Out In The Field In... Belgium

Last weekend, apart from visiting my family in Germany, I went to a festival called Groezrock. In Belgium. It sounds much more of a mission than it actually was, the Belgian/Dutch border is about 15 minutes drive from my parents house and the total driving time was about an hour. Which is why I didn't go for the whole camping-at-a-festival experience. Not that I mind doing that, I'm really looking forward be a filthy hippy for a long weekend this August when I go to Boomtown, but I was on my own and end of April is not the time you want to go camping anywhere in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany or (god beware) the UK. It really could've been a degree or 10 warmer, the evening was cold even with 4 layers on.

Obviously the Belgians are aware of that and the general volatility of the weather, so all 4 stages and the merch/market areas were in massive circus tent shape things.

None of my friends could come along, so I opted for a festival light experience and only headed to Meerhout for the bands I actually wanted to see, thereby missing out on a lot of potentially interesting happenings (like Tim McIlrath doing an acoustic set with the Scorpios or The Aquabats) but all in all I think it was a good solution.

On Saturday I got to the festival around 6pm, trudged around for a bit to get my bearings, checked out the stages and the merch, then proceeded to accidentally bump into the bassist of the Aquabats while trying to avoid a tumble of drunk people. I had missed the Aquabats set (and, having checked them out on youtube I can't say I'm a fan) and therefore had no clue who I was talking to, otherwise I would've tried to be a bit more investigative in my questions. Instead we just chatted for a while about touring and stage fright and the awesomeness of hotel nights while waiting for Pennywise to come on stage. Chad was really nice and I was kinda sad when he said goodbye halfway through the set to head back to the VIP area. Oh, btw, he's a massive fangirl for Rocket From The Crypt, he actually ran onstage to get their setlist when they were done :)

The main reason I was there was RISE AGAINST, who took the stage at midnight. By that time I was second row from the barrier, which apart from being a bit squished was also nice and warm. What can I say, Rise Against just killed the main stage that night. They were AWESOME. Tim McIlrath's voice is just... I can't even... he makes my knees go weak (he's also seriously hot, which helps).

Sunday I got to the festival a bit earlier because THE USED were on at 7pm already. Their set was a bit of a weird one - the sound was seriously shite and it was a lot less busy in front of the stage than expected (I was right at the barrier and I had space). For some reason The Used seem to come across best when they're headlining in a small club, the times I've seen them on a big stage their chemistry seemed to be slightly off (only exception being Warped, but Warped isn't that big, really). They rocked, they always do, but I felt something was missing. I would also like to discuss Jepha's fashion choices at some point. Srsly, the man was wearing a light blue denim trousers and shirt and I'm really not sure what's going with his hair...

I stayed for Billy Talent, who were quite enjoyable, but left before Bad Religion came on.

All in all a really good weekend and it was great to see my family, but in regards to festivals I very much prefer the dance ones (less alcohol, more fluffy happy people - yes, I know it's the drugs, but still).

Standing With Your Spotlight On Me

This is the gig round-up, because there has been an awesome amount of amazing gigs in my life in the past 10 days.

To start things off, THE USED supporting Evanescence at Wembley Arena on 9th November. I've never been to Wembley Arena before, I don't particularly like big venues, but there's this band obsession I've got and well, the things you do for love. So, Wembley Arena. Fits 12,500, which sounds bigger than the arena looked, but I trust them on this. I went there straight after work, which meant I had plenty time to get there and get myself organized once I was there. What I didn't expect was to bump into Dan and some of his friends. Didn't change my time plan one bit, but made my night a lot more awesome because sharing the experience with others always makes it better. It also meant I had people to make fun of the support-support with and people to help me get to the front who were just as excited about the Used and as indifferent about Evanescence than I was. Unfortunately most people in the audience were there to watch Evanescence and while the Used were awesome and totally rocked it, the audience were dead on their feet. As in, not moving. We tried to get a mosh pit going but failed and got angry looks. But hey, we tried. I watched the first few songs of Evanescence and then decided that I don't like them and left.

I almost managed to meet up with Jay after the gig because he was working around Wembley, but time wasn't on our side and I had to leave before he finished work.

