Shakira - Loba / She Wolf - amazing!

Shakira has a new song. It is amazing.



My review:

• Squelch disco.
• HORN!
• Disco
  
• Honking horn!
• Beeps!
• Shakira sounds like she's drunk on a vocoder.
• HORN!
• HORN!
• Spanish singing!
• Synth-laser!
• Head-flick.
• Ooh, quick fire rap-singing.
• Ugh grunt.
• Synth-laser! (head-flick.)
  
• High-as-the-sky chorus.
• "Ah-woooooooo!" wolf sound.
  
• Heavy breathing.
• HORN!
• More Spanish singing.
• Synth-laser
• Head-flick.
• Quick-fire & ugh.
  
• Chorus.
• HORN!
• "Ah-wooooooooooo!"
• Bridge = Ghetto-blaster humping moment.
• Breathing, breathing, breathing.
• Massive, OTT crescendo.
• More drunk vocoder.
• HORN!
• Synth-strings!
• Handclaps!
• HORN!
• Heavy breathing
  
  
• And it's called SheWolf. Brilliant. Even if it is crying out for a big gay hands-in-the-air remixing.
  

Tel Aviv Bauhaus building flash mob

Yesterday, I took part in a flash mob. I never thought I'd say that. What with summer downpours, it almost threatened to be a "flush mob". Boom boom.

The purpose of the flash mob - organised by the Jewish Community Centre in London - was to build a replica of a Tel Aviv Bauhaus-style building.

This is part of their celebrations of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary. I had no idea that Tel Aviv was only 100 years old, originally founded on the outskirs of another town, Jaffa.

And as the city grew in the 1920s and 1930s, German Jewish architects introduced Bauhaus architecture to Tel Aviv. Now, Tel Aviv's White City, contains more than 5,000 Modernist-style buildings inspired by the Bauhaus school and Le Corbusier. Apparently, Tel Aviv has the world's largest concentration of Modernist-style buildings.

So, yesterday, in Hoxton Square, clad in pink hard-hats, around 20 people made blocks from cardboard boxes, some cardboard balconies and flowers from crepe paper, and our very own Bauhaus building, 17 Emile Zola Street

And then we demolished it.

There's another Tel Aviv bauhaus building flash mob event on July 12. Go, it's great fun.

Food & Meat-related tube stations

It's a quiet day in our office, and a conversation about Swimbeldon turns turns meatily to Gambledon and a whole afternoon of foody pun fun.

Puns are good.

• Turnpike Loin
• Aldgate Yeast
• Banger Lane
• Parsnip Green
• Elephant & Custard
• Euston Squash
• Bacon Street
• Brent Cress
• Charring Cress
• Mill Hill Feast
• Arnos Grape
• Ladbrook Gravy
• Marrow-on-the-hill
• Bean Park
• Green Pork
• New Crisp Gate
• Turnip Green
• Kings Cross St Parsnip
• Snout Kensington
  
• Hamden Town
• Whitechipolata
  
• Mansion Grouse
• Offal
• Turnip Green
• Maida Veal
  
• Shepherds Pie Market
• Piccalilli Circus
• Marrowlebone.
• Brussel square
• Mint-Imperial Wharf
• Old meat
• Lan-pasta Gate
• Sprout Kensington
• High-berry & Ice-cream-ton
• Oxford Circus-cous
• West-Mince-ter
• Pimmslico
• Chutney bridge
• Seven shish-ters
  

Any more?

Walbrook - London is a river city

I took part in Amy Sharrocks' artwork Walbrook on Friday, a walk which recreated the course of London's underground and lost Walbrook river. About 30 people, all wearing blue, were tied together and walked the course of the river from Islington to Cannon Street Bridge.

Amy spoke before the walk about us being water: we were tied in formation resembling the molecular structure of water, and we, as humans, are 90% water. In this walk, we were water in the form of a river. Her artworks deal with how Londoners interact with water.

