I’m not a fan of Yates’, which I ended up in on Monday because a friend violently objects to Wetherspoons for whatever reason, but they had some lovely Christmassy hats hanging from the ceiling over Christmas. We were the only people there and I asked the very chirpy barman (presumably glad to see life and try out his array of bad jokes/awkward chat up lines) if I could have one. He said yes and this made me happy as I like small wonderful Christmas-hat type things, and it made me smile.
Maybe Yates’ isn’t as bad as I thought, if you ignore the pole dancing area and the swarm of yobs that arrived the minute closing time was announced, at which time closing time was suspiciously called off.
And yes, as the photo demonstrates we celebrate Christmas by devouring Terry’s Chocolate Oranges and playing with curtain finials.
When I was in London over Summer I found @tiredoflondon which blogs one thing a day to do in London. I was never organised enough to use it (probably read here: in bed at weekends) but loved the idea and this month I started writing one for Brighton (Tom, the guy who writes TOL was super helpful here).
I moved here to go to Sussex Uni in October 2007 and spent my first year understanding what an Oceana was and why it should be avoided. I’ve mostly managed to miss the important side to Brighton – the bits for everyone, that don’t necessarily involve dancing badly or massive pupils, and the parts that make everyone feel that it’s in some way intrinsically different to any other city – and whilst writing @boredofbrighton I’m starting to become aware of everything I’m missing (well, to a point – I’ve still idea what’s on at the Cowley Club, but then that’s not listed on Brighton tourism sites so I might have to go leaflet hunting and ask about with hippy friends).
We like doing things, as Liam is busy demonstrating here on our way to walk around the frosty cemetery last year.
A nice person called Jonathan, who also writes a nice blog, has been writing about bands with me. He recommended the Hornblower Bros. They sing about Waterstones, how could it be wrong? I’m clueless with local bands as it seems I’d much rather keep Cat Stevens on Spotify for hours on end, than have a nose around MySpace. Perhaps my priorities are wrong.
Either way, when I’ve handed in my two looming, doom-filled January deadlines on the 14th, I want to start going to the things I’m writing about. Not all, but more. And take photos. And get more people interested, but that’s more of a side note.
I stole an idea, but we’re sticking with Faris’ notion that that’s okay and it somehow makes me a genius. Bitchbag takes videos and cuts them together in snappy chunks; nice insight to life I think. I liked the idea back in November and also had no video editing skills – a good excuse to master the simplicities of iMovie, if you can call those video editing skills.
Anyway, I got distracted playing around with video from the last half year but finally cobbled together my bits for November and December (which is good because they’ll become massively more irrelevant the minute it hits 2010) . I’ve learnt the pain of removing long chunks of video that I love but no one else would (mostly gig footage), but soon got over it. I quite like them.
Lost my camera charger in December so there’s less chunk-age. Although all that really means is there’s slightly less fit-triggering Christmas lights footage, which I had plenty of anyway.
I made a Gingerbread house on Christmas Eve, mostly inspired by seeing this video by Justine at which I like to scoff in a superior and obnoxious manner. “Gingerbread house in a box?” thought I, “What a cop out.” It all went swimmingly although I measured everything nicely before it went into the oven and conveniently forgot everything expanded inside.
Luckily when haphazardly trying to stick it all together, which was like using lumpy breakable bricks and was imaginably a pure delight, my father walked in proclaiming his tiling skills. I’ve never seen my Dad actually interested in cooking-related things so seriously before, but under the guise of DIY he (like me) got far too excited.
I was really pleased with all this until I met a friend at a pub who’d done exactly the same thing. We compared photos – hers was beautiful and intricate, and even had footprints in the icing snow. Mine looks like it’s been done by a five year old and the roof join has a big hole. I don’t really care though. We spent Boxing Day drinking champagne, playing a four hour game of monopoly and demolished it.
Also most impressed with ability of a roofy piece to stand up by itself.
There are nice things about going home to my little village for Christmas. Not only sozzled parents but also a big snowy untouched back garden.
