Wow - look at what comes up first if you type 'aaargh' into Google images.
What's got my goat now? Stupid brainless spam blog replies, that's what. I don't want a fucking cello - and I'm not interested in your courses and seminars. You're getting in the way of genuine replies, from Boadwee and Corny (thank you both) and I wish I knew how to stop the unwanted crap coming through.

I typed 'busy doing nothing' into google images in the hope of getting a good image for this post, and the only one I really liked (of a mud covered hippo) I wasn't able to save. So I got more angsty, and for a laugh I typed 'angst' in, and up came this work by Jack Pierson, so that was good.
I love Jack's work, and he's always been a totally charming guy whenever I've met him. So it's annoying that he was in town last week and I wasn't - having been on an extended break in Sussex.
Anyhow - doing nothing. I'm quite hopeless at doing nothing, being a nervous energy type of person, but today I can't face anything. Largely it's the hangover as a result of a wrap party last night, but also the house is a mess because of builders and to cap it all it's a miserable day outside. So I've turned my impatience into an advantage to blog. Except I have to think of something to blog about and since I can't really get my head round it I'm coming up with a totally random spewof unrelated nonsense. The new Bret Easton Ellis book started off well but I'm losing interest in it about half way through. Or maybe it's just my bad concentration at the moment, lthough I did sit through nearly two hours of Stockhausen on Saturday night and my concentration didn't waver for a minute.
What else? The Decemberists record is stunning - probably my favourite CD at the moment (I'm playing it as I type this). Must wash the fox poo off Marfa's collar a bit better. Nearly time for lunch. Maybe have another big long soak in our new bath. When do the Christmas decorations start going up? All this and more - busy doing pretty much nothing.
Normal service (or at least as normal as it gets on this irregular page) resumed soon hopefully.

... is, I think, one of the great underrated poets of the 20th century. Now that the dust of the Beats has settled and we've all put out Gregory Corso books to the back of the shelf, the time has come to give Weldon some of the veneration he deserves. The prompt for this was Anthony Lane's piece on kees in an old New Yorker that I read on Sunday, and this morning I've been rereading a lot of Kees's poems in his rather slim Collected edition. They''re so good - he manages to combine a fat woman in a bathing suit and the human condition and not make it seem flippant or silly. The easiest way to imagine Kees is to think of Cary Grant playing Richie Manic and you've got the idea. Like Richie, Kees vanished by a bridge (the Golden Gate in SF) and was never seen again. You'd think this would have secured a huge mythic status, but certainly in the UK he's a cult figure at best. Less self-consciously weighty than Lowell or Jarrell he's a truly moving voice for those who discover him.

I've had a whole morning to myself. The reason there have been so few posts here recently is that I've not had a morning to myself for a while, nor an afternoon, and often not much of an evening. This is because of the BBC 2 series Secret Of Drawing, which starts this Saturday, and has been keeping me busy for the last couple of intensive months.
So I took Marfa out, made some tea, went into a daydream, and in the daydream I was thinking of all the posts I could and should have written had there been the time. The transcendence of Arcade Fire at Electric Picnic - quite possibly the most emotional live performance I've seen this decade. The greatness of the artist George Shaw. The Marc Quinn sculpture in Trafalgar Square and the political inability to objectively criticise it. Andrew O'Hagan's brilliant piece on the New Orleans disaster in the current LRB (which can be read in full by the curious and the patient by clicking on the London Review link to the right.) Keren Ann at Bush Hall - nearly as emotional as Arcade Fire. The lunacy of spending £17 on a pair of socks. The pleasure of wearing marino wool socks whatever the cost. Kate Bush is back. The cost of shower enclosures and mosaic tiling. Kate Moss and that drug stuff.
And then I fell out of daydreaming and onto the laptop and quickly realised that I had to go to a digital film grading session and, once again, it will all have to wait.
But it's a start...

Spotted at Electric Picnic in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, late at night there were many drunk males trying to get inside to uncover the mystery of The Red Tent. Festivals, eh? There's provision for everything. Except, curiously at Electric Picnic, late night drinking. It's a festival - what do people do after midnight if not keep drinking??! Hence the ludicrous spectacle of a Lost Vagueness tent with bands, dancing till 4 am and a bar that has all its bottles removed by 11.30. Let us hope this is taken note of for next year.

Welsh. Ginger. Footballing genius. What more could you want?