Why must words hurt? Love in the time of cougars

It’s a dangerous time to be a word. Put yourself in the place of the word cougar and think how you would feel. One minute you’re pottering around in a peaceful corner of the dictionary, minding your own business and referring to a mammal native to the Americas. The next, Courtney Cox has come out of nowhere, pounced on you and crowbarred you into the title of her dramedy Cougar Town, and Grazia is fretting over whether or not you’ve become an offensive term. It all happened so fast, but now it’s done and your meaning has changed forever. It’s time to take stock.

As someone who was recently cougared, I take a particularly interest in the subject. Is it wrong of me use the word in this sense, even though it’s currently everywhere? Should we fight to give it back its old meaning? Words are slippery things, and can easily elude our clutches. For example, according to official cougarology, I should now be called either a cougar “cub” or a “victim,” which suggests a certain confusion as to whether I was being mothered or attacked. I suppose I’m still a bit confused about that too.

Winston Churchill famously said that anyone who wasn’t a conservative by the age of forty didn’t have a brain. This may apply to politics, but the old dog certainly can’t have been talking about sex Conservative it was not. I suppose there’s just no point wasting time on inhibitions when you’ve seen it all before.

There we were, me ravishing a woman old enough to be my mother; her all over a boy young enough to be her son. Psychologically, it was pretty fucked up. There was clearly some deeply troubling Oedipal stuff going on in both our minds—dark, unholy thoughts best left unsaid. But we both knew they were there, and the space between the thoughts and their expression was filled with some really great sex.
Wow, I thought. Cougars.

In the morning we shared the mirror. As I spiked my hair with styling fudge, and she caressed her face with L’Oreal Revitalift Anti-wrinkle and Firming Eye cream, we caught a glimpse of each other’s vanity and vulnerability reflected alongside our own. For a moment, we were both more cub than prey.

That’s what we need to remember when we toss around words like cougar to describe each other. It’s not the word that is important, it’s the person, and no word is ever going to do justice to the multitudes contained within. That’s why I don’t have a problem with the word cougar any more than MILF or toyboy or twink. They’re just words, and they’re funny, and the sooner we choose to read them as descriptive rather than pejorative, the better.

When Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls pleaded with the girls to “stop calling each other sluts and whores…it just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores,” she had the right end in mind, but the wrong means. She should have told them to start calling the promiscuous guys sluts and whores as well.

Much like the St. George’s Cross was an insignia of racism until those of us without tattoos and rottweilers decided we quite wanted it back, so should we cheerfully look forward to the day when “I am a slut” will be no more an offensive sentence than “I have blonde hair.”

So if someone you know is being a cougar, call them a cougar. If someone is sleeping around, be they straight or gay, old or young, male or female, then call them a slut. To their face. But not as an insult, just as a noun. That way, together, we can truly build a better world.

744 Hours - 7 must-see shows

UNDERAGE FESTIVAL » 1 August
Victoria Park | Tower Hamlets, E3

Teens between 14 and 18 must move fast to get tickets for this fourth annual mix of hormones, future music and Topman sponsorship; where kids brought up under Harry Potter and Labour get bonkers in the park. No parents, 19-year-olds or booze allowed (highly edgy security). £29.50 gets a line-up—overseen by geriatric tastemaker Sam Killcoyne (18)—headed by Ellie Goulding, MIA and Lightspeed Champion. The bill is probably better than Lovebox and also includes interesting acts like Stornoway and Everything Everything, and a ‘Community Music Stage’. The kids are coming up from behind—until the embarrassing Harry Enfield Dads come to pick them at 8pm, when the festival ends. Amy Liptrot