As we set off, I found that, rather than learning a lot about where we went through, the geography of the city was slipping past. I was talking and learning about other people in 'the river' - almost oblivious to what was going on around us.

Maybe all rivers do that. They flow silently, unseeingly through landscapes, especially cities. People are busy building over and around them, on their banks, but the rivers unknowingly continue flowing, doing what they do.

I noticed placenames with watery connotations, but they slid past. I was able to photograph some, some I missed.

The experience really resembled being a river - our sense of onward momentum was very strong, the movement like a river current.

The blue elastic ribbons holding us together were sinuous - at one point I was wrapped and surrounded, later I only had two ribbons tied behind me. It moved around silently, unbeknownst to me, like water when you swim.

We set off with a great pace, slowed at some points and sped up again. Having sluiced slowly through the city, we reached the Thames in silence.

99 cone

It's summer! Yesterday, I had a 99 cone - lovely ice-cream and flaky chocolate. Lovely.

I started to wonder, though, why is it called a 99? But, sadly, it seems, nobody really knows. The term was used as early as 1936 in a Cadbury's ad which said "Try a 99 ice cream with Cadbury's Dairy Milk Flake chocolate".

There are some wild theories, such as:

• There's an idea that the flake chocolate bar is exactly 99mm long, but everything back then was measured in imperial measures.
• Askeys, a cone-making company, made a cone stamped with "99"
• An Edinburgh ice cream maker called Arcari claim to have invented the treat in the 1920s and named it after the address of their shop at 99 Portobello High St.
• The initials of ice cream - IC - is one way to write 99 in Roman numerals... but the usual way is to write it as XCIX

Lots more interesting suggestions on Wikipedia and BBC.

Photographers Gallery

I recently submitted some images to the Photographers Gallery in London - not in any professional sense, but for a fun online gallery called Beautiful Disasters, which encourages anyone to upload images they have taken which went wrong, but have something beautiful about them.

I uploaded these two. The first is a building somewhere in the City seen, I think, from Bethnal Green road (or somewhere Hackney / Shoreditch) on a bright February afternoon. The photo came out blurry, but I really like the feeling of this being a balmy high-summer day, and the light reflecting on the building in the foreground.

The second shows blurred street lights in Cork city, around dusk. It wasn't as dark as the photo implies, but I love the effect of the sky and the light trails.

The gallery is now closed for uploads, but there are many interesting photos to look through.

I also noticed on their site a project called the The World in One City. It aims to take portraits of citizens living in London from all 205 world nations, to be displayed in time for the 2012 Olympics. Fantastic.

What's in San Marino

I've long wondered exactly what is in San Marino. Just what keeps such a small state afloat and what goes on there?

In my recent trip around Italy, I decided to stop overnight in San Marino. Perched high on a mountain, San Marino city overlooks the rest of the tiny republic. The San Marino flag features three towers on three peaks, the symbol of San Marino.

There are also a variety of tacky-sounding museums (the Museum of Torture, and the like). Mainly, it seems tourism is the prime industry here with souvenir shop after souvenir shop.

Sadly, when the final bus leaves at half past six, San Marino empties. I walked around the town, seeing closed shops, empty bars, empty cafés and empty restaurants. It was all rather disheartening.

Happily next morning, everything was busy again and San Marino seemed a happy place. So happy, indeed, that the police wear delightful mustard yellow shirts. Lovely San Marino.

футбол! Football with London's Bulgarian fans

Last night, I watched the Ireland -v- Bulgaria football match with Bulgarian fans, and pretended not to be Irish (bit like Lorraine from The Apprentice).

I went to two venues. Starting in Arda2, a restaurant in Finsbury Park, I joined 5 Bulgarian football fans to watch the match.

Two screens showed the match - one with Irish TV, and the other with Bulgarian TV. Oddly, the sound came from the Irish channel.

I began to question whether these guys actually were Bulgarian. Some of them seemed quite happy to see Ireland take the lead. Then, they were equally happy to see Bulgaria equalise. Add to that, they were speaking to each other in a mixture of English and another language (I can only assume it was Bulgarian).

