2012 Vs. Paranormal Activity

One cost somewhere between $200 and $260 million to produce... the other cost between $11,000 and $15,000. (Accurate production budgets seem impossible to pin down via the internet.)

One takes away 158 minutes of your life you'll never get back (though it feels like much more)... the other zips by in 86, leaving you wanting more.

One wastes big Hollywood names like John Cusack, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover and forces distinguished actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jimi Mistry, George Segal and Oliver Platt to regurgitate the kind of lumpen dialogue Lucas would have rejected as trite... while the other casts two unknowns and lets them ad lib naturally to create believable, rounded, appealing characters.

One blows the GDP of a small country on the kind of cynical, bloated and obscene CGI escape routines that start out preposterous and have nowhere to go from there... whereas the other contains possibly 4 or 5 low key fx shots that ramp up the tension to unbelievable heights and have the audience literally screaming in their seats.

One manages to generate little in the way of excitement by destroying the entire planet... the other fixes a handheld camera on a sleeping couple and makes it impossible to tear your eyes away from the screen.

One revels in the kind of stupid disaster movie cliches that sank many an ocean liner and destroyed innumerable national monuments across the world for nothing more than hollow spectacle... the other uses classic horror film thrills while jettisoning the gratuitous gore that's mired much of the genre in recent years to wonderfully refreshing effect.

One has the kind of mawkish, overblown, patronising and nonsensical ending you'd expect from the man who gave us the worst film of the last decade*... while the other has one of the most heartstopping, "What The Fuck?", you'll-need-new-pants climaxes I've seen in years.

Both are doing big business at the multiplexes... one will be far more profitable than the other.

And the winner is...?



By the way, I ignored the warnings and went by myself. Sadly, I wasn't alone. The showing was sold out, and I was probably the oldest person in the theatre... by at least twenty years. It was however quite heartening to see how this tiny, one camera / no gore horror flick held the hyperactive teen audience's attention in a way 2012 never could. Two young lads sitting next to me started the film complaining about the wobbly video camera footage ("What? Is it gonna be like this all the way through?") and ended up shrieking, "aw no - no way - I've gotta get out of here!" You could see the relief on their faces as the lights went back up.



*10,000BC - at least the addition of an extra 12,012 years can't make things any worse.

Muppets

So I log on to pay my credit card bill (which I do every month, paying off the full amount, just to piss of the credit card company), but it won't let me access my account. Instead I get a message telling me to call customer services.

Turns out someone other than me has been using my credit card details to make a fraudulent payment. Only £30, but the fraud prevention bods spotted it and put a stop on it before it could go through. They're now sending me a new card, having cancelled my old card to stop it happening again.

Which is fair enough. These things happen. Except do you know what they've been trying to use my card to pay for? Their mobile phone bill. Now correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but wouldn't a mobile phone bill have your name and address on it? D'oh!

In other financially distressing news, I took my car in for service & MOT yesterday. 4 new tyres, new brake pads and discs, etc. = £500. Don't expect a Christmas present from me this year.

Never mind, to cheer me up, here's the Muppets version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Much better than the Queen with Paul Rodgers version.

Skunked

I didn't know what I'd make of Skunk Anansie.

Unlike many of their Britpop siblings, I wasn't hugely into them back in their heyday. I liked the singles, but never got round to buying an album. Picked a couple up cheap recently and still liked the singles; wasn't too bothered by the rest. So when Dave suggested we go see them live as their reunion tour hit Manchester, I wasn't sure it was entirely my bag. But he persuaded me: "You've got to see them live - Skin's mental." Mental is always good. He could have also mentioned that they take their name from the African folk tales of 'Anansi, The Spider Man'. That would have done it too.

I was surprised to see the Academy sold out last night. For an ex-Britpop band to still fill a venue of that size is pretty impressive, especially when they've been away for 8 years (though reunions always bring out a nostalgic buzz in ticket buyers). The crowd were well up for it too... but not as up for it as Deborah Dyer, the insaniac they call Skin.

The rest of the band came on first, ripping into the first track, Selling Jesus with an aggression that suggests they've been sat on their hands for most of the last decade, waiting for the call. And then came Skin. Or, I thought it was Skin. It was hard to tell. What actually appeared on stage was a huge glittery Flump, an aggressive golden pompom, tearing into the song like a cross between Sweetums and Animal of the Muppets. I've never seen anything quite like that coat, it took me a good few minutes to even realise I could see Skin's head inside it. When she finally shrugged it off at the end of the song (or slayed the beast that was attacking her), her real outfit looked almost ordinary. It was still sparkly, skin tight and superheroine-like, but compared to the Muppet explosion? Tame.

