Hey All

Friday I bought myself another bookshelf from Ikea.

Saturday I made it to my friend's birthday picnic and then onto the Saturday of Give It A Name at Earl's Court Arena.

Then back to Battersea Park for the after-picnic party with extreme Asian movies and stuff. Saw drunken arguments and stuff on the nightbus again (stuff being someone throwing a bottle at someone else and narrowly missing me, me looking out the window the whole time pretending not to notice what was going on). Hate the night bus.

Sunday: Last day of covering Give It A Name. Jimmy Eat World blow my mind. AFI don't connect for some reason; Davey's voice sounds strained. Take the train home and cook up some mince and pasta before it expires. Watch Doug Anthony Allstars clips on youtube, trying not to laugh loud enough to wake my flatmates. Collapse into bed.

Today: I've got writing to do. And I should probably put together that bookshelf.

Over and out.

-J

Tired

Hey all,

Yesterday I made it to my friend's picnic in Battersea Park (proper) in the afternoon.

Which was cool.

Then I headed to the Emo Festival at Earl's Court Stadium, took notes, collected vox pops etc.

Interesting and surprising for the most part.

After the show headed over to the friend's after-picnic party at Battersea Park (vicinity) for a couple of hours.

Now I get some sleep before going back to the Emo Fest.

Over and out.

-J

Festival fun

Hey All,

Looks like I'm covering two days of Give It A Name on Saturday and Sunday for Alt Mag.

Thee Ed called me about it this afternoon, and the double passes just arrived by courier a minute ago.

Neato.

Now all I've got to do warm up my scribblig hand and work out who to give my spare tickets to.

-J

News

Hey All,

Last night I got to see Einsturzende Neubauten. Which ws pretty cool, since I have wanted to see them play ever since they toured Australia in 1991. The show was at Koko in Camden, and they played mostly newer material.

Apparently when they played at the Forum two years ago, they played a lot of classic material as they were celebrating their 25 year anniversary.

It was a lot less apocalyptic than I expected, but it was still worth seeing.

Lots of folk came out for the Neubauten show. Some friends handed me a flyer for a new club they are doing in June, which looks to be good.

Right now I'm feeling restless.

I still haven't made it to IKEA to get a new bookshelf, but it is top of my list to do.

Otherwise not much else to report.

Over and out.

-J

I have decided...

To get myself another bookshelf.

This decision is influenced by two things:

#1 The fact that my other bookshelf ran out of space a long time ago.

#2 That if I have another bookshelf I can free up all the desk space being taken by all the crap that has piled up there since the other bookshelf ran out of room and

#3 The discovery that there is an Ikea which is located closer than deepest, darkest Croydon. Still not necessarily close, but closer. Getting there won't be a mission likely to write off a whole day.

Fortunately the kind of bookshelf I need would only cost about £10-15, so it isn't going to break the bank.

By the end of this week I expect to be a Two-Bookshelf Power.

Over and out.

-J

Hey All

Another weekend is tailling off.

I've been awake for far too long.

I arrived home from clubbing last night at about 11, engineering works on the Northern Line making my journey home from Angel slightly different, this time taking the 30 to Archway then walking down Oxford Circus, wandering up to Holborn and exploring side streets I had never seen before. I found a pub hidden in an alleyway, with a sign saying 'Established 1549', and a plaque saying 'Established 1749'. Curious.

I also found a pretty big park, flanked on three sides by Georgian Mansions and with a Tudor looking complex of some sort on the fourth.

That was enough exploring for one day, so I hit the Central Line and headed East.

Arriving home around half 11, I checked my messages and did some writing here til about 1500. On my way home I had spotted a box full of door-top coat hooks (mental note, take photo) at a pound shop, something I had been looking for, for a while. Back at the flat it fit on my door nicely. Groovy, now I don't have to leave my jackets over the bedpost or hanging off the knob at the bottom of the bannister.

Then I jumped in the shower and pell melled to Tesco to do some much needed shopping before it shut.

