16 Feb 2008

Ballring

Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 9:31 pm by alby

Me and Pee decided nearly on a whim to bugger off to Birmingham for the day part of the Ballring. I wasn’t expecting huge numbers due to the previous Ballring outing which has gone down in infamy as a massive mess of an event (or at least the show).

Turned out to be not a bad turnout all things considered.

The venue aint great though. The main room has huge windows so if the sun’s out all the jugglers have to face away from the windows. Not a problem for solo jugglers but for passers like me it can cause grief. There is another room with less in the way of sun problem but the ceiling there is too low. Ah well.

We got there not too late and bumped into loads of folk. So we started a “standing around” workshop and spent some time chatting to them all.

I got to speak to Sharon after an age of not seeing her so that was nice.

Loads of photos.

I avoided the games but did have a very entertaining while passing with Jay and Mamph doing 9 and 10 club feeds and playing with varieties of them.

Pictures here.

Home early.

Have fun.

Left at midnight

Posted in Life, People at 10:24 am by alby

Lizzah’s leaving this weekend.  Aw.

We were having a scary fillum night last night and clurb wanted to use it as a leaving do for her as well.

And I’m going to do it as a HLCBG.

Highs:

  • Ace company.
  • Good fillum.
  • Pizza.
  • Cake.

Lows:

  • Failure of the party popper wot I was given.  It was some swanky thing that was supposed to do something good.  The bottom fell out of it rather than the top popping off.
  • “It came off in my hand”.
  • String patty.

Crush:

  • My mates are ace.

Bane:

  • Shall we say “an amount” of mess to clean up when I can be bothered.

Goal:

  • Surprise Lizzah.  Met.

Photos: here

14 Feb 2008

Take That

Posted in Music at 12:43 pm by alby

Years ago I was walking through the city streets in Newcastle. I got to the Virgin Megastore to see an huge crowd of folk hanging around. I asked someone to tell me what was going on.

We’re waiting to see Take That.

said the spotty oik. Well at that time I’d never heard of them. Shows what I know.

Yesterday I cycled to work through the city centre here and saw an huge crowd outside HMV, at 8am. I didn’t fancy stopping so zoomed past and on to work.

After work I was off up to the uni for my german class and at DMH there was another huge queue of folk. Still didn’t stop to ask and wasn’t interested beyond “Oh there’s a queue”. Just read in the local rag that it was all about another new and thrusting young band. This time called “Paramore”. Never heard of them either.

No doubt they’ll go far.

Have fun.

13 Feb 2008

What was it for again?

Posted in People, Work at 1:05 pm by alby

Oh I’ve just had the loveliest patient.

Old black woman who was very talkative and telling me tales of her youth and husband (long dead) and her grandkids.

At one point we have to ask what medication people are on.

After a longish list of proper drugs she said

And oh what do you call it?……. Oh now what is it again?…… It’s a small brown tablet…… Good for you it is….. Oh what was its name again?…..

So I asked what the tablet was for.

It’s for the memory.

Sounds like it works well then.

Have fun.

12 Feb 2008

Are y0u?

Posted in Life at 8:38 pm by alby

I just received an anonymous text message.  Total content:

Help. I0m horny.

How bizarre. No phone number (just the same message as sender).

Booked

Posted in Juggling at 4:38 pm by alby

Ferry for EJC booked.  That’ll be £30 each from the Plumpton-Bears then.

See you on Friday.

Darwin Day

Posted in Life at 9:29 am by alby

Happy Darwin Day everybody.

I like the idea of celebrating rationality but even to me this Darwin Day idea is unfeasibly contrived and artificial.

Ah well.

Have fun anyway.

11 Feb 2008

Mongers

Posted in Juggling, Rants at 7:37 pm by alby

There’s normally something to like on rec.juggling and something to ignore but something’s really getting on my tits today.

There’s a thread on there about Mr Gatto. He’s not part of it though. It seems others have decided to argue and fight for him.

He’s produced a new video which he will be charging for. I have no problems with any part of that. He also just stuck up a trailer for it showing some very good technical juggling.

Apparently he’s arrogant. I’ve said as much before. But “ooh really”? Is he?

Now I wouldn’t normally care but 2 or 3 people who really should know better have immersed themselves into a flame war about who’s right and wrong.

