18 Mar 2010
Posted in Fillums, Juggling, Life, Reviews at 6:31 pm by alby
Hi all. I am around and about but v busy.
Stuff wot’s happened:
- Bunch of fillums seen, rented via Lovefilm.com which seems to be pretty good but there have been a couple of issues of discs not quite working properly. Nothing that stopped the things working completely but sticking on occasion and being a pain.
- Best was probably “Eastern Promises” by David Cronenberg. It’s about Russian mafia in London and is quite gruesome and unpleasant. Same director and star of “A History of Violence” (which is better, it did at least seem to have a complete story arc). If I didn’t expect there’ll never be an “Eastern Promises 2″ I’d say that the scene was set for that to happen.
- Currently have “In Bruges” to see.
- Spending a lot of time in Derby (for obvious reasons).
- Chocfest been to. Lovely to see so many friends again. Sorry no full review as I missed the show again. Hopefully I’ll get to stay for Lestival’s show.
- Worrying stories about Chocfest maybe not being carried on as most if the orgs won’t be around. Fingers crossed that younger Yorkies will take over. Hopefully things aren’t so negative and I just caught people tattling.
- Bad news re a friendly chap in York having had a heart attack. Good luck and best wishes to him. Get well soon Yo-Yo Monster.
- Work being a pain.
- Getting better after Labyrinthitis.
There’s prolly more to mention but that’ll do for now.
Have fun.
Permalink
13 Jan 2010
Posted in Reviews at 9:57 pm by alby
The Grauniad have just put up a wotsit about their critics’ favourite drama shows ever.
Not sure I agree with certain aspects but that’s the nature of lists.
I should point out that I haven’t seen a lot of them including many that are considered “vital” by those who know about such. Eg The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men (I tried but hated it), 24, West Wing, Hill Street Blues, and more.
But there are some very strange oddities in there.
Let’s start at the bottom.
Number 50 – Grange Hill? An unusual start but it seems to make sense if you think about it. Gripper and Tucker are characters that many of my age fondly remember.
Number 48 – Eastenders. Hmm well close to Grange Hill as loads of the actors from one ended up in the other. No idea what Stenders is like as I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more than the occasional badly timed channel surf glimpse of it.
Up to no 40 for The Twiglet Zone. Now we’re talking. I assume they mean the original series complete with Shatner wigging out on a plane and the freakiest one ever where the man woke up and all the nouns had changed. Top stuff – well done Rod Serling.
Number 38 – Brookside? How bizarre. Perhaps the Graun’s critics like the odd bit of Anna Friel lezzing up.
Number 34 – The Prisoner. It isn’t number 34 it’s a free series. Proper good stuff this. No editorial needed.
Ah but then they go and ruin it with number 31 – This Life. Really? Wannabe lawyers shagging? Really? Very poor.
Half way up the list now with Battlestar Galactica at 25. I really REALLY hope they mean the 80’s original (starring Face from off from The A Team and Lorne Greene – other brands of garden fertilizer are available) rather than the remake.
To 22 with Buffy tVS. Top stuff and I have to admit I was cynical before being more or less forced to watch it. Annoyed by sniffy types who don’t get the subtleties of this show and refuse to see the humour. Beyond that there are certain episodes that rank as some of the best telly ever. Hush won awards – and not many shows would have something approaching 40 minutes of no dialogue (partic in a series noted for its dialogue). Personal fave episode is called “Passion”, doesn’t seem to get mentioned a lot but it’s the nearest a telly show has come to a good horror fillum (except maybe Ghostwatch). And I reckon “Once More With Feeling” (the musical episode) was inspired and it worked. Yes that’s me, endorsing a musical. “The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together…”etc.
Twin Peaks at 12. Another good idea but too many episodes not directed by Lynch and killed off by dim mercans when they found out who killed LP (no not that one), as if that was ever the point of the show.
And that’s it for dramas. Haven’t seen any from any higher up the list than that.