Got home, showered, slept, showered again and made my way to Wood Green and Ally Pally for WARPED TOUR UK. I was early, mainly because TFL lies and had told me it would take 2 hours to get there. It took about 1.15 and I actually got to Alexandra Palace half an hour before the doors opened. There was quite an impressive queue in front of the gate but it was moving, because they were checking bags and tickets already and herding the people to another area, which meant once doors opened we could just walk in. Once inside I dumped my stuff in the cloak room and ventured to the Merch area, which turned out to be an insanely smart move as for most of the rest of the day you had to queue for about an hour to get in there. I acquired a Used t-shirt and checked out the other stuff, then wandered off to check out the rest of the venue. Ally Pally fits about 10,000 people and it was sold out, which meant there were serious crowds going on. The queues everywhere, and the insanely rude and stressed security, were the only downsides (if quite big ones). You couldn't get to parts of the venue at times or had to queue for quite some time to get there, which sucked. The rest of the organization was pretty impressive for what I've seen in the UK so far. You got a running order booklet, the bands actually started on time, they had shuttle busses running to the station after the show. As for the line up, well, that was pretty fucking awesome. And yes, it did feature The Used as special guest secret headliners.

The Used were on in the early evening and the show started at 2pm, which meant I had loads of time to check out other bands. Let us explore:

Band that opened the main stage and did a really fucking awesome job at it:
The Story So Far (they're also masters in the moshing-with-our-backs-to-the audience category)

Band with a name that I'm not entirely sure about:
The IT Boys (still not sure what they were all about)

Band I missed because I got distracted by the skate ramp and food:
AWOLnation

Band with the worst fashion sense:
No, not the Used (for once), but Blood On The Dancefloor (a skeleton morph suit thing on a chubby guy is not a good look, also, what were you thinking with the facepaint? Not impressed by the music, either)

Band I accidentally really liked:
Man Overboard (they were good!) - missed Breathe Carolina because of them...

Band with the most deceptive name:
Architects (seriously, I was expecting fluffy electronica and they almost paralysed me with metal, not impressed - I went to watch skateboarders instead)

Band I only watched because I was getting myself in position for the Used, but who really rocked:
3OH!3 (ridiculous name, ridiculous tunes, but really fucking catchy - I danced)

Band I thought sounded familiar and ended up knowing most of the songs of:
New Found Glory (on the East Stage while I was squeezed in second row of the West Stage)

Band I came there to see and who absolutely fucking smashed it:
THE USED (we need to talk about their fashion sense at some point, really, we do)

I left the main stage(s) behind at this point because it was getting crowded and focussed my attention on the side stage to watch:

Band that had the audience going like a rocket and best stage banter:
Less Than Jake (so much fun)

Band I was excited about which didn't quite live up to it:
Bowling For Soup (they were still good, though)

Most surreal moment of the day:
sitting in the portaloo at the back of the main room while Lost Prophets launched into Last Train Home. The portaloo fucking shook! Almost panicked and probably never peed that fast in my life...

The main stage set up for Warped is great, basically the main stage is split in West and East and while a band is playing on one side, the band on the other side is setting up - which means there are almost no breaks! Awesome idea, wish more festivals would do this. Also, each band (except for the headlining headliners) only gets 30 minutes, which means they all give their best to kill you.

Overall, I really enjoyed Warped and will return next year if the line up is as good as this year. Would be nice if they find a better venue than Ally Pally, though...

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the main event in the smallest venue so far:

THE USED in the Luxor in Koeln. I knew the venue from the time I lived in Cologne, it's absolutely tiny (500 capacity, fuck yeah) and not only did it  mean I would see the Used up close and kinda personal, I also managed to meet up with a lovely friend of mine. The gig was the best so far, the Used seemed to really enjoy the small venue and I got to touch Bert... it's hard to describe the awesomeness, so here's a picture:

Yes, that mic is Jepha's and I was standing right in front of him. He's even cuter up close...

I'm now in the throes of a massive post-gig depression. I NEED MORE THE USED!!!!
(I might get it, there was mention of a headlining tour next year, yay!)

I also got a cold.

Send pretty inky boys to my rescue...

