Kentish Town's Flowerpot to close after landlord shenanigans

Snipe has just learned via Twitter that amazing Kentish Town pub the Flower Pot will be closing 1 November. We’ll follow up but here is what the pub has released:

“We’re completed gutted to inform you that from 1st November The Flowerpot will no longer be at this venue.

“We’ve basically been scammed and after building a successful venue from scratch the lease has been sold from beneath our feet.

“We will of course be taking everything and everyone with us when we go and promise to find a new HQ quicker than you can say Jagerbomb

“The NYE party is still going ahead and from now until the 1st we will party in style. We will be back.

The Flowerpot

Review: The Amaz!ng Meeting - what happens when Cory Doctorow, Stephen Fry, Alan Moore, and the Amazing Randi play host to 1000 of their closest friends

The Amaz!ng Meeting, bringing together sceptics for an entertaining exchange of ideas, recently staged at the Hilton Metropole Hotel last weekend. Organised by conjuror, paranormalist investigator and bane of Uri Geller, the Amazing Randi, TAM brought together a dazzling array of speakers to discuss loose variations on a topic- What is scepticism and how can we use it to save the society we believe in?

A brief and incomplete recount of the conventions highlights would include the superb and hilarious MC’ing of Richard Wiseman, the fascinating tour of the weirder corners of the universe by Marcus Chown, Cory Doctorow discussing the madness of a proposal for a copyright firewall in the UK, an interview with Lost Girls graphic novel artist Melinda Gebbie, and Richard Dawkins. There was a light ripple of confusion in the applause following Dawkins’s statement that Christianity was the armour needed in our battle against the most evil religion of today, Islam. What he meant, I think, is that the actions of extremist Muslims – stonings, suicide bombings, attacks on free speech and “honour killing” of young women perceived by men as somehow besmirching their good name – are wrong and should be stopped, regardless of cultural relativity. Atheism had a frequent mention at the talks. While being a sceptic and humanist doesn’t necessarily preclude being religious, it is awfully hard to view the universe clearly if you think, at the heart of it all, there is a benevolent but bloodthirsty deity who created the world 6000 years ago in order to punish the vast majority of his children for not being narrowminded enough. A moral atheism was continually espoused, that we should be good to each other because it is right to do so, not because a lightning bolt took divine dictation on a couple slabs of rock three millennia ago.

BBC political reporter Nick Robinson rips placard from protestor - caught on video

Like many police officers, many reporters have not yet caught on that the public now walks around with little video cameras and can destroy your carefully crafted narrative.

Today (but filmed yesterday), BBC political reporter Nick Robinson pulls an anti-war placard from a protestor on College Green.

Self Made

Director Gillian Wearing
Country UK

Gillian Wearing has a history of getting people on camera and making them open up. In the 1990s she did it with a series of videos asking people to “Confess all on video”, people who responded to an advert she placed in Time Out. Now she is doing it with a group of people, the focus still on individuals and their pasts, but in feature length documentary form. The result is an anaemic piece of work, simultaneously annoying and manipulative.

The premise for Wearing’s debut feature is another advert placed in publications all over the country. Wearing put out another advert something to the tune of: “Calling anyone who wants to appear in a film, contact me”. And Self Made begins somewhat promisingly with a long tracking shot of a disgruntled gentleman seemingly on the edge of a breakdown. We find out more about him later. This is followed by a definition of method acting which flashes up to inform us on what is going on. We then meet a method acting coach, the enthusiastic and slightly new-agey Sam Rumbelow. We are also introduced to a group of seven people, all, we are told, with interesting or affecting back stories. And this is where the trouble with Wearing’s documentary begins.

As it unfolds, the group go through a kind of therapy in the method acting class, under the harsh lights of some nondescript warehouse. Here they act out scenes somehow related to their lives, their worries and their pasts. They are then given the opportunity to film their ‘end scenes’, which are professionally shot, with additional actors and an entire crew to produce a glossy, stylish bit of film. For now we will ignore the fact that none of these really work (with a few of the candidates even cut out of the film altogether, and without explanation).

Unfortunately, Self Made is the kind of insipid documentary filmmaking that seems to say that people are not ‘real’, ‘human’ or worthy of compassion until some artist puts a camera on them and makes them discuss their distressing experiences, then making them cry on screen. Is this for our entertainment? Because they certainly don’t seem to be coping any better with their problems by the end credits.

Wearing also seems to be saying that what we watch is immediately ‘good acting’ when someone manages to shed some tears. To cry is not to act. Are we to think that a distraught person releasing a solemn tear is art? Or even entertainment? Or perhaps this is Wearing’s point, to point out the mixture of reality and art for this reason; the mere ability to well up when the director shouts ‘action’. This might be true if the film did not carry with it this swagger of arrogance and self-righteousness.

The first of these ‘end scenes’ to be shown sums up this problem. A girl in her early-twenties drones out some Shakespeare (we are supposed to be impressed she remembers all the lines): King Lear on a moodily lit stage sat around a dinner table, with some hammy fellows supporting her. The scene wears on, until we finally reach that moment. The teardrop comes and rolls down her cheek. Bravo.