So I've never seen an intro quite like that. And I've never seen a performer crowd surfing / crowd walking quite like Skin. In one song she walked across the shoulders of the crowd while still singing. In another, she surfed almost the entire length of the Academy, got up on top of the mixing desk, sang a chorus there, then surfed the whole way back without dropping a note. Mad as a cement mixer.

But what about the music? Pretty much as expected. The singles are still cracking. Some of the other tracks are a bit too loud and shouty for me. But the new material stands up very well, particularly the cheeky I Don't Want To Kill You, and Squander.

I didn't know what I'd make of Skunk Anansie. I'm still not entirely sure. But it was a great night anyway.

Meltham Is A Dangerous Place... (6)

Previously on Meltham Is A Dangerous Place...



The skies had been sullen, the rain relentless, the woods wretched and without welcome. But I needed a walk. When you spend all day sitting at a desk typing heinous inanities, sometimes you just have to get out and smell the raindrops, scratch your face on a bramble, and slide on your backside through the mud.

This was a typical Autumn day then, until I arrived in the clearing. That's when the rain stopped. The skies cleared. And suddenly, it was like I'd stepped into a different world.

Then I saw the statue.

Then I heard the old man coughing.



"So," I said with a sly grin, turning my face into the sunlight and pointing a flippant thumb at the rusting iron icon before me, "I suppose you're going to tell me it's the Golden Idol of Meltham, a sacred effigy to the indigenous peoples of the village, a Meltham Moai - our very own version of the Easter Island statues?"

"Don't be so flipping ridiculous," he said, his usual querulous bark echoing through the glade. "And people is one of them words that don't take an 's'... you know how I warned you about them."

"No? Then I suppose it's the corroding countenance of the old Meltham god, worshipped by witches and warlocks round these parts for centuries through blood sacrifice, with sacred healing powers for any who lie naked in its shadow by the light of the waning crescent moon?"

"Pff!" he cried, batting away a gnat with the back of his liverspotted hand. "If you're just going t'mock me, young 'un, you can bugger right off, and see what happens to you then."

I could tell I was pissing him off, but I really didn't care. It felt so good in the sunshine. In the bright green warmth of the clearing. It was like all that shadows that had crept over Meltham these last few weeks - since I first met the old man on the night of the bleeding rainbow - it was like they'd all cleared and everything was good again.

"Wait - wait - those eyes, those ears, that stretched, equine face... it's not Prince Charles, is it? No, surely I'd have read about it in The Examiner, if Meltham was getting a royal visit this week."

The old man said nothing. He just stared at me, curled his lip into a sneer, and let out a wet, rasping sigh. "You've no idea, do you? You don't even see... You don't even see!"



I could see I'd pushed him about as far as I could for one day, the fun was going out of it, and the Prince Charles gag had fallen flat even by my hackneyed standards. "Oh, go on then," I said, "tell me what I'm missing. It just looks like a rusty old statue to me..."

"Aye. 'Cos that's all it is, lad. Nothing special about it at all. It's not the statue you have to worry about here - it's this bloody clearing! Green and leafy and still blooming well after the rest of the woods have turned to Autumn. Don't you see how wrong that is?"

A shiver passed through me; I could have sworn a cloud had passed over the sun, but everything was still bright. Bright and green and lush... everything November shouldn't be.

"But... that's strange, I'll admit it. I mean, I've seen a lot of weird things since I moved to Meltham, but this is hardly the worst. In fact, it's wonderful, isn't it? A place where it's always summer - even in the depths of winter. A place where you can always come to feel the sun on your face, top up your vitamin D, just... feel good about yourself, and the world, and..."

"Aye," said the old man, nodding, "you feel good 'ere all right, everyone does - even me. But ask yourself this, lad... for this summer clearing to exist, surely there has to also be a winter spot, somewhere else in Meltham, a place of eternal cold and death and misery? Woe betide you if you ever stumble into that place, lad, specially on a summer's day, you with just your T-shirt and your Cargo shorts and your Ray-Bans..."

I want to tell him I'd never wear Cargo shorts or Ray-Bans, but the words dry up in my throat. Yet despite it all, I still feel great. Unnaturally so.

