Over the Festering Season, I read a book called “Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. It’s written for young adults, but has a lot of levels to the story. For me it’s a better book than Twilight (and much better than the sequels) and with a lot more ideas.

The basic premise is based in an America that’s had some un-named armageddon, and is left with twelve “Districts” ruled over by “The Capitol”, which is portrayed as a decadent seat of government while the Districts are much poorer, but all their produce goes to support the Capitol. The Hunger Games themselves are an annual televised event where a boy and girl from each of the Districts is selected by Lottery to be the Champions for the District, and are then put against each other in an arena, forced to survive and kill the others until only one winner remains.

It’s got a lot of very subversive ideas within the book, and I was really impressed by it, so I’ve also bought the second part of the trilogy, called “Catching Fire“, which I’ve just finished.  Again, very subversive, continuing the themes of the evil Government that cares nothing for the people involved, just for keeping the status quo, and keeping the security of their own privileged positions.

What’s annoyed me more though is that the final part of the trilogy won’t be published ’til at least August this year. And I really don’t want to have to wait that long to find out how it all works out in the end.

I’ve been a fan of Henry Rollins for a very long time now, so seeing him doing a spoken-word gig at Norwich UEA was always something I’d be at.

Rollins is one of the hardest working people on the gig circuit – you only have to look at the schedule for this tour to realise that – which always makes it an interesting gig when he talks about his insane travelling plans, along with his life, ideas and experiences. In this gig, he talked about the fact he’s going to be playing a significant role in Season Two of Sons of Anarchy (fantastic news, in my opinion) as well as Thanksgiving, America, elections, being friends with William Shatner, giving speeches at Sonoma University in California, and travels to Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, India and many others.

I like the Rollins attitude, which was basically described as “Someone tells me a place is dangerous, I want to go there and find out for myself“. In other words, do things for yourself, don’t just believe what the media/politicians/other people tell you.

In fact that was pretty much the theme for the entire gig – some two and a half hours of it, too – to do your own thing, don’t just sit back and let other people do the talking/doing.

I’m already looking forward to the next Rollins tour.

On Saturday we went off to see Sherlock Holmes, the new film by Guy Ritchie. In fairness, I wasn’t expecting much from it – so we were really pleasantly surprised.

Robert Downey Jr is the star, and makes a fantastic version of Holmes. A much more physical version than the classic Jeremy Brett one, but a believable one all the same – and I have to say, a version that I really liked. Jude Law as Watson is also fantastic, and the pairing of the two is fantastic, with a fairly believable interaction and relationship.

It’s quite obvious that they expect to make at least one more Sherlock Holmes film – the storyline in this one is pretty good, but does a lot of character-building and so on, ready for a larger sequel.

All told though, good fun.

On Thursday, we went to see Marcus Brigstocke’s “GodCollar” tour in Norwich.

We’ve seen Brigstocke on TV a few times, but really had no idea what to expect from him live – and I’d made a positive effort to not read any reviews of the show at all. We’ve been disappointed by other shows where we’ve seen most of the material before (Frankie Boyle in particular) so we didn’t want that to happen again.

We needn’t have worried. The show was fantastic – although definitely not for those with a lack of humour about religion. It’s not offensive per se, although I can imagine some people might find it so, but more about Brigstocke’s thoughts around organised religion, and trying to find his own beliefs and thoughts about God.

He’s scathingly rude about most aspects – which in my opinion is always a good thing – and particularly about Richard Dawkins, iPhones (and users of iPhones) and plenty of other things besides.

It made for a fantastic two hours – both very funny and thought-provoking.

I’d happily go and see Brigstocke again – well worth it. But definitely not a show for the faint-hearted or easily offended.

Yesterday, Herself went out and got an Apple iPhone from Carphone Warehouse.

Initially I was fairly impressed with it, there’s some nice interactions and stuff going on.

However, today we (OK, I) updated it to the latest version of the operating system, version 3.0.1. And since then the new iPhone has been a nightmare.

