Monthly Archive for March, 2009

wish i could tell you all the things that woody allen helps me see;

Published on March 30, 2009 in a little more personal. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

gutter ball

I went bowling with a couple of workmates on Friday night and couldn’t resist sharing this photo Lynn snapped of me celebrating my collosal failure to even hit the pins (if you look closely you can see the bright green ball trundling merrily along the gutter). I think I managed a magnificent total of about 55. Eat your heart out, President Obama.

What can I say? It’s a lot harder than it looks on the Wii.

Thankfully, one thing that’s much easier in real life than on the Wii is driving. Well, most of the time: I base this on the fact that I finally bought Mario Kart yesterday, and although I can manage the courses much easier on an old Game Cube controller than the Wii Wheel I’ve had a go on at parties I’m glad that the sudden rollercoaster-like dips, ink splotches and my worrying tendency to fall off the edge of bridges aren’t a common feature of my Thursday night lessons. I’m progressing fairly well I think: while the four years of lessons I’ve already got under my belt certainly give me a head start, I think I deserve to be proud of the fact that only four lessons in I’ve already carried off two maneouvers.

My instructor is great. His name is Bob, and he is really chatty and says that I’m far from the worst pupil he’s ever had. He also takes the piss out of me mercilessly, and because I know what I’m like I’ve told him that he’s not to let me try to get out of things that he knows I’m capable of doing. Because of that, I’ve driven home since my second lesson. On my third, after having practiced an emergency stop (“I won’t ask you to do that again,” said Bob, mimicking what you’ve told on an actual driving test), I pulled off a perfect one right on Paisley Road West when five kids ran straight out in front of me. Not a hint of nerves, and if you know how terrified I used to get behind the wheel (once even during a test itself) you’d be as proud of me as I feel.

My driving style isn’t instinctive yet, by any means – sometimes I let myself get soothed by my instructor’s voice, to the point that I worry that I’m incapable of thinking for myself behind the wheel. Still, it’s early days. Last week Bob asked me to pull over by the side of the road, and when I stopped he asked me if I had seen Annie Hall or if I was too young.

“Yeeeeees… it’s one of my favourite movies,” I replied as a niggling feeling of dread began to creep up my spine.

And with that, he slowly opened the passenger door to reveal that I was parked about a foot from the pavement. “It’s okay, I’ll walk to the kerb,” he said.

I’m currently on the sofa with my laptop and a stomachache, which I hope wasn’t the result of last night’s birthday dinner for my brother. I googled my various symptoms, and it turns out I either have some kind of gastro thing or the Hanta virus. Too tired to shake it off anyway after somebody in the close thought they’d throw a party on Saturday night – the weirdest thing was, all was quiet when we went to bed (at about 2am) and their music was fucking shite. Please, someone point me to this post when I undoubtedly start to worry what the neighbours might be thinking during my birthday party. Just because everybody here is older than us doesn’t mean they’re more respectable!

don’t let this fading summer pass you by: the first quarter review;

Published on March 29, 2009 in music. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I keep a list of everything I’ve bought, seen or listened to in any given year to make it a little easier on myself when it comes to writing those end of year lists we bloggers so love. I do this because it’s hard for me to separate what came out in any given year from what I discovered backdated, which is why although they’ve yet to release any new material my “band of 2009″ will probably be the Gaslight Anthem. I’ve written about them before of course, in a post that continues to attract controversy from people not sure if their little lyrical tributes are homages or rip-offs (I’d go with the former, since it’s so blatant – it’s as if the band’s record collection is so vital a part of their lives that little snippets can’t help but filter through in their music. And who can argue with that?); but the obsession has only grown stronger since a once-doubting Stringer ordered their killer first album and I bought their frankly amazing Senor and the Queen EP.

This weekend, I’ve also been reliving December’s Light of Day London Parkinson’s benefit show, thanks to a recording that popped through my letterbox yesterday from my German friend Claudia. I hope I’ll always be the girl you can hear screaming on bootlegs, even if I’m now old enough to have a 25-year-old younger sibling.

