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It was busy! This weekend I:

- went to see Gary Numan; actually that was on Thursday evening but no matter. It was great – there were four people playing synthesizers! And lots of middle-aged men in leather trenchcoats shouting “NUUUUU-MAN!”. He did ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ and it was amazing! He also dispensed with the synthesizers to go metal, which was less so. Beforehand, we went to Nandos and [info]misterant demonstrated his amazing ability to magnetise forks.

- Watched the BBC Four documentary about Paul Morley learning to compose classical music. Oh, he is so pretentious and earnest, and yet almost always right about everything! My favourite bit was when he said that the music he wanted to compose ought to be a reflection of himself, so it would be sad and melancholy. Then there were many shots of him listening to music while looking sad and melancholy. He wore a duffle coat throughout the entire two-part programme. I want him to be my friend.

- Went to Poptimism. All the Poptimists are still lovely. Singing along to 'American Boy' with [info]hoshuteki and pretending to be Estelle and Kanye is still fun.

- Did some top-notch walking and queuing with Kevan, during which I tested out the City of Westminster’s text service which locates your nearest public toilet, and discovered that it always knew where I was. I haven’t decided whether this is helpful or sinister.

- Went to North London in order to sit in a pub with [info]roz_mcclure and do High School Musical quizzes. While waiting for her in Archway station, Paul Morley WALKED RIGHT PAST ME!!!!

- Made a fairly poor fist of partying with the New Zealand Goths, and an even worse one at getting home again. It turns out that South London is not very close to North London.

- Saw the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy. Looking at the huge lump of wax being pushed through the archways in the gallery, and the big yellow concave wall, and at people looking at themselves in the strangely-shaped mirrored objects, made me feel extraordinarily happy.

- Was more successful at partying with the New Zealand Goths in honour of the baby Goth’s first birthday. He is pretty great and battled through his cold in order to entertain his guests by chewing on their iPhones. I also paid a visit to Action Cat, who immediately came and sat on me.

Life is interesting! Tomorrow [info]pink_weasel and I are going to see Shakin’ Stevens, although he has such a reputation for grumpiness these days that I bet he won’t sing ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ at all! My plan to leave all my Christmas shopping until 23rd December won’t backfire at any point, will it?
Christmas icon
Some of you already know, so we may as well tell everyone: Ewan and I sort-of broke up a couple of weeks ago, and now we are all broken up properly. As we were together for more than four-and-a-half years and it was all good, this pretty much sucks. But it's all very amicable, so please don't feel awkward around us or take sides; we will still be turning up to all the usual things.

This has no reflection on my choice of Hull as a holiday destination. Hull is lovely, the fish pavement can cheer up even the most downcast, and the Hull teenagers hooted just as loudly at Twilight: New Moon as we did.

No need to send virtual hugs or pity me - I am OK. I have some good friends and my boys in the office, and my ace flatmates. (Unfortunately Holly is in Adelaide for a while, but Kevan has been entirely awesome at preventing me from mouldering away in my bedroom.)

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say to the internet on this matter.

Ooh!

  • Nov. 12th, 2009 at 12:48 PM
bass
There's a new Magnetic Fields album out in January!

(Not that I liked the last one much, but I remain optimistic.)

I Love The Nineties

  • Nov. 4th, 2009 at 9:55 AM
ned
I didn't know this before, but [info]kevandotorg pointed out the remarkable amount of old comedy programmes that Channel 4 has on its Channel 4 On Demand site, and gosh he's right! Look, here is Sean's Show and Vic Reeves' Big Night Out and all of Adam And Joe and 135 episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway!

I wonder if I have the energy to go and revisit all of this or whether it's better left in the past. Says the person who walked to work this morning listening to The Family Cat and World Of Twist.

Phone

  • Oct. 19th, 2009 at 10:24 AM
Christmas icon
I lost my phone again! I don't know how! Apparently I will get a replacement SIM card by the end of the week, and then you will be able to contact me as normal. But until then, um, don't! Sigh.

Fancy dress fail

  • Aug. 6th, 2009 at 4:44 PM
Christmas icon
Oh help, please will someone tell me how to dress up as someone or something from the 80s for a fancy dress party? I have Saturday morning and a budget of tuppence to knock something together. Despite some helpful suggestions in a previous thread, all I really think I can manage is Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club and then I'd probably just look like me wearing a big jumper.