Which I managed because I somehow time my departure just right to catch the 257. Shopping was managed quickly thanks to the list that I had compiled on the Tube home

Back at the flat I threw some towels into the machine and headed to the the tube station, planning to head to WH Smith at Stratford to buy some magazines and head back home in time to pull the towels out of the wash.

When I got to Stratford I discovered that the WH Smith had closed two minutes earlier (1702, no less), so I jumped back on the Central Line, taking it all the way to Tottenham Court Road (fortunately I had bought a Kerrang at Stratford, otherwise I would have had nowt to read for the journey... I had left Queen of Swords by Michael Moorcock (my current Tube/Queue book) in my other jacket, not expecting a long journey.

At Tottenham Court Road I hit Borders, with about 15 minutes to spare before it closed.

I managed to find most of the magazines that I was looking for, and I also found a stack of Alt Mags. I noticed an older goth with a Sisters of Mercy shirt under a leather jacket thumbing through it at the shelf. He didn't buy it. Lousy tire-kicker : )

With a couple of Magazines in my bag I figurd I should see if Forbidden Planet was still open (it wasn't), I checked to see if the Shaftesbury Avenue Fopp was open (it was) and I kept strolling Eastways, whereupon I wandered into Covent Garden, where I got tallking to a couple of University Socialists outside a Astrology shop.

The details of the conversation aren't really worth replicating, but strangely one of them disagreed with me that Adolf Hitler was a Nationalist, or maybe she meant to disagree in an entirely different way.

On the same street I found a cute little colourful shop full of Kitch-y things, and got talking to an Australian girl from Sydney.

The shop was too cute and thee conversation was interesting.

After that shop closed I found a Fish and Chip shop around the corner, but I figured I would wander down to Leicester Square instead, where I ran into a friend of mine that I haven't seen for months.

Chatted to her for a bit, then headed home... to discover the towels in the washer that I had left there four hours ago.

D'oh!

Nevermind.

I will sleep well tonight.

Over and out.

-J

Ey Oop.

Hey All,

Spent today writing and sleeping.

Have some kind of head cold etc that's bugging me.

Yesterday had a nosebleed, the like of which I haven't had since school (including all the times I've taken hits to the nose in mosh pits and TaeKwonDo classes). It eventually stopped, but it bled like a stuck pig while it was going.

Watched House and Shark; House is getting darker, Shark telegraphs the majority of its punches. James Woods and Hugh Laurie still kick ass.

Time for sleep.

Over and out.

-J

Hey All

It's late, and I am about to turn in.

In the meantime, here is some news:

I'm writing up the review for the show that I saw last Tuesday. I'm going to turn it in tomorrow.

Also: Monday morning I received a couple of CDs to review from Germany. I've been listening to them, yesterday and today, jotting down notes.

And: I received my copy of Alt Mag in the mail yesterday. Neato. Will get onto labels about albums to be released in June/July to review for next issue.

And with that, I turn in.

Over and out.

-J

Frustrating

The last two days have been pretty frustrating.

A card arrived by courier from Australia yesterday morning. Which is good.

But the process for getting that card authorised has been pretty nightmarish. Every time that I think that I am going to cross the line somebody shifts the goalposts.

Hopefully I will be able to sort it all out by this time tomorrow.

To add an extra layer of frustration, just before five today I got a call on my mobile from some courier woman who was trying to find my address. I walked out onton the walkway to try to flag her, but she didn't seem to be in the vicinity. Maybe she was just on a side of the road where you couldn't see me, I don't know. She didn't believe that there was a 24 on my street, since she could only see a 34 (dimwit!).

I told her that it was in the big block of flats and that if she came down she would probably be able to see me standing on the landing.

'Just a minute.' She told me and hung up.

I waited for about 40 minutes for her to find her way here, then I gave up.

I'm going to get the name of the courier company from my parents so that I can call them in the morning and ask them what the fuck is going on. A delivery woman who doesn't know how to find an address, doesn't realise that the isn't a street in Europe that starts counting at 34 and can't apply enough reasoning to realise that a big block of flats probably numbers 1 to 30 should probably be investigating another career.

