Pan's Labyrinth

"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944, after Franco's victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.I was talked into going along to see this by Louise, who showed me a few stills from the film as "bait"... and was very pleased I did (though it was not really what I was expecting). Without giving too much away, it is much grittier than the taglines suggest, with the story of Ofelia and her "imaginary" world weaved in with the story of the brutal reality of life in rural Spain in 1944. There is one particularly brutal scene that made me cringe a little, and made me wonder how the film had avoided an 18 certificate (though it has apparently been edited from the original - the US release runs 7 minutes less than the Spanish original). The film had a 22-minute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival, and it's easy to see why.Recommended, but definitely not for the squeamish - don't be fooled into thinking this is a modern-day "Willow" !

Sam's 21st birthday party

Sunday was Sam's 21st birthday. Last night was Sam's 21st birthday party. This is why everyone in the photos below is probably feeling the same way I do right now. Hungover.

Anyway, everyone seemed to have a good time. We started in Zephyr, after meeting up in Subway, then moved on to the party in Paparazzi. The party then moved on, with us, to Warehouse and finished, as ever, in the Noodle Bar.

Sam and Dan in Warehouse

Ste looking suitably unimpressed with
popper remnants in PaparazziLouise, also a little unimpressedMe, a little more in the spirit of things

RaeRae, JuJu and some scary random

Me, with Ste and JonLeeMan

Me attacking Ste's tooter

Lindsey (looking a bit manic) and Louise

JonLeeMan and Stacey

Emmit and Louise

Emmit with balloon string on head

Photoshoppery IV

More Emmit

Lottery

I didn't win the lottery this week - and frankly I'm a little disappointed ! See, it's a synchronicity thing, and here's the full story - bear with me, it does explain everything.

On Friday, driving home from work, my mind was wandering somewhat while stuck in traffic and I was thinking about Google. I got to thinking how reliant I now am on Google and how little I actually need to think of answers to questions anymore. I figured I had probably Googled (or checked on wikipedia) at least a dozen things during my day at work. I had even Googled directions for a lost truck-driver, then showed him the exact car park he needed to be in, on Google maps.

Now, you may think "Well, that's a good thing, isn't it - having all the answers at your fingertips ?". Well, it is to an extent, but I'm worried that I'll lose my ability to think of answers to simple questions, and one day someone will ask me a question and I'll be without internet access. Will I just blank ? Will something kick in and return me to my former thinking state ? I was having some kind of weird nostalgia for the pre-Google days of cluelessness and thinking !

Anyway, not long after finally getting home I was reading Douglas Coupland's J-pod, and I read the following passage : ".... we're googling every ten minutes. The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we've started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless".

:o 2020, Douglas ? Try right now !

So, with a strange feeling of synchronicity, akin to deja vu, I wondered what other synchronicity was in the ether, and if I had stumbled into some sort of cycle of coincidence or something (yes, I really do think like this sometimes).

Then, a few pages later on I read.... "What a weird coincidence. I should go out and buy a lottery ticket". "How come ?". "Anytime you have a coincidence happen to you, it means you've entered a luck warp - for the next short while everything you do will be touched by it".

:o I'm in a luck warp ?!

And so it happened that the following day I bought my first ever lottery ticket, a lucky dip. I was quietly confident that the £4.7m was mine but sadly, when checking the numbers, only two of the six had come up.I must have come out of my luck warp - next time I'll act faster !

Home-made veggie burgers

My mum gave us this idea at Christmas (though we found out later she had heard it from Anthony Worrall-Thompson). Simply take and finely chop all your leftover cooked veg, add a beaten egg and some additional mashed potato if needed, then fry with a little oil. We did this on Boxing Day with whatever we could salvage from my Mum's the day before.... and they were gorgeous !

So, as we had some leftover veg yesterday, including some mashed potato, I decided to have a go at a low-fat (and vegan) option, without the egg. Worried about them crumbling when fried, I baked them on a lightly greased tray... and they were lovely.For tea, we had some lovely store-bought Spicy lentil & tomato soup, with a Food Doctor seed & grain bagel.

BlindSummit

Yes, I used to be in a band. We weren't the best band in the world, but it was a lot of fun !

Here we have youtube clips of BlindSummit covering The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" and Primal Scream's "Jailbird" at Leeds Packhorse in 2005 (with me hiding at the back behind the drum kit), along with a poster for one of our other gigs and an early promo poster.

Photoshoppery III

Well, it just wouldn't be right leaving Emmit out !

Blackball

We've been putting off watching Blackball for a while, after reading some pretty bad reviews of it at the time of it's release. Let's face it, just how funny can a comedy about crown green bowling be ?

Well, pretty amusing really. We were expecting a badly directed, slapstick farce and what director Mel Smith has provided is a fairly clever satire on the "sexing up" of sports, and the need of sports program directors to constantly inundate us with graphics, facts and figures. All that said, it's quite predicatable, there are a few slapslick moments and it's not uproariously funny throughout, but overall it's worth a watch.

Vince Vaughan shines as the agent of the rebel bowler Paul Kaye, and the ancient British comedy stalwart Bernard Cribbins also puts in a good performance. Add to this Alice Evans as the eye candy, Johnny Vegas finding his role as a loud, drunken, Mancunian quite easy to get to grips with (method acting at it's extreme) and minor/cameo roles for Josie D'Arby, Mark Little, David Schneider, Vic Reeves, Tony Slattery & Imelda Staunton and you have quite an impressive line-up, which Mel Smith puts to good use.