But there’s more weirdness. At number 16 there’s “How Do You Want Me?” starring Dylan Moran and Charlotte Coleman. Excellent dark comedy series. I started watching this again on DVD and it’s awfully uncomfortable at times. Not quite sure it counts as drama tho.
And at number 5 the very little known “A Very Peculiar Practice” starring Doctor Who and that bloke from “Waiting for God” (sadly missed). I adored this show and they only ever released series 1 on DVD. Annoying as I wanted to see the episode from series 2 where the band Loop (I think) played hellish noisy noise stuff pretty much throughout [edit: Just remembered it wasn't "Loop", it was a band called "Slab!"]. Bring it out BBC!
And that leads us to what isn’t in the list.
For a start House isn’t in there. I can sort of understand this as every episode of House is effectively the same as every other. But the writing’s good and Hugh is bloody brilliant in it.
And if you’re going to have “A Very Peculiar Practice” in there then where are the 3 Beiderbecke series? (Starring James Bolam, the lovely Barbara Flynn – also in AVPP and lots of ace trad jazz) A major omission in my book.
Ah well as I said, lists do this I suppose.
Permalink
02 Nov 2009
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 9:16 pm by alby
So then after a further 8 hour flight (complete with 160mph tail wind at one point – whee!) I made it to Melbourne and after a long trek through their quarantine section was spat out onto the streets.
Got me a bus into the city and then went to find my first hostel.
First impressions of Melbourne? “Meh, it’s a city”.
My immediate task on getting into my room was to check my ankles out. When I had my shower at Singapore airport I’d discovered that my ankles had swollen quite dramatically. This had me buying a pair of those sexy flight socks for the second leg (geddit eh eh?) of the journey.
It turned out that very little had changed. Still swollen and pitting horribly. Is this normal? Or am I just an undiscovered cardiac patient? Fingers (but not legs) crossed.
I wasn’t actually too worried but then I went to the loo and had horrible chest pain. Crumbs. I slept that night with my feet on a pillow. Wee’ed loads the next morning – I’m pretty sure not weeing on the flight much was the problem. No worries after that anyway.
I’d got to Aus at about 7pm their time and was tired so I actually managed to drop into their time easily just by staying awake until 10ish and then going to bed for a good while. I thought that would have been more difficult. Nice.
Oh yes, crappy iPod news! The bloody home button didn’t work on flight 2. Then did the next day, then didn’t the day after etc… I took it into an Apple shop only to be told they’d need to send it off and this would take 2-3 weeks. Nice. Still not working properly. Internetting it seems to suggest that it’s a dodgy piece of design and/or manufacture. So as well as not playing stuff with my file format of choice it also has the XBox360 habit of breaking if someone looks at it wrong. If it wasn’t for the opinions of people whose opinions I trust then I’d have to assume that they sell over-priced, sub-quality tat.
Anyway. The MJC then.
After waking up with synchronised me and Aus time (yay) it was a swift gather up of stuff and then back to the central station to get a train to Collingwood.
After arriving to the college I realised that I didn’t have enough cash to pay to get in.
They let me leave my stuff behind the desk and pointed me at ATMs. Annoyingly Australia is way behind us with regard to placing cash points all over the place; they’re rare beasts over there. Got to the first one to find it wasn’t dishing out any cash. Arse. 10 mins walk later I found another one – not dishing out cash either. Another 15 min walk further there was a 3rd ATM – no dice. Bloody hell! I’d been walking for ages, it started raining – I had about £20 worth of Aus cash on me so nowhere near enough to get a room, or buy much food or drink over the weekend. There were no banks around for me to drop into (and no exchange places neither). The best I could find was a Western Union place that wouldn’t let me use my credit card to buy money. They did let me know that someone could send me cash from abroad. In other words, phone your folks and get them to send you some. Err no.
Eventually I found yet another cash point. This one didn’t give me any cash but did at least let me know why. My bank had blocked the card thinking someone had nicked it. Great. So it’s Saturday afternoon here, early Sunday morning at home, nothing open and no-one to phone for hours. Magic.
