Happy Halloween

The puppy ate my witch hat, and I got a crick in my neck carving my pumpkin. Super-duper.

Be impressed. It took hours. Hours.

On the plus side there was also a wee trip up North. This meant that I spent about as much time on the woeful rolling hell of a Megabus as I did in the company of friends old and new, but I'm not complaining. I could. I could go on for hours about second hand music, gruff bus drivers (I know it's a low cost mode of transport but manners don't cost anything), traffic, the new shape my spine has been forced to take... but I won't. I'm trying to be a better person.

The delays, the rain in Newcastle (bitter, bone-chilling and relentless), a closed transporter bridge and a mixed performance from Eddie Izzard, was nicely juxtaposed with sightseeing around North Yorkshire (Rievaulx, Helmsley and Bywater), a rather fun Hallowe'en party in Durham, and most important of all, the onslaught of mixed emotions that only a chicken parmo can provoke.

Yes, that's right a chicken parmo. This strange addition to late-night culinary lexicon can only be found in Teeside. According to BBC Tees a parmo is...

A chicken or pork fillet that is beaten until it is flat and roughly the size of half a pizza box, covered in breadcrumbs, then fried. Then béchamel sauce and a layer of cheese (strangely not parmesan) is added and it’s grilled.It's usually served with chips and salad (that’s the healthy part) and some people swear that a layer of garlic sauce (another Teesside delicacy) needs to be poured on top.

Yes, a beaten, folded, cheese covered, water-filled piece of poor quality meat, served with limp salad in a little plastic baggie. I bet you're salivating.

It's pretty strange that something I've never eaten (and never would) is a little time capsule; their very existence became a reassuring presence during my time squatting in my boyfriend's dorm St 'Ockton (home of the friction match). It's the fast food equivalent of a Munchin in Oz; you may not be in Kansas, but it's strangely comforting to have them about. Unlike that boyfriend, I can uncharitably add.

I'd bottle that kind of wistfulness and sell it if I could.

As for the main event of the weekend, well, no, the main event was going back up North and seeing friends who have long been neglected (some of whom read this, and yes you're all more important than a chickeny comestible, honest). Ostensibly we were all going to watch Eddie Izzard. During our early days in Durham- we'd bonded over a mutual appreciation of poking badgers with spoons.

Alas the glory days have come and gone for all of us, but especially Eddie's stand-up. 'Stripped' was notable for glimmers of form, however the overall performance was a little flabby, weighed down perhaps by a focus on atheism that is neither radical, original or witty enough. Whilst there were inovative uses of twitter, lots of reference to wikipedia and a bizzare advert for Apple, the whole perfomance seemed diminished and lacking in zest - heavily reliant on affection for old material.

It didn't live up the legacy of Glorious or Definite Article, nor could Eddie match the works of some the fresher names on the circuit, many of whom have taken his best qualities and run with them. I'd like to single out Tim Minchin, who not only put on a sparkling performance in Brizzle the other week, but has also ruined my life with the bloody catchy 'Canvas Bags'; a song that just won't leave my poor mind alone. Given the option of spending £17.50 to see Tim, or £30 plus for Eddie... well, the choice is clear. And you've change for a parmo.

Listen and be damned.

And she sang upside down from a rope ladder...

At some point a Noisettes gig will be replete with all kinds of sparkly jim-swishery, but at the moment they're making do with one rope ladder, lots of 'bugger-me, I'm famous!' attitude, large hair, and some flashing lights. The current Wild Young Hearts tour looks acrobatic, and sounds absolutely ebullient, not to mention rather good.

Do they need the props to get things going? No, not at all - this band is 7 parts swagger to 3 parts fizz, not to mention being renowned for raucous gigs. They kicked off with car and crowd pleasing 'Don't Upset the Rhythm (Go Baby Go Baby Go)', and sounded far too big for the shanty stage of Cardiff Student Union - though singer Shingai Shoniwa repeatedly abused her rich voice to make bat-like squeals for purposes unknown. No bats chose to make an appearance.

Despite the odd shriek, the music had our little gang swinging like salsafied snakes sizzling on hot grills: highlights of the night included the cover of T-Rex's 'Children of the Revolution' and 'Saturday Night'. Plus Shoniwa barged past my friend and I as we listened to supporting act Mpho. We felt rather special, and a just a bit cool; even if this conviction was based on a far more glamorous elbow being judiciously applied in our direction. I can safely say that all who attended got to bask in shamelessly upbeat, soulful distinctive pop.

Things A Naughty Puppy Can Eat...

• Cream off my super scrumptious cheesecake brownies, in the bin they go.
• Favourite bra
• Premium bond cheque
• Swanky pub matchbox aka memento of a great night out.
• Next door's parcel, loss of which will be blamed on mail strike
• Pink Ted's eye- the iconoclast!

