| Someone pinch me! :D
Barry be Pre-Zee-DENT!
Also. Birthday celebrations:- in London on 14th Nov starting at Bloomsbury Lanes and wandering
- in Shef on
5th Dec 6th Dec at the flat if there are no clashes or objections. All welcome.
UPDATE: Obama's really telling it like it is. "What, we have to *work* to make things better? I can haz fiksd eco*nom**nom*ony nao?"
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| | Tags: | avenue q, eurobeat, les dennis, les miserables, london, mel and sue, musical, show, terry wogan, the internet is for porn, theatre | | Subject: | Wecause zee green man iz flaching it iz allowed... | | Time: | 11:20 pm |
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| This week I have mainly been seeing shows, because the lady is away, but her best friend has come from Austria to cat-sit and see shows.
I saw Les Miserables earlier in the week, and if I were them, I'd feel a bit hacked off being put in too small a theatre for my epicness. In fact I shall call it Mini-Mis. Beautiful scenes, beautiful lighting, plenty of tugging at the heartstrings, but 10 cast members short of stunning.
Which left room for it to be outshone by Les Dennis and Mel from Mel & Sue doing what can only be called 'Mock Eurovision'.
Eurobeat is exactly what you'd expect. International stereotypes and milked until dry, poor euro-pop, a intro from Tezza, innuendo, witty co-host banter and a round-Europe 'televised' vote at the end.
It was about perfect. The best kind of low-brow entertainment and the closest thing to actually being at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Avenue Q was still my runaway favorite. I expected it to be darker and more out there, and it loses some lustré when you know a couple of the big numbers, but otherwise I have fully invited the bad-idea bears into my life.
I managed to dodge the twin bullets of Mamma Mia and Never Forget. *Always* read a synopsis before going to a show. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Q: Apart from Mint, do any herbs taste good with chocolate?
It's understood that a lot of spices work perfectly well.
A: Over to you...
*![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) imyril is credited with brave inspiration by trying Earl Gray Hot Chocolate. | | comments: 20 comments or Leave a comment |
| Dear lord. Did anyone get the number of the party that hit me? Thankfully avoided a proper hangover by virtue of being still drunk this morning. The tactical error was Cava straight from the bottle. Sorry to whoever bought it along :/
Thanks to all you lovely people for coming and making it a festive. Thanks to the non-lovely people for making it a lot of fun too. I officially transfer my winter affections to New Year from Christmas Day, which was a little bit on the shit side.
We really must have more gatherings. Say in about 1.5 hours? | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
|  Dear lord but these birthday celebrations are gonna kill me. The wonderful and moderately messy party on Friday was a fantastic start, involving as it did the major food groups of great people, copious alcohol, pizza, turkish delight, whiskey and champagne. And poker. And Guitar Hero. The cake was (mostly) a lie.
Then down to London on Monday and the guys at work whisked me off to the Newman Arms Pie Room for hot pie action and beer and presented my with my own personal attack chopper for living room warfare! Thanks to dave_chimaera for the lift down at fuck o'clock in the morning. A greasy motorway breakfast always wins over the train.
 Finally last night was the gathering of spods in London, which I co-opted as another birthday celebration and a good excuse to get dr0nk again. GBK does the best burgers ever, followed by the best champagne cocktails ever at Kettners, then finally a few jars at the best Dutch bar in Soho...Ever! murasaki_star also gave me emoMyspaceCred in woollen form. Win!
Tonight is a hopefully a sedate night at the cinema to see Stardust finally. Unless things go a bit turbo.
I less-than-three my friends! | | comments: 23 comments or Leave a comment |
|  Life continues apace and this has been a week of media enrichment. I've finally decided to 'get' podcasts and promptly downloaded radio 4 and 'the show with zefrank' * to my brain. Also saw Pirates aye-aye-aye having only experienced number 2 through careful re-enactment and and the medium of dance by imyril. I found it evocative of Jason & the Argonauts.
I've also availed myself of the one of the benefits of London** and after a very nice evening in the company of arminh and a couple of young ladies have picked up the sunday papers from Charing X at 0002h and started reading them over dim-sum in chinatown.
This would of course mean more to me if I'd already cultivated a habit of reading Sunday papers, but you've got to start somewhere. This also makes 2 or 3 things that I really *should* have been doing anyway and am now actually doing something about :-)
* highly recommended to those of you who like the similar quirky shit to me and haven't *done* this months ago. You know who you are.
** apart from paying twice as much for drinks and gate-crashing hotel bars***.
*** of *course* I'm a guest. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Life is starting to come into focus, mentally, and the last week has seen me feeling a little more 'awake' and thoughtful each day. This was handy as it contained many wonderful experiences :-)
Read on for stuff I've mainly posted for my own benefit, but which you're welcome to snoop on.
( Little bit of bar-stool self-analysis. )
The upshot is that I'm losing weight, changing shape, smiling more and with thought, effort and a little luck, life may actually turn out to be rather good this year.
( Books I done readed. ) | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| | so...after barely making it on time to tellyvision centre, nigelh and myself enjoyed a spanking recording of friday night with jonathan ross. If even half the shit that went on makes the cut it'll be a corker. Bonus marks for making it to the green room afterwards and with the aid of nige, not being a total wallflower and managing to have an erudite chat with regina spektor and eddie izzard at the same time. Plus food and booze gratis. As nige said, i feel we recouped a little of the license fee there. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| Highlight of the week so far was the Lou Rhodes gig last night, which almost didn't happen. Her only sister died tragically a couple of weeks ago which unsurprisingly meant the rest of the tour was cancelled.
