can you feel the knife?

Wanting to embrace the Halloween spirit before going to the (highly anticipated) Grizzly Bear/London Symphony Orchestra gig at the Barbican in the evening, I sat down this afternoon to watch À l'Intérieur.

Ho. Lee. Fuck. Mind scarred forever; another addition for my Most Fucked Up list. The French know how to do brutal horror films, they really do.

After that filmic experience, I ended up walking to the Barbican after realising that (a) with all the TFL closures this weekend, it would be nigh on impossible to public transport it, and (b) Barbican is actually only about 20 minutes, give or take, walk away from me. Plus, I kind of needed the walk to come out of film shock. I'm not knocking the film - it clearly works to have had such an effect, and I'm actually quite a fan of the French new wave horror films that have been coming out in the past few years. It's just not exactly a calming precursor to an evening of orchestral indie music...

Finally got to the Barbican and met up with J-Dig, then took our seats. Grizzly Bear and the LSO, oh my. Love love love. GB are pretty much one of my favourite ever bands, and seeing them play in that space, with the orchestra backing them, was just incredible.

tuesday evening and i'm a cheapskate

Sunday actually ended up being a thrifty day, in the end. Sam, my plus one for the screening, brought me books (courtesy of Penguin, no doubt...): Peter Pan ("Because no one's ever actually read it") and The Outsiders, which had been on my Amazon wish list. After the movie I headed over to east London where James D. and Jimmyjames (as above, with Tilda Plum) were entertaining Metal K and his lady, who were in from LA. Jimmyjay gave me a 2000 AD t-shirt that didn't fit him, and then bought me a Wonder Stuff LP (old joke). We went to get food in Spitalfields but nothing really took my fancy so I just didn't eat. We later wandered round the conservatory at the Barbican (fun to explore as none of us had ever managed to get in before), which JJ drove to. Then Tom bought a round in the pub. Result.

So all in all, I only paid for travel expenses. Which, of course, with the goddamn price of travel here, was still more than enough. Oh for $2 subway rides...

And while I'm writing: if it's got to be this cold, it could at least snow and provide some entertainment. The most fun I've had these past two days is getting over-caffeinated and dancing around with my ipod cranked loud to De La, Lady Sov, Marvin & Tammi and, um, Fall Out Boy, attempting to bring some order to my little corner of Universal Music.