Art Nouveau Ho

I tried to find a recording of Noel Coward singing this, perhaps the most personal of his songs; but there seems to be none online.

In Coward's absence, Julie Andrews's delivery seems closest to his. Crucially, she doesn't sentimentalise or self-indulge; just delivers the words and lets them speak. I'd wish for a simple piano accompaniment rather than a soupy mess of strings, but she succeeds despite it all.

I'll never forget hearing Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan sing this as Elyot and Amanda in Act II of Private Lives, seated comfortably at the piano in Elyot's messy apartment. Like Benedick and Beatrice, Elyot and Amanda are a couple whose favourite form of intimacy is verbal sparring; but the music created a rare moment of calm between them, their shared voices becoming, briefly, another form of intimacy for these two turbulent characters.

- Watching my friend Pete strut his stuff as an operatic dog in The Doctor's Tale at the Linbury,

- A spectacularly marvellous weekend with woodlandwildman, who has a way of enlivening my home whenever he's about.

- Time spent with lostinavebury and other fine people;

- Saturday night's White Mischief extravaganza, at which the Wildman was doing Victorian photography, Professor Maelstromme was selling shiny objects and the worthless love-slaves of Fetishman Comics mounted a fine display;

- The Dead Victorians, back from hiatus and sounding mighty fine. Likewise Professor Elemental, tip-top emcee and genuinely good soul.

- Iolanthe at Wilton's Music Hall with a splendidly talented all-male cast! I did enough G&S at university to become thorougly bored with it, and this is one of those rare productions that actually make it fun again. Do see it while it's on.

The first ten days of this year have been so harrowing that I thought I should post about things that generate happiness. For me, webcomics are a major source of joy. Here are a few of my favourites:

(Some of these will seem obvious to people who know webcomics, but I'm addressing this to an audience of varying levels of geekery.)

Long-form stories

Rice Boy by Evan Dahm. Dahm has a lot of comics up on his site, and they're all very good, but I keep coming back to Rice Boy. It's an intensely colourful tale of a young creature who is called upon to fulfill a prophecy and is, frankly, not too sure about this. Part of the joy of reading this comic is discovering its world, Overside; it's also got a rich cast of supporting characters whose destinies are interwoven with Rice Boy's. If it's wrong to be slightly in love with someone who's got a cathode-ray screen for a face, I don't want to be right.

I'm also eagerly following Dahm's current comic, Vattu.

I've raved about Family Man by Dylan Meconis before, but I will not be silent on this topic. It's just so beautifully done. If comics about the life of an eighteenth-century scholar pique your interest at all, you can't go wrong by reading this. Ongoing.

SPQR Blues by Klio: another historical comic, set mostly in Herculaneum around AD 79. Chapter II, which I particularly like, is an extended flashback to the protagonist's days in the Legion. Ongoing.

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell: As with a lot of webcomics, there's a period at the beginning where the art is sort of ropey, but it improves by leaps and bounds and is now excellent. I was iffy about it at first, but I'm now hooked on this story of two girls studying at a mysterious academy full of magic, demigods and robots. Ongoing.

Dicebox by Jenn Manley Lee. Beautiful art, and an intriguing story of two sporadically-employed women kicking around the spaceways. Keeps you guessing, but also keeps you engaged. Also, check out its alter-ego comic, Don't Look Back by Patrick Farley, in which our heroines board a guitarship for some cosmic rock and roll. Both contain nudity, so NSFW.

Short stories:
Giant Days by John Allison. I was a huge fan of his Scary Go Round. One of its protagonists, Dark Esther, heads to university in this short story and dishes out class warfare to the deserving.

City Face by Tom Siddell. Pigeons do extreme things for love.

A Wolverine short story by Faith Erin Hicks. Drawn as a pitch to Marvel, which they didn't pick up, so we get it for free! If you've ever wondered what Wolverine's favourite breakfast is, wonder no longer.

Nothing Is Forgotten by ryan a. A wordless comic, beautifully done.

The Cat on the Dovrefjell by Kaja Foglio. A beautifully drawn Christmas folktale. Contains trolls.

