Everything You Need For Your Complete Entertainment And Instruction
Look at this! Plugging music again.
The new Pet Shop Boys album, Fundamental, is a quite fabulous piece of work, and well up on a level with their better productions. Favourit tracks include The Sodom and Gomorrah show, Casanova in hell and next single Minimal (though I'm not sure it's a great choice of single).
The special edition has an extra disk of remixes and other oddities, including Elton John.
The Last Stand
Off to see the new X-Men film tonight. I'm hearing very mixed things about it, so my expectations are a bit all over the place. More later.
Room With A View
In honour of Dave and Octavia's (almost) last night in town before becoming suburbanites, David and I went out for dinner with them to the recently-opened Galvin at Windows in what used to be the Windows on the World restaurant in the Hilton on Park Lane.
Yesterday morning I was expecting the experience to be somewhat minimised by miserable weather (what's the point of being on the 28th floor if you can't see anything?) but a glowing review of the place by the always dependable Fay Maschler at least suggested that the food was going to be good. As it turned out, yesterday afternoon was suddenly warm and clear, and the view was about as good as you could hope.
Quick tip if you ever go - don't plan on spending time having a drink in the bar first. It's full of people talking on mobile phones, smoking cigars and generally being conspicuous consumers, and the service is diabolical. David and I got there at 8.30 and settled into a corner on a couple of sofas. The guy in charge then very obviously sent over a waitress to make sure we were going to be a larger party and weren't hogging more space than we should (even though it was the only free space when we'd got there). David then asked for the cocktail list, which they apparently thought we only wanted to read and not order from, as we were then forgotten about for fifteen minutes until Dave and Octavia arrived. Once they then finally came to take the drink order we were then left waiting over another fifteen minutes for the things to arrive.
So avoid the bar, go straight into the restaurant and you won't regret it - the food was superb, the service great, and the evening thoroughly enjoyable. A slight marring at the end when their system went down and they couldn't provide us with the bill for a while was really no one's fault, and you've got to love a French waiter who can take the piss out of himself by apologising that his French accent isn't strong enough and then deliberately overdoing it to make up 
Seen Everything? I Doubt It
Two items that trigger my "What the fuck?" alarm have come to my attention today.
The first comes from The Guardian:
The town of Black Jack, Missouri, got its name from the variety of oak tree that once grew nearby. "Those stately trees represent who and what we are today, a proud city with strong roots, providing the safety and respite of community," its promotional literature explains. It is the kind of place where family is valued - just as long as the family in question meets certain criteria. Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving's family, it seems, do not.
The couple could face fines of $500 (£270) a day, and Black Jack is already facing the unwelcome glare of national attention, as a result of a local regulation that bans unmarried couples with more than one child from occupying homes there.
Oh dear - What is the world coming to?
And the second comes via Dave, from the BBC News site:
A district nurse has been cleared by a court of indecent exposure after sunbathing naked in her back garden.
Lynett Burgess, 55, from Llandyfriog, near Cardigan in west Wales, was filmed by a "shaken" neighbour in July 2005 and was charged by police.
The prosecution at Cardigan Magistrates Court said Ms Burgess's nude sunbathing was "not normal" behaviour.
But magistrates cleared her, adding that it was accepted she did not intend to "cause harm or distress".
I honestly can't find the words to express what an unutterable waste of time, energy and public money this was.
And as for this from the pervert neighbour with the camcorder:
"I don't want to bring up my children in such an environment."
Well to be honest I wouldn't want to bring children up in an environment where neighbours spy on each other and report to the police, but I guess his kids are pretty much stuck with that.
Casting Against Type
The lovely Lee, who was among those gathered for Eurovision on Saturday night, posted yesterday about something from the evening which I had forgotten, namely the assertion that all gay men had a typewriter when younger.
I for one was forced to confirm that I fit this stereotype, as was My Beloved.
I had mine for years. I ended up taking it off to university with me and writing essays on it.
(I'm just making things worse, aren't I?)
This Big Brother-Free Zone
As previously mentioned, I'm not watching Big Brother this year, though as I'm living with what could only be called an addict, it would be impossible for me to be unaware of it.
And strangely, I've also discovered that a couple of people I know, know people in the house. And stranger still, more than one person I know has had some past experience of that man who has walked out. I say 'has past experience', because no one seems willing to lay claim to actual friendship, on the basis that he's apparently just as bad in real life as I gather he has been in the house.
“The XI In Team”
Look away now if you don't want to see me even tangentially talking about sport.
I don't know a lot about cricket, but I do get that it's played by a team of eleven players. The current poster campaign that Sky are running for their England Test Match coverage make much of the fact through the logo they've used, which is this:
EngXIland
Which to my mind makes the fact that of half a dozen or so variant posters I've seen, every single one features only one player, and the same player at that, utterly inexplicable.
I bet the team members who aren't Andrew Flintoff feel really valued.
So Chris Gets His Wish
And Lordi walk off with the Eurovision Song Contest. In typical style this no doubt means that there'll be a bunch of similar style entries next year. Hmmm - Helsinki sounds like a more appealing trip than Athens....
As far as last night was concerned though, I think it's safe to say that if that song hadn't been performed in that way, it wouldn't have won. But the voting was all over the place anyway. How did that dirge the Irish put in do as well as it did? And the Russian and Lithuanian entries both receieved significantly less appreciation where we were than songs that ended up getting nowhere, from Armenia, Germany and Denmark. Highest ranked song that actually should have been a contender: Sweden's Invincible, though as previously discussed they picked the wrong entry anyway.
Bye Daz - presumably we'll never hear from you again, even though you achieved the UK's strongest showing in several years.
Well That’s That Then
Say bye-bye Belgium, who we thought were a guaranteed finalist for Saturday's Eurovision. And farewell too to Cyprus, Albania, Belarus and all the others who fell at the semi-final hurdle.
Worryingly, someone I work with is thinking of watching the main contest purely because of Finnish entry Lordi. I'd hate to think he'll be voting on the same basis - that whole act is just wrong.
The major theme we picked up on in last night's performances was that of large blokes in skirts - David uncharitably extended this category to include at least one contestant who is officially female.
Still, at least it provides an alternative to Big Brother.
Carry On Flogging That Dead Horse
So there's to be a new Carry On film. Starring such top quality comedy actors as Vinnie Jones, Carry On London is finally in production after a three year delay caused by issues with the financing. Really? They had trouble finding the money for what will clearly be a number 1 worldwide smash? I'm shocked!
Seriously - In the way that I used to think Doctor Who would never come back, I've always been sure that someone somewhere would find a way to do new Carry Ons, blithely ignoring the fact that the originals were at least as much about that specific set of performers as they were about the scripts or the plots (and I use that term in its loosest possible sense).
I'm sure all involved will give it their all, but nothing they do will make it possible for me to go and see a performance by Kenneth and Hattie and Charlie and co.