The Muppets win at everything.  That’s all I have to say on the matter.

In other news, Mrs. Toad and I went out into the garden this weekend, to try and tackle the small jungle which has slowly been developing since the Summer.  The weather has been so spectacularly shit since July and August that we just haven’t been out there, so our window boxes have all died and every bed was overrun with weeds.

Still, due to our particularly indelicate methods of gardening – a little closer to slash and burn than anything you might see on Gardeners’ World – we managed to get through an awful lot and also to shove some rather late bulbs into the ground, albeit more in hope than expectation.  It was nice though, especially because we haven’t been out there for months now.  Although fuck knows what we’re going to with all the piles of cuttings and various other crap we generated.

Anyway, after the extreme rock ‘n’ roll of a spot of gardening, I’m not sure that booze and drugs and gigs will impress me all that much.  But let’s give it a go, eh…

Thursday 2nd Feb: Born to Be Wide Festival Seminar at the Electric Circus.

The guests for this one include Dave Corbet (T In The Park/The Edge Festival), Katch Holmes (Knockengorroch Festival), Gordon Reilly (Insider Festival), Shaun Arnold (Go North). So if you want to know how best to get on festival bills and to hear some chat about what it can actually do for you, then I strongly recommend you come to this one.

Thursday 2nd Feb: Lady North play Sick Note at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a late night club show, and I actually think this might be one of the best ways to experience Lady North’s thumping rhythms and hypnotic guitars.  And for those of you getting soused at Born to Be Wide ealier, then this would be an ideal place to stagger onto next.

Saturday 4th Feb: Love Your Library Day at Penicuik Library, with The Last Battle and Matt Norris and the Moon.

Ed from 17 Seconds has organised a couple of great events for National Libraries Day.  The first is a comedy night involving Frankie Boyle and Miles Jupp, but that’s sold out now, and the second is a musical event out in Penicuik, with a couple of 17 Seconds Records bands.  The 37, 47 or X47 will take you there really easily from the centre of Edinburgh, so I don’t want any whinging excuses about the enormity of the journey, it’s just not that hard.

Sunday 5th Feb: Dam Mantle plays Superclub at Sneaky Pete’s.

Dam Mantle is probably on the fringes of my taste for electronic music, truth be told, but for those of you with better knowledge of this kind of stuff I reckon this should be a very good bet.

More Ides of Toad action this week, as Kid Canaveral, Thee Single Spy and Monster Island take to the stage at Henry’s.  I hadn’t been to Henry’s for so long before The Leg, Louis Barabbas and Zed Penguin show, and I’d rather forgotten that it is actually a cracking little grubby indie club.  One of those places whose drawbacks actually seem to add to its charm, so please come down this weekend, and come down early to make sure you catch Monster Island.

And there may be some excellent gigs happening in Edinburgh this week, but there are a couple of ongoing things which also need to be mentioned, so for those of you looking to get out and about, enjoy the sun and indulge in some afternoon pintage, there will be plenty of excuses.

Firstly, Avalanche Records have a few events this week, including an Aberfeldy in-store and a Glasvegas meet-and-greet on the weekend.

Secondly, and pretty much my personal highlight of 2011, there is a Muppets Festival at the Edinburgh Filmhouse. Anyone who knows anything about me at all will know that if I am unavailable this week or fail to respond to your emails as quickly as you think I should, then this is why.

Thursday 21st April 2011: That Fucking Tank, Shield Your Eyes, Battery Face & Mr. Peppermint at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This will be noisy.  Apparently That Fucking Tank don’t play Edinburgh all that often, so if you like your music to delivery you a good hard slap in the ears then this will be very much up your street I should imagine.

That Fucking Tank – Keanu Reef

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Saturday 23rd April 2011: Kid Canaveral, Thee Single Spy & Monster Island at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This is going to be boisterous fun.  Three different takes on indie music, with Kid Canveral’s boisterous pop contrasting with the laconic Americana-tinged Thee Single Spy and the ramshackle, yeah so what delivery of Monster Island.  I am really looking forward to this one.

