moving on

got bored with this site.

try this instead

pip pip!

hip replacement therapy

Y'know what a stayathome I am. Scarcely go further than Somerfield from one Sunday to the next. So when I originally planned to blog this month, you would have heard all about hanging out with all the art whores at the Tate for a showing of Steven Arnold's Luminous Procuress, part of this summer's Dali season - a sign outside the screening room said 'sold out', but there seemed to be a VERY long guest list. Did ANYONE pay to get in? I wonder ...



That was followed a few days later by the hippest gig in Christendom, No Bra at the George & Dragon. Canapes handed round, then a little speech from the landlord afterwards thanking everyone for coming, including Jay Jopling and the staff of the White Cube. It all only took 20 minutes, from Suzanne plugging her laptop into the dj booth till it was all over, and I was back home and in bed by 10.30. My kinda gig.


Then it would have been that off the cuff Sunday night trip to see Taxidermia at the ICA. Don't read the reviews, and don't get all mither-y with it being Hungarian - it's the scream-out-loud funniest thing you'll see this year. More than made up for the overblown Gallic hysteria that was La Vie en Rose which we endured the previous Sunday night. Now there's a showbiz biopic just begging for a French & Saunders makeover.

Then David Hoyle opening in his new season at the RVT with wossername with the boob-n-face-job from Big Thingy, all interspersed with the two naffest shags I've seen this side of the millenium.

Then on the domestic front, there's the tale of my imminent eviction from sunny Old Street, followed by the unlikeliest reconciliation with him whose possibly receding hairline may never be referred to in a malicious soubriquet again.




But no, let's not go there just now.

Let's kick off with a nice afternoon with Owen on the South Bank, which you can read about here.

Then there was Saturday night.

I'm sure this says something about me when I can walk into Retro early evening, stone cold sober, only for one person to buy me a beer without being prompted, and someone else to tweak my nipple. And no, since you're asking, I haven't had work done on them. Thanks to the lovely Gerald&Stephen for doing the honours.

Then we were off to Duckie. Now I don't know about you, but I've always found the Duck a bit of a hit and miss affair. More than once every coupla months for me is pushing it. Sure the Hip-Hop Collective were fun, and they played Imagination's Just An Illusion AND 20th Century Boy, but trying to inflict Pretty Vacant on that crowd of post-post-post-punk preppies halfway through the evening is stretching it. What did the Wifes expect them to do? Swan dives from the stage? Mass bottlings on the balcony? It's an essential track, and let's face it, where would this blog be without it, but I suspect it's had its day in public with the over 40s. Oh yeh, and while we're on the subject, I can put up with Morrissey and Kate bleedin Bush now and again, but that Tarrant in the Rush Hour number is unforgiveable.

Me and Nick left at half 12 while dear Amy was doing her utmost to get some credulous punters up on stage for a dance-off quiz. I think I'd rather stick with the Pistols.

Had a weird dream when I finally hit the sack. I danced briefly with Jonny Woo, who was on the way out of the pub in full Jack Smith/Cockettes stylee glitter make-up and a 60s psychedelic print mini, then Amy was up on stage announcing the Reader's Wifes imminent retirement. The crowd was strangely underwhelmed.

Hmm.

Come to think of it, we were sitting just two seats down from Jonny in full warpaint at Luminous Procuress, so I guess there is some kind of synchronicity to all this.

And just before I forget, rush on down to Heal's in Tottenham Court Road for the summer sale before it ends. They've got Duckie shower caps on the ground floor. I kid you not. They're covered with the yellow rubber duck wallpaper graphic they used to have on the website. Dead spit. The shower caps don't come with a soundtrack of Blur on a stylaphone tho.

You heard it here first.

