Live Webcast. Fail...

Sometimes people just get it wrong.

A Sporty Blow-job?...

The London Olympics logo - is it just me of does it look like Lisa Simpson administering a sporty blow-job?

Peter Gabriel @ The O2...

On Saturday night Paul, Simon and I went to see Peter Gabriel perform at The O2 Arena in London's glitzy Greenwich peninsula. My word it was a good night. And The Guardian agrees.

The show was the New Blood Tour 2010 promoting his recent Scratch My Back covers album. The first half was this new album with each track back to back and the second half was all the hits and more (the 'more' being a full orchestra.)

The light show was, as you might expect from the master of the visual, rather special too.

The set list was:

First Half
Sledgehammer (orchestra intro)
Heroes
The Boy In The Bubble
Mirrorball
Flume
Listening Wind
The Power Of The Heart
My Body Is A Cage
The Book Of Love
I Think It's Going To Rain Today
Apres Moi
Philadephia
Street Spirit (Fade Out)

Second Half
San Jacinto
Digging In The Dirt
Downside Up
Signal To Noise
Mercy Street
The Rhythm Of The Heat
The Drop
Darkness
Solsbury Hill

Encore
In Your Eyes
Don't Give Up
The Nest That Sailed The Sky

The Little Dog Laughed...

Last night Stu, Darren, Duncan and I went to see The Little Dog Laughed at the Garrick Theatre in London's glitzy West End.

The play is a comedy and tells the story of an agent who plans to buy a successful Broadway gay play, make it into a film but betray the scriptwriter and give the piece a happy heterosexual ending. She firmly believes its box office chances will be ruined if the actor she has in mind for the main role reveals that he is indeed gay. But the plans start to go ary when the closeted actor falls for a rent-boy - much to annoyance of the former's agent and latter's girlfriend.

As the play progresses we wonder if we might actually be watching the very film script the agent has always secretly been planning.

Tamsin Greig plays the manipulating agent perfectly. Rupert Friend and Harry Lloyd ensure that the love story ot the play's heart doesn't get too lame, while former Bond girl Gemma Arterton turns in a standout performance as the 'Jilted Joan'.

We really enjoyed it.

They're Justified and They're Ancient and They Like to Roam the Land...

Lost Camera...

These are the photos this guy always keeps on his digital camera in case he loses it. That way, whoever finds the camera and looks through the stored photos gets a nice little story with instructions on how to return it to the owner.

Nice idea, huh?

 http://www.andrewmcdonald.net.au/a-pictorial-guide-to-avoiding-camera-loss/

Sometimes I Disgust Even Myself...

I did something so disgusting eight years ago it's only recently I can even bring myself to talk about it. It was so vile, so yucky, so out of character and so outrageous that my then partner Marky almost disowned me on the spot. He was so embarrassed he wouldn't even walk with me on the way home from the incident. I will never, ever, ever be able to go there again. And I'm truly ashamed. I'm blushing even now. OK, I was more than a little drunk. But that's no excuse. No. Really. It isn't.

So what did I do?

Well, we were on our way home from the pub and feeling a bit peckish popped into a kebab house (name withheld) on St Paul's Road for some take-home grub. We got to the front of the queue, placed our order and stepped to one side to let the people behind us get served. So far so good.

Waiting for the food to be ready I rather absent-mindedly wandered over to the mirrored wall opposite the counter. I paused for a moment and then peered more closely studying my face in the mirror. OK, now here's the awful bit... I then reached my hands up to my face and between my thumb tips squeezed a particularly large spot that was all white and ripe for bursting. The entire shop watched as a fountain of white pus spurted all over the mirror in front of me. Seemingly satisfied with this facial fungus evacuation I took one last look in the mirror before turning back round to face the counter. I must has missed the looks of horror on the faces of the other occupants of the shop. A heartbeat later one of the assistants reached down below the counter and withdrew some disinfectant spray and a cloth. He lifted the wooden counter flap, stepped forward and wiped all the mess I'd made off the mirror without saying a word. To my shame I didn't say anything either. I didn't even apologise. I just waited at the counter for our kebabs. By the time we left with our food it was perhaps gradually dawning on me that something might have been up. Yes, Marky had seemed particularly agitated since I'd stepped back from the mirror. And, yes, I think people might have been staring at me. But at the time I didn't fully realise the cause of either Marky's agitation or indeed that those stares were ones of utter disgust and loathing.

Once outside Marky erupted in a fountain of his own. He was livid.

Needless to say, however hungry I've been, I've never had the courage to darken that particular kebab house's door again.

Large Hardon Collider...

Good old telegraph.co.uk

Muscle March...

