Happy New Year...

A very Happy New Year to all my readers.

I'm off to Duckie tonight for their New Year's bash at South Central. Matt, Aaron and I will probably meet up first and travel down together.

I'm taking things easy this afternoon with a siesta partly in preparation for tonight and partly in recovery mode from yesterday's craniosacral therapy (thanks JC), afternoon delight (thanks Nick) and late night boozing (thanks Stuart, Gary et al).

Let's hope 2006 is better than 2005.

The Big Room...

Two blokes overheard on the Victoria Line on 30th December at 11:48pm between Kings Cross and Higbury & Islington:

"What you doing tomorrow night?"
"Liz is going to a gay George Michael-type wedding at 5 then we're out to the pub"
"A gay wedding? On New Year's Eve? You going too?"
"Nah. I`m meeting her later."
"You don`t fancy it?"
"Not that. But New Year`s Eve? Funny time to get married, innit?"

Gay weddings Civil partnerships join the big room.

King Kong...

Roger and I went to see King Kong last night. A bum numbingly long film - all 3 hours 9 minutes of it. Good fun though but with perhaps rather more dinosaurs (hints of Jurassic Park) and insects (hints of Starship Troupers) than I might have expected of an ape picture. If you like CGI-fests though then it's a goodie. Especially the sequence with the ship running aground (hints of Titantic).

Afterwards we met up with the super sexy Matt, the equally sexy Alistair and Matt's visiting friend Aaron for beers in the Eddie.

Arbie the Robot...

A 'press release' from my very good friend Roger....

Hello! As some of you already know I was in the recording of the last ever episode of "Never Mind the Buzzcocks". I appear as my alter ego Arbie the Robot (www.arbietherobot.co.uk) in the line up of "guess the star of old". Arbie had originally appeared in the Pointer Sisters' Top of the Pops performance of "Automatic" back in 1963.. (ok maybe not THAT long ago!) It is being shown on New Years Eve (Saturday Night) on BBC2 22:30 - 23:00 - set those video recorders or cancel your New Year's celebration and stay in to watch me on the television! The episode is supposed to be very funny, according to friends that went - I was left in the dressing room for 2 hours and didn't see a single second of the recording (no, not even my bit!!) , so I can't pass comment!!!!!!! A Happy New Year and hope to see you in 2006!!! Love Roger. ps. its repeated on Mon 2 Jan, 23:00 - 23:35

Dr Who is top TV Moment of 2005...

Britain's TV viewers have voted a clip from the Christopher Ecclestone incarnation of Doctor Who as the top TV moment of 2005. The behind-the-sofa moment - featuring a suitably spine-chilled Doctor and Rose confronted by a ghostly lad haunting Blitz-ravaged London in The Empty Child - will appear on the BBC 1's 2005 TV Moments on New Year's Eve.

Bar Fly...

Jason is over from Ibiza at the moment and has been staying with me for the past couple of days. Last night we thought we'd do a bit of a tour of the West End bars; visiting our old haunts and maybe a few new ones too. We started in Comptons (bit dire to be honest) then G-A-Y Bar (thought I'd hate it but actually we had fun swaying to I Know Him So Well), Friendly Society (didn't stay long as were getting stared at by the lesbians), Escape 'Dance Bar' (if G-A-Y bar was a twenty somethings video bar then Escape is a thirty somethings video bar), Comptons (again) and then Bar Code ('rammers' and 'kicking', as I believe my nephew might say). Along the way we bumped into loads of friends including the lovely Darren (Hi Darren!), the equally lovely Mark (Hi Mark!) and the rather gorgeous Jim (Hi Jim!). Fun night but slightly paying for it today.

Christmas brain teasers: The answers...

1. Teeth, feet, head, ears and hands.

2. As I say, true story. There was a special deal: buy 10 cards and get 1 (or 2) free. This means that nobody would buy 10 since they may as well take the extra two for the same price. The deal was 50p per card or 12 for £5. So while buying 5, 15 or 20 cards was cheaper than buying 6, 16 or 21, buying 10 was not cheaper than buying 11, or indeed 12!

I'm Dreaming of a White Trash Xmas...

Last Friday the wonderful Ian treated me to a Christmas present of a trip to The Pit at the Barbican to go and see Tina C's I'm Dreaming of a White Trash Xmas show. Up to Tina's usual high standard - we laughed and laughed. We even got a chance to say a quick hello to Tina C's alter-ego Christopher Green afterwards. Marvelous.

Dr Who: Christmas Invasion...

Well, what a great show is was last night. Dr Who: Christmas Invasion was funny, scary and action-packed. I especially loved the mass suicide attempt, the Lion King gag and the slightly post-modern Doctor chat. I think David Tennant will work out very well indeed. I'm really looking forward to the spring when the new season is upon us.

The Lady Varnishes...

It's been a very productive non-Christmas Day so far; emptied the dishwasher, got that first coat of varnish on the new boarding in the bathroom, did a bit of office work and had some beans on toast.

This afternoon I've got the car to test out to make sure it's in good working order for the trip to my folks tomorrow, a few more presents to wrap and those pesky second and third varnish costs to apply.

Oh, and it's the Dr Who special (Christmas Invasion) at 7. Marvelous.

Christmas Food Shopping List...

Here is my Christmas food shopping list. I bought it all at Sainsbury's on the way home from work Friday. Chicken pie on Christmas Eve. Beans on toast Christmas Day - the meal that is also the recipe. £13.43. Not bad. Most of that was the cost of the beer. Stella and I shall be having a private time this year.

Gay Men's Chorus...

Last night Alistair, David and I went to see the Gay Men's Chorus at the Barbican Hall perform their show Make The Yuletide Gay. And they did.