I am rapidly falling out of love with my puppy; with his waggy little tail, cute way of jumping on my face every damn morning, and the way he eats absolutely everything, whether it be on the floor, the pavement or on a high seeming unreachable tabletop. I'm done with the whole bundle of fluffy exhuberance. He's free to a mildly indifferent home.

.... Yeah, I love him really.

Film Review : Surrogates

Directed by Jonathon Mostow, Starring Bruce Willis, with Ving Rhames and James Cromwell, Screenplay John Bracanto and Michael Ferris, based on Robert Veneditti's comic series 'Surrogates'.

'Surrogates': a poor man's sci-fi. No, to be more accurate it's a poor man's Phillip K Dick, but without the paranoia, suspense, or fiendish dystopia. There's a slightly blue/grey tint to the action - so you know the future when you see it, a dash of 'Minority Report' here, a bit of 'Total Recall' there and a small measure of 'Foster, You're Dead', complete with a hold-your-hand plot tied together by the shoe-string of a vaguely interesting concept - in this case living your life through a flawless machine. No part of this idea ever feels properly explored.

The plus side; Bruce Willis does what he does best, i.e strutting around moodily whilst having marital problems. There's some joy to be found in the Hollywood warning of the dangers of superficiality (whilst Bruce is looking very good for his age). Also all the ridiculous stunts from the Borne films are suddenly plausible, though for the most part the human controlled robots go about their very boring (but now very beautiful) lives. Best of all: it has a running time of 89 minutes.

As for what's wrong; Willis' character Tom Greer isn't quite the anti-hero he could be. He's disenchanted with the idea of living through a robot; he hints at a deep ocean of melancholy concerning his dead son, and is grief stricken at the fact his wife is a shut-in, who lives through a giant barbie doll. To top it all off - he's a maverick FBI agent. But he's the everyman too. The robotic, FBI, crime-fighting everyman (although because everyone looks perfect, and is free from danger, there's no real crime). He's everything you want - he's us; but he's the bad us, but then again he's not really that moody, after all he's us, and we're basically alright, but this is a really bad day.

Unfortunately this clashing of tropes makes for a disengaging character, one who is both aloof but begs us to share his pain. The problem worsens as the 2D Tom Greer is the only character we get introduced to in any depth- in a world where image is flexible personality, alas, seems void, even for the 'meat-bag' real humans. Ving Rhames pops up occasionally as the 'Prophet' spouting revolutionary rhetoric like a rasta Tom Paine, James Cromwell gibbers in his plush mad scientist attic room, but there just isn't enough of them to make you care.

I'm sure the intention of the film was to make Bruce feel like the one lost and lonely lamb surrounded by a landscape of plastic dreams, because, as if you haven't guessed it, the theme running through the film is that when humans interact remotely they lose their humanity. It doesn't work though. The robots aren't there enough either and there's very little contrast between machine and 2D meat-bag.

Oh, there's a crime to solve too, but that's all incidental and shouldn't get in the way of the undergraduate philosophising.

In short the film's exploration of what it means to be human is flippant and shallow. It feels like the Hollywood gloss has missed the point, and there may actually have be a good point in there somewhere. Still at 89 minutes it's watchable for an Orange Wednesday. Certainly not worth full price, but it does pass the time. I also took slight pleausre at the idiots in the seats next to me who 'ooohed' and 'ahhhhed' at every, ahem, 'plot-twist'- they better not see Total Recall, lest it blow their tiny minds.

This Song Will Make You Happy

The Voluntary Butler Scheme is one jingly jangly man named Rob (look, he's got balloons!). Rob has written a joyful collection of low-fi indie noise that you should just adore: they make you feel young, sunny and... happy. Yes, these tunes will make you happy. 'Breakfast, Dinner, Tea' will be speeding me on my way to London today, and because of it I'll be bobbing in my seat, daydreaming out of the window and crucially all thought of what junction and where will be forgotten.

Never mind. Everything is lovely. Incidentally isn't The Voluntary Butler Scheme a great name; it's one of those concepts, like Saki's occassional garden, that you just wish existed.

• Voluntary Bulter Scheme The Eiffel Tower & The BT Tower

Fun Thing #881 - Public Transport

I cannot drive. I can barely walk without tipping over - straight lines in a four wheeled chariot of death? No chance. I rely on public transport and in penance I constantly maintain a thwarted expression. Last weekend, thanks solely to my super skills of organisation (i.e. writing lots of stuff in a notebook), and admittedly a friend coordinating the actual important things, such as pre-booking late night taxis, travel went so smoothly that I felt I must be dreaming. This weekend normal service resumed with avengence.

Saturday night instead of going to see Mesrine parts I & II, I ended up forking over £7 to see cookery orientated chick-flick Julie & Julia recommended by A.- a man who treasures the Dawson's Creek soundtrack in his record collection. Taste is not quite his strong point. I owe him though: I'd put him through Sunshine ("For Seven Years I talked to God... " absolute drivelling pile of ludicrousness), and do I ever hear the end of it? No, so I'm waiting for him to slip up.