Ongoing silliness:

Two splendidly geeky pleasures: Order of the Stick and Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic. YAFGC has occasional nudity, so merits the NSFW mark. Since it's a daily comic, the archives are HUGE, but well worth coming back to for fun and enjoyment.

A Softer World by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau. I don't know if this counts as a comic, since it's essentially just typewritten captions over background photos, but it's lots of fun to read.

Double Fine Action Comics: I can't really explain my fondness for this exceedingly strange strip. All I know is that I love it, especially the mini-jokes in the top margin.

Too obvious to mention:
Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio and Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton. If you're on the internet and have a pulse, you've already made up your mind about these. Kate Beaton never ceases to be awesome; Girl Genius is going through an annoying patch right now, but is still generally a good story.

Have I killed your productivity yet? If so, my work here is done. Unil next time, true believers!

In my mind, Christmas most emphatically doesn't start until it's actually fucking December, so I can't quite bring myself to admit that I'm Christmas shopping rather than hunting down shiny objects for friends as usual.

Still, I thought I would share with you some of the sources of things that amused me, which might perhaps further your own shopping agenda.

Firstly, webcomic people generally have class-A swag available for purchase, and John Allison is no exception. I tend to assume everyone knows and loves his T-shirts as much as speedlime and I do, but he also has some remarkable canvas bags, one for knitting and one for shopping. He also has several lovely posters, including one that's a particular work of genius: Aubrey Beardsley's Lady Gaga.

I also can't say enough good things about the work of Etsy seller SoCharmed. She has all sorts of loveliness in her shop, from Rococo to Baroque to Romantic to rock 'n' roll. She makes weird-ass little cameos out of things like x-rays and secret documents. Oh, and she does "libertine" necklaces paying tribute to Aphra Behn, Oscar Wilde and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

While on Etsy, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my good friend Professor Maelstromme, your source for all things gothic, steampunk and arcane. She specialises in making one-of-a-kind jewellery out of found objects, and also does a fine line in hats and fascinators. Recently she has also begun selling a few outfits made by the fantastically talented wyte_phantom (here and here, so far.) I must say, $255 US for a corset and bustle skirt is a total steal, so get in there while you can, ladies.

Right, I'm off to acquire one of these terribly educational sewing machine diagrams from the Regretsy shop. Otherwise I might forget which part is which, you know, and that would never do. See you later, shoppinators.

This week's Onion is like unto the fiery finger of God him/herself descending to inscribe journalistic satire upon the earth.

84 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live

"NEW YORK—At 4:32 p.m. Tuesday, every single resident of New York City decided to evacuate the famed metropolis, having realized it was nothing more than a massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants.

"With audible murmurs of "This is no way to live," "What the hell am I doing here—I hate it here," and "Fuck this place. Fuck this horrible place," all 8.4 million citizens in each of the five boroughs packed up their belongings and told reporters they would rather blow their brains out with a shotgun than spend another waking moment in this festering cesspool of filth and scum and sadness."

Biden To Cool His Heels In Mexico For A While

"Sources in the Obama administration confirmed that the vice president advised staffers to play it cool if a couple of rugged-looking sonsofbitches come looking for Dynamite Joe, and urged officials to throw them off his trail by saying he was attending a conference on nonproliferation in Munich."

Smart, Qualified People Behind the Scenes Keeping America Safe: 'We Don't Exist'

"According to the utterly nonexistent super-geniuses who we've been telling ourselves are keeping our nation safe with their superior technology and lightning-fast decision-making abilities, there are currently no living people who resemble them at the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DHS, TSA, or any other federal, state, or local law enforcement agency, and there never really have been at any point in American history."

I'm typing this from a hotel room in The Hague. Rather surprisingly, I'm not currently on trial for war crimes.

I'd never been to the Netherlands before. I like it here, and wish I had more than two days (Amsterdam yesterday; the Hague today.) I've walked along canals, experienced a rijstaffel and seen more paintings than you could shake a stick at.

What's strange about being here, though, is that I speak not a syllable of Dutch. I can just about read it, given its close relationship to both English and German, but I have no idea how to speak it, or understand it when spoken.

It is so weird being in a European country where I don't speak the language. So weird.

Tomorrow: back to London; singing; then off to Berkeley Castle for the Berkeley Skirmish (featuring, should the reenactors not behave themselves, MORE SINGING).

