No, I’m not desperate, but still, I’d Do Anything!

[Written Sunday 27 April 2008]

OK, so I’ve just sat down to watch this week’s (26th April) ‘I’d Do Anything’ and I am feeling rather mixed about it. Although there were a few fantastic performances this week, I feel that there were far too many duff performances for this stage of the competition.

The worst performance by far had to be Niamh’s cover of ‘Valerie’…

Out of tune, an ‘attitude’ that stunk, painful and the choreography made me cringe terribly! She made a lot of progress with me last week; however I think that she’s just gone and undone it now and she’d be my choice to leave this week to be honest.

Sarah is going from strength to strength – WOW! I’d now place her as my number 1 choice to be Nancy!

Samantha was absolutely awesome at belting out ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ and really gave it some welly! Alas, the BBC have yet to put a clip of her up on YouTube it would appear.

Jodie stunned me – a real mature performance for once and she proved she’s got a fabulous set of lungs on her! I hated 9 to 5 last week, I thought she massacred it, but her version of “I Have Nothing” was believable, powerful and emotive! Another strong contender!

As for Jessie, I’m not raving about her so much at the moment. She needs another ‘One Night Only’ to get back to my good spot me thinks. Ashley now seems a lost cause… her performance this week was bland, unrecognisable and forgettable. Such a pity as I really do like her. That said, I would still hope that she’d be there next week.

The Olivers did one of my favourite songs from Annie (Hard-Knock life) which I really enjoyed too. Chester is probably my fave Oliver thus far and perhaps one of the least ‘weird’ hehe.

Written Monday 28 April 2008

Finally had chance to watch the results show, and I was not particularly surprised at the bottom two. I must confess that I was routing for Niamh to go initially, however I can see why, after 4 ‘bottom two’s’ that Keisha had to be dropped - especially when she’d consistently been the least popular Nancy and thus was really taking up another girl’s place.

Their sing-off on The Rose was awesome and moved me somewhat. It also helped to convince me that Niamh should stay this week, despite the fact that I really dislike her fringe!

In all my time of being infactuated with everything ALW related (not in a perverse/weird sense though!) I’ve never seen or heard of the Lord coming across as annoyed as this though – I couldn’t tell at first if he made an early exit at the end due to his anger or just another of his ill-timed TV moments (such as his faces and pointing hehe). It was only when I saw the close-ups on YouTube that I saw the sense of fury that was spread across his face that I realised how ticked-off he seemed!

Something else clicked with me this evening too, and that being that Cameron Mackintosh probably has a lot more involvement in Andrew’s decisions than the Lord himself. As we all know, the theatre production is Cameron’s and Andrew’s merely fronting the TV show for him – and so it stands to reason that Cameron should be making the executive decisions really. I would presume that the results show is now on a Sunday for a few reasons; on the surface due to the voting fiasco that normally surrounds these things, weird scheduling reasons at the BBC  (e.g. Russell T Davies is rumoured to be very unhappy at the random placing of Doctor Who this season) and also so that Cameron has chance to review the show and share his thoughts with Andrew prior to the sing-off. I also think that would explain why Andrew decided to save Ashley last week, despite doling out some of the harshest critique that I’ve seen him give. Maybe I have an over-active imagination, but one cannot help thinking that Cameron is certainly pulling strings at a very high level, despite his reluctance to appear on the TV show.

QI; Quite Interesting!

Without a doubt, QI is one of my favourite TV programmes and has been since it first started. However, this week’s episode had to be one of the best ones yet! I caught it on BBC iPlayer and had to pause it so many times as I nearly fell of the bed laughing!

The highlight of this week’s show has to be the introduction of the Manakin Bird to the wider public.

So so funny hehehe!

Last week’s on-going mirth about eating NOTHING BUT rabbit also had me in stitches (essentially, if you eat NOTHING BUT rabbit you will die, an idea that the panelists simply couldn’t understand hehe).

The theme tune to this show is also absolutely awesome – I really need to find an .mp3 version of it, I love it that much hehe.

Long may Stephen Fry reign over us!

The Witches of Eastwick

… flying onto a regional theatrical stage near you!

THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK

And yes, it is based on the excellent book by John Updike and was turned into a film that had Cher in it…  which obviously I adored too hehe!

I am terribly excited about this! It was all announced back in December 2007, however I’ve only just remembered about it and so thought I’d blog to share my enthusiasm for a show which for one reason or another hasn’t ever really been in favour with the critics or the theatre-going public. They’ve even pretty much disbanded the official website on the Cameron Mackintosh website, and there’s seemingly no media or photographs to speak of online whatsoever - grr.

Alas I was too young to catch this show when it was playing in the West End of London at the start of the millennium, though that didn’t stop me devouring all of the TV appearances that the cast did, and playing my soundtrack over and over until it broke!