And naturally, I'm not going to share any of that with the firm until I get my package. If they've given it to someone else, I'm calling the police.

Frustrated and anxious.

Dammit.

-J

I managed to have myself a pretty cool weekend.

Saturday I headed over to Hackney to go to a friend's going away party. I did mean to get there early enough to participate in a late-afternoon barbeque he was having, but a) I didn't really have the cash on my to buy any meat to bring (I could have used Tesco vouchers, but that would have meant taking meat across town.

So instead I headed out, meaning to catch the tube to Angel and then a bus to the party.

Unfortunately, the Northern Line was closed on the Bank Branch (and possibly will be next weekend... mental note: check that), meaning that I had to find alternate means to get to Angel. A Tube worker told me to catch the #43 off Princess Street. Interestingly, when I said to him 'Ah well, so long as it works when they are finished.' he laughed ominously.

I missed a 43 bus by seconds when I got to the stop. Which should have meant that I would have to wait 10-12 minutes for the next one, given that it was a Saturday.

Nope. the next 43 was about 40 minutes later. And in classic Transport for London fashion, two arrived at once, and the first one that I got on was going to terminate at Old Street, so I had to get onto the other one.

Fortunately my journey was actually pretty straightforward from there.

And the party was pretty cool. Lots of interesting people, friends I haven't seen for a while, lots of fun. And I even got two sausages left from the BBQ.

I wound up leaving just before two AM to head to Slimelight, since I knew that the host was going to turf everyone out at some point anyway, and people were a) starting to leave and b) starting to get rather loud.

Slimelight: same as usual, two electronic acts that weren't bad, crowds of people, the usual suspects dancing, and a couple of other friends who don't make it out too much lately. Mental note: since I'm writing for Virus Magazine now, I really should talk to a good friend of mine who always seems to know when the good industrial/electronic acts are going to play, vis-a-vis getting passes to cover them etc.

While I was there, someone mentioned that the giant slides at the Tate Modern were finishing after Sunday, so after Slimelight I passed up the invitation to an afterparty to head to the Tate (just to kill time I took a bus with friends down to Tottenham Court Road, and when they went west I walked East, meandering alond Through Covent Garden down to The Strand until I finally made it to a bridge across the river, and then along until I got to the Tate.

While in the queue I spotted a couple of the lawyers that I worked with at the Courthouse. How random is that?

Anyways, the riding the slides was a) deceptively scary and b) incredible fun. The sensation of flying down these metal tubes was intense, exciting, exhilerating and terrifying all at the same time. So much so that I went on the highest slide (level six) four times (it would have only been three, but an Italian documentary crew had me jump the crew so that they could send me down the slide with a digital camera in hard, to record the expressions on my face as I went down; they chose me apparently because I was wearing an intersting hat).

Because of the way that the sliding tickets were timed, I wound up having plenty of time between slides to explore the Tate, looking in the bookshop in the bottom floor, the gift shop on the second, and at least two of the exhibitions.

All in all pretty incredible. I should have started going earlier, I think, but it was still great fun.

After the slides, I walked across the bridge that links the Tate with the other side of the river (I forget which bridge it is... Millenium Bridge? I don't know) and wandered up to Holborn Station.

The tube took me back to Leytonstone where I collapsed into bed and slept for about fourteen or fifteen hours.

Today I am busy.

Apologies for the long post.

Over and out.

-J

Hey all

I can't recall if I mentioned this, but The Loaded Dog (a pub on the High Road here in Leytonstone) has shifted from only having cover bands and concept bands to featuring originals bands on Fridays and Saturdays.

Hence the Friday and Saturday evening migration of hipsters, students, townies and the like on early Friday and Saturday evenings.

Last night Adastreia played there, and since the venue was all of five minutes walk from my flat I figured I really should make an appearance.

And I was pleasantly surprised by how heavy they have gotten, and how much they have developed their stage presence.

The downside was that I missed two calls, because I thought that the vibrate function was just my pocket reacting to bass frequencies. Apologies to the caller.

After that: an early night. I tried to do some reading, but I passed out instead.

