Midway through the journey of my life...

A spectre of a bard long dead
I slowly raise my weary head
And follow Beauty's siren call.

A gig, we had, last night 'tis true,
A concert with a wond'rous view,
And laughter spread to one and all.

I'd better stop there before you or I lose the will to live. Yes, last night saw the last B+B gig before Edinburgh and the long awaited test of the festival set-list and extraneous patter. For those of you of a legal bent (or members of the Fringe First committee) I should quickly point out that the event was by invitation only and no charge was made for the performance. We were offered some blueberry schnapps afterwards but that was purely medicinal and evidence of the warm-hearted hospitality of our hosts rather than some sordid financial transaction.

Katy may gush about having an illuminated Tower Bridge as a backdrop, or the windswept ambiance of performing in the middle of the Thames, but the Bitch's heart was set on playing the gorgeous baby grand.



No Bitches may be found in this photograph.

Now I may (alright I do, endlessly) complain that Madame's interest can be all too easily captivated, like a kitten with a piece of string, by the prospect of a high-tech, high-concept or highly expensive stage backdrop. For those of you who doubt by side of the argument I would remind you of the length of time it took your browser to download the moving image of the star-cloth below. However, even I would be forced to admit, that having one of London's most memorable landmarks floodlit behind you as the sunset fades in the sky was pretty damn breathtaking and is going to take some beating.

How did it go? Bear in mind that I was stuck away at the back of the stage on a raised platform, exposed to the wind and so could only hear Katy for much of the show. In lulls between gusts I could hear what sounded like laughter and they looked like they were having fun. From my point of view, I managed to rip the nail off my thumb strumming my way through an unplugged, acoustic version of 'Serious Song' and the power cut out on the keyboard at the climax of 'If I Were Gay'. On the other hand, the audience thought that was part of the act and I've never been one to turn down a free or unintentional laugh. Ignore me, my childhood hero was Oscar the Grouch. From all accounts, biased, honest, drunken and unsolicited alike, it went very well. It was quite a diverse crowd and everyone claimed to have enjoyed it and laughed a lot. Which was nice.

Disturbingly, in the last week or so I have acquired a brief stand-up slot within the act, otherwise known as Katy's fag break. As the last time I tried stand-up I was greeted with a baffled wave of confusion, apathy and drunken hostility it was something of a jolt to be well received. Funny even. I guess bilingual puns about obscure historical minutiae wasn't the future of comedy after all...

So, the wind is at our backs, our jib is cut and our eyes are fixed on the northern horizon. We are ship-shape and, if not Bristol fashion, decidedly bosomy none-the-less. I would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at the moorings for giving us such a wonderful welcome and the chance to play a venue unlike any other. I can't finish without mentioning that this community is currently under threat, despite support from the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, the local MP, many, many celebrity faces and much of the local community. It would be a crime to let this vibrant, thriving micro-culture die and to lose another part of London's history to the power of local development. Follow the link for more details, I shall descend from the soap-box now.

I shall probably not get the chance to write again before we're off so I shall say goodbye until Edinburgh. I suppose I had better go and pack...

Il miglior fabbri

That's who I'm leaving the inevitable rich and detailed description of last night's triumphant Beauty and the Bitch Edinburgh preview to (Clue: that means you, Dave). I may well have spelt it wrong, as my Italian, mediaeval or otherwise, is weak as a kitten on crutches, but please just pounce on me in the comments if I am wrong, as I cannot be arsed to google for it.

Two words sum up the delicious, windswept and stunningly-viewed Arts Ark for me: floating bandstand. What do you get when you search for an image of a floating bandstand? Well, you get this:



Not only lovely, but strangely evocative of Sunday night's venue, despite actually being in Australia.

Over to you, Virgil ...

Tick Tock

And the countdown to Edinburgh continues apace. 