The Sharpest Lives

So, there was a party in my block of flats last night, a proper BLOCK party at that. The occasion was Guy Fawkes day, there wasn't a bonfire but a shitload of fireworks and every single flat in the house (9 in total) had people over for a get-together. I'd only managed to get one of my friends down, but flatmate had a few local friends over, there was booze and food and even some poi spinning because that just seems to happen when I'm involved. Ended up crashing the downstairs neighbours party after midnight and proceeded to get quite drunk and stumble back into my own flat around 3am. I'm a tad hungover today, the second time this week which seeing that I don't really drink that often (which means if I do I get drunk really fucking fast) is a bit of a record.

I went to see The Fields Of The Nephilim on Wednesday with Kenneth. Now, I've tried being a goth for about 3 months when I was 15 and mainly because I had a crush on the token goth in my year. It wasn't a particularly successful endeavour because I'm generally a pretty happy person and while I do like wearing black, I'm useless at doing elaborate make-up and like my music hard and fast (that actually hasn't changed that much over the years). I encountered the Nephilim a few times in my gigging life, though, mainly a supports for bands I was following or at festivals. To cut it short, I only really know one song (Moonchild, a true goth marvel) but thought I'd tag along for good ol' times sake and to potentially laugh at some goths. It started out with a few drinks in the pub because we decided that we don't need to see the support act and went on with more drinks at the venue. By the time Nephilim came on I was just a little bit shitfaced and probably giggling way to much to pull off any remaining goth-ness, but seeing that we were on level 3 (I didn't even know it existed) of the Shepherd's Bush Empire that didn't matter too much. It actually was a pretty good gig, there were attempts at moshing which deserve kudos for dedication to the cause because the music is not really fast enough to pull off proper moshing and Nephilim were solid in terms of sound. What made it awesome was watching my friend, a closet Nephilim fan for most his life, get into the music. He was air-drumming! And singing along! I was impressed and seeing him so excited made me go all excited. It was really, really good.

Work the next wasn't all that great, I'm not used to being that kind of hung over but managed to pull through.

I'm now gearing up for THE USED and WARPED (very, very, very likely including THE USED) next weekend, which will be beyond awesome (I hope. I'm pretty certain it will be.)

Oh, and I've published a story again! The crazies are somewhat coming back, huzzah! Unfortunately it wasn't one of the ones on my WIP list, NO, I had to go adopt a stray bunny from a newly discovered community, but I wrote the shit in two days and I'm finally making progress with teh words in some of the WIPs now.

Did I mention I'm excited about next weekend? Did I?

IMGOINGTOSEETHEFUCKINGUSED!!!!!

Here, have a picture:

*squeeeeeee*

Catch! Up!

I've been living in my head quite a bit in the last few weeks. I usually have AWESOME ideas for blog posts when I'm in bed and trying to go to sleep, but they're usually gone in the morning. I probably should just write them down, I've got a writing pad near my bed in case a story hits me, because stories are way more annoying than ideas and thoughts and THEY DON'T GO AWAY until I write them down. Hasn't happened for a while, unfortunately, but it could any minute which is why I also lug a writing pad around in my backpack when I'm on the train because rolling a story around in your head for an hour is really exhausting.

But I think a catch up is in order, because I've actually done stuff in the last few weeks that was pretty cool.

Like going to the Hide & Seek Weekender in the Royal Festival Hall. I've tried to drag friends along but they were their usual flaky selves, so I just went on my own. I unintentionally arrived when they had just started, so I got to take advantage of not having to battle to get into a game. Played Killer Queen, which was a lot like capture the flag but not, with food (balls), swords (for sending people back to their base), a bomb (which you could use to blow up your opponents base) and a queen (with 3 crowns, aka 3 lives). It was awesome and a pretty good workout as it involved frantic running around to grab food, kill people and drag that bloody bomb along. I then waited around for half an hour, catching my breath, and got to play Alien Encounter where I was a monster looking for food and trying not to get killed by the agents. Also got to play Searchlight, which was totally rad. I didn't get to punch the custard (was just what it said on the tin) because there was a queue and I was hungry. So, yeah, really good afternoon, although I've got the feeling that the Hide & Seek guys are going to go back to doing evenings as they were slightly pissed off about all the parents dumping their children at the games.