It was, it's fair to say, a sedate affair - mainly as they sat drinking Coke & J2O and staring out the window.

At half time, I decided to leave the maybe-Bulgarians, and hot-footed it to Green Lanes to Juliana99. If Arda2 was sedate, Juliana99 was comatose. Two men sat inside watching the match in dead silence. The Bulgarian tv commentary was deadpan with a ridiculously low volume.

An old woman sat in the corner clucking and sucking her teeth.

Eventually a few more men arrived. I noted they were all snappy dressers with trendy jeans, designer jackets and t-shirts. The bar owner - in a loud Hawaiian shirt - rather let the side down.

The (boring) match ended in a draw, with the Bulgarians on TV barely cracking a smile. I hung around afterwards, hoping to hear some Bulgari-pop. But there was none. The bar just emptied out, leaving me to wonder where all London's Bulgarians are. Maybe they've been credit crunched?

Hey, Mr DJ

I'm DJing tonight, at London Media Gays in barcode. Should be an ace evening of retro and nu-pop! My last foray at DJing was playing foreign pop at the long-gone Club Contact, and I'm hoping to revive the foreign pop tradition tonight by playing lots of - now v trendy - ace Swedish pop, such as:

Velvet - Chemistry

Alcazar - Burning



Maybe Infernal - Redefinition

and, of course, Agnes Carlsson - Release Me

Map drawings of Ukraine by Yuliya, Switzerland by Lorena & Hungary by Felician and Lisa

One of my favourite things about Eurovision parties is the potential to meet others from different countries, especially if that country has an ace song. When Greece won in 2005, I celebrated with a Greek guy at my party and ended up talking to his elderly father (on the phone from Greece) about how brilliant Elena Paparizou had been.

This year, at Eurovision parties, I met people from Ukraine, Hungary and Switzerland, and asked them to draw maps of their countries for my EuroRevision project.

Yuliya, from Ukraine, drew her country. She was bemused by my request.

Lorenza, from Switzerland, was in high Eurovision spirits wearing fabulous gloves. She drew this map.

Finally, Felecian & Lisa drew this map of Hungary. Both had been in the UK for three years, initially moving here to find work.

Vroom with a View

While on holiday, I like to read something about the place I'm visiting. In Italy, I read Peter Moore's diverting Vroom with a View, his account of travelling from Milan to Rome on a 1960s Vespa.

Some facts I gleaned were:

• Vespas were named after the Italian for wasp.
  
  
• Vespas were designed as transport for ordinary Italians still reeling from the Second World War. The cost of a Vespa was, however, just a bit less than that of an average Italian salary. So, Piaggio (the manufacturer) came up with the idea of allowing their customers pay in instalments, which was a radical concept for the 1950s. Piaggio was the first European company to try this, and it paid off with more than half a million Vespas sold by 1953.
  
  
• The Italian phrase cugi - which means tacky or cheesy - comes from the phrase cugini di campagna 'your country cousins'

London to Bologna, from above.

I took these aerial photographs on a flight from London to Bologna.

Eurovision in Italy...

They say there's no interest in Italy for Eurovision, but I spied:

• This year's Hungarian entry blaring out of a car stereo
• A full page article about Eurovision including a picture of Svetlana wearing Fuck The Crisis t-shirt
• Lulu's Boom Bang a Bang being used to advertise fruit juice.

It's Eurovision week

Eurovision week has arrived, and all the joy it brings. This year, I've decided to skip watching the semi-finals, and just watch the final live (I'll watch them afterwards, obviously). By doing this, all the acts are a surprise, just like when I first starting getting into Eurovision (the 1990s).

So, to achieve this, I'm on holidays in a Eurovision-free zone: Italy. Anyway, without further ado, here's my Eurovision ru-down for 2009.