Tonight there is a going away party for a friend of mine, so I'm going to head to that.

After that... who knows.

In the meantime, I've got some scribbling to do.

Over and out.

-J

Hey All

I went to see The Scare last night in a weird venue in Camden.

Good show, cool people.

I have to email the boys a bunch of questions so that I can write them a new bio.

The new Alt Mag is apparently out, but I haven't received my copy yet.

Apart from that, not much news.

Pain on the left side of my back that might be a sore muscle, or it might be a kidney.

Seeing how it progresses.

Over and out.

-J

Weirdness

This afternoon, I got a call from somebody at the Ex-Cel hall at the Royal Victoria Docks, in the Docklands, asking me if I had been there recently.

Immediately on the defensive, I told them that I had never been anywhere near there, and if someone had used my ID or tried to use one of my cards, it sure as hell wasn't me since my wallet had been stolen a week previous.

The caller explained that was why she was calling. My wallet had been handed in at the docklands. No Cash, but all the cards seemed to be there, and they could either mail it to me or I could collect it.

This intrigued me. It would have been easier for them to mail it to me, but I wanted to see where my wallet had landed. So I took down the directions, and after an hour or two of taking the DLR back and forth, I finally found where I was supposed to collect the wallet from.

And I could see why the caller was surprised that my wallet had arrived there... this was the centre of a very modernist area, part of the East End Urban Renewal that seems to be going on in preparation for the olympics. Refurbished warehouses retasked as restaurants and offices stood alongside futurist buildings next to decomissioned shipping cranes, lined up like sentinels along what used to be a wharf.

I collected my wallet from the security office and checked the cards: they all seemd to be there, just in a different order.

Of course, I had already cancelled my bank cards, a process which cannot be reversed, but it was still good to have my Tesco Club Card, my Slimelight Membership Card and my library cards back (I'm still going to make sure that no books were borrowed out on my cards, though).

It still seems weird, though. That someone would take my wallet, go to the trouble of carrying it miles from the point of origin and then not throw it in the river.

Nevermind, I'm glad that there are less cards that I have to replace now.

Enough for the time being.

Over and out.

-J

Hey All

Hey.

Last night I covered a minor metal fest thing at Koko, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Moonspell from Portugal are actually bloody good (even if their engineers decided to mix the drums way too loud).

When I got home I checked my diary and discovered that the ear syringing was actually scheduled for 0920 this morning. I thought I had another week's grace. I had been puttin the olive oil in my ears intermittantly, but I was kind of distracted away from it by the whole No Wallet Crisis a week ago.

Still, I wasn't going to reschedule another appointment, so I olive-oiled my ears before going to bed and first thing in the morning before hie-ing off to the clinic to get my ears blasted again.

In any case, the nurse cleared my left ear, then did my height, weight and blood pressure as well (176 with my boots on, 78.5 kilos (getting fat or just muscle? I suspect a little of both) and I can't remember what the BP was, but she said it was good).

Anyways, I wandered back home, making plans to head back to Harrow Green Library to hunker down and write the first draft of my review. And when I got back to the flat I realised that taking a step or tapping the right side of my head with the heel of my hand caused a low-frequency vibration echo in my left ear.

It doesn't really bother me yet, and it might just be a result of the ear finally being wax free after five or six weeks of being blocked, but I'm hoping that this is just a temporary thing.

*shrugs*

Anyways, work to do.

Over and out.

-J

Update:

The booming echo is gone!

I threw some towels into the wash and figuring I'd use the next hour to do some reading, I grabbed the book I'm finishing and threw myself down onto a couch. The jolt shook something out of my left ear, and when I stood up I noticed that the BOOoOoM had gone.

I guess it was just a bubble of water left over from the syringing process.

Sweet. Something less to worry about.

Now back to my book.

-J

Hey All

Yesterday afternoon I wandered over to Wanstead Flats to take a look at the Fair that was set up there.

And it was... a fair. With rides stinking of diesel and pumping RnB and ghost-trains with airbrushed fronts.