Oh! I like fancy dress parties very much, and yet I am so very bad at them! Maybe I won't go. Woe is me.

Please advise!

  • Jul. 31st, 2009 at 11:59 AM
bass
Is Field Day any good, or will I want to kill everyone if I go along?

WHAT??!

  • Jun. 8th, 2009 at 10:08 PM
bass
I am at home this evening doing my homework while listening to Radio 2, and now Big Band Special is on so I was all prepared for some gentle show tunes to sing along to, but it is a special programme celebrating the music of David Gedge! He is singing Wedding Present songs with a swing band! I DON'T UNDERSTAND! This is what happens when you don't go to the pub.

Music news!

  • May. 29th, 2009 at 5:00 PM
mertle
Attention, people who like Dark Was The Night - there is a podcast of the DWTN live concert online! I am very excited that it features David Byrne doing things, and I keep trying to listen to it this afternoon but am getting distracted into playing disco music on the office stereo.

Also, Antony and the Johnsons have done a cover of 'Crazy In Love' which makes everyone in the office want to kill themselves whenever we hear it.

That is all.

Back once again like a renegade master.

  • May. 7th, 2009 at 9:51 PM
Christmas icon
Back back back! What did I miss? Yesterday it seemed like I'd been away for about six months, most of them on aeroplanes. The thought of coming back and living my silly, chaotic life in over-crowded, grumpy London again seemed fairly dreadful for a while; right up until I got back to my street and there was a sandwich board outside my local pub announcing that it was Indie Barman's birthday, and my garden had decided to grow huge purple flowers while I wasn't looking. Aw! I guess sweet things happen anywhere in the world really.

Anyway, I had a really nice holiday and am somewhat less cross with everything as a result, though we'll see how long that lasts eh. Here is the short version of my holiday:

New Zealand - I went up lots of tall things and looked off the edge, and I saw kiwi birds which are actually real!
Seattle - [info]verlaine has grown a stripy beard and lives in a house with a tiny dachshund!

I will write the long version with photos soon for anyone who's interested, but I'm so far behind with my Japanese course now that it may take a few days.

Oh, and I saw most of the new series of Flight Of The Conchords and it's funnier than the last one; there was an episode featuring karaoke and Brian, the president of New Zealand, which made me hoot loudly in front of [info]tigerpig's parents. Then again, I also laughed a lot at New Zealand breakfast TV, but I was quite jetlagged...

But! I was really looking forward to catching up on three weeks of all my favourite podcasts, but iTunes has only given me the most recent editions! Can anyone advise me on how I can get the ones from last week and the week before? I can't figure it out, and there are so many Mark Kermode opinions I haven't heard...
mertle
How are y'all doing with your 101 things lists? Some of you must be nearly finished! I've got less than a year to go with mine, and I know that I'm not going to manage all 101 things (some of which I've lost interest in anyway. Perhaps I shall never have a giant papier mache head). But I should at least try!

Progress report. Cut for those who are squeamish about blood, or the Midlands. )

Tags:

Don't talk to me!

  • Feb. 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 AM
spong
Bah. I may be awesome at getting through snow, but I am still hopeless at hanging onto my possessions. Where is my phone? It's not in the office, or in my bag, or any of my pockets, or the car I got a lift in yesterday... IDIOT NEWHAM!

Feb. 2nd, 2009

  • 5:57 PM
winter qo
Hooray, home already! If this weather keeps up I'm sure I'll get steadily grumpier this week, but right now I'm excited to be home before 6 and cheerful after my excellent weekend.

On Saturday I went over to Ladbroke Grove to meet [info]drummygirl and, appropriately enough, play drums. We tagged along with [info]pollitesss to a samba drum class in a sports centre under the Westway, run by an energetic Brazilian dude who spent most of the time dancing around the room, making faces at us and taking phone calls though they must have been inaudible. I felt a bit foolish as I don't think I've played a percussion instrument since junior school, but everyone was friendly and helpful, and they let me stand at the back, gave me earplugs and a big drum to hit and told me who to copy. Luckily I had about the easiest part to play, so I drew on my vast experience from playing Drum Drum Revolution and didn't c0ck it up too badly. And it was ACE! Two hours of hitting things and being part of a band playing lots of cool samba rhythms made me feel very chipper indeed, and I want to do it again.