It’s extraordinarily tedious. And people wonder why I don’t give a toss about the “who’s best” schtick that the WJF and its advocates have.

It reminds me of the Speccy/C64 wars of the mid 80’s. People seem to be defined by their allegiance to something/one that’s not really theirs. And poking that bubble really does wind some folk up good and proper.

Honestly people just grow up.

Monday morning

Posted in Work at 11:21 am by alby

Finally I feel a bit rested.

After 12 hours sleep on Saturday night and not getting out of bed ’til 3 yesterday my body seems to have caught up a bit.

So feeling good as I cycled off to work this morning. 

Only to discover that the physio room was locked.  And there was no key.  And the master key didn’t work.  And the cleaner who might have the key wasn’t in.  And nor was the elctrician who may have used it over the weekend.  And our admin lady wasn’t in.  And so we couldn’t warn patients that they may not be getting seen today.  And so they’d be annoyed.

It took 25 mins of searching from the receptionist at the centre to find a master key that worked (deep in some safe somewhere).  Into the room to discover the keys sat under the PC’s keyboard of all places.

Welcome to Monday!

10 Feb 2008

There are supermarkets in Leicester

Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 6:38 pm by alby

Chocfest 13 was yesterday and a day was had.

Up early to get P, C and D before zooming up the M’way. We’d had a plan to avoid insulting D on the way up. That plan lasted all of about 5s ‘cos he kept feeding me set-up lines. Had at least 2 or 3 hysterical moments on the trip which prefaced the general hilarity of the day.

Arrived earlyish but the gym was already pretty busy.

As I wandered across to dump stuff with the others I heard an “Oi Alan!” from the side and looked to see Dr Helen, Charlie and Alex (looking pregnant and happy - yay!). Cue hugs of varying levels of Britishness. Also bumped into Jay and fak and Lynne and DB and Tom and others too. One annoyance was that I bumped into Barry, an older guy who used to go to the Lincoln club (no longer exists) when I did. I meant to go and have a long chat with him but kept a: forgetting and b: missing him when I did remember. Pah.
Thus began a day of chatting and some practice. Me and clurb did some good 8 club and some terrible 7 and back to back. But it didn’t really matter, the laughter generated by our general crappiness more than made up for it.

At point we were in a lefty-righty passing workshop trying something new. We weren’t too good at the thing but clurb was getting close to it whilst I was just getting the clubs back to her. Then she managed it. Yelped, leapt around maniacally and then noticed that the room had fallen silent and all eyes were on her; cue even more hysteria and laughter. I had to usher her out of the place with her still tittering madly and people’s faces staring at us with bemusement. Was possibly the most entertaining workshop I’ve ever been to and I’m not sure that the teachers had expected it to turn out quite that way.

Back to the main gym to play some games (proper ones not tedious juggling ones). I would have beaten clurb at Scrabble if D hadn’t helped and if they hadn’t taken 20 minutes per go as opposed to my 30s a go.

There was some weird crate game thing wot Mini lent us too. Wasn’t convinced by that one though. Clurb still has it tho’ so it might be worth a second look.

At one point I was collared by Mick from BJC asking me re workshops there. Shall be doing a couple so feel free to come along.

As I’d been knackered all last week (since Glasgow) and driven to York and was driving home I thought it might be a good plan to sleep for a bit so I had an hour asleep in my car before finding the others to get food. Then I heard the dreaded “Oh the chippie is closed - it won’t open until the 15th”. Disaster.

This led to a charge around trying to find food and we ended up in a chinese place with a tardy attitude to getting us served. Nice enough food but it meant that we nearly missed the start of the show.

To the show:

There was a lot in the show and I wasn’t keeping track so I may well have forgotten a lot and get details wrong.

First thing to notice was the compere. The guy was playing a creepy cheesy working men’s club type character. Problem was I didn’t like the character. At all. He started off by effectively rubbishing everyone to follow, introduced each act (nearly) with a dig at their amateurness, told inappropriate stories and just didn’t keep the mood going between acts. I wonder if he was trying the “be crap and the acts look better” style of compering.

The order of these starts right I think but is probably completely wrong for most of the review.

