nixsight

• @josiefraser Is that your first time through? You motored through them, didn’t you? We liked the first Generation Kill, Simon’s latest. #
• @josiefraser Else I guess you could go back & watch Homicide, or that mini-series “The Corner”… #

• @josiefraser True, that. I didn’t think I’d be able to cope with her flat delivery when she appeared, but once you get used to it, horrible! #
• @steevbishop Course! She said she was there, but I failed to make the connection. I knew her when… Good person, lots of energy, scary…! #
• Something very odd going on with comments at EW. Anyone else having comments close & a surplus of spam, with recent WP upgrade? #

• This a stupid time of day to be awake & already en route. #
• Also, Obama takes centre stage, taking mobile calls may cost you money, & confidence falls to an all time low. #
• At Apple EBC. Who wants to touch me? #
• London & the Tube are hot as hell today. Muggy, too. #
• iTunesU presentation thought provoking. Lots of thoughts/ideas, as always after these things. #
• Now the trick is not to let the workaday sap that energy. #
• Lou@FP London is still my awesome FP favourite, & you can take that to the fucking bank. Whatever THAT means. #
• I wonder how much news I’ve read off papers that other people are reading, over the years? #
• I’m a filthy voyeur-pirate, stealing news with my furtive, glancing eyes! Won’t somebody stop me! #
• I’d never realised before that reader’s views is an anagram of reader’s wives. How odd. #
• @steevbishop It was an intro to iTunesU. All very interesting stuff, but it requires a lot of work, not just from me, before we’re ready. #
• @steevbishop Heh… think we may be talking about different Lous? Maybe not… Though there is a surplus of FP Lous, past & present… #
• @steevbishop In my world, two counts as “a surplus”. FEAR ME! #
• @josiefraser Oh god, yes… Have you read her book/backstory? She basically IS Snoop, bar the serial killing… #
• @bremxjones Especially big when you haven’t been to the new FP (visiting old colleague) & there are works everywhere you’ve been directed… #
• On way to Walkabout for leaving do. Mmm, our very own bit of Oz, here in Southampton. #

Super short reviews, this week. Need bed. I have a date with Apple in the morning.

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… After standing up in the midst of thousands of strangers for five hours. But that’s okay, because we were watching live music. I’ve no idea what the capacity of the Rosebowl is, but it’s a pretty big cricket-ground venue, and by the time the band played it was packed. The weather kept threatening to turn on us, from dull and overcast to positively nasty, with odd flashes of sun that only really promised that rain, if it came, would be heavy and in a storm.

Girl One kept saying that the weather would hold. She is a terrible optimist when it comes to things like this.

[Spoiler: She was right.]

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• @steevbishop A pretty late night for all, I suspect. Everything aches this morning. But the takeaway chow mein tasted all the sweeter on it. #
• @steevbishop See? Your ass hurt TOO. My legs feel a bit weaklingly. Oooh, your after-concert food sounds as good as ours & now I’m hungry! #
• @steevbishop Red Bush here, too. Not very good at this mullarkey, are we? We should leave the going out to the young uns, you think? #
• I have had enough of wearing shoes for one day. So I am going home, and taking off my shoes, and that is that. #
• @rantz1 Well, that doesn’t sound good. Anything in particular, or just the exertion/personal satisfaction ratio all askew? #

Just faffing around, and noticed that I actually once filled out my Amazon profile details. I don’t really know what I was thinking when I wrote the “In My Own Words” bit, but it tickled me, so I’m sharing it here:

I was a teenage gameboy.
I was a fireman in my brain.
I led the plastic troops against my cousin’s forces. He had more soldiers, I had the tactical edge.
I flew from one end of space to the other, and was back in time for tea.
I fell on my head, just the once, and lost a week that I’ll never get back, one way and another.
I was the Fall Guy, leaping off my bike before it hit the fence at the end of our garden.
I was all these things.
Now look at me.
Reduced to this…

I honestly have no idea what I was on about. I honestly thought I’d stopped writing like this long before places like Amazon even existed… But I guess that’s just self-delusion!

Three favoured tracks from this week:

3: Big Jumps – Emiliana Torrini

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I had never heard of Emiliana Torrini before reading This Recording. This is something I have now addressed. I am struck by the variety of her songs, and her ability to carry off all styles convincingly, but this is the perkiest of the songs I have heard, and cheers me greatly.

2: Something Changed – Pulp

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I recently rediscovered “Different Class”. This used to be constant listening – how did I manage without it for such a long while?
Jarvis Cocker’s world really is unrelentingly real and cynical. I picked this song because it’s about the most optimistic one on the album. Even that isn’t saying much – the telling line is at the beginning – there is potential for this to be some big yarn that he’s spinning, and as such it is suspect throughout.

1: You Woke Up My Neighbourhood – Billy Bragg

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Not, by any stretch, my favourite song by Mr Bragg, but all cheery and up-tempo in your face, and I play it in honour of the REM gig, as two of them are on the song.
Also, we’re seeing him soon, n’all.
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• @steevbishop Oh, man, you’ve got to. WE’RE going to make it, & WE’VE got explosive ebola & leprosy, respectively. If WE can, YOU can too…! #
• @douglasnoble A firmament of your integration? I always assumed that you were a filament of mine own imagination… #
• @davidbaillie In the immortal words of Temperance Brennan, archaelogical anthropologist & celebrated author, “I don’t know what that means.” #
• At REM. Loved the Guillemots shambolic, disaster clad set. Not hating The Editors, but feel like I’ve heard it all before. #
• The audience, oddly, seem blown away by the combo of 80s U2 music & post Gothpop vocals. #
• 80s car-wreck through a contemporary filter. I’m the right age, apparently, but just not feeling it. #
• Lenny Bruce is not afraid. #

Just a very quick one, this week, because we are going to see REM at the Rose Bowl. All comedy, n’all:

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