JENS LEKMAN » 3 August
Union Chapel | Compton Avenue, N1 2XD

The last time Jens Lekman blessed our shores with his own unique brand of self-deprecating chamber pop, he’d just released one of the albums of 2008 with Night Falls Over Kortedala and crooned his way across the UK including shows with Bon Iver, Josh Rouse and Wildbirds & Peacedrums. In his two year absence, he’s since quit Sweden for a life of leisure in Australia – only stepping out for a handful of dates in the warmer climes of Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Lekman returns for a one-off show in the glorious surroundings of the Union Chapel and, with no new album to promote, expect greatest hits galore. Anyone who has seen Lekman perform can only testify of his magnificence on the live stage; with the added backdrop of the Union Chapel to enhance the experience, even Jesus Christ might swing by. That is, if he can get a ticket. Rich Thane

RATFACE » 3 August 2010
The Windmill | 22 Blenheim Gardens, SW2 5BZ

Ratface is a vocalist who sings/screams/raps/gesticulates wildly over Casiotone lo-fi backing tracks and Wu-Tang beats from a grainy 8 track. Augmented by a back up vocalist and the occasional Casio stab, Ratface shows are raw, violent, funny and a whole lot of fun. Having fronted much-missed hardcore punk band Dead Letters, Russell moved to Bristol and started gigging solo under the Ratface moniker, moving between vocal loops, scattershot rap and hectoring post punk lyricism, Ratface straddles many potentially awful cliché pitfalls but darts amongst them with such nimble grace he deserves a knighthood (he’d send it straight back). A living genius. Go see for yourself. Sebastian Reynolds

A HAWK & A HACKSAW » 3 August
Café Oto | 18 – 22 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL

This Leaf Records-sign Balkan/Klezmer/Mariachi fusion folk ensemble are stalwarts of the ATP scene, and after tours with unlikely indie megaliths Portishead, their audience is growing. Jeremy Barnes’s previous work as drummer and organist in legendary acoustic rockers Neutral Milk Hotel can’t have hurt. Hailing from Albuquerque and often gathering a mixture of English, American and European musicians, every tour is different and consistently excellent. Based around the flowing accordion work and swooping vocals of Barnes and the virtuoso flair of violinist Heather Trost their ranks are often swelled by tuba, cimbalom and trumpet for fascinating variations on eastern European roots musics. Look out for mooted new album, provisionally titled ‘No Rest For The Wicked’, soon. Sebastian Reynolds

FUCKED UP » 9 August
Barfly | 49 Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8AN

There’s plenty to like about Damian Abraham. He’s got a great name for starters, like God and the devil wrapped into one. It makes sense then that he’s the size of two men, a sweating, snarling 20 stone punk monster known as Pink Eyes on stage (though Shouty Mouth or Clammy Forehead would suit just as well). He also spent the $20,000 2009 Polaris Prize money on funding a right-on cover of Do They Know It’s Christmas, featuring Wu-Tang and Yo La Tengo yelling into a Dictaphone while listening to the original on his iPod. And his band is just as awesome. Mike Williams

YES WAY » 13 – 15 August
Auto Italia | 1 Glengall Road, SE15 6NJ

DIY promoters Upset The Rhythm and innovative curators Auto Italia collaborate to showcase the most exciting sounds and visuals from the UK underground for the second year. No-wavers Islet preview their October tour, gamelan fanatics Chora demonstrate why the Wire love them, La La Vasquez and Plug return and there’s a special ‘opening night’ party with Lovvers, Cold Pumas, The Human Race and Sub Pop dudes Male Bonding on the 13th. Sian Rowe??

GOLD PANDA / MAX TUNDRA / DAM MANTLE » 17 August
Madame JoJos | 8-10 Brewer Street

Evergreen midweek indie-dance-whatever party White Heat has teamed up with Rockfeedback for this stellar night of live leftfield electronica. Gold Panda was one of the hype bands of 2010 after his inclusion on the crazily over-valued BBC Sounds list, but his catchy, supine synth squiggling is well worth your time (unlike much of that list’s all-hype-no-tunes inclusions). Max Tundra is a 100-carat genius, making mind-bending pop that combines the 8-bit aesthetic of Germlin and DJ Scotch Egg with tunes fit for the Jackson 5. Dam Mantle opens with an amniotic, low-key, ambient take on things. John Rogers

Diary: Simon Raymonde

Monday The week started off with a firecracker at 10.30am when I got a whiff that 6 Music had been saved. It took all my might not to call everyone I knew but as the news was embargoed till 11am I had to sit on it. After all our campaigning it really felt like something of great import had just happened. A victory for the underground.

