Headphones Filled with Straw

My word, I was tired last night but I did manage to stay awake for Nathan Barley, the new Channel 4 comedy penned by Chris Morris and Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker. ‘im out The Mighty Boosh (see links!) was in it. Morris directed same. It is a massive swipe at ‘cool’ and features more embarrassing, fashion victimised, what’s-hip?-hepcats than you can shake an i-Pod Shuffle at. The character Barley is, according to the C4 site, 26 and ‘a webmaster, guerrilla filmmaker, screenwriter, DJ and in his own words, a "self-facilitating media node". He is convinced he is the epitome of urban cool and therefore secretly terrified he might not be, which is why he reads Sugar Ape Magazine - his bible of cool.’ Perhaps I’d better remove that Creative Zen Micro from my Amazon wish list. This was a dark comedy - naturellement - featuring empty lives galore interspersed with bullying, insensitivity and bloated self-obsession. Hollow men. This was not easy viewing but the target was hit.

S was talking about Chris Morris last week and mentioned his use of Warp (see links!) electronica in his Blue Jam radio show so I was not surprised to spot some Autechre halfway through last night’s show. Like a man possessed I’m trying hard to find a track listing from the show so I can prove how clever I am. No luck so far.

I have a week off and I intend to do little except find some lo-fi knitwear in a Bristol charity shop (I am slap bang in the middle of an appalling knitwear crisis), enjoy some understated popular music at Thursday’s Twisted Folk evening, avoid watching Gloucester play rugger footy, listen to plenty of ‘nice’ music while striking a pensive pose, and peer through my fingers at the Gloucester rugger footy message boards and, perchance, gasp merrily at the latest rumours about volcanic wingers who may or may not be heading our way.