Then there was Beardyman, who done a gig at the Koko last Saturday. I was a bit surprised to see it went from 9pm to 3am, because that's a fucking awkward time frame for a gig, but bought a ticket anyway and then proceeded to try and convinced people to come along. Managed to talk my flatmate into it (by showing her loads of Beardyman stuff on youtube) and we rocked up at Koko at 10pm. It was no re-entry, which is always a bit shit, and it was even worse when we saw the running order. For reasons unknown to mankind, Beardyman was on last at 1.30am. He had 2 DJs and one DJ crew supporting, which could have been fun but wasn't really because they weren't all that great. But, hey, my flatmate was buying me drinks and there were guys to look at (even though I didn't want to take any of them home) and Beardyman was actually pretty cool. Judging by his facebook page some people were annoyed that he didn't do more beatboxing and/or stand up, but it was a club gig and he usually does sounds & looping stuff when he does those, so I was pretty ok with what surfaced. Could've done with it not going all that late because by the end I was somewhat tired (and a bit tipsy, I'm a total lightweight). Flatmate fell asleep on me on the nightbus, but all in all it wasn't too bad getting home (1 hour and 2 busses, which is pretty good for London standards).

I also caught up with Cherelle and got the latest on her new boyfriend. Haven't met him yet, but will next weekend. The boy might be useful and Cherelle is happy and all is good.

Last night I went to South Bank for a friend's birthday. He doesn't run with my usual crowd, so I got to chat with loads of people I don't hang out with that often which was cool. We went for dinner at Ping Pong and I can confirm that I still don't particularly like dim sum. I just don't see the point of sticky dumplings that aren't seasoned well enough. Give me sushi any time, but drop the fucking dumpling.

Coming up is a Burning Man planning session (second attempt) and a long weekend without the flatmate. I've got Friday off because I had to use the day or lose it (I'm NOT losing any holiday, fuck no) but no plans. I'm sure I'll find something to keep me occupied, tho. I always do.

I Come Alive / The Used, O2 Academy, London

I saw The Used last night. It was awesome.

Because I'm a cool kid and also because I don't like waiting outside a venue for the doors to open, I left the house in time to catch the second support act. Or that's what I'd thought. Transport for London totally had other plans. The train arrived as normal, but then proceeded to crawl from station to station because of some signalling problems around the Camden area. Which is pretty impressive seeing that said area is on the other end of the line. Without problems, the journey takes 36 minutes station to station. We'd barely made it to Stockwell in that time, where I left the Northern line to it's misery and jumped on the Vic line, which for once was running and not even experiencing delays. Made it to the venue with enough time left to drop off my coat, pop to the toilet, position myself in the audience and stand around for 15 minutes listening to the venue's idea of appropriate backing music.

I therefore can't really comment on the awfulness or awesomeness of the support acts. I assume they were ok as most people were still inside the venue and not hanging out outside waiting for the noise to finish.

The Used took the stage almost on time (there was a running order for the bands on the website), which was quite a surprise.

But before we take a look at the gig itself, let's have a moment to discuss the band's wardrobe choices. In particular Jepha's. Because, seriously, what was the man thinking? The only possible explanation would be that he didn't have any clean clothes left and had to steal them from an 80's metal band that was staying in the same hotel, although I have the suspicion he was actually serious about his outfit. It kinda matched his pornstar mustache. Still, I would've preferred to not see him in a jeans vest with studded shoulders (gold studs, too), a sleeveless loose fitting black top and light blue jeans. The only redeeming feature were his converse. I like it when men were converse, especially if they team them up with 501's. I probably would've jumped Jepha on stage if he'd done that (and subsequently would've gotten thrown out, but it would've so been worth it), so maybe he'd sensed danger and thought he'd wear something less jumpable. He also seems to have taken out most of his (visible) piercings, which is sad. He still looked hot as hell, though, which goes to prove that nothing can distort real beauty *le sigh* The rest of the band was unobtrusive. Ok, Dan was wearing a bright red headband (him and Jepha read the same magazines, no?), but he's the drummer for god's sake and they're not exactly famous for their fashion sense, which is why they get stashed away behind the drum kit. Bert was all rock singer and ball of cute** in band t-shirt, black shorts and black shoes vans. I approve. Not sure what Quinn was wearing, couldn't see him that well as he was on the other side of the stage and I kept getting distracted by Jepha's hotness and Bert's, errrr, Bert-ness. Which is absolutely fascinating. I'm assuming Quinn was wearing something as I most definitely would've noticed nudity and what he was wearing was fairly inoffensive.

