Forgot to report that Owen and I saw Peter Jackson's remake of KING KONG on Sunday.

There is much to admire... which is kinda all I did. I admired but I didn't get involved.

Don't Take My Coconuts!!

Still getting over the fabulata KID CREOLE AND THE COCONUTS at Jazz Cafe on Monday with Owen and Dawn.  I had always wanted to go to the venue so this was a good opportunity to kill two tropical birds with one stone. 

I was delighted at how close the audience can get to the low stage so when the musicians were going full heft it was really powerful! The crowd wasn't too bad actually - compared with the trogs one might have got somewhere like Shepherds Bush Empire. 

Dawn and I had seen the Kid a few years back at Kew Gardens - and missed our chance of dancing onstage when we both went for a wee break at the wrong time! - and I remember saying how good it would be to see them in a small club. I'm glad to say they lived up to expectations!

August Darnell really knows how to work the audience and with his band of international musicians rattled through some KC&C classics: ANNIE I'M NOT YOUR DADDY - I'M A WONDERFUL THING, BABY - STOOL PIDGEON (ha cha-cha-chaaaa) - ENDICOTT - DON'T TAKE MY COCONUTS and a whole raft of other fab tunes.  

Of course also on hand were the most frightening women in pop The Coconuts - never smiling, dancing up a storm and on hand to shoot Kid withering looks whenever he boasted of his sexual prowess!

Allegedly he came up with the idea after seeing Bob Marley's I-Threes... thank Gawd he never got them wearing floor-lengths and turbans!  I wonder where the classic Coconuts are now, Taryn, Adriana and Cheryl?  Hopefully still making grown men grovel...

Scantastic!

By the way I didn't tell you Constant Reader of my new toy... namely an Epson 3490 scanner. 

I had some money given me for Christmas and kinda wanted to get something useful with it. After discovering that practically all the electrical shops in Tottenham Court Road don't stay open past 6:30 - maybe it's an Asian thing - me and Owen schlepped up to Warren Street to find the big PC World opposite Warren Strreet stn. open.  And there it was... right against the back wall saying "buy me"! 

Not a difficult decision as there was a tenner off. Sometimes I shock myself at my practicality.

Mozalladium!

 

So, Constant Reader, there I was at 8.59 this morning, happily pressing the refresh button - which will also be my new euphymism for wanking - on the SeeTickets site to book tickets for Stephen Patrick Morrissey at the London Palladium in May. Of course there was tsouris... never let it be said that See always works ok when there is a big on-sale.
 
I had me a nice pair of stalls seats, T for Tommy 28-29, booked them, pressed the confirm button.... then because the site took so long to go on to the next window the booking timed out. I said the cnut word I can tell ye.

I stayed my hand from fashioning a noose out of the Thai sarong which was draped over my sobbing shoulders and again pressed 2 for the stalls. Hey poncho... J for John 40 - 41! Centre of the OP block 10 rows back. Cor. I might be in with a shout of catching his sweat-soaked shirt when he hurls it into the audience at the end.

I am as usual all of a moistness at the thought of seeing my SPM - and at the home of family entertainment too! I'm sure the ghosts of Judy Garland, Dorothy Squires and Johnnie Ray will watch over him...

Who Got Her Ready?

     Well, I guess it's a 'look'.

Diana Ross at Richard Pryor's funeral.

May I just say that I am loving Celebrity Big Brother?

Slowly but surely the fun has been ratcheted up and tonight was pure BB evil. George Galloway and Preston were punished for talking about who they nominated by being made to nominate three housemates to go up for eviction. What they didn't know was it was being shown to the housemates on the plasma screen tv. Traci, Maggot and Rula were nominated. The looks on their faces! It was the best drama evah...

