Things and Stuff #22

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: comics, Wembley, Eden, pods, eyeballs

This is going to be a fairly quick one.

Thing 1: Rat Planet

I finally read two awesome comics I've been meaning to get to for ages - Rat Queens and Bitch Planet. They are both great. Rat Queens is funny, filthy, bloody fantasy about a gang of rowdy adventurers battling trolls and trying to find out who framed them. Bitch Planet is a sci-fi dystopia about the prison planet where women are sent when they commit 'crimes' that are non-compliant with the ruling patriarchy. Both of them are NSFW and feminist and diverse. Bitch Planet particularly made me fall off my chair with horrified glee. It's not subtle, but that's kind of its charm. It takes real world sexism that we're all deeply familiar with, dials it up to 100 and throws a giant lampshade on it.

One of the more SFW bits (c) Image Comics and Kelly Sue DeConnick

It is the horrifying patriarchal dystopia of my heart. If you only read one horrifying patriarchal dystopia this year, make it this one.

Thing 2: Hello Wembley, goodbye Birmingham
I've done my Hans Zimmer gigs. They were freaking amazing.

Until they take the videos down (and they seem to be far more tolerant this time than last time actually), you can see quite a bit of it by plugging 'Hans Zimmer Live' into Youtube or Instagram. I particularly recommend Interstellar and the Lion King! I didn't know the Interstellar music at all before we started rehearsing for this and now wow, that ending, I, wow.

Anyway, here is our sort of signature moment, a Crimson Tide medley that turns into the fiendishly hard and a+ perfectly named 160 BPM from Angels and Demons.

Sadly, my last Zimmer Live gig was the one in Birmingham on Tuesday. Happily, I'm going to have plenty more fun weird choir stuff for these posts in the next few months.

Speaking of which...

Thing 3: Rowing in Eden
The next actual CEFC concert with the full 100-strong choir which we've been working up to for months and months is finally here! It's on Monday the 18th in the Barbican Centre at 7:30pm.

Also, bloody hell, look at this stunning thing, I kind of want this image framed to hang on my wall (c) CEFC

If you are in London, you should come. We're doing Poulenc's Gloria, which is fun and weirdly cheeky for a piece of classical music (one movement was inspired by monks playing football...), Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music which is gorgeous, and John Adams' Harmonium which is utterly amazing and strange and knocks 160 BPM into next week in terms of heart-pounding difficulty.

Thing 4: Bangity Bang, Hello to Jason Isaacs, Shut Up Phone, It's Just Us Here, What's Next?
I love the Cornell Collective.

Actually, I love podcasts in general. I have a real podcast problem: when I subscribe to a new podcast I like to listen to all of it. When it's something like the Nerdist, which seems to put out an episode every day and stretches back into the depths of history (like, 2010) this is a real problem. I've been working my way through the back-catalogue of the Pharos Project (Doctor Who and dirty jokes), What's The T with Ru Paul (drag, life and dirty jokes) and The Indoor Kids (video games and... wow lots of these podcasts are really filthy). Plus I'm obviously keeping up to date with the vital ones, your Wittertainments and Empire Movie Podcasts and Adam Buxtons and Answer Me Thises and West Wing Weeklys (Josh Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway rewatch and review the West Wing one episode at a time. No massively dirty jokes yet, but they're only on episode four, there's still time.)

The only drawback to my massive podcast habit is a) that there are so many more I will probably never get to (Song Exploder, The Black Tapes, even Serial, they're on the list, I just haven't had the chance), and b) that if I hear another advert for Squarespace I think I might rip my own ears off and feed them to the nearest podcaster. (Not that I am not very grateful to all the advertisers for providing me with more free quality entertainment than I could ever possibly cram into my brain, but... seriously.)

ANYWAY - this was meant to be a fairly simple rec entry, so let's just say one of the good things about the Cornell Collective, Paul Cornell's wonderful geeky creator podcast is that it's monthly and has been going for less than a year so it's possible to catch up. Also, it's wonderful! And geeky! And stars creators from the worlds of TV, film and comics, talking about geeky things and usually some Doctor Who! If you like these things, you should listen to it.