Today I also learnt that the brilliant tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson has died at the age of only 69. It is a sad loss, but the real tragedy is that he had been retired for some years due to early-onset Alzheimer's. I will always remember his beautiful voice.

Stories!

The Truth Is A Cave in the Black Mountains, by Neil Gaiman, at fiftytwostories.com, itself a repository of most excellent narratives.

And for afters: I, Cthulhu, or, What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9' S, Longitude 126° 43' W)? Also by Gaiman. More stories here at tor.com.

Writer and artist Faith Erin Hicks sketched out this Wolverine story as a pitch to Marvel; when they passed on it (for being too much fun, clearly), she put it up on her site for all to see.

Other things of beauty:
Long-exposure photos of fireflies in the woods on DeviantArt. I miss the fireflies of Washington DC.

Monsterdrawings on Post-It notes by John Kenn: "A little window into a different world, made on office supplies."

Singers, rejoice! If you're sick of untalented nonentities having recording careers due to the horrors of autotuning, the answer has arrived: Auto de-tune! I for one will definitely be shelling out $799 for this fine piece of equipment, which I (of course) heard about on MetaFilter.

Speaking of advances in science, if the recently-fired-up Large Hadron Collider has you confused at all, here is a handy diagram explaining it from those fine minds at The Onion. In reporting the recent LHC activity, the Daily Telegraph made the beautifully obvious typographical error, joining an illustrious list of publications that includes the New York Times.

Speaking of large hardons, you guys saw the eighteenth-century rosewood dildos that were recently sold at auction, right? In their own travelling case, no less. (Insert obligatory Rochester poem here.) As the brochure put it, in possibly the best sentence ever: "The case, although having a re-lined interior, appears to have aged commensurate with the phallus." I am going to try to use that last phrase in conversation whenever possible. "Your pants, sir, appear to have aged commensurate with the phallus." "Your mom appears [etc etc]."

Of course, those Age of Enlightenment types never dreamed that one day technology would advance to the point where a steam-powered sex machine would be possible. Sadly, the small minds at the US Patent Office did not share the inventor's vision, and the 1891 patent application was rejected. However, the prototype was preserved for posterity.

Speaking of disturbing phallic objects: anyone fancy some chocolate chip pancakes and sausage on a stick? Mmmm, tasty. But how do you get the maple syrup to stay on...?

Happy Easter, everyone!

Happy Pi Day! (also Albert Einstein's birthday!)



To celebrate:
14 perfect pi pies (via vvalkyri
The Pi Song by Hard 'n' Phirm. Contains wizards and a robot.
Also,
http://3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209.maxg.org/pie.html

People who insist upon European date notation can wait until 22 July and celebrate Pi Approximation Day.

"Love is like pi: natural, irrational and very important." --Lisa Hoffman
"Yeah, except pi never ends." --Me

I have a friend who has an Alexander McQueen coat. Because she is a woman of glory and valour, she let me borrow it once; I wore it to the opera and revelled in style-by-association. Since I heard the news of McQueen's untimely death, my thoughts have been lingering particularly on that coat and that friend.

Moth trails: long-exposure photos of moths and lights, inspired by this picture of a bat chasing a moth.

Drunkenness in bats does not impair their flight, scientists find. It does, however, make them wear little tiny fruit baskets on their heads.

Kitty Carlisle was a classically trained soprano who sang at the Met, among other places. In later years, she became politically involved with the arts, arguing strongly against censorship of such artists as Robert Mapplethorpe. (She was also a friend of my grandmother's, which I think is kind of cool.) However, she's best remembered as the attractive, dark-eyed girl from the Marx Brothers' film A Night At The Opera. The hit song from that movie was called "Alone," and here she is, singing it with sweet-voiced tenor Allan Jones on YouTube.

A few years ago, I found the sheet music to "Alone" in my local charity shop. I was overjoyed, since it's been out of print for many decades. I brought it home, but have never had a chance to sing it in public... until now. Tomorrow night, ladies and gents, White Mischief at Proud Cabaret! Be there! I'm singing 8.30 - 9pm, and afterwards we can all get drunk as a fruit bat.