting of his screen wife, Ms Charlotte Gainsbourg, is for me the film's sole let-down. We are meant to believe her character is utterly English, rather than the daughter of the world's most French Frenchman. But her accent doesn't convince. Indeed, at one point she sniffs "I Yarm Going Barck To LarnDarn". It is no wonder Mr Penn's character took to chain-smoking.
Flashback diary entries to come, then.
A lot to write up.
Last Sat lunchtime: interview for RARE FM to plug my various London performances. It's a student radio station based in what resembles an airing cupboard at UCL's Medical School Division of Infection & Immunity. The presenter Mr Jefferson seems nervous, and I wonder if he's nervous of me because of my defensively aloof attitude (something I do try to mitigate), or nervous for me as unproven radio material that might splutter and swear and libel members of the Royal Family within seconds of opening the fader; or just nervous about the temperamental equipment he has to operate while presenting a radio programme. Regardless, I am grateful to him for letting me loose upon his show.
Ideally one would have a separate engineer doing what I believe is termed "driving the desk", but this is community radio so it's naturally all DIY. Recognising the semaphore for "Can you keep talking while I try fiddling with these knobs to get it all working" is essential at such places. The room is actually slightly bigger and easier to get into than the studio of Resonance. There, one has to maneovre oneself up London's narrowest twisting staircase outside of the one in Gosh Comics of Bloomsbury.
No wonder so many local and community radio shows give out their phone numbers and email addresses all the time: one never knows if anyone is listening at all. Thankfully, a reader from Belgium writes in with kind words. God bless Belgium.
I punctuate my interview with some of my favourite music of the year, this being the time when the media starts compiling its Best Of 2004 lists. Lately I have developed an increasingly fogeyish pose of being out of touch of current chart rock and pop, yet am actually more in love than ever with acts such as Scarlet's Well, The Hidden Cameras, Client, and many of the artists featured at the club Kash Point. I play the following tracks:
<b>Hidden Cameras – Music Is My Boyfriend</b>
Taken from "The HCs Play The CBC Sessions", the first of their two albums released on Rough Trade this year. I chose this song particularly because it features prominent harmony vocals from Reg Vermue, aka Gentleman Reg. In Easter readers will recall I did a very John Peel-like gesture with Mr Vermue. I wanted to see him play in the UK, and no one else was getting him over here, so I did it myself. I helped to book his first ever UK live dates and supplied backing guitar. Had I the power to grant him a UK radio session, I would do so like a shot.
<b>Bishi – Uniform and Armour</b>
Taken from the Kash Point compilation album. A perfect pop song, from one of the many young stars in the London nightlife firmament.
<b>Client – Radio</b>
Another perfect glacial pop song. Should really be in the proper Top 5. All these songs should be in the proper Top 5.
<b>Morrissey – Let Me Kiss You</b>
This is where my Robin Hood approach falls apart, as Mr M has enjoyed much chart success and media life in 2004. That said, the Best Of list I glanced in some Magazine entirely overlooked "You Are The Quarry" in favour of some non-threatening trainer-rock groups that journos always seem keen to promote. I could write an entire book about how important Morrissey is to the world, now more than ever, but Mr Mark Simpson has beaten me to it. This song is my Single of 2004: romantic and arch, poignant and pure, subtle and sexy, and a rather 80s meld of jangly guitar and synthi-strings which is right up my cul-de-sac. And yes, I know, some of his 2004 b-sides are even better. But that was always the way. It will be good to see the words "I Have Forgiven Jesus" in the Christmas single charts.
At the radio station, I don't manage to play "How The Cypress Made Apollo" by Scarlet's Well. So it instead goes on my Vox N Roll set at the Boogaloo two days later. Of which, more anon.
Like cliched buses, I appear to have confirmed no less than three performances in London over one short period. Plus a radio interview.
Saturday November 27th
At 1.30pm GMT I shall be chatting about my world and works as a guest of Mr Jefferson on RARE FM, the London student radio station. I think one can listen to it on the Internet. More details about the station here
Then in the evening I shall be appearing at an event called Mildmay Cabaret: A Special Occasion. Mildmay Club, 34 Newington Green, N16 9PR. Buses: from Angel, 73, 476, 341; from Finsbury Park, 236; from Liverpool Street, 141.
“A dazzling night with over 15 local and international cabaret acts, musical, burlesque, comedy, cigar girls, to capture classic 1920s Berlin in this beautiful 1880s theatre.” I’m going on last performing some kind of spoken word piece written during the rest of the show, based on my observations and thoughts of the night. A kind of blogging without computers. Doors 7pm. Tickets £7 / £5. For more details, contact Mr Kevin Quigley at k_astral@hotmail.com or 07951 077661.
Monday November 29th
Mr Edwards Presents Mr Jerome K Jerome at The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AA. Onstage 9pm. I shall be reading from the new edition of Jerome K Jerome's classic of Victorian observational comedy, The Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow. This edition is published by Snowbooksand regular readers will recall the book includes a brief Afterword from myself. There should be copies to buy on the night. An ideal gift for that difficult fop in your life. Or even your mother. Or in my case, an ideal gift for difficult fops in my life, my mother AND my landlady. In line with the “Vox N Roll” rules, I’ll be punctuating my short readings with a selection of chosen music. A kind of DJ-ing with literature and records. Free entry.