Hopeless Ligger

I would never have made it in PR. I go to ‘functions’ and all I want to do is grab a drink then run out the door. Got invited to the David Hatch private view at Fred on Wednesday (ok, when I say "invited", a mate told me he was going, and I latched on like Hoxton’s finest). I liked the Fred stand at the Zoo Art Fair last year, and I have thing for Nayland Blake’s mad rabbits, so I even schlepped up in my nattiest Paul Smith schmutter. ‘Course by the time I’d trailed out to the wrong end of Cambridge Heath after a vile day at work, I was knackered.

There were a couple of familiar faces there, including Brian Robinson whose interviewing technique with Peter de Rome at the lezzygay filmfest drove us from our seats in NFT1 last March (tho his conversation with James Bidgood on the new DVD of Pink Narcissus is pretty groovy), but when said mate had failed to show after 20 mins, I’d had my fill and went home for an early night. I was too done in to make much of the flower-faced boys morphing into vultures, paradise birds and giant squid, but I quite liked the smaller, Hannah Hoch inspired portraits. Did everyone in London’s Fashionable East End Quarter go to the Paris/NY Dada exhibition last year, or did they just blag a copy of the encyclopedic catalogue from their galleristas?

Much more fun was the meet’n’greet with Buck Angel the next afternoon at Kudos. It’s not every day you get the chance to play hookey from work with the world’s first FTM pornstar. Top marks to Dawn Right Nasty for drunkenly texting me the details in the wee small hours of Thursday morning – I knew my insomnia would have its uses one day. I don’t think I’ve darkened Kudos’ doors since they opened in the early 90s – it’s a bit fouffy for me – and I wasn’t sure if it was quite the right venue to launch Buckback Mountain, but as you can tell from Dawn’s blog, we had the angelic one to ourselves for the best part of an hour. He’s such a honey. And he doesn’t really look like the landlord at all. Far more tattoos.

Oh yeah, and there’s going to be photographic evidence courtesy of Fetishlad.com. Allegedly. That’ll look great at the employment tribunal when I finally get what’s coming to me. “It was a networking event, honest!”

Then a works leaving do the same evening on the 29th floor of Guy’s Hospital tower. A funny sort of venue, the Robens Suite, with dark shiny wood panelling that’s definitely seen better days, and a kinda ok cold buffet, that was tasty enough, tho you felt somehow some of it at least should have been hot (crispy duck rolls, beef and yorkshires, mini quiches, bits of pitta bread with no dip apart from a rather nasty blue cheese slop, that sort of thing), but even in the dank driech of Thursday evening, my GOD the view from the 29th floor!!

True to the public sector ethos, the place had only been booked till 8, so suddenly the booze vanished, the food did the same, and the tables were being rearranged around our ears. We relocated first to the George Inn in Borough High Street, and stood in the drizzle for the next hour, then headed over to the Southwark Tavern. Now I wasn’t really pissed, but it was one of those evenings when I thought I’d be able to keep it in check and didn’t. Oh dear. No wonder I’m feeling sorry for myself this weekend. Still at least it was only white wine. Oh, and bitter. Hmm.

Dropped into Mme Wendy’s for a swift one with the boys from work on Friday evening, and caught this picture in QX. Suzie Krueger and Buck Angel at Hardon. What a pair. Now I knew SUSANNE when she was studying law a few years back, and I was still serving time in the library gulag, stamping books. Nice woman. Spotted me for a fairy almost the minute she walked in. That’s what I call gaydar.

Zoomed off from the Retro to do the Gormley exhibition with more or less the same crew who braved the John Waters’ triple bill the other week. And the verdict? To be perfectly honest I think he’s more interesting to read about than see. Space Station in the first hall is pretty overwhelming by virtue of sheer scale, which is roughly the same effect that Angel of the North has if you ever get to see it close up, and the steam room was a giggle, tho somewhat too full of shrieking teenagers to feel like anything more than a particularly freaky fairground ride.

The concrete pillbox jobbies were just dull in the unforgiving space that is the Hayward, as were, I’m afraid, all those wire structures upstairs. All I could think of when I saw these last things was a car showroom. Any of those pieces could hang in your local shopping precinct atrium, and you wouldn’t give them a second glance from one hungover Saturday afternoon trail round Primark to the next.

