Tuesday, September 23, 2008

About Four Blog Posts Away From Eyebrow-Raising Fanfic

I seem to be suffering from an alarming surplus of love at the moment. Possibly as a counterbalance to the amount of hatred generated by, and if I could type through gritted teeth I would at this moment, Charley Boorman, I am falling head over heels at every opportunity with many amazing things. Well, I say they're amazing. I would though, I'm in love with all of them. Here is a non-exhaustive list:

A) Guy Garvey and Elbow-mbo in general. Hooray for the Mercury win! I discovered to my surprise recently that I owned and liked all of their albums - I always assumed I had missed a few along the way - which I guess makes me a proper fan. But recently, one song in particular has invaded my brain and refuses to leave. But not in the usual mentally jarring, nagging, earworm way; rather, it gently plays on repeat in the background of my thoughts, lending absolutely everything I experience a melancholic hue. Great for mooching along grey London streets, but not, say, for eating a really good houmous. The song is The Bones Of You, and it is about as perfect a song as you will ever care to hear (although I am a complete sucker for anything with a 12/8 signature). It's about what happens when you hear music which reminds you of a tragic love affair, and boy, does it nail it. I have read huge great gushes of praise about Mr Garvey recently - someone referred to him as "the last drunken poet" or something, which I think is pretty gross and makes him sound like what the NME imagines Pete Doherty is (or did a few years ago, I dunno, whenever I read NME I always feel like I'm being repeatedly being told how completely out of touch and stupid I am, like I'm standing in the middle of some cretinous Camden pub wearing a full Saturday Night Fever disco ensemble). He may be a fantastic lyricist or there may be better ones, but that misses the salient point, that he has a fucking gorgeous voice and I could listen to it all day. In fact at the moment I am. And I love him totally.

B) Andrew Collins. Strange! One of those people who has been in the background of the general cultural chatter in my life for years, Collins and Maconie, then popping up on clip shows and pretending to be Mark Kermode, but suddenly I have discovered his blog and devoured almost the entire two-year archive in a matter of hours. I didn't realise he'd written almost everything in the world, including Not Going Out which I think's actually funny thank you very much, and been editor of Q when it was good! I should be worshipping at his feet, Brooker-style! And now, I am. Also, he does a good podcast with Richard Herring, which just involves the two of them talking for an hour and is somehow the top end of hilarious. I imagine most people "reckon" that if someone taped their pub conversation for an hour, it would be pure-spun gold comedy fit for a king. And I know that most people are really, really wrong. But these guys are the exception. That's what comes of being professional comedians, I expect. Note: Mr Herring does not appear in my lovelist, due to some misremembered slight from the dim and distant past - he's done something at some point which was specifically designed to specifically annoy specifically me, which is a rather paranoid-schizophrenic thought. But! Still true. Anyway, Andrew Collins - I love him totally.

C) Sue Perkins. Proving it's not just men that have suddenly captured my heart, which personally I find reassuring, as it means that it's not some grotesque hormonal response to the rapidly approaching day when my ovaries crumble into a fine dust, making me fall in love more or less at random in the hope that something, somewhere will impregnate me. Although, what IS love, eh? A topic for another day, is what it is. Anyway, lovely Sue, who's just fabulous and wonderful, and I didn't even watch that conducting reality show she was in. And I don't even begrudge her the amount of reality shows she appears to be doing at the moment. Mostly, I just adore the "Supersizers go..." shows she does with Giles Coren (who was finagling his way into this list before the whole fuck-gate thing and before I realised that he might be an overprivileged insufferable cunt, cunningly disguised by a pixie beard. I just said might be, Giles. Save your bile for the lowly underpaid footsoldiers in your business called show) She is quite possibly the most quick-witted and amusing laydee on the box at the moment, and she does it by just being funny, not being funny&ditzy, or funny&sexy, or funny&havingtotalkaboutperiods. Yikes. Getting into dangerous feminist territory here. I'll back away from that cos I wouldn't know what I was talking about, and just say, Sue - I love her totally.

The usual objects of my ridiculous affections still loom large, of course. They know who they are. Or at least, they will when they receive the special packages I've just sent them. You're right, that IS made out of my own hair!

Oh, now. That's just nasty.

**UPDATE** Stop press. I changed my mind about R Herring, cos I've just discovered his blog, and it's very nice. Plus he writes it every day about the minutiae of his life and still manages to make it amusing, which I admire utterly. Plus plus, he lives very near me and I have occasionally seen him out and about, so maybe I should seek him out and say hello, which he can then write about on his blog, which I can then write about on my blog, and we can all merge into a self-regarding mobius loop which should, if we're lucky, get sucked directly into hell. So congratulations, Richard. You're on my list. This is really not good news for you.

2 comments:

Lyregal said...

You now have me hooked on "The Bones of You". (Thanks!) :)

justrestingmyeyes said...

hooray! I have spread the love. Long may the song haunt you (in a good way)