"You watch out for that clearing, lad, there'll be another pretty statue for you to look at in that... while you freeze y'sen to death, and despair that you ever did live. you just won't be told, will you? Meltham... is a dangerous place."

It Really Gets My Goat... (1)

The new Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man, is out in the UK this weekend. November 20th, that's what it says on all the posters and online ads.

Except... it's not out in the UK at all.

It's only actually out in that London.

Grrrrr! I really thought that movie companies had stopped this archaic and patronising practice of releasing films in London before the rest of the country, presumably because the capital's cognoscenti deserve and appreciate intelligent flicks more than the plebs out in the sticks. They never do it with the blockbusters, so why do it with smarter, cooler films like this?

And if you are only going to release the movie in London for the first week - at least have the decency to point that out on the poster and internet ads!!! What, you don't think anyone outside the capital can read? GITS!

Harry Brown

The second scariest teacher at our high school was called Harry Brown. He could silence a room of misbehaving scrotes just by walking down the hall. He once gave me the bollocking of a lifetime for knocking on the church door and not running away as fast as my mates. I couldn't sleep for a week, worried the police were going to come knocking and drag me away to borstal for my crime. You didn't fuck with Harry Brown.

So I felt a strange affinity for Michael Caine's new vigilante-grandad movie before I even read the glowing reviews. Caine's one of those actors who, despite some very dubious career choices (Jaws: The Revenge?), really does get better with age. He's hardly put a foot wrong lately, acting Christian Bale off the screen in both The Dark Knight and The Prestige, and his performance in Harry Brown is up there with his best, so it's rightfully being compared with Clint Eastwood's swansong, Gran Torino.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't live up to Caine's acting. The script is clunky and heavy handed, telling when it's already shown, stuffed with ungainly exposition and frequently resorting to cliched dialogue and unimaginative swearing. It's also unremittingly bleak. Whereas Gran Torino had a lightness of touch and wasn't afraid to laugh at itself or its aged antihero, Harry Brown tries to be worthy and righteous, ending up reactionary and preachy. And the plot is so obvious even a drugged-up hoodie passed out on a ratty sofa could see it coming.

Worth seeing if you like Michael Caine, or you have a scary Harry Brown in your own past, just don't expect a classic. It certainly isn't the best British film of the year, no matter what the critics might tell you.

Kafka On The Shore

It's a long while since I read any Haruki Murakami, and I was wondering why as I started Kafka On The Shore. Indeed, for the first two or three hundred pages, I was kicking myself for leaving it so long - this guy is one of my favourite writers.

And then I remembered. Murakami is one of the most readable writers out there. He pushes all the right buttons for me - engaging characters, unpredictable twists, quirky flights of fancy, what some still call 'magic realism' (a term I've stopped using since I saw it applied to Neil Gaiman), psychological depth and the kind of honest, everyday detail that Stephen King excels at... but... and yes, I'm sure you could hear the 'but' coming, he does also have a tendency to drive me up the wall. His novels never quite wrap up as satisfyingly as I want them to and often (though not always) leave me with a maddening sense of ambiguity, of an itch that isn't quite scratched. Maybe that's my fault as a reader. Perhaps I don't think about them deeply enough, I get so carried along by the sheer verve of Murakami's storytelling ability that I don't stop to consider the themes, or what the author's really trying to say.

Kafka On The Shore tells two parallel narratives that intertwine, as expected, in the most unexpected of ways. The first story introduces Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old who runs away from home and ends up living in a library while subconsciously searching for his long lost mother and sister. There's a wonderful wish-fulfillment fantasy going on here for anyone who dreams of escaping their 9-5 and holing up in a library reading books all day, and you almost don't want the darker aspects of the plot to infringe on Kafka's idyllic new life. But a story without conflict would be like a scone without jam, so Kafka finds himself a suspect (in his own mind at least) in the violent death of his father, and a romantic assignation with the ghost of his still living mother soon follows. Shades of Oedipus, which I guess is what the cover copy means when it talks of "a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos".

The second story involves Nakata, an old man who may or may not have had some kind of close encounter as a boy that's left him befuddled, but with the ability to talk to cats. Unemployable, he boosts his state allowance by hiring himself out to track missing moggies and return them to the families who love them. But a violent confrontation with a catnapper who resembles the striding man logo from Johnnie Walker whisky bottles sets him off on an odyssey that involves a mysterious stone, a truck driver called Hoshino, a pimp who looks like Colonel Sanders, and a sky that rains mackerel.

