choctaw_ridge

After being dazzled by La Streisand's take on Ne Me Quitte Pas on BBC1 Friday night, here's Discofied Divas Squared from 1979, the year I graduated, became a nurse, and Thatcher came to power.


( And )

Last night I posted the song Miracles by Jefferson Starship as My Favourite Record OF ALL TIME!™ and my good buddy, cherielabombe pointed out that she really liked it but she was 4 years old when it came out. What a four year old made of the lyric I'm not sure, when it seems to be all ladies and gentlemen doing filthy things to one another with ecstatic results, including some rude words and noises slipped in which the censors possibly missed.

So I thought of what songs I had liked myself at the age of four. ( 1960! )

Happy memories of Edinburgh University, halls of residence, student life, being young and dumb and full of vigour!

Our Lady J is celebrating 20,000 hits on Pink Prada Purse on YouTube. Let's add a few more!

Another absolutely splendid Duckie!



We went down to Peckham to have food and drinks and fun with some friends, at an event organised to exploit the presence upon these shores of a friend from Iowa. Despite the torrential downpour that suddenly broke over us, we all managed to make it to ( Duckie )

Went to the pictures this afternoon, an appropriate entertainment for a day that had proven suddenly autumnal. Saw District 9, a South African sci fi film. It's great! It explains very little and shows you a great deal of fun stuff.


Like all the best sci fi, it takes themes from contemporary culture and presents us with metaphorical teasers. On the surface, this one is about race, about the othering and subjugation of millions of people. It's about the ways that political oppression is sustained and how easily we can all be hoodwinked by the powerful. It has so many more delicate touches in it too.

It works on every level, I think. The cinematography is great (it reminded me hugely of City of God), the sound is great (the click language of the aliens, the incidental music) and the effects are very well managed. The 'prawns' make the Cylon centurions look clunky and robotic. But the main thing is that it's a rattling good story that moves along at a fair old lick, and you can't predict every turn of the plot, right up until the ending where much is tantalisingly unresolved. I admired the ending very much. And the central figure of Wikus van der Merwe is played by a guy who's apparently never been in a film before: Sharlto Copley. He does a great job. You like him, he's funny, but even from the first he is seamlessly inserting crude racist epithets into everyday exchanges and he's no mindless mass-market Hollywood good guy.

I'm sure there's lot more to say but have to go cook some prawns.

During the gap between #71 and #72, I continued to post at least one Favourite Record OF ALL TIME! each week on Facebook. Some time I shall perhaps list those here. We shall see...
So, how gay is this? Boys Town Gang and Can't Take My Eyes Off You.

( Rambles on further... )

Like London buses, you wait for a blog post for ages and then two come along at once! I am in the middle of several jobs but waiting for something to happen in every case before I can proceed further, so shall use the time to muse here.



I wanted to say a word about ( audiobooks )

My dear partner has recently posted to his blog after a gap of some many months. Shamed by his sudden industry, I shall do ( the same )

Crazy paving!

Mr Bula has pictures of the mini aliens!

I <3 Mike Patton, and to judge by coverage of the Brixton Academy reunion tour last week, he's just as gorgeous now as he always was.

Look at the alarmingly young Jon Stewart introducing the Afghan Whigs (and a very young, slim Greg Dulli there too). I saw these guys live three times in the 90s and played this album relentlessly.

Seasonal!

Evokes some very happy childhood summertime memories.

Obvious, I know. First of the Gang to Die was his encore at his hometown 50th birthday gig. It was blindingly good.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Eurovision! Looking forward to the customary Eurovision party this evening down in fabulous Peckham (bittersweet this year because there will be no B this year) and so here is my very favourite Eurovision song evah! Came second in the competition two years ago and I love it still, listen to it on the iPod all the time: Verka Serduchka with the 2007 Ukraine entry Danzing Lasha Tumbai. Love the frock. Love the hat. Love the glittertwinks performing on either side.

Weekly weigh in: 97.1kg. Lost 3.4kg in a week. Usually do lose quite a bit in the first week on the Atkins torture. Not bad at all considering I've been eating like food was going out of fashion (though not any of the starchy stuff that Atkins disallows) and drinking gallons of booze. Have been doing only a gentle and fairly short routine when at the gym but I have been to the gym every day, except for Tuesday. Encouraging! Keep it up, Porkboy! No thai curries! No thai curries! No thai curries!

A lot of synchronicity this past week - random mentions of this song and of Beck then I listened to it on youtube the other day then Adam and Joe played it this morning for Black Squadron's listening pleasure.

Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why dont you kill me?
(get crazy with the cheese whiz)

See, I'm not prejudiced against Scientologists...

I lost tons and tons of weight in the course of the last year. Then I went through a grim period where the diet and the exercising all came unstuck. And, in a couple of months, I put half of the 20kg I'd lost back on again. One of the things that worked before was me posting my weight here every Saturday so that I could see the pain was having results. Going to start back on the diet and the gym kick this weekend and this time I'm going to torque up the weigh and shame thing by making this thread public.
baseline weight: 100.5kg ^^!