What could be gayer than a choir of over one hundred gay men all in excellent voice singing close harmonies in matching outfits for a couple of hours?

The hostess for the evening was the rather lovely and rather throaty Rula Lenska (aka Rosa-Marie Leopoldnya Lubienska, ex-Mrs. Brian Deacon, ex-Mrs. Dennis Waterman, Q in the rather wonderful Rock Follies and Rock Follies of '77, Dr Styles in Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks where she was shot with an invisible energy beam by enemy troops just as she's about to activate the ship's self-destruct switch. But I digress). She was rather fabulous though.

The chorus mainly sang Christmas carols with a few drag queens thrown in for good measure and lots of crowd participation.

The encore to the night was a Destiny's Child / Beyonce medley complete with dancers and all hundred of the choir 'doing the actions' - clutching their bums and hamming it up to Survivor. Very funny.

Christmas brain teasers...

1. Below you will find a sentence of a young man who ate and ate so much Christmas cake. Within the letters of the sentence are hidden five parts of his body that grew the fastest. Can you work out, using all the letters, what the five parts are? HE SAT THERE AND HE FEASTED

2. True story. Last December the Crown and Greyhound pub was selling it's own Christmas cards. Cards were sold seperately and in theory you could ask for whatever number of cards you wanted. Among the other combinations, many customers ordered multiples of five cards; lots bought 5, some bought 15 and several bought 20. What seems odd, though, is that no body bought 10 cards. Apart from coincidence, can you think of a simple explanation for this?

It's A War Out There...

With no disrespect meant to anyone who has actually been in a war zone but... who knew that Christmas shopping in London's glitzy West End had been reduced to what is virtually unarmed combat. Yes, I mean you, rude woman with dopey kid in Hamleys. Yes, I mean you, aggressive woman in Nike Town. And, yes, you too, you arse-hole who physical manhandled me in HMV Oxford Street. You know who you are. You cunts.

Constant Erection...

"I have a bit of a problem. For the past day and a half... I have a constant erection."

The Human League...

Paul's surprise Christmas treat for me last night was a trip The Forum in Kentish Town to go and see Sheffield's finest - The Human League. And they were awesome.

I really like the venue as the sight lines are good and even though we stood near the back we could still see perfectly well, get to the bar and had space to dance.

When the Phil (Oakey), Sue (Sulley) and Jo (Catherall) appeared on stage the audience went wild. The light show was excellent, the sound quality top notch and set list perfect. Phil's voice was very strong - its lost none of its rich warm baritone end, and he also cranks up to those high notes in "Human" perfectly well.

The set including, but wasn't limited to:
- Tell Me When
- Heart Like A Wheel
- Love Is All That Matters
- Mirror Man
- (Keep Feeling) Fascination
- The Sound Of The Crowd
- The Lebanon
- Sin City
- Rock And Roll Is Dead
- All I Ever Wanted
- Marianne (one for the fans, the first B-side of the Holiday 80 / Being Boiled 7")
- Human
- Love Action (I Believe In Love)
- Empire State Human (my favourite League song - 'fetch more water, fetch more sand, biggest person in the land'. Did Oakey really come out to perform a synth duel with a Moog Liberation strapped round his neck?)
- Louise
- Open Your Heart (sounded fantastic live)
- Don't You Want Me?

Encores
- Being Boiled (surely the only song with the word 'sericulture' in it. Silk worms and Nazis in the back projections... Okaaaaay...)
- Together In Electric Dreams (strictly speaking Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder but we were all dancing too much like loons to quibble)

We went to the pub afterwards which was crammed full of people chatting about the gig. We fell in with some motley crew and were soon swapping stories about League gigs, Marc gigs, 'Frapp gigs... There's a certain type, isn't there?

Buttplug...

"Buttplug. Have you got a buttplug?"

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous...

I went round to see Ben and Sarah and the triplets on Saturday afternoon. It was just wonderful to see them all. Dressing the kids up and pushing them round the park was so much fun. We then went and got a Christmas tree and made the place look festive too. A lovely afternoon. What could possibly go wrong?

Full of good humour I headed round to my friend Ian's in Vauxhall. That's when things started to go a bit wobbly. Ian had a bottle of a drink called 'Scotched' (22% whiskey blend) so we mulled the lot and downed most of it (hic!). We then went to a drinks party in Waterloo, had vodka and champagne and wobbled a bit more. More pre-show drinks at the bar of the Old Vic were in order - well you wouldn't want to be sober for pantomime now would you? Serina McKellen's Widow Twanky in Aladdin didn't disappoint. If anything the show was too gay. More drinks at the interval helped the giggles come thick and fast. I was a bit giddy by the end.

Back to Ian's afterwards we had more Scotched and then we danced across the cobbles to Duckie. Where we proceeded to get completely hammered. Ian wisely made a move early but I stuck it out. By 2am I'd snogged the landlord, snogged the short gay rapper from Fierce Girl and snogged some guy in a blue cardie. Luckily good sense prevailed and I poured (pawed?) myself into a cab just in time only to wake up at home wrapped in a towel watching QVC at 5am. Heavens! God knows if I ordered anything! Needless to say I had the hangover from hell yesterday. Mind you, I had people round to play games in the afternoon so soon perked up after some hair of the dog. Alcohol - it's own cure. Dontcha just love Christmas?

Optical Illusion...

Pink or green or nothing at all?

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.

If you stare at the black + in the centre the moving dot turns to green.

Now, really concentrate on the black + in the centre of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky!

It's amazing how our brain works. Of course there really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear.
[Thanks Rog]

Dump...

"Did you do a dump in my car?"