Second Shot

I spoke with Jules yesterday, a good friend from Southampton Uni days, for the first time in about four months – I’m so crap at keeping in touch with people – and was surprised to hear that his work company had transferred him from Bath to New York. Bloody Hell! was the first thing I responded with to his answer to my question “How’s it going?”. Seriously, what else could anyone say?! He spoke of it before, saying that he told his bosses he was bored of working in Bath and wanted something else to do.

I’m incredibly jealous but am completely proud that he’s made it that far so quickly. I’ve been to New York on holiday and can only imagine what it’s like to work there – could it be anything like London? Maybe, but the thing is that because I don’t live close enough towards the centre of town I don’t quite feel the greatness of working in what is actually a lovely capital city.

But I digress; Jules says he’s loving it out there (so far for a month) and will be there for a year doing something slightly different from the UK-based work. Good stuff.

And it’s got me thinking if I would like to do something similar. Going to new places to work would seem like a step in the right direction but right now I live, work and breathe London so I wonder if it’s really necessary – especially seeing as I’ve only been doing so for six months. I should be going to Bristol in a couple of weeks time to help out with some work; not quite transatlantic, but it’ll do for now.

Anyway, congratulations Jules – hope all goes well for the upcoming year.

A rather hardcore gaming session can be had with Gears of War in the sense that it’s pretty graphic and involves lots of guns and bullets. And some. More. Anyway, if you have Xbox Live it’s definately worth your time and should stay in your gaming catelogue.

Thanks go out to my brother for letting me know that Ben Folds was touring the UK this week. I was umming and erring about going because of the ticket price but thought that he’d probably only turn up once this year so what the hell.

And I’m so glad that I went for it. Yesterday night (Tuesday) at the Hammersmith Apollo was absolutely f-ing amazing; yet again Folds performed like a talented mad-man, hammering out the old and the new and really getting the audience behind him. As always, it starts off high and hard, followed by a quieter solo section, and then ramped up towards the end finshing on ‘One Angry Dwarf’ minus the Misirlou ending. Why? Because the first tune was ‘The Theme From Dr Pyser’ (which incorporates said riff), a fantastic acoustic session that I’ve only heard from the DVD (The Complete Sessions at West 54th).

In fact, Folds played a load of tunes that I hadn’t heard live the last two times I went to see him. ‘Underground’ (which he said he messed up in Dublin a couple of nights ago), ‘Freebird’ (mixed in with what I will forever call ‘weather channel shit’), ‘Evaporated’ (a great sentimental tune), ‘Narcolepsy’ (or at least a muchly improved/favoured version), ‘Last Polka’ (riffingly good), ‘Still Fighting It’ (another great sentimental piece), ‘Kate’ (great chirpy tune), and a new one I hadn’t heard ‘Such Great Heights’ (a cover apparently).

And to make matters even better, just to push the boundaries of skill even further, was that he had a little syntheseiser keyboard (as well as a number of other instruments) that he’d programmed in some absolutely brilliant sounds. The fact that he was impressed with his own handy work made everyone else chuckle. He played to the crowd fantastically, and with him swinging between syntheseiser and piano with his right-hand, it truly showed his greatness, bouyancy and flair. There was a load of ad-libbing added to the mix of songs and just for filler, and for me that’s just as good as the tunes themselves. I have the greatest respect to those that can just pull something so tune without thinking, covering mistakes with flair and just generally pumping out tunes. The drummer (Sam somebody, not the usual drummer) has my respect too, picking up Ben’s riffs and giving the whole session a fantastic beat.

I have to say that the only downside with a slight lack of atmosphere, lacking in the wooing and yelping during quiet sections of tunes (maybe that’s a bit too American?). But it didn’t matter much as I made my own atmosphere although I did hear some others singing – twas good to hear others getting involved. I have to find a bootleg of it (and I’ve just found out that there’s a bootleg of the Brixton event too).

Finally, I read on thesuburbs.org.uk that Jamie Cullum was sitting up in the Circle Seats balcony. He told someone at the bar that Folds was his hero and I suspect that he was mightily jealous of all the applause Mr Folds was getting (I don’t follow Cullum’s work, so have no idea how many events he does or how popular). I know I would be. But I suppose that truly shows just how good Ben Folds really is.

Big Brother is showing its best side now – a nicely polished load of turd. Fucking load of crap and I can’t believe we’re hearing people put the words Jade and politics in the same sentence – I would never have thought it possible.

Yes that’s right, it’s all about this ‘race row’, which it may have seemed to be at the start but it is now clear that it’s all about stupidity and ignorance and more stupidity. And shouting stupid shouty Jade twat Jade twat cow. Maybe there’s argument against Shilpa too – being argumentative without but cause possibly – but Jade is just a gobby loud and annoying woman. My God I can’t believe she’s even vaguely famous, or why they thought putting more camera-time on Jade was a good idea.

And then there are those other two women, whatstheirrnames… Danielle and Jo. Them laughing with Jade about how humourous the argument was made me cringe with anger (if such a thing is possible) – how can you be a role-model and respectable if you’re shown to laugh at the responses of a defeated victim, or if not that then seem to side with the victor’s comments.

It’s all a very sad state of affairs… arguing about shopping lists and such like.