The first quarter of 2009 has brought plenty of its own treasures though, even if this household’s eagerly anticipated Bruce Springsteen album wasn’t one of them. The Hazards of Love, the new album from previous Last Year’s Award winners the Decemberists, was released this week and I’ve had time to give it a couple of spins. It’s a dense record even by the notoriously wordy band’s own standards, and one that calls for repeated listens in its entirety before its story starts to make sense. Something of a “prog-rock opera”, the record tells the story of Margaret and her lover William – to say nothing of the former’s shape-shifting rapist, a forest queen and a cold-blooded rake. Or something. Although featuring great lyrical turns from Shara Warden (My Brightest Diamond) and Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark as the female characters, it is through the sweeping, epic music that the story unfolds in an album which takes lyricist Colin Meloy’s ability to create a strong album from the most convoluted of story arcs to the next level. Hardly one for the iPod, but worthy of your time nonetheless.
BUY: The Hazards of Love at Amazon.co.uk

From the complicated to the not-so, then: with her sophomore album It’s Not Me, It’s You, Lily Allen has cemented her reputation as my no-bullshit popstar of choice. You’ll have heard lead single “The Fear”, with its cutting denouncement of celebrity culture, as it was number one over here for about nine million years. The rest of the album is just as strong as Lily deals with sex, drugs, God and disappointment in her own inimitable style.
BUY: It’s Not Me It’s You at Amazon.co.uk

“When she was 22 the future looked bright,” Lily sings, and its a sad echo a couple of years on crops up on Emmy the Great’s debut album – released the same day and the recipient of a few more spins around here. My love for Emmy can be traced back to various demos which have been kicking about for almost as long as there was an internet, so the songs which make up First Love already sound familiar. What makes this album a shoe-in for my end-of-year top ten though is that these songs have lost none of the stripped-down hauntedness which made me fall for them in the first place once repackaged for mass consumption. “24″ and the album’s title track display a weary resignation beyond the singer’s tender years, while “MIA” is even more disturbing in its final recorded form. I’ve bought three copies of this record already – both for my own consumption and for various birthday presents – and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
BUY: First Love at Amazon.co.uk

Just arrived is Animals In The Dark by William Elliott Whitmore, a dark, folky record I overheard in Monorail a couple of weeks ago and fell in love with, and one I will doubtless come back to when I’ve had the chance to digest it properly. Today’s final recommendation, however, goes to sometime New Pornographer Neko Case, who with Middle Cyclone has delivered an album of stomping folk-tinged gorgeousness that’s worthy of breaking her to a wider audience. “I’m a man, man, maneater,” croons the songstress on “People Got a Lotta Nerve”, so warmly that you realise you could never resist.
BUY: Middle Cyclone at Amazon.co.uk

Full disclosure: if you do fancy any of these and buy through the links above, I get something like 5p per record sold. Help a starving blogger, go on! ;)

you said i was your blue, blue baby: last month’s mix, march 2009;

Published on March 26, 2009 in books & literature and music. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .
This entry is part 7 of 28 in the series monthly mix club

Mr Alan Moore, I believe I owe you an apology. Although I will maintain that I have no need to see the movie adaptation of your opus ever again (a position I am sure you will by no doubt appreciate, since by all accounts you have even less interest in the project than I do), I am sorry that I referred to one of its protagonists as “big blue zen samurai shit flying around on Mars”. I’m reading Stringer’s copy of Watchmen at the moment, and fucking hell, you guys… this thing is nuanced, and intricate, and emotional, and gripping. All things that a certain blockbuster was not.

I’m aware that this is old news to, well, everybody, but I thought I’d better set the record straight.

Other than that, there hasn’t been anything particularly exciting keeping me away from this blog. Work is still difficult, my knees are still sore and my weekly driving lessons continue to be a source of quiet pride. I’m still photographing my silly face on a daily basis, and spending way too much money. Not least on music: I’m too tired to get out to many shows, but as we finish up this first quarter of the year I suspect I have bought more albums than I have in a long while. Not that you would know, as I haven’t been writing about them: I wonder if it would be too smugly self-referential to attempt a little roundup this weekend?

It’s late enough in the month though for your monthly mix, which has got me through some particularly bleak spells this past few weeks.

As Bad As It’s Been, Hasn’t Killed You Yet: last month’s mix, March 2009
1. 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers (ft. Nico the Beast): “Rabbit Season”
2. The Decemberists: “The Rake’s Song”
3. M Ward: “Oh Lonesome Me”
4. Justin Townes Earle: “Can’t Hardly Wait”
5. Two Cow Garage: “Burn In Hell”
6. Amanda Palmer: “Leeds United”
7. Virginia Dare: “Baby Got Away”
8. Missy Higgins: “More Than This”
9. Neko Case: “Polar Nettles”
10. Langhorne Slim & The War Eagles: “Colette”
11. My Latest Novel: “All In All In All Is All”
12. The Little Hands of Asphalt: “The Future”
13. Iron & Wine: “Love And Some Verses”
14. The Hold Steady: “Atlantic City”
15. Okkervil River: “So Come Back, I Am Waiting”

[ZIPPED MP3S, LEFT-CLICK AND SAVE]

Monthly Most Played after the jump.

