If you like music, which I do, then there is a good chance you’ll know James Lavelle, the world-renowned producer, label owner and DJ. It’s possible his name is unfamiliar to you but if I said UNKLE, you might think, Oh yes, that guy from Mo’wax. Well, James has now added the role of art curator to his CV and if his pop-up exhibition at London’s Haunch of Venison gallery is anything to go by, he’s pretty good at it. Read the rest of this entry »
The problem with having an over active, yet lazy, imagination and self is the issue of starting lots of things and finishing none of them due to some almost unachievable attention to detail on how things should be. OK, that’s quite a long winded way of saying I started lots of blog posts but they’ve all got stuck in Draft limbo because I had a great idea part-way through each blog and started a new blog and then…you can see where this is going can’t you?
So, the end result is I’ve deleted all the drafts as can’t seem to find as much enthusiasm to finish them off as I obviously had when I started them. This means of course that some topics I really wanted to mention I won’t because I’ve forgotten them. That’s not to say the topics were not worth remembering, it’s because I naturally have a bad memory I sometimes rely on my blog to remind myself of things I like!
One campaign that I should mention is one being run by Aviva, it’s their Tell Us Your Story campaign. They are looking for people who’ve gone out of their way to help others, caring souls (their words not mine!) who have answered the needs of an individual, family or local community. You nominate them online and could win a £1,000 prize for Story of the Week. Stories are also voted for by the public, with the overall favourite receiving a specially tailored grand prize worth £10,000. And it doesn’t stop there! For every nomination made Aviva will be donating £1 to the Street to School programme. Read the rest of this entry »
You may recall I wrote about my first visit to the ballet and how I was planning to return. What’s that you say? You don’t recall? Well, I suggest you go catch up, I’ll wait for you.
I found out that Birmingham Royal Ballet were bringing their production of The Sleeping Beauty to London and as luck would have it, I was able to see it on opening night, the day before I was due to fly out to Kiev. Well, Icelandic volcano ash put paid to the trip to Kiev but my trip to the ENO went ahead 
I should actually mention that between the November 2009 and April 2010 I did manage get along to the Peacock Theatre to watch Blaze. Sleeping Beauty this was not. If however you like street dance (what people my generation would probably call break dancing) then you’d have enjoyed it. There was one really cringe-worthy scene where they try and do some weird rap about how it’s cool to be fat just eat vegetables and meat in sensible doses. No, it was worse than I’m describing it, it was terrible. But, that was the only low and as lows go it wasn’t that bad.
A few years ago I enquired about the times of the street dance lessons at a local gym which holds classes and getting told in almost hushed tones that I should realise that I’d probably be the only guy in the class and everyone else would be aged 18-25…I think she was trying to discourage me, it worked and in a way I’m glad because after witnessing the mooves that were being busted during Blaze, I could see my creaky old bones would never keep up… Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been following things lately here you’ll know I’ve been linking to a lot of the stuff coming out of the Vice UK/VBS.tv corner of the internet, for good reason. It’s usually all good, thought provoking, eye-opening stuff that I think you’ll find interesting. I say that because I figure if you come here to read my witterings you must be drawn to similar stuff as me but of course I could be wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time.
So, while I type this in bed, recovering from some sort of mutant cold/flu bug (not man-flu) I thought I’d tell you about The Vice Guide to Film. As you’d expect, this is no regular film guide. Shane Smith, the co-founder of Vice Magazine, explores some of the less-known film movements and national cinemas of the world. Shane gives you, the audience, a chance to peek behind the closed doors of the film industries in countries such as Iran and North Korea where he hangs out with maverick film makers like Gaspar Noé and throws himself in at the deep end by acting in a Mexican film. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh dear, I’ve been very slack in keeping on top of the blog lately. If you’re a regular visitor here you’ll know this, I go through periods where I blog endlessly and then silence. No news is goods news my old Gran used to say but the fact of the matter is there is lot’s to blog about but not so much time. This is partly a problem of my own making as I always feel a blog should be more than a few words, crudely thrown together to make a sentence with a couple of said sentences joined together higgledy-piggledy to make a paragraph and these aforementioned paragraphs….you get the idea? Read the rest of this entry »
