Stuff I have been doing
Mar. 6th, 2008 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeLast Friday I braved the train chaos and went to Preston to see ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nerdcakes and Juno. I was panicking because of the train CHAOS and ended up getting us to the cinema about an hour too early. We were going to go to Chiquito's so that I could have fried ice cream, but apparently everyone else had that idea too, so instead I dragged Sarah reluctantly to KFC because every time that awful advert about mum's night off has been on recently I have wanted their chicken, or more specifically the skin from their chicken. Now that I have had it I won't want it again for several years.
I really enjoyed Juno, mostly because of Ellen Page, who was wonderful. I liked Jennifer Garner in it too. I was pissed off at first because she looked like she was going to be a stereotypical uptight woman, but then it was fine. The dialogue at the beginning was a bit awful, but everyone was so good it faded away after a while.
On Saturday I went down to Manchester, where I had the nicest roast beef I have ever eaten in my entire life, along with roast carrots and beetroot and the best potato wedges of recent memory, and went to reclaim the night withirrtum. I was getting anxious about it, because as I have said I generally don't enjoy the marches, but this was really good, actually. They kept the chants going well enough that I didn't worry about it, and was able to join in as well. I didn't notice any negative reactions, and plenty of people clapping us as we went by. It had two sections - women-only march (including transwomen) at the front, and mixed supporters bringing up the rear. I think it was a really good way of doing it, and it worked well - about 400 people, I think they said on the f-word (where I also appear in severe profile in some pictures they posted). It was also shorter than London, and not as slow-moving, which is always a plus for lazy me. We marched past the very Spar where I went for help a few years ago after I'd been attacked, which also made the whole thing more meaningful for me.
We skipped the rally though, and went to see Margot at the Wedding instead. Then we went back to Rachel's and ate french fancies for supper and then for breakfast. In the afternoon we went to see My Blueberry Nights. I much preferred Margot, even though that was quite odd. Nicole Kidman did a great awful mother. There were a lot of shots of very white underwear. I was surprised at how good I thought Jack Black was (until the end, though). I didn't like My Blueberry Nights at all, really, although I enjoyed Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz in it. Jude Law's accent was just bizarre, Norah Jones was irritating, and why on earth would anyone leave their keys in a cafe?
On Tuesday I went to a Fair Trade comedy thing withnerdcakes, who is great to go to comedy things with because she will cheer for things she likes even if no-one else does. I am always cowardly and wait to see if other people are making noise before venturing any noise of even moderate committal. This time she cheered for both Liverpool and Fair Trade fortnight, which are actually good things to cheer for.
It was good, only £3 and in a pub with cheapish wine. There were three comedians and a compere. The compere was very odd about...well, just very odd altogether actually. He found out that two men at the back were a plasterer and a brickie and said "you could build a house!" as if that would have likely never have occurred to either of them and thus be hilarious. It wasn't. He was okay though, and I had a good night. I liked the first comedian, who I think was called Dan Atkinson, best. He tried to rile up rivalries from the wars of the roses, having lived in York, saying that York was better because it had a Minster, and all we had was a borderline crack problem. (We do also have a cathedral, but it's not a particularly stunning example of ecclesiastical architecture, to be honest.) The middle guy was from South Africa, and told us very London-centric jokes. Like the 7/7 bombers being silly for relying on the punctuality of whichever line it was - why on earth would we know the efficacy of public transport in a city we don't live in? Also, I think that we could possibly stop with the pseudo-patriotic "aren't we great for the way we react to terrorism" crap now. Though he did mention that when he did his jokes in America he was booed for making jokes about terrorism, and when he did them in the UK he was booed for having shit jokes, which did make me come over all nationalistic. The third guy had a guitar. He sang a song about killing Howard from the Halifax adverts which made me a bit sad because I think Howard from the Halifax adverts seems quite nice, and I don't understand the hatred. He also kept telling us to "keep up" when we didn't laugh enough at what he said. Grr. But anyway, I'm pleased that there's comedy I don't have to stay overnight to see, and plan to go again.
Today I went to see Banter being recorded, which I really enjoyed. The series starts in April, and I'm not sure where this comes in.
It was at the Drill Hall, which was easy enough. I timed myself walking from Euston to see how long I needed to get back in time for my last train, and it was almost exactly 15 minutes. As it seemed that the next recording started at 7pm, this seemed fine.
At the start the panellists were giggling and peering out from behind a curtain while Andrew Collins (who looks far too much like Mark Steel to be allowed) talked to us about Elvis's last meal, for no reason that I can tell.
