Vacation!

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I’m on holiday, which means one of three things for the blogging.

1. it’ll go up in frequency.
2. it’ll go down in frequency.
3. frequency won’t change.

I’m glad we enumerated all those options, otherwise there may have been confusion.

As for the holiday so far – we can describe my mood in one word – tetchy.

The stress of the previous week suddenly vanishing leaves me hanging in mid-air with my legs spinning in that Fred Flintstone kinda way, and that means I’m tetchy. I’ll be ok in a day or so (i.e. I’ll have migrated back to merely grouchy).

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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Disclaimer: my memory sucks.

I was reading Wil Wheaton’s blog and his post on the Rocky Horror Picture show, and it reminded me of my first Rocky Horror partici -(consta)- pation (movie rather than stage show, I’ve never seen the stage show). Things were a little different for me, I’d listened to the audience participation album, over, and over, and over and over before I saw the movie.

The album was fascinating, almost magically transfixing. I can’t really explain why. But it was made even more surreal by never having seen the movie. I’d listen to it on my Sony Walkman, while going to sleep or doing whatever, amazed by the ability of the crowd to synchronise with the movie. I mean I really couldn’t even tell what was movie and what was audience sometimes.

Assuming you’ve seen the movie or the screenplay or heard the album, you’ll know there’s not really any mention of what any of the characters are wearing, or how they look. Ok, I’d sort of seen an image on the front of the album cover but it was only one image. So I guess I was in for a surprise when I finally did see it. My friend, who’d recorded the album onto tape for me, said we should watch it on video one day. Or maybe that happened after I saw it in the cinema. If he’s reading I’m sure he remembers.

Well well. Not quite what I was expecting, as you can imagine. More, skin that I was expecting. Certainly significantly more lace, and more gold lamé. But still, it was good to finally see what the hell was going on – there are some sections of the movie which when all you can experience is the audio don’t make any bloody sense at all. For example, the scene in the lab where the machine is turned on and makes a lot of whoooooooooommmmm type noises – no clue what the hell is going on if you just have the audio to work from.

So we watched it through, we shouted a few things and it was okay, it grew on me. Listening to the tape made a whole lot more sense now. I think that eventually I went to university, or it’s possible that this happened just before I went to university, as I say things are a bit hazy. But we found that a new cinema was opening in our home town, and for their opening night they would be hosting a Rocky Horror Picture show. Who could turn down such an opportunity.

I went as Eddy, I remember harassing a friend of mine to lend me his brown leather jacket, which he was clearly reluctant to do (especially since he knew where I was going to take it). My entire costume consisted of a stripe of tomato puré on my head to act as Eddy’s scar, and the desire to borrow a leather jacket (I’m pretty sure Dave never did let me borrow it, quite sensibly). Andrew wore a basque, I still have photo’s of him in it, which I swear never to show anyone. We piled into what I remember was quite a small car, maybe a metro or something, and drove to the cinema.

I have clear, absolutely clear recollections of driving past a police car on the way and getting a really good solid stare from the two officers in the front. I think we were all pretty nervous about being pulled over, and what kind of excuses we’d have to make. It added a sort of excitement to the whole deal, the risk of being pulled over (although we were obviously driving well within the legal limit), some guy with food on his head, another in women’s underwear, and who knows who else in the car (I don’t, memory explained above).

The cinema made the mistake of offering free popcorn. I’m not sure what they were thinking. Hundreds of people, who’ve come along itching to throw stuff around in a cinema, with water guns, and they handed out free popcorn. I don’t think anyone ate any of it. I do remember going home with it stuck to me, my feet, my hair and my clothes. And I vividly remember leaving the cinema walking through a trail of popcorn on the floor.

I remember throwing stuff, and shouting stuff and standing up and wafting the smoke away from the side of the screen (I stood in the aisle, not on the stage, not brave enough for that) at the right moment. I remember belonging to this club of complete lunatics for the length of the film. I remember it being a fantastic night. I remember spending a lot of time trying to ensure the people in underwear I was gawping at were in fact female.

I have no clue how much it cost the cinema company to clean that theatre but I’d like to thank them, erm, around 18 years later (roughly), for hosting that evening, it really was excellent.

And 18 years on, Rocky Horror Show participation is still a part of my life (like far too many movie quotes). I’ll be quoting it until I pop my clogs I should imagine, I listened to it so much, I just can’t get it out of my head.

So if you ever meet me, and half way through something you’re saying, I call you a slut or throw rice in your face, it’s probably not intentional. I promise.

BBQ!

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Someone within smellshot[1] is BBQ’ing and it’s making me very very hungry.

[1] yeh, well it should be.

My memory sucks

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I envy those people who recount with clarity tales and funny moments from their past. I can’t, my past (anywhere from around 30 minutes ago to the point where I first sucked in a gulp of air) is a hazy blur of forgetfulness. Let’s get this cleared up first though, I had a good childhood, my mother is great and did an amazing job, my sister is great and her family is wonderful. I love them both dearly (although I don’t think I’ve ever verbalised that to them). I didn’t suffer any more than average as a kid due to bullying at school (although I was bullied), and while we weren’t rolling in cash my mother made an amazingly small amount of money go miles and we had enough.

So, I haven’t blocked out my childhood memories because they sucked, I just don’t really have a lot of memories, and the ones I do have are hazy and I’m really bad with dates and timelines.

