I don't suppose anybody reading this is interested in my Slint tickets for next Wednesday? I've changed jobs since I bought the tickets and am on call next week, so I can't go.
I've got two tickets - face value is 22.50 each but I recognise that is highly extortionate so if you're interested, make me an offer.
It'll just become one of those gigs that I didn't quite make it to.
Saw an ad in the paper at the weekend for 'Underneath the Lintel', a one-man show starring Richard Schiff, that is starting a ten week run in London at the start of February.
A quick google finds a limited supply of reduced tickets available for shows up to the 20th Feb. Tickets are £39.50 afterwards, £20 beforewards.
Open iTunes/iPod or Windows Media Player to answer the following. Go to your library. Answer, no matter how embarrassing it is.
How many songs? 819 - Work PC
Arrange by artist: First artist: American Spring - Falling In Love Last artist: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Arrange by song: First Song: the Absence of God - Rilo Kiley Last Song: the ZooKeepers Boy - Mew
Arrange by time: Shortest item: The Midwest is the Best - Headlights (0:18) Longest item: MotherFucker=Redeemer (Part One) - Godspeed! You Black Emperor (21:22) Arrange by album:
First Album: 38 Carat Collection - Prefab Sprout Last Album: Yanqui UXO - Godspeed, again.
First song that comes up on shuffle: Stars And Stripes - Grant Lee Buffalo
How many songs come up when you search for "sex"? 1 How many songs come up when you search for "death"? 4 How many songs come up when you search for "love"? 26
Arrange by play count: Which is your most frequently played song? Old Dan Tucker - Bruce Springsteen
"On Saturday 6th May, legendary Australian singer songwriter Grant W McLennan died in his sleep at his home in Brisbane.
McLennan was one of Australia’s greatest songwriters who created an outstanding musical legacy as a founder member of The Go-Betweens and as a solo artist. He was enjoying enormous acclaim for the band’s most recent album Oceans Apart, which has received five star reviews around the world and won a prestigious ARIA award."
And that meme thing that's going around: Go to Wikipedia and put in your birth date. Don't put in the year. Post in your LJ with three neat/important events, two births, and two deaths!
18th July Events
64 - Great fire of Rome: A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control while Emperor Nero reportedly plays his lyre and sings while watching the blaze from a safe distance.
1536 - The authority of the Pope is declared void in England.
1872 - Britain introduces voting by secret ballot.
And lots of other stuff.
Births
1937 - Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (d. 2005)
1980 - Kristen Bell, American actress
Deaths
1988 - Nico, German-born model and singer (b. 1938)
2004 - Paul Foot, British journalist (b. 1937)
Apr. 7th, 2006 @ 08:27 pm
"list seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to."
I've loaded the shuffle with Buffalo Tom / Juliana, so there's a bias towards those.
Juliana Hatfield - Sellout / Get In Line Buffalo Tom - Mineral / Wiser Pavement - Starlings of the Slipstream Saturday Looks Good To Me - Alcohol Blake Babies - Temptation Eyes
And I can't tag anybody. If you read this, and you haven't already done it, and you feel you should, you're welcome.
Jan. 20th, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
Then : Three days in rural France, staying with Elaine's aunt and her collection of rescued animals, far from a trace of a mobile signal.
Now : Back in the office, one of the applications I support has been in a loop for about 20 hours, the new bloke has been sent home for the week cos there was nothing for him to do, and my manager has got a 'bee in his bonnet' about how much time I spend supporting one of the systems, despite me telling him before Christmas that I spend too much time supporting this system and him telling me there was nothing he could do.
Not especially glad to be back.
Jan. 18th, 2006 @ 10:47 am
A few weeks back, i realised that S4 of the West Wing was sitting on my shelf, unwatched and unloved, because I took umbrage at the slight change to the packaging design.
And so I sat myself down, and I watched, and I watched, and, on the whole, I enjoyed. Yes - you can see Sorkin is running on autopilot at times, his dialogue is nowhere near as snappy as before, the cast are sleepwalking, and it misses Rob Lowe.
But still - Jeremy from Sports Night - its pointless calling him anything else, I can hardly remember his name (its Will) does a fine job of standing in, assuming you take it as being Jeremy from Sports Night. Will is rubbish. And Toby, and Andy, and Huck and Molly. I had to dab a tear from my eye when they were holding his hand (it was dirt, in my eye, ok?)