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

 
Went with O to see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN at the weekend. Ang Lee's film has been much discussed, both while in-production and during it's release, and I was really looking forward to it. Sadly I was not as blown away by it as I was expecting to. It would have been good to have had some emphasis in some scenes but they all had the same slow pace with an inevitable slow fade to black at the end. HOWEVER.... I have found the film hovering over me like one of the large black clouds hovering over Brokeback Mountain itself and it's bleak vision of a Love That Dare Not Speak It's Name in Wyoming is difficult to forget.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the two men caught up in a love that they hardly understand themselves give career-best performances. Ledger inhabits the role as if born to it, unable to express the emotion that churns within he speaks as if every word has to be double-checked in case it gives him away. There are also telling performances by Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the men's wives, both growing more disillusioned as the year's go by. Randy Quaid as the rancher who brings the two men together initially and Linda Cadellini as a bar waitress who is also left hurt by falling in love with the Ledger character also shine in their few scenes.

Oh and Anna Farris, so toe-curlingly vapid as the Hollywood actress in LOST IN TRANSLATION, makes an impression here as a chattering airhead wife at a function attended by Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. The photography by Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is jaw-droppingly sweeping.

I am currently giggling like a crazy person...

...over a Newsnight report about a South Korean stem-cell doctor being investigated for falsefying results.

British Professor Dr. Stephen Minger is talking about Dr. Wang-Woo-Suk who has lost his German funding thanks to Professor Schatten.

Thumbzup to science reporter Susan Watts for doing all this with a straight face.

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE on screen...

Went to see *intake of breath* THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE over the weekend with 'imself. He has a shite week at work coming up so 'twas by way of a cheer-up treat.  

When I was a wee 'un TLTWATW was a favourite book until I found out that it was a veiled parable on Christianity. Ever since then I have had an inate distrust of any sort of fantasy film or book... just waiting for the God Factor to kick in and ruin the whole damn thing.  

However I enjoyed the film more than I expected. The film moved along at a good pace which is a surprise in itself with this sort of film. The performances by the young actors playing Lucy and Edmund far outshine the two older ones, the animation of the animals is very good especially the White Witch's feared wolves and Aslan is well strokable.  In case you don't know Aslan is a lion.

And then there is Tilda Swinton as The White Witch.  As an actress there has always been something glacial and cold about her so, as the creator of the never-ending winter that swams Narnia, she is outstanding!
 

All day it's been bugging me...

...who Pete Burns reminded me of when he went into the Big Brother house... then it hit me - I give you RuPaul and Janice from The Muppets!

I hasten to add.. the pictures of RuPaul and Janice are of their doll figures. Pete is 100% real.

H A P P Y * N E W * Y E A R

Well start as you mean to go on... so, Constant Reader, the first posting of 2006 is to tell you I have FINALLY been to the theatre this year: it took me long enuff!

Tonight Owen and I went to see AND THEN THERE WERE NONE at the Gielgud Theatre - and what a fun night it is! I was worried it would be a standard Agatha Christie stage transfer with the attendant whiff of the warhorse but luckily the book had been given a bit of a buff-up by the excellent Kevin Elyot - whose own plays tend to be about the past haunting the present - and it now cracks along at a brisk pace tinged with a mordant wit.

You know the deal... eight guests are tricked into attending a gathering on an island off the south coast by an unknown person claiming to be a friend of a friend only to find no host just two servants hired for the night. After dinner a record is played and a voice informs them they have been gathered together as the ten all share one thing in common.. they were all implicated in the death of someone in the past but have never been actually accused of the crime. Then one by one they start being murdered...

Christie's rattling good yarn is delivered intact with no happy ending as has been the case in film adaptations, surprisingly what it doesn't have is any real sense of suspense... one sits and waits to see which one will be killed, usually offstage.  But it makes for a fun night out helped by Elyot's script and some fine performances from Gemma Jones as the rigidly moralistic Miss Brent, David Ross' bluff ex-CID policeman, Graham Crowden's world-weary General and the always dependable John Ramm as Rogers, the butler who after the death of his wife still feels the need to almost apologise for the need to move to one of the guest rooms, the smallest of course. Surprisingly the show has not found an audience and is closing next week after a run of nearly three months. 

