Gregarius » Don't make eye contact

Don't make eye contact (10 unread)

Good day for media

Posted: November 29th, 2007, 7:14pm MST

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I love Futurama. Last night I saw the new Futurama film Bender's big score and was happy to see it lives up to expectations. I've got a few criticisms but generally brilliant. Actually my only criticism is that there was far too much of bringing in previously used characters, it sometimes felt like it got in the way of plot and funny although other times I loved the callbacks to previous episodes. It was full of funny moments and with a plot that actually worked out well over the entire story. I was expecting it to be more like several episodes stuck together since I know they're going to cut it up and show them as episodes. Now I can't wait til the next one!

I also got a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. I was so surprised to see it since I only read last night that it wasn't being released in the UK due to copyright problems (probably connected to James Bond being in it and being a total scummy bastard). I've read most of it now and it's a joy. Alan Moore constantly dazzles with his invention & creativity. This kind of project is perfect for him because one of his unique strengths seems to be being able to write in a massive array of different styles with the same skill rather than just mastering one or two. It's particularly tough to write authentic sounding Shakespeare but naturally he manages it. Of course now I have to spend a while reading the online commentaries to find out who half the characters are and marvelling at how well they all fit together in the story.
Just back from seeing Bill Bailey with ...

Posted: November 27th, 2007, 8:39pm MST

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Just back from seeing Bill Bailey with Andi and Susie. It was absolutely amazing. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurts! Andi & Susie got the tickets back in April and had to come all the way from Stoke and Dartford respectively and travelled back tonight and I'm sure they think that it was totally worth it.

The weekend was bloody good too with buddleia and i_kender down for the night. We saw The Darjeeling limited which while a little strangely cut was everything I love about Wes Anderson movies and played a lot with my Wii. God I hate Nintendo for naming it that.
Well I'm back from my tour of ...

Posted: November 20th, 2007, 8:35pm MST

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Well I'm back from my tour of such wild and wonderful places as Manningtree and Stoke on Trent. I haven't really had time to catch up on livejournal let since I got back but I'm hoping to do that tomorrow.

First I went out to Manningtree to visit Bob and Tracie. I got to go off to Ipswich one day which was pretty interesting. It really got me thinking about Monoculture since that town is a very distinct mix of old and new. I think that more and more we will find the same shops and high streets everywhere we go. It's a disturbing future.

At Manningtree station there is a little tower that is happily falling apart that I had a little poke around in.

Here is the inimitable Sai. She prepared some Apple pie which was exceedingly tasty and quite unexpected.

She also arranged a surprise for me. Last thursday we went up to the Monkey forest and out there there is an aerial assault course. Now this was an immensely fun experience. Also exceedingly terrifying. I was wearing my most slippery shoes, there had been a frost that morning. Generally these are not good conditions to traverse logs twenty feet up in the trees. Now I was determined to not fall with Sai there, she would never let me live that one down! Given that she does frequently mock my lack of balance it could be considered quite cruel to set me up like that but I like to think her motives were pure. Each little piece of the course had fresh challenges, there were many moments where I didn't think I'd be able to manage it but each time I somehow managed it. The funnest bit is right at the end when your line is hooked up to something and you jump off the edge of a 40ft drop. Sai tells me she's going to try to get a job there next summer, I think she'll fit right in.

We Saw Beowulf too. It's a good movie but there was something wrong with it and it took me a second viewing with Andi and Susie to work out what it was. The score is shit. I mean really really bad. So bad that it screws with the emotions of the film. It seems like a nitpick but to me that shows how important a good score is.

Andi, Susie and I also went out to my old homestead of Oswestry to see ravenshaw and go up to the Hill Fort there. Was brilliant to see Rob again and quite odd to see my old town. Lots of memories there, particularly regarding Katy and when we got together since we were wondering around near Katy's house and a couple of places we used to hang out when we first dated. It's scary to think how long ago that all is now.

But here are some pictures of us on swings!

And here are some pics of us all having fun on the Hill Fort.

It was all a fabulously fun and relaxing time and it was all quite depressing having to go back to work yesterday!
I'm off for a week now. I'm ...

Posted: November 11th, 2007, 8:49pm MST

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I'm off for a week now. I'm going to visit friends in Manningtree and then Stoke and won't be back till late next sunday.
In the meantime I'll leave you with a story. This is a true story apparently that I had never heard before today and has come up twice from different sources. I love that kind of coincidence and it makes me want to pass it on.
Back during the Napoleonic Wars, a French vessel is shipwrecked near the port of Hartlepool. The locals go on-board and the only survivor they find is a Sailor's pet monkey dressed in a little military jacket. Now the locals have never seen either a monkey or a Frenchman before so they come to the conclusion that it's a French spy. They hold a quick impromptu trial and the monkey is found guilty and hanged on the spot.
Since then the residents of Hartlepool are, to their own displeasure, nicknamed Monkey-hangers.
Burn him in a tub of tar! Burn him like a blazing star!

Posted: November 6th, 2007, 6:30pm MST

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You know in The Nightmare before Christmas where you have the different towns dedicated to the holidays? Well Lewes is like that when it comes to Guy Fawkes night. There are a bunch of different bonfire societies there and they have spent the entire year preparing. Best of all they compete with each other. It's a wonder Lewes has never been burnt to the ground.
It's a pain to get in and out of Lewes on the night because it's so crowded. It's 15 mins away from Brighton by Train but it was a good hour's travel including queueing for the train and longer to get back afterwards. Great fun if you like being crushed in a massive crowd. The crowds don't let up either. Last year I was literally trapped for two hours because I got caught in the epicentre of the festivities.
For a pyro like me it's all worth it though. There are folks with flaming torches everywhere, explosions, burning barrels, effigies, costumes, it's brilliant.
There were points where the parades were letting off strings of firecrackers so close and loud that I could feel my eardrums vibrating in my head.
After the parades I went up to the golf course over the town with a couple of friends I'd randomly met and we watched three separate fireworks displays. I've never seen any so technically accomplished. They were spectacular, one in particular left me with my jar dropped at how good it was with it's explosions within explosions.
All in all it's a massive effort to attend but well worth it. Next year though I want to go with someone.
Back from Lewes Bonfire night. A proper ...

