Slovenia and Croatia...

Overyourhead is off on it's holidays from today for a week: Slovenia and Croatia. I may not get a chance to do any posting so back soon.

Nancy Boy...

On Saturday Drew and I went to see Nancy Cartwright's one woman show, "My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy," at the Riverside Theatres in Hammersmith. As I'm sure you know Nancy is really a 'boy' - Bart Simpson.



It was quite a good show - with lots of suitably amusing anecdotes - ruined only slightly by the fact that... I was dragged up on stage and forced to take part in the trivia quiz!



For my pains (and imperfect knowledge of Bart's middle name) I won a Bart Simpson key ring - given to me by Bart Simpson him/herself! Yay!

Gay Springfield...

It was the 'gay marriage' episode of The Simpsons last night. Hilarious. No prizes for guessing who came out... "there goes my last lingering thread of my heterosexuality", indeed.

Hangover...

I have a confession to make. I'm odd. Really odd. Or maybe just mad. But... I... enjoy... (I find it hard to admit this)... actually enjoy having a a hangover. I find it warm and fuzzy and nice. It's like a brain hug. Does that make me weird?

Heavy Doll Action...

Got myself a crying, walking, sleeping, talking living doll; who also does rude things with other dolls.
[Thanks Rog]

O2 sponsors white elephant...

O2 has confirmed it is to sponsor London's most prominent white elephant by renaming The Millennium Dome "The O2". Due to reopen in 2007 it will be a venue for music, shows and sporting events. A spokesman for O2 shrugged off claims that it was sponsoring a monument of ridicule. "This is a bold move," he said, "and is in keeping with our emphasis to back music and entertainment." Let's face it though, at the end of the day it's just a big tent that no-one wants to go to.

Goldfrapp - Supernature...

More live dates from the lovely Goldfrapp. They are headlining at the TDK Cross Central festival in Kings Cross on Saturday 28th August.
And straight from the deer's mouth: We've changed the title of the album - it's now called Supernature. It's still coming out on 22nd August, and Ooh La La will be on 8th August as previously planned. And the tracklisting is as follows:
1. Ooh La La
2. Lovely 2 C U
3. Ride A White Horse
4. U Never Know
5. Let It Take You
6. Fly Me Away
7. Slide In
8. Koko
9. Satin Chic
10. Beautiful
11. Time Out From The World
12. No. 1

Can't wait!

Big Brother 2005...

It looks as if Big Brother, which starts this Friday, is aiming for the same evil streak it had last year; transparent walls, a claustrophobic feel and an unlucky 13th person. Doubtless I shall be glued.

Son Of A Peach...

Mario never used to behave like this in my day. Dirty dog!
[Needs Flash]

Kelly Osbourne - One Word...

I'm obsessed with Kelly Osbourne's One Word and have it on repeat both on my MP3 player, at home, at work and in my head. Love it. Especially CD2 - that has a cover of The Human League's Sound Of The Crowd.

Arsenal FA Cup Champions...

I cannot let the event pass, Arsenal became FA Cup Champions with the final on Saturday. Arsenal beat Manchester United but not with a particularly satisfy of victory; it was 5-4 on penalties after 30 minutes extra time. Still although we know we can play better than we did it is important to go back home with the trophy. Modifies rapture. So two cheers for the Gunners!

Paul and I have both put ourselves down for season tickets for the new Emirates Stadium when it opens for the 2006/2007 season. Fingers crossed though as there are approximately 32300 other people in the queue in front of us. Our joker to be played? We are both Islington Residents and so should get priority for half of the new tickets released.

Wedding...

On Saturday it was my sister's wedding. Everything went smoothly and we all had a fantastic time as I know Jo and Martin did too. So congratulations to the happy couple! May you have years of joy ahead. All my love XX

Justin Bond & The Freudian Slippers...

From Monday June 20 to July 2nd Justin Bond (& The Freudian Slippers) are performing at the Soho Theatre, "an evening of story and song by, for and about trannies, hustlers and drug addicts. Following on from several sold out runs with Kiki & Herb, Soho Theatre presents the premiere of this solo show from New York's Justin Bond. An autobiographical melange of music and video in which Justin tells all about his years teetering on the edge of the sidewalk between the nightclub and the gutter from San Francisco to New York to London." Not to be missed!

Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith...