Semi-Final 1

• Montenegro
  Utterly silly, camp nonsense, and a magical way to open to the show. In a word: fun
• Czech Republic
  Gypsy rap that's much more ridiculous than it should be - Gypsy.cz is good enough in his own right. In a word: disheartening
• Belgium
  Elvis look-a-like claiming Elvis is stealing his act. In a word: genius.
• Belarus
  Dull rock ballad. In a word: boring.
• Sweden
  The first of this year's opera-pop entries, with added camp. Malena is brilliant, but this is like asking Judi Dench to do an Iceland advert. In a word: kitsch.
• Armenia
  Novelty tune, novelty dance routine, fabulous novelty costumes & hats. In a word: routine.
• Andorra
  Catchy guitar pop tune that bounces merrily along. In a word: Nice.
• Switzerland
  Pet Shop Boys, with guitars. In a word: unsung.
• Turkey
  Likeable ethnopop dancing fluff, and hurrah for it. In a word: pulsey
• Israel
  With singers from both sides of Israel, this could be corny. But it will be alive on stage. In a word: heartfelt.
• Bulgaria
  The second of the opera-pops, with added ethno-warbling. In a word: desperate
• Iceland
  Is it true? A moving ballad about loss and ending? How very Iceland in 2008/2009 financial year. In a word: moving
• FYRO Macedonia
  Not memorable in the least. In a word: forgettable.
• Finland
  A happy poppy dance song. About failure. Brilliantly Finnish. In a word: misanthropic
• Romania
  Pop poppy about Bucharest's banging babes. In a word: tonic&lime.
• Portugal
  Sweet, lovely, Portuguese ditty. In a word: obrigado.
• Malta
  Third time lucky for Chiara with this ballad? In a word: handjabs
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
  Delightfully rousing Balkan ethno-rock ballad. In a word: revolutionary

Semi-Final 2

• Croatia
  An Aegean-esque folk song supplanted to Dalmatia. Nice, but nothing new. In a word: lully
• Ireland
  I say it's Ireland's best entry in years. Girlband rockpop with nice line in shimmying. In a word: etc
• Latvia
  Russia kraut-rock. Big in the hall, undoubtedly. In a word: null
• Serbia
  Big-haired bloke and his old mate singing a daft song about shoes. In a word: overdone
• Poland
  Nice ballad, delivered well. I'd like to like it more than I actually do. In a word: true
• Norway
  Sweet love song hidden within some muscular Vikings-in-the-Urals fiddling. Great. In a word: winner?
• Cyprus
  Sweet, swooshing story song. Maybe too big for its performer, sadly. In a word: fleeting
• Slovakia
  A dull, plodding duet. In a word: snoozy
• Denmark
  It is Ronan Keating, in disguise. Good, if you like that kind of thing. (And plenty do). In a word: commercial
• Slovenia
  Violins ahoy, and a singer trilling behind a screen. Did you expect her to be blonde? I didn't! In a word: crescendo
• Hungary
  It's called Dance With Me, but should be Camp Like Me. In a word: gay
• Azerbaijan
  A catchy dirge. In a word: infectious
• Greece
  Gym-toned Sakis leads an aerobics class, while singing a song. Olivia Newton-John for the naughties. In a word: flex
• Lithuania
  It's sweeping, impressive, and he wears a nice hat. The hat is the thing I like best. In a word: sweet
• Moldova
  Great red boots for Nelly, the singer of this Slavic-ethno-pop dancing riot. Nelly! In a word: bonkers
• Albania
  A pseudo-thumping dance tune with nobody dancing. In a word: hopeful. Sadly, it may be forgotten because here comes...
• Ukraine
  Riotious, surreal, almost nasty. And all the more amazing for it. BOM! This will have a huge performance. In a word: bumpy
• Estonia
  Delightfully ethereal song, good contrast to what comes before. All it needs is some Kate Bush-esque hand waving. In a word: mystical
• Netherlands
  Three camp old dears in shiny suits belt out a shiny song called Shine. In a word: shiny