Accommodation and venue booked? Check - and our flat's in salubrious Grassmarket, just a hope skip and a jump from the venue. I WILL stop being smug quite soon, I expect.
Songs written? Check (I should bloody well hope so, by this stage). Although how we were going to fit our 15-song repertoire into a 55-minute slot was a profound mystery until we came up with the idea of having a couple of "swap songs" in the running order, whereby we could substitute one or more of the songs for a new one and, er, perform them for the first time in front of an Edinburgh audience. Eeeeek. Was that really a good plan? Talk about baptisms of fire ...
Technical equipment begged, borrowed or stolen? Check (mostly). I don't know whether other women enjoy shopping for gadgets and cool technical stuff as much as I do, but clearly when sperm and egg fused to create one-cell Katy, something went strange with the female shopping chromosome, which has somehow become inextricably linked to the male one for messing around with electronic toys. So whereas I should start salivating like Pavlov's dogs every time I see a bridal shop or nail bar, what actually makes me very very excited is something like a Treo mobile phone/PDA (sadly deceased), a digital camera (back when 2.1 was a lot of megapixels) or a starcloth.



So pretty! In fact, if for some reason the venue walls aren't strong enough to support its 9kg weight, I'm having it in my damn bedroom. So there. Oh, we also need a sustain pedal (or something), a radio mike and an electroacoustic guitar. It's a good job the car's big. Although whether it's big enough for all that, the keyboard, myself, Beren, Dave and my costumes is a rather more fraught question. If it comes to the crunch, I fear Dave may have to walk ...

Funny is as funny does

I'd like, if you'd be so good as to oblige me, to conduct a little thought experiment. Think of your favourite joke. Something simple. Something funny. If you can't think of anything then you'll have to make do with the following:

The Pentagon today announced that it had uncovered a cache of text books, protractors, slide rules and calculators hidden in a cave in Northern Iraq. They are claiming the find as evidence of Weapons of Maths Instruction.

Sorry. Still with me? Okay then. Try memorising the joke and then repeating it endlessly over the course of six weeks varying the wording, trying to find the pithiest way of saying it. Run the joke over and over again until you can do it in your sleep (or in front of a paying audience). Still think it's funny? Even if you thought it was to begin with, how sure are you that it still is? What are you willing to bet on it's potential to get a laugh? Now imagine that rather than a joke you were told (and, if you bothered to remember it, chances are you laughed when you heard it) this joke is in fact, one that you have written. The only way to know if it's funny is to tell someone, but the only situation you have to tell the joke is one where you've not only told perfect strangers in advance that you can make them laugh, but you've taken cold, hard cash off them on the promise of doing so.

Still funny?

I'm not asking for any special pleading here. I can't imagine that there's any way round this. I doubt it's any easier if you're big-time stand-up headlining the festival or one of the writers of a tiny student sketch show. Funny is funny and in a market as crowded as the Fringe, there ain't a hell of a lot of room for 'nearly', 'slightly chucklesome' or 'good effort - I nearly smiled'.



So, yeah, the act is pretty much nailed down. The songs are written, the patter is polished, the scent of fear is in the air and it's one week to go. Do you feel funny, punk? I'll let you know...

Should I stay or should I go now?

I mentioned earlier, the deep and abiding love that I feel for my job. That black hole that sucks 42 hours of my life away every week, exposes me to the bile and self-righteous anger of Joe Q. Public on a regular basis and gives me the sleeping patterns of an insomniac teething baby? Ah, thought so. Until recently, my sweet and understanding boss had taken my request for the month of August off (to enable us to take the show to Edinburgh) as a formal giving of notice on my part. Then, ten days ago, everyone else in the shop handed in their notice for the end of July as well. This, please understand, was not in some misguided attempt at solidarity but purely because no-one in their right mind stays there longer than they have to.



I am not Spartacus. However, this has caused a distinct sound of backsliding to appear in the air whenever I talk to the boss. You might have thought that, with my leaving at the end of next week, some final decision would have been reached - not with the shining example of staff morale-boosting that passes for senior management at my firm. The final straw was being phoned at work tonight to be asked if I would still be contactable by phone when I was away. Clearly, the little ferret is planning on hedging his bets until the last possible moment of my return. Still, I may just have the last laugh. If he has not officially terminated my employment before I leave, then any time I spend in Edinburgh is agreed leave and can be counted against the two weeks paid holiday I have coming to me. Think I'll keep that one to myself...