In the evening I saw 80% of my favourite Londoners, hooray! First I went to [info]cloudgirl's birthday party, where we had to dress as stars of the 1980s. I went as Mike D of the Beastie Boys (after deciding there would be too many Goths present for me to backcomb my hair and be Robert Smith), and Ewan was a surprisingly good Morrissey, but our favourite costume was an eighties George Michael in dazzling white tennis shorts and orange tan. Alas, we had to leave after a couple of hours, but hooray, when we got to Don't Stop Moving it was excellent! Small, crowded and very hot, but I had such a lovely time dancing to 90s pop with people I really like that it didn't matter a jot. I even did the Whigfield dance with [info]p_dan_tic, and who knew that day would come?

Sunday was largely given over to staying in bed watching Haus, but we got out in the afternoon to attend [info]misterant's ghost walk around Westminster. It started snowing immediately, and by the time we called it a day my fingers had stopped working altogether, but it was still good fun hearing Ant's spooky stories and then retiring to the pub to quaff wine and shake our heads at the weather.

This morning Ewan left to catch a train to work, but returned within ten minutes to report that everything was hugely delayed and he was going to work from home. There's not much I can do without my database, but I didn't fancy getting all upset on a cold platform waiting for a very late, very crowded train, so I decided to catch the bus from Peckham to Wandsworth instead. A genius plan! Up to the moment when I got to the bus stop and someone told me that all the buses had been cancelled. The sensible thing would have been to head back to the train station, but I am not renowned for my common sense so decided to walk it instead. And it was great! From Peckham to Herne Hill, the roads were white and silent and the only people I met were children all cheerful because they'd just found out that school was closed, or toddlers on sledges, or people on their phones saying "Sorry, I can't get in, I'll have to stay at home today". It was such a jolly atmosphere, everyone excited by this freakish change in their lives. By the time I got to Brixton the roads were slushy and slippery and the pedestrians looked irritable, but then I hit Acre Lane and saw my first snowman of the day, and people carrying estate agent boards towards the park as makeshift sledges, and it seemed like an adventure again. Clapham Common had snowmen everywhere you looked! My eyes started to swim from staring at so much whiteness. I stopped at the shops to buy dry socks, and was in work two hours and forty minutes after I'd set off.

When I lived in Denmark, of course, it snowed like this every winter, and as I was supposed to get up early and shovel the pavements every time, I grew to resent it quickly enough. I was a home care assistant then, and we were expected to be at work on time - to check the weather forecast the night before and get up earlier - or the old people we worked with would be stranded all day. It felt a bit silly today, to have battled into the office and then have little to do except feel self-righteously exhausted.

Anyway. A whole evening at home! Stop wasting it on the internet, Newham!

Jan. 13th, 2009

  • 10:25 AM
Christmas icon
Flippin' heck Livejournal, it's almost two weeks into the new year and I still haven't posted anything! I fear this is the way things are going to be now. At work I have been given more to do (hooray!) and moved to a desk in the main office, where I share a table with two other people who have the same name as me - imagine the hilarity! - so it seems inappropriate to webskive there any more. And I'm just not home that much... So I'm going to be a Livejournal lurker rather than an active babbler for a while. I won't be far away though, and I still remember everything you say on the internet...

Anyway, right at the beginning of the year I went to Paris with the Highbury Massive, because it is good to let New Zealand Goths tell you what to do. Paris was so cold I thought my ears were going to fall off and the Eiffel Tower closed down, and it was also REALLY EXPENSIVE. Why did nobody warn me before I went that the exchange rate was so bad that Euros and pounds are now almost the same thing? Cripes! I'll warn you myself then: the only things that are still affordable in Paris are bread, wine and paperback literature. After a day of gnashing our teeth, we decided to find it hilarious that bars were charging almost a tenner for a pint of Kronenbourg, while privately resolving never to buy anything ever again on our return. Also, I managed to book a really rubbish hotel room for four of us, where we paid no mean amount for four wobbly beds in a row, plus one chair, plus a shelf, on the high street where overly cheerful Parisians partied until 5 am outside our window the first night we were there. My friends proved themselves saintly by not complaining about it in the slightest. Also, Paris on New Year's Eve = not that exciting; there were no fireworks beside the ones that people were setting off randomly on the pavements, but the Eiffel Tower did go twinkly at midnight.