Continue reading ‘you said i was your blue, blue baby: last month’s mix, march 2009;’

surallan will see you now;

Published on March 25, 2009 in aff the telly. 2 Comments Tags: , .

If you had to re-bullshit my wealth, then you best bullshit it down by £100m at the moment, why not? And then, suddenly, when we pull out of recession, we can bullshit it up to £900m or something like that. It makes no difference. Do I care if I lost £100m? I tell you what, give me £600m cash, and we’ll shake hands.

[Sir Alan Sugar, speaking to Sam Wollaston in The Guardian.]

The Apprentice is back tonight. Hurrah! I don’t normally have an opinion on the candidates before the show airs, because they all say the same stock phrases in their little blurbs for the website which are carefully calculated to make them sound like pricks. Most of them are picked because they are pricks, admittedly, but it’ll be interesting to see how they interact and whether the person who will ultimately emerge as my favourite looks a complete idiot in the first couple of weeks.

I’ll probably be on Twitter tonight, so I’ll see you there if you’re watching.

this is your hometown;

Published on March 24, 2009 in photography. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

regeneration: ur doin it rong
blue movies
lost dog
walter spring

On Saturday morning I got off the bus a few stops early and spent an hour or so wandering around Tradeston. A few tweaks in iPhoto, and you too can make your hometown look like a Bruce Springsteen song! It was a good weekend all in: friends and drinks and shopping, and The Seventeenth Century at the 13th Note. On Mothers Day I cooked a full roast dinner, which for a first time wasn’t a complete disaster. That’s one thing off my list of Things To Accomplish in 2009 (leaving passing my driving test, and learning the correct application of smoky-look eyeshadow).

This post is something of a placeholder because I’m a bit short of proper blogging time at the moment, but I hope you’ve all been good little boys and girls because I’m pretty sure I owe you a mix CD by the end of the week.

a strange “status” of affairs;

Published on March 18, 2009 in technology and the media. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I realised this morning that, with the exception of a quick update about the football on Sunday (posted because it had again struck me that it had been a while), I haven’t actually updated my Facebook status in about a week and certainly not since the roll-out of the social networking behemoth’s latest redesign. While I’m sure that this is a state of affairs which none of my contacts on the site have found particularly distressing as I was always a bit of an oversharer, it represents a pretty major shift in the way I use social media.

It hasn’t been an overnight shift, of course – it’s fair to say that Twitter fills the “microblogging” need that I was unconsciously using Facebook status updates for when that was the only option open to me. I’ve had a Twitter account since 2006, but only picked it up again when my boyfriend started using it the site became a bit more fashionable – these innovations are, of course, only as good as your audience. There was never any point using Twitter to share news when I was broadcasting to ten people, but now that I’m being followed by 300 it’s a worthwhile way to share links, commentary or little anecdotes from the back of the bus. Facebook, on the other hand, I’d rather reserve for more important announcements to be instantly broadcast to a wide range of “real life” friends, and family members.

I put this down to what I perceive as each site’s typical audience. Although seemingly never out of the news at the moment due to its status as the latest celebrity trend, most of the Twitter crowd seem to be early adopters: the techies, the net geeks, the dreaded “social media experts”. While Twitter is becoming much more fashionable, particularly here in the UK, it hasn’t reached the degree of ubiquity that profile-based sites such as Bebo and Facebook have. Your mum probably doesn’t have an account yet. You’re not likely to network with the people you went to highschool with.

Which is why I’ve never been keen on the integration of Facebook updates and tweets. I can see why synchronising the two is a great time-saving device, and helps you get your message quickly to two different audiences, but I think both sites call for a different style of content. Indeed, I’ll go a step further: I’d be happy to see updates I post to Facebook copied over to Twitter, mimicking the range of tools I use to broadcast when I’ve updated this blog, or to share my last.fm listening statistics. To me, Twitter encapsulates what that user is thinking, doing or linking to in that moment: it’s not a model that I think works well the other way around. It’s why I stopped using Twitter to update my Facebook status about ten minutes into trying out the service – basically I talk a lot of bollocks, frequently, and while it might be interesting to my fellow Tweeters as they see it stream by in real time it’s not interesting to my cousins, or my work colleagues, who aren’t constantly connected in the same way I am and who maybe check their Facebook profile once a week. I know that Facebook is jealously posessive of its data and such reverse integration isn’t currently possible, but I’m just putting it out there.