Here you go: http://cornellcollective.geekplanetonline.com/podcast/the-cornell-collective-01/

Thing 5: [Eyeball squick warning]

Jessie tore her cornea last weekend. It was awful. She's much better now, and I know where my local A+E is and how to get there, so that's a tiny silver lining. Just a word of advice, for anyone who is thinking of getting hit in the face with a tree branch and tearing their cornea: don't.

Things and Stuff #10

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: theatre, drinking, ARCs, home and Night Vale.


Thing 1: The Drowned Man

Jessie and I went to see Punchdrunk Theatre's new London production The Drowned Man. It was several weeks ago, and I'm still processing the experience. It was like being in a dream, more literally than I can really express. We were surrounded by mysteries. We walked through strange places and found ourselves in even stranger places. We saw things, and we missed other things, and we were moved and incredibly creeped out and got seperated and found each other again. We imagined that things would happen that didn't happen, and had several what the hell just happened moments. We were told that there was a bar, where we could take our masks off and sit for a moment... and we never actually found it. 

One of the things we did see, (C) Punchdrunk Theatre

I would love to literally walk you through everything that happened and everything we saw and felt and thought. But I won't do that, because some of you might want to go, and for the rest of you it'll be like someone telling you in detail about this weird dream they had last night... 

Thing 2: alcohol
I also saw The World's End last week. I have to admit, I don't think I loved it the same way I adore Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I really did enjoy it, but what with the Gary King character and the way the whole thing is based on nostalgia and wasted lives and the concept of a good life not necessarily being what you think it is, and death and friendship and, y'know, some really self-destructive alcoholism... it was a lot of fun in places and soared past the six laughs rule, probably on the music choices alone, but at the same time it was really, really melancholy. Much more so than either Shaun or Fuzz. I think that fight in the final pub is going to stick with me for quite a long time. 

Also, today I am rather hungover as last night we said our WP goodbyes to Karen Ball, Commissioning Editor extraordinaire who is tragically leaving us to become Publisher at Little, Brown and Atom books. I think we all needed to drown our sorrows a little, because we don't know what on earth we're going to do without her... 

Thing 3: ARCs
The advance reader copies of Skulk have gone out! And when I say they've gone out, I mean apparently there were enough requests that every single copy is accounted for. I'm officially on the edge of my seat, hoping that anyone who reads it and likes it will say so loudly and often and those who hate it will never tell me... 

Thing 4: maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
Some unexpected househunting developments this last week have left me thinking about London and whether I'll even know who I am any more if I move away. 

I was actually born in Holland, though my parents are both English, but I've been a Londoner for at least twenty one years. Whether it's North, South or East (West London is the only compass point I've not lived in), London is London. Whatever you want, whatever kind of entertainment or culture or food or shopping or anything, it's about an hour away on the Tube. I've spent probably more hours of my life on the Tube than doing almost any other thing. There are places in London I've never seen and other places that feel like coming home every single time I go there. 

I just don't quite know how people live outside London, and not in an obnoxious 'oh how can you bear it' way - more in a 'I don't know how busses work or what it's like to live more than seven minutes walk from a supermarket' kind of way. It's silly, really, but being a Londoner is a big part of my identity. I don't think I'll ever stop being a Londoner, even when I don't live here any more. 

Thing 5: Carlos' perfect hair
Welcome to Night Vale is a very strange, very wonderful podcast about a sleepy desert town and its everyday problems, such as strange pyramids appearing out of nowhere, PTA meetings being interrupted by an invasion of pterodactyls, all wheat and wheat by-products turning into snakes, and Desert Bluffs' underhanded attempts to win at football. Also, the weather segment is unexpectedly brilliant. Here is some beautiful fan art: 

As made by the rather absurdly talented alackoforder on Tumblr

You can download the episodes on iTunes or from Commonplace Books' website.