The panellists were:
Jenny Eclair
(whose introduction included that she was supported by men who went on to be more famous than her, had been in the Vagina Monologues, and was replaced by Britt Ekland in Grumpy Old Women)
Richard Herring
(whose introduction included that he had script edited the most racist series of Little Britain, and been Someone the Shepherd in a BBC series)
Chris Addison
(whose introduction included that everything he'd ever been involved in stopped after one series before it got stale, also a joke about The Thick of It, not having Chris Langham in it, not even in the first series, oh no, it didn't even have a first series actually)
Will Smith
(whose introduction was mainly about all the Will Smiths he wasn't)
Which was quite pleasing. Richard Herring was wearing a stripy jumper and had good hair, though he kept peering peevishly at the audience, which was slightly off-putting. The last time I saw Jenny Eclair I was not terribly in favour, but she was much calmer on this, and I liked her a lot. She got given feminist points at one stage for something I can't properly recall about Adam and Eve. Also pointed out that, if they were saying that The Bash Street Kids weren't terribly representative if they only had one girl, that comedy hadn't got much further as there were four men and one woman.
The rounds were
1) dances
2) fictional schoolkids
3) haircuts
4) things you find in the drawers underneath the cutlery drawer
Jenny Eclair's top dances started with contemporary interpretive dance done by middle aged women in their vest and pants, which led to Chris Addison regaling us with an anecdote about sharing a flat with Jenny in Edinburgh and someone's towel smelling disgusting because she kept burning bacon. It made much more sense not written down, but the main point was that she was constantly in vest and pants. Someone else's favourite dance included the cossack leg thing, and then there was an argument about whether you would be shot for not doing the cossack thing or for doing it, and Chris said that what seemed to have happened was that two people who knew very little about history were trying to stretch out their knowledge rather than back down. V true.
I was very pleased with Jenny Eclair in the fictional schoolkids round, because she jumped straight in with Darrell Rivers, and said that we would all have liked to go to Malory Towers and share a scrubby towel with her after swimming in the sea. She mentioned the Twins at St Clare's but couldn't remember their names - I did not tell her what they were (Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan!) but half felt that I should. Richard Herring chose Lynda Day from Press Gang, who is indeed a rather wonderful fictional schoolkid, but Chris Addison said it wasn't fair to pick her because Richard ended up going out with Julia Sawahla. Apparently she never, at any point in their relationship, produced a newspaper or even an articlei, which was a great disappointment. At some point during this round it was decided that Richard had an unhealthy interest in women far younger than him, and this became a, rather sick at times, running joke. As part of this, Will Smith guessed that Richard would have "pigtails" as one of his top three haircuts". He did not. What he did have, and what was very great and only slightly tragic (and normally Richard Herring is entirely the other way round), was Stewart Lee's hair from 1996 when it was sort of spidery and flopped in his face. (It was GREAT HAIR. I remember it well.) Then he went on to blame that hair for the downward turn of his career.
For the, frankly bizarre, things you find in the drawers underneath your cutlery drawer, Richard Herring had brought in some penis shaped cocktail sticks, which he distributed amongst the panel. Chris Addison used one to clean out his ear, and Will Smith pointed out that, if trimmed appropriately, they would be good for Action Men.
The audience bit where the people have to say what their favourite [whatever] is and see if it matches the audience was planets. I chose Mercury, which came absolute bottom. They said when they were doing it that it was the favourite planet except Uranus, but they didn't tell me that when I was asked. Perhaps I look like the sort of person that rises above such peurile behaviour. Chris Addison and Jenny Eclair talked very loudly over each other for a bit about the status of Pluto. Saturn won, Earth was second. I don't know why I chose Mercury, except that I quite like the metal. And also it's the first one, and gets overlooked a lot, so it's like helping the underdog, as evidenced by the results of the survey. Oh, and someone said "the sun" and Chris Addison was indignant because Andrew Collins said it was all right, and it manifestly was not all right. That was what I liked so much. It was geeky without feeling that they had to be apologetic about it, and also without people pretending that PERFECTLY NORMAL THINGS were geeky. Liking Star Wars is not a sign of your great geekiness, it is merely pedestrian. (I was once at a conference where someone claimed to be a Star Trek geek, and then referred to Dr Spock. I nearly died from vicarious embarrassment.)