Never mind that though; it was good to be on holiday somewhere else because my thoughts got knocked off their usual boring track, and I got to spend a lot of time with some lovely people. The majority of the Highbury Massive rented an apartment on a houseboat on the Seine, with the attendant jollity, high drama and injuries that ensue when you share a small living space with your friends, and we spent a lot of time hanging out there. [info]specialknives taught me to play blackjack and [info]maxinemogadon taught me to play some card game where you have to beat up Catholic schoolgirls. I let people put Goth makeup on me and read a lot of chick lit. In the daytime, [info]hoshuteki and I wandered the streets in search of macaroons and things to eat other than cheese sandwiches, hélas, in vain! But I did go to the Louvre, and the Louvre was boss. I had no idea I'd love it so much, because I know nothing at all about art and only usually go to the Tate Modern; however, [info]maxinemogadon had encouraged me to drink an inordinate amount of frozen strawberry margaritas the night before, and all I was fit for was being pushed around a beautiful marble palace full of mad antique art by my boy, who possesses the rare talent of making Greek pottery interesting. I loved the pots and the hieroglyphs and the sculptures, but mostly I loved the barking mad religious art of the Renaissance, which we kept expecting to turn into Terry Gilliam cartoons and chase each other around the museum. It was disconcerting enough that St. Sebastian kept trying to barge in on every religious scene, like the Nativity and so forth, without St. Denis going to prison and having visions of Jesus and being beheaded all within the same canvas. I think I want to draw cartoons like this now, with all the narrative happening in the same frame at once.

On the last day we went to the Natural History Museum and that was also pretty challenging because it was almost entirely full of skeletons. There were skeletons of everything, from gerbils and bats to whales, dinosaurs and mammoths, and it took only a moment from walking into the museum and registering that the collectors really liked skeletons, to noting that they were all running at you.



And once you'd accustomed yourself to that, you could move on to the shelves full of animal organs in jars (pickled gibbons' tongues!), and the jars of one-eyed kittens, conjoined pigs and two-headed lambs. It was fascinating, and I couldn't eat even half of my lunch afterwards.

And then home. Thanks to [info]cloudgirl for getting me to do something different this New Year's Eve, and for utterly derailing all my New Year's resolutions! I'll start again on payday...

Dec. 15th, 2008

  • 10:40 AM
Christmas icon
Oh, last week was so busy! I went out and did stuff and had mince pies instead of dinner twice! Tsk, December.

When I last posted properly, I was squeeing with excitement at the prospect of going to see the Steel City Tour, and I was right because it was splendid. Heaven 17 were on rather early so we were able to see Glenn Gregory's dazzlingly white teeth from the back of the venue and grump about not being able to hear the synthesizer properly. They did a version of 'Temptation' which lasted about ten minutes, but if I'd written it I think I'd have done the same. Their other songs are good too, it turns out! The women in the toilet declared that Glenn Gregory had aged well - "He's all right, innee! In the 80s he was really ugly!" And then ABC, oh... they couldn't possibly live up to my expectations as 'The Lexicon of Love' is one of my favourite records ever (I own it on LP, cassette and CD!) and there was something a little cabaret about them, with a band of session musicians insisting on doing 80s saxophone solos and playing songs off their new album, meh. But Martin Fry singing 'All of my heart' and 'The look of love' in front of the red curtains was wonderful.

And then the Human Leg came on and they were AMAZING! They had a big synth sound, an even bigger light display and Phil Oakey running around the stage being hugely charismatic and charming, and they played pretty much a greatest hits set and it was so, so good. I love him all the more for introducing 'The Lebanon' as "a very serious song", bless him. [info]maxinemogadon's wish that they would reunite with Heaven 17 and perform their spoken word flexidisc went unfulfilled, but the rest of us merrily sang 'Empire State Human' all the way home. They made me happy for the rest of the week!