Anyway, back to the act. Preparations continue apace for Sundays 'secret' gig. I now have a super-sexy new toy to play with as we've acquired an electro-acoustic guitar to replace my elderly hot-pink electric. Not that it wasn't a talking point, but I just didn't give off the required Aran jumper and sandals aura that an acoustic provides. My life is turning into Bob Dylans in reverse. Shortly I shall change my name to Zimmerman.

Preparing to meet ones adoring public is always difficult, but for me the hardest part of the final preparations is looming on my 'to do' list for tomorrow. No prevarication, procrastination, or petrified posturing can conceal the fact that I have to get my hair cut. There is nothing in principle wrong with hair cutting. I have no wish to resemble an Old English Sheepdog and truth be told, it is getting a little warm up top with several inches of unwanted insulation. I don't have to look at the finished results and so the process should be relatively painless. The problem is that, in keeping with my generally clueless state over all questions of style and fashion, I have never mastered the art of going into a hairdressers and asking for a cut. The routine usually goes as follows:

Me: I'd like a haircut, please.
Hairdresser: Certainly, sir. How would you like it?
Me: Off.
Hairdresser: Erm. What do you mean?
Me: I don't know. Shorter. Kind of tidy.
Hairdresser: Would you like me to use the clippers?
Me: Yeah. That'd do it. Set it to 2 and stop when you reach the neck.
Hairdresser: (Wondering what they did wrong in a previous life) Right then.

You see, it gets the job done but I'm left feeling like an idiot. Which may be accurate, but dispiriting. I usually just hack it off myself which is both cheaper and better for the ego, but I've left it too long and I'd need a flymo. I was wondering, gentle reader, if anyone had any helpful suggestions for how I could translate "Just cut it short so it's out of the way and I don't have to come back here for a long time" into fluent coiffurese? And while we're at it, any tips for engaging in small talk when your glasses have been hijacked and some stranger with an aversion to the subtle application of perfume is buzzing around your head with either a shower nozzle or a pair of dangerously sharp scissors? Outside my head they're asking about my holiday plans, inside my head runs a chant of 'Struwelpeter, Struwelpeter, Struwelpeter...'

My head, dear hearts, is in your hands...

The joy of Blogger

One of the things about Blogger, as I've just discovered, is that if you enter certain types of e.g. music in your profile, you can then look at all the other bloggers who've entered the same thing. As I tried to be as massively eclectic as possible in naming my three chosen music-makers, how freaked was I to find that I share at least two of my tastes (or are they?) with another?
 
How even more freaked was I to discover that this blogger who has indicated a fondness for Elgar and Del Amitri is 98-year-old Hugh from Indiana?

Hugh
98-year old male Aries
Greenwood : Indiana : United States
34 recent posts (505 total)
 
Fortunately I was joking, so we don't have to get married. Or was I?

Argy Bargy

No, not yet another musical-related spat between myself and the divine Dave, but a reference to the surely significant fact that our next performance is also likely to be on the water. Talks are currently being held about doing a secret gig* on Sunday 25th July (i.e. just before we go up to Edinburgh) on a friend's barge, which comes handily equipped with a grand piano. Don't they all?  
  
 
 
(Actual piano may differ from that shown)
 
There's something strange and lovely about playing a set with the waves lapping at the hull and the floor lurching gently beneath your feet. When I say strange I obviously mean nauseating, but apart from the whole trying to keep your voice in key and your breakfast in place, it really is rather special.
 
Cabaret Manners Vol 1:
Dave and I were privileged earlier this year to be dragged along to experience the full-spectrum musical psychosis that is Kiki and Herb: (see http://uk.gay.com/article/2537 for details cos bloody linky thing isn't working) playing on board the HMS President. Kiki, clawing her way onto tables and vocally raping such classic artists as Eminem, is fantastically disturbing and perhaps not to be emulated unless I want a hernia and a lawsuit; but Herb, who sits at the back, plonking away on his keyboard and uttering not a word from one hour to the next, really is a model of appropriate accompanist behaviour. Bitches take note.
 