  • Josh and Chris from Leeds were up first with their Leeds routine (apparently). Was a good start with some nice sharing of balls, hard stuff and they seemed happier on stage than I remember them.
  • Plumsie. Introduced as “His first time ever on stage”. Oh dear. Clearly nervous. Messed up the first couple of tricks and legged it leaving an empty stage for a bit.
  • Some young lad - forgotten his name. He came on to do some balls, clubs and diabolo. A nice piece of cheese and good for a lay audience. Loads of grinning and loads of basic tricks with few mistakes. The main point of contention with this was the appalling music/muzak he used. So not only does he go for the campest song ever in “Gimme gimme gimme” but he goes for an easy-listening instrumental version of it. Quite possibly the most unpleasant backing track to a routine I’ve ever heard.
  • David from Manchester. Young and technically talented juggler. I’d make a guess that he’s going to challenge Ady for the cute vote at BYJOTY. Some hard tricks, most pulled off successfully. He’s going to be very good.
  • BKA - ie Void with his Kendama wotsit. Basically an advert for the Kendama comp at BJC with some contrived contest and volunteers. Notable for the shocking lack of faith in Void’s kendama abilities from the volunteers.
  • Rachael - hula. Started with an extremely inappropriate comment or two from the compere about auditioning for his academy back stage as he wandered around the stage with his flies undone (obviously). If I was her I’d have decked him. Despite this she managed a good session of hula-ing. Some very good tricks done with style and vigour.
  • At some point there was an interval which included the chocolate cake contest results. Notable for DB winning something and Lorri’s (in)advertant mention of “bias points”.
  • The raffle was disposed of quicklyish by Lizzah and Jimbob and on to the second half.
  • The events announcements. They all had to do tricks to be allowed an announcement. Jay did the first public announcement of the Lestival and managed to screw up his trick at exactly the time he mentioned the words “mastery of the diabolo”. Couldn’t have timed it better if he’d tried. The other announcement of note was Void’s BBU announcement done in the style of Miark.
  • The compere wanders on and the curtains part to see the same set up as was there for plumsie in the first half.
  • Introduced as “only the second time he’s ever been on stage” (the compere’s funniest line of the night) was indeed Plumsie. Smiling more and relaxing into it a bit as he rattled through his routine. Loads of drops but enough successes to keep them cheering. Fantastic reaction from the crowd who knew damn well it couldn’t have been easy to get up on stage again. If you excuse the phrasing - points for sheer balls. And one for the helmet spin.
  • Norbi hacked me off even before his routine started. Now I know why he asked for cameras and videos to be switched off but talk about flattening the mood somewhat. This throws something else up a bit. Why don’t events have an official videoer and not let anyone else into the show with a camcorder? Then if the act doesn’t want something to go out into the public he/she can ask that one person later rather than awkwardly interrupt everyone’s enjoyment with what comes across as a rather precious request. As I said I can think of a couple of good reasons why the request was there. Most notable was prolly because he dropped a lot (prolly a new and not very performed routine I’d guess). I’d also say that it was hardly “a new prop”.
  • York students. 4 of them doing juggling balls and sharing and some body moves and stuff. Nice finish with a hat full of balls and a doff. Nowt too fancy but done well enough and different enough to be interesting.
  • The Hitmen. Spanish guys from Circus Space. Reservoir dogs style doubles routine with wit and skill. Enjoyed it a lot. Compere came on with a negative quip and I remember him being roundly booed by the audience for it. Served him right. (NB clurb remembers differently and that he was booed after commenting on Plumsie’s second go - I vaguely remember that but I’m sure it was worse here - I certainly picked up that comment as being worst).
  • Erik Borgman (?sp) was on last. I’d not heard of him but turns out he’s an ex-Cirque du Soleil performer and it showed. At ease in front of a crowd, funny, skilled football juggling. Easily fulfilled everything you want from a headline act. An excellent way to finish the show. Turns out he’s doing the BJC too so that’s a draw if you didn’t have enough reasons to go already.
  • The performers line-up at the end. I’d not normally mention this bit of the show but a couple of things stuck out. First was that plumsie got 2 mentions which was a giggle. Second was that he was the only one, out of 15 people on stage not wearing predominantly black. He stuck out like a sore plum. (sorry)

And that was that. A great day out and some full-on shifts in emotion over the course of it. Will be looking forward to next year’s from today.

Many thanks to Mamph and the other York lot for keeping going with this. Still the best 1 day event (until the Lestival of course ;o)).

Have fun.

PS Photos here.

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