** for considerably crazy and possibly physically dangerous values of cute

Now, the gig. Due to my lateness I started out pretty much at the back of the room. Which would've been annoying if it wasn't for my knack for active queuing. Some people might call it elbowing my way to the front, but I'm more subtle than that. I just fit in small spaces, am squishy and short enough for tall people to not notice me until it's too late and then I'm already in front of them. And I've got years of experience, perfected at numerous New Mode Army gigs, which most of the audience clearly didn't have as they were half my age. A few songs in I was 4 rows from the front, which was alright. I could've taken photos if I could've been arsed to get my phone out, but judging by the amount of cameras I've seen there'll be photos on the web soon, so why get all distracted from the gig if other people do all the work for me.

In terms of setlist, I'm not familiar enough with their albums having mostly fallen in love with the latest one (Vulnerable, it's awesome) to be able recognize the songs and even if I'd known the titles of the songs, my memory is shite, so this is stolen from setlist.fm and may be wrong:

Take It Away

The Bird And The Worm

Listening

Kiss It Goodbye

I Come Alive (I remember this one)

I Caught Fire (yay)

Hospital

The Taste Of Ink

All That I've Got

Buried Myself Alive

Blue And Yellow (yep, that was awesome, too)

Give Me Love

Put Me Out (bounce, bounce, bounce)

The Best Of Me

Paralyzed

an acoustic set of

Surrender (this was intense and insanely good)

On My Own

and, the encore

Blood On My Hands (awesome)

Pretty Handsome Awkward (definitely)

A Box Full Of Sharp Objects

I did my best to sing along to the songs I knew, jumped around and generally had a very, very good time. You could see that the band was having fun on stage, Bert is just amazing, and the energy of the crowd was there, although I've been at gigs where the air was almost electric, but it was pretty good going nevertheless. It was one of the roadies birthday the next day, which meant he got a birthday cake (the interesting bits of a naked man, including cock ring, dead classy) and 'happy birthday' sung by the audience.

Got home around midnight, wide awake, which was annoying seeing that I had to get up and go to work the next morning, but what can you do.

Definitely want more of that, and yes, next time The Used come to London, I'll (most likely, subject to availability) be there.

30 Seconds To Vyrt

Last night I watched my first webcast. I vyrted (not sure if that's a word, it might be, if not it's one now).

Due to the fact that I have been fashionably late in my crush on 30 Seconds To Mars, as in, only realizing that they're awesome right after they've finished their mahoosive, Guiness-Book-recorded world tour, I felt I had some catching up to do. They're not touring at all this year, at least that's what they're saying at the moment, but to make up for that and, I guess, to make some more money, they put on a 3 hour live webcast from their base in LA. It turned out that I didn't have any plans for last night, so I bought a ticket (£6, pretty reasonable considering that just going to the movies is £10 nowadays), got my speakers hooked up to my laptop and settled down in front of it at 11pm to get my 30StM fix.

The whole thing got off to a slightly rocky start, more like a massive clusterfuck of lagging sound and refreshing my browser, problems apparently caused by solar flares. The sun was probably just having a jealous fit and was trying to keep me from oogling the prettiest man alive. Anyway, 2 hours and various black screens, pictures of palm trees (see above) and cups of tea later they'd sorted out their issues, maybe told the sun to just fuck off and get over it, and what happened after that was pretty awesome.

There were acoustic songs, Q&A's, people randomly doing shit, Jared messing up and almost burning down the kitchen in an attempt to make vegan pancakes, various bits of footage from upcoming video releases and  new songs. Altogether almost 4 hours, kinda to make up for the problems at the start.

It was interesting to see them in their natural habitat. Tomo and Shannon looked pretty relaxed, Shannon more on the trippy-jetlagged side and Tomo reminding me of a happy little puppy, while Jared was a lot more tense because Vyrt is his baby, his company and he obviously wanted everything perfect. I also assume he's just a tense, OCD, control-freakish son-of-a-bitch anyway, which doesn't make him less adorable. He looked a lot more relaxed and natural in the "afterparty" bit of the broadcast, but I guess he never completely relaxes, ever. It felt a bit awkward a times with him, still lovable, but I just wanted to hug him and tell him it's all fine and he can just let go a little bit more...