*By the way, if you're wondering about the secret nature of the secret gig I've just told you about, it's secret because (as places are limited and barges have been known to sink under the sheer tonnage of our screaming fans before now) you have to contact us if you want to come. First come first served, last one to the gangplank is a tax accountant.
 
Such is our excitement at playing this prestigious venue (and piano) deep in the heart of London's glamorous Docklands, that we are giving away tickets for free. If you'd like a ticket (and a map) email info@beautyandbitch.co.uk and we'll send you details nearer the time, as well as putting you on our mailing list for future gigs and B&B news. If you just want a ticket or two and don't want to be put on the list, just holler. We will be playing our full Edinburgh set, having a drink and then singing more songs, some of which will be world premieres, until you beg for mercy.  See you on the Thames ...

Back at the coal-face

Well, the tart and the tramp were back on stage again tonight. We're right in the middle of organising production details, publicity and all the paperwork for our Edinburgh shows, but every now and again, you have to get out there and strut your stuff just so you don't forget why you're ploughing through the drudgery. There's no point in having the best organised show in town if you're so rusty performance-wise that it's no longer fun to watch. So tonight was our penultimate warm-up gig.

"Cheese and Crackers" is a monthly variety cabaret masquerading as a talent night down in Vauxhall on the Battersea Barge. It generates a really good atmosphere and has been very good to us over the last few months, allowing us to try out a lot of our new material in front of a live audience. Of course, by the time the voting comes around at the end of the night everyone's too pissed to care too much who wins, but dammnit, I could have done the the victory cheese plate tonight. Yesterday, I discovered that my treasured stilton was missing from the fridge and I have yet to track down the culprit. I don't know if you can experience dairy produce cold-turkey, but I was definately jonesing for some blue cheese this evening.

Back to the point, we got a chance to test our new opening number (Once More, with Feline) out as an attention grabber and dust off the old classic 'Just a Good Friend' again. I must say, it felt damn good to be back on stage. There are only so many times you can laugh at your own jokes (though I have yet to discover what that number is for Katy) and it's easy to forget whether something is actually funny once it's been rehearsed into the ground. Hearing people laugh in all the right places really set me up for the Festival next month. One more gig at the end of the month and we're off north. It's all too bloody close for comfort, but after tonight I'm a lot more confident and relaxed. Expect things will revert back to frantic soon, but for tonight the Bitch is in a mellow mood.

As Rumpole of the Bailey wearily climbs to his feet...

Whilst I would be glad to place before the court several instances of my appreciation of forms of entertainment best described as 'kitsch', 'camp', 'ironic' or just plain bloody awful, I would table the motion that there are far better targets for your riposte.

A) I have yet to watch one episode of 'Tru Calling' all the way through and only tuned in for three. In my defence:



There are greater forces in this world than quality acting, writing or direction.

B) In the absence of a statute of limitations, I will be forced to plead my youth. It was a school production: I had a choice of spending time in the company of a rugby team of potential psychotics of questionable aroma or as one of the few 'artistic' boys in close proximity with 90% of the school's female population and being permitted to grow my hair beyond regulation length. I was seventeen. Think about it.

Frankly, the fact that the results were three-and-a-half hours of dubious artistic merit only serves to reiterate my position that children and musical theatre are a poisonous combination.

P.S. Chess sucks.

Outside. Now.

Ha! Some people just can't take a bit of healthy competition. And moreover ...

a) I really can't believe I'm being lectured on taste by a man who has knowingly and willingly watched more than one episode of Tru Calling.

b) I really can't believe I'm being lectured on musicals by a man who played Dobbin in the for-some-reason-never-revived Bath production of Vanity Fair: The Musical.

c) There's nothing wrong with liking Chess.