Tuesday Wavves have got themselves a new manager, dude who looks after Courtney Love, and I figure I should call him to discuss King Of The Beach. It’s one helluva record. Beastly good. Abe Vigoda’s brilliant new track Throwing Shade should be up on Soundcloud soon – exciting. Their new sound is a thrilling a leap forward.

Wednesday Met with John Grant to discuss Edward Munch, La La Land, Alan Partridge, Mock and Toof, Solvent (the band not the abuse) and then looked through the stunning footage from Mountain Man’s St Augustine’s Tower show last week.

Thursday Announced new headline show we are promoting for Mountain Man at St Giles Church. Got new mixes from Swedish band I Break Horses, which I then played 20 times without pause. So thrilling. Then off to judge the Green Man Poll gig at the Monarch with the winner opening the Green Man festival in August. Phil from Mojo and Stephen from Moshi Moshi are fellow judges. We agreed after a hot and sweaty show that the Dufflefolks (not a great name admittedly) were the deserving winners.

Friday A very productive label meeting. We sat out in the sun in the courtyard and talked about how much we love Edwyn Collins, how good Arcade Fire gig was, the merits of Lloyd Cole (I wasn’t having it, others disagreed), and how the new Walkmen album is their best yet, and sent John Grant off to Cardiff to shoot the Chicken Bones video. The treatment is insane and I can’t WAIT to see it!
Another week in my quiet life.

Simon Raymonde is the founder of Bella Union and a former Cocteau Twin

Best Coast: riding the wave

As a result of the rise of low-cost bedroom recordings and the rise of the internet as a tool for communicating and distributing music over the last decade, it increasingly feels like one could never run out of bands to discover. Using blogs, MySpace profiles and webzines, anyone with a passing interest in music can daily read names they’ve not read before, see promo shots they’ve not seen before and hear songs they’ve not heard before. With such a modern media overload to contend with, we all build filters both conscious and subconscious, either favouring certain blogs or blocking out bands with triangles as part of their names.

Best Coast got vetoed by a number of this writer’s personal filters initially: young girl talks about hot weather, weed and cats a lot, plays lo-fi beach jams and sings simple, naïve lyrics about boys ‘n’ shit. I’d considered the whole package to be a pretty face on top of a stack of buzzwords from the last twelve months, a contrived set-up. This, as I was soon to find out, serves a massive injustice upon Bethany Cosentino, the voice/brain/face of Best Coast.

Having spent a childhood with a musical family keen for her to succeed in the field,
Bethany began writing songs when she was fifteen under the name Bethany Sharayah. They were sweet country-tinged pop songs in the style of Rilo Kiley and attracted some attention from major labels, which she remembers with mirth, boiling her flirt with an A&R hotshot down to “it was just like a dude handed me a business card and was like “I wanna have a meeting with you” and I was like “no” and that’s what happened.”

Soon after deciding that this style of music wasn’t what she wanted to devote herself to, she started psych-drone twosome Pocahaunted with a girl called Amanda Brown who she met at community college. “I got to smoke a lot of weed, I got to hang out in a dark recording studio with this other weird girl and we would just make these weird trippy songs and we got to open for Sonic Youth out of it, which was pretty cool.” A support slot during which they used twelve minutes of their allotted thirty and sat on the floor playing one chord progression over and over, but one which enabled Bethany to become friends with Thurston Moore.

Having fulfilled many a musician’s wildest dream at such an early point in a career could potentially have skewed her outlook on the whole business. Instead, she moved to New York to start anew and left the band as one, three thousand miles separated them and two, it was another genre which didn’t ignite sufficient passion from within to be an on-going concern.