I remember going and seeing the first Batman movie, but can’t remember when it was in the context of my life, for example. I think it’s because I don’t spend a lot of time trying to recount my past memories, these things get stronger if you remember them over and over. So perhaps if I sat down and wrote down memories they would lead onto other memories and more things would come back. Thinking about some things certainly causes them to behave that way. But anyway, in general, I don’t have a good recollection of my past.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I started writing a blog post about the Rocky Horror Picture Show and wanted to put a disclaimer saying my memory sucks, and wanted to be ‘clever’ and link to a post about how my memory sucked. So here it is. And this isn’t a plea for hugs, it’s just a statement of fact, which explains why some of my other posts and future posts have screwy time lines.

Self referential blogging at it’s best.

Efficient disappointment

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I used to browse to something like 10 or 15 different websites and check for updates, blogs mostly for friends. It passed the time. I used to get disappointed after about twenty minutes of browsing that none of my friends had blogged anything new. After another 20 minutes I’d forget and go and check again. Then someone reminded me about Google Reader. So I spent an hour setting it up so it’s got the feeds of all my friend’s blogs. Now it takes me 15 seconds and one click to get disappointed that none of my friends have blogged anything.

Technology in Action.

Comics

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I know it’s not very popular or cool to like Keanu Reeves, or at least it wasn’t, maybe it is now. Anyway, I like him, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the movies he’s been in and that includes Constantine (did I ever review it … apparently not). I knew it was based on a comic book (sorry, graphic novel, although no one ever goes to GraphicNovelCon2008) but I never really did graphic novels or comics. I read the Beano, Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake and that kind of stuff when I was very young, but I never really graduated onto 2000AD and the like and once I discovered novels I never got into ‘the comic scene’.

I guess it’s a bit odd because I did the other stuff comic readers tended to do, I was a tabletop roleplayer (sounds like a movie), I played computer games on my 16k and 64k spectrum (and atari 400), I even wrote software (I wrote a whole bunch of tools on the speccy for roleplaying, databases for stuff, loot generators, yeh I know how bad that sounds). I loved fantasy and sci-fi movies (and Lost Boys which even features comic loving geek heroes), novels, the whole deal, but I just never ‘got’ graphic novels. I passed up the chance to buy the two David Gemmell graphic novels when they were newly out, I just bought the books instead (although I own them both now), so it wasn’t even an issue with the material. Just the format.

Anyway, I like Constantine, I like the world setting and the general premise. It matches similar work by Mike Carey (Felix Castor) and Jim Butcher (Dresden), modern day anti-heroes almost using supernatural or mythical powers in a modern world to hold back some kind of generally evil evilness. Incidentally if you’ve not read Mike Carey’s “Felix Castor’ stuff you should. Odd kind of full circle here because Mike does a lot of comic book work himself.

I’ve slowly drifted away from high fantasy and heroic fantasy and into an appreciation of a very limited number of books around ‘modern crossover’ or ‘modern fantasy’ or whatever you want to call it, and Constantine fits that bill. So, I enjoyed the film, I bought a novel and it was ‘ok’, and so I thought I’d buy a couple of comic book anthologies and see what the buzz was about. They’re upstairs, one in the guest bedroom on a bookshelf and the other in the bathroom, I read it now and again when I’m in there for any length of time.

Maybe I’ll let you know if I enjoy it sometime.

Food Weirdness

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Do you have any weird food habits? I do. Many of them revolve around even and odd numbers, some of them revolve around an almost supernatural fear of not serving enough food and one of them relates to cutlery. I guess this post is not going to paint me in a good light.

I think, looking hard at them, that it may be mild OCD. Although (and this is without any disrespect what-so-ever to true sufferers of OCD which is a terrible illness) I think many of us think we’re ‘a bit OCD’ because people are more aware of the symptoms in recent times. Maybe I’m just plain crazy and it doesn’t have a name.

Do you find that you can’t just toast one piece of bread, and that you must in fact toast an even number of slices? Maybe because toasters have two or four slots (a quick search on google didn’t find any with odd slot counts). Certainly when I was young you had to put single bread slices into specific slots in our toaster, otherwise the universe exploded (or something). I mean, I don’t fall over if I have to eat an odd number of toasted products, but I certainly have pause to think ‘this isn’t right’. Our Tesco sells crumpets in packets of 6. There’s two of us in this house. That’s 3 each. Distressing.

I hate mismatched cutlery. We have a range of cutlery in our draw and I really don’t like having a mismatched knife and fork. Usually of course I only use a fork and don’t bother with a knife, I am after all a man and I can eat my food with only a fork thank you very much. But on the occasions where I do use a knife it has to be the same model as the fork (and if I bring cutlery in for other people, I make sure they’re matched as well). This isn’t even really different types of cutlery, we have two sets of stainless steel, one plain and one patterned and I don’t mix them.

Then there’s the deep psychological issue of not serving enough food. I really have no idea where this came from but I have no doubt it contributes to my weight issue. It goes hand-in-hand with serving up everything that gets cooked, and not being able to leave it or throw it away if I cook too much (and since I fear not serving enough, I always cook too much).

Lastly (for this far too revealing blog post) is the habit of eating the stuff you like least first and leaving the stuff you like most to last. I first remember doing that at school during school dinners, getting rid of the stuff I didn’t really like in the meal and leaving the nicest bits to the end.

Vanity, messing with technology or just functionally rich?

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I’ve added a ShareThis button button to the template so it shows up at the end of each post. I can’t decide if I’m deluded enough to believe people might want to actually share the garbage I spout (the Vanity option), or if it was just because I quite liked the idea of how it worked and wanted to play with adding it to the template (the messing with technology option) or whether I just felt the blog needed it to be technically complete (the functionally rich option).

Anyway – you decide. But make sure you tell your budies as well!

Favourite word today: Puckish (yes, watched Bones last night).