Natalie Merchant - Live at Symphony Hall, Birmingham

Having bought the full album: 'Leave Your Sleep', rather than the abridged 'Selections From...', and finding the level of detail that went into it to be very impressive (over one hundred musicians were involved, and she painstakingly researched the poets whose words she put to music, writing about each of them in the book that accompanied the CD), and then paying £27:50 for a ticket to see her live, I was expecting to see Natalie Merchant accompanied by a full band, to help recreate - as best as she could - the sound on the album. I was therefore sorely disappointed to arrive (late) at the venue to see her accompanied only by two guitarists.
The die was cast, as the saying goes.

There is a certain tendency, particularly in instances of 'acoustic' music, for performers to slow songs down in order to convey a sense of 'weight', or poignancy, to their songs; Natalie Merchant is one person who never needs to do this: her music is incredibly insightful, and powerful - particularly when she 'opens her lungs'; however, this is exactly what she did...
I don't know if the audience can be looked to as a contributory cause, because they were all a bunch of cunts - the kind of cunts, if you follow my meaning, who hang out in 'pubs' and acclaim all things to be magnificent, lest they have to look at their worthlessness and experience the horror of insight: they greeted each new occurrence as though it was the most splendid, contrary thing imaginable (or even unimaginable, such is their low nature, and shock...)!
It is this attitude which might have influenced, subconsciously, the performance of Natalie Merchant - that is, she might have sought to pander to their base nature.

Regarding her performance: I am astounded that I must report that she forgot the words to her songs. She is touring an album that she does not know how to perform.
This is even more astounding an occurrence because she prefaced every song with a slideshow - projected on a large screen behind her:

...which she narrated, from memory, in detail...
During one song, she suddenly addressed a member of the audience while singing, and asked 'You've bought the album, haven't you?', because the mongoloid was trying to validate its existence by singing along; she then admitted that she asked this in order to distract from the fact that she had forgotten the words! The album/song came out a matter of months ago...
She later asked the audience for requests, because she wouldn't be back 'for about ten years', only to refute them all on account of her and her band not having rehearsed them/knowing how to play them; the song she chose, she ended up improvising with her guitarist: humming to try and figure out whether it was in C or G - thereby entirely negating any feeling, or atmosphere that could be created. Thanks.

She actually remarked to the gathered morons - whose proclivity for over-exuberance i have already documented - that if she was a dentist, say, and fucked up, people would feel aggrieved - however, that was what she was doing right now, in her professional capacity, and they were only too eager to applaud, and laugh! Here is an animated representation of what the crowd did throughout the performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdmYInXplY

If the performance had been what I had expected and hoped for, all of these travesties would have been transcended; but unfortunately it wasn't - a great shame, as I know that she is easily capable of doing so.

Iron Man 2

I think it might well be me: the world (well: the 'West') is a more and more contemptible place as the months pass, it seems. The content of the films offered at the mainstream cinema is insulting; i recently walked out of 'Repo Men' one laugh/entertainment/interesting event-free hour into it, only to walk into another contemptible piece of shit called 'Date Night'.

So it was that I was hoping that when I went to see something billed as a massive mainstream undertaking - Iron Man 2 - it would be at least hilariously bad: I was under no illusions - I did not expect that it would be of any credit or worth to mankind, or even the lower species - but I did think that those guilty would have at least managed the bare minimum: acting that gave the impression the actor gave a shit about being there; character development; meaningful (in the context of the film) events and characters; and so forth.

What was delivered made me think that an eight year old boy had conceived and directed the film - or was at least a much-utilised consultant to such an extent that they broke child-labour laws: at one point, believe me or not, two men in metal suits - not robots, mind - had a fight while the Daft Punk song 'Robot Rock' played...is the population full of retards not under the care of the State? Or are their carers actually permitted or encouraged to allow their meagre mental faculties to be abused and atrophied yet further with idiocy such as Iron Man 2, for some abstract reason i'm ignorant of?

The crux of the film was meant to be that main cunt (Robert Down's Syndrome jr.) was dying, and there was no way to stop it - but there was nothing at all done by the film-makers to convey any sort of tension with regards this critical part of the plot.
Alongside this was meant to be some sort of adversarial relationship with Mickey Rourke - the guy with a face like the cunt of Sarah out of Sex and the City: i.e., like Rocky's eye, in the words of Andrew Dice Clay - but Rourke had about five minutes of screen time in the two-hours this insult to the human race debased existence - including a final showdown with Down's which was as tense as the rest of the film - that is, as tense as a used condom sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
Which is where these bastards should all be, really - for the good of us all, including themselves: i'm sure they don't wish to continue hurting their loved ones and society by creating such abhorrence as this.

And if they do: then we have all the justification we need to do away with them.