By contrast, the next day I went to see MJ Hibbett play a gig in a room of about 30 people including his parents (who kept filming him on their digital camera. aw!), and we ate mince pies and tried to help him out when he forgot the words to a song about aliens landing in Debden by guessing other stops on the Central Line that might be in the song. MJ Hibbett gigs make me want to run home and draw comics and play my guitar and spread optimism all around me. Maybe I'll get around to it next year.

At Indiejob I got rather distracted at the end of the week by making paper stars for everyone I like, and we had a Secret Santa thing where everyone got something nice except for Saintly IT Guy, who got a big cardboard box containing two lollipops and a cigarette lighter. (Which he accepted with his customary saintliness, while we unearthed his Secret Santa and beat him up.) Worldweary Guy got Play-Doh Operation and his little worldweary face lit up as he sat at his desk making Play-Doh intestines. I also went to the accounts department's Christmas meal where I sat next to Ricky Martin's biggest fan: "He's my ideal man! I flew to Madrid to see him!". I like the fact that although I work for a well-respected record company, only about two people in the entire office are even the slightest bit cool.

Then I worked all weekend (fie on you if you complained about the rain on Saturday - I had to stand outside in it all afternoon!) and watched The X Factor final with gracious Christmassy host [info]lozette, and I went to a party where I spent most of the evening talking to an old blues musician about how to get a piano up numerous flights of stairs.

Too much fun! This week I plan to eat celery and stay in my room.

Yuri Gargarin having a cup of tea.

  • Dec. 8th, 2008 at 4:39 PM
twee
Hello! You catch me on a brief visit home to wash my hair and dump the Christmas decorations I've been out buying this morning. I also ate a mince pie with Otherjob boss and went to the British Library where a security guard accused me of carrying a bag of blood in my rucksack, and on the way home I passed a big hoarding on Lower Clapton Road upon which someone had spraypainted "Clapton is good". Yay! As if that weren't enough excitement for one day, I'm leaving the flat again in about 40 minutes to go to Hammersmith where I will see THE HUMAN LEG!!!! AND ABC!!!! And Heaven 17, who don't have such a special place in my heart as the aforementioned, but are sure to be pretty good anyway. I know that they're all going to be old and balding (and not in a cool way) and insist on doing songs from their new albums, but I am still SO excited at the thought of Martin Fry saying "Martin, maybe one day you'll find true love" in real life. And Phil Oakey doing anything at all! Oh man!

Which reminds me, last Thursday we were encouraged to wear our old band t-shirts to work because Steve Lamacq was doing something on the radio about it. About ten of us did so and someone took a photo in which we all look like sacks of sh1t, and it all seemed a bit silly really (especially as my Huggy Bear t-shirt has disappeared! And the Bis one! I think the World Of Twist t-shirt just fell apart by itself...). But today I went into Urban Outfitters just in case it turned out to be a better shop than I'd thought, and good grief! All the mannequins were wearing Sonic Youth t-shirts! At £32 a pop! And then I went downstairs and the place was full of Human Leg t-shirts! What on earth? Why are bands I like being turned into fashion statements? Why are Sonic Youth t-shirts being marketed as something you might see on a catwalk? Am I just a terrible indie snob? "I'm beginning to understand you at last, Steve Lamacq," I muttered darkly as I exited the shop.

Talking of indie, I had to research some videos for work last week and I found this one for Sugarcube by Yo La Tengo which made me laugh into my sleeves behind my computer. ([info]mrs_leroy_brown should note that it features Bob Odenkirk. I still don't know who he is, but I like saying "Bob Odenkirk".) Oh, why won't it let me embed it? And look, here's the new video by lovely MJ Hibbett for The Advent Calendar Of Fact, which aside from being lovely, features much humorous moustache usage. Hooray! I'm going to bunk off evening class tomorrow and go and see the last MJ Hibbett acoustic gig of the year at The Lamb on Lamb's Conduit Street, because an employee of Morl3y College told me it was OK to do so. You should come too!