Monster Island – The Green Room

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Saturday 23rd April 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf, Black Heart Generator & Verse Metrics at the Wee Red Bar.

I don’t actually know too much about the other two bands on this bill, but Edinburgh School for the Deaf are fuzzy, shoegazey and loud as balls.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – Love is Terminal

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Gosh it’s multi-post bonanza of obsessive lunacy on Song, by Toad today. I know this is far too many posts for a sane human being, but honestly the news today is bringin’ the crazy and there’s no way I could let it pass without a round of applause.

Item No1: Paris & the Mystery Meat
Everyone’s favourite talentless whore has been released and gave an interview to CNN in which she described her meals in the Big House as containing “mystery meat”, which she then rather perplexingly described as “really scary”. Seriously. Anyone here remember the last time Ms. Hilton had any sort of difficulty wolfing down mystery meat with all the glassy-eyed enthusiasm of a sedated Alzheimer’s patient? No, me neither. At least true to form she’s still talking about god, albeit in slightly different context than usual, playing that time-honoured Get Out Of Jail Free Card that the American public never seem to tire of falling for.

Rufus Wainright – Old Whore’s Diet

Item No2: Tom Cruise: Verrückt und Verboten!
Or, bonkers and banned, as we’d (vaguely) have it in English. Apparently he has been banned from filming his latest movie in Germany – allegedly about Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler – because they think he’s just a bit too mad. If they’re worried about his inability to accurately portray sensitive historical material then fuck me, how are they not attempting to extradite Mel Gibson for public tarring and feathering? Honestly, I’ll be gutted if they ban Scientology. Scientology is easily the coolest religion in the world – a great big fuck you to people who believe in the preposterous things that infest every religion. Walking on water? Resurrection? Virgin birth? Chicken feed! That’s primary school make-believe, that is. Try great big fucking flying spaceships and alien beings and volcanoes, you pussies! It really makes the other religions look like they just weren’t really trying when they came up with their creation myths.

Also, it’s like a great big finger of deranged lunacy that points helpfully at every single one of its hilariously credulous followers reminding us all to point and laugh every time they raise their heads above the parapet. Fucking idiots.

Ballboy – Essential Wear For Future Trips to Space

Item No3: Best Oddly Not Good Enough
Real Madrid, having won precisely bollocks all of any import for five years have finally won the league title in Spain. Fabio Capello, the man who guided them to this momentous triumph, has needless to say, been sacked immediately. Now, they didn’t win it in style, and Barca may have imploded spectacularly to clear the way, but sacked? Scolded, maybe. Told to do better, perhaps. But the first title in five years and he’s sacked – are these people on drugs? Well, high on their own galactic levels of vanity perhaps…

Midlake – Excited But Not Enough From back when they sounded just like Radiohead.

Item No4: Beware the Ghost Ducks
Yes, seriously. 30,000 rubber duckies were washed overboard when a particularly enthusiastic storm hit their container ship in the middle of the Pacific back in 1992. Due to the vagaries of global oceanic currents they circled, as a group, around the North Pacific for years until a misadventure with Arctic pack ice spat them out, bleached a deathly white, into the Atlantic early in the new millennium. After flirting with America’s Eastern Seaboard they are now caught in the Gulf Stream which should bring them en masse to the shores of Ireland, Cornwall and the Southwest later this year. Christ, you’d think you were mad, wouldn’t you. A 30,000-strong fleet of ghostly rubber duckies approaching your shores – it’d be terrifying!

Crash Test Dummies – How Does a Duck Know?

Makes all that boring shit about people dying in Iraq by the thousands and the increasingly militant stance of the Russian government and the slippery avoidance of any sort of accountability by Dick Cheney seem like no more than the hum of a distant bee, doesn’t it.