The two plots do eventually come together, and most of your questions will be answered. As always with Murakami, it's an enthralling ride... but if you're anything like me, you may find yourself feeling a little dizzy and disoriented when you finally climb off the rollercoaster. That's no reason not to read Murakami, as long as you remember what you're letting yourself in for.

Lately, I've Been Listening To...

...these (among many other things).

God Help The Girl - God Help The Girl

The new project from Belle & Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, God Help The Girl is 'a story set to music', the soundtrack to a film that Murdoch hopes to shoot next year. Although the lyrics are typically Murdoch, he's broadened his musical scope, working with a number of female singers (some auditioned through the band's own website) as well as guest vocals from Neil Hannon and others. Classic 60s girl groups swirled together with lush orchestral indie pop and a achingly poignant narrative in one of Murdoch's most inspirational works to date.

The story deals with an endearingly unhinged lady and the fantasy world she inhabits - a female Billy Liar with Holden Caulfield tendencies and little bit of Amelie optimism. The story appears bigger than any one album can take, Murdoch has also released a 5 track EP and two singles, the second of which (Come Monday Night) features a contender for the year's best b-side (and song title), the delightful spoken word whimsy of Howard Jones Is My Mozart. Can't wait for the movie.



Morrissey - Maladjusted



The reissue of Morrissey's most maligned album rescues it from mediocrity in quite a startling way. Gone are the record's two weakest tracks, Papa Jack and Roy's Keen, the worst single of his career. In their place are some excellent b-sides like Now I Am A Was, Heir Apparent and Lost, plus the bizarre-yet-riveting Sorrow Will Come In The End, Moz's hatchet job response to the Mike Joyce court case which was removed from the UK version of the original album at the last minute by frightened lawyers. A ghostly, spoken word rant, it features the most direct and nakedly savage lyrics of his career. There's no room for wit or metaphor here, you can almost see him, sat there in his lonely room on the night of the verdict, tearing the paper in his exercise book as he scrawls these lyrics with the blood of the judiciary.

Yet strangely, the songs I find myself most drawn to now are the album tracks I ignored ten years ago. Maladjusted, Ammunition, and the deeply disturbing Ambitious Outsiders, a song that gives Chris Morris a run for his money in the Paedogeddon stakes - you wonder why the Daily Mail weren't all over Morrissey's arse for that. And then of course, there's Trouble Loves Me, the great lost Moz anthem, with it's mocking cry of "show me a barrel and watch me scrape it" that beat the reviewers at their own game.

Unlike Southpaw Grammar which changed little on reissue, despite the addition of some never-before-released offcuts, Maladjusted has been transformed here. If it had been released this way back in '97, maybe he wouldn't subsequently have gone eight years without a record contract. It also has a far better CD cover.



The Pearlfishers - Up With The Larks



The recently released "new" album from my old favourites Prefab Sprout, Let's Change The World With Music, proved a disappointment. I still love Paddy McAloon's voice and musicianship, but the overly sentimental nature of the lyrics stuck in my throat, and starting a swooning orchestral rock album with a cheesey 90s rap didn't help either.

Thank heaven then for The Pearlfishers, the long lost Sprout-alikes who out-Paddy Paddy on this wonderful 2007 release. I've written about the title track before, and was prepared to be disappointed by a whole album of them, but this just blew me away. Gorgeous, sunshiny pop that sounds like Brian Wilson if he'd grown up in Glasgow.

This is songwriting...

When I was a young sappy boy, looking for a way to make a mark
Somebody at school heard me sing, called me a poof and wheeled away
Stood my ground, followed on, through the quadrant and the halls
Caught him up, pushed him down, kicked him squarely in the balls
Well, I felt great for a day, a little bit less so in a week
By the time my greatest fight was famed, I was sick and sore ashamed
Felt the sting in my fists and the sting of salty tears
The hero for a day who milked his hollow cheers
Fight fire with flowers, greet your killer with a kiss
When they call you down just say, 'there’s no better day than this'
Wage the love of the world against the darkest powers
Victory is easy when you’re fighting fire with flowers

Listen to The Pearlfishers at their website, and prepare to fall in love.

Sweet Baboo - The Mighty Baboo

Yet another artist I wouldn't have discovered without visiting Condemned To Rock 'n' Roll (thanks, Larissa!), Sweet Baboo is the alter ego of North Wales lofi-with-tunes noisemaker Stephen Black, about whom the interweb provides me precious little information. (No wikipedia entry? Write one yourself, Steve!) I did find one particularly nasty review, which probably would have dissuaded me from ever checking this artist out had I read that before hearing any of his songs. Which only goes to show that you should always listen and make up your own mind, because other people's opinions are always rubbish. I know mine are. Why are you even still reading this?

