prolific.org

Easter. Wanted to travel, but everywhere was too wet, too cold, too dear. And so I am rewatching Battlestar Galactica, Season 1, for the fourth or fifth time.

Starbuck: Now, if you were human, you’d be just about ready to start offering up some false information about the location of the nuke. Some tiny thing that might get you a reward and maybe spare you a few minutes of this. But then I keep forgetting, you’re not human. You’re a machine.
Leoben: I am more than you could ever imagine. I am god.

Battlestar Galactica is a weird show for me. I stopped watching it back in 2003 when the first season was in progress, finding it too dark for my mood back then. I like darkness a lot, but at the time I wasn’t up for it. When my head was in a better place, I started re-watching everything and now think it’s fantastic. I can’t wait for more and I am sad it’s ending, but happy it will end before it starts to suck. I’m also pleased a spin off, Caprica, will be made.

Starbuck: Permission to speak off the record, sir?
Tigh: Granted.
Starbuck: You’re a bastard.

The strange thing is I don’t like anybody in the show. ‘Like’ on lots of levels. I am not a fan of any of the actors, I don’t find anyone particularly attractive, I don’t care much for them as individual characters… they’re all bastards. But I love the show, love the ensemble, love how they interact, love the way everything looks and I love how smart the show is and how it touches on various political and religious topics.

Romo Lampkin: There is no greater ally, no force more powerful,
no enemy more resolved, than a son who chooses to step from his
father’s shadow.

If I had to pick a favourite on the show, it would probably be Romo
Lampkin, who only appears in a handful of episodes in Season 3. Played
by the always charming British actor Mark Shepard
(Firefly, Medium)  Romo’s presence managed to make me forget the utter
drudgery of the Starbuck/Anders relationship, if only because I kept
wondering why Shepard was putting on an Irish accent for the part.

Shepard himself is a fan of he series, he called it
‘the most political show on television’ in a Q&A session last year and practically begging Ron Moore, the show’s creator, for a part.
His love for the material shines through in his performance.

Baltar: Congratulations… You’re not Cylon. 100% human, and
very, very bright green as well… You couldn’t be more human if you
tried.

BSG in ways is like the West Wing, another show so dense I can watch it again and again and again and never get bored. What’s so good about Battlestar Galactica is that it’s not about the scifi, just like the West Wing wasn’t about the President. It’s about us. Which everybody who is watching the show already knows, but now you know too.

I’m bloody tired of those Taiko drums though.

Anyone watch Pop on Trial, the 90’s with Stuart Maconie, Caitlin Moran, Goldie and Paolo Hewitt on BBC 4? Oh. My. God. The. Smug. Goldie’s the only one I didn’t want to throttle. He seemed a lot more interesting than previously suspected. Hewitt, Moran and Maconie represent everything I hated in the British music press in the 90s. The insular, anti-European, suspicious of anything attempting to be more than entertainment vibe. No mention of U2, of course – the band that arguably dominated the early 90s world wide. Paolo ‘I’m so far up the Gallagher’s arse my face looks like I’m permanently smelling poo’ Hewitt especially I wanted to gag. I don’t know who said it and I’m paraphrasing but, yeah, the 90s… all about Thatcher’s children run amok. Fuck Oasis and Loaded and lads and ladettes.

“A permanent contract? My god, Prol, how bourgeois you’ve become!”, said the actor at the party.

Bour-bloody-geois yourself, Mr Double-Income-Two-Kids House-In-Swanky-Part-Of-Town.

Hotpress announces Sinead O’Connor’s comeback.

Pray she keeps it together this time.

She’s still feisty:

“Religious songs with bad words, that’s the best way I could describe it!” she explained. “Been thinkin’ for years the religious area of music has a huge gap in it. Needs a bit of punky filling. I kind o’ had the feeling for years, that God must be pretty sick listening to a lot of the awful shite religious stuff there is out there. Reckon he or she’d like somethin a bit more thuggin. For thuggin big G.

“Like, if I was God, I’d be using a lot o’ bad words. Given all the shit people be carryin’ out in God’s name like. So that where I coming from on God and music. Musically speaking, to rescue God from religion.”

[Read more]

This one goes out to a friend who’s moving house today. Emigrating, as he calls it, although he won’t be crossing country borders. But the river is wide and the feeling deep.

As I write this, he’ll have locked the door. The house is empty but for the ghost. Hush, don’t follow him. Haunt no more.

He is, for the moment, between houses. Uprooted, a vagrant, a traveller and a lodger for a while. Alone among friends.

I think of him, as I always do and hope for a blessed new life and new beginning, good health, joy, and many songs to sing.

God guard his home from roof to floor
The Twelve Apostles guard the door
Four good angels round each bed
Two at the foot and two at the head

• Curry score: 2 (Local take-away and the still fabulous Rasa Samudra)
• Celebrity score: 1 (Tracy Emin @ the ICA)
• Art score: 3 (Osbourne Samuel gallery, Raphael exhibit at National Gallery, 100 artist see God at the ICA)
• Sleep score: +/- 20 hours in two nights

“The musical genius of S Club 7 lives on!”
– Top of the Pops presenter, 2004.

As the man said, god help us all.

This is for those Dutch politicians claiming four more years of the Bush administration is a victory for its policy on the ‘war on terrorism’.

When Nick Cave releases an album (which seems to be every bloody year), I dutifully part with my cash for the CD. He’s one of the artists I’ll buy just about every release of.

The last couple of years his albums haven’t really done much for me, though I had a few weeks intense enjoyment of his last one, Noctorama. In particular the single ‘Bring it on’.

Abattoir Blues, the first CD of this lovingly packaged release, continues with the energy and drive that ‘Bring it on’ had, but the rest of Nocturama lacked.

Lyrically, Cave takes us from God to cannibalism (I’m sure it’s a metaphor…), drops names like Auden, Nabokov and Marx and mentions his ‘flag’ at ‘full salute’. Sweet.

I’m on track 6 and I’ve heard at least three possible singles. And I keep thinking: “This is how R.E.M. would sound if they still cared.”

Well, perhaps not the title track Abattoir Blues, which seems to have barely grown out of some sort of demo stage. Think U2’s So Cruel, i.e. interesting idea with maddening drum beat.

But it’s immediately followed by the beautifully crafted ‘Let the bells ring’, where Cave’s almost in Crowded House territory.

Purists might scream ’sell out’ like they’d never screamed ’sell out’ before at Abattoir’s almost middle-of-the-roadness, but I’m quite taken with it. In fact, by the time the first track finished I had gone and ordered a ticket for his November 2004 concert in Amsterdam. And I’d told myself I would skip this tour.

Part II, The Lyre of Orpheus, tomorrow.

Trying to book a holiday is doing my head in. The idea of going somewhere to do nothing all by myself is frightening in itself. Having to decide where and when is well nigh impossible. I should really learn to drive a car. (Have license, don’t drive.)

Update: oh, thank god, I made a decision. Flying (cheaply) to Nice on August 4, will train it to Marseille (only 2.5 hours). Fly back August 10. This is my first ‘holiday in the sun’ since the early 90s. Cue thunderous applause.