After a crappy Friday, Saturday was rather marvellous before a sharp wake up call (M5!) on Sunday morning bought Darren and I crashing back down to earth. But more about that later – I will try to get through the details of the weekend chronologically. Cos I’m anal like that! Anyway, after the news that I’ve to have a camera shoved up my jacksie, I was looking forward to our weekend away in Manchester and it was actually quite lovely! We spent far too much time and money shopping at the Trafford centre, visited the Kylie exhibition (more on that below) and had a really fun night out on Canal Street, even if it was full of hen parties (Darren’s pet peeve), far too full of self importance teeny gays and older gays in see through tops who really should know better. However, it was a really fun night and we immersed ourselves in lots of boogying and chatting and people watching and “snuggling” (oh boy was the “snuggling” exhausting!). Even when I got accidentally punched in my bad ear (again!) I was only moody for about 4 minutes. Which, to be honest, I thought was entirely reasonable! I even got ten pounds stuffed in my pants while doing a sexy dance!! Anyway, when we had exhausted ourselves clubbing, Dazpants and I went back to our hotel where he practically inhaled two garlic bread baguettes! Greedy fucker! And then proceeded to lie awake telling me how tired he was but how awake he was. For about 40 minutes. I must have the patience of a saint I tells ya! Grife! Anyway, I woke up this morning to the bedroom positively reeking of garlic so despatched my man to the shower while I opened every window I could find. We packed up our stuff and went to the car, which looked a bit strange and it took me a minute to realise it had no passenger window anymore! Bloody nora! Not only do I have to face an anal probing (and not the good kind) but we woz robbed! Ok, actually it was all a little weird because they didn’t even take anything. Not even Darren’s Ultimate Kylie cd or his stage Sound of Music soundtrack! Good grief – have they no taste? So rather than wait the 2-3 hours it was going to take for the autoglass place to get there, we decided to drive home and just pretend we had the window open! To paraphrase pretty woman, big mistake. Big. Huge! It wasn’t the nicest morning and slightly raining and we were both freezing cold. We just blasted Kylie and drove at ridiculous speeds, though Darren found it very amusing that every time he drove past a lorry, I got splattered with spray from the road. Marv! I think everyone should join with me and say boo you whores. Boo you whores indeed!!
THE WEEKEND SHOPPING:
I have to give full credit to Darren for his financial management of our relationship. When I met him, I was up to my ears in credit card debts and student loans and he organised my outrageous spending so it was all paid off in about 18months. For which I will be forever grateful as we wouldn’t be in such a good position now if it wasn’t for that. Despite the fact that I am far more careful with money now, I still spend more impulsively than Darren! Which was clearly evidenced at the Trafford Shopping Centre in Manchester on Saturday. There were a few nice tops and jeans and a couple of books I wanted (included the two latest in the Spook’s Apprentice series and a spin off from the hilarious Girl 15 collection – god, I’m so juvenile!), a starbucks and a multitude of magazines and stuff. Darren spent £1 on a bottle of water. Hahahahahaha.
Ruthiepoos, Lou and I went to see Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix on Friday night. Naturally we had to splash out on Gold Class seats as they are for over 18s only and I couldn’t cope with the tween set. Anyway, Gold Class seats are incredibly comfortable but aren’t designed for whispered comments as they each have a table for your free popcorn inbetween them! So Ruthiepoos and I were catching up and yelling our most intimate secrets across the cinema during the advertisements. You really don’ want it to go all quiet when you are yelling out “and that’s when I gave him the rim job of a lifetime…” Anyway, after forty fucking seven minutes of adverts and previews the movie finally started and I had that ultra romantic moment where you meet your dates fingers in the tub of minstrels you are fondling! Only Darren chose not to come, and it was some random guy on the other side of me who thought it was his popcorn. A likely story my friend. Minstrels do not feel like popcorn. It’s like comparing cock and lady garden. They are just totally separate. Still, anyhoo, the movie was very good indeed. I am putting my main review in the same background colour as the post so as not to spoil it for anyone! If you want to read it just highlight the text below!!