The previous performer at this venue was a Mr Conor Oberst of a band called Bright Eyes who I’m told have recently made Number One and Number Two in the USA Billboard charts simultaneously. Very nice of him to warm up for me.
Tuesday November 30th
I shall perform some of Mr Quentin Crisp's words at something called the Hanky Panky Kabarett. This is organised by Mr Xavior, he of the band DexDexter and slightly of the band Placebo, and who is also in that Placebo-related band in the film Velvet Goldmine. The event takes place 9pm-Midnight at Bistrotheque, 23-27 Wadeson Street, London E2. Tel: 020 8983 7900. For more details, email: hankypankykabarett@hotmail.com. Hmm, yet another Hackney art cabaret. Something must be in the water.
In indie music news, I see that the band Gene have decided to split up, with their last ever concert at the Astoria in December. I’m rather interested in going – Mr Rossiter the singer does have a certain something, and they were one of the more interesting groups from that dreaded Britpop slipstream. Elsewhere, The Wedding Present have reformed, and have just released their first single in 7 years. What can it all mean?
Mr Eddie N tells me he has found the edition of Italian Vogue featuring the photoshoot of various Kash Point club boys organised especially for the magazine. It appears very few of the people who turned up made the actual piece. The outraged shrieks of sundry men in make-up fill the London air. I too have been cruelly omitted from the magazine. Still, Mr Warboy was also at the shoot, and took a few photos of his own. They can be found here. The photo accompanying this entry is from that day. My buttonhole is an onion flower.
Coming in 2005 to a book emporium near you is this little effort. I’m not inside, but I am on the cover. Regular readers will know the genesis of this photo. My companion is Ms Anne Pigalle. The lobster is called Susan.
Some details, from the Dedalus Books catalogue:
I would have lost my wager: the back of the box for the Olsen twins' "Winning London" doesn't have a Big Ben on it after all. I try to put the film on in the shop, but Ms Welch isn't having it. She suggests I watch it at home, but I'm not THAT curious. Instead, I plump for renting the DVD of "A Canterbury Tale", the lesser-known Powell and Pressburger film.
Troy.Two and a half hours of aesthetically pleasing men in skirts and sandals, but the script is more wooden than the horse. No excuse, given Mr Homer is the father of storytelling. Mr Sean Bean is given too little to do as Odysseus. The battle scenes are all very epic, but not quite up to the standard of the Lord Of The Rings films. Given her reputation, Helen of Troy's beauty is rather ordinary – a face that bored a thousand CGI ships. Hector's wife, played by Ms Saffron Burrows, is far more striking, and one gets the sensation young Mr Bloom is far more in love with his lipbalm. Still, when this film came out at the cinemas, I spotted many people on public transport suddenly reading The Iliad. So Troy is ultimately redeemable.
Yesterday I received a cut to my eyebrow, courtesy of being hit in the face by a Disney video that had toppled from a high shelf. "101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure". Yes, it does feature a cartoon Big Ben on the front sleeve. And a red double-decker bus on the back. Straight to video, to Mr Edwards's forehead, to Whittington Hospital's Casualty ward. Which in itself sounds like a creation of a hasty kid flick set in "Londonshire".
I was given a tetanus injection just in case. You can't be too careful with attacks from singing cartoon dogs.
<p>In the waiting room, I muse upon a strange affliction that movie producers have suffered lately.
<p>It appears to go like this. While planning the sequel to a previously successful children's film, and ideas are thin on the ground, take the characters on a cliched tourist trip to London. Make sure Big Ben is on the sleeve. And, if possible, a dog.
If no dog is available, see if a former member of S Club 7 has any space in her diary.
<img width=300 src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000764FF.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"></img><img width=300 src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002I834U.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"></img><img width=300 src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00022FWTA.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"></img>
My Beefeater hat is raised, however, to the designer of the box for the Olsen Twins' inevitable offering. Incredibly, Big Ben is nowhere in sight:
<img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005U2KH.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"></img>
I'll wager it's featured on the back, though.
It's certainly on the film's <a href="http://www.winninglondon.com/" target="_blank"> website,</a> where one can "get the 'how-tos' on having a funky London party."
Another sample quote from the site: "Vivian is London's rock and roll designer. She takes traditional English garb and makes it her own. She has suited up a load of celebs including the kind of punk Johnny Rotten."
******
On my streetwalking rounds, a black woman in the passenger seat of a passing car makes loud kissing noises at me. Then, as I glance in her direction, she shouts back "NOT REALLY!".
Which gesture do I believe? In a matter of seconds she has introduced herself to me as a liar, after all. The sad clown takes any affection, even joke affection. It's all a big joke. It's all so serious.