This drastic diversion in style helped Bethany to consolidate her identity as a songwriter. “I was in this band, playing this kind of music I had never been familiar with, music that I’d never listened to, so if it did anything, it allowed me to realise that the music I wanted to be making is nothing like this. And before I was in Pocahaunted I was making pretty poppy, singer-songwriter stuff, so it was obvious that I’m a pop songwriter at the roots.”

New York proved too cold to sustain someone so in love with the sun and the beach and as soon as she touched back down in Los Angeles Bethany began work on Best Coast.

“The cool thing about Best Coast is that it’s the first band I’ve ever been in, the first project throughout the whole of my musical history that I’ve been really proud of and really excited about because I think it’s the kind of music that I would want to listen to.”

“This is something which really interests me; making music evocative of 50s and 60s eras and California and this whole beachy aesthetic that’s been tagged onto this band. That’s what I want to create: I want to make music which sounds like that. This is the kind of music I’ve been listening to for years now, beachy, Californian, 50s/60s stuff. I’m like “cool, I’m making music which is reminiscent of that time” and even if it’s not, if it doesn’t exactly sound that way, if it’s making people say “I live in Madison, Wisconsin where it’s freezing and I’m listening to Best Coast and I feel like I’m at the beach surrounded by palm trees”, that’s fucking awesome, that’s what I want to do.”

A few listens of the upcoming debut record Crazy For You and the affectations are there strong and true. Sweet, reverb-soaked vocals on top of lo-fi guitar and backing harmonies bring a sound of 60s pop songs updated to fit modern slacker life – lots of ooh-wah-wahs and “I wish he was my boyfriend” alongside liberal references to a weed habit that sail close to the gauche. After closer examination it appears as just another example of the honest, open and unabashed way Bethany presents herself and her life. She’s young and doing what she wants to be doing—making music, getting stoned, watching Seinfeld with her buddies and hanging out with her cat, Snacks, who adorns the front cover of the album.

One wonders what kind of mileage such juvenile pop songs will have in a year’s time when new buzzes like ‘witch house’ have taken off and subsided again, but this is a girl going with the flow, concentrating on the here and now.

“Who’s to say that in two or three years from now I’ll be into goth and industrial music, who fucking knows, I might try to do something like that, because the kind of person I am, my interests change a lot, the stuff that I’m into changes a lot.”
Make the most of her upcoming shows because her mind is supple for change, and learn from my mistake: don’t make assumptions about Best Coast.

Perfume Genius: I hear dead people

In 2008, Mike Hadreas’ web page read: “Cool guy. I think he’s dead”. He didn’t really need to write anything at all. As Perfume Genius’ debut album ‘Learning’ demonstrates, the biography is the songs. They describe relationships with an older man; smoking weed and listening to Joy Division (“Mr Peterson”). There’s addiction (“Write to Mother”), modern love, and coming to terms with homosexuality (“Gay Angels”). Even the piano, the second star of the delicate album, comes with it’s own story. His teacher Maxine, someone he describes as a “legitimate woman”, could easily slip into one of the songs with her grizzled paws, lookalike German Shepherd and fusty aroma.

“I wrote a paragraph about me and it sounded convoluted, like I took myself too seriously,” he explains, smiling as if to prove he’s not desperately morbid. “I don’t like to change things. I tried to go back and re-record the songs at one point but it didn’t feel right. A lot of them I’d only played when I’d written them and I even had to re-remember them for the live show”.

That’s the reason Hadreas is in town. It’s his first UK show at London’s Hoxton Hall, something he’s been looking forward to since signing to Turnstile Records, a UK label that flew out to meet him when he was just a shadow on the net. He admits that the live performances are what he’s always imagined Perfume Genius to be. “Although I am trembly,” he says, putting out his hands, “on stage I think even my brain shakes”.