We wanted to build a snowman but it was too icy so we settled for a half-built igloo using spades to cut chunks and accidentally batter the grass. I parcel-taped my camera to the upstairs window frame at the back of the house, with the window open throwing wild abandon to heating costs.
And then it rained, and got dark. So I threw a bucket of water over it hoping it might turn into ice, and we went inside for tea.
The music is by ‘Christmas Song’ by The Hornblower Bros (a local Brighton band who I need to write about at some point) poached unashamedly from Jonathan.
There’s lots of Alice in Wonderland about recently. I saw the Tim Burton trailer which looks unsuspiciously Tim Burton-like, and also something slightly more interesting was the SyFy (haw) channel’s marching about of white rabbit heads in a New York PR stunt.
I liked this since Alice in Wonderland has nice potential for interpretation and because, in the same way Dr Who sometimes manages, they’ve pulled off the eerie enemy quite well (aside from the slightly awkward dancing, above). Perhaps combine any sort of eye-obscuring object with a suit, and you’re sorted on the evil front (The Matrix for one).
Happily the show ‘Alice’ happens to be up on YouTube, and I like it. It’s silly good fun. Universally appealing, I thought (and really quite interesting after the first five minutes) until the boy looked at it from an uninvolved point of view and pointed out it was girly. For example it’s got romance and a ‘quirky English chap’ type Hatter character who is not only very good but coincidentally fills the “swooning” criteria. So perhaps it is.
I must try and write more about myself I suppose, I’m quite bad at blogging in that respect. It’s all very well posting the latest ad video but it all gets a bit similar after a while (although write about ones here I think are amazing and give opinion). There’s far too many people doing that and I live in fear of doing it without noticing. It seems almost like some sort of delicious feed to just show people that you’re aware of the latest thing.
Anyway, I am perfectly capable of talking about myself although most things tend to turn into some sort of post for Bitchbuzz (links to which you can find down the right column). I’ve been reading Belle de Jour’s blog for a while (because I am in fact a girl and like chicflicks and such nonsense) and she’s got a great ability to talk humanly. Something which I lack, or possibly try not to do because it’s all too reminiscent of being fourteen and blogging. And I’m quite terrified that my inner fourteen-year-old voice will pop up.
That said, here’s the making-of video by BBH. Just because I like it.
I couldn’t help but hold my breath along with the director when they’re trying to dribble mercury just so.
A nice things I have found today via Simon Law who writes a far better post on it than I. Firstly, a fascinating video of 24 hours of plane travel condensed into 2 minutes. Each yellow dot is an aeroplane. It seems a bit as though Americans are far less keen on night travel than Europe. Either way it’s a lovely video.
And then this lovely advert about pollution by Ogilvy New York which is far more nice and arty than the “Plane Stupid” polar bears falling out of the sky advert. I like it a lot, although I’m not sure how well it works.
We have a strange culture with crash screens, and i forget how important they are, especially with the right touches. Google Wave has its “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” firefly references which makes fans of tech and sci-fi melt a little inside. This site doesn’t have one because I am arrogant and lazy.
As Rory Sutherland says about the Eurostar, money would be better spent on people’s enjoyment of the journey rather than the speed. He prescribes that the several million pounds spent on increasing the speed on the journey by half an hour should have been spent on scantily clad supermodels serving drinks. Who would be the more satisfied customer?
Twitter’s worked on that, making their graphics cuter over time from altered LOLCats to more carefully crafted home-made images, and a gallery’s sprung up under the name of Tweeterr.
On the other hand Windows don’t really have this down – an angry customer has created a Microsoft equivalent of the Fail Whale gallery with twelve pages of examples.
It’s not just operating systems. Mankind seems to have a strange obsession with taking photos of broken systems. For example, this website, full of photoed fails. I’m not exempt. Everyone seems to have a failwhale photo lurking around on their computer. If laptop screens had a fail whale, they should all look like this.
I absolutely love this from BBH for Google Chrome. Unpretentious, good designs with layered card, home-made sewn bits, Pong, big bundles of wool lying around in studio, and a plinky-plonky music box soundtrack. Yum yum.