The Final

• France
  Wonderfully dramatic, brooding chanson ballad. Classy. In a word: superb
• Russia
  Some lady warbling about her mother, or is it Russia? Who knows, who cares? In a word: orphan
• Germany
  Novely song, sounding like Mambo No 5, with Dita Von Teese in the background. In a word: Inexplicable.
• United Kingdom
  She's been down, down so long. And now the song's in your heard for the rest of the day. Strong performance expected. In a word: classy.
• Spain
  The super sound of a fun night in Fuengirola! In a word: fiesta

And that's it. Who will win? My money's on Norway, and I'd love to see UK, Spain, Estonia, Ukraine, Belgium and Ireland do well.

Fabstraction

Pretty, isn't it? And it has a pretty name too - Fabstraction.

Wandering around Mayfair last week, Ian Davenport's paintings like this caught my eye.

The pic above isn't one of those I saw at the Alan Cristea gallery, but it is similar. Vertical lines of bright, vibrant colours skirt down the canvas and descend into an abstract messiness at the base of the picture. Lovely.

More about Ian Davenport - at Waddington Gallery, on Wikipedia.

Also a video about some of his work on display in Warwick University.

UK Eurovision Preview Party

Last night's Eurovision Preview Party was a great success. There was a real fun, friendly, positive and enjoyable atmosphere. Here's a run-down:

Great vintage performances from previous entrants Nicki French, Friðrik Ómar, Jessica Garlick and Imaani.

Imaani is 8 months' pregnant, well done to her for coming along to perform! Jessica Garlick still sounds stunning, and Friðrik is a great fun performer giving us an acapella This is My Life which happily became disco-dance-tastic in the final chorus. (Jade Ewan - take note).

Nicki French is a national treasure, and should be preserved in aspic.

Polish singer Lidia sung well with two nice songs. Bulgarian Krassimir seemed like a nice, sweet guy, but a little uncomfortable on stage.

Romanian Elena really sells her song well and she spins around a lot. Awesome hair extensions from her. A troupe of dancing Balkan girls strutting around stage on Moscow will be a treat from her.

Icelandic Johanna was great - very strong singer and she delivers her song well.

Cypriot Christina proved she can sing - and sing well. Her Eurovision song is a little too big for her, as she seems quite timid and nervous. Hopefully the supportive and excellent reaction she received will help boost her confidence.

Ireland were great - they performed their song with great energy and enthusiasm. They just played one song, which I felt was a shame as the crowd were really loving them. Watch:




And then: Ukraine

Svetlana Loboda came on stage aloft on the shoulders of one of her 4 very hunky, very fit dancers. They all then proceeded to give a performance which beggared belief - muscular, powerful, dynamic, energetic and frenetic.

The dancers - chests and arms bared - were a surreal mix of rabid thuggish soldiers and gay boy harlequin marionettes. They performed Be My Valentine with such gusto, it will surely figure high in the placings in Moscow. They then performed another song with Soviet-style marching and flags depicted the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

And then the dancers donned t-shirts and then took them off again. And then I got one (a t-shirt, that is). And then they proceeded to climb about the stage. And then writhed about. And then flexed their muscles. And then started to take bits of clothing off. And then we all fainted...

Watch for yourself - this is Svetlana's encore performance of Be My Valentine

Libraries in Norwich - a history

I went to Norwich last week, on a whim. Having read that Norwich has the busiest library in the UK, being a library fan, I decided to go to see it for myself. I also learned that having opened in 1608, Norwich's library is among one of the oldest public libraries in England. So, the day was set for a fascinating day of library encounters.

Before I went, I had a look in the Royal Geographical Society's Foyle Reading Room at some old maps of Norwich - dating from 1946, 1914, 1910, 1830, 1834 & 1766. The later three showed two library sites, so I set off to find out what was there now.

The first Norwich library was established in 1608. Three rooms of a house belonging to Jerrom Goodwym, a swordbearer, were converted into a library for use by visiting preachers in a building adjoining this, St Andrews Hall. The library stood here for 193 years.