Seen and not heard or Keep your bloody daughter off my stage, Mrs. Worthington

I would cry genuine tears of collectible Bitch brine if I gave the impression that may place on this earth was merely to contradict and correct my esteemed colleague. However, there are callumnies and social faux pas so heinous that it would pain my tiny heart not to rise to the bait. Some of these, such as the wearing of corduroy cut-offs or busking to the works of Busted, can be settled with a smart open-handed slap to the temple. Some crimes of taste require me to don the cavalry-twill of avuncular wisdom and patiently explain to Katy the error of her ways.

So, to Alan Parker's paedophile paradise, the sacharine stage-Mom pleaser 'Bugsy Malone'. It is not true the Mr.Parker has never knowingly made a decent film. It just feels true if you've ever sat through any of the others. There was The Committments and er, um, you know, that other one, that one you enjoyed when it was on several Christmasses ago. Thingy. Admittedly, he's not exactly reknowned for his subtlty or avoidance of stodgy bombast but I don't think we can blame him for the sheer blood-curdling horror that this musical arouses in my blood. Indeed, were I to come face to face with one of Harry Potter's Dementors I can well believe that I would find myself playing piano at an endless audition for a provincial amateur production whilst an infinite hoard of precocious tap-dancing pre-teens squawked and simpered their way through the songs.



Further, it is not that all the songs of themselves are to blame. "Tomorrow" is a simple but effective smoky blues tune with workmanlike yet workable lyrics. "Bad Guys" may be as musically complex as Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" (the only top-40 hit I know of based on only two chords) but it has a charm and verve that it would be churlish of me to deny. The problem is not the material (although the weak one-liners, poor pastiche of pulp dialogue and ham-fisted slapstick of the book and screenplay can have little or no defence) but the fact that it is performed by bloody kids!

The 'joke' that all the hoods, swingers, vamps, heels and cops are just kids wears thin after the first thirty-seconds or so and yet is expected to sustain an entire evening of the under-talented, over-trained pitiful performances of pint-sized, painted, pre-teen preeners. If you want to see a dark tale of crime and corruption played-off against comic songs and genuinely inventive use of the musical genre to offer contrast, bathos, pathos and subjective commentary, then I suggest you try Brecht and Weil's Threepenny Opera. If you want a nice, simplistic film about Prohibition gangsters with clearly defined Good and Bad guys, try The Untouchables. Hell, if you want to watch Jodie Foster when she is far too young for the thoughts running through your head then just get hold of a copy of 'Taxi Driver'. This is the reason I cannot look at the picture Katy posted below with out visualising handcuffs on her upraised arms and a cigarette burning out in an ashtray off camera.

Put simply, I have yet to see a child's performance of an adult role or song that was improved by the age of the performer. A talking dog is of note, not for what it says, but for the fact that it talks at all. I am too scarred by memories of apalling TV 'Talent' shows from the late seventies that seemed to be populated entirely by fourteen-year-olds pretending to be washed-up divas; their voices an apalling mixture of middle-aged wobble and youthfull harshness. Bonnie Langford, I'm looking at you.

No, my Beauty, I will never cure you of your addiction to 'Chess', but I am determined that, in time, you will see that musical theatre is a difficult and demanding genre that requires talent, training and maturity. The skills needed are more than a winsome smile, perfect dentition and an unbroken voice (whatever the career of Darren Day seeks to prove in opposition). The time has come to put away childish things. Please, for the sake of both our sanity, do not bring that accursed tape with you to Edinburgh and finally, this is what prime jail-bait should look like:

He's a sinner, candy-coated ...

God forbid that in these virtual pages I come across as some sort of misanthespian West-End-hating bile junkie, chasing an ever-retreating vitriolic high by pouring scorn on the work of my theatrical betters. I realise that there are more important things in the world than feeling a bit cheated upon leaving a place of cosy, middle-class entertainment.

On the one hand, the world is full of nasty things - disease, poverty, human cruelty and Council Tax (which encompasses at least two of the above). On the other, it is a place of unbearable beauty: of rainbow-coloured sunsets, of majestic wildlife, and of mankind's highest achievement: Bugsy Malone.