I want to follow her and ask her questions. Why the kisses, then why the disclaimer? What does she want me to think? I think far too much about the incident and what it means, what it says about her, about me, about people in cars, about the world. Perhaps she would respond, "I was just having a laugh". I want to know everything about her. I take everything extremely seriously, especially jokes and sarcasm and what people mean EXACTLY when they say they're "having a laugh". I want to put the entire cast of the half-hearted TV impersonation programme Dead Ringers in an interrogation chamber. Too much of the world's laughter is nervous laughter.
*****
Weds of last week – Boogaloo movie quiz. Present in my team this time are Mr White, Mr Lawrence Gullo, Dr Dave Kennedy, Ms Anna Spivack, Ms Lucy Madison, and Ms Madison's companion Mr Dale Shaw. I rather liked the latter's early 90s band Blood Sausage and his comic strips, but I think this is the first time I've spoken to him properly. He's affable and charming, and even apologises for wearing trainers. He also knows a lot of the answers: it transpires he's worked in a well-stocked San Francisco video shop.
The quiz seems harder than ever, though I am pleased to be able to spot a song from "Xanadu". We mistake Jonathan Pryce's singing voice from Evita for Mr Bowie in Absolute Beginners. Mr White retold a scene from "Kentucky Fried Movie" rather well, after a question arose featuring titles of the spoof films within that film. But could we name the other female lead in Lost In Translation? Could we name the new film starring Mr Robocop from its trailer? Could we Hellboy.
Celebrity questions this time came from, as they unkindly described, "borderline celebrity Har Mar Superstar" and "Giovanni Whatisiname with the odd face". The medic in Saving Private Ryan. You know.
One of the bar staff I'd not spoken to before said I looked like Dorian Gray. I do hope she meant the character rather than the painting. A man asked to take my photo by phone, and I obliged. A woman came over and complimented me on my lilies. The flowers were a bit too fresh this time, with not enough open petals for my liking. As the evening wore on, though, a few of the closed buds were beginning to open, so clearly the quiz was good for them. Perhaps it was the Xanadu question.
Recently rented:
<b>Connie and Carla</b>. Starring Ms Toni Collette and the woman who wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, plus Mr David Duchovny and Ms Debbie Reynolds. The eponymous ladies are struggling cabaret singers, who hide from criminals by disguising themselves as drag queens. Their new act in disguise is, of course, a hit – the innovation being drag queens singing rather than miming. Ms Collette, with her strong jaw and talent for camp clumsiness evinced so well in Muriel's Wedding, adopts far more easily to passing as a drag queen than her more indelibly girlish companion. Which is a shame, as it's the latter who gets the romantic subplot with Mr Duchovny. When watching the scenes where Mr Ex-X-Files finds himself curiously attracted to his overdressed friend, it's hard not to shout "it's so obviously a real woman, Mr David! Are you blind?".
The film's conceits aren't particularly original. In reality, there's plenty of showtune drag acts who sing rather than lip-synch – springing to mind is the wigged-up Barbra Streisand impersonator who's put out his own albums in character. Also, the comic potential of women dressing as men dressing as singing women has already been brought memorably to celluloid by Ms Julie Andrews in the Blake Edwards film, Victor Victoria. Connie and Carla is no "Adventures Of Priscilla…", but for an easy ride through well-researched drag queen make-up tips, frocks and showtunes, it's enjoyable enough.
Mr Bush Junior gets a second term as President. I spit blood at the news.
Tonight, I shall be drowning my sorrows captaining my team at the <a href="http://www.biggerboat-filmquiz.co.uk" target="_blank">Boogaloo Movie Quiz</a> with the usual lilies and whichever beautiful friends can make it.
Here's a photo from the last one, which rather captures my life at the moment: the two people I see most often. Ms Welch, who I spend time with at my Slight Job. Mr Gullo, The Houseboy in my Slight Social Life. Blurred photo by Mr Hupfield of the quiz people.
<img src="http://www.biggerboat-filmquiz.co.uk/images/octQUIZ1.jpg"></img>
Standing in the shower, I realise something has followed me in there.
By the plug hole, left of my feet, it's one of the many little yellow printed tags I've made for the World Cinema section at Archway Video. One tag for each director that the shop stocks at least three films by. Fans of non-English language films tend to follow a particular auteur's work, so filing the back catalogue this way seems to make sense. I've printed out about 50 such tags. My inner librarian is satisfied.
Thought: So many diarists I know are librarians. I've just realised why this is. Every diary keeper is a librarian of sorts. A diary, as opposed to a LiveJournal, is an attempt to put some sort of order upon the seemingly chaotic. Place a gentle order upon things. Make sense of them. Understand. Learn. And now, I file away foreign films just as I file away moments in my life.
I try to outstare the sticky label in the shower. Somehow it has survived a trip down Archway Road, a disrobing and a full night's sleep. What does it want? Is it a stalker? A reincarnated lover like Ms Kidman's new film, "Birth?" If her husband had come back as a sticky yellow label rather than a small boy, the film would have been far more interesting. Once again, Hollywood fails to ask my opinion and the world is a poorer place.
I read the label – its only true message to me. Which film director wants to share my shower so badly? Place your bets now, Dear Reader.
Staring back at me, Canute-like against the relentless swirl of water, is the word "BUNUEL".