To calm those nerves, he recruited his friend Alan to sit calmly on the second keyboard, joining Hadreas for duets. “I’ve been a real hippy about that,” he explains of his live setup. “I played with a guy who was a really good musician and I asked him “do you know what that song is about?” and he’d say “um, yeah, sure I do!” and never really say what. I knew that he didn’t know and I needed him to really understand, you know? Alan has been through a lot of things I have and we have similar life experiences and that’s really important. He’s really nice too!”

These meanings have struck a chord with many Perfume Genius fans, who often write letters to Hadreas about how they identify with his experiences. It’s something that he’s found particularly helpful, especially in the moments when he’s not so sure where his music is going. “It’s good that I’m getting these ideas and stories out to people,” he says. “It makes my fear seem so goofy”.

As the show eventually proves, he had little to worry about. Even listeners who have not experienced the troubles that the singer has find his simple stories inspiring. Like Raymond Carver, someone who Hadreas admires, he lets his audience read between the lines.

And perhaps it’s funny, considering his original internet bio, that the kind of fervent fandom that Hadreas inspires is often reserved for, well, dead people. The damp-eyed mythical persona that some have created for him (away from the reality of him loving jodhpur ski pants, wanting to cuddle Tom Jones and loving Diet Coke) isn’t a millions miles away from those surrounding Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis.

Yet as he takes stock of the past, he definitely won’t be stopping like those guys. He’ll return to the UK before the end of the year and hole himself away at his mother’s house to write more songs for a second record. “I’ve been learning how to…” he stops and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t say “learning” so much! I mean, I’m figuring out how everything works. I haven’t ever been this healthy and I feel like I’m making the right decisions, even if I haven’t made them in the past. Having people watch me can be strange, but hey, I hope they keep on doing it.”

School Of Seven Bells

The School Of Seven Bells may or may not be a real place; it’s the name of a mythical Columbian pickpocket academy. It sounds like a setting Hayao Miyazaki might dream up for one of his fantastical animations; or indeed, one of the lucid dreams of Alejandra Deheza, who along with ex-Secret Machine Benjamin Curtis and her identical twin sister Claudia, forms The School of Seven Bells.

Their new album is a textured sonic tapestry, curiously entitled ‘Disconnect From Desire’. “The album’s title is actually an ‘oblique strategy’,” explains Deheza. “It’s from a set of cards Brian Eno created. Each card has a kind of creative solution on it. I pulled this card that said “disconnect from desire”, and it happened to resonate like crazy with everything I was writing.”

This kind of gentle mysticism seems to run through School Of Seven Bells, right from the name through their approach, the shoegaze production values and semi-abstract lyrics. “It’s part of our daily lives so it has to come out that way,” Deheza elaborates. “If something resonates with us or inspires us to do something new then we pay attention to it.”

The School Of Seven Bells may or may not be a real place, but this band have created an immersive synthesis of their ideas and influences that’s every bit as intriguing.

Wilson by Daniel Clowes

If Larry David could draw he might come up with something like Wilson, the new graphic novel by Ghost Town creator Daniel Clowes.

The milieu of Wilson is familiar to anyone who has seen Curb Your Enthusiasm. Our anti-hero is a white, middle-aged man growing old and miserable in world as disappointed in him as he is in it.

He’s a failure as a husband, as a son, as a father, as a man. His pregnant wife left him to seek a better life as a prostitute and he’s never had a proper job. But that doesn’t stop him berating strangers he meets at airports when they tell him they work in consulting. “Listen brother,” he says, “you’re going to be lying on your deathbed in 30 years thinking ‘Where did it all go? What did I do with all those precious days? Some shit-work for the oligarchs?’” Ouch.

Such episodes punctuate a larger story, as Wilson ages and confronts the landmarks of a 21st century life—things that await us all if we haven’t suffered them already: the death of a parent, partial reconciliation with an ex, the moment your estranged adopted daughter whom you tried to kidnap finally provides you with a grandchild.

