Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Blue State/Red State. Blue State Red State began shortly after Election Day 2004 with a desire to debunk what seemed like a growing consensus in most mainstream and right-leaning media that the re-election of Pres. Bush represented a wide cultural divide. The basic argument against this, in favor of a progressive move forward can be found here. [via Do You Feel Loved?]

I currently have the man from Sky here to install my Sky + box. I thought I was being burnt by Sky before I'd even been hooked up as I received a letter last week detailing the charge for every meter of cable and extra wall-mounted doohickey involved, but when he arrived he confirmed that my free installation is genuinely free. Which is something. He told me a story about how when he turns up at some houses to install Sky the owners are shocked and appalled to find out that as part of the process he will actually be drilling holes in the wall. How exactly do they think the Sky box gets it's signal? Magic?

If you're a Pet Shop Boys fan then you'll probably be salivating at the news that their concerts are being rereleased on DVD (correction: If you're a PSB fan then you'll probably have been a lot less tardy than me in discovering this). I got Performance several weeks ago, which has some of my favourite PSB moments ever, the opening This Must be The Place.../It's A Sin/Losing my Mind medley and We All Feel Better in the Dark with Chris's strip and dance (the extended mix on the enhanced Behaviour album has an extra verse in which Chris confesses he feels 'really horny'. Is it just me or is there something faintly unsettling about the Boys making direct reference to wanting to have sex? Rather like a vicar dropping a 'bollocks' into a Sunday sermon?). The commentary track with Chris Heath is comfortably ignorable though. Although the various things he's done for them in the last few years, the booklets for the enhanced CDs, the commentary track for the Pop Art DVD, have tended to be things that even casual fans who have just read the odd music press interview would know, here the Pets are able to offer almost nothing that isn't either obvious or known from the booklet that comes with the DVD. They chose the songs. They gave them to the director to fashion in to a show. They don't appear to know what the opening scene with the Alpine Symphony actually means, other than it's symbolic. Chris Lowe actually leaves the room in embarassment at the start of We All Feel... If you haven't read them but can find them, the two books he wrote about the Pets on tour are much better, for all that it was a long time ago, and much more entertaining. (And incidentally, the DVD cover claims that I Can't Take my Eyes Off of You has been restored to the concert after licensing issues prevented it being on the video. This is not the case.)

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