Firstly, Herself always has a lockcode set on the phone, so when you turn it on, you enter a four-digit PIN. Normally, no problem. However, as part of the upgrade to 3.0.1, the iPhone needs to connect back to iTunes, and iTunes can’t do that with a lock code set. Oh, and the iPhone wouldn’t do anything except say “connect me to iTunes”. Nothing else, no way to enter the lock code.

Cue a call to O2 to find out what needs doing, and then one to Apple. Which resulted in…

Factory Reset Number One. Yep, roll it all the way back to how we got it, loss of any settings we’d sorted. Square One.  And an OS upgraded to 3.0.1.

And all was well. Um, except for not having any access to wi-fi settings (as in “Not installed” rather than  “Not available”) or Bluetooth®. Totally greyed out, nothing there at all.

So a few resets, and another call to Apple.

Half an hour later, Factory Reset Number Two – and still no improvement.

So tomorrow we’re off to Carphone Warehouse, armed with an Issue Number from Apple, to get a replacement iPhone.

Let’s hope that one works better.

I’m not slagging off the iPhone per se – however, my experience with it so far has emphatically not been the most positive one. We’ll see how things go with the second one before I write up a valid review of it…

Way back in the day, I was a big fan of Janes Addiction, but never got to see them live. Then they reformed and created a new album (Strays), and I still didn’t get to see them live.

And I’ve been a fan of Nine Inch Nails all the way back to the first album, some twenty years ago now.

So it was a complete no-brainer that when the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction) tour was announced with UK dates, I was going to be going.

And lo, last night was the night – and amazingly, I got there in plenty of time. (Considering that last time I was going to see them, Ticketmaster never sent the tickets) Hell, I even got to see the support act – a band called Mew, who I wasn’t overly impressed with. Sorry, Lori, they just didn’t do it for me – but bear in mind I said the same thing way back when Muse supported Skunk Anansie, so don’t count on my opinions for much…

Jane’s Addiction, on the other hand, absolutely rocked the place. It was very much a case of “playing the known stuff” – although that’s not a massive challenge when you’ve only released three albums anyway. My only disappointment was that they didn’t play “Hypersonic” from the “Strays” album – but them’s the breaks. They played pretty much everything else they’ve done that was popular and/or well known.

As for NIN themselves, they did even more. Even though Jane’s had been fantastic (and loud!), with a storming lighting set-up, NIN just did the same only more so.  Brighter, louder, harder. It was awe-inspiring. Even better, it seemed like almost a retrospective – again, lots of stuff from the first couple of albums, the real crowd-pleasers, with not much from the latest album at all.

Of course, we knew it was going to be something special for the NIN section when they started bringing out extra lights and speaker stacks as well as what had already been on the stage.  What we didn’t expect, though, was a guest appearance by Gary Numan for two tracks – he’s been an inspiration to Trent Reznor (the lead of NIN) for years, but it was still pretty stunning to see him live as well.

All told, my enjoyment of the gig was only slightly damaged at the end, when some fuckwit girl called Lisa decided to keel over next to me – she’d been leaning on me for the previous track, and when it came to an end she just fell forwards, not even an attempt to stop herself.  Luckily, I was standing right next to the sound-desk enclosure, so was able to yell and get a security guy’s attention, and while he sorted out getting her medical help (and, as it turned out, a wheelchair) I ended up being the main prop for her, with her holding on to the railings of the enclosure. I’ve no idea what she’d taken (it certainly wasn’t a fit, she wasn’t pissed, but her eyeballs were floating off in different directions) but she was like a sack of shit – and roughly as good as one at standing up.  All due respect to the O2’s medical and security crews though, they were absolutely fantastic.

It meant I didn’t get to pay the full attention to the final track (an awesome version of “Hurt”) but well, priorities and all that.

Still, it was an absolutely stunning gig – as well as eye-fuckingly bright and brain-throbbingly loud too- and if it is to be (as rumoured) their last tour for a significant time, well it was certainly one hell of a way to go out on a high note…

(Oh, and just to rub it in, it took me less than two hours from leaving the O2 to get back home – I got in at 1am. So suck that Wembley, and your bullshit carparking farce)