Alasdair Watson

My brain has been kicking an idea around for a while now. It is not an idea I like one little bit, and I can’t let go of it, and I’m starting to get massively, massively fucked off with it. The idea is this: write a novel.

This is a shit idea. I don’t do long prose, because I’m shit at it. But I have reached the point, after some 18 months of kicking it, where I am forced to concede that if ever I am to do something with MARLOWE it won’t be a comic (or at least, not any kind of mini-series of the sort one could pitch as a previously unpublished writer). But I don’t want to sit on it. So I need to make it into something else. Something where I can place different demands on the thing, and make it another sort of beast, while still exploring the themes I want to. And the only form I can find that would make it something fit to see the light of day is to write it as a novel.

This doesn’t just suck because I don’t want to write a novel, by the way. This sucks because it means a totally different approach, a complete re-thinking, and, most crucially, it means doing a fucksight more research than I needed to for the comic. My head has Betrayed me. I must kill it. Or at least talk myself out of writing a novel.

Yes, I’ve got consumption again. All I need is to start noncing about in a big frilly shirt writing poetry and getting into fights, and they’ll be mistaking me for a romantic poet. So, in the spirit of cultural critique:

“Frontline” by The Newcranes. Guitar and accordion drive Midlands crustyrock from the early Nineties. Nostalgia exercise. Levellers-esque, eaither with a greater sense of whimsy or just dodgy songwriting. “This love was made in heaven/This love was so divine/But now instead of sweet white wine/It tastes like turpentine”.

“Gravelands” by The King. Belfast-born Elvis impersonator doing covers of classic rock tracks in the style of, well, Elvis. Annyoingly, I see that I apear to have an older version. With less tracks. And it cost more. Arses. But it’s ace, so that’s ok.

24, Series 1 & 2. Already seen series 1. Hadn’t seen Series 2, and am coming up on halfway through it now. And getting slightly tired of the plot twists as two minutes two the hour. So far, I think there have been two episiodes that haven’t had them, and that’s just because they’ve managed to set up a character’s life being in peril about ten-fifteen minutes earlier, and keep them in that state for the rest of the episode. Also, am completely failing to give a fuck about the sub-plot with Kim. Can we just write her out of the next one, please?

The Man Who Sued God. Adequate Billy Connoly vehicle, weighed down by gross sentimentality in places. Enough good moments to mean that I didn’t feel I wasted my fiver, but one that could easily wait for video.

Pirates of The Carribean. Decided to see it again. Enjoyed it just as much the second time around.

New coffee grinder. Finally bought a burr grinder, for the making of better coffee. I fully endorse this product and/or service. Now I just need a decent espresso machine…

I’ve lost my mobile. If you’ve been trying to get hold of me on it since Saturday, that’s why you’ve been failing. I should be sorting out a new mobile in the next week or so, but until then, e-mail’s your best bet, or my home phone, if you’ve got that.

Several of my American friends have posted about going through the new season’s TV schedules, planning their viewing. Aside from trauma that people do this (not just them – I just find the notion of watching enough TV to have to plan it ghastly) it reminds me that a new season of The West Wing is about to start, which means episiodes for me to download. I’m a little worried about this, as Sorkin’s gone now, and I’m nervious about what they’ll do with/to the show. So I’m skimming the spoiler sites, looking for hints about what’s coming, and am pleasantly surpirsed to see that Gary Cole (American Gothic, Crusade) is apparently joining as a recurring cast member.

As for the plots – well, it’s early to tell, especially since the first few episodes of season five have to deal with the enormity of the end of season four, and can to an extent, coast on that, but I think I can see some of the new angles in the hints. I don’t think it’ll be bad but I can see how they’re skewing away from the politics-driven stories, toward character-focused stuff. On the one hand, a bit gutless, but on the other, perhaps it’ll be less liberal-propagandist (not that I mind that, being a big old bleeding-heart myself, but it’s a bit heavy handed at times), and I like the characters and actors enough that it’ll keep my interest for a while. Whether it’s enough to remain the only TV show I give enough of a fuck about to download/schedule time around, I don’t know.

Feel like I ought to update this thing, but have largely nothing to say. It’s been a nice few days – the heat’s back down a a level fit for people that aren’t made of leftover lizard bits, and there’s a breeze off the river that’s made up for the office’s lack of decent air conditioning. If only it was like this all summer.

Weekend plans call for barbequed meats tonight, drinks with Ross et al tomorrow, and not a lot for Sunday.