This building housed a private subscription library, which also doubled as Norwich's library for some time, between 1837 and 1976. The building is now a tastefully renovated restaurant.

In early 19th century, Norwich was dubbed the "Athens of England" for its intellectual life and society. So there was call for a second library, and in 1857 another library opened at this building on St Andrew's Street.

The owners, sadly, could not find a suitable notary to open the building (they had asked the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Stanley, Gladstone, Lord John Russell, and even William Ewart, a well-known library campaigner).

Apparently, this was the UK's first building specifically designed as a library. It's now gone, demolished. The site on St Andrews Street stood from March 1857 to December 1962.

The library then moved to the site it currently occupies - although the building has changed. It burned down in 1994 due to an electrical fault. Here's what it looked like inside, sometime in the 1960s.

And now, the library is a bright, open, airy place, all glass and light. It's laid out more like HMV than a library, and has Council information, CDs, DVDs, books, internet and local archives all on one site. And the books are good - I noticed an architecture book I've previously only seen in gallery shops. And to top it all, it's getting even bigger.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day in Norwich, and its libraries. Here's hoping it continues to have success for another 400 years.

Litter on beaches

I was right when I said that Chesil Beach was full of rubbish, with a coastal litter survey for the Marine Conservation Society today finding 385,659 individual pieces of litter on 374 popular beaches. Over a third of that comes from the public.

Lots of worthy comment in this article about needing dedicated litter reduction plans, incentives to recycle and so on, but one thing that may help are a few bins. I don't remember seeing any on Chesil Beach (admittedly, it's probably not so easy to install them there).

True or False Tour #2

A colleague who hadn't been on our True or False Tour / Pub Crawl in January asked me to do it again. I jumped at the chance - it was such fun putting it together.

So yesterday, I joined my colleague, and Susanna, Tobias & Caitlin from Sweden to see London, drink in some pubs, and tell lies and tell the truth.

I made a few changes this time around. Instead of having a helper, I was more like a traditional tour guide - except some of my stories were true, and some were false.

This gave me flexibility to make bits up as I was going along, and meant I wasn't talking for a very long time!

I'm happy to report it all went swimmingly well. Caitlin remarked at one point that I should do more of these tours, and I certainly am planning too.

So, in the meantime, if anyone wants a tour around London with fun true-or-false quiz game built in, let me know!

Sounds Like Teen Spirit - Junior Eurovision film

I went to a screening of Sounds like Teen Spirit tonight, the documentary about Junior Eurovision. And it's about so much more than Eurovision: it's about being a kid, becoming a teenager, learning about life and love and losing.

We meet 4 of the contestants in the 2007 Junior Eurovision - Giorgios from Cyprus, Marina from Bulgaria, Mariam from Georgia and band Trust from Belgium - and follow their preparations to go to Rotterdam and their time at the Contest.

These kids are a world away from what you expect - not precocious stage school brats, they're warm, funny, innocent, disarming, chatty, shy, lovely kids.

10 year old Yiorgios from Cyprus is a chatty, funny guy who gets teased at school, but loves to sing and dance and be in the moment.

Marina, from Bulgaria, lives in a good home, but misses her father who is divorcing her mother. At one point, she wonders whether it's better to have no feelings, as then you never feel pain.

Mariam, from Georgia, is delighted to represent her country and have its flag among Europe's others, even if her family's TV only works long enough to see her perform.

And Trust, from Belgium - three guys and 1 girl - are teenagers learning about love and being endearingly awkward adoloscents.

I loved this film - it was warm, funny, sad and absolutely delightful. Director Jamie J Johnstone does a wonderful job, bringing the kids' personalities out with a warmth and honesty which shines through. He approaches the show without any cynicism which gives the film real heart and affection.

Go see this - it is life-affirming and heart-warming. It will leave you smiling, and thinking, for hours, and whether you like Eurovision or not, you'll come with a sense of joy in performing, music and youth.