Few sample clips of the musical score are linked below;

Overture

Eastwick Knows

Make Him Mine

I Love A Little Town

The touring production, which is sweeping most of the larger regional Live Nation theatres (and a few independants) over the course of Summer 2008 – Spring 2009, will also star Marti Pellow (of Wet Wet Wet fame). Given his popularity in the countless touring productions of Chicago, I have a feeling that he may be what this production needs to get bums on seats.

Unfortunately, they’ve not announced the casting of the three ‘witches’ yet; though I will always be gutted that I never got to see Maria Friedman performing as Sukie! (

Tickets are available from Ticketmaster (shameless plug – you’re forced to buy them from us hehe)

I think I may have to arrange a trip back home in October especially to see this production – THAT is how obsessed I am with it hehe!

UPDATE - More info just posted on Whatsonstage! and I LOVE the new logo that they have for the show!

Thanks for reading and hopefully someone out there will share my enthusiasm for this awesome show! hehe xx

 

Random YouTubeness

Yes, I know this is a rather dated clip now, however I’ve decided to change the video on my Thingbox profile and the decision was a rather reluctant one… therefore rather than just letting my memory of this clip slide into oblivion I figured I’d just blog it so it remains with me for all eternity hehe.

_{I think the guy in the purple has a lovely bum (blush)}

The next clip has been widely posted already by some of my friends and I also came across it the other day though I have just taken ages to get round to blogging it hehe – it’s in reference to the London Mayoral Elections of 2008 and based on an interview/debate between Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick as heard on Newsnight. It’s the bit at the end with the musical instruments that really cracks me up hehe.

Returning to Thingbox, my new video was going to be the Going for Gold theme tune;

BUT, the whole song is here and is probably what I will put on my profile instead I think!

My other choice, which will be my next posted video I think, was the Channel 4 Schools ident from the days of yesteryear…

The music and the spinny thing were just SO catchy! Even now, ten years on, I’m still humming along to it!

Finally, I presume that most people caught the clip of the man who was caught in a lift for 41 hours about 10 years ago (though the footage has only just been released). How scary must that have been for him, I’m not quite sure that I would have coped as well as he did! He did, however, receive a substantial payout for his ordeal, which I think he rightfully deserved. Double click on the YouTube clip and click on ‘more info’ at the side of the clip to get the full story.

I also like the fact that if you click on”statistics and data” on a YouTube clip, it can show you every site that links into the clip – very cool to check out likeminded people! 

Thanks for trawling through my randomness! xx

Brief comment on I’d Do Anything

Wow - last week (20th April) saw them performing what I thought was the best group performance thus far…

Fabulous choreography, though God knows why they included Graham Norton and that rolling pin hehe!!

Performances of the week go to;

Sarah – Midnight Train To Georgia (Gladys Knight)

I think her performance style matured so much this week and she really nailed the song – a serious contender now maybe – good on ya girl!

Samantha – Hurt (Christina Aguilera)

WOW is all I can say! I had started to panic when I heard that this song was chosen to show emotion, predicting ham overacting and the like, but I think Samantha really did pull it off well and I was somewhat moved to be honest!

I was so surprised to find Ashley in the sing-off along side Francesca, and I am glad that the right person left the show this week.

I SOOOOOOO can’t wait for the weekend – whoop!

Thanks for reading xx

PS – I just found a clip of the trailer for this show (which I hadn’t seen before) and so figured I’d post that too hehe!

On a Saturday in Manchester

So, last Saturday (19th April) was the long awaited trip back home to Manchester with Stu. How exciting!

We booked the train tickets weeks ago so as to get them for a decent price, although as engineering works occur on the West Coast Mainline every weekend, the journey took four hours each way instead of the usual two. That said, the journey wasn’t particularly arduous and didn’t feel too bad fortunately.

Saying that, 5am in the morning was when we had to get up to get ready to get to Euston and catch the train! So slightly arduous perhaps, but perhaps what upset me more was that my computer totally died when I fired it up and appeared to have totally wiped itself (fortunately over the past two days I’ve been able to restore most of it!).

Anyways, we got to Piccadilly Station, Manchester at 11:30 and quickly hopped onto the Metrolink to Salford Quays. Metrolink proved a really good way to show Stu most of the sights of Manchester city centre and was the most efficient way of getting down to the Quays.

                    

… and yes, that is a picture of me being butch with Old Trafford in the background hehe!

We’d come down to the Quays so that we could go to the Lowry Centre (LS Lowry is my favourite artist) and also to the Imperial War Museum North.

First off, the Lowry Centre…

   

We fond the Lowry to be OK, but to me it seemed to be missing a good number of his works which was somewhat disappointing. Either way, we had to dash anyway so we wouldn’t really have had time for much more what with our schedule and all that.