It ended at 19.20, which meant that, despite an uncomfortably full bladder, I had to set off at top speed to Euston to try and catch the Last Train. I was successful, and in fact had to loiter while thinking of deserts, crackers and the like until they put up the platform.
nerdcakes and Juno. I was panicking because of the train CHAOS and ended up getting us to the cinema about an hour too early. We were going to go to Chiquito's so that I could have fried ice cream, but apparently everyone else had that idea too, so instead I dragged Sarah reluctantly to KFC because every time that awful advert about mum's night off has been on recently I have wanted their chicken, or more specifically the skin from their chicken. Now that I have had it I won't want it again for several years.I really enjoyed Juno, mostly because of Ellen Page, who was wonderful. I liked Jennifer Garner in it too. I was pissed off at first because she looked like she was going to be a stereotypical uptight woman, but then it was fine. The dialogue at the beginning was a bit awful, but everyone was so good it faded away after a while.
On Saturday I went down to Manchester, where I had the nicest roast beef I have ever eaten in my entire life, along with roast carrots and beetroot and the best potato wedges of recent memory, and went to reclaim the night with
irrtum. I was getting anxious about it, because as I have said I generally don't enjoy the marches, but this was really good, actually. They kept the chants going well enough that I didn't worry about it, and was able to join in as well. I didn't notice any negative reactions, and plenty of people clapping us as we went by. It had two sections - women-only march (including transwomen) at the front, and mixed supporters bringing up the rear. I think it was a really good way of doing it, and it worked well - about 400 people, I think they said on the f-word (where I also appear in severe profile in some pictures they posted). It was also shorter than London, and not as slow-moving, which is always a plus for lazy me. We marched past the very Spar where I went for help a few years ago after I'd been attacked, which also made the whole thing more meaningful for me.We skipped the rally though, and went to see Margot at the Wedding instead. Then we went back to Rachel's and ate french fancies for supper and then for breakfast. In the afternoon we went to see My Blueberry Nights. I much preferred Margot, even though that was quite odd. Nicole Kidman did a great awful mother. There were a lot of shots of very white underwear. I was surprised at how good I thought Jack Black was (until the end, though). I didn't like My Blueberry Nights at all, really, although I enjoyed Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz in it. Jude Law's accent was just bizarre, Norah Jones was irritating, and why on earth would anyone leave their keys in a cafe?
On Tuesday I went to a Fair Trade comedy thing with
nerdcakes, who is great to go to comedy things with because she will cheer for things she likes even if no-one else does. I am always cowardly and wait to see if other people are making noise before venturing any noise of even moderate committal. This time she cheered for both Liverpool and Fair Trade fortnight, which are actually good things to cheer for. It was good, only £3 and in a pub with cheapish wine. There were three comedians and a compere. The compere was very odd about...well, just very odd altogether actually. He found out that two men at the back were a plasterer and a brickie and said "you could build a house!" as if that would have likely never have occurred to either of them and thus be hilarious. It wasn't. He was okay though, and I had a good night. I liked the first comedian, who I think was called Dan Atkinson, best. He tried to rile up rivalries from the wars of the roses, having lived in York, saying that York was better because it had a Minster, and all we had was a borderline crack problem. (We do also have a cathedral, but it's not a particularly stunning example of ecclesiastical architecture, to be honest.) The middle guy was from South Africa, and told us very London-centric jokes. Like the 7/7 bombers being silly for relying on the punctuality of whichever line it was - why on earth would we know the efficacy of public transport in a city we don't live in? Also, I think that we could possibly stop with the pseudo-patriotic "aren't we great for the way we react to terrorism" crap now. Though he did mention that when he did his jokes in America he was booed for making jokes about terrorism, and when he did them in the UK he was booed for having shit jokes, which did make me come over all nationalistic. The third guy had a guitar. He sang a song about killing Howard from the Halifax adverts which made me a bit sad because I think Howard from the Halifax adverts seems quite nice, and I don't understand the hatred. He also kept telling us to "keep up" when we didn't laugh enough at what he said. Grr. But anyway, I'm pleased that there's comedy I don't have to stay overnight to see, and plan to go again.
Today I went to see Banter being recorded, which I really enjoyed. The series starts in April, and I'm not sure where this comes in.
It was at the Drill Hall, which was easy enough. I timed myself walking from Euston to see how long I needed to get back in time for my last train, and it was almost exactly 15 minutes. As it seemed that the next recording started at 7pm, this seemed fine.
At the start the panellists were giggling and peering out from behind a curtain while Andrew Collins (who looks far too much like Mark Steel to be allowed) talked to us about Elvis's last meal, for no reason that I can tell.
