Monday 27 September 2010

Love gone wrong

I am going to make a 'Crying into your beer' mixtape all about love gone wrong. Send me your tunes for inclusion I will have to find another way of making it now that Switchpod (or Bitchslut as RoMo called it) has gone down the tubes.

So far I've got Nina Simone, 'I've got it bad & that ain't good' and Roy Orbison's 'Crying'. What other tunes do we play when we're at the wrist-slitting stage?

Sunday 26 September 2010

Send your single friends my way

Right then. I mentioned it before, but it's an idea whose time has come. Speed dating is torture, internet dating full of nutters. What is there left? Yesterday out to dinner, we were talking about how we're all gorgeous & attractive, yet how hard it is to meet people in the big city. Thus was born the idea of the pub quiz where everyone invites their single mates, (we all have them, right) you all sit on teams with new people to break the ice. Then DJ afterwards for music & dancing, etc. We thought it should be on a Friday too so people don't have to worry about work next day (most pub quizzes are traditionally mid-week.)

I think it's genius & can't believe no one has done this before. It's MY idea and I want to do it before anyone else does.


All I need now is
1) a venue that doesn't mind pub quiz on a Friday
2) pub quiz questions
3) A funny quizmaster.
4) A DJ for afterwards.
5) People to make a simple website or nice posters/flyers to advertise (not really into the idea of Facebook)

My role will simply be to delegate, sit back, collect the money & get filthy rich.

Any takers?

Also, what do you think about getting a good balance of men and women? How can this be achieved? I don't want to be all clipboard Nazi but it is best to have a rough balance. Or even more men, because they can cope with competition if there are few women, they are like testosteroney stags clashing antlers in a forest, but if it's mostly women, it does not make for a sexy flirty atmosphere, the women get either all catty or depressed & the men want to run away.

I really want to do this, even if it's a one-off. I need your help, my internet friends.



Still trying to finish Hackney, That Red Rose Empire by Iain Sinclair.

Friday 17 September 2010

Dealbreakers

Getting over someone fast. What would constitute a deal-breaker for you?



(I apologise for lack of intelligent/book-related posts. It's September, what can I say.)

Tuesday 14 September 2010

the internet

Not as fun as it used to be, somehow. Or is it me?









Flight from the Enchanter, Iris Murdoch. Nearly bought this vintage Penguin with Annette swinging from the chandalier, but it was a tenner. Am on an Iris Murdoch kick. She's awesome.

Monday 6 September 2010

Fish Tank

So, Fish Tank! Saw it with Em in Barcelona and forgot to mention, it is one of the best films I've ever ever seen, made me proud to be British. Andrea Arnold (writer and director) takes this small scale story and makes it into something huge, powerful, vast, epic. Basically it's about Mia, who lives on an Essex council estate with her mum and little sister, full of anger and longing and aggression, being gradually won over by her mum's new boyfriend.

I can't explain how powerful it is - it feels like verite, but more heightened and atmospheric - even the way she uses sound (something you tend not to notice in films) and light in the film, it's like she knows how to hotwire the emotional centres in your brain. This trailer makes it look a bit grim but it does have laughs too, especially from Mia's cocky little sister (to Mia's new boyfriend; "Are you a pikey?")

Bonus facts: Andrea Arnold used to be in a kid's show of my faraway childhood called Number 73. She used to zoom around on roller boots and was the coolest thing ever. She spotted the main actor in Fish Tank, Katie Jarvis, having a row with her boyfriend in a train station and cast her, though she'd never acted before.

You should see it. It's one of the few films I've seen recently that really is about something.

(I will stop posting soon. I've just been in the house for 5 straight days and am going a bit stir crazy.)

Saturday 4 September 2010

On women's magazines

What do you think of women's magazines? I've stopped looking at them, even in the hairdressers. It baffles me that they still exist. Lots of people on Twitter seem to write for them, I have to bite my tongue. I stand in front of newsagents' shelves for 10 minutes hesitating and walk out without buying anything. I am a woman but they're not for me. And it's weird that a something good like Jezebel can exist happily online but not in print. Still miss the Face. It was the only magazine that seemed to be for everyone.

Also stopped reading Saturday and Sunday papers (the tutor at the summer workshop inadvertently killed them dead by remarking "They're just sick. Pages & pages of all this stuff you're supposed to want and articles about terrible things happening somewhere else in the world - and there's so much of them it would take you all weekend to read it all, when you could be hanging out with your friends and family." I'll never buy one again as long as I live.)

Oh print media, I do miss you though. What do you read?