Category: Random

A day without blogger. And a difficult day it was too. My complete inability to update the site at lunchtime or before work has been profoundly frustrating. In general this has been a pretty weird day, and one that cannot hope but improve (that is of course assuming that my meeting with my new flatmates goes well). After that, I am off to the Liquid Lounge, before (possibly) heading on to Popstarz. I’m wearing a dark blue Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt with the number “36” on the back should anyone else be there.

What is it with A&F anyway? We don’t have them in the UK (so forgive my ignorance) – I picked up some of their clothes while in LA with Kerry and Sean. The catalogues are renowned for their homoerotic imagery (and with good reason), but they still seem to sell just as much to straight men of a pretty conservatively masculine disposition as they do to gay people.

A&F are basically part of the same trend in clothing that spawned the horror of the Evil Gap Clones – ie. everyone wearing the same thing – looking the same. This is a great source of horror to many people, and given my politics you might expect me to have a similar reaction. Weirdly though, I don’t – it’s almost as if clothes have become so generic that they have become invisible – for most of us they are no longer the demarcation points of culture or class. Perhaps homogeneity has resulted in a certain amount of liberation. Perhaps if we all wore the same thing….? On the other hand, I always have in the back of my mind the line from A Handmaid’s Tale – spoken by the arch-conservatives who want to ‘free’ women from dangerous things like ‘free will’ – that there are both freedoms to and freedoms from. It is the sign of the politically libertine to always aim for the former (“go libertines!”).

Homogeneity in and of itself shouldn’t be considered a bad thing – sometimes the act of mimicry inevitably carries with it a certain amount of irony. Take openlog for example – is this a piss-take, an affectionate (self?)tribute or a straightfoward design decision? It’s the same and yet because of its mimicry it has its own unique identity. [Check out kottke.org if you don’t know what I am talking about.]

Today began with a very sad event – a direct result of my vagrancy – somewhere in all the move I crushed one of the pairs of sunglasses I bought in LA. If I was of a more morbid disposition I would say it was symbolic.

I’m still at Chris’ place which is nice because he doesn’t expect me to go out and entertain him all the time and he likes watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is ultimate escapist entertainment. Tomorrow I’m on the move again though, which is exhausting – this time to Camden to stay with Liz. And of course I have my meeting with my new flatmates. The sooner I get a flat, the sooner I get my computer back. The sooner I get my computer back, the sooner I can finish the site (and the sooner I can get a good night’s sleep).

One thing I really need to know – does Darren of timemachinego go to the EasyEverything on Tottenham Court Road? Because if he does, I’d like to wave to him one day from the balcony at Time Out. Which reminds me – the website is currently running a online drugs poll which I worked on.

Any regulars to barbelith are familiar with the nexus – the anti-establishment post-counter-sub-cultural discussion forum. Recently there has been rather more in the way of conflict and flame-wars than normal – so much in fact that I have been sent a really interesting article from Wired about The Epic Saga of The Well (May 1997). The well was one of the first and most significant online communities, and it was – at times – wracked with conflict and crisis.

Temporary plateau of weirdness reached. Things remain weird, but have ceased to get increasingly so. Chris has said he will put me up for a couple of nights, which is really decent of him and means that I can now slide through into next week courtesy of him and Liz. I am getting increasingly worried about my new potential flatmates however – not in terms of whether I will get along with them, but about when we will actually find a place to live in and what compromises will have to be made in the process. Hopefully I will have resolved this by Friday night.

Most attractive new weblog of the day definitely goes to Fifty-Five.

Trash culture purists only: A comprehensive and interesting site on the comic book Planetary.

Can someone explain to me how it is possible that I can cross the world and crash on someone’s floor in LA for nearly nine days, but when I return to my home country and home city, almost none of my friends are prepared to house me for even a couple of nights. Has anyone got an answer for me?

As ever the best way to cope with the many disappointments and injustices of life (and people) is to ignore it completely and muck around on the net for hours. Which is what I intend to do.

I am delighted to report that vitaflo is back on the air at last. Not a lot seems to have changed, although the site is altogether more … green … The HREF section is still the best guide to the best design sites on the web – a constant source of inspiring work.

Here all about Grant Morrison’s appearance at the DisinfoCon from the site itself. And I quote: “I probably shouldn’t admit this here, but I’m not familiar with ‘The Invisibles’ comic, so I had no idea who Grant Morrison was, but he was very funny, very drunk, taught us Magick, and sure that he had been on a ride with aliens in Katmandu, so he had my attention!”

And I am probably the last person to notice this, but Epinions has also finally launched it’s full version, complete with clean and elegant design and cheery little smiley things. The only slightly depressing thing is that I have spent so much time running around like a headless chicken in recent months that I am in imminent danger of falling off the bottom of their Most Popular Movie Reviewers list.

“Hey Tom, there’s a really big party going on in Austin, but you can’t go.”

SXSW fever is running rampant through the webloggers. And those of us stuck five thousand miles away can only pine for what might have been – and of course check out SXSWb, images by pb (day 1, day 2, day 3) and metafilter, and the commentary from powazek, prehensile tales and riothero.

Still it’s not the same as being there.

I feel bad for not talking more about my LA time – so here are a few sites for the minor celebrities I bumped into: Loren Dean [at party with him – he wore lots of plaid], Tyne Daly [wandered around the pier in Venice Beach], Gina Gershon [sat behind us chatting away during a showing of Wonder Boys].

Needless to say I have found a place to stay (take a bow Evil Nick). Bed finally located around 7pm GMT. My luggage arrived this morning at work more or less intact as well. Everything seems to be coming together. I went to see The Insider so that I wouldn’t fall asleep too early. It was a pretty strange film – only in America could people be surprised by the news that cigarettes are addictive. The most interesting part of the film (the media politics and strategies/counter strategies) were unfortunately the bits without the most interesting character/actor/performance. Russell Crowe is a god.

And before I forget – IF YOU DON’T ASK YOU DON’T GET!

Radio Barbelith is back on the air. Every day over the last week that I haven’t been able to update the site I have felt more and more anxious – what if everyone got bored and wandered off? I mean – there are thousands of wonderful weblogs that are updated every day without fail. They wouldn’t let something as tiny as a holiday interfere with their duty to their readers. (I am thinking of stable barbelith links like kottke.org, riothero and megnut)

Well, anyway, it’s back and not likely to go away again in a hurry. And that’s even considering the difficult situation I find myself in. Regular readers will know of my homelessness – a couple of weeks ago I moved out of my flat in Hampstead and took all my stuff up to my parents’ place in Norfolk – and then of course I embarked on my epic voyage to LA. I am now back in London, only to find that Virgin have mislaid half of my luggage, my mobile phone has run out of energy and I can’t contact any of the people who said that they might be prepared to put me up for a couple of nights. Tom Coates – homeless, without any clean clothes or means of communication…

But of course I must not dwell on such concerns (shit shit shit shit shit shit shit), and instead must talk about my time in LA. I can’t even begin to talk about everything, but a few images really stick in my mind – flying over the lights of Las Vegas at night (able to pick out individual casinos and roads), half naked men bouncing up and down on coffee tables, the sun setting over Venice Beach and the madman with the bubble machine. And of course, my ever gracious and hospitable hosts, Kerry and Sean.

Quite a lot has happened on the web while I have been away as well. blogger has been redesigned (by none other than powazek himself and even riothero has reached some kind of design plateau after the frantic changes of the last month. More later, as and when I get the chance…