And that sliced bread thing? Mannah from heaven? Geddit? My dad took us to the Hayward for the first time in the early 70s, and I have a distinct memory of being bewildered by slices of mouldy bread and squashed chocolate teddies behind glass. Plus ca change. (Actually the most exciting thing about that visit was seeing the Draconians running round the South Bank staircases on Dr Who a couple of weeks later – that's the "Frontier in Space" serial for the Who dweebs amongst you).

Then there was the long, long queue for the glass box upstairs, which we avoided, and finally the game of spotting all the Gormlems from out on the smokers’ balcony. Thing is, I walk past them everyday on Waterloo Bridge, and believe me, the novelty wore off after the first week. We’ve even got three of the buggers on our own buildings at work, for what it’s worth. And the exhibition’s so popular. Banal, corporate art for banal, corporate times. Will anyone be bothered with him in 20 years? I wonder. Paolozzi he’s not.

But the thing that really gets me is, when did the wind-powered kinetic light sculpture on the Hayward’s roof stop working? For the first time that I can remember, you can get out onto the second balcony, and see that all the coloured neons have been removed. Did someone retire and forget to tell anyone where the on switch was? I think we should be told.

read it and weep

Well it's been about a year since I started this, and things have almost run their course here in blogland. I'm so damned busy I can't hardly stand it, so entries here are going to be few and far between. The dissertation is starting to kick in in earnest, and any time spent here is keenly felt. Might have to give it up chillun.


So what to tell you for now?


About the week I spent at Northampton Rugby Stadium learning ergonomics and getting the odd glimpse of the NZ Maoris practising that thing they do when they quiver their thighs and stick their tongues out at the Duke of Edinburgh? I had some photos taken on my shiny new phone, but I haven't got around to buying a USB cable (and at £30 a pop I'm less than inclined), so my candid shots of the Express Lift Tower, the road-side maggot machine, not to mention one of the most impressive examples of Norman archictecture in the country will have to wait for another idle moment.


What about the John Water's triple bill a couple of weeks back at the Barbican? Something of a marathon even for the most dedicated devotee of the Pope of Trash.

Pink Flamingos I think has stood the test of time the best. I realised that the VHS version I used to have was heavily censored: the chicken f*ck, the artificial insemination, the singing asshole, Divine giving Chicken/Danny Mills head then eating doggy doo, were all there in the raw. There aren't many movies that generate a genuine gag reflex, and deliver a great obscure r&r soundtrack to boot.

Then Female Trouble. This one kinda goes on a bit too long, but still has some great hairdos, and some great jokes: Edith Massey in skintight leather, the toolkit f*ck scene; Mink Stole utterly obnoxious as the retarded daughter Taffy getting her well-deserved comeuppance after running away and joining the Hare Krishnas; Divine performing on a trampoline then turning a gun on the audience. It left me with exactly the same headache I remember developing when me and my mate Alan, the pothead presidents elect of UEA Gaysoc got hold of some Norwich queen's video and showed it to a stoney-faced roomful of baby fags and teenage Greenham wimmin back in the dim and distant early 80s... I seem to remember Mink Stole reminiscing to Jonathan Ross on The Incredibly Strange Filmshow that her main memory of making the movie was endless screaming. That figures.

Then Desperate Living. Now there's a movie that can safely be put back on the shelf and forgotten about. The scenes in suburban Baltimore are admittedly hilarious: Mink Stole accusing her 6 year old son of rape; the baby in the fridge; the acidhead babysitter murdered by Liz Renay in a bowl of dogfood. Sadly once the action moves to Mortville, everything and everyone loses the plot. Apparently if you were ever taught by nuns it makes more sense. I wasn't. Too bad.