Hey-ho.

BEST GIGS OF THE YEAR

(in no particular order)

Marianne Faithfull (Shepherds Bush & Queen Elizabeth Hall) - Beverley Knight (Hammersmith) - Patti Smith 'Horses' (Festival Hall) - "Stand Bravely Brothers" (Festival Hall, represented here by The Dresden Dolls) - "Songs Of Innocence" (Festival Hall) - Michelle Shocked (Islington) - Buffy Saint-Marie (Canada) - Justin Bond & The Freudian Slippers (Soho Theatre) - Scissor Sisters / Bananarama (Forum)

MY 10 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR!

My 10 favourite reads of the year...

not saying all well written but the 10 books I enjoyed the most!

A who's that of the royal family...

I am proud to say I have watched no television at all this Christmas.

I now realise Madonna might have a point in not letting Rocco or Lourdes watch tv... m'Ma is watching some quite frightening load of cock called WHATEVER LOVE IS on ITV (the clue to it being shite is in the channel) I had hoped we were over the tv-drama-based-on-the-life-of-the-royals after the genius that was DIANA: A TRIBUTE TO THE PEOPLE'S PRINCESS.
 
This scream-out-loud tv movie was knocked off a few hours after Diana herself and is on my Amazon dvd rental list - I must see this forelock-tuggin', poe-faced, laff fest again if only for the scene where Diana meets Mother Theresa - played by an actress about 6 foot tall!!!

Anyways... what's good for the Diana faction is good for the Camilla pack... WLI tells the story of love among the ruling arses when a Chris Barrie lookalike playing Charles falls for the Rubenesque lovely playing Camilla. No horse-faced biddy here oh no. Anyways it all leads up to the Chris Barrie lookalike being introduced to Lord and Lady Spencer's girl Diana, played by an actress who looks like a young Victoria Wood. I sat staring at this though latticed fingers until a scene when the Chris Barrie lookalike lead a new hoity-toity lady friend up to an actress who looked not unlike Charlotte Church. saying "I would like you to meet my sister Anne" - it was then, Constant Reader, that I smashed the television in.

How strange that the Director, Producer and Casting director who were no doubt so keen to do this piece of ermin-lined shite were not familiar with what the actual royals look like.

MERRY XMAS CONSTANT READER!!! A Wild Duck is no turkey...

 
Yes after all that pushing and shoving in shops and on Oxford Street, the regimental planning that goes into my card lists, the fear of starvation due to Budgens closing for one *whole* day... it's here! And what a quiet day it's been, what with O *and* m' Ma up in Newcastle - not together I hasten to add! As there is squit-all on the tv I have watched a few music dvds: 2 x Ed Sullivan Show complilations of Motown acts, Take That's video anthology and a collection of Barbara Cook's 1960s tv appearances.

Andrew dropped by this morning and gave me my Christmas Day present, the wonderful film DOWNFALL starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler. I'll have the paper hat on watching Mrs. Goebbels poison the kids soon...

Have I seen my last theatre of 2005? I went on Friday night to the Donmar Warehouse to see Ibsen's THE WILD DUCK in an excellent production directed by Michael Grandage.

A wonderfully ironic production to be on at this seaon of good will, this devastating play shows how sometimes ignorance really *is* bliss. Gregors Werle, the son of a wealthy businessman returns home after 15 years to discover that his father allowed Ekdal, his business partner, to carry the can for a wrong business move resulting in him falling on hard times. 

Ekdal's son, Hjalmar was his best friend at University and Gregors discovers too that his own father privately financed his friend to become the town portrait photographer and also engineered Hjalmar's marriage to a former servant who left his house when his wife accused them of having an affair. 

Gregors is furious and determines that Hjalmar must be told that his whole life is built on the money of the man who ruined his father. He talks his way into being Hjalmar's lodger and starts on his campaign of Truth.... with devastating results.