Category: Action
Players: 1-4
Age rating: 3
Publisher: NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe
Release date: 19/03/2010
Wii Points: 500
Game language: English

Muscle March is the first WiiWare title to offer a polar bear in Speedos.

Charlie Brooker on News Reports...

A good deconstruction by Charlie Brooker on how news reports are put together - might temporarily put you off watching the news as you'll just be spotting the format points for a bit.

The Power of Understatement...

"It is never very difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."
[P. G. Wodehouse]

Satyagraha...

Last night Paul treated me to Satyagraha at the ENO. It was brilliantly hypnotic. Jaw-droppingly wonderful. In has to be in the top ten best things I've seen on stage. Ever.

The opera is in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists. It was composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance de Jong. It's loosely based on the life of Mohandas Gandhi. The term satyagraha is the philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance developed by Gandhi himself.

Act I. Tolstoy
On the Kuru Field of Justice
Tolstoy Farm (1910)
The Vow (1906)

Act II. Tagore
Confrontation and Rescue (1896)
Indian Opinion (1906)
Protest (1908)

Act III. King
New Castle March (1913)

Philip Glass's music is simply glorious: those repetitive patternings shifting and shining with ingenious rhythmic and melodic ideas, interlocking, overlapping, yet ever calm. But it was the staging that made the night so wonderful. So enchanting.

The director of the piece was Phelim McDermott (Shockheaded Peter) and Julian Crouch is the assistant director and set designer. Boy, they did an amazing job.

All three acts take place within an arc-like wall of curving corrugated iron. Within the slow waves of music and human movement, an ensemble of acrobats and puppeteers conjure miracle after miracle. Newsprint looms large: there is a ubiquitous whispering of newspaper as sheets are shifted, read (the founding of Indian Opinion was central to Gandhi’s work) — and then, almost imperceptibly, formed into gigantic papier-mâché puppet-figures of gods, beasts and politicians.

High in the iron wall, windows disclose the three iconic figures who watch over the three acts: Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King.

The beauty of the sung Sanskrit is bewitching: sober sepia projections of key passages replace supertitles; but verbal comprehension isn’t really the point. Although it would be inappropriate to single out individual performances in a work that has so little to do with conventional operatic glory, Alan Oke’s central performance as Gandhi is a masterpiece of compelling clarity and absorption.

As the last act unfolds, the great wall buckles and disintegrates, leaving a miming silhouette of the preaching King high on his plinth, and the diminutive figure of Gandhi below, singing a simple rising scale — no fewer than thirty times.

Stand out moments of the night for me were:
- the amazing floating coat hangers and the equally amazing floating lights lifted up high
- the weaving and crumpling up of a huge web of sellotape to produce at first a barrier, then a giant puppet man then an image of Gandhi himself
- the long newspaper streams across the stage that became first a barrier, then wings for Gandhi and then again sky high banners for projecting words all in one fluid motion.

Image after image is etched indelibly on the memory, in its masterly fusion of the aural and the visual. Go see.

What is hard and seven inches long?...

My pen is.

I Love You Phillip Morris...

Last night Stu and I went to I Love You Phillip Morris. I'd been dying to see this film since I first heard about it and it's trouble in gaining a cinema release.

The film is a comedy-drama film based on the real life events of gay con artist, impostor, and multiple prison escapee Steven Jay Russell and his love for prison cell mate Phillip Morris. And it certainly was an unusual film. An unbelievably twisted story that can only be based on real events. Quite sweet in parts and rather explicit in others.

In fact four people walked out. The frequent blow jobs they were fine with. I don't think they liked Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor kissing each other. To some, a kiss is far more threatening than a blow job.

If you fancy a diverting trip to the cinema give it a whirl!

Whom The Gods Would Destroy...

'Tis a tough day at the grindstone today. Things generally 'work' or can be 'fixed'. People on the other hand 'don't' or 'can't'. People are cunts. Still, firm hand on the tiller today and full steam ahead. I shall come through this with my sanity intact. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

10 types of people...

There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't and those who mistake it for binary.

In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor...

There's a moment in every geek's life when one goes for the 'communal hug' on a pet-subject and finds oneself unexpectedly out in the cold. The piano player stops playing. The landlord shakes his head as his eyes head heavenward, and he slinks away to rearrange the crisps. The lonely sound of a misdirected dart is all that haunts the otherwise silent pub. And it's definitely time to get your anorak. "You like what...?"

Corridors in science-fiction movies. This guy loves them.

Egypt Photos...

 

Jordan Photos...

 

Put A Donk On It (signed)...

I love the way the BSL signer gamely enters into the spirit of this frankly ludicrous song. "Big fish, little fish, cardboard box" indeed.