So, boring terrorist stuff, but the characters are still holding in. Oh, Mary Louise Parker started off as very annoying, but by the end (ie, when she is talking to Donna, not Josh) she's verging on likeable.
Right - now I've got three stupid Amazon rental DVDs that I've been sitting on for weeks as they were the first three films I added to my list and the bloody goons sent them out the next day. First - All About Eve (my teacher at college is a bit of a Bette Davis fan)
Dec. 2nd, 2005 @ 07:34 pm
The Breeders All-Stars Line Up at Blackheath Halls on Saturday. Utterly brilliant. Not a very coherent review but it tells all.
Nov. 21st, 2005 @ 09:49 am
A slightly over serious review in the Independent - "The show combats urban alienation by inviting you to join in a rite of joyous infantile regression. Children and adolescents of all ages will have a ball." Really?
The Telegraph concludes - "But, during the spectacular and strangely beautiful grand finale, I looked around at a genuinely enraptured audience and couldn't begrudge them their millions."
I may even change my icon in tribute.
Nov. 15th, 2005 @ 09:10 pm
Gig last night. Went to the pub before strolling off to the gig. Paid our 6 quid, went into the bar. There was probably about ten other people in there, a few of them at the bar. 5 minutes after we got served, 4 of them left the bar to go onstage. They were the support band!
Didn't really pan out for the main band either. Was kinda weird being at a gig and feeling the eyes of the band on you every time you got up to go to the bar or the loo.
Getting called out in the middle of the night is no problem. 04:00, however, is the wrong time. After 30 minutes of looking at a PC screen, on the cusp of daylight, I couldn't get back to sleep, and so lay in bed listening to 'Wake up to Money' waiting for the alarm to sound.
No 'Trick or Treaters' last night. Whether this is purely down to my neighbourhood reputation as the crazy bloke who lives alone, or because I wasn't there for much of the evening, I don't know. I suspect it's more of the latter. Never mind - means I've got lots of sweets to eat.
Nov. 1st, 2005 @ 09:14 am
Working from home as my back is killing me, and I didn't think 50 miles in the car would do me any favours. Normally, I wouldn't care, but the flight to Cali on Saturday dictates that I do care.
But boy, that RAS connection is so slow. I can see outlook thinking whenever I ask it to do something, and then I can see it shrugging its shoulders when it finally gives up the ghost.
Saw Huckabees at the weekend - what a terrible film.
And I had my 'quarterly' appraisal yesterday. Moaned about being expected to support that SQL Server installation when I have no SQL Server training. "Do the training then" he said.
Strange man. If only it were that simple...
Sep. 29th, 2005 @ 10:30 am
Todays conundrum - how to get an 18Gb database and a 44Gb transaction log into 52 Gb of storage. Fuck knows, to be honest. Much thanks to Keith for creating the problem. !*$£
Sep. 22nd, 2005 @ 09:33 pm
So to college where, for reasons that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, I'm doing an AS Level in Film Studies. "If you all took the course now, you'd pass it", says our tutor, trying her best to deny the 'Exams are easier now' myth. And then she passes out a questionnaire, to stimulate discussion.
- Whats the last film you saw on DVD - Whats the last film you saw on TV - Whats the last British film you saw
I had to keep apologising for not having any answers. Good job they didn't throw in anything really difficult.
Sep. 21st, 2005 @ 10:26 pm
Specifically, playing "Its a Shame About Ray" in order. It's weird, I thought the fact that you knew what was coming up would kill it as rock gig, but if anything, the fact that everybody knows what's coming next intensifies things. There's not a lot of room for slack (hah) on that album, but when everybody knows that an underachiever like 'Kitchen', is going to get followed by 'Ceiling Fan In My Spoon' it kinda works for the performance.
Evan does Frank Mills solo, and its wonderful.
But then he carries on solo, and songs like 'Different Drum' & 'The Great Big No' are crying out for a rhythm section, and it all feels a little self-indulgent and reminds you of the fall of Dando in the mid-90s.
So as a precis of his 90s, it actually works quite well.
We get the powerpop indie-lite of one of the great (short) albums of the era, and we get the noodling that followed. Half-brilliant, half-underwhelming.
Sep. 16th, 2005 @ 10:49 am
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