So I soggily wandered back to the MJC and luckily the rather lovely Christian let me in by leaving my credit card details. He also lent me his phone to call a hostel. They would accept payment by card too. Sigh. Still didn’t look good for food tho.
So after all that I then had to take all my kit to the hostel which was a further 20min walk through streets I didn’t know dragging all my stuff.
A few zeds later I was heading back yet again to actually meet some jugglers.
Wandering around the place some bloke wanders up and says “I recognise you” and turns out to be some Londoner called Dave. He was at a few UK cons that I was at too. So we had some chatting and then he introduced me to Mr Cheetham (nee Popstar Dave). Another thoroughly lovely chap.
I went to one passing workshop which sounded interesting but turned out to be lots of wandering and figuring out how to do the wandering. Meh, not interested. In one of the halls I met a couple of guys passing and joined in with them for a bit (hello Ash and ?Christophe).
But my lack of juggling for some months soon told and my patterns just went to pot, mainly I think because I just didn’t have the stamina.
At this point I wandered into the canteen to have nice and cheap food from some folk by the name of “Lentil as Anything”. After lots of chatting with new pals and “ah”ing at Hannah’s ?broken wrist I ended up being taught some very bizarre twisted passing pattern.
Incidentally some moron told Hannah that he’d healed her by holding on to her wrist for a while. She said “no it still hurts” so he pressed it harder. Idiot. Anyway on enquiring more she’d had numbness and some pretty decent swelling of the hand – I suggested she get it x-rayed.
Regardless the passing didn’t last too long as the show was kicking off soon. Just before this point my bank phoned me up to tell me that they thought someone had stolen my card. After being grumpy with them for a bit they agreed to let me access my money again and that episode was thankfully brought to a happy end.
To the show: Most of this was really bloody good. The comperes were excellent and the majority of acts had something decent to offer. And it was probably the longest show I’ve seen for a good while.
Highlights for me:
Olivia: a girl doing a wind-up doll routine – smooth moves and ace choreography.
The diabolo kid who came 3rd in Australia Has Talent (corrected for grammar).
2 Antipodean acts – first did parasols very delicately and the second was a very zippy, if brief, 2 person thing where one was the object – very speedy and, if they didn’t need to be brought so far, I’d say bring ‘em for a BJC. Make ‘em do some workshops to bump up their value and that’d maybe do. They were called something like “Feet 2 Feet”.
Another acro thing with 2 blokes and a woman – they did the slightly cliched fighting over the woman thing but their twist was that the 2 blokes ended up together.
Matt Hall justified his entry by impressing with his tennis can routine as well as a 3-7 ball sequence.
There were a couple of acts that didn’t move me much.
Some woman did a hat act that lived up to pretty much every hat act I’ve ever seen. There was a hugely over-angsty meteor act that started on the floor and never really took off. And some bloke did an air guitar act. Yup an air guitar act. Admittedly he did rip off one Umbilical Brothers act as well (complete with wooden screen – yes that Umbilical Brothers act) but that didn’t rescue it for me.
And that was it. A generally very high quality show. I have to admit to being surprised but then I realised that the Aussies only have 2 events each year so they get the good stuff at each of them. The performers want to perform and there’s not much opportunity to do so at JugCons. So fewer, better quality shows maybe. Not such a bad deal.
But then the show was over and so was Saturday. At the moment that everyone should have been all up and excited and trying stuff they’d seen the site was closed and we all had to go our respective ways. If there was one criticism of the event it’s this lack of a 24 hour space. I was told that previous international guests had mentioned the same before. It was really a shock to not have it available. Weird. Definitely the only really noticable big thing to sort for future years.
The next morning I was back for more of the chatting thing. It turned out that Hannah had indeed broken her wrist yesterday and was now all plastered. That’s unicycling for you. Xray showed a full thickness, undisplaced fracture through her radius. Ow.