The audience was something to behold. Probably a smattering of Bell/Scala/Mix faces, but 25 years down the line, who knew? There was that bloke I pass on the way to work everyday who never says hello; Adam, our local teenage opera singer; those two peculiar nudists who used to go those seedy Gymnos events, and half the Actionettes who I think came in to check out the hairdos in Female Trouble. Then on the side of real people there was the lovely Brendan, my last London-based link with when I was innocent 18, and from later Kentish Town/King's Cross days; Nick, the only person from college still in touch; the landlord; Roberto from more recent times. Oh yeah, and Jamie, who once messaged me on G'daah with a photo of himself drinking wee out of a dogbowl, then who feigned amnesia when we were finally introduced down the George as mutual friends of Francis (with whom he has since fallen out. And with whom I apparently have recently fallen out, if that's what complete radio silence means. Not sure why precisely this has happened, but I have my suspicions. Might have been something to do with me actually saying out loud in a conversation with him "actually I don't give a shit how much your house is worth." while he was coming down off a weekend on the horse tranquillisers. I had my reasons ...) In fact a representative sample of just about every part of my life in the last 25 years.

What else? We've had a major leak through the ceiling from 'er next door/upstairs. It's taken over 6 weeks to get fixed - a deadly combination of lumpen proletariat apathy and fecklessly inept sub-contracted council plumbers. Drip. Drip. Drip.

There's no point in asking you'll get no reply

Funny old week, where certain friends proved to be flakes of the very crumbliest, flakiest variety, new acquaintances sprang surprises, and to get biblical, one particular dog returned to its vomit only a year later than expected.

Some of you will already have been bored to tears by tales of the balding YBA. Nearly 18 months after he dumped me for the 3rd time, and officially broke off contact, I get an email yesterday apologising for c*ntish behaviour, and meekly suggesting the renewal of some sort of dialogue. My first reaction is that he's been dumped again, and I'm probably number 1o in a list of possible ports-in-a-storm - the recycling of my own words in this most recent message, together with a certain, queasily familiar recidivism smack of grovelling calculation . Obviously those expensive sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy aren't working too well. The rationalist in me tells me to ignore it and move on. A certain sour satisfaction in knowing I was right works alongside a few tattered remnants of christian charity in tempting me to forgive and forget. And another part of me would still like to see him locked in a room with a rabid mandrill.

Don't watch this space.

On a breezier note , I fixed up with a nice young man from G'daah a couple of weeks ago. On his arrival in this sunny corner of the Islington/Hackney borders, his first words were "I've been here before". Now although my memory is certainly a great deal shakier than it was, there are some things I do retain, so it was a relief when he 'fessed up to having been dragged back here from the Oak Bar some time ago, by the landlord and one of the landlord's best mates in my absence. And before y'all start imagining scenes of more than usual depravity, it was best mate that had pulled ... and of course it goes without saying, they were all veh veh drunk ... The one detail the nice young man omitted, presumably to protect my finer feelings, but which emerged on subsequent discussions with 'im indoors, was that they had spent the night in MY BED. Well, I've certainly been guilty of far worse behaviour, so that one can pass without too much comment.


Fast forward to one rainy evening this week, and I found myself heading up to the northern slopes of the Picadilly Line for second helpings. Coming into the nice young man's pad, he mentioned that his flatmate (and ex) was away in Athens, which immediately rang alarm bells from recent chatroom dribblings. Later (much later) it emerged that flatmate (and ex) is fairly well known to me already from G'daah, and has also spent a few Saturday afternoons in EC1 in the last year or so. I have a few standards left, so a big kiss'n'tell session most definitely did not ensue. However enough information was imparted on his side to make it obvious that some point-scoring games were being played between him and his flatmate (and ex) and while this didn't exactly have me running screaming for the door, it has made me think that it is perhaps time to get out of the playpen for a bit.

And the flakes? I think I'll draw a tactful little veil over that one.

Brendan tells me it's like I'm living a version of Schnitzler's Reigen crossed with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. (This was on the phone while he had the Coronation programme on in the background, and we were both commenting on how lonely the Queen of Tonga looked in all that rain. Did she have an official needle-finder was our question?) But Schnitzler's a new one on me. I think it just goes to show that if you hang around in one place for long enough, real or virtual, the whole world will pass by.