Instead of walking over the bridge between the Lowry and Imperial War Museum North, I decided to float!

The Imperial War Museum North came next… it’s yet another a fab metal structure, though it also houses a tower too, which was awesome – some of the camera shots from the peak of it are posted below. I was so impressed with myself, I walked over a really high metal grill walkway that you could see right through without freaking out hehe!

       

As these were museums, they were also free (though they do ask for a small donation if you wish to give one). I would definitely say that both were worth the time and donation! The Imperial War Museum also had a cool audio-visual show which we caught in the main gallery – very captivating!

After this, we headed back to the city centre via the Metrolink and grabbed some lunch from Greggs (a fine northern institution!).

I needed to purchase some new shoes, so we hit the Arndale Centre and I managed to spend £70 on Converse shoes! Normally I’m only a “I’ll pay no more than £20 for shoes and never mind if they wear out soon” kinda guy, and so this was a huge deal for me hehe!  I managed to get two pairs for that price…

 

Very chuft with them! I just need to figure out how to waterproof them and then they’ll be accompanying me out to places!

After that, we headed down to Canal Street as Stu’d never been to the Gay Village before. We had a quick wander up and I showed him all of the ’sights’ of the Manchester gay scene. And NO, not like that! Filth! P

I’d booked us into Velvet on Canal Street for dinner which was absolutely lovely and very reasonably priced! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! We had a good ol’ natter, some nice wine, lovely food and thus really enjoyed it!

There was just time for a quick nip into Clone Zone together before we had to dash off back to the train. On the way back, I took him past the new Piccadilly Basin development. We found these really cool blue things/water feature next to the new GMPTE HQ…

   

Some random kind lady offered to take a picture of Stu and I over at the blue feature, however London seems to have rubbed off on me and I politely declined her offer – though on reflection it would have been nice if we’d had a nice picture together next to the blue things… that said, I’m glad I still have my camera I guess!!

The train back was pretty dull and uneventful, and it was with big smiles and a sense of utter exhaustion that a very tired and weary Mr Gari and Mr Stu flopped into bed shortly after midnight having thoroughly enjoyed our Manchester adventure.

Thanks for reading xx

Last.fm

OK, so some of you may have noticed the last.fm feed that I have on the bottom of my blog, and also on a few of my profile sites. I get one or two messages a week asking about it, and so I figured that I’d share the genius of this gadget for anyone who’s currently unaware of it.

What is Last.fm? [taken from the FAQ's at Last.fm]

Last.fm is a service that keeps track of what music you listen to, and then produces a large number of features personalised to you.

Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

Once you’ve signed up and downloaded Last.fm, you can scrobble songs you listen to on your computer or iPod automatically. Start scrobbling yourself, and see what artists you really listen to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see.

Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.

You can use Last.fm to listen to music, find out about artists you may like, other people with similar music taste, gigs in your local area, charts and quilts for your personal site, as well as much more.

Simply put, this is a fab application which I highly recommend procuring, especially as it’s free to download and run! It’s an amazing way of keeping track of your listening habits and sharing them with friends. Each week, I am going to post my Last.fm charts to my blog I think so that we can see how awful my music tastes are hehe! Rather than go back over historical data, the info below is for the week ending Sunday 13th April 2008.

Thanks for reading! xx

****************************

Full listing available HERE

   1    Mika – Happy Ending  6
 
   2     Sweet Charity -Rhythm of Life Broadway Cast  2
 
   2     Queen – I Want to Break Free    2
 
   4     Will Young – Out of My Mind     1
 
   4     Hi Tack – Say Say Say (Waiting 4 U)    1
 
   4     Freemasons – Love on My Mind (King Unique remix)    1
 
   4     Queen – Play the Game   1
 
   4    Girls Aloud – The Show    1
 
   4     Billie Ray Martin – Honey (Queen B Full Length Mix)   1
 
   4     Meat Loaf – Kiss Is A Terrible Thing To Waste    1
 
   4     DHT – Listen To Your Heart    1
 
   4     Boyzone – Picture Of You – Boyzone    1
 
   4    Kylie Minogue – Your Disco Needs   1
 
   4     Janet & Rocky – Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me    1
 
   4    Pink – Don’t Let Me Get Me   1
 
   4    Kylie Minogue – I Believe in You    1
 
   4     Brad; Janet; Riff-Raff & Company – Over at the Frankenstein Place  1
 
   4    Elton John – Crocodile Rock 1

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[Meg:]
If there’s a prize for rotten judgement
I guess I’ve already won that
No man is worth the aggravation
That’s ancient history, been there, done that!