I've just discovered that Sweet Baboo released another record earlier this year. Considering how much I've enjoyed his first album, I'll have to check that out. Visit his idiosyncratic / slightly annoying website here, or click on his last fm page for an easier way to hear his tracks.

How I Feel Today

It's just one of those days...

An Airborne Toxic Event Over Manchester

"It's always great to play Manchester," says Mikel Jollett, lead singer of California indie band The Airborne Toxic Event, stretching out the 'a' in the first syllable as Americans always do, "it's where all our favourite bands come from."

Now barring the idea that Jollett says this every night, wherever the ATE are playing ("all our favourite bands come from Scunthorpe"), I'm not sure you'd immediately peg this group as Smiths fans. They've certainly got a more college rock sound than a lot of Moz-disciples you might hear, and their storytelling lyrics and ability to rock out the power chords owe more to E Street Band Springsteen than This Charming Man. But just imagine a band that combines a love for my two favourite artists... there aren't a lot of groups out there who pay allegiance to both Morrissey/Marr and Bruce - in fact, short of The Killers before they decided the wanted to be pop stars, I can't think of any. Yet last night in Manchester, as well as tracks from their excellent self-titled debut album, The Airborne Toxic Event played three well known covers. The first? I'm On Fire. The second and third? During an encore of Missy, one of their best songs, they lapsed into both Ask and Panic.

Well, that's pretty much me sold. Even despite the gigiots in the audience (and last night was gigiot central - I feel a 'bad gig behaviour' post coming on very soon), this was a night to remember. And a night to decisively chalk down The ATE as one of my favourite new bands of the year. Even if Dave did think Mikel Jollett looks like a young Leonard Rossiter... couldn't quite see it myself.

How I Spent My Thursday

As is customary at this time of year, please don't ask.

Meltham Is A Dangerous Place... (5)

Previously on Meltham Is A Dangerous Place...



Step outside my front door, go along through the neighbours' gardens and out onto the pavement where the dustbins get left for collection every Tuesday. Cross the main road, dodging the cars that hurtle by on their way to Penistone, Dove Stone, the Peak District and Sheffield. Go over the river and take the footpath that follows it through the woods down to Meltham Mills. That's where you'll find the first of the blue ropes...



Take a few more steps down that darkling pass, where recent rain's made a soggy tapestry of the fallen Autumn leaves, and keep looking up. Ignore the heron where it sits on the edge of the waterfall, and the squirrels that scallywag and skedaddle at the sound of your footsteps. Keep looking up, because that's where you'll see the blue ropes, suspended from the branches of the aged trees, frayed and fluttering in the breeze, more and more of them the deeper into the woods you go.



Should you happen to meet an old man on your way, hunched over a crooked walking cane, dragging up the catarrh from his chest with a thick, syrupy gargle... you might be tempted to stop and ask him, "just what's with all the tattered blue ropes, old timer?"

Don't be surprised if you don't like the answer.



"That's where they hang 'em. The witches."

"The witches? I thought you said the witches were... I mean, last week, you rescued me from one who was painting black spots on the sycamore leaves..."

"Not our witches, lad. Nobody hangs our witches. (More's the pity.) But every now and then, we get a visiting witch - from Slawit or Marsden, sometimes even from Holmfirth-- Ptui! And our witches don't take kindly to comers in, so they string 'em up in these woods and leave 'em to swing..."

"But... there's no nooses on the end of the ropes. They just fray into nothing. How would they hang anyone from that?"

"The nooses are there, lad... you just can't see them in the daylight. Come down here after dark though, and you'll see 'em plenty. See the necks they're wrapped round too. Y'see, it ain't the bodies they hang in these woods, 'cos you can only hang bodies once. Souls, though? You can hang souls again and again if you know the right black magic. You can hang 'em in these woods forever, so those dead witches from Holmfirth, they'll never know peace again."

If you do hear a story like this, somewhere in the dense, longshadow woods just two minutes from my front door, you might be led to conclude that Meltham... is a dangerous place.