Why then Facebook’s redesign? Chris Willman at Huffington Post is one of many bloggers who have commented on the seeming “twitterfication” of the daddy of social networking websites. I’m not usually one to complain about a site redesign, but the new look makes very little sense to me. I don’t want to see a mess of data every time I log in – I like my neat status updates, which thankfully are still accessible in the same way on my phone. I want to see who’s breaking up, who’s having a baby, who’s changed their hair – all things I have been late to the party on in the last week because Facebook no longer lets me filter what content I want to see, when I want to see it. That day’s birthdays has been shifted someplace weird, in tiny font, and you might argue that if I have to be reminded when distant friends’ birthdays are so that I can write on their walls when I don’t really talk to them for the rest of the year I shouldn’t really be posting for those people anyway. I disagree, perhaps because I love to celebrate real-world connections no matter how tenuous. Or I’m just really, really nosey.

So why the change? Who asked for it? To quote Willman:

Earth to 24-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: As of last month, Twitter was getting 54 million monthly visits, which sounds impressive, except that this genius thing you invented was getting almost almost 1.2 billion visits–or, in other words, was still about 20 times as popular as the nascent challenger. Remind us again, Mark, what it was you didn’t like about that math?

[As an aside, and on the topic of integration which I managed to get away from, don't get me started on updating a blog with a daily aggregate of "tweets" posted, including conversations which passed twelve hours ago with people your blog readers don't interact with. Has anybody ever had any feedback or comments on the back of such posts, with the exception of maybe a new follower who didn't realise you were on Twitter as well? I'm not having a go - the concept genuinely boggles my mind and I'll happily agree to disagree if you find it worthwhile.]

When I first started using Twitter I thought it was utterly pointless, but that was before this new generation of plugins and tools to improve the whole experience. If I’m at a computer I use Twitterfox to post updates, which runs as a subtle pop-up at the bottom of my Firefox browser window. It’s become the easiest way to keep in touch with me if I’m busy or backlogged with my email, and it’s easy to jump in and out of the constant conversation even if it’s only just by checking recent posts and personal replies – and now I’m following over 200 users, I’ve abandoned the pretense of ever being able to keep up with everything ever posted. Which is fine, because as I said above Twitter as a tool is all about what’s happening now. These days it’s where I get my news from – spread and retweeted before it even hits the sites.

It does has its inconveniences though, particularly as it gains more media exposure. I seem to have ended up on some sort of “Twitter Elite” site which means I’m instantly recommended to anybody joining the site in the Glasgow area, which is nice in a way but it’s always strange to see somebody new who’s following maybe Stephen Fry, Alan Carr and Last Year’s Girl. I’m not sure how many of these people stick around when they realise I’m not a celebrity, and it’s fair to say I’ll follow back if there’s a decent amount of interaction – I’m a sucker for banter. No, the biggest pain in the backside is the marketers – I don’t mean the “WOW I GOT A FREE IPHONE CLICK HERE”-style spammers, who show up on every hot new site sooner or later, but rather the so-called “social media experts” who all seem to have about 4,000 followers apiece. Given I struggle to keep up with 200+ I’m not quite sure how that works, so I rarely give them the time of day. Plus, in their profile photos they all look like balding, middle-aged CEOs only in jeans and flannel shirts to show that they’re not the office type. I don’t want to take lessons in young, hip technology from somebody who looks like they could be my uncle, thanks.

Anyway, this is getting a bit long and keeping me away from the yummy dinner I’m having made for me tonight. The gist of it is: I love my blog. I quite like Twitter. I used to love Facebook. But they’re three very different sites which I use in very different ways, and on which I cater to very different audiences. You may disagree, and I suspect this post will either tank or pick up comments from people I’ve never even heard of given that Twitter is the hot topic of the moment. Personally I’d quite like to hear what you think.

what’s my age again;

Published on March 17, 2009 in a little more personal, books & literature and current affairs. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

A US study has revealed that the onset of old age begins earlier than previously thought, according to the BBC.

Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found that mental powers including those of reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought start to dwindle – from age 27.