I'm glad she was able to keep this one date, as the venue was very special, the audience very supportive and she shone like a star*. I probably couldn't have done it. Y'know, mentally, apart from not playing the guitar very well and not being a very good singer.
The gig was a mix of the material from "Beloved One" and songs destined for a new album "Bloom"* with a beautiful rendition of "Gabriel" blended in. It was a very moving and wonderful gig and already one of my favourite musical experiences ever. It's nice to feel so good about music again.
I'm going to break my YouTube cherry and get some clips up from the show. Update to follow...
Tonight is another night in the fine company of Jonathan Ross and friends, mainly because Regina Spektor is performing, but with bonus Eddie Izzard, Andrew Lloyd Webber and John Barrowman. Result!
* Celestial variety
* Hopefully arriving Sept 2007. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Went to Sheffield for a whistle-stop tour to see and do and it was very fine indeed. Trip was made enjoyable by murasaki_star on the way up and the Brooklyn Works possé ok the way back down. There was must Asian cuisine and Wii and chatting and Eurovision and Lions and Tigers and Bears....oh my!
Also went to see 28 Weeks Later with dave_chimaera. If you liked the first one you'll probably get on very well with it. It's an accomplised little piece in terms of action sequences and pacing and I very much enjoyed it and is *begging* for mock subtitles a lá Star Wars Ep.1 trailer.
Being a gym regular again, I also got myself swanky new scales that tell me my weight and percent muscle and body fat. This morning they said "99% Dim Sum" and then "A suffusion of yellow." Strange. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Life is somewhat unshitty at the moment. Bits of it are even fun and downright salubrious.
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| Due to continuing bad shit happening, i'm declaring Jan 2007 to be an unofficial expansion pack to that bitch of a year, 2006*1. I'm sure there are peeps out there who had a good year, but it seems to have been trial-by-fire for most.
Personally, I almost died, lost my Dad who raised me more or less on his own, worked more hours than a junior doctor (for a net result of zero) and had a friend die tragically.
This makes my new years resolutions simple. Eat Well, Get Fit, Work Smart and, if time allows, find a wonderful partner.
To this end I've left the company I started last Feb, and nigelh and myself have started a new company*2.
I wish all my friends a wonderful 2007. It starts here*3.
( Footnotes ) | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I'm almost certainly going to see Bond tonight, because after Layer Cake I'm a total convert to Daniel Craig's brand of leading man. Then an article mentioned he was slated to play Lord Asriel in the film of His Dark Materials.
Get in! That's a fine piece of casting!
Then I look up one slot and see that Nicole Kidman is to play Miss Coulter. *Has the fear* Even in Cold Mountain she was a bit of a one-trick pony. She's going to take one look at the script, the crew will point her towards the set and the director will shout "Start Chewing!"
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I fear that Mr.Pullman's fantastic work is one chirpy cockney chimney sweep away from being ruined. Maybe I'll take along a small cutout of Miranda Richardson's or Kristin Scott-Thomas' head and edit out Nicole's throughout the film. But there's still the voice :'( | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| To make up for never joining a gym before, I've joined four at once to compensate and y'know, ditch the lard.
If anyone frequents Hillsborough Gym and doesn't mind company as a great excuse for turning up. Lemme know. Now I can finally realise my dream of inviting a classy lady to a front seat at the gun show.
longhairedhippy is chronicling similar efforts over in his journal in what is now the formative Anti-Lard Club". Normally when you combine something and Anti-something, violence ensues. In this case, only a general sense of being well-fed and well-exercised ensures. Further experimentation must be done.
I'm tracking my weight and some other simple stats in the protean Google Spreadsheets, which is an awesome little tool for this kind of thing. Graphs and other metrics will follow once I work out the API, unless someone else has done it already, or has time to tinker | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| For those that haven't seen me skulking around social events in a low energy fashion recently, I thought I'd let you know I'm still alive and (more or less) well.
I've got a whole bag of hugs here for everyone who came and visited me in hospital, sent me a get well soon card and wished me well.
Big thanks to jwhiskers_, easytiger and my SO for looking after me and bundling me into an ambulance before the rather large pulmonary embolism had a chance to finish me off.
There may be rumours as to why the embolism occurred, and I can confirm that a pitched battle with a rival ninja clan was the most likely factor.
Thanks again peeps :->
Current Health: "5 ninjas and rising". | | comments: 32 comments or Leave a comment |
| I love autumn, but it seems like a weird one this year. Lots of changes happening.
Thu night through Sat morning was a bijou-cruise to Amsterdam. 11 hours either way on a very large ferry and the first proper cruise I've been on. It was a new environment for me, with small cabins, stag party hell, some casino action, and staring with wonderment into the wake of the ferry in the middle of the night. Oh, and some (drunken) Dance Dance Revolution with easytiger.
After a coach ride through industrial Rotterdam (identical to industrial Hull but more windfarms) jwhiskers_, easytiger, kitten_star and myself arrived in Amsterdam.
We didn't have long there and no-one was feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so we wandered around the center drinking in the tone and plenty of coffee (not "coffee"), avoiding bicycles with varying degrees of success and generally being counter-bohemian.
Amsterdam felt very odd to me as I was expecting to walk around mentally gawping at buildings and museums, much like I did it NYC. E.T. said it first and said it best
"It doesn't feel totally like you're abroad on holiday -
it feels foreign but not completely foreign.
I wouldn't want to holiday there for more than a few days,
but I could happily work there."
The return trip was more casino, DDR, drinking games and staring into the void. It was a good trip, and a lot of that rides on the people you go with. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
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