(This is my happy jpg. This is my happy jpg because when I googled for "manic grin" I got a picture from a Russian website devoted to PG Wodehouse. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.)

But back to the burden of my song ... which is that I love musicals. I love musicals more than I am confused by Pinter, amused by the Mighty Boosh or bored by David Hare. I'm basically a gay man trapped in a woman's body, that's how much I love them. And in Bugsy Malone there is a totally original high-concept (gangster movie with kids), a brace of brilliant performances and a score to die for. This music is so good that if I put it on when I'm doing the washing up, I hardly even mind that I'm doing the washing up. It's like drugs. Drugs made of song.

If anyone can look me in the eye and tell me that the thumping rhythms of "Down and Out" doesn't make them want to do a stomping dance routine on the table, or that "Bad Guys" is something less than a work of subtle lyrical genius, let them prepare to be poked in that very eye. How can you argue with lines like these?

We could have been anything that we wanted to be
With all the talent we had
With a little practice
We've made every blacklist
We're the very best at being bad!

You're rotten to the core
My congratulations, no-one likes you any more!

Bad guys! (JAZZ HANDS!)

We've made the big time, malicious and mad
We're the very best at being bad!

And of course, it contains every ten-year-old's female role model:



Some things just can't be improved on.

A load of Old Times

On Saturday night I was less than privileged to catch a performance of Harold Pinter's timeless (or was that endless?) tragicomic masterpiece, Old Times. I'm not going to link to it because a) I'll only stuff it up and b) it really was, for an (allegedly) marvellous script performed by A-list Brit talent, about the dullest piece of theatre I've seen since An Inspector Calls. And my arse still has numbness flashbacks from that one.

Now, it's not that I've got anything particularly against Pinter: I saw The Caretaker a few years ago with Michael Gambon, and it was witty and funny and made some sort of sense, which unless (and even if, really) you're talking about wacky avant-garde stuff, a comic play ought to be able to do. However, the laughter generated by this production of Old Times was at best, relieved (i.e. the actors had said something lighthearted and easily understood) and at worst, born of confusion or incongruity in the characters and/or text. Both, if you were lucky.
Shame on you, director Roger Michell (responsible for such cinematic gems as Notting Hill) - everyone else tried their absolute hardest and you didn't even read the script!

I don't consider myself a particularly obtuse theatregoer and I've been watching and reading modern plays for a good ten years, but I must admit I was overwhelmingly relieved when my sister turned to me at the end of an hour and a half of what played increasingly like a senile dream-sequence and said "What the hell was that all about, then?"

Infinite monkeys and the modern movie script.

Never let it be said that the Bitch is not practical. Whilst some would-be creative genii are content to be the middlemen in a direct transfer from Daddy's trust fund to the local weed merchant and some feel that money, food and minor luxuriant touches such as the avoidance of scurvy would interfere with their muse, I scorn such petty disdain for reality. No, the Bitch toils mightily and without thanks in the dank underbelly of entertainment retail. Yes, my friends, my younglings, I'm the manager of our local video rental shop.

This may look like the ideal job from the outside. I sit in a bullet-proof box all day, occasionally looking up from the Guardian crossword or some coroner-chic crime novel to sneer at the next fool to rent 'Love, Actually' or 'Haunted Mansion'. I stir myself, on occasion, to place a few titles back on the shelf and return to my busy schedule of staring into space. I even get free rentals and watch films before they are out on the shelves. Herein, dear reader, lies today's problem. For, not only may I watch next weeks releases, but I must. Let me just warn any avid fans of the cinematic arts that Monday 12th July is not a date for your diaries.