Harker

I've long been a fan of detective fiction - from Holmes and Marlowe through to Morse and Monk - in books, films, and on TV, and though detective comics are rare these days (unless you count Detective Comics, which is anything but most of the time, despite featuring "the world's greatest detective"), I followed books like Maze Agency and Ms. Tree throughout the 80s and 90s. Though some of Ed Brubaker's recent work touches on similar noir territory, there hasn't been a decent detective comic in years, so I was intrigued to read about Harker - a monthly, independently published British detective comic featuring a grumpy copper and his smart alec sidekick... it sounded too good to be true.



As it turns out, Harker is everything you want from a good detective story and more. DCI Harker himself is a welcome hybrid of Morse and Jack Regan, with a splash of comic book cool thrown in. He's cranky and cynical, and like many of the best detectives appears at times to be borderline autistic. He's also got an appealing vulnerability / Scooby Doo cowardice, best seen at the end of his first adventure when he's trapped in the British Museum with a psychotic, devil-worshipping serial killer. DS Critchley, his partner, is a sharp-tongued, sharper-dressed ladies man who at times, like Lewis and Watson before him, thinks his boss is a few fingerprints short of a crime scene, but obviously gets proved wrong when the case finally wraps.

The brainchild of writer Roger Gibson and artist Vince Danks, Harker is an impressive book for all kinds of reasons. It's exciting and witty, sly and knowing, and features a genuine whodunit, with clues and red herrings aplenty. It's also inspiring to see an independent comic like this stick to a monthly schedule, and offer trade paperback collections for those of us who prefer to read our stories in one wholesome chunk. The first of those, The Book Of Solomon, is available to buy now from the Ariel Press website. I don't know what to praise more: Gibson's ingenious plotting and canny dialogue or Danks' crisp linework and stunning backgrounds. Harker is everything you want from a contemporary mystery story, and it's great to see the creators have all kinds of further adventures planned, taking their crimebusting duo to Whitby, Portmeirion, Blackpool and even New York in the months to come. I can't wait!

The Writing Group

So I've joined a writing group.

I know, hard to believe, isn't it? A miserable, misanthropic sociophobe like myself, going out and meeting people - total strangers! - voluntarily, without any money changing hands.

I've always believed that writing is a solitary activity and that talking about writing is like writing about music - just like that old 'dancing about architecture' chestnut. But then again, I talk about writing all the time on this blog (and write about music too), while solitary activities can become lonely, dispiriting things... so why not give it a shot?

I was further encouraged by the venue of this particular group, a major Manchester theatre, and the fact that a number of the writers involved have had plays produced. While I don't have any plays on the go at the moment, I've had some positive responses to the scripts I've written in the past, so maybe this would be a good way of making some useful contacts or getting my work in front of an actual audience for a change (beyond the three people who regularly read this blog).

Still, I was terrified I'd arrive to find everyone chatting away, dropping witty bon mots like Oscar Wilde, and discussing why Jude Law wouldn't return their calls... thankfully, this wasn't the case. There may be some charming, gregarious, extrovert writers out there, but such creatures are far from the norm. Most are just as nervous, insecure, and hopeless with self-promotion as I am... it gives me a warm glow just to be reminded of that.

"My name is Ben, and I'm a writer..."

Seriously, that's how a couple of the participants chose to introduce themselves to the group at the beginning of the session. I couldn't tell if they were being ironic or not. I hope so. The whole thing felt far too much like an AA support group as it was. Though by the end of the evening, that comparison bore fruit. Because the main things I took away from last Monday night were hope and reassurance. The reassurance that I'm not alone with this terrible affliction. And the hope that maybe I'm better at it than I sometimes think. We'll see.

That's why I'll be going back next month. More then.

Luke Haines - Wot A Rotter

Monday night, English Southern Man Luke Haines ventured north of Watford Gap to Manchester, and I got to see him play live for the first time. The Deaf Institute is a terrific venue, best described by the adjective ‘intimate’. Though not as dangerously overcrowded as last week’s Morrissey gig at Leeds Academy (i.e. there was still room to breathe), the room was still pretty full… but I reckon that was 150 people max (probably closer to 120). I was surprised to find Haines couldn’t draw a bigger crowd, because as far as I’m concerned he’s everything you want from a rock star. Dark, sarcastic, intelligent and angry, but with a warm, witty stage presence, and a nice line of self-deprecation – as you’d expect from the author of Bad Vibes.

Though Haines probably wouldn’t thank me for it, I can’t help but take the Morrissey comparison further. He’s a true individual. A Luke Haines song could only be a Luke Haines song, with recurring themes of death, shame, depravity, fading glamour and lost innocence common throughout his work, not to mention that old “what it means to be English” chestnut, and a curious obsession with the darker areas of recent history - from the Yorkshire Ripper to Baader Meinhof to Gary Glitter.