We were sat watching them set up for volleyclub at one point. This was apparently reasonably new to Australia. I mentioned it was quite popular in Germany and this elicited a “Oh the girl who started it here is from Germany” from someone. Sure enough a german voice echoed through the hall announcing a volleyclub workshop. Oh and she got the rules wrong.
In the evening was the second Renegade (I’d missed the first as it was on the night I’d arrived in Melbourne).
Matt Hall progressed his Scissor – Paper – Stone – Look Over There thing further by introducing the 3 person variant which entertained the room thoroughly when he got everyone playing.
Some guy impressed with unicycling on a slack rope whilst doing a 3 ball cascade, whilst significantly drunk – nice.
They were the stand-outs for me. Until the intermission.
Things got fun here. We were in a school gym. So lots of toys! Someone set up a vaulting horse and springboard which led at first to people vaulting over higher and higher squashy foam obstacles. Then someone had the idea of joggle 3 then do 1 up, do a somersault and then land back into a 3 ball cascade. One kid did it twice to rapturous, well deserved, applause.
And then the problem with not having 24 hours space came in again. They had to finish the Renegade before midnight so they had to stop the vaulting fun (fun for spectators as well as the participants) to get through the remaining acts. Such a shame. If we could have stayed later we could have had both without having to prematurely halt one of them.
Anyway that was Sunday.
Monday was the last day and there were fewer people aroundand I caught up on a bit of sleep as well so just went there to say hi and bye and thanks and nice to meet yous etc.
So then an MJC. Very good indeed. Ace acts, lovely folk. Shame about the enforced home times. Ah well. Doubt I’ll get there again for some considerable time but I do hope a few of the folk I met manage to get across to Europe for a few cons. Would be nice to meet them again.
Major thanks to Christian for letting me in with no money and lending me his phone. Cheers too to Iain, Hannah and plenty more of their pals whose names I forget. I am so crap with names, sorry. And ta as well to Dave and Dave for company and conversation.
Photos here (no show pics tho).
Permalink
21 Oct 2009
Posted in Reviews, Travel at 10:26 pm by alby
Well done me. I managed not to remember a note pad. Sigh. But this did mean I bought one at Singapore airport. This wouldn’t ordinarily be bothered with but this is a special one. The front cover is a serene photo of footprints in a snowy landscape with the words
“CHALLENGE – Do not follow where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Then on each page is a sort of water mark (not actually, just a cheap bit of very light grey writing) which states
“Destined to win”
With this notepad I can hardly go wrong this whole trip! Woot.
Anyway back to the trip.
I was off to the airport via a coach from Leicester city centre and I was planning to get a cab to the coach station. Well 40 mins before my coach was due off I phoned up the taxi cab and was told they had an hour wait at best. Eek. This was at about 4am. Must be mighty busy or maybe they only had the one guy on. So off I trot on foot dragging a large case and lugging a full day pack. Luckily I bumped into a cab on the way who gave me a lift. Not a great start.
All my flights to Aus and back were on Singapore Airlines. I’d happily recommend them. Decent space, nice service, good entertainment system etc. Very good. The food was top notch too. I brought back a menu with me so I could remember the food offered. How about this for a dinner menu (in economy no less):
Appetiser: Thai Papaya salad with shrimps
Mains: Beef fillet with port wine sauce, roasted assorted vegetables and potato, or
Indian style butter chicken with jalfereizi [sic] vegetable and basmati rice, or
Char Siew pork with steamed rice and leafy greens.
Cheese: Cheese and crackers.
Dessert: Chocolate delight.
Not bad at all.
The flight to Singapore lasted nearly 13 hours though which is a bugger of a long time in anyone’s book. The A380 is quite large too – good for cutting down turbulence and loads of space to move about.
My prep worked though. The iPod gave me plenty of entertainment (and with a seat back USB port available, it didn’t run out of juice no matter how many vids watched or games played), the sound cancelling headphones