In summary, Blackball is far from the best comedy film ever, but it's far from the worst and was a pleasant surprise.

Xenical II

Weigh-in day today, and guess what ? I've lost another 2kg.

That's a total of around 9lbs in two weeks, so I am well pleased with my progress. I'm thinking of giving it a couple more weeks before I start any serious exercise program, as I'm worried that the fat-to-muscle process will slow my weight loss and discourage me. Once I have a month, and hopefully over a stone, under my belt (or rather away from under my belt), I think I'll be confident enough to cope with a slowing down of weight loss. Here's a table showing my average intake of calories, fat, etc. over my first two weeks on Xenical.
While last night's pasta plan turned into pizza at the last moment, tonight's dinner did actually turn out to be Pasta Arrabiata.

Go Saints !

I've really been getting into my NFL recently (anything to spend 3 hours vegging out in front of the TV watching sport).... so much so that I asked for a New Orleans Saints replica jersey for Christmas, which my wifey kindly obliged with. Have also just found out that one of my best interwebuddies is (unsurprisingly in retrospect) a Patriots fan.

Go Saints !

Photoshoppery II

Louise - Amsterdam - late 2005.

This one took me a little time.... not so much the actual Photoshop work, but deciding how she would like presenting. Luckily, she's happy with the result.... a Warholian quadrych !

Damian

As promised, here is a photo of our little nephew, Damian, taken at his Grandma's over Christmas. The top he is wearing is one we bought him from Big Red Machine in Amsterdam.
Obviously, our main aim is to see him grow into a Rock God™, and my own personal goal is to turn him into the world's best drummer. All my presents to him will be drum-based, which I'm sure his parents, Em & Ross, and their neighbours will thank me for.

The first step to Damian's drum-world domination is the LeapFrog Learning Drum, which I bought for him last week.

Photoshoppery

I finally tracked down the camera, lost since our New Year trip to Dorset, and uploaded the photos. My aim this morning was to edit up and post a photo of our nephew, Damian. He is just over six months old and stayed with us (with his mum) for a few days after we returned. Now they're gone, we're both really missing them.

But, unfortunately I got sidetracked by a couple of photos we took at the Odeon Christmas party which I decided I needed a bit of Photoshop practice on (see below). I suspect a photo of Damian will follow later today !

First is Ste, looking decidedly gangster-like in Paparazzi .....
.... and Cat, rocking out in Warehouse

Cuteness overload

OK, I know I've had blogfrenzy today, but I've just been bloghopping and seen this photo.

This is Razzle, the African pigmy hedgehog and has to be the cutest thing alive (sorry, Ginger)

Marc Almond - Heart On Snow

It's very rare that I hear an album for the first time and know immediately that it will be one of my favourite albums of all time..... but it happened this week with Marc Almond's "Heart On Snow".

I had read much about the album in Marc's book, "In Search of the Pleasure Palace: Disreputable Travels", which was my "launderette book" a few months ago. Marc had been asked to visit Russia and record a variety of traditional Russian songs with a wider variety of Russian artists. There were many reasons for his acceptance, but the main reasons were probably boredom and a desire to see the country & sample the culture again. The result is this truly magical album, "Heart On Snow" which I'd recommend to anyone, regardless of what you think your musical compass encompasses !

Just about every track is a gem and some of the lyrics are just downright beautiful. His voice really comes into it's own with these songs, which he sings in a mixture of English and (phonetic) Russian. The album will also give you a chance to hear Marc duet with the amazing Russian diva, Alla Bayanova, who was 88 years old when the album was recorded.

Buy it now !

Xenical and fitday.com

So, having topped out at around 310lbs just before Christmas, I decided to take my Nurse Practitioner's advice and start on a course of Xenical. These are tablets designed to help with weight loss as part of a low-fat, calorie-controlled diet. They work by allowing the stomach to digest and process only 70% of the fat you eat, the surplus being passed untouched through the system. The gut can then take care of the rest, provided you don't overload it.... more than 40-45 grams of fat per day, or more than 12-15 grams per meal, and the side effects include stomch cramps and vile diarrhoea !

But, so far so good. Apart from a little discomfort when I've "pushed the fat envelope", I've been well throughout, and have been taking Xenical for well over a week. I'm tracking my nutritional intake on fitday.com - free to sign up to and easy to use. All you need to do is enter all the foods you eat every day (you can add as many "custom" foods as you like), and the site produces various pie-charts and tables. You can make your account public, so everyone can see what you're eating, and you can see mine here

Today's photo is of our precious boy, Ginger (who has his own webpage at Catster)

Welcome to yet another blog

As anyone who knows me will already be aware, I pretty much suck at blogging. I seem to get more enjoyment out of actually setting them up than actually posting ! This is my second blogger account, and these follow hot on the heels of dead myspace and livejournal accounts.

Let's see if we can do any better this time :D

One thing I do intend to do is to post a photograph every day as I think they split up the blog well and make it more easy on the eye (obviously, this will depend on the subject matter !!). Here's a nice photo Louise took from the main station car park in Blaenau Ffestiniog to start with....

Looks a bit random, but I need to get a big picture of Grimsby Auditorium's seating plan online somehow !