Dance & Drink & Screw

Lady Gaga, Born This Way, 2011
I've been wondering for a while when the first Big Summer Album of 2011 was going to land.  Well, this is it.  It's going to be hard to find a better pop album this year.  It's exhilarating as watching Flash Dance for the first time; or seeing Cher live during her "If I Could Turn Back Time" period.  Sometimes you hear Madonna in the background, screaming for help from the Berlin sex club Gaga keeps her prisoner, but it doesn't last long - Lady Gaga thumps her shut with vocals that Madge could only dream of hitting.  Plus, she has infinitely more self-deprecation and humor than good ol' Madge, though she's just as obsessed with Catholic imagery. ("Bloody Mary", "Black Jesus", "Electric Chapel", H.I.M...)  On Twitter, there's this absurd rivalry between her fans and Britney's, which is silly because dead-behind-the-eyes Britney is now completely out of her league: everything about Gaga in this album screams hard work.

My favourite tracks: "Born This Way" (which I still maintain is nothing like "Express Yourself" - just listen to them side-by-side), "Marry The Night", "Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)" and "Heavy Metal Lover".  I detested "Judas" when I first heard it but it's one of those annoyingly catchy songs that just grow and grow in your head.

My neighbours are going to hate me in no time.

I accidentally ended up in a party last night with Jodie Marsh.  She is tiny.  She was wearing an all black, tight outfit, high heels and long dark extensions. It's a sin to see someone so young wearing so much make-up.  There were other famous people there, like that blond woman who's always on TV shows about music, and that older guy with long hair and a moustache, and those young people who are probably in Skins or something.  And I think I spotted the actress who used to play Ian Beale's wife and died falling down the stairs.

It was the press night for The Most Incredible Thing at Saddler's Wells - a dance piece collaboration between the Pet Shop Boys and coreographer Javier De Frutos.  Purely accidental - the £10 tickets we had were arranged by our friends Vini Bambini and Bia months ago and nobody warned me to dress to the nines.  Suburbia was absent.  Everyone's life there was on show, flamboyant clothes below those so hard smiles.  Every actor needs an audience; every action is... a performance. West End girls mingling with Dalston boys.  Two kisses on the cheek.  Very thick quiffs.  Expensive midriffs.  Sugar and daddies.  Buckets of champagne everywhere and me with my large glass of white wine.  A few people from my past: that woman from the NT who is so nice; that girl who assisted the directors (now busily working the cord that separated the riff raff from the VIPs.)  Avoided them both.

Sadler's Wells gets hot when it's full. I thought of fj and how he should be there with us. We sat near the roof, our view the beginning of a roller coaster's descent.  The show started well, with robotic domino dancing to a disco beat swelled by the orchestra.  Then tedium set in: uninteresting fairy-tale, lame jokes about reality shows, gaps that were far too long, clichéd choreography (apparently, full of references to famous classical ballet, but who cares?) and a limp climax.  What have I done to deserve this?

Outside, we met Bia's uncle and his friends - an older generation that loved the piece. It massaged their brains with all the classical references it threw on the stage.  But to us, with our ignorant gut reactions, it didn't say a thing beyond "is it Christmas?"  Left to my own devices, I'd have taken the show's music to a smoky nightclub. The sun would welcome me from the club's gloom to where the streets have no name. I'd end up home and dry.

Why can't the UK send someone of the caliber of Jedward to compete at the Eurovision? Blue are beyond dull.

This new song by Jedward reminds of Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson. I think they have a good chance of winning. Wasn't that backing singer with the mohawk in Belle Amie?

May 14, in the diary.

A friend of mine is leaving London for New York; he got a well paid job in an arts centre over there. He asked wink_martindale and I if we'd like to buy his Wii and games. I asked how much he wanted for them? He understood that I wanted to buy everything and dropped on Wink's lap a box with the whole lot. We already had a borrowed Wii from my landlady so now we currently have an excess of video game consoles in the house. I'm starting to think I don't want any of them - it's just more distraction from the stuff I need to do (study horticulture, write Mills & Boons novels, become a millionaire).

We went for a walk this morning to find a café where we could sit, read the papers and write in our journals. We chose the Rich Mix because it's always empty, has nice big windows that give you a view of Bethnal Green road and nobody bothers you if your coffee mug is empty. I briefly left to buy today's Guardian from a corner shop and walked past Preston from The Ordinary Boys. He's tiny! He went into a new hipster café with three friends. The Rich Mix couldn't attract hipsters even if it tried, bless.

We then hit the local second-hand bookshops for Paul Auster's Timbuktu (for my bookclub) but couldn't find anything. Went to my gym, watched an episode of a new brasilian soap opera while eating toast with peanut butter and now I faff around online while Wink naps on the couch. He was meant to be making carrot cake for us. I might wake him up in a sec.

wink_martindale and I sat beside Carole from Big Brother 8 this weekend. She was with a friend at the same coffee shop as us and she sang along to one of the songs on the radio at one point. I bet most of you don't remenber that particular Big Brother: it was the one where the housemates were initially all-female and then slowly men were introduced in the next couple of weeks. It was ferocious.

We had gone to the coffee shop to do our NaNoWriMo and I thankfully ended up breaking through my problem of not knowing what my story was about. I've now got a direction and I'm excited about my characters. I followed Natalie Goldberg and Ian McEwan's method of writing: jot down anything and everything - even if it means pages and pages of random narrative - until something clicks. It really does work.

Last night, we got home in time to see the fireworks in Victoria Park. As my landlady/friend correctly pointed out, it was probably the last one the park would have (thanks to the government's cuts.) The theme was the death of dozens of people at Bethnal Green tube station during the Second World War - where many had panicked after hearing sirens and rushed down the stairs, causing a crush that killed 176 people on 3 March 1943.

