blimey, it's all gone rather surreal in b&s world, what with hoax gigs, multiple identities, releasing new material... whatever next? ever feel haunted by past comments? i just received an sweet email from the original singer of the littlest hobo theme (yes!), which i raved about on sinister around the time it was used on the natwest adverts. he thanked me for my compliments, told me about his new album 'maybe tomorrow', and directed me to his website. i was quite excited by this, but it got me hoping that the archives never provoke less pleasant responses. 'you slagged off my novel in 1998, here's a virus that will utterly destroy your hard drive'. mark has already summarised the rather non-sinister but still rather fab brighton meet-up, so i won't dwell on his apparent intention to empty all brighton's record shops of stock, nor the rum (definitely not the rum), nor the fact that i learnt the adjective for 'heron-like', which i've now forgotten, nor the toast. it was all good clean fun, though now mark has outed me as an early supporter of pete waterman's evil empire, he won't be invited back... oh, and in case anyone wondered, i'm not actually *married* to mr jamie t conway... i wonder if mark is expecting people to remember jamie from his melody maker days? not impossible i suppose, i'm told he actually did have fans. and, even better if you're a young music journalist, enemies. now, i must say something about dating. grr. for a long while i was sure such a stupid concept couldn't really exist, or not in britain anyway, maybe in the kind of america portrayed by my judy blume books and 'girltalk', which i read at a highly impressionable age and panicked because i didn't get half the references, being english. what the hell was the difference between pants and panties? and which ones shouldn't you take off on a first date? ah yes, dating. i have never been on a single real date in my life, to my knowledge. imho, if you go out for the evening with someone who you haven't slept with, or at least snogged, then you're just friends. why call it a date? where is the line between friend and date? i say avoid the confusion and cut to the chase. if you go out with a nice guy/girl and end up in bed, cool. but why spend an evening being all anxious about 'etiquette' and 'signals'? it's a lot less embarassing eating spaghetti in front of someone *after* they've seen you naked. chris pez said something about cool places to live and manhattan lofts. i also fully intend to own the latter some day, and in fact i think we should club together to buy a sinister apartment block. like in 'friends', everybody will sleep with everybody else, gunther from the coffee house will be played by stuart murdoch, and ugly naked guy will be... hm, couldn't think of anything to put here without causing offence. nice to hear from owen again, even if he was boasting about his sex appeal while pretending to be just an overwhelmed indie kid. we all do it, after all. as for lowgold, i saw them supporting grandaddy and wasn' t really enamoured. too angsty. but at least they're better than top-yourselves-please-loader. tomorrow is my last day at work! i'm freeee! (to start another job.) luv archel xxx *************************************** Rachel Playforth 'She may not be famous, but she's right' - Homer Simpson For the best in new writing on the web, visit www.buzzwords.org.uk Contact us on buzzwords@bigfoot.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+