The Running Man

Just finished watching The Running Man on TV - great action movie and a social commentary to boot. Gotta love those 80’s outfits and hairstyles.

Street Etiquette

Don’t you just hate it when you’re walking along the street in busy pedestrian traffic and people are just so rude? They don’t move an inch to facilitate your getting past them!! I was walking down Oxford St (that of Monopoly fame) a little while back and was getting very riled up by the amount of people virtually walking straight into me. Now granted that London is a busy place (over three million people are moved on the underground every day - that’s 75% of NZ’s population!), however, I still don’t see the harm in someone meeting you half way by moving over a foot (see I’m in England now so I’m reverting back to imperial measures) to allow the passing of both parties in relative ease – I was pretty angry and someone was going to get a dropped shoulder before too long!! Come to think of it most people down Oxford St are probably tourists – bloody foreigners.

Anyway, so it reminded me of the Oxford St incident yesterday when I was walking to work in the rain and had my umbrella up along with 95% of everyone else. Now funnily enough I generally don’t have too many complaints about the footpath etiquette of the people around where I work, as I think we are all in the same boat and just want to get where we are going. However, on a wet day the footpath’s useable space is immediately halved by the multitude of people with opened umbrellas and life becomes a jungle again. You really have to keep your wits about you in order to avoid losing an eye to an oncoming umbrella. So as always I tried to think of how this could be avoided and came upon the idea of either 1) extendable footpaths (probably not that feasible) or 2) transparent elongated umbrellas. Then again I thought why doesn’t everyone just wear a coat?

The Blog That Failed

So since my purchase of the Creative MP3 player I’ve been listening to a heap of music (mostly thanks to Levi). The majority is stuff that I am relatively familiar with, however, I’ve discovered a few new gems along the way. For example, I have a new found appreciation of Metallica who I’ve been a "passive" fan of for sometime now and saw in concert coming up a couple of years back. Now of course I’ve heard their albums from time to time but I’ve never really listened to them. However, having played Ride The Lightening, And Justice For All, Metallica (aka The Black Album), Load, and Reload for the past couple of weeks or so, I have come to the conclusions that:

1. they are up there with the great bands - some of the compositions and performances are just brilliant and they have a total synergy going on

2. I have greatly underestimated Kirk Hammett’s abilities as a lead guitarist (I think this is mostly due to his very average tone, although this has improved with the albums). Some of his work is fantastic – The Call Of Klutu and the absolutely gorgeous harmonised solo on My Friend of Misery to name but two.

It is also very interesting hearing the progression over the years from the early thrash metal of the first four albums (these don't sound nearly so "alternative" today as they did back in the 80's which illustrates the huge part that they, along with certain other bands, played in bringing heavy music into the mainstream, which in turn makes it easy to forget how groundbreaking it was at the time) to the classic rock sound of Load and Reload, which are both absolutely superb albums (although the hardcore fans may disagree).

The other thing with listening to music through headphones constantly is that, (besides probably contributing to speeding up my hearing loss) you hear all sorts of things that you normally miss by just listening to a stereo. The subtle vocal, bass, guitar, drum – whatever, lines that are “hidden” away low in the mix are brought out and add that little bit extra to songs that often you have been listening to for years without noticing. The production is also highlighted as the stereo effect is brought to life by our binaural senses.

Anyway so what’s my point? Well, it's that you can see things in a totally different light by changing the way you do something, it’s like an old painting in a new frame.

Another Weekend

Out after work on Friday with work people to Agenda – good night.  Chicken soup for dinner when I got home courtesy of Gem.  Spent the night on the couch.  

Quiet day in on Saturday until Gem, her friend and I went to an engagement party at Brogans in Fulham.  Few drinks, but not a very exciting night.

Up early to watch the 19th and final race of the 2005 Formula One Grand Prix, good race – I’ll blog more on this later.  Back to bed for a cat nap then organised tickets for Bon Jovi with a couple of friends for June next year.  The Wembley Stadium general admission tickets had sold out so we opted for the Southampton gig.  

Down to the Boathouse to meet the ex-flatmate who’s back in town from Brazil for a day or two on route back to Oz, meet some more new people and had a good time, was there a number of hours.  Then boring stuff like grocery shopping on the way home and that was another weekend gone just like that.

Quote of the Day

This is just classic!

Robbie Williams "I am the only man who can say he's been in Take That and at least two members of the Spice Girls"

The "British" Party

The biggest member at the party

The Weekend That Was

Met up after work on Friday night with some friends and some of their friends and so on – all in all a group of about 20 of us, and we did a Jack the Ripper guided tour walk, which was very cool and interesting. We found out quite a bit more about London both now and then – three million people inhabited the one square mile that is the City of London in 1888 - the year of the killings, as opposed to the ten thousand that live there now. The last part of the tour where we ended up would have been almost as it was back in 1888 with the cobbled streets and gas street lights etc. All this for only £5.

We finished the tour close to Brick Lane so about half the group went for that great ‘traditional’ English meal – the curry, which Brick Lane is famous for. We negotiated a 30% discount and free round of drinks, and had a few good laughs Left about 11.30pm and headed home, got home about 1am and had a phone call from Nona back home.

Saturday.
Met a couple of friends and went shopping for costumes for the British themed party tonight, scored an inflatable Big Ben as my costume while the others got theirs. Had Maccas for lunch and went to the scene of the party. Got the essentials i.e. beer and the party kicked off later that night. A great time was had by all, I only wish I had a pound for every time my Big Ben got squeezed. Stayed the night there on the couch – finally to sleep about 4am.

Sunday:
Bacon and eggs for breakfast from the very accommodating hosts and then watched a bit of the cricket - Aussie v The World X1, the third one dayer from Melbourne - Aussie absolutely kicked ass and won by 157 runs.

Hung around for the A1 Grand Prix from Germany, the Kiwi team did well again and came fourth in both races and are now tied for second with France in the overall competition, only one point behind Brazil, good stuff lads.

Headed home, grabbed some essential groceries on the way. Caught up with a couple of the flatties, watched an episode of that classic show Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em, which I haven’t seen for years, crashed out for a couple of hours from exhaustion. Watched Cocktail and then the F1 highlights – great race. Ahhh what an awesome weekend and now it’s back to work to recover.

Jimmy Jangles Will be Jealous Not Jovi-al

Bon Jovi are booked to open the re-built Wembley Stadium next year http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4296786.stm, I am so there, yes on my steel horse I'll ride. Jealous Jimmy Jangles? http://www.jimmyjangles.blogspot.com/