Accordingly, I have just under three months in which to finally read War and Peace, set myself up for life by winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and invent a cure for cancer.

I’m sure the study has some merit, but it smacks of the sort of filler I often use to kick off my editorials. Given my precarious position on the brink of old age though, I can’t help but comment – and it’s a bit gutting that, after my body (or at least my legs) has already given up its youthful vibrancy, I can’t rely on mental agility to see me into my thirties!

At least my memory is still intact – the story reminded me of a conversation I had on MSN years and years ago with a friend of mine. I’m pretty sure we were still teenagers – I was certainly still using MSN! This friend and I were joking about heading for our twenties and getting older, and I can’t remember the context but we hit on “27″ as being impossibly old to us at the time.

I suspect this friend has forgotten our conversation, not least because he’s only got a couple of weeks left before he hits said magic age…

I should probably stop reading autobiographical works by New York-based ingenues, who seem to come across and more interesting and glamorous than me even as they write about their collection of pink plastic ponies (it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only person who can’t help but respond to simple offers from the supermarket or the office stationery supply catalogue with requests of an equine nature – you and I should do cocktails next time I’m in the city, Sloane, although I suspect we’d be like two kids in a toystore). I just get jealous that my anecdotes don’t merit a book… although at least the author’s a little bit older than me, so there’s still time!

Assuming dementia doesn’t get the better of me, anyway.

ETA: As Fraser pointed out below, 27 is also the age commonly associated with rockstar death. He reminded me, in fact, that when I half-drafted this post in my head this morning I was going to write about the themed birthday party I’ve been planning: if I am to be any sort of rockstar after all, then I should celebrate my 27th like it’s going to be the last birthday party I will ever have.

Which it had better not be, incidentally.

So I’m going for a costume theme. Which will, of course, fall flat as costume parties usually do (generally my doing it has to be said, although I at least have an idea of my costume already). And there will probably be themed cocktails and dead rockstar mixtapes. Traditionally I don’t like to start organising my birthday party until those of my siblings have passed, but keep an eye out for news!

she’s friday night when sunday’s almost done;

Published on March 16, 2009 in a little more personal. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

I have spent this weekend mostly regressing back into somebody who’d rather just say “no”. It seems that for every eyes-wide-open-on-the-back-of-a-bus moment of revelation, there is an equal and opposite apathetic exhaustion. My sense of self is a war of attrition: the result is that I only left the house to go as far as Asda or my brother’s sofa. I credit this state of affairs to two things:

ONE: My legs these past few days have been painful and heavy, and I feel like Scott McDonald at the end of ninety minutes plus stoppage time if I try to climb a flight of stairs. I’ve been keeping up my exercises, and liberally applying my painkilling tinctures, so it’s incredibly frustrating and I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe I’m trying too hard at the gym; entirely possible due to our new calorie-counting beat-the-green-light electronic system. Maybe I need to start looking for a ground floor apartment, and hope the local neds don’t little and the upstairs neighbours don’t spring any leaks.

[This will happen over either my dead body or my eventual confinement to a wheelchair as a ground floor apartment would take me even further from my ultimate dream: an airy, spacious flat with a balcony, overlooking either a Meditteranean-style bustling plaza (soundproofing essential) or a harbour. When I was very young I actually coveted these flats in Paisley which came nothing close to either, but did overlook a major junction where my mum and I once witnessed some guy get his head kicked in.]

TWO: The rest is just the same old daily bollocks that I cannot write about freely somewhere I am not anonymous. Though at my best, I can rise above it and I am taking steps to improve and ultimately free myself from that particular set of circumstances, sometimes I let it get me down. And I hate myself for it, which depresses me even more.

Now while I am not suggesting that I become Zooey Deschanel although I certainly wouldn’t argue (based only on viewing the trailer for Yes Man as I’d rather adopt her style than Jim Carrey’s), I can’t say that a low-key weekend has even helped me to feel a little bit reseted. Perhaps, while I idly hurl cliches, “a change” really is as good as one. It’s time to make some plans… but not for this week.

Last week, Miss Smidge posted her own personal “Ten Commandments” and urged us all to come up with our own. While these are certainly not exclusive, I think jotting some ideas down might at least help me put things into perspective at the start of another week.

I. Thou shalt respect and appreciate thy friends. While missing the odd phonecall is perfectly understandable, it’s not too much to expect that you will at least eventually call people back.

