Notes From The Geek Show

• A Long Shot
  OK, this probably isn't going to work, but does anybody remember an experimental musical / rock opera thing from the late 80s / early 90s that was shown in a one-off TV adaptation on late night BBC2?
  
  The way I remember it, it was set around a bakery, with the main character being a baker's apprentice or somesuch (but with big dreams of a life beyond bread maybe?). Anyhoo, I can't remember any more plot details than that, but I do remember this guy as looking kinda like Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins -- young, shaven-headed and round-faced in a cherubic sorta way. And I have a picture of him in my head looking pale as the moon against a black background.
  
  See, I'm thinking that the whole thing, visually speaking, had a very artifical, staged look, sort of a Shakespeare's Sister / Dresden Dolls / Tim Burton vibe. I can't be any more specific, I'm afraid, but in my mind's eye I see dark backdrops, pale skin and metallic colour... an iconography of dark fairy tales (moons and stars), of Bradburyesque carnivals, Brechtian cabaret and a burlesque Christmas. Something kinda avant garde, a little bit glittery, a little bit goth. I don't know.
  
  And annoyingly that's pretty much all I can remember. Musically, I think it was a contemporary sound, something pushing more towards experimental rock than Broadway torch songs, but I'm fucked if I can even remember a tune never mind lyrics.
  
  But if the description rings any bells with anybody out there, I'd really like to know just what the fuck it was. Every time I see a picture of Billy Corgan I'm reminded of the fricking thing and I wish I could remember what the fuck it was called, cause I remember thinking it was actually kinda cool. But I've never been able to drag the memories up to the surface of my consciousness, and it's not at all the easiest thing to track down on Google with just a few keywords to go on. So if anyone knows what the fuck it was, help me out here.
• N-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen!
  So a few weeks back I got an email from The List (Scotland's version of Time Out), offering free tickets to their Christmas shindig if I wanted them. Naturally, I snapped at the chance to lig the event, which was timed to coincide with the release of the magazine's "Hot 100" of 2007's hippest and most happening, and sounded like it should therefore be fairly ligworthy. Hey, I'm shallow; sue me. Anyway, obviously an obscure genre scumbag like me is not going to be on the guest list because I'm actually in the Hot 100, but I figured that my name had probably slipped onto some additional invitees list because of a group interview/article a wee while back by journalist Doug Johnstone in connection with the Ballads of the Book album. I knew that the album had been something of a success, what with the Celtic Connections and Triptych gigs, and the word coming back from friends at university that it had generated a fair bit of buzz amongst students. So it seemed like the most plausible cause.
  
  What I didn't actually think of was the possibility that the album itself would actually make it into the Hot 100... at the #19 spot, no less!
  
  So, yeah, fucking cool! The party itself was a fun way to spend a few hours, with a few free drinks thrown in, but most of the folks in attendance seemed to be behind-the-scenes media-types rather than recogniseable faces, so it didn't exactly feel like hobnobbing with celebrities. I did spot Grant Morrison but didn't get a chance to chat with him before he disappeared. Still, I caught up with Alan Bissett, met and chatted with Andrew from Chemikal Underground, and generally had a good time with me mates, partying into the wee hours. So, yeah, as I say... fucking cool!
  
  Also, is it bad/sad of me to be chuffed that, at #19, the Ballads album puts us (by which, of course, I mean ME!!!) above Alan Cumming (#58), David Tennant (#36) and J.K. Rowling (#53)? Hah! Nightcrawler, Doctor Who and Harry Potter! Eat my dust, losers!
  
  Top Twenty, mate. Top Fuckin Twenty!
• An A-Z Of This Blog
  

  Anonymouse -- what you risk being dubbed should you choose to post comments anonymously.Leeway will be given for those unfamiliar with blogosphere etiquette (in direct proportion to rational content and amiable attitude), but anonymity will generally be viewed with suspicion as a potential marker of craven trolldom.The simplest of online handles is all that's needed to distinguish you from hit-and-run arsewipes.

  Behemouth -- Also known as the Giant Fire-Breathing Bewilderbeeste, this creature is docile unless provoked by the perplexing idiocy of the world-at-large (and certain religio-political institutions in particular).Unfortunately, when aggravated, the Behemouth's response is often disproportionately hostile, taking the form of a rhetorical rampage of several thousand words, generally aimed at reducing the preconceptual terms of the debate to dust, with little regard for principles of tact and diplomacy.The result may be entertaining but should be regarded with an arched eyebrow of skepticism.The swift application of a logical baseball bat on the nose is a good way of stopping the Behemouth in its tracks, enabling the resumption of civilised discourse.

  Cunt -- a word that many people apparently find offensive, presumably due to some freaky Freudian neurosis in which oral, anal and carnal acts and organs are considered "vulgar".This is clearly fucked up, motherfuckers. Swearing is an art form, and if it makes you blush, well, as a wise man once said, "I am not innarested in your condition."The only context in which "profanity" is considered out-of-bounds on this blog is that of abusive bigotry, dig?Otherwise, be as much of a mouthy cunt as you wish.

  Dionysus -- knows no nations, suffers no tyrants, heals all sorrows.He is often to be found on this blog, either riding the Behemouth with a cowboy whoop or following behind it on foot, having set it off on a rampage with a swipe of his sacred thyrsus across its arse.Dionysus is the libertine Id, the horny kid, the spirit of tragedy and comedy, an aesthetics of passion which stands as antithesis to an "Apollonian" aesthetics of reason.Where the latter becomes co-opted to the service of psycho-cultural institutions of Empire (i.e. where "order" is aggrandised as an end in and of itself, "perfect" as a quality rather than the measure of a quality), it becomes necessary, in my opinion, to adopt a Dionsysian strategy of antidoxy, to attack sophistry with song, to fight ideology with imagination.Dionysus is only one mask, but he is a mask that must be worn.

  Ethics -- is the aesthetics of social interaction, and therefore as applicable on this blog as in any other social context.My own model of ethics posits no absolute right and wrong, only the psychophysiologial imperatives of passion (joy and sorrow, anger and fear, disgust and surprise) extended socially by empathy, through which we evaluate our own behaviour, formulating aesthetic judgements which build to complex systems of axiomatic standards, general and specific.Ethics in this sense is an active skill, an emotional and intellectual faculty of self-awareness, rather than a passive conformity to pre-existing universal imperatives.Ethics is not, therefore, to be confused with morals.

  Fuck -- that shit.A nihilist mantra which articulates a general disregard for essentialist bollocks.People die.All else we say is only noise or song.

  Geek Show -- the society of the spectacle as portrayed on this blog, or this blog as a sideshow in the society of the spectacle.Take your pick; all you need to know is that when I say "geek" I'm not talking in the sweaty-palmed computer nerd sense here but rather in the carnival grotesque sense.The Geek Show is the world we live in, the cave in which Australopithecus crouches over severed heads of humans, an Ancient of Days, a Deus