Back in Business!

Well my dearies! It has been too long and there has been too much going on! It is rather hard to know where to start, hope you all had a rather lovely Easter, mine was suitably crazy and drink filled, shocking i know!!

Part of the weekend included a Good Friday trip to Popstarz at it's new venue - Sin on Charing Cross Road, The Gossip were playing so i kinda expected that it would be busy but nothing prepared me for the sheer ridiculousness of the venue. Call me old fashioned but the old venue of the Scala club in Kings Cross was perfect for popstarz, it never felt too busy, you could move around quite easily and rarely had to queue for anything apart from the cloakroom! On Good Friday we had to queue for the cloakroom, queue to get into the different rooms, queue to get on the dancefloor etc etc, It was quite simply one of the most hateful experiences i have had in a long time. I will give it another chance but that night really took the piss.

I had a few days off work since then on annual leave and thought i would just chill out and catch up on a bit of reading, my friend Oliver had let me borrow a couple of books, one of which was a book by Dan Brown called "Digital Fortress" - I had already read the Da Vinci Code and Deception Point and thought they were ok, this book however, was a steaming cow pat pile of shit of a book! His writing style is so annoying - basically it goes - one paragraph describing the scene and the next describing what's going on, i advice you to skip every other paragraph in this case. The book goes on and on about this rather impressive sounding computer that can translate any code in any email quick as a flash but there is one code it can't break and that basically sets up the rest of the book.

As i reached the climax of the story, I found myself repeatedly saying at the top of my voice whilst on my own "OH COME ON!!!!" - If you are intending to read this book you shoud be warned I am about to spoil the story (I actually believe Dan Brown spoiled the story by writing it) - basically the code that is needed throughout the book is believed to be engraved on a ring that the code designer has passed to some one in Spain shortly before dying, the whole story is spent following this guy's mission to locate the ring and get the code back to the bigwigs in America, this goes on and on like a Heather Mills outside court speech and is just as mental. It turns out after all that chasing and bullet dodging that the code they are all looking for is 3, the number of fingers on the code designers jeremy beadle like hand, we thought he was giving the ring away with the code on it but in fact he was just holding up his manky 3 fingers - what a load of twaddle! Now normally in the back of books there is a little piece about the author - eg - what he does, if he is married and where he lives, Mr Brown seems to have decided this is not important, a shame really as I would like to go and ask him for the time it took me to read this book back, I would also like to pick his computer up and slam it down on his fingers so his hand resembles the hand of the character in his book and hopefully he would not be able to write another book like this ever again.

Also last week I bought Heat magazine - when will I ever learn?? I had to laugh though, they had some real exclusives in their "week in pictures" section, I do hope you are holding onto your seats!

1. A picture of Gwyneth Paltrow walking with a shorter female friend with the headline "Gwyneth Paltrow is tall, is'nt she?"

2. A picture of the actress Jessica Alba going to get her nails done in LA surrounded by paparazzi. Shocking an attractive actress getting her photo taken!!

3. A picture of David Beckham with his hand over his groin on a football pitch as some one is taking a free kick!! - don't footballers all over the world do that?

4. Abby Clancy (WAG) running down the street on a cold day in a t shirt with her nipples visible in her top, shock horror, nipples go hard when it's cold!!!

5. Sadie Frost has worn the same bikini twice in the last 3 years!!! - may she hang her head in shame!

6. Britney Spears' sister Jamie Lynn is blooming! yes it's the shocking story that 6 months pregnant Jamie Lynn is bigger than she was 6 months ago

7. Heat Magazine has also noticed that Nicole Ritchie is also looking much healthier than she used to after recently giving birth, yes she has more meat on her bones than this time last year, ya know when she was not pregnant

and I ask myself why do they limit the booker prize to books when this literary genius is out there talking about the issues that really matter!!

Whilst I am getting all wordy wordy on your ass, I thought I would lead into the next part of the blog by saying

Dont judge a book (or album in this case) by it's cover.

http://gumclinic.blogspot.com/2008/03/hard-skin.html

As avid readers of this blog will know I do worship at the Church of Madonna, A few entries ago i uploaded the cover art for the new Madonna album "Hard Candy" labelling it as "fierce", this of course was my personal opinion and although I am sure the cover has been airbrushed to buggery - I am still very excited about the contents of this album, yes I am talking about the music, I do get sick of rowing with people who say that Madonna just finds a style of music and steals it for herself. After 26 years in the business no one can deny that Madonna has a keen ear for all that will be cool whether it is underground french dance music, multi ethnic gypsy punk or new york dance house voguing. Her next album seems to be highly influenced by Hip Hop, Several other female artists have already been collaborating with the artists that Madonna is working with, Nelly Furtado is the main girl that springs to mind, working with Mr Timberlake and Mr Timbaland to great success. I do wonder how much influence Ms. Furtado had over the production, Madonna has written and co produced all the tracks on the new album so lets just wait and see what she comes up with before drop kicking her ass at the first beat.

As for complaints about Madonna skipping back in time, If I had been around and on top of my game for 26 years, I would be more than happy to reflect back on where I had started from and where I had got to. We should all wait and be excited about the artistic direction of her video releases from this album and the upcoming tour - I will need to get my eyes tested as I am sure it will be like nothing we have seen before.

Discuss

Here are some more fine fine fine pics of her greatness






Finally it's a long overdue hottie moment, Lazing around this last week I have still not been able to enjoy the delights of daytime TV but now I wish I had, This is one of the male nurses from daytime soap "Doctors" - if he was a nurse in real life I would so be jamming a biro in my eye right now!!



xx