I'm off to Northampton tomorrow for a week of learning about ergonomics. I've made a resolution not to touch t'internet while I'm away - no email, no trolling, no nothing, just quiet evenings in the hotel, reading up for the dissertation (Bourdieu, Chin-Tao Wu and Mark Rectanus - google-em!). Back in the land of the living next Friday night. I'll be like a coiled spring.

Gay's The Word

This is kind of old news which I meant to blog quite a while back, and I’m sure you saw it in the weekend papers simply ages ago darling, but it still seems relevant. Gay’s the Word, the UK’s only dedicated, independent, lesbian & gay bookshop is under threat of closure. In a way it amazes me it’s still open, but it’s been part of my London landscape for the whole of my adult life, and if it closed it would be a real loss. Sod bland porno outlets, Prowler and Clone Zone, and the mainstream lezzygay bits of Waterstones and Borders, we’re talking quality, quirky, seriously queer, radical, eccentric, independent bookselling here. (oh god and a serious spelling mistake on their homepage, heaven help ‘em)

I freely admit, I’m an impatient bugger like everyone else, and I get most of my obscure needs satisfied by Amazon and ABE Books these days, but Gay’s the Word occupies an important place in my heart. What’s more that nice man Jake Arnott supports them. And where else over the last 25 years would I have been able to amass, amongst others, the following titles?

In no particular order…

*Shock Value, John Waters
The Complete Reprint of Physique Pictorial
*A Class Apart by James Gardner
*Not for Your Hands by David Rees (the bilious autobiography of the author of The Milkman’s On His Way, who bizarrely was an oldboy of my school and shared the same A Level English teacher)
*Queer Fear vols 1 & 2 (horror fiction anthologies)
*High Camp: a Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films vols 1 & 2 by Paul Roen
*Anal Pleasure and Health by Jack Morin
*The Foreskin: a Closer Look by Bud Berkeley
*Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany by Harry Oosterhuis
*Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture by A. Evans
*Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag – the History of an Obsession by Peter Ackroyd (Peter Ackroyd?)
*The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) by John Lauristen
*Most of the E.F. Bensons, all of the Armistead Maupins and the Neil Bartletts, and the complete run of Square Peg magazine, minus no.1 which was only sold round the pubs.

And from their amazing 2nd hand section the following were unearthed:

*the hardback edition of Quentin Crisp’s How to Become a Virgin;
*A Lasting Relationship: Homosexuals and Society by Jeremy Seabrook, which I can remember furtively leafing through behind the stacks at Surbiton Public Library on the way home from school;
*something that John Rechy wrote after City of Night and Numbers which is so atrocious that I can’t even remember the title;
*and most recently, the original paperback edition of The Joy of Gay Sex, with a sweet handwritten message on the title page, but more importantly, with text by Edmund White – this one I also have fond memories of, as myfirstboyfriend had a strange edited edition called Gay Friends and Lovers with somewhat sketchier versions of the Michael Leonard illustrations, and advice on giving blowjobs that I will take with me to my grave.


Get down there. Sponsor a bookshelf. Buy stuff. Go there every week and buy more stuff. Keep it open.

Gay's the Word, 66 Marchmont Street, LONDON WC1N 1AB
Russell Square tube.

Random

The Morning After the Night Before

It's a strange world where you can get woken up by the late night arrival of someone else's midweek gentleman caller, only to be cruised by the same at 8 in the morning as he emerges from the bathroom while you're ironing a shirt.

Only Gay in the Village

Similarly strange in Vauxhall Cross, where a couple of Victorian pubs, and a row of railway arches with a glitterball outside gets called a 'gay village'. Is this what we've been fighting for?

Do You Think I'm Looking Older

I've got no illusions about my shape and size, but I have to admit mixed responses when a distinctly bearish 32 year old admits in one breathto joining WeightWatchers then says you have a pretty good body for a man of your age?

Such times.