It's relaxed, it's conversational,
it's here.
By the way, I like the look of
this blog.
One happy outcome of the whole
Big Blogger experience has been making the acquaintance of a whole bunch of new-to-me bloggers... such as the
Girl With A One Track Mind. Naturally - and because I make it my business to track such trends - I was aware of her "raunchy" reputation, and of the "buzz" which surrounded her
(mugs to camera, Norton-style), but I had been operating under the glib assumption that nothing on a heterosexual woman's fairly explicit sex-blog could possibly be of interest to me.
(We'll leave Belle De Jour out of this. Please see
what I said below about rules and exceptions.)
I was wrong, though. To me, the most interesting of The Girl's doubtlessly
vast array of skills
(mugs to camera again) is that she is able to write about sex in a way that amuses/enlightens/informs, rather than merely titillates. (Although having said that, titillation is not exactly shied away from. And quite right too.) The overall effect is akin to reading a travelogue of an exotic far-off country which you know you'll never visit. (Or something. I'm extemporising wildly here.)
Anyway, there I was, reading all about
The Girl's annoyance with some random bloke who couldn't stop staring at her tits, when I suddenly realised that, blimey, I actually had common cause with the random bloke in question. Yes, readers! I admit it! Sometimes, I find it almost impossible NOT to stare at female cleavage - and I speak as someone who is well aware of the mixed messages which this sends out.
In my case, I think it's a reflex reaction born out of a shyness in making direct eye contact. Much safer (for me at least) to let the eyes drift downwards, and into the warm safety of the female bosom. Why, sometimes I can almost hear myself think... "Mummy".
Terrible, really. Especially when you realise you've been busted, as the woman in question hastily, nervously rearranges her decolletage - like something must be
wrong down there. After all, what other explanation could there be?
My name is Mike. I am a fully paid-up homosexualist, and I like staring at women's tits.
(Bloggers! You know
those days when you feel like you've said everything there is to be said? Well, today isn't one of them.)
It's good to see the "collaborative mix project"
ILMiXor revived again, after a few months' break. Disc 5 of the project is entitled "Around The World In 80 Minutes" - the premise being that each track should in some way lie to the East of the track which precedes it. Thus far, we have moved from London to Benin, Stockholm/Nigeria, Italy, Russia, Israel and Iran/Ukraine. OK, so some of the geography has wobbled a bit - but if you're sufficiently broad-minded, then the music is all good.
Having registered my interest fairly quickly, I'm nearing the top of the queue, and should be making my own contribution to the mix some time towards the end of next week. I just hope that I don't get stuck somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Anyone know any good tracks from Fiji?
My favourite blog post of the last week? No contest: it has to be
Willie Lupin's tribute to Mo Mowlam, which contains some delicious personal reminiscences of her pre-political Gay Disco Years.
(This also helps to explain why she chose
Blame It On The Boogie as one of her Desert Island Discs, a few years ago. At the time, it seemed like such an unlikely choice - but now, I have context.)
Hypocrisy, thy name is Mike. By telling you last week that I was off to see a drag show at
Cabaret, then failing to come back and tell you about it, I have come perilously close to breaching one of my own
seven deadly sins of blogging. However, since Miss Mish has spared me the effort by providing
her own write-up, all I have to do is link to it, and move on. Isn't blogging
wonderful?
(We don't call her "Miss Mish" in real life, by the way. Because that would be just silly.)
Oh, go on then - just a couple more observations. The audience was about 80% female, about 60% over 50, and about 95% heterosexual. There were lots of large, jolly groups of ladies who probably worked together: Mary from the post room, Barbara from the help desk, Margaret from catering, all mock-bashfully hooting and screeching at the remorselessly "blue" material from the drag queen compere-cum-DJ. ("We do use some rude words, like
f**k. But we could use some worse ones... like
murder.")
After a wobbly start from the "Slinky Minky" troupe (two girls, one boy, one glamorously svelte drag queen lead), consisting of some rather underwhelming strutting and synch-ing to some rather forgettable old show tunes, I was beginning to wonder whether staying in town on a Friday night had been the best move after all. However! The whole evening turned round in an instant, the moment that the next section was announced: a tribute to the Eurovision Song Contest, from the 1960s to the 1990s. How I whooped! How I shrieked! How strangely quiet everyone else went!
They didn't disappoint, either. From Cliff Richard to Clodagh Rodgers to Abba to Bucks Fizz to Gina G to Dana International, with costume changes galore, it was as if my entire life history was flashing before my eyes. This stuff goes
deep, people.
From this moment on, the Slinky Minkys could do no wrong. Such verve! Such panache! Such taste! Oh, I just feel that it's
so vitally important to keep these folk traditions alive, don't you?
Saving the best till last, the much vaunted "Grand Finale" section turned out to be a tightly choreographed 15 minute montage of songs and routines from
Chicago. With this, the Minkys raised their whole game, and excelled themselves. Clever staging, imaginative moves, perfect split-second timing... and all this at the end of a show which had lasted for the thick end of two and a half hours. One had to salute their diligence and stamina, if nothing else.
(Besides which, anything related to
Chicago was bound to get our table of former George's Bar regulars all gee'd up. The soundtrack to last Autumn, that was. You had to be there at the time, though. Honest to Betsy, I'm not the sort of queen who normally goes ga-ga over show tunes. Perish the thought! But to every rule, it's good to have an exception.)
As the show finished and the disco kicked in ("No drinks up on the stage, girls - and please wait until the crash barriers are in place"), and the Marys and the Barbaras and the Margarets stepped up and shimmied to a stream of thirty-seconds-at-a-time 1960s classics (Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Phil Spector), so we grabbed our things and sloped off to
NG1, for our own step-up-and-shimmy. Ee, it's been a while. These places work best when you've kept away for a few months. The trick is not to start thinking it would be a good idea to visit more regularly. Diminishing returns and all that. Strictly high days and holidays, that's me.
(Um, this was meant to be a single-paragraph hit-and-run link-post. I must be congenitally incapable of brevity. At this rate, we'll be here all night.)