[Muses:] Who’d'ya think you’re kiddin’
He’s the Earth and heaven to you
Try to keep it hidden
Honey, we can see right through you
Girl, ya can’t conceal it
We know how ya feel and
Who you’re thinking of

[Meg:]
No chance, no way
I won’t say it, no, no

[Muses:]
You swoon, you sigh
why deny it, uh-oh

[Meg:]
It’s too cliche
I won’t say I’m in love

I thought my heart had learned its lesson
It feels so good when you start out
My head is screaming get a grip, girl
Unless you’re dying to cry your heart out
Oh

[Muses:]
You keep on denying
Who you are and how you’re feeling
Baby, we’re not buying
Hon, we saw ya hit the ceiling
Face it like a grown-up
When ya gonna own up
That ya got, got, got it bad

[Meg:]
No chance, now way
I won’t say it, no, no

[Muses:]
Give up, give in
Check the grin you’re in love

[Meg:]
This scene won’t play,
I won’t say I’m in love

[Muses:]
You’re doin flips read our lips
You’re in love

[Meg:]
You’re way off base
I won’t say it
Get off my case
I won’t say it

[Muses:]
Girl, don’t be proud
It’s O.K. you’re in love

[Meg:]
Oh
At least out loud,
I won’t say I’m in love

xx

BBC News Idents

So, once again the BBC have over-hauled their idents for the BBC News service.

You have to view the whole clip to get to see everything, it’s a North-West clip as I’m a North-West lad hehe!

If you’re geeky like me, you may also like this one, as it has the countdown on it too!

I like the new ident quite a lot, there’s nothing offensive/objectionable about it, and I think the white is a nice contrast to the old red version (though I still can’t believe that this particular ident strain is around 10 years old!). Bit of a mix between the initial post BBC re-branding ident of 1997 and some of the more recent idents – a good jumble I think.

Below is a link to a series of clips of the BBC idents through the years and how they’ve changed. Is it bad that I can recall most of these?! hehe!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7355722.stm

Finally, who could end a post about BBC News idents without posting a clip from the fabulous Bill Bailey? This one cracks me up every time D

 

Politics, voting and other such bumf!

For some reason, despite many friends receiving their postal votes for the upcoming London elections this morning, I only got the big bulky guide of how to vote, and not my postal voting slip. Gah!

I have no idea about how the London Assembley elections work (or even the Assembly itself!!), and after reading their guide, I am still pretty much non-the-wiser! I don’t know if I should just vote Labour as I usually agree with all their principals, or else not vote in the Assemblies so as not to risk diluting the vote with ignorance… hmm! I think I will research my Labour candidate further and probably vote for her unless she’s said anything too objectionable.

Back on the subject of the more exciting London Mayoral Elections, I must confess that the pamphlet and the idea of the supplimentary voting system were mucho confusing at 8:30am…especially for a northerner where we all vote Labour anyways. Two votes?! Argh, my eyes are bleeding!

Still, at least the postie got the right door for once! Plus I like the way that London brands it’s election process as “London Elects” – I think that puts a good spin on it and makes it more accessible to those who perhaps would not vote otherwise.

I have just read said booklet properly, and wasn’t particularly impressed with the bulk of my options, though I do understand the SV voting methodology much better now.

Having said that, my first impressions are that it may have changed who’s getting my first and second votes, which I wasn’t expecting it to do!

The BNP’s pitch made me laugh out loud… “I will make sure that people like you – the real Londoners are put first”… (he bolded the Londoners bit) technically I’m Mancunian but I’m still eligable to vote… the buffoon! 

Their supporting quotes are laughable too.. one ‘student’ is blatantly referencing Irish elections; “I’m voting BNP because I’m Irish and the BNP are the only party that cares about the indigenous people of these islands”

According to ‘Housewife’ “only the BNP have policies which keep our children safe”… incredibly short-sighted!

The Christian Voice proposal was pure bumf, no substance to it at all, and Brian Paddick’s pitch was rather self-obsessed I thought. I’m sick of his people constantly spamming me telling me how wonderful Brian is and how he once saved the world with his little pinkie whilst having a cup of tea, practicing yoga and reading GT – the Lib Dems always seem to go OTT with the party info crap, wherever I’ve voted in the past! Ken’s pitch came across as arrogant and self-assured I thought… one page is a big picture of him, (btw, the cost of inclusion in the booklet was 10K for 2 pages) and the formatting on the other page setting out his proposals hardly make for stimulating/eye-catching or interesting reading – it was pretty much just “tube”, “tube”, “oyster”, “travel”.

Bo-Jo isn’t even getting a mention on my blog. Lets just say I take a very dim view to him and cannot believe that he is being taken seriously by nearly a third of the voting public!

Actually, I want to mock him, so I will concede to post the below;

The Green Party put in a good proposal, and I’d never really considered them before.

Current thoughts are Sián Berry (of The Green Party) for first preference vote, and then Ken Livingston for the more realistic second preference vote