This month is unusually full of gigs, and goodness knows when I'm going to have time to write any Christmas cards. What a rubbish excuse, eh. Anyway, last week was Isis in a crowd of beardy metal fans and a sticky pool of beer, and to my surprise they were excellent. The security guard who searched me on the way in wasn't though - she confiscated my satsuma and my knitting, but once I was inside, I put my hand in my pocket and found a big pair of scissors! Which I accidentally brandished at [info]boyofbadgers in my surprise, but I daresay he was disrespecting me.

I must be off out again. TO HAMMERSMITH! TO THE SYNTHESIZERS!!!

Ach ve!

  • Dec. 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 PM
qo sign
Fans of inconsequential worrying, worry no more! As of last Saturday, I have a proper winter scarf again. It was made by [info]land_girl and presented to me by [info]mzdt at draughty Ealing Broadway station, so it is a true indication of how LJ hears your cries for help and takes note of them even when it doesn't leave comments. I have a stripy scarf that doubles up as a blanket! I'm so happy!


New scarf!



It looks better in real life. I look awfully grim there, but it is quite hard to convey one's happiness when trying to take a photo of oneself. To make up for it, here is a picture my nine-year-old friend G. drew of me (he has chosen to remain anonymous in it). Hmm, it seems my plans to put on an insulating layer of fat for the winter are going quite well...


Me, apparently...



Oh! I have five Spotify invites if anyone is curious! Spotify is quite good, but not as good as actually paying money for records and CDs and downloads. It's true! Pls to notify me if you're interested.

Mithering about werk> )

Also, apparently tomorrow is Wear Your Old Band T-shirt To Work Day. Ridiculous! That is every day!

This evening I did something I haven't done since my mid-twenties and went to a gig by myself. I saw Murder In Monochrome because they are my friend's band, so I did not mention that they sound exactly like Muse and only complained a little that I had to watch an Italian Goth band first. To pass the time, I read some of the flyers on the walls, and dear friends, I ask you:

Poll #1308957
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

Which of the following band names are any good at all?

View Answers

The Cherry Bakewells
22 (55.0%)

Run Don't Walk
9 (22.5%)

Ground Dust
2 (5.0%)

The Dead Roads
8 (20.0%)

Micky C and Crisis
6 (15.0%)

Bee Ororo and the Angel Transmitters
8 (20.0%)

Wendy Bennet Trio
5 (12.5%)

Men In Masks
4 (10.0%)

Caimbo
2 (5.0%)

The Broadcasts
3 (7.5%)

The Stanley Blacks
4 (10.0%)

Zen Arcade
14 (35.0%)

Popular Workshop
10 (25.0%)

The Shebeats
3 (7.5%)

The Momeraths
10 (25.0%)

And these?

View Answers

The Naughtys
3 (8.8%)

Some Velvet Morning
7 (20.6%)

Raw Fox
7 (20.6%)

Frankmusik
7 (20.6%)

The Brute Chorus
5 (14.7%)

Ufomammut
5 (14.7%)

Lento
3 (8.8%)

Hey Colossus
8 (23.5%)

Jedethan
0 (0.0%)

The Whybirds
7 (20.6%)

The Colourcode
4 (11.8%)

To The Bones
7 (20.6%)

The Shills
8 (23.5%)

Dweeb
3 (8.8%)

Citizens
5 (14.7%)

Please suggest a better name for a jobbing indie band.

While we're here, if you have an opinion on the matter, who do you like best?

View Answers

Adam
18 (64.3%)

Joe
10 (35.7%)

POPMASTER!

  • Nov. 21st, 2008 at 3:30 PM
bass
Thank you for all your random pop facts! Here they are, unedited, for everyone's enjoyment!