Just before the fireworks began, Wink told me that Bethnal Green was supposedly the most haunted station in London, with a very high amount of ghost sightings. Suddenly, in the park's darkness, sirens began to roar and lights pointed up at the sky. Tower Hamlets' logo at centre stage exploded on fire and two voices began to sing: "London Town is on Fire, London Town is on Fire..." It was very haunting and macabre. The fireworks were accompanied by popular hits from the 1940s. The memory of those who lived and died during the Great War was never far away.

I rode the Tube's Central line yesterday evening beside Jason Orange from Take That. He's about 6 foot, with muscular arms and chest stuck on a tiny dancer body with designer beard. He looked around when I first came in - that look celebrities give when they wonder if they have been recognised - and that's when I knew it was him. Otherwise, I'd have just thought it was some cute gay guy on his way to meet friends downtown.

Was he testing the waters because tickets for Take That's shows had just gone on sale and crashed a website? I tried to not pay attention to him but kept getting reminders of his presence from the double-spread Take That story in all the Evening Standard's being read. I'd say all the commuters were unaware of him apart from myself and two girls. When he was about to leave at Bond Street, he smiled at one of the girls (I think she had quickly waved hello at him or something). That must have made her day.

Our boiler malfunctioned three days ago and we haven't had any hot water since. Yesterday morning I went to the gym before work and noticed for the first time that they pump music into the shower room. Black Eyed Peas don't make good showering companions. Today, I went after work and there were many guys about but I was lucky enough to have the shower room to myself. Our landlords have offered their home's bathtub while they sort someone to check the boiler. They had us over for dinner last night as a thank you for watching over their cat Blanche on the weekend.

I only have two days left at the recruitment agency. A famous Bollywood star came into our building today, according to the security guard at reception, but my team didn't see him. He looks a bit like Antonio Banderas on his Wikipedia page. My co-workers tease me about my new job, about who's going to substitute me, about the little inside jokes we have built over these past weeks. I have no energy to join in the fun because I'm fighting some kind of cold (brought into the office by my line manager, who had a chest infection over the weekend). We are all getting sick.

I'm still reading Joe Orton's diary on the bus rides to work and home. He was very raw and very smart. His entries, though, on the Moroccan boys he brought home and shagged are troubling. I'll be commuting on the Hammersmith line as of next week, which will give me lots of hours underground to get through more books. Anything to keep me distracted from the weather getting cold and grim.

Dynasty: The First Season, 1981
Dynasty's first season is neither campy nor kitsch: it's pure, unadulterated bad art. Launched at the height of Dallas' popularity, it follows its format to the tee in the hope of gaining some of its popularity - going as far as borrowing plot lines (the oil business) and characters (Krystle's rag-to-riches story) - but on a lower budget (supporting actors are rehashed, such as the prosecution lawyer who is only a few episodes before a punter in a disco club). There's no tension, no antagonists (if you discount the "hero" Blake Carrington's rapist homophobe rages when he doesn't get his way.) It's like the anodyne garden of Eden before the snake (Joan Collins) arrives and wraps itself around Eve (Linda Evans) for a fight in a puddle of mud. For the DVD launch, the producers sneakily hint at Collins' presence on the box's cover as a way of tricking unwarry shoppers - she makes her entrance only in the Second Season. But get through the First Season you must if you want to reach that campy good fun. And, in any case, there's some pleasure to be found in the show's fossilised impressions of the early 80s: rotary phones inside limosines, cellphones the size of heads, Emily Dickinson quotes by crackling fireplaces and a lot of unprotected sex.

When I left work yesterday, I started entertaining this fantasy of throwing a party at The Victoria pub - the kind of party where a band is on stage while all the attendees arrive dressed up (in tuxedos, as cowboys, 40s gangsters - whatever the theme dictates.) This fantasy then took me back to the night we saw The Severed Limb play The Victoria - a really good show, but poorly attended.

A few blocks later, who was standing at the same bus stop I catch the No. 8 home? The singer from The Severed Limb, dressed up like Johnny Cash and holding a guitar case. That threw me off a little. Psychic moment? Or do coincidences exist? The questions didn't go any further because the universe threw me another curve ball with the appearance of Darnell from Big Brother 9. Before my mind could find the secret connection between their simultaneous presences, their buses arrived and they were gone.

Wink and I are not in the mood for gardening this morning. But it's nice outside - it would be a shame to spend it indoors.

From today's Popbitch:

This could be pop's greatest urban legend or the moment Ricky Martin decided for certain he was in the gays. At the beginning of his solo career, while on promotional duties in South America, Ricky agreed to appear on a TV programme that made its viewers dreams come true. He was due to surprise a teenage Ricky fan by bursting out of her wardrobe.

On the day of filming, Ricky was duly installed in the wardrobe during the afternoon, complete with hidden cameras to capture the action. Soon, his victim returned from school and went up to her bedroom, carrying with her a pot of liver pate.

Then things went horribly wrong: the girl removed her clothes and smeared her parts with the pate. She then called the family's alsation dog up to her room, and let it lick off the pate. Unaware of what was going on, Ricky burst out a couple of minutes later, yelling "Surprise!"...

I love urban legends. This must be a proper one since the version I know of this story is set in Australia.

I have a Ricky Martin story: when he was a kid, his boy band Menudo came to Brasil because of their huge popularity. They got followed around everywhere and girls even tried to invade their hotel rooms. On their last day, the hotel's chambermaid told the newspapers that Ricky had peed in his bed. But was this just a rumour (another potential urban legend)? The boys used it relentlessly in the playground to tease Menudo fans from that day on and I never heard them played on the radio again.