Top
Nonsense
These We have Loved
BLOGADOON
latest
next week
previous week
first week
Links
Responses to:
blogadoon@iansie.com
º December 11th-17th 2000
Monday Vauxhall Tavern, Rick Bébout
Tuesday rugby team, gay greeting
Wednesday Marc Almond
Thursday limitless our greed
Friday yours was yum
Saturday office parties
Sunday It's Christmas, Carol
º Monday 11th December 2000
Maybe more next week on Dame Edna at Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and why her show is such an institution. This week I found the whole thing rather dispiriting: Edna herself still crazed from a night at Trade, a dubious riff about Myra Hindley as Santa, and the whole place so full that at times, my dear, it was too rammed to get a cigarette to your lips.
Perhaps the whole thing is finally falling victim to its own success - when your gay space is squashed by several fat middle-aged couples fresh out of an Essex steak-house, it may be time to move on. Nonetheless, I managed a few beers and kissed a few familiar faces - then home in time to watch Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, a telling contrast.
Meanwhile, a rousing plug for Rick Bébout's 'Promiscuous Affections, A Life in The Bar, 1969-2000'
Some selective quotes may give the flavour of this vast autobiographical site covering the first 50 years of Bébout's life as a gay activist and journalist:
"The very word 'bar' means something to gay people, gay men in particular, that it does not mean in the wider world. It is much more than a place to have a drink. Most people, even many gay people, have no idea what our lives can be like in these places. Bars, along with baths and discos, have been disparaged by too many of us as foolish, sinful places...But they were places of wondrous life, places to be celebrated."
"I believe that the erotic is central to life, to true human perception. I don't mean just sex, but eroticism -- ambient, serendipitous; resisting the easy categories of which modern 'gay rights' mavens are so fond."
And this, from the excellent Neil Bartlett: "I become the gay man I am not by expressing any innate desire (that's homosexuality), but by joining a particular culture, by learning a particular language. I've always thought the phrase should be 'going in,' not 'coming out'."
Bébout is just nine months older than I am. Given all of the above, I guess I don't have to point out the parallels betwen his epic work and my own scant efforts here.
º Tuesday 12th December 2000
Did everybody catch the picture of the Cambridge University rugby team on the front of today's Independent?
Last night to Compton's (grim), Bar Code (very grim) and then onto the Retro Bar (the theory being that it would be packed on a Monday with kids going onto Popcorn at Heaven). But before I could get there David sprang up out of the pavement, in that way that only your very best friends and lovers can.
As we stand drinking, and talking (largely about blogs and blogging, and why anyone should bother), in walks some queen who, spotting some friend at the other side of the room, screams "Where the fuck were you on Saturday night?!"
I murmur to David "...the traditional gay greeting.". And David says to me "There's your blog for tomorrow."
º Wednesday 13th December 2000
Last night to Marc Almond at the Union Chapel.
Sinsational.
º Thursday 14th December 2000
According to the latest issue of the London Review of Books the poetry of J H Prynne is "difficult..obscure...imbricated".
But hey, after a night at the A-Bar, the White Swan and Sailors, this much I can understand:
...Cry as you
will, take what you
need, the night is young
and limitless our greed.
º Friday 15th December 2000
And so the saga of Ms Swire breaks out on the front pages.
I received my copy of the 'salacious tittle-tattle' in Monday's mail; today it's on the front page of the Telegraph; how long before Ms Swire herself is hosting a show on Channel 5?
Oh and by the way, just in case you didn't get a copy, the bit they don't quote is: "I hadn't swallowed for years but yours was yum and very good for me too! Apparently it's very good conditioner for your hair too."
º Saturday 16th December 2000
Will Self once wrote that, working as he does at home, his office party consists of a six-pack, some twiglets, and a wank behind the photocopier. Wise move. There are, it seems, party people and office-party people. A few tips for those who don't get out much:
There won't be a cloakroom. At the end of the evening your bag and your coat will be where you left them, not where you dizhtinctly remember leaving them.
There is no necessary connection between the amount you drink and how much you pay for it. Drink what you want, not what you can.
When someone starts staring into the middle distance after you've spoken at them for five minutes, it is not because they are hypnotised by your verbal felicities.
the proper place for lengthy criticism of long-established office procedure is a carefully-constructed memo, not the dark corner of a crowded wine-bar.
Demanding someone dance with you might work when you're fourteen but tends to lose its charm when you're forty.
Corporate karaoke only works if you're japanese.
Never start telling a joke if you can't remember how to finish it.
There will always be some people at a party who are more attractive than you. There should always be some who are less attractive than you. When one of these groups outnumbers the other by more than fifty per cent: leave.
There will be one precisely right moment at which to make a swift and elegant exit: seize it.
The best time to decide how you're going to get home is at the beginning of the evening, not the end.
Shouting is not attractive at the best of times; shouting at or by muddle-eyed women who have lost their shoes is just plain ugly.
Throwing up was not designed as a spectator sport.
º Sunday 17th December 2000
Last night to the pub-theatre at the Hen and Chickens to see 'It's Christmas, Carol', with Scrooge as an ageing transvestite miserabilist running a video shop in Oldham. 'Audience participation' was mentioned, so we feared the worst when we found that the cast of seven would be playing to an audience of (count 'em) ten.
Major potential for embarassment. But it was wonderful: a thoroughly professional job with fab costumes, good dancing, great singing and a more than liberal sprinkling of every gay joke you ever heard of. My how we laughed.
Mark, Jonathan, David and I were the only gay people in the audience, which surprised us - looks like the show has been under-publicised. Take a bunch of chums, get drunk and go - for a merry gay lesbian and transgendered Christmas.
......previous week