I thought the start of the movie was the best yet. It could have been almost any film apart from the utter recognisability of the cast. I thought it was appropriately eerie and the dementors came across as quite scary and evil. And that was a major theme of the movie – the representation of magic as something that is not all starlight and glitter but actually quite ominously dark and messing with the order of nature. The magic used in the film seemed to be quite primal and malevolent, which really intensified the battles at the end with the death eaters! Dolores Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic was represented in an almost Nazi like way as they controlled what knowledge people should be given and what was right and wrong. Portrayed as a woman teetering on the edge of all she believes in falling apart, I can’t help but think that if she just got a good shagging or bought a magic vibrator she might have loosened up a little!! As always the joy of these films is the genius of the main cast – Harry, Hermione and Ron. I loved the barely concealed to all but them love affair of Hermione and Ron, Harry’s increasing despair at his maligned name, but the joy he gets in teaching the dark arts. Oh! And Neville, Ginny and Luna Lovegood were all incredible also. Ginny had some great moments where she has jealous flashes in her eyes every time Harry is around Cho. Ruthiepoos said that she needs to see it again because she missed all the ace stuff they put in by concentrating on what was missed out. I thought it was a great interpretation of the story, and deserves repeat viewings as the characters put a lot of the story into unspoken facial expressions and body language, and the headlines of the papers also gave fleeting clues as to what is ahead. A great movie and I am now thoroughly excited for the book!
THE WARDROBE OF A SHOWGIRL:
Even though Kylie remains my second favourite female singer of all time (and one of three acts I’m doing 20th anniversary features on over the next couple of months), I can’t say I was chomping at the bit to see the exhibition that has recently moved to Manchester. Still, as it was free and we had some time to kill, Darren and I popped in and it was actually quite good. It was really interesting to see the clothes close up (that woman is bloody tiny) and the display of singles, albums, magazine covers and photoshoots made me quite nostalgic, even though there was a little rewriting of history (“Put Yourself In My Place landed Kylie another top ten hit in the UK!” Ummm, no I believe it peaked at #11; “By the time 2000 rolled around, Kylie had yet to miss the top twenty in England” um apart from Some Kind of Bliss of course…) ~ but who doesn’t like to gloss over the iffy bits of their lives?! Still I was impressed enough by the exhibition – and Darren creating his own showgirl outfit – to buy the coffee table book as I left. This and my fake greatest hits week got me pondering about the new millennium years of Kylie’s career. I remember reading an amazing article on Fluxblog about what a fantastic album Body Language could’ve been with a bit of track rejiggling. And I’m still unhappy with how not very “ultimate” the ultimate collection was. Frankly I think the ozzies got it right with their 87-99 collection, and a third hits collection of Kylie should have looked like this (leading off with Your Disco cos I still maintain she should have released that as a single when the almighty mix leaked onto the net in March 2000; and adding Light Years (and Fever) as that definitely should have been a single backed with Physical!)
Your Disco Needs You
Spinning Around
On A Night Like This
Kids
Please Stay
Light Years
Physical
Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
In Your Eyes
Love At First Sight
Fever
Come Into My World
Slow
Red Blooded Woman
Chocolate
I’m Just Here For The Music
I Believe In You
I Know
Giving You Up
THE BASTARD LOVECHILD OF REALITY TV:
So Popstars returned to tv on BBC1 on Saturday night. And it was all kinds of wrong. Dance X is a new show that is looking to put together a pop group that can sing and dance. Only there will be two pop groups rivalling each other. Don’t you just love that new cutting edge concept? It’s Kids From Fame meets Popstars The Rivals, only without any of the charm or appeal. The judges have no appeal whatsoever, and clearly misunderstanding the appeal of watching all those bad auditions, the BBC chose to whiz through the audition process, boot camp and whittling it down to the final sixteen in a mere 60 minutes. So not only did the entire process seem really rushed, it was hard to care when people got cut because I didn’t even know who they were!! Still, a local dancer from Nightingales – Calvin, who danced at our civil partnership reception – is through to the final sixteen so I guess I will be watching the live shows from next week to see how he gets on. It all feels so rushed though!!
THE BIG BROTHER BITS AND PIECES:
The video above is hilarious as the gang practice their very best Kylie dance moves. Check out moody Gerry not being impressed that people aren’t worshipping his Kylie knowledge. It reminds me of someone I know (*cough* *matt*) and I really mean that! In a loving giving way of course…
Brian had the most brilliant line ever with his “politics is just showbiz for ugly people” speech…
The fake eviction was a pile of doggy do – once again Big Brother wimped out of what could have potentially been a brilliant twist. I’m losing interest fast…