Yet despite such bleak subject matter, you always know where you’ll find Luke Haines's tongue. Either in his cheek or raspberrying in your face. Satan Wants Him for it too… while Beelzebub rejected Moz’s soul years ago.

“I wrote this song with Billy Joel,” Haines says, introducing 21st Century Man, the bastard son of We Didn’t Start The Fire, and title track to his excellent new album. What follows is a typically caustic jaunt through the decades of Haines’s life, namedropping The Green Cross Code Man, Yasser Arafat, Bobby Sands and Bernadette Whelan (a David Cassidy fan killed in a front of stage crush - but I had to look that up). It contains some of Haines most cutting and amusing lyrics to date...

"I was a star in waiting
All through the 80s
Thatcher tried to get rid of the coal
The whole country went on the dole
Susie Lamplugh disappeared
David Bowie lost it for years
Died a death in his slap-bass phase
Everybody else died of AIDS..."

"What can you do when you've made your masterpiece?
That's what I did in the 90s
Yeah, I was all over the 90s
I was all over in the 90s."

Not the case, Luke. This old Billy Joel fan still loves you, and so did 150 people on Monday night in Manchester. Long may you moan...

Comics Come Out

A couple of mighty fine small press comics that have plopped through my letter box recently...



O Men creator Martin Eden's long awaited full colour comic Spandex has finally become a reality, with a gorgeously produced #1 that acts as a taster for the massive 120 page Spandex graphic novel which will follow next year.

For mature readers only (no, seriously), Spandex features the world's first gay superhero team. It's a lot more tongue-in-cheek than Martin's other work, and the bright colours suit that perfectly. Think Queer As Folk meets Justice League, this is loads of fun - but has a darker edge too, as can be seen in issue #1's shock ending. Martin's plan for the forthcoming graphic novel sound really promising too... but you'll have to buy the comic to find out more.

Full details here.



The fifth issue of Tony McGee’s Outcastes was released just a few weeks ago, and the adventure is really hotting up. This one’s a little bit Jules Verne, a little bit steampunk, a little bit Mutiny On The Bounty, as runaway twins Winter and Summer finally encounter the bewitching bohemian Armida (who I’ve been telling Tony since issue #1 bears a striking resemblance to Thea Gilmore) on an ocean crossing to disaster. Tony pulls out all the stops on the art this time; his panel layouts in particular create a wonderfully seasick sensation on the page (Neal Adams would be proud), particularly when the climactic storm kicks in. Beautiful stuff, with Tony’s best cover yet.

Find out more and read excerpts from the latest issue (plus other comics by Tony) at his website.

Jennifer's Body

Juno writer Diablo Cody's new film Jennifer's Body is a mess of contradictions. Comedy horror is always a difficult balancing act; what usually happens is your film ends up falling either one way or the other. It's either scary at the expense of laughs or, more commonly, funny without the fear. Jennifer's Body walks the tightrope better than most, but does so without any major thrills or innovation. There are some nice lines, but not half as many as in Juno; and a couple of almost-decent jumps, but nothing that'll give you nightmares.

The other major contradiction is the way the film's been marketed - heavily on the strength of Megan Fox's "number one lads mag babe" sex appeal, while the script is aiming for slightly more feminist territory, reminiscent at times of Heathers. The problem with Megan Fox is that I don't find her particularly sexy... I know, hard to believe, eh? She's like Angela Jolie, cold and robo-vixen; at times just plain terrifying. And I don't just mean when she's devouring bloke's entrails. This might have worked in her favour, except that she's actually scarier when she's trying to be hot... when she's supposed to be horrific, she's crying out for varnish.

Still, there are reasons to watch this movie. Amanda Seyfried gives a cool turn as the movie's heroine / Jennifer's best friend 'Needy' (despite the subtle-as-a-brick nickname), and Cody-favourite JK Simmons pops up as a dreadfully unhip / "cool" teacher. As with most of the films he appears in, he's the best thing here. Far more interesting to watch than Megan Fox... sorry, lads.

Meltham Is A Dangerous Place... (4)

Previously on Meltham Is A Dangerous Place...



"You see those black spots on the sycamore leaves, young 'un?"

Despite the old man's tendency to frighten the bejeezubs out of me on a regular basis, I like that he calls me 'young un'. At 37 and counting, you take all the affirmations of remaining youth you can get.