Ben Daniels is horrifyingly good as Gregors - the most hissable villain on stage this Christmas - a man who knowingly destroys his friend's life because some absurd notion of The Right Truth. In a world endanged by the terrorist and the neo-con this is a very timely play. 

Paul Hilton and Michele Fairley give fine performances as Hjalmar and Gina whose life is turned upside down due to an outsider's social experiment and Sinead Matthews is heart-breaking as their daughter Hedwig. Excellent support from Nicholas le Prevost as the neighbour doctor who sees through Gregors actions, William Gaunt and Peter Eyre as the two fathers and Susan Brown as Gregors' soon-to-be stepmother.

Sublime SUNDAY....

On Saturday O and I went to see Stephen Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at the small Menier Chocolate Factory fringe theatre in Southwark. This most personal of his musicals - dealing with the sacrifices an artist must make to pursue his vision - is a tricky one to pull off. It's hard to engage with the characters of Georges Seurat in the first act and his great-grandson also named George in the second while at the same time the score includes some of the loveliest music Sondheim has written. I remember being disappointed with the 1990 National Theatre's production possibly because I was so familiar with the Broadway recording with the powerhouse performances of Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. However this production by Sam Buntrock is an utter triumph again proving that the smaller you can do a Sondheim musical the more resonant the piece will be (mind you this isn't always the case, I disliked the cast-playing-instruments SWEENEY TODD earlier this year).

Daniel Evans, who seems to be getting better as he gets older, plays the two Georges very well while Anna Jane Casey is fine as Dot although her singing could do with a bit more heft. There is excellent support namely from Jan Soper as Seurat's mother, Simon Green as Jules, Seurat's more successful artist colleague and Liza Sadovy as Yvonne his wife and secret admirer of Georges. One of my favourite scenes is a small one between Yvonne and Dot in George's studio which is played very well by the two actresses. 

However what makes this production a winner is the excellent design team of David Farley's set and Timothy Bird's digital projection which floods the stage with colour and fluid movement. Used with economy and wit the digital animations are a total delight with nice telling touches such as the actor's one by one leaving the second act tableau of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" as their characters digitally appear in the painting on the museum wall behind them.

I can never deceide which is my favourite Sondheim show - usually it's the one I have just come out of - but SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE lays claim to the one that effects me emotionally. The three songs that end the first act floor me: Dot's WE DO NOT BELONG TOGETHER usually starts me off, Georges and his mother's BEAUTIFUL keeps me sniffing on a low-light and then... the tears just flow during the song SUNDAY. 

One of the most beautiful melodies ever, it's sung softly by the characters in the Seurat's painting as he arranges them into the final tableau that will freeze into "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte". It gets me every time... I'm not talking "tear tricking down face" I'm talking shuddering sobs. I cannot explain it.. it just reduces me to an emotional blub at the end of each act.

I loved this production.

3 unhappy experiences...

What a week - last Tuesday while running for the train I tripped on the last step up onto the platform, did a staggering 2 step run then went down bang. 5 days later my knees are still plastered up. And stinging. That's the last I run for a damn train to work.

Thursday saw Owen and I at the National Theatre to see the 30s comedy ONCE IN A LIFETIME which stars David Suchet, Victoria Hamilton and Adrian Scarborough. 

I must admit to being disappointed in the production. It's a perfectly fine play for the Lyttleton Theatre which has been given the full Olivier Theatre treatment and it rattles about the stage like a pea in a pod. It also mirrors one of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's criticisms of Hollywood - the original play is given the full Big Production overhaul with unnecessary big sets and interpolated song and dance numbers which only hold up the gags. 

The play still delivers some fine jabs at the insanity of the Dream Factory but there is some dodgy pacing which needs to be tightened up before the opening night. The set hopefully will be tightened up too. After the second scene the stage manager walked onto the stage and asked if we could all go into the foyer while they fixed the revolving drum which had got stuck! Ten minutes later we trooped back to our seats and the play resumed. Needless to say the massive staircase which rose out of the stage got the biggest hand of the evening!