I have friends (I even like some of them). I have friends who travel. I have friends who have recently traveled to the United States. From their frenzied reports and from the reviews it garnered on its cinema release, I sat down to watch Jack Black in the 'School of Rock' expecting an experience approaching the Second Coming of Groucho Marx. What I got was 'Sister Act 2' with the black nun replaced by a fat, gurning fool. I have nothing against the well-built man. I, myself, am no stranger to the all-you-can-eat-buffet that is Somerfields 'reduced to clear' shelf. I greatly enjoyed the performance of Mister Black in 'High Fidelity' and regard his performance of 'Let's Get it On' at the climax as one of the highlights of my DVD collection. I am pestered by a warm and fuzzy feeling just thinking about it. However, Messrs Black, White and Linklater ("Why do I have to be Mr. Linklater - it sounds like a tardy sausage-maker? I want to be Mr. Red.""Mr. Red is on another job.") forgot to add a number of elements to the script; namely laughs, character arcs and any understanding of RAWK. Characters wander into shot, state they name and explain that they are archetype A. If we are lucky, they will attract our attention later and tell us that they are now archetype B. Our classical pianist is still the same 2-d Asian stereotype, but now he wears a cape and has spiky hair. Our fat, shy girl has discovered that she can sing and is now a fat, smiling girl. Poor Joan Cusack is stuck playing the same repressed School Principal throughout. Never forget, kids, women with a successful career and no children must be anally-retentive, lonely, unfulfilled and desperate to land our hero or any passing leather-clad rock poodle. Don't even let me get started on the 'gay' ten-year-old who makes John Inman look like a nuanced take on modern queer culture.

More to the point, why make a film about rock music, a comedy, no less, without understanding what might be funny about the music itself? Heavy metal parody, after Spinal Tap, may be redundant but it's hardly rocket science. Reprising 'Wayne's World' with 'Immigrant Song' replacing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' hardly illustrates an abiding love or interest in the music. The songs in 'School of Rock' range from the pathetic (Maths is Great) to mere pastiche. I know that the song at the end was supposed to have been written by a ten-year-old but I would happily have suspended my disbelief had it been a true parody, or, perish the thought, funny.

It may sound harsh to accuse a film about an unauthodox teacher bringing new meaning into the lives of a group of children for being formulaic. In fact, it may strike some of you as somewhat akin to denouncing the Pope for not being the greatest lay of all time. There is nothing wrong with openly producing a B-movie and selling it such. This film was reputed to be so much more than that. I should not have been able to anticipate not only the plot twists, but also most of the key lines of dialogue. I should not have suffered dizzying levels of deja vu throughout the film. I should not have been able to open my poke at the end and find a pig in it.

My theory is that, somewhere in metaphor-land, a group of monkeys unionised and realised that they were infinite in number. This lead to the motion that, given that infinity minus a couple of thousand is close enough to infinity so as to make no mathematical difference, they could lend some of their group (along with their typewriters) to Hollywood in order to script their movies. Rotating the monkeys on duty also led to odd mathematical result that, given their infinite number, the chance of one individual monkey being called up to active service was infinitesimally different from zero. The rest of the monkeys now spend their days in hammocks sipping Pina Coladas on the profits and we have to watch this crap. I don't imagine it's a long trip from metaphor-land to California.

Anonymity is for wimps

After a prolonged, Jacob's Ladder style wrestling match between Dave and the dubious angels of blogger.com, I bring you ... me! No longer must I hide behind the collective pseudonym, because I've finally be invited to join my own blog under my own name. Whoopee! (I think)

The Bitch is Back

First of all, apologies for launching in with an Elton John reference. If my ham-fisted attempts to bluff my way through the technology have worked I shall now be able to carp, snipe and correct my esteemed colleague and generally undo all her good work.

Profuse and insincere thanks to Beren for kicking us forcibly into the online world and may I just ask why you look so much like a young Michael Winner on the website ?

Hmm, an empty space and only the sound of my own voice for company... I think I shall be very happy here.