Feel like I’m becoming complacent. Nothing new on the horizon, and I’m not too bothered by that fact. I’ve fallen into a comfortable rut. This is usually my cue to do something deeply stupid, so watch this space over the next month or two to find up what inventive scheme I come up with to cause myself work and stress.

There is nothing happening. I demand entertainment. Therefore, in an attempt to entertain myself me, I demand that you reveal unto me your embarassing personal secrets. Or other people’s, I don’t care. Just as long as they’re good. Be as anonymous as you like.

You’ve probably see a few of these before – hell, I may have linked to them myself, but these are the things that are making me laugh by the simple fact of their existence this morning:

• Lava Dome Five – godzilla porn.
• Lords of the Rhymes – Beatbox gollum.
• Vegan Erotica – wherever there’s a sex-niche, there’s someone filling it. A lack of acceptable BDSM gear was not something that has previously occured to me as problem of the vegan lifestyle.

Speaking of getting hold of music – does anyone else out there remember a band from the late eighties/early ninties called The Newcranes? I think they were from the midlands, and I particularly remember a song called “Turpentine” from a mini-album “Frontline”. Can anyone out ther help me? I don’t know if it was ever released on CD – the only listing I can find for it in the UK is as vinyl, although there looks to be a guy in germany selling a CD, only I can’t figure out how to pay him.

I’d really like to get hold of a copy, either on CD or MP3. Can anyone help?

As previously mentioned, I saw T3 last week. It was entertaining enough, but very light, and I felt that the end played badly against the end of T2, which was much stronger, so I left feeling a bit cheated. Lot’s of interesting visual gags and references to the previous films. Good if you’re bored, I guess.

I saw Pirates Of The Carribean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl on Sunday. Must-see movie of the summer, I think. Orlando Bloom is a bit wooden, but pretty enough, whcih is what he’s there for, but Johnny Depp more than makes up for it by being utterly marvellous. People will either want to shag him, or be him, depending on gender of preference. Possibly both, now I think of it. The film is funny, well paced, taught in the right places, and takes itself just seriously enough, which is to say that it’s not afraid to be light, but doesn’t run chasing after every gag, so it all comes together very nicely. Point of interest – the director’s previous film was the (surprisingly well-recieved) American version of The Ring. All in all though: for being based on a Disney ride, this comes out looking very good.

Went to B movie on Friday, finally. Loved it, despite heat and equipment failure. They were very sensibly allowing people to stand out on the street, which was a fine plan, although it did mean I missed a few tracks that would have had me hurling myself for the dancefloor.

The wonders of the modern age mean that after skiming the playlist for a few details, I’ve started hoovering down work by appropraite artists that I liked at the club, quite legally. I know I verge on becoming tedious about mundane trivia like the ability to download MP3s, which is so commonplace nowdays, but I just love the fact that I can do this. Annoyingly, though, Emusic doesn’t have any Reverend Horton Heat, apart from a single track on a Willie Nelson tribute I’ve already downloaded (mostly for Johnny Cash’s brilliant cover of “The Time Of The Preacher”). So, anyone out there got any recommendations for a must-buy Horton Heat album or two, since it seems I must pay actual cash money for some?

London’s first Flash mob took place last night. I wasn’t there, as I was doing Important Research (yeah, OK, I was watching Terminator 3 – it was average) but I’m interested in the phenomenon, which, from where I sit, looks to be largely stillborn.

The point of these things (in so far as they have one) is to introduce a moment of random strangeness into the lives of people observing the phenomenon – a bunch of people doing something faintly surreal, and scattering, leaving nothing more than bemused smiles in their wake. This isn’t going to work, if people spot a crowd of people doing something stupid, and mutter “Oh, another bloody flashmob”.

Which, given the level of media coverage that these events are now getting, is what seems pretty likely to happen. They’re not going to be strange and unexpected, because everyone’s going to have heard of them.

Earlier in the week, I was arguing that these things aren’t just a load of artwank – they’re (theoretically) a way of experimenting with new social technologies, part of a process of acclimatization to new group dynamics spawned by changing methods of communication. A chance for people to adjust to them in play, so that they can use them in seriousness, although I note that the technologies employed by the precursor of this sort of thing, the illegal raves of the eighties and nineties never really got much used outside the chemical scene.

I think I’ll have to amend my position, in light of the media circus, and the sheer pointlessness of forcing a shopkeeper to reopen his shop so that they could go and be “random” in it – neither anonymous, or likely to put a smile on the faces of the passing public, who will almost certainly not have noticed. The notion of a flashmob is an interesting one, full of potential, and not just artwank. But so long as it’s artwankers who organise these things, they’re going to remain a load of luvvie toss.