Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Originally wrote this for our work e-mail list but since it accurately reflect my views on the film, I shall replicate it more or less in full here:

Nikki and I just got back from seeing Juno. It was, as Seb, Rachel, and the Academy Awards Comittee had advised, fucking fantastic. I loved how realistic (almost) everyone was in it. Not since Joss Whedon put pen to paper have I seen so many stereotypes be skillfully avoided. It’s got an utterly awesome script and Ellen Page is unbelievably excellent in it, and even when he’s not in Spider-Man, JK Simmons is like, the best thing since sliced Jesus. The only really weak member of the cast was Jennifer “weeping” Garner, playing the same character she plays in everything: the mildly unreasonable, self-righteous woman who breaks into sobs at the slightly provocation. Good job that’s the kind of character she was playing really, but would it fucking hurt for her to try and show some range once in a while?
 
Also: Moldy Peaches on the soundtrack. WHY SO MUCH? I can’t fucking stand NY anti-folk, and they’re public offenders number 1. “ooh, look, we’ve written deliberately poor, meandering under-produced songs and sung them in cracked and earnest vocals!” Ugh. It really, almost inexplicably, fucks me off how ingenuine it is when it’s pretending to be exactly the opposite. Twee, shallow music for people with twee, shallow ideas. Get me a hacksaw.

Guess what I did Wednesday night while Nikki was on her way back from Belgium. Still thinking? NEED A CLUE?

How’s this?

That’s right. A free Frank Black “precore” show (it’s like an encore, only before the gig.) I’d been planning to go since I learnt of its existance a couple of days before, and since the previous one in Dublin ended in the police escorting him away from a crowd of a thousand fans, I spent the day glued to the Frank Black forums to see if there was any news on how it was going to go down. By complete chance, I discovered he was appearing on 6Music, so I tuned in to see if I’d missed it. Luckily I hadn’t, and when he appeared he confirmed that the council would not be letting them do the gig as planned, but to stay tuned…

A brief interview and a few songs followed. At the end, it was announced that a new venue had been found - the Social on Little Portland Street, a venue I last visited to see David Ford when he was thrashing out his new album, which occurred not too long after Nikki moved down to London - possibly even just before. With that in mind, I grabbed Nikki’s old, battery-less camera and fled, eager to get in line. I popped into the newsagents on Haven Lane and purchased some, then combined the batteries with the battery-less camera leaving me with one working camera. I love it when life is like an adventure game.

Naturally, because I wanted it to be fast, the Tube was completely fucked so I spent the 50-minute wait on what should’ve been a 25 minute journey praying to Satan that I got there in time. When I emerged from Oxford Circus I had to orient myself, but still managed to make it to the venue in time to join the front of the queue with about 8 or 9 other people. We waited until just gone 5, when who should arrive but Frank Black/Black Francis himself, with tour manager and cameraman in tow. As he waited outside for someone to let him into the venue, he did stand at the front of the queue and speak unto us (literally, he stood mere inches away from me) and it was fucking awesome because he’s FRANK BLACK, y’know? If I had a religion it’d probably involve him.

He explained the situation with the gigs to us, and I made him laugh when he said “they told us we’d be arrested if we tried to gig because, I dunno, they thought we were going to start a riot or something.” and I was like “Wait, we’re not!?” demonstrating the rapist-like with that’s gotten me where I am today. His tour manager also discussed how Westminster council cracked down on busking like the gestapo (I’m paraphrasing) but once they heard he was taking the free gig to Camden’s jurisdiction they naturally stopped caring.

Eventually he was let in and we followed, and I found myself a nice place to watch, sitting on a table in a booth near the front. He played a substantial set of about 8, maybe 9 songs, including Where Is My Mind? and Motorway to Roswell, as well as some stuff off Bluefinger (easily his best album since the Pixies and you should all totally get it) and Svnfngr, and a new song. And it was all fucking great. I hestitate to use the word magical, because my soul is dead, but that’s got to be about as close as it gets. We’re talking Arcade Fire at Porchester Hall, 4Scott, Placebo-instore levels of impressiveness. Plenty of between-song banter, too (as well as during song-banter) and he used that special ability musicians have to make the slightest comments seem hilarious. He also did this amusing thing in Where is my Mind where he mimed the instrumental bits, which doesn’t sound that interesting, but y’know, you probably had to be there. AND I WAS!

To end, here is a youtube embedment of various versions of the only song people seem to have recorded, the aforementioned Where is my Mind. If you want the full James Experience, this specific video was recorded by the person literally sitting in front of me, as you can probably see if you compare the video angle to the angle in my photo.

Otherwise:

On Friday Josh, Ian and I checked into the ‘Bush VUE at the very real risk of losing our lives to see the JJ Abram’s film (that he neither directed nor wrote) Cloverfield. Despite all the hype that was allegedly going on, the cinema was well less than half full, which I think I’m right in saying is a good sign that pleases cinema owners. Still, if I’ve learnt anything from 25 years of being increasingly in the minority, it’s that you can’t judge a film by the size of its audience.

Now, this brings me to my first point. One about the audience. I speak not of the specific people in the cinematorium on that day, but of the wider demographic that the films of this particular cinema are aimed at. The young people of Shepherd’s Bush.

Before the film began, we were “treated” to the unique spectacle of cinema adverts. In between the tradition japery about mobile phones, deoderant and alchohol, we had a succession of public service messages designed to confused and subdue the population. In a short 10 minute period we were “advised” the following:

Have sex with a condom. (well, rather, have sex with a woman (or man) while using a condom)
Do not drink alcohol excessively.
Do not drink and drive.
Do not have sex without a condom.
That person you’re having sex with probably has venereal disease.
and most importantly:
Do not be a twat on the bus.

That last advert was particularly pointed given the usual type of people inhabiting the 207 down Uxbridge Road. By which I mean people who hold loud conversations with figments of their own imagination, drug dealers and 13 year old wiggas who think they are in a gang. The bus advert in question showed 4 different views of a bus, being shown concurrently, accurately replicating the nightmarish claustrophobia of bus travel. It prominently featured a monied, white male neglecting those around him while shouting about business deals on his phone, as well as rowdy teenagers who were unintentionally harassing a frail pensioner with their “banging” “choons” which were being piped through tinny speakers on their “mobiles.” Luckily, a thoughtful young woman and an asian youth were on hand to straighten out society, requesting that the fuckers in question clean up their act. Of course, in real life, such intervention would undoubtedly result in you being fatally stabbed in the kidneys while onlookers pretended not to notice, so quite what the advert is trying to suggest I don’t know. It has, if nothing else, successfully reminded me why taking the bus in London is less a form of travel, and more a form of Russian gambling.

Anyway, it’s lucky that the government is on hand to deliver this propaganda to us. I know that most of us would drink until we passed out were it not for the helpful advice of The Man, though one wonders if their binge-drinking and violent culture of careless fornication and disrespect isn’t largely related to confused law-making and poor social welfare in the first place, and simply telling people to “stop it!” isn’t really going to sort anything out when the root causes aren’t directly related to the manifest problems.

On the other hand, the movie industry has finally stopped relying on irritating public service anti-piracy messages and taken matters into its own hands, by making all movies for the forseeable future into complete, utter corn. Jumper, for instance, a film that sounds like it’s about sweaters, but is actually about a teleporting man and the cabal of people out to kill him. Or the new Star Trek, which by all available indications appears to be a film about welding. Not much chance of pirating those…

Still, maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, Cloverfield was fucking brilliant, spending the first 15 minutes ensuring that I was as bored as possible so that the remaining hour seemed even more brilliant. It’s the film that awful Godzilla remake wishes it was.