Posted: November 5th, 2007, 9:02pm MST

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Back from Lewes Bonfire night. A proper post will follow but it was a fun time. Lewes is like one of those holiday towns from The Nightmare before christmas. It seems like they must spend the entire year preparing for the burn. But in the meantime I gacked this from the indupitable honeymink

For the first five people that reply to me and re-post this challenge, I will send you something. It might be something I've made, or something cool from my hidden stash; it might be a mix CD, or a rubber duck, a book I think you will enjoy, or something else that is awesome. Whatever it is, I promise that I will get it to you in 365 days or fewer. The only thing you need to do in order to participate is to be one of the first five to reply to this.
You know you're a geek when...

Posted: November 3rd, 2007, 9:24pm MST

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You get home at 2am on a Saturday night and it was because you saw a late night showing of Serenity and you can't imagine anything better!

Today was a good day. Started out with a wonderful package from honeymink which included some chocolate and an Annett Louisan CD of some very beautiful, sexy music. That had me grinning all day.
Tentacles and teeth!

Posted: October 29th, 2007, 5:16pm MST

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This is deeply freaky. It looks like a Shoggoth!
Well yesterday was a nice end to ...

Posted: October 29th, 2007, 4:40pm MST

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Well yesterday was a nice end to a great week. It was really good to see iscah93 again after so long

Here are a few pics from the night. The first is a father teaching his young daughter how to kill, her handgun skills were very impressive. The next is Sai bowling, naturally she got all strikes (at first I thought that she hadn't got any strikes but twenty minutes with a hammer and she persuaded me I'd just seen it wrong.) The third pictures is Sai with a serial killer we met. His shtick is that he beats people to death with their own feet. Charming fellow.

After playing on the Wii (Sai annoyingly started to be better at Wii tennis than me almost immediately, I hate it when she does that!) we went bowling and watched Stardust. Good to see it again, it's amazing how much the story is simplified from the book. It's a real shame that so many of the aspects I loved about the book are missing but at the same time it's clear why every decision was made and the creation of the Captain Shakespeare character is brilliant.

All in all a lovely time had by all. I'm really glad Sai and I have remained friends, it's so easy to lose touch with people when they move away. We also saw Jamie (who isn't really a serial killer as far as I know) which was cool too. Haven't seen him for a while either since he's extremely busy with working for his church 24/7 and to be honest given our wildly differing views on his fundamentalist beliefs and the fact that he life now consists of nothing but his church I haven't been trying to hang out with him. Frankly I think that in order to stay friends we may need to only meet with some sort of moderator to stop us discussing religion. Sai is good for that because she's always up for using violence.

Today has been slightly less fun with a trip to the doctors about an embarrassing diabetes related infection but that's all really TMI.
London Lip

Posted: October 27th, 2007, 12:56pm MST

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One time Selena went to a Neil Gaiman signing up in London, rozk had told him about her and he recognised her and chatted for a bit. She told me the whole experience turned her into a gibbering fangirl. At the time I told her it would take Alan Moore to do that to me and she agreed he could turn anyone into a gibbering fangirl. That was on my mind a lot yesterday when I went to see an event with Alan Moore in it and true to form I was in total gibbering fangirl mode.
The event itself was called London Lip and was a celebration of a book called London: City of disappearances which was edited by Iain Sinclair and included pieces by Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock who were there to discuss the themes of it, read from it and generally chat in front of an audience. There were also poetry from Brian Catling and some impressive singing from Kirsten Norrie.

rozk was there actually although I barely spoke to her since I was trying to hold in the aforementioned gibbering.

Of course I wasn't actually there because I'm an avid follower of psychogeography but really because Alan Moore is something of a hero to me. I believe him to be a true genius in that while there are many writers who are great in one or two styles he seems to be able to write with immense wit and insight in any style or medium. But more than that it's his integrity that I admire. If he'd wanted to he could have become a millionaire writing crowd pleasing stuff but he's always gone for writing things that are creative and meaningful and different. He doesn't want to be associated with bad adaptions of his work to the point that he will now no longer accept any money for any films based on his stories. So anyway, you've got the message, me big fan.

My first surprise was that he wasn't eight feet tall, distorting the space around him with his sheer present and occasionally engulfing careless passer bys in his beard. He was in disguise as a normal person with his hair tamed, wearing a dapper suit and only a singly occultish ring, a caduceus.

After the show they all did signings. It quickly became clear that most people were here for Alan Moore, even Michael Moorcock was being mostly passed by although all three of them signed the London book for me.

Melinda Gebbie was there too, sketching the three of them as they spoke. Unfortunately she left pretty quickly after it ended so I didn't get a chance to snag an autograph or tell her I loved Lost Girls.

But I managed to get a couple of things signed by Alan Moore. I don't really get those people who collect signatures online, etc. I mean surely the whole point is that it's a memory of meeting the person. It's always a dodgy thing to meet your heroes. Too often they can turn out to be assholes or, possibly worse, you can make a fool of yourself. Alan Moore is most definitely not an asshole. He came across as immensely affable and filled with kindness and good humour. It was a real honour to meet him.