II. Thou shalt do something creative every day.

III. Thou shalt know thy limitations. The word “no”, despite what has been posted above, is perfectly acceptable if used firmly, sparingly and not only in response to fun things.

IV. Thou shalt make more of an effort to aquaint thyself with the city’s many and varied club nights, bars, exhibitions, theatre, drinks promotions and cultural events. By this I mean actual knowledge, not merely a reciprocal Myspace friend request.

V. Thou shalt not live to work, unless thou manages to one day sustain thyself as a freelance journalist in which case thou may live to do lots of interesting things in order to write about them for profit.

VI. Thou shalt develop a proper facial skincare routine, exercise regularly and stop using chocolate as an antidepressant.

VII. Thou shalt not “spend money like watter”. Its pleasures are fleeting, hollow and leave you scrabbling for bus fare the last week of the month.

VIII. Thou shalt cook from scratch, using fresh, local and ethical produce where practical.

IX. Thou shalt be more open to new places, new experiences, new books, new music and new foodstuffs (this last part within reason and open to negotiation).

X. Thou shalt continue to dream – but never at the expense of action.

sunday morning;

Published on March 15, 2009 in current affairs and the media. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The trouble with not having much time to blog at the moment is that, by the time I get around to posting about anything, it’s already old news. However, I found the Sunday Express’ front-page condemnation of the now-teenaged survivors of the Dunblane shootings so abhorrent that the links are still worth posting just in case anybody missed it.

The story, now pulled from the paper’s website and currently subject to at least one formal complaint through the Press Complaints Commission, exclusively reveals a shocking truth: that, thirteen years on from the tragedy, the now eighteen-year-old survivors post photos of themselves getting drunk and talk about sex and drugs and fighting on their Bebo pages.

That these kids are now eighteen is important: it means that they are now “adults”, and fair game for scumbag journalists previously prevented from publishing intrusive “where are they now”-style stories. That journalist Paula Murray and editor Derek Lambie consider this topical, relevant or even a story on the anniversary of the shootings only goes to show that it’s becoming harder to find a conscience in tabloid journalism these days as sales and advertising revenue plummet. Still, I can think of one newspaper none of us would be disappointed to see go out of business.

They Say It’s Raining In New York has an excellent breakdown of the article which is well worth reading.

The PCC’s journalistic Code of Practice states, under heading 3:

Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications. Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent.

As justification has not been, and it would be hard to see how it could be, forthcoming, you’d be well within your rights to make a complaint to the PCC here. ETA: As Greg so rightly pointed out on Twitter, you can’t actually complain under the PCC code if you are not directly involved in the report (perhaps Ofcom could learn from this?). However, the Media Guardian reports today (Monday 16th) that the PCC has launched an investigation. The Express has still not commented.

“most people don’t believe that rock n roll can save your soul”;

Published on March 14, 2009 in film and music. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

A little bit of catching up on a Saturday afternoon. My sister’s been round, and it’s the Cup Final tomorrow, and I sorta feel as if despite everything I wrote last weekend I’d rather just stay home tonight, and cook something, and watch some DVDs. The thing is, I’m not sure what to cook (although I’d like to make a pie for dessert since it’s 3/14 for our American cousins today). I’m bored of the same old stuff, but the cardinal rules of food tend to limit me referring to friends or recipe books for suggestions.

I’m struggling to make sense of this Hold Steady mini-tour. I think the closest they’re playing to us is Leeds, but it’s on a week night which means synchronising days off and thinking of travel and tickets and hotels. I’ve spent far too much money recently, and May’s shaping up to be a pretty busy month, so Stringer’s told me not to even think about it.

At least there’s a new trailer for that forthcoming documentary to tide me over, eh?

Anyway, our tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in Dublin arrived, and have taken pride of place on the pinboard in our kitchen. I realise I have yet to mention the Hangin’ Out On E-Street series, featuring video interviews and cover versions from a few artists you might have heard of, but with Tegan and Sara’s contribution just posted now’s as good a time as any.

And Hooverville is a new site focusing on “old music” in and around Glasgow, from the same mad bastards behind Crooked Rain.

We went to see Watchmen last night. No point in a review since it’s not my demographic, but it’s one of Stringer’s favourite books and he was spitting tacks all the way home (ETA: and later, on his blog). I really liked the first half – it was pretty and had good music and plenty of gratuitous violence – but if I expand my usual “zen samurai shit” to “big blue zen samurai shit flying around on Mars” you’ll understand, right?