Strange how these things always look the same, no matter where you go in the world or no matter how often they come to you.

It was interesting taking a look at Wanstead Flats, though, since the last time I was there was a couple weeks back when we had that snow day, and the big lump of Green Space was transformed into a sea of white.

Came home, cooked some Spag Bol (carbolicious!) and hunkered down to watch Prison Break. Predicted the twist (which wasn't hard... the promotion clips had pretty much telegraphed the punch and the clues had been set down earlier in the season).

I was going to turn in early, but I stumbled on BBC showing Ginger Snaps Unleashed, the sequel to Ginger Snaps, the Canadian teen were-wolf movie. I liked it. It was dark, it was gritty and the characters somehow seemed better fleshed out than the first one (which I still loved, even if it was like Degrassi with Werewolves).

And interestingly it seemed to mix up traditional low-budget gothic-horror with body-horror and elements of the psychological thriller. All this without being at all self-conscious or a pastiche of earlier work (yes, I'm looking at you Wes Craven).

More evidence of Post Genre cinema, I guess.

Tonight I am being sent to cover Portugese Goth Metal band, which should be fun.

I guess it means I'll have to get the DVD of Life on Mars, Season 2, since the finale/denouement is on tonight.

Over and Out,

-J

Hey All

Hey,

A very quiet Easter Sunday for me.

Woke up around 11, watched TV for a bit, decided that Shipwrecked made me wish that the French would resume nuclear tests in the South Pacific, chilled out, looked at Youtube clips etc.

At some point I discovered that Spiderman II was on, which I hadn't seen for a while, so I watched it beginning to end trying to work out whether Sam Raimi was unconsciously putting in clues to his Genre Film Past, or whether said clues were only really present in The Hospital Scene (which could easily just be him cutting loose and having fun in a way that he couldn't do for the rest of the movie).

By the second or third reel I was starting to wonder whether I was thinking about it all wrong. Sure, Sam Raimi did the Evil Dead movies, which are clearly Genre Films, but Spiderman is a Superhero Movie. Which makes it a Genre film as well.

But the Spiderman francise has stupid cash behind it, made mad money at the box office and featured some pretty mainstream talent (or at least not wildly underground actors). Bruce Cambell's cameos notwithstanding.

Besides which, Spiderman isn't just Comic Book Superhero with Horror Touches. There was elements of the teen drama in there as well, albeit coded in obliquely.

So maybe the Spiderman Franchise is so successful because it is constructed as a piece of Post-Genre Cinema, simultaneously aware of the conventions that inform the franchise but not bound by them.

Still, whichever way you look at them, Tobey Maguire swinging on webs makes for great popcorn fun.

And after that, two episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Stuff blew up. Neato.

Now I'm sleepy.

Over and out.

-J

Hey

Hey O,

A big Thank You to Gus and Mum for going above and beyond the call of duty to help me out. Your lateral thinkings skills have saved me from temporary starvation.

Over and out.

-J

Hey O

Hey,

So far this has been an up and down week for me.

Monday I sorted out a council tax issue. Yay for me.

Tuesday I got a call that I had accidently overdrawn one of my accounts just when a direct debit (to cover my BT line/broadband) had come up. This had to be dealt with right away. Boo.

Yesterday I go into the bank to pay to pay money into said account so as not to incur massive fees. While I'm distracted at the bank, my wallet is stolen. Didn't see who did it, one moment I had my wallet, then next I didn't. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

I call through to the bank helpline to cancel the HSBC cards, then at home I cancel the Commonwealth Bank Card. All cards will be reissued, but not for a week or so.

Just in case something like this happened I set aside some money/tesco vouchers to tide me through until I can access my accounts again. Similarly in the Just In Case file, my Visa Card wasn't in my wallet, it was sitting at home.

In the good news file:

At the suggestion of a friend of mine, I emailed one of the editors of VirusDotCom, and she liked my stuff enough to send me a 'welcome on board' message, with plans on sending me some CDs to review. Neato.

Apart from that, not much else to add.

Over and out.