Better late than never

I have at last parted with the twelve quid necessary to become a fine and upstanding member of edfringegroups.com. I am told that this bring not only health, wealth and happiness, but
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(THREE? Three, for the love of God?! We're not trying to build a weapon of mass destruction, we're singing underneath a bar for goodness' sake! Why do we need three handbooks to tell us how?*)
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(Do they mean the Fringe Programme? Or is it like a high school yearbook - bad black and white pictures of the gormless and clueless with captions like "Most Likely To Commit Mime" and "Desperate for Attention"?)
Venue Lists!
(Hmm. Underwhelming. Again, a Fringe Programme without a comprehensive venue list is a bit of a crap Fringe Programme - so why do I need a separate one? You're not really selling this, edfringegroups. Unless there are secret underground venues known only to fringe performers and accessible via the back of wardrobes. Which would be quite cool.)

*Still, more for your money I suppose

Truth, kiss or motivational seminar ...

Thrilling as the Truth Kiss or Dare and subsequent (nay, inevitable) nipple/jam interface on tonight's Big Brother is, I feel strangely inclined to turn it off and do something less boring instead. This is where the blog comes in.

When I was about 18 I kept a diary for nearly a year. It was my first year of University and I expected to have a number of reasonably formative experiences during that time - experiences worth recording, anyhow. I was not completely disappointed, but when I took it out and re-read it a few years later, the really interesting thing was not what I'd done or seen or had for breakfast, but what my first impressions were of people I still know, in some cases, nearly ten years on. Man, but I had some terrible judgement.

And of course, the irony of diary-keeping is that, unless you're a Kenneth Tynan or Williams, if your life's exciting enough to make interesting reading, you won't have time to write it all down. I'm hoping the blog will fall somewhere in between a diary and an appointments book. Not to mention an aide-memoire for when I got really drunk the night before.

Oh yeah, the motivational thing. I went to a "masterclass" in leadership today. Oh, sit up and wipe the hysterical drool off your chin. In my defence it was a) paid for by The Man (i.e. my employers, not my gangsta sugar-daddy) and b) featured a free lunch. Now, I'm sure I'm not alone in that when I see the words "Free Lunch" on a poster, all the words surrounding it sort of melt away and I feel compelled to sign up to hippo-massage or scrotal tattooing or whatever it is right there and then.

I didn't regret it though, although it's pretty much what I've heard before from other similar speakers: be all you can be, learn how to dream again, identify what's stopping you reaching your goals, visualise your future and it shall come to pass, saith the leadership guru. Not that it doesn't make a lot of sense, really - plenty of people are trapped by an oppressively pessimistic sense of what is and is not possible ... but it's just different sugar on the same pill, i.e. if you're not happy or successful, it's basically your fault, so stop blaming others/circumstances.

Now all I have to do is twist the above into a positive-sounding catchphrase and I'm made for life. But it's late, and I'm tired, and the cat needs attention and TV Years - 1985 just came on. I think it's the one that interviews actors from the A-Team. Now who wouldn't give up their future as a guru for that?

253

Today I am mostly reading Geoff Ryman's groundbreaking-when-originally-published web novel 253. I'll link to it when I'm semi-competent at this game. Don't hold your collective breath. You'll be glad to hear that it's now available in dead-tree format so that punters can read it on the tube and feel all post-modern.

The gimmick is that a fully seated tube train has 253 people on board (including driver), and so each of these passengers (and driver) is given a short 253-word biography. The book's also got handy carriage layouts and small ads - the equivalent of site maps and pop-ups, I suppose. It's really rather good. Post-modernly, Geoff is one of the characters. Can you say Martin Amis? Dave hasn't read it but I promised to force it on him soon when we were rehearsing tonight.

I think the highlight of Dave's evening (apart from hearing me attempt unprovoked scat singing on Once More With Feline) was seeing his new headshot:
 
 
 
Did I leave the gas on?
 
and being strangely reminded of all those moody black and white shots of dead 30s poets that once adorned his English classroom at school. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em ...

Hi Beren

Hope this works. Got to say the blog isn't very addictive yet, but I'm hoping to get extremely drunk either with or without Dave tonight and make up a lot of nonsense illustrated with unlikely pictures of my housemates/turtles.

Which is nice.

Like a virgin

... blogged for the very first time.

Now all I have to do is work out how to use the damn thing. Luckee me!