Other end scenes involve a seriously disturbed but discerning and genial guy called Asheq, who decides his scene should be about kicking a pregnant woman in the gut. Then there’s the one with the cringe worthy depiction of Mussolini, hanging upside down after he’s been executed. His scene lasts for about three seconds. And that is it. Oh, and the guy who used to get bullied. Now he is a belligerent and bitter man-boy. Then there’s another one with the middle-aged woman, Lesley, who actually comes to be the heart of the whole documentary, but her film also fails to blag any emotion. Who knows what happened to the others. Must have been especially tasteless.

The problem is not that we don’t feel for these people, of course we do, but that Wearing tries to manipulate us into a reaction with such cheap trickery. So just look out for those ads asking you to “confess all on video”.

Snipe Top 5: Controversial civic elections

Today, voters are picking Tower Hamlets’ first directly elected mayor. Well, those that can be arsed are. It’s been a controversial run up to the medium-sized day, with the Labour party making like a banana and splitting down the middle amid rumours of backstabbing, betrayal and Ken Livingstone. To put this shenanigans in a bit of context, here are 5 other (mostly) local elections which were so scandalous that people actually took an interest in them.

Pitkin County Sheriff, Colorado, 1970
As the above-linked video shows, perhaps Hunter S Thompson’s finest hour. His platform was a mixture of idiotic attention seeking (tearing up the streets, renaming Aspen ‘Fat City’) and sensible, evidenced based social policy (legalisation of drugs). He shaved his head bald so he could refer to the crew-cutted conservative incumbent as “my long haired opponent”. He promised not to eat mescaline if elected. He lost. Perhaps it was for the best. A year later he took the trip which he would turn into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

London Mayor, 2000
Not only was this election a novelty, bringing the concept of a mayor with GASP! a bit of power across the pond to the UK, but it was also jam packed with fascinating dodgepots. Snipe can’t afford a lawyer so will keep this brief: crafty Ken stood against the party which had nourished him, before returning to the bosom at a later date. It was all a bit Oedipal. Meanwhile, Tory candidate Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare (there’s a gag in that title somewhere…) was chucked out of the race so he could be convicted of perjury. Democracy at its best.

Dunny-on-the-Wold By-Election, the Regency
One of the classic televised elections, in which Blackadder acts as voter, returning officer, candidate’s agent and eminence grise. Brilliant satire on the rotten boroughs and of contemporary election coverage in the media. Lots of quotes here if you’re that way inclined.

Hartlepool Mayor, 2002
As most people know, the citizens of Hartlepool elected a grown man wearing a furry suit and calling himself H’angus the Monkey to their highest civic post in 2002. One wonders what Aristotle would have made of it. Probably a very long and dull treatise. Anyway, Stuart Drummond, the monkey at the typewriter in Hartlepool town hall, was recently re-elected for a third term. Which proves either that you don’t have to come from the political establishment to be a capable local politician, or that locally elected mayors are a complete waste of time.

American Presidential Election, 1876
Not a civic election, but then sometimes Top 5 writes cheques that Google search can’t cash. This is worth including anyway because it’s a good contender for the title of most controversial, corrupt and downright dishonourable election in Western political history. And that includes the Bush-Gore millennium mess up. Short version: both sides bribed, threatened and (in a very modern way) lawyered themselves silly. Hayes ended in the White House despite receiving 250,000 fewer votes than Tilden. An American farce.

Headless Horseman

Headless Horseman I found via the blog of the Tender Age label, a Moshi Moshi supported project run by 17-year old A&R Toby Bull. It sounds like a fractured, electronic version of Lucas-era Skeletons, full of whirling sub-melodies and skittering, unravelling beats.

Headless Horseman – SH8KR by snipelondon

London agenda for Thursday 21 October

London agenda for Thursday 21 October

1. Bad Things That Could Happen, a film by design collective ‘This Is It’ at DreamBagsJaguarShoes [Run Riot]
2. Nervy, rhythmic, post-punkisms with Cold in Berlin, Man-Flu, and Youthless at the Lock Tavern [London Gigs]
3. An evening of mystery and nightmares inspired by the films of David Lynch at the Double R Club [Run Riot]

Google employees make video for Dan Savage's 'It Gets Better Project'

This keeps getting better and better. (If you’re new, Dan explains things in a previous column, here)

Say ‘no’ to hate crime this weekend

Last year’s successful vigil against hate crime is to be held again this coming Saturday, October 23rd.

The event, organized by Facebook group 17-24-30, will take place in Trafalgar
Square, 7-9pm. There will be a 2-minute silence at 8pm.

Guest speakers include Deputy Mayor Richard Barnes and Stuart Milk, nephew of
gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk.

In 2009 the event attracted 10,000 visitors. Those who cannot attend are being
urged to join in at home, by lighting a candle and observing the silence.

Organizers are desperately trying to raise funds to make this an annual event.
Businesses and individuals can donate via 17-24-30’s website.

Becoming Real

Here’s some pretty brutal, mischievous, witchy electronica for you from Becoming Real, soon to be seen touring with the awesome SALEM.

Becoming Real – South London Congo by snipelondon