The tone is darkly comic, the restrained illustrations complementing the deadpan prose. Human relationships are held together by selfishness, necessity and the fear of dying alone. The death of Wilson’s father provokes a bout of inarticulate self-absorption: “I’m all alone”, he moans, sitting in a playground in the middle of the day, drinking and heckling the kids for daring to interrupt his silence with their joy.

By contrast, the death of his dog produces a 200 world eulogy: “My love for you was always tempered by the inevitability of your loss,” runs a typical extract, “but in contemplating that unthinkable vacuum, I am better able to grasp my own finite trajectory, and by extension that of all things.”

It’s these moments of wider perspective which elevate Wilson above the simple comedy of the Grumpy Old Men, and perhaps even the more sophisticated work of David. “I wonder if progress always felt like this?” Wilson asks of the disillusionment he feels at his growing reliance on computers, while the pathos of an online video chat with a grandson who can’t be arsed returning his love brings a shock of sadness to the novel’s final pages.

Doubtless Wilson would call comparisons with David a bit of fucking lazy journalism from someone who was too ignorant to judge the novel on its own merits. But if, like this reviewer, you’ve never read a graphic novel before because you suspected they were the preserve of a bunch of loser gimps, you might find his misanthropy a pleasant surprise.

Wilson by Daniel Clowes is published by Jonathan Cape. RRP £12.99

Things that go bump in the night: Hotel Medea and Ghost Stories

Shortly before midnight, a group of confused travelers disembark on the wharf to be processed in stages by strangers. Under the jolly, slightly menacing eye of our ferryman host, Jorge, we are alternately cajoled and scolded. Suddenly we find ourselves in a mythical land, dancing, singing, conspiring to bloody war and witnessing the betrayal of a people by their queen. Having been thus initiated and assimilated we become children, change our sex, turn spies, are war refugees racing in confused gaggles under a dawn sky, clutching our favourite toys. We are a wounded people, and when revenge finally arrives it is ours, on behalf of our queen, Medea.

Medea is one of the bloodiest of Greek myths. Jason of the Argonauts lands on the shore of Colchis, ancient Georgia, to claim what he sees as his birthright, the Golden Fleece. The “barbaric” people living there with their powerful witch queen, Medea, see things differently. Medea falls for Jason, however, abandoning her people to be with him. Killing her own brother who protects the Fleece she gives it to Jason to found his political empire. He’s a cheating prick, though, and Medea’s broken heart revives her devastating power with disastrous consequences.

Hotel Medea, a joint project between Para Active, Zecora Ura and Arcola Theatre, is a five or six hour epic (time becomes vague after the first four hours) in the far east of London, and quite unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The Greek myth is kept loose and given a uniquely Brazillian twist, producing images and emotions impossible in a traditional play because the audience are living the story. Extremely loose. Given the impenetrable accents of the performers and the lack of concrete narrative, the evening is a series of lived moments rather than a coherent play. It felt a little like being a character on Lost. Am I still a visitor? One of the Others?

The production is presented as a trilogy in two uneven halves. I recommend leaving your fears and egos at home and stay for the whole evening/morning. The first act, Zero Hour Market, is a whirl of Brazillian energy and colour, and nearly incomprehensible, but you get to dance, sing, wash a naked man and have a bad cup of coffee at the end. The second half is when the adventure truly begins, culminating finally in a subdued breakfast at sunrise amongst friends across from the O2 Lump, or whatever it’s called.

The fear of death is universal, but it doesn’t stop us climbing into the Drop ‘o’ Doom at the funfair, a rickety contraption maintained by inbred, transient carnie folk, and letting ourselves fall hundreds of feet to the ground, passing our own vomit as we plummet. Why? Why pay good money to shit yourself and waste all those overpriced hotdogs, clods of cotton candy, and greasy donuts by puking over yourself from on high?