-J

Update:

Hey All,

I might have posted something about how my ears were all blocked up with wax, and that I was dripping olive oil into them while waiting for an appointment to get them syringed.

As far as medical complaints go, this wasn't too bad and it did force me to wrok out exactly where my new GP was located, since the old one closed and is now a counselling service or something.

Anyways, about three weeks ago I finally made it to an appointment to have the doc look in my ears again, whereupon he declared both ears to be "pretty rammed" and that I needed to keep oiling them for a week until the nurse could syringe them.

Of course, last week the clocks went forward an hour, and I remembered to change some of them but not the others. So I missed my appointment because I was looking at the wrong clock (yep, I suck). I rescheduled the syringing for the next availiable double slot (both ears, ya'see), which happened to be seven days from then.

Today I headed to the clinic, all the while having terrifying visions of a clueless nurse blasting my ears with an enema syringe full of hot, salty water until blood pours out of one or both.

Turns out these days the art of ear syringing is done with a specialised device that delivers water at a stead temperature and at a constant pressure. That ear syringing misshaps seemed to be the most popular source of compensation claims (source: wikipedia) might have had something to do with the change.

Anyways, while my premonitions of trauma and doom turned out to be unfounded, because there was so much wax in my ears, the process was only half successful.

The nurse (middle-aged, matronly and faintly Scottish) managed to clear my right ear, but my left ear still needs more olive oiling before it can be fully de-waxed. For what it is worth, out of my right ear (the one that was been 'the good ear' over the last few weeks) came a lump of wax the size of a sultana.

I shudder to think what they will get out of my left.

In any case, I go back in a week and a half time, when hopefully they be able to sandblast the remaining wax out, leaving both ears fully functional and wax free.

Yay.

Over and out,

-J

News:

I really need to get my blog on more regularly, because it occurs to me, not for the first time, that my blogging of late has been both piecemeal and irregular.

Anyways, here is the update:

Because I was exhausted from writing the review (it was a difficult review to write for a couple of reasons, not least the slight SAD I developed last week after the first Sprang of Spring went Sponk! into a wintry relapse), I wound up missing the Neil Gaiman signing. Nevermind, he will be back in another six months, and I did see him reading last year at UCL.

Instead I got an extra hour of napping and headed to the housewarming/gathering in North London, where I was introduced to the small group with 'This is Jason, he is a Music Journalist.'

The gathering was most interesting, so much so that I missed the last tube south and therefore missed my window of opportunity to go to the breakcore party. Oops. I hope I haven't burnt a bridge there. I think there might have to be some apologizing to be made.

I wound up crashing on the floor of the flat, not able to get any sleep because I had drunk too much coffee (rather good coffee, mind, but enough that I wasn't able to get anything more sleep-like than that weird, disassociated hypnogogic state where you're not actually asleep, but your body thinks it is. Really hard to explain, and a good reason why from now on I'm not going to rely on caffeine as part of the creative process (part of the reason I overnapped was my over-caffeining to write the review... couldn't get to sleep ergo I couldn't wake up when I needed to).

It disturbs me to remember that once upon a time I used to speen weeks on end in that weird state of too-tired-to-sleep I-think-I'm-on-fire semi-psychosis. I think I was young and stupid enough to think that I enjoyed it. These days it is just a subtle reminder: for the sake of your sanity, keep working on your organisation.

In any case, after a breakfast of sorts I took the 91 down to Holborn, ate a sub-of-the-day (£2!) and followed the street around until it hit the Strand and then Charing Cross Road. The Spring Crowds were out in force, regardless of the non-committal weather, on Shaftesbury Avenue I saw a man freebasing (!?!) in a Telephone box (I don't know what was in the foil, and I didn't stop to ask) and eventually I made my way back to Tottenham Court Road Station and Leytonstone, where I caught another short nap before it was time for the first episode of the new season of Dr Who. Which wasn't as good as we have come to expect, but I'm sure this season will get better as it goes.

Last night I chose chilling at home over heading out.

Today I'm thinking nothing too intense, just planning my moves.

Enough for now.

Over and out.

-J