March 1st 2004 - March 7th 2004
Sunday Coptered
Saturday Misc
Friday So...
Thursday Ok, slightly funny
Wednesday Inner thigh
Tuesday Big Gay News
Monday Non-standard
Sunday 7th March 2004
I blush to think how the quality of my tv viewing has declined over the last few months. I've even taking to recording ER. But it was worth it for the bit where the chief doctor that nobody likes has a funny turn up on the roof, watching the helicopter's rotors and remembering how he lost his arm. And then he goes downstairs and catches the idiot intern smoking a spliff in the courtyard. And then he looks up. And the helicopter falls on him.
Saturday 6th March 2004
Miscellany
"Tell a dream and lose a friend" or so they say. Club promoters have too many friends already, so Patrick Lilley won't mind me telling you he dreamt he went on a caravan holiday with David Bowie.
And did you hear the one about the drunk lollipop lady? I could so do that job.
All that fuss about Iris Murdoch and now it turns out she was a crap shag...
And blueberries may be pear-shaped.
Friday 5th March 2004
Despite my best efforts, Blogadoon stubbornly remains something of a minority interest (aka cult).
I'm not sure why that is. Too sporadic? Too queer? Too bitter? Too, gulp, intelligent? Should I install a comments system? Does my blog-rolling needs work? Or maybe there's some fatal flaw in my css sheets that makes the damn thing unreadable on the majority of machines?
Whatever.
On those rare, but rewarding, occasions when it becomes clear that I'm in the actual physical presence of a real reader my brain turns to mush.
As last night, shortly after midnight, in a club due south of Tate Modern (yes, that one), when someone who'd managed to get their clothes on a few moments before me leant over and whispered, "So are you going to give this place a good write-up then?"
My eyesight's crap at the best of times, and the stygian gloom of most gay venues doesn't exactly help, so, here as elsewhere, it's entirely possible that this was someone I'd met before. Alternatively, it was a total stranger who'd just witnessed me..getting up to no good at all.
Either way, it was a buzz. And, either way, the only cogent response was to grin widely and say nothing.
So if you see me out and about, hey, say hi. Just remember that a cogent response is not part of the deal.
Thursday 4th March 2004
Cockle jokes update
The unfunny joke about the Chinese cocklers,sharks and Morecambe Bay first reached me as a txt msg about 24 hours after the story broke; Popbitch repeated it a few days later. Anne Winterton (who should know better) was then reported as having told it at a private dinner, which gave the media the chance to repeat it, as it were, out loud.
Several commentators (inc Janet Market-Porter, who should also know better) subsequently grasped the opportunity to point out the bleeding obvious by explaining that, actually, we use humour to defuse situations that scare us - a justification that might hold considerably more, um, water if any of us could possibly conceive of Ms Winterton giving any more than a blind tuppenny toss for the fate of a handful of deceased Chinese immigrants.
Be that as it may, I got to the White Swan last night slightly later than usual, just in time to catch the end of the drag-compère's opening number, a new version of Fagin's song from Oliver, retitled 'You've got to pick a cockle or two':
"..I always say to my Chinese
Don't let the water get over your knees.."
I admit I laughed. But I also noticed she didn't pause for applause as she ended the song and went straight into her appeal for members of the public to come on stage and take their clothes off.
Wednesday 5th March 2004
I dare say you caught the story about how New York feminist Naomi Wolf has complained about a pass made at her by the literary critic Harold Bloom, twenty years ago.
Contrary to what Ms Wolf may have been expecting, most of the coverage of her story seems to have concentrated on deriding her for going public with the accusation after so many years - Naomi Wolf as victim? Oh, give me a break.
I have to confess to a sneaking sympathy for Bloom, not least because Wolf's immediate reaction to his placing his hand on her 'inner thigh' was to throw up in the sink: I guess that's a No then.
Mind you, that could have been an equally valid reaction to his chat-up line: "He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. 'You have the aura of election upon you,' he breathed."
Either way, I can't but sympathise with his dejected exit: "When he reemerged - from the bedroom with his coat - a moment later, I was still frozen, my back against the sink. He said: 'You are a deeply troubled girl.' Then he went to the table, took the rest of his sherry, corked the bottle, and left."
Tuesday 2nd March 2004
Big Gay News
The number of gay weddings in San Francisco and a growing number of other cities now numbers in excess of 3,400. That's almost 10 new gay wedding anniversaries to be celebrated every single day of the year - a powerful lot of weddings.
Best yet, it was all started when a man named Gavin Newsom, a quiet politician dismissed by many as a corporate suit, shared the same sense of outrage that you and I felt on hearing George Bush declare, in his State of the Union message, that heterosexual marriage forms "one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilisation" - a view shared with The Pope and, slightly morer surprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose dire prediction of concomitant riots in the street raises several interesting mental pictures).
Personally, I abhor the idea of state-sanctioned relationships in any form, and would far prefer that the institution of marriage be abolished altogether - a move that, ironically, the American government itself now supports with the Social Security Administration's decision to not accept any marriage licenses from San Francisco for the time being.
Back on this side of the pond, the Telegraph finally got to run the headline it's been waiting for all these years: Killer pouffes.
(The Telegraph, you'll recall, is the paper whose sub-editors have long-laboured under a style-book that outlaws the use of the word 'gay' - in anything other than a headline - a policy, that even under their new young editor, has encouraged the use of antiquated solecisms such as "homosexual rights" as recently as a fortnight ago.)
Elsewhere in the UK media, coverage of the news that yet another popular soap opera is to feature its first gay kiss has tended to focus on quite how this same-sex snog was going to be portrayed - given that The Archers is, after all, a radio programme.
(Once the sound engineers have sorted that out, I look forward to the next logical step: radio's first gay wank.)
His issues of Wallpaper* always had the same cover: thin woman with hair pulled back in a pony-tail looking lovingly at gay man in tight Tom-Ford-style shirt and groovy trousers. No sexual chemistry whatsoever. Wallpaper* was a style bible for people who live in boxes, always dine out and even then only eat something if it matches their sweater or frock...
- Janet Street-Sweeper gives her (unavailable on-line unless you care to pay for it) opinion of Tyler Brulé in this Sunday's Independent.
Overheard at the office
"..that picture of the Pope, we were going to put 'so-and-so smells the Pope's finger' and then we sobered up and I wrote 'so-and-so kisses the Pope's ring' and then I went 'whoahhh..'"
And finally...
Obituary watch: compare and contrast
Times: By middle age, he came himself to look something like a bishop of the old school, with a round, balding head, pink cheeks and a striking combination of twinkling benevolence, a mischievous sense of fun and an authoritative, sometimes even stern, aspect.
Telegraph: Although he never married, Hooker's flat on the Brighton sea-front pullulated with friends, widows of friends and innumerable godchildren.
Independent: In an earlier age and time Michael Hooker would have been described as a confirmed bachelor.. In recent years, however, his existence was frequently enlivened by a succession of handsome young men friends, including at one time a budding pop singer...
Monday 1st March 2004
Overheard at the office (1)
She: So..is Standard Life like, a company?
Me: [pause] As opposed to..a philosophy? [laughter]
She:[mutters] ..wanker
Overheard at the office (2)
She: Where are you from, Jo?
Jo: Me? I was born in Enfield
Me: Really? I was born in Enfield!
He: And only 45 years apart! [laughter]
......previous week