***

We need to be scared, as a way of dealing with the unknown. Going to Alton Towers 13, watching horror movies like The Grudge, or just sitting round a campfire telling ghost stories are ways of exploring our fear of eternity, of oblivion. When I was a kid we had parties in which we watched six scary films in a row until numb, scratching up a body count but hardly caring if those dumb cheerleaders and jocks are decapitated under the bleachers. Serves them right! Stupid kids. Now, how do we break into the parents’ liquor cabinet?

Ghost Stories, playing at the Duke of York Theatre, employs brilliantly all the archetypal devices of the shock flick, plus basic crowd psychology, to deliver cheap thrills and barely stifled gasps. On stage, Professor Phillip Goodman expounds upon his research as to why people, who ought to know better, still believe in the paranormal. Gradually we are drawn in, lulled by long periods of quiet inactivity, until—BANG! Flash! Monster! Weird… thing… I can barely make out! Scream! Shit myself! There go the hotdogs! Why did I climb in this damn contraption in the first place?

Ghost Stories is pure crowd pleaser, but I came away disappointed. Written by League of Gentleman co-creator Jeremy Dyson, and Andy Nyman, the mentalist collaborator of freaky Derren Brown, I was expecting something more subtle and menacing than a mere live-action The Ring. I wanted my head genuinely fucked with, and fucked with permanently. Having said that, the play definitely delivers, judging by the delighted shrieks of the audience. Employing bright lights and loud noises to spark a thrill might be lazy, but it works, and chances are you will get everything you desire out of the show. You won’t learn anything about the nature of fear, but if your date (female or male!) hops into your lap you won’t care. Just don’t go to some damn dark park afterwards to make out under a full moon, for Christ’s sake, people! Jesus!

HOTEL MEDEA
QE II Pier, Greenwich
Until 14 August , 2010

GHOST STORIES
Duke of York’s Theatre
To 7 November, 2010. Dark Mondays.

The Marquise Went Out at Five O’clock

Edel Assanti Project, 276 Vauxhall Bridge Rd SW1V 1BB

There are so many parts to this exhibition’s press release, an enticing bundle including three jpegs, one pdf press release and an invitation. I’m enticed, but also slightly intimated before I even arrive at the Edel Assanti Gallery in Victoria.

Anyway, the gallery itself is a stripped office building located over three L-shaped rooms, a form which lends itself perfectly to the narrative theme of this group show. Edel Assanti is like a logical, central, lucky art tombola.

RCA Neomie Goudal’s photographs capture incomprehensible scenes, the unsettling settledness of a chair covered in fluff or unraveled twine. Stuart Bailes’ photographs are similarly epic and subtle, hinting at an unseen tension.

Adam Thomas’ carved book’s juxtapose an moment of text with the process and method of presenting it.

Meanwhile Jorge De la Garza’s collages investigate shape and representation in the most thoughtful and careful way.

Walking along the Vauxhall Bridge Road later, I see London’s scariest man foaming at the mouth with pupils like abysses. Some venues would charge for this experience.

The Marquise Went Out at Five O’clock continues until 5 September

Savage Love: Crusty

I was recently told that I am being puritanical and self-righteous because I can’t get over the fact that my partner spends a good deal of time seeking out pictures of very young girls to masturbate to. Nothing illegal, he says, but still…

He admits to having a 20-year-plus addiction to porn, and with that particular addiction, he says, comes the need to continue upping the taboo factor in order to get off. I can understand the natural escalation from traditional porn to something more risqué, and I’m fine with him watching chicks with dicks defecate in each other’s mouths until his eyes bleed, because those she-males are consenting adults.

Eight-year-old girls, however, are innocents preyed upon by pedophiles and people with child-lust disorders, in my opinion, and I think a rational adult, even in the throes of sexual whimsy, should recognize that boundary and not cross it. My question is this: Is it considered typical sexual behavior for a guy who’s really into porn to seek out YouTube videos of 10-year-old ballerinas without having any kind of pathological inclination toward pedophilia?

He Says I’ve Turned Into My Born-Again-Christian Mother