huskyteer -- Before their success in the 60s, Simon and Garfunkel performed Everly Brothers-style rock and roll as 'Tom and Jerry'
angelv -- Rachel Stevens has size 3.5 feet!
bagrec -- Mary Hopkin sang backing vocals on David Bowie's "Sound and Vision" (as Mary Visconti)
miss_newham -- Australian pop star John Farnham was, in fact, born in Basildon. Or was it Dagenham?
land_girl -- Jilted John's one hit wonder, Jilted John, only reached number 4 in the charts although almost everybody over the age of 30 can hum it!
tonight_we_fly -- I was once filmed crawling around dressed as a cat in a video for Th' Faith Healers, but I don't think the footage was ever used in the end. Well, I've never seen it.
mrs_leroy_brown -- oh all my obscure facts have to do with The White Stripes. Uhm Jack's first band was Goober & the Peas, he was a durmmer. First band as guitarist was The Upholsterers. His birth name is John Gillis
katstevens -- One of the guys who wrote the lyrics to the post-rock track on the new Beyonce album also wrote the lyrics to 'No Air' by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown!
sbp -- Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath plays with artificial fingertips made out of washing-up liquid bottles, because he sliced his fingertips off in an industrial accident when he was 17
burkesworks -- "Standing in the Road" by Blackfoot Sue was NOT penned by the burly physio of non-league Farnborough Town.
kiss_me_quick -- If there were enough room, I would tell you the best selling UK singles of every year from 1980 to 1991.
yiskah -- wah, I don't know any! ask tom.
shermarama -- Elvis Costello's real name is Declan McManus.
lifesizemonkey -- Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys trained as an architect
tomatorama -- I only know made up ones, like that Rod Stewart invented bread (according to Bob Mortimer)
friend_of_tofu -- Should this be an obscure fact about pop, or a fact about obscure pop?
maxinemogadon -- Mark E Smith likes to start drinking at 12 noon on a saturday and doesn't like to be disturbed
steviecat -- Poly Styrene's maths teacher was Brian May of Queen !

None of these were any use to me whatsoever last night, but we still did well! Sort of. We entered two teams from work and my team were generally reckoned to be the hopeless outsiders, but for the first five rounds we knew almost everything! We were in second place for an hour and got so overexcited and shouty about our thrilling unexpected success that we were probably very obnoxious. Then it all got really hard (there was a hideous round where they played two records at once and you had to identify them both - flippin' impossible) and we dropped to something like 12th place, beating the other work team by about one point. But oh, that first hour was exciting, and because I knew more answers than anyone else I now have an AWESOME reputation at work as queen of pop trivia. I hope you're all proud of me!

Mike Read wasn't there in the end, but I saw Janice Long, Gary Crowley and Mark Goodier (all of whom I think are dreadful) in the same room. This morning I got a text from a friend saying "Where was the room? In 1992?".

Have a lovely weekend y'all! I am working both days and possibly going to an 85th birthday party!

PS And John Shuttleworth was there too! But I couldn't spot him, which was probably just as well as I would have approached him excitedly and told him how much I like [info]land_girl...

A few questions that I need to know...

  • Nov. 19th, 2008 at 11:34 AM
Christmas icon
1. How you could ever hurt me so...

2. Please will somebody explain the appeal of Spooks? Several people whose opinions I respect tell me it's the most exciting thing on TV, but whenever I try to give it a chance, it seems like the most dreadful tripe. I don't really understand TV though so I'm prepared to accept a decent explanation of why I'm wrong.

3. I am going to a work Christmas party for the first time in my life and apparently the theme is 50s retro. How the heck does one dress 50s retro? Apart from dressing as Mark Kermode. He may be my moral compass in this world, but I don't think I can rock a quiff...

4. I am going to a VERY HARD POP QUIZ on Thursday and I might get to meet Mike Read! But apparently my team is terrible. I am going to spend my every unoccupied moment for the next two days reading lovely Popular and trying to swallow the Guinness Book of Hit Singles, but perhaps you can help me out too by telling me a really awesome and obscure pop fact? I'd do the same for you! Please fill in my poll which is SECRET due to [info]sevenwindmills being on an opposing team and already knowing everything about music. If your facts are good enough I will share them after the event! Also, what shall I say to Mike Read?


Poll #1300088
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 20

Please tell me an obscure pop fact!



5. Dudes, if I am becoming too media, will you come round and slap me? Promise?

In Japanese, I can now say "What's that over there? It's a tortoise!" and I've learned the word for owl. That's all I need to know, surely!

Nov. 13th, 2008

  • 2:36 PM
gothic king
Hooray! The bloke at the next desk has just discovered MJ Hibbett and is making people listen to 'Hey Hey 16K'!

Otherwise, today is a day of utter ruin. Oh, and I've lost my phone. And all my house keys. And I slept in a graveyard. Why oh why do I agree to go drinking with boys?