So, £6 well spent for a night's entertainment. I've definitely had worse nights costing me more money! Looking forward to their next Vyrting (new word alert), but before that I've got a gig to attend. Yes, a gig! By another band that I've re-discovered via my recent plunge into slash fanfic (oh, the virtues of porn). This time I came to the party just in time for the tour, although the gig was already sold out when I heard about it. Which is somewhat the story of my life, it's not the first time this has happened and won't be the last, I'm the queen of procrastination and just don't like to plan my gigs in advance. Cue a bit of fretting and cursing, then trailing the net looking for people selling tickets. The search let to ebay, which was expected, and I've managed to secure a ticket. Ok, I had to pay £5 above face value, but I think I can just manage that.

Which means, provided that the people who sold me the ticket didn't rip me off (still a possibility), I get to see THE USED play the O2 Islington tomorrow. I'm pretty excited, can't exactly remember when I last went to see a band, but it's been a good while. The Used are also doing a meet&greet today in Kingston, but I'm not entirely sure what I would do there except stand around and stare at them. Never really seen the point in getting anything signed by a band and as much as I'd love to hang out with them, I wouldn't want it to be in a forced situation like a meet&greet where there's loads of fangirls crowding them and no way to connect and talk. I mean, if I would bump into them tonight in town somewhere, accidentally, I would be thrilled and totally up for hanging out (and, let's face it, the bassist is pure hotness, I wouldn't mind taking him home and do very dirty things with him). But those awkward "oh, hi, love your music, you're pretty" convos never worked for me.

I officially declare this my return to rock weekend. Here, have a pretty boy for the journey. \m/

source: last.fm

(ain't he cute? so looking forward to seeing him on stage tomorrow)

Tuning The Raspberry

Last night I saw Beardyman play in a giant, purple, upside down cow. As you do, obviously.

I took the train to Waterloo after work, which actually was pretty relaxing & totally trouble-free. We had dinner at the Wasabi's in the station. I got some sushi & a seaweed salad, which was not quite as tasty as it looked but still alright. We then ambled towards the river, following the "To the cow" signs. Not that the cow was hard to spot, really. I mean, yes, London comes up with crazy things, but it's not every day that you happen across a rather large cow which is not only bright purple but, in fact, a music venue.

We installed ourselves in the very pleasant beer garden in front of the cow, had a drink, had another wonder, joined the queue for the entrance, bumped into Tom & Emma & finally made it inside. We got really good seats, not that the venue had really bad seats in the first place, it's tiny.

Beardyman's set was awesome, even more awesome than the last gig I went to as this time, it being a much smaller venue, he actually joked around for a while before getting down to business. If I could I'd go see him again straight away! Seriously, that man is a god on the beatbox & this is from someone who doesn't really like beatboxing all that much. He's funny, a total entertainer, although he seemed to be somewhat upset about the fact that FRANK had turned down his idea for promoting the service... one wonders why.

We headed home pretty much straight afterwards as it was already late & I still had to check my brother's presentation (which I did once home & then finally fell into bed around 1am).

I'm going to the dentist tomorrow morning, which had saved me from attending the volunteer day but probably won't save me from being in even more pain tomorrow. Also, I'll have the pleasure to go to work afterwards & spend the day in the office, while my colleagues have the afternoon off to watch the England game. Methinks I won't do any overtime tomorrow...

Things That Make You Bounce

credit

It's actually been a full week since I last posted. I blame this on being busy at work & having somewhat of a life.

This week has been a mix of excitement & just staying in at night, which was good. Work is still keeping me on my toes, my boss is now handing over lots of reports I will have to do in future & he really is the King of the Spreadsheet. I'm sure it'll all be easy peasy in a few weeks, but right now I'm struggling through massive tables to update without a clue. It's cool to have full responsibility for a set of channels, to be their point of contact & handle the everyday stuff. My boss has announced that he expects me to take over once I'm up & running with everything. This both scares me to death & really excites me. 

To take my mind off work stuff & because it was planned months ago & I really wanted to go, I went to Camden on Tuesday after work to see Dan Le Sac v. Scroobius Pip rock the Koko. And rock they did! Awesome! Unfortunately they also made me & my friends suffer through two abysmally bad support acts. A girl rapper/shouter that not only had a very annoying voice, but wasn't easy on the eye neither. Thank god Catherine was there to have a little bitching session with me :)

The second support was a fat American guy who also rapped or something & sometime through the gig decided to take half his clothes off. I mean, come on, who wants to see this?

