prokofiev is 84 points. with a triple word score.

I’ve only just discovered Maestro, a reality tv show on the BBC where 8 entertainers compete to see who is the best conductor. Yes, conductor. There is something absolutely HILARIOUS about Alex (the bassist of Blur) waving his arms wildly in the air while the BBC Orchestra is playing the slowest version of Carmen ever because he’s still not moving his hands fast enough. So much effort, so little results.

everything popular is wrong.

It’s not everyday that your physiotherapist engages you in a conversation about Henry James when you tell him you’re writing a dissertation on Oscar Wilde.

(Item #2462524 that I will miss about living here.)

but it’s too late, it’s over now.

Celebrities, like kings, have two bodies — the body natural, which decays and dies, and the body politic, which does neither. But the immortal body of the ‘image’, even though it is preserved on celluloid, on digitalised files or in the memory of the theatre-going public, always bears the nagging reminder of the former (’She looks great. Isn’t she dead by now?’) As their sacred images circulate in the demotic swirl of the profane imagination, celebrities foreground a peculiar combination of strength and vulnerability, expressed through outward signs of the union of their imperishable and mortal bodies. Let those marks of strength be called charismata; the signs of vulnerability, stigmata. They work cooperatively, like muscles in opposable pairs, and their beguiling interplay, now widely heralded among acting teachers, has a long history as well as popular currency as the source of public intimacy.
…
When stigmata so far overrun charismata, the embarrassed celebrity becomes too available to the identification of the audience, and that special quality of apartness, which Glyn describes as ‘unbiddable’, disappears, taking ‘It’ down with it.
…
The publicity department at Paramount arrounged for Bow and Glyn to spend time together and to be seen in public doing so. To that end, striking redheads both, they sped around Los Angeles together in a large Packard, accompanied by the actress’s great red chow dog and a redundant driver provided by the Studio. Bow, who at best regarded speed limits and traffic lights as advisory, insisted on taking the wheel, while Glyn kept her upper lip stiff in the passenger’s seat and the terrorised chauffeur wept and prayed in the back. What inter-societal connection opened up between these two women in their work together cannot be rationally specified, but one did, and it must have had to do with ‘It’, which for both of them, in their different genres, meant the ability to stand as if naked in the middle of a crowded room as if alone.

- Joseph Roach, “Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’”

i am lost.

I am lost, I am lost, I am lost.

I am definitely lost. I don’t know what the fuck to do with my dissertation, my future job prospects, moving back home, leaving here, EVERY SINGLE THING.

And you know what else is scary? There’s only been one thing that’s been more or less constant in the last 12 years.

Backstreet Week (almost a fortnight ago now) was more than I could’ve ever wished for.

And then when I was talking to Geri when I came back, she told me that she was worried for me, because she didn’t know what I’d be like when this constant was gone. I told her I managed for 10 years without even seeing them live in concert and just laughed it off.

But you know what? The thought of not having something — not having that one constant — to channel my emotions and energies into scares me more than you can imagine.

Sometimes I think I’m jaded and cynical with a facade specially built to keep most people out. And then I realise that hey, my poker face is nonexistent, I wear my heart on my sleeve (and I wear it on my sleeve for them) and I can be read like an open book.

I’m not so sure which one is better, in the long run.

oh oh oh-oh oh.

Now New Kids on the Block are reuniting. (Ten cookies to anyone that can identify the reference in the title of this post.)

*looks around* Seriously, did I just step through a time warp? There are way too many boybands touring this year.

(Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have gone into Media Studies or Sociology instead and write that big thesis on the positive effects of boybands on the cultural landscape and seek to de-trivialise them. Or something. At least I’d know where to go on the Internets to get survey participants.)

Earlier this evening while chatting on MSN to one of my Brit friends, she asked me why I didn’t watch Doctor Who or Torchwood. Now, I love John Barrowman, but mostly on the West End. And the news of David Tennant playing Hamlet in Stratford excited me more than his casting as the Tenth Doctor. And I do like sci-fi stuff, so that’s not an excuse either. Anyway, I said something along the lines of “I just feel like it’s wrong going into Who or Torchwood without really understanding their place in the British national identity,” to which I got the online equivalent of the WTF face.

Yeah, in addition to thinking too much, I’m definitely stuck between multiple cultural identities now.

don’t think i don’t notice your wandering eyes.

I don’t care if people don’t get this mania I have for certain things. All I know is that I’ve been waiting forever for AJ McLean to release his solo album, and the minute the videos of his solo shows turned up on youtube, I’ve been frantically saving and watching them all. He automatically earns points for having a proper horn section (well, one trumpet, one trombone, and one alto sax), and for writing songs with JC Chasez. But oh, Gorgeous. I’ve been listening to this song nonstop for about a week now, and I freaking LOVE everything about it.

If I’m this excited now, I can’t imagine what I’ll be like at his London show, or how I’ll be like once the album is released.

killing me softly.

I’ve gone into another one of my band nostalgia moods.

I miss the trumpet so much it makes me cry when I think about it.

who the hell majors in that?

This is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in recent weeks. Traditiooooon!

epic fail.

Why is it that my most profound and deep thoughts always sound so trivial when I verbalise them?

shake, rattle and roll.

It appears I have just sat through my very first earthquake.

Earth tremor felt across England
The US Geological Survey’s website reported a quake of the magnitude of 4.7 and said the epicentre was 30 miles (50km) south of Kingston-upon-Hull.

Basically, it’s not very far from me. It’s practically in Yorkshire. There was a horrible rumbling, and then the ground shook for about 10 seconds. Everything was shaking.

I think I’m going to stay up a while more.