"It's some kind of disease," I reply, "black tar spot something, I read about it on the internet."



We were standing in the Honley woods, just up the hill from the old David Brown factory, on a fine but windy Autumn afternoon. I'd come here for a walk, figuring it was far enough away from the malevolent Wood Man and the Shrine of the Pernicious Ram that I wouldn't be bothered by any of the old man's superstitions today. I should have known better. Even out in the woods, he finds occultism and danger.

"True, true," he says, resting on his walking stick and throwing back his nose to snook up phlegmicide. "At least, it may be true in parts other than these. But don't put all your faith in your electric magic box - there are stranger truths, older truths at work in Meltham."

"So you're saying that the black tar spot disease hasn't actually affected the sycamores of Meltham - that something else is causing these marks?"

"Aye - witchcraft!"

Oh. here we go again...

I don't say it out loud, but still he read it in my eyes.

"Ah, yeah, mock all you like, young 'un - but the witches of Meltham are painting them spots with their own horsehair brushes. And it's not paint they're doing it with neither! It's the blood! The blood of the rainbow! The blood of the rainbow!"

I've heard enough for one afternoon, so I decide to leave him to his delusions. Or maybe I just don't want to hear any more today. The wind's come colder now; colder than it's been all summer, and the nights are drawing in.

"Beware," he shouts after me. "Beware when the black spots are all around you! You'll never leave the woods again!"



I follow the path down the slope towards the village. Through the wind-stripped trees, I can see the roofs of the old mills looming ahead. Dry leaves cackle and hiss under my feet. I'm almost home when something stops me in my tracks. Up ahead, just off the path, a young girl - she can't be more than sixteen, in a dark scarlet hood. In one hand she holds a paintbrush, in the other... a jam jar, its label long since boiled away, filled now with a dark, viscous red. As I watch, she dips the brush in the jar, then spots it on the leaves in front of her. Large, browning gold leaves, three- and four-fingered, brittle and curled. Sycamore.

Spot. Spot. Spot.

I turn, and start down the slope in the opposite direction. I know I can get back to the village that way too. There's no way I'm walking past that painter. But after little more than a few steps off the path, I'm back where I started. I look down at my feet, and that's when I see them. Sycamore leaves. Black spotted sycamore leaves... the ground is covered in them.

I turn back towards the hooded girl. She's gone. I run down the path where she was, but once again I end up back where I started. There's no way out. The leaves are all around me. Some of the spots still wet. They only dry black, I realise. I turn again, crashing through the undergrowth deeper into the woods. I know I can get to the road if I go that way. Or I think I can. But there's no way out. The black spots are everywhere.

That's when the hand grabs me from behind, and the old man drags me out of there, swishing away the leaves with the tip of his walking stick, clearing a path where there just wasn't one a moment before.

Soon I can hear traffic, and the light changes through the branches, then at last we break through a bramble patch and out onto the safety of Knowle Road. I'm gasping. My heart's a machine gun. I can't even catch my breath.

"Time's coming," the old man says, narrowing his eyes and locking them on mine. "Time's coming you're gonna have to start listening when I tell you. Meltham, lad, it's a dangerous place!"

Trust Me

‘Trust No One’ was Fox Mulder’s famous maxim, and you have to wonder if Elmore Leonard’s son Peter took that to heart.

I’ve not read any of Leonard Sr.’s work (I must do something about that) though I have seen Get Shorty, Cat Chaser, 52 Pick-Up, Out Of Sight and Jackie Brown, so I reckon I know his style. Twisty-turny, double-crossy, stabby-backy plots and endearing, multi-faceted characters… all of which can be found in junior’s second novel too.

The plot would give Quentin Tarantino wet dreams. It begins with not one but two robberies gone wrong, and stars a spunky heroine on the run from everybody and noble-though-disgraced ex-cop investigator O’Clair, who’s got Bruce Willis written all over him. It’s a thrilling, fast-paced read that zigs when you think it’ll zag and manages to find time for some wonderful character moments. I loved the bit when, while sneaking around in Bobby The Crook’s apartment, O’Clair finds a fancy tropical fish tank, with only one fish in it…

“…an ugly little thing floating on its side near the surface of the water. It looked dead. He poked it with his index finger and the little son of a bitch spun around and tore off a piece of his flesh in a split second.”

Turns out Bobby has a pet piranha. Which kinda sums up the whole book. Even the fish will bite your finger off as soon as look at you. Trust no one.