Dan Le Sac & Mr. Scroobius Pip were worth the wait (& it was a very long wait, doors opened at 7pm & they got on stage around 9.30pm), though. Funny, bouncy, great lyrics & awesome show. 

I had plans to meet up with Lynn on Thursday to have a catch up & dinner at Westfield, but she'd only had 2 hours of sleep the night before & wasn't really up for being sociable, so had to cancel. Boo. This freed up my evening somewhat, so I had a brief exercise session (I so loves my trampoline!) & vegged out on the sofa.

Yesterday was Play Time! I ran off at 5.30pm (i.e. on time) from work to the V&A where Playgrounds was about to happen as part of the V&A Late Nights. Having been to the Sandpit last months I sort of knew what to expect & that you had to be there early to get on the lists for games. They did it a bit differently at the V&A, there was no central sign up desk but you had to go to each game individually, which was a bit of a drag as you might show up at one game only to discover it was full already. Managed to meet Benjy & group most people together by simply texting them the room we were in. In the end formed a little group with Benjy, Taynor & later Ellie, which was really cool. We played a Silent Relay, where we were secret agents getting instructions via iPod & had to run around the museum to hand over code words, letters & cameras. It was tons of fun but also a bit stressful as the guys who had planned it had totally underestimated the amount of people crowding the rooms. After that we signed up for Mr Mirrors & had to find our lost identity by solving puzzles & finding people with top hats in rooms that would give us lost emotions. We also played a rather naff version of twister with questions. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening & I think most people (my flatmate being an exception by the looks of it) had fun.

We stayed & played until the ushered us out. Benjy & Ellie went home, me & Taynor went up to Camden to meet up with Minh. It had started raining & Minh had moved from a really quite cosy pub to the World's End (of all venues). Got to meet some of his friends, but due to an incident with a really drunk girl that they had to take care of the evening was cut short & I was on the bus home at midnight.

My legs really hurt today from all the running around, I miraculously have put on almost a kg (I blame that on bingeing on chocolate the last 2 days & my period starting on Monday, I really hope it's not there to last) and I'm somewhat undecided what to do tonight. Emma's celebrating her birthday by having a pub meet & going to a barn dance thing. There's also the option to go to Whirl-Y Gig, but I kinda ruled that out as the next weekend's going to be a mahoosive party. There's also the rather tempting option to just stay in, be boring & watch a DVD. I'm favoring the latter, really, but know that I'll probably get bored halfway through. I think I'll venture over to Manor House for the pub meet & then play it by ear.

Frequent Flyer: An Evening Of Spoken Word With Henry Rollins

Just look at him!!! *swoon*

Ok, have to calm down now. Thanks to a friend's Facebook post a while back I'd heard about Henry Rollins coming to London to do a spoken word performance. I got totally excited, having first noticed him in some 5-minute-rant vids on MTV years ago. I loved the energy & the anger coming through, also that he seemed to know exactly what he was talking about. And yes, he does look rather tasty as well, which made things even better.

Tickets were purchased, I only got seats on the balcony which turned out to be really high up & pretty far away from the stage. I hate buying tickets for venues I don't know, you never know if that seat that looks good in their seating plan actually is. Next time I go to the Royal Festival Hall I know...

Anyway, flatmate & I got in, took our seats & got comfortable. All there was to see was a mic stand on a vast empty stage. The lights went out, Mr Rollins entered the stage & I was mesmerized! He talked for about 2 1/2 hours straight, about the world, his travels, life & love. Time passsed quickly, it was a pleasure to listen & watch him.

I might have developed a tiny, tiny (errr, ok, MASSIVE) crush on Henry Rollins. He not only looks absolutely tasty (tattoos & all), he's also highly intelligent, cares about stuff & is altogether a total maniac. You see, just my kinda guy.

Left the venue majorly impressed, tubed home & crawled into bed as I was exhausted & still fighting that nasty lurgy.

I'm feeling a lot better today, my nose is still not quite unblocked but I'm less under the weather & therefore contemplating a trip to the V&A this afternoon.

More culture, here I come!