Then on Friday showing the Devil works in threes... Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel at Shepherds Bush Empire. The win triple of indifferent act, vile crowd and bad venue. It was Owen I felt sorry for... 30 years to see a favoured artist only to be greeted with negligible sound, boozed-up punters and a charisma by-pass act. The one song I was looking forward to hearing COME UP AND SEE ME (MAKE ME SMILE) was of course lengthened further than necessary for the hand clapped call and response version.... yawn.

Roll on this week!

MATCH POINT - Woody Allen's new balls?

This evening I saw an advance screening of Woody Allen's newie MATCH POINT, not released here til January. The film, his first film shot entirely outside New York, stars Scarlett Johansson and an otherwise British cast including Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton.

His new backdrop has invigorated him to a certain extent but the film lost my goodwill when the plot was pitched suddenly into melodrama. The first 45 minutes promised much - Rhys-Meyers is Chris, a tennis player just off the circuit who finds work coaching in a well-heeled tennis club. A friendship develops with upper-class Tom (Matthew Goode) who invites Chris to the opera with his family. There he meets Tom's sister Chloe (Mortimer) who is won-over by his charm which develops at a visit to the family country estate. At the same weekend party, Chris flirts with a sexy girl - who turns out to be Tom's girlfriend Nola (Johansson), an American actress not having the best of success in London. 

Despite his relationship with Chloe he finds himself attracted to Nola who fends him off until, upset with her future mother-in-law's snide remarks, she has sex with him one rain-swept afternoon in the country. Chris is told a few weeks later by Tom that he has dumped Nola as he has found a more acceptable girl for his family and Nola vanishes from London. Chris marries Chloe and accepts a job in her father's business in the city. Then Nola reappears in London and Tom's passion is re-ignited...

The film turns into a love triangle with Chris torn between his wife's desperate attempts to get pregnant and his mistress' increasing desperation at his unwillingness to end his marriage. When Nola gives him the unthinkable - but predictable - news that she is pregnant Chris is forced to choose his fate. The film then lurches abruptly into a cross between Theodore Dreiser's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY and Dostoyevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT - via Allen's own CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.

Needless to say, the film's plotline is played out in front of London's most glamorous locations - the characters only appear to shop in Bond Street (which might explain why they are never seen buying food), Rhys-Meyers' office is in 'The Gerkhin', the apartment Rhys-Meyers and Mortimer move into after their marriage is a huge penthouse affair with enormous windows overlooking the Thames and the cultural life of the couples is viewed at Covent Garden, Tate Modern, The Curzon Mayfair and The Palace Theatre. Indeed there are so many shots of Rhys-Meyers coming out of designer shops that I thought "Why not have him come out of Buckingham Palace and have done with it?"  
 
The absurd melodramatic turn of events also rendered the film's most interesting character, Scarlett Johansson's Nola, into little more than a pathetic shrill creature. Up until then, Johansson had fleshed out the character wonderfully, making her attraction to Rhys-Meyers totally understandable. The casting of Rhys-Meyers is problematic - his inscrutable air keeps his Chris at an emotional distance from the audience and more strangely his Dublin accent is almost untraceable but much is made of his character's Irishness.

a Popbitch tribute...

Georgie Porgy wouldn't die
He drank wiv boys and made girls cry
But when the law said we can drink all day
Georgie Porgy passed away!

RICHARD II / AS YOU DESIRE ME

It sounds like the start of an odd love letter but it in fact heralds the fact that I have done two theatre trips with Mr. Guy Thomas in the past week.