Julie & Julia: directed and written by Nora Ephron, starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci.

Julie & Julia, is... okay, a bit of a strange mix between fussy and fluffy. It's based on two true stories; one of Julia Child's rise to cooking glory, and one about a very thin woman who not only seems to constantly eat butter with no ill affects, but also cooks her way through Child's recipe book, blogs about it, and becomes famous. Damn her.

It has Norah Ephron's typical and tedious generalisations about differences between the sexes crowbarred in, but it's endearing enough in parts. Stanley Tucci and his marvellous voice are a pleasure, and once you get over Meryl Streep's impression the film bobs right along. The downside includes the quirky and narcissistic Julie character, and the two stories are sometimes awkwardly segued together - Ephron's commitment to the parallel lives conceit is slightly grating.

My favourite moment was when Julie's husband suggested she write a blog about how she adores living in Queens, which was of course my original impetus behind '1001 Fun Things'- a plan that quickly disintegrated when I realised I didn't have enough bile to constantly hate Aber and write about how much I hated it too. And I moved.

Anyway, the film, yes, it's okay - it's something safe and inoffensive, your mum would probably like it. Though I'm sure it leaves bloggers everywhere wondering why movie rights haven't been optioned for their solipsistic thoughts, and lastly where did she buy that magic fat free butter?

Here endeth the review and begineth the aforementioned chaos.

A. and I left the cinema, it was late on a Saturday night, we had no time for a drink and post film discussion because the respective last trains were due -in any case the pubs were all full of leering drunks who would love to spill drinks over me. So off we went to the station where A. (who'd travelled 44 miles just for the pleasure of seeing Julie & Julia with me) learned three valuable lessons:

• Cardiff - Doctor Who set by day -a special kind of bedlam on Saturday nights.
• As the capital of a purportedly developed nation, Cardiff has all the usual indications of progress; tall buildings, lots of shops selling designer kitchen gadgets, asymmetric hair on young men. However these are no guarantees of an efficient public transport system, or in this case any trains to Bristol later than 10pm (I'd checked and found one at 11, but alas... on Monday to Fridays only).
• Drunken weirdos flock to the train and bus station like zombies to top-hats.

I in turn learned that my train had been replaced by a bus. Great. I hate all trains, but that is nothing, nothing compared to the unadulterated sheer loathing that I reserve for buses (and Aberystwyth). We journeyed back to my home via the joys of the rail replacement bus, and not just any rail replacement but the last replacement of the night, every seat of which was filled with absolutely tone deaf piss-heads. All of whom were determined to work their way through the soundtrack from Grease. Bastards.

Death by buses continued on into the next day too -sadly there weren't enough replacements to cope with the demand to get out of Bridgend, or some stupid football match in Cardiff was on or something, so we remained stuck in misery-ville, eating blackberries and taking in the odd castle. Eventually A. fled, bemused at the terrible consequences of trying to do something as simple as going to the cinema on the wrong side of the Severn.

I'm sure there's a film in here somewhere, and I'd like either Kate Winslet or Jennifer Connelly to play me please.

You Pronouce it Tinmuff. Really.

4th September: Teignmouth*

What an unforgettable weekend; I shared a pint with some lovely people, including the great grandson of Harold MacMillan (a thoroughly nice chap), repelled any potential vampire attacks with late night garlic friend rice, crawled through some medieval tunnels, and found myself agog at a breathtaking performance by Muse. It was all achingly good and now I'm back to the green laserless skies of drab reality.

The guys from Muse can't walk down the street without winning some sort of live award, and quiet rightly so: love them or hate them, it's undeniable that they pour their hearts, souls, and three truckloads of equipment into their performance. However the homecoming gig in Teignmouth (pronouced Tinmuff, which like Aber, smells of chips) wasn't so much about the light show, the punch and judy set up, the funky videos, or even Matt's Kaoss Mansun (a guitar with a touch pad connected to a Korg Kaoss pad - sounds a bit like a theremin). Quite simply the band returned triumphant and their music was amazing. Muse played their rock socks off.

Andy, the taxi driver who took our party back to Exeter, was less impressed. He regaled us with tales of ferrying Chris the bassist home from Heathrow. Chris was heading back Teignmouth jubilant at the cutting of a new album; it's fair to say that he can be imagined jumping into the taxi with a certain amount of swagger, though this was soon diminished after hearing the news that his driver ( a skiffle man) had never listened to any Muse tunes. Eager to rectify this sad state of affairs Chris popped the newly made disc into the cd player. After a brief listen the taxi driver's words of consolation were "oh well, you've got a riff to yourself, ay, that's nice isn't it." He cheekily disclosed to us who should know better that "it's a load of old crap" and that he'd lost the copy Chris gave him in a move.

For those who are interested, it's on the Radio 1 and the red button tonight, but here's a clip of my favourite moment, a new arrangement of 'Cave'.

*From the flickr photostream of Olly-Og