Last night Paul and I went to see Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

The blurb said: "The Sith are masters of the dark side of the Force and the sworn enemies of the Jedi. They were all but exterminated by the Jedi a thousand years ago, but the evil order continued in secrecy. They operated quietly, behind the scenes, acting in pairs - a Master and an Apprentice - patiently biding their time before they could take over the galaxy. In Episode III, they'll finally exact their revenge on the Jedi."

As the last couple of films have been a tad disappointing maybe this really will be Revenge of The Sixth. And indeed it was. It was great. It has restored my faith in the franchise.

However...

I thought that despite some good bits it was way too repetitive. The scenes were cut way too fast to take it all in. There was far too much CGI leading it to look like a 1970s Roger Dean album cover. The acting was awful (with perhaps the notable exception of Ian McDiarmid as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine). The script poor and the direction pedestrian. There was no real magic that we'd enjoyed in the first trilogy. Having said all of that it was better than either Episode 1 or Episode 2! My 2p.

Caravaggio...

Last night Drew, Paul and I went to the National Gallery in London's glitzy West End to see the current Caravaggio exhibition showing there.

It was a magnificent, albeit brief, tour of the last four years of the great painter's life when he was on the run from a murder rap in Rome.

Killing someone in a duel was not atypical behaviour from the hot tempered, violent, rebellious, tormented genius. He painted some of his greatest work while on the run and fearing for his life. Odd that.

Caravaggio's work in general is striking in that it is virtually photo realistic. However his characters in these later works are charged with emotions that seem to come from the artist's own personal experiences. I suppose in that respect he is what we might coin the first 'modern artist'.

Oh, did I mention he was a big old bender too.

Dreamweaver Intermediate...

Yesterday I was on my second Dreamweaver course - this time the intermediate one that helped introduce me to slightly groovier features: META tags, forms, libraries, cascading style sheets, rollovers, behaviours, layers, timelines, Flash, pop-ups and image maps. All great fun. But rest assured, dear reader I shall not be subjecting you to too much dynamic content on overyourhead. That would just be needlessly cruel.

Laurie Anderson: The End of the Moon...

Last night Paul and I undertook our almost annual pilgrimage to the Barbican Theatre to see our idol Laurie Anderson perform live. She was performing The End of the Moon, the second of her trilogy of intimate solo works. It followed on from the fabulous Happiness show. And was no less fabulous itself. Weove Laurie: poet, humourist, violinist and NASA's first (and last) artist-in-residence.

Selected gems included:

Who taught you what beauty is?

Life is just bad art. Written by too many writers not knowing what they are writing about. Characters come and go almost at random. Plots start but never go anywhere. Characters die for no reason whatsoever. It's like those empty buses at night. Circling the city.

And beneath it all is your subconscious. Your subconscious can't speak. It doesn't know any words. So it just shows you pictures. This is blue. What do you make of that? And you spend years trying to figure it out.

I was in Turkey last year. On this TV show. And the audience all had guns. Pistols, machine guns, various other artillery. And I thought, "Oh oh. Not what any artist wants. A heavily armed audience."

New BBC Weather Map...

Have you seen that new 3-D television weather forecast graphics on the telly? It's crap. After the BBC News yesterday it crashed twice live "ERROR! NO VALUE!" How embarrassing. The Scots aren't too happy either.

Doctor Who DVD...

The first Dr Who DVD of the new series is out this week. With a 12 certificate due to the The Unquiet Dead episode, which featured Victorian killer zombies. The second DVD will be out on 13th June - again with a 12 certifcate - this time due to the scene of the Dalek being tortured.

Alison Moyet at the RFH...

Last night Paul, Simon, Charlie and I went to see Alison Moyet at the Royal Festival Hall. Paul had booked us a box which gave us an excellent view of both the stage and the auditorium - an auditorium packed with poofs and dykes aplenty. The gays do like Alf.

The staging was simple with keyboards, two guitars, drums and a stringed quartet. But it was Alf's voice we had all come to hear. And she did not disappoint. She would tenderly caress both classic love songs and defiant heartbreakers with equal vocal skill. Her range was amazing and style distinctive.

The show was to promote her last two albums, the most recent of which, Voices (a covers albums of classic love songs), has been the soundtrack to my life for the last few weeks.

To say I cried during the show would be putting it mildly. I blubbed like a baby more or less throughout. At one point, just after God Give Me Strength, I even had to leave my seat and go outside to compose myself.

Alf is a great, great performer. And it was a great, great show (sniff).