Last Thursday was RICHARD II at the Old Vic which finally saw Kevin Spacey delivering a performance worthy of that stage's history. Although not one of the most poetic of Kings - and I think some of the speechs could have done with more introspection and less tart snittiness - he really excelled in the deposition scene where his cry of anguished frustration "I have no name" was all the more powerful for seemingly coming from nowhere. He was ably supported by Ben Mles whose Bolingbroke slide smoothly into power after his exercise in regime change in a strangely Blairite manner. There was excellent support from Julian Glover as John of Gaunt as well as Oliver Cotton and Peter Eyre.

Tonight we saw Pirandello's AS YOU DESIRE ME at the Playhouse Theatre with Kristin Scott Thomas and Bob Hoskins, slickly directed by Jonathan Kent. I had seen the film starring Greta Garbo yonks ago so knew the story - Elma is an amnesiac singer in a Berlin cabaret, one night she is followed by a man who tells her that she is in fact Lucia, the wife of an Italian count who had disappeared from their villa in WWI when she was raped and kidnapped by some German soldiers. Bored by her decadent life as a mistress to a violent writer she goes to Italy where she is greeted by the count, her aunt and uncle. 

Four months later she agrees to meet her sister who had regretfully allowed the missing woman's death certificate to be signed. However what was at the heart of that decision was who gained control of the villa, as it was part of the wife's dowry on her death it reverted to her sister. Is Lucia really Lucia or is she simply being used as a pawn? When her ex-lover Santer arrives at the villa with an insane woman who can only speak the name of the aunt the whole question of identity is blown apart.

Sadly it reads and lives in the mind better than it does on stage - at 90 minutes it still seemed padded and repetitive. However it was worth seeing for the livewire performance of Scott Thomas - almost bursting out of her slinky 30s dresses with frustration of not knowing who she is. Hoskins was strangely muted as Santer but there were memorable performances by Margaret Tyzack and John Carlisle as the woman's older relatives.

New York New York: Day 8

The usual mine-sweep of the room to make sure that absolutely definitely nothing had been left in the room. Cleared out the safety deposit box then it was out into the streets for the last time. We journeyed down to Houston Street and walked along to the rather fine Angelika Film Center to see the 11am screening of NEW YORK DOLL. 

It was great to see it again and it didn't take long for the first tear to well. The Angelika is at the top of Mercer Street where the Dolls played one of their most famous gigs so it was a great place to see the film. Happy to report that Owen liked it as much as I thought he would. Eeee it's been a while since I went filums on a Sunday morning!

We were about 20 minutes late for lunch with Suzanne at Niko's on Broadway at 76th Street. It was nice to finally meet up with her and tell her about all out adventures. Owen particularly enjoyed his pizza so it looks like we have made another culinary discovery! 

Cabbed it back to the hotel, picked up the luggage then cabbed it again to Newark. The taxi driver took us down 5th Avenue then turned at Washington Square through the Village to get to the Holland tunnel which was a nice way to say goodbye to the city. Newark airport is a bit of a dump with unhelpful staff and the flight was as dreary as coming out so I shall leave our New York trip there. It was a really fun holiday and it was nice to reacquaint myself with the city.

New York New York: Day 7

Giggleheim yesterday, Museum of Modern Art today! I had been round it on a previous visit but have not seen it since the upgrade. The building looks excellent, large galleries, wide connecting concourses with views down onto the floors below.

As with the Guggenheim's RUSSIA! exhibition, most of the lower galleries were more than easy to pass through, unmoved by the claims of installation pieces or photographic exhibits which were jaw-droppingly average. 

However the higher up you go... truly the closer to art heaven you get.  It was quite an experience seeing so many great works under one roof... definitely one to visit again.





We walked round the sculpture courtyard afterwards which was bathed in sunlight and we found Picasso's delightful statue of a goat. Spent bigly in the shop too.

After that it was time to head downtown and see my friend Sam who runs the film poster gallery Posteritati. He wasn't in the gallery but he and his wee 'un Benny caught up with us at Il Palazzo in Little Italy where O and I were fit to burst from the food! After walking Sam back to the gallery we had a nice meander up through SoHo which was as busy as anywhere on a late Saturday afternoon. 