The panellists were:
Jenny Eclair
(whose introduction included that she was supported by men who went on to be more famous than her, had been in the Vagina Monologues, and was replaced by Britt Ekland in Grumpy Old Women)
Richard Herring
(whose introduction included that he had script edited the most racist series of Little Britain, and been Someone the Shepherd in a BBC series)
Chris Addison
(whose introduction included that everything he'd ever been involved in stopped after one series before it got stale, also a joke about The Thick of It, not having Chris Langham in it, not even in the first series, oh no, it didn't even have a first series actually)
Will Smith
(whose introduction was mainly about all the Will Smiths he wasn't)
Which was quite pleasing. Richard Herring was wearing a stripy jumper and had good hair, though he kept peering peevishly at the audience, which was slightly off-putting. The last time I saw Jenny Eclair I was not terribly in favour, but she was much calmer on this, and I liked her a lot. She got given feminist points at one stage for something I can't properly recall about Adam and Eve. Also pointed out that, if they were saying that The Bash Street Kids weren't terribly representative if they only had one girl, that comedy hadn't got much further as there were four men and one woman.
The rounds were
1) dances
2) fictional schoolkids
3) haircuts
4) things you find in the drawers underneath the cutlery drawer
Jenny Eclair's top dances started with contemporary interpretive dance done by middle aged women in their vest and pants, which led to Chris Addison regaling us with an anecdote about sharing a flat with Jenny in Edinburgh and someone's towel smelling disgusting because she kept burning bacon. It made much more sense not written down, but the main point was that she was constantly in vest and pants. Someone else's favourite dance included the cossack leg thing, and then there was an argument about whether you would be shot for not doing the cossack thing or for doing it, and Chris said that what seemed to have happened was that two people who knew very little about history were trying to stretch out their knowledge rather than back down. V true.
I was very pleased with Jenny Eclair in the fictional schoolkids round, because she jumped straight in with Darrell Rivers, and said that we would all have liked to go to Malory Towers and share a scrubby towel with her after swimming in the sea. She mentioned the Twins at St Clare's but couldn't remember their names - I did not tell her what they were (Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan!) but half felt that I should. Richard Herring chose Lynda Day from Press Gang, who is indeed a rather wonderful fictional schoolkid, but Chris Addison said it wasn't fair to pick her because Richard ended up going out with Julia Sawahla. Apparently she never, at any point in their relationship, produced a newspaper or even an articlei, which was a great disappointment. At some point during this round it was decided that Richard had an unhealthy interest in women far younger than him, and this became a, rather sick at times, running joke. As part of this, Will Smith guessed that Richard would have "pigtails" as one of his top three haircuts". He did not. What he did have, and what was very great and only slightly tragic (and normally Richard Herring is entirely the other way round), was Stewart Lee's hair from 1996 when it was sort of spidery and flopped in his face. (It was GREAT HAIR. I remember it well.) Then he went on to blame that hair for the downward turn of his career.
For the, frankly bizarre, things you find in the drawers underneath your cutlery drawer, Richard Herring had brought in some penis shaped cocktail sticks, which he distributed amongst the panel. Chris Addison used one to clean out his ear, and Will Smith pointed out that, if trimmed appropriately, they would be good for Action Men.
The audience bit where the people have to say what their favourite [whatever] is and see if it matches the audience was planets. I chose Mercury, which came absolute bottom. They said when they were doing it that it was the favourite planet except Uranus, but they didn't tell me that when I was asked. Perhaps I look like the sort of person that rises above such peurile behaviour. Chris Addison and Jenny Eclair talked very loudly over each other for a bit about the status of Pluto. Saturn won, Earth was second. I don't know why I chose Mercury, except that I quite like the metal. And also it's the first one, and gets overlooked a lot, so it's like helping the underdog, as evidenced by the results of the survey. Oh, and someone said "the sun" and Chris Addison was indignant because Andrew Collins said it was all right, and it manifestly was not all right. That was what I liked so much. It was geeky without feeling that they had to be apologetic about it, and also without people pretending that PERFECTLY NORMAL THINGS were geeky. Liking Star Wars is not a sign of your great geekiness, it is merely pedestrian. (I was once at a conference where someone claimed to be a Star Trek geek, and then referred to Dr Spock. I nearly died from vicarious embarrassment.)
It ended at 19.20, which meant that, despite an uncomfortably full bladder, I had to set off at top speed to Euston to try and catch the Last Train. I was successful, and in fact had to loiter while thinking of deserts, crackers and the like until they put up the platform.