Stopping off for a wee at the Angelika Film Center we headed to Bleeker Street to visit the Biography Store, a small bookshop I always visit and usually find something to buy but not this trip dammit. HOWEVER walking up Christopher Street (my favourite street) we went into Alternate Cards and.... I now own my own RuPaul doll! She stands an Amazonian 13" tall and I may never leave the house again!

And - as if it could not get any more Out There - we saw the Christmas show at the Radio City Music Hall.  O is a bit of an Xmas junkie so he was in Bliss City just looking at the marquee! 

The cavernous, opulent lobby was worth the price of admission alone - to say nothing of the Gents! - but the show was beyond anything. Starting with a 3D film of Santa flying in and out of the NY skyscrapers we then were treated to the first of several appearances by the famous Rockettes.
Legs, huge sets, snow falling inside the auditorium, skaters on stage, dancers on stage, this was surely what the Follies must have been like! And if my senses hadn't reeled enough we had a re-enactment of the Nativity which outdid itself in jaw-dropping earnestness - with the help of real donkeys, sheep and 3 camels! 

We staggered back to the hotel to meet Dezur and Paul for much-needed JD and Cokes!

Then sadly... up to the room to pack in silence... sigh, the saddest part of any holiday.

New York New York: Day 6

We Metrocarded up to the Guggenheim which I have always wanted to see but never got round to. Typically they were renovating the front so I didn't get to see it's impressive frontage, however once inside I was thrilled by the spiralling rotunda. 

The main exhibition was RUSSIA! an overview of Russian art. Sadly most of it was very easy to be given the go-by... icons, religeous art, court portrature, vast landscapes of St. Petersberg a la Canaletto, many paintings depicting the life of the humble peasant - all quite ironic bearing in mind what was to come. 20th Century art movements were adopted but rarely it seems understood, then there was the Soviet Art extolling the revolution - there is an bizarre one of a teenage girl meeting Stalin surrounded by applauding party members - all of whose heads could easily be painted over at some time. 

However there were paintings which drew you to them, there were some fine 'social realist' ones - depressive as Hell but at least they gave a sense of real life. Landscapes of startling clearness - almost like digital photographs and an amazing painting by Vasily Vereschagin "Defeated: Service For The Dead" of a priest and officer under a darkening sky standing in a huge churned up field that stretches off into the horizon which is filled with the bodies of hundreds of dead soldiers. 

Off the main rotunda are separate galleries given over to the Thannhauser collections and the museum's substantial Kandinsky paintings. The first contained some glorious works by Picasso: "Woman With Yellow Hair", "Mandolin and Guitar" and "Le Moulin de Galette" and the Kandinsky gallery glows with colour and imagination. Looking forward to future visits...

After lunch in a crowded Madison Avenue eaterie that left me feeling more hungry after I left than when I went in, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking leisurely though a Central Park turning golden in Autumn and getting ready for the invasion of runners for the NY Marathon on the Sunday. 

The park looked lovely and after a bit of hunting we found the ice-skating rink - the last time we were there it was surrounded by huge banks of snow!  By now I was seriously flagging, made it back to the hotel and had about an hour's snooze which was much needed. We were both in two minds about going to see the show tonight - but we had the tickets and thought we could always leave in the interval if we were not enjoying it.  Enjoy it?  We loved it - AVENUE Q at the Golden Theatre.

What a great show - the most enjoyable one of the trip. To say it's a musical with puppets is putting at it's most basic - it's a laugh-out-loud collision between The Muppets and the best American sitcoms. The cast of seven - three actors, four puppeteers - work their arses off and the show fully deserved it's Tony Award for Best Musical - among it's hilarious songs are IF YOU WERE GAY, EVERYONE'S A LITTLE BIT RACIST, THE INTERNET IS FOR PORN - 'Grab your dick and double-click' and THE MORE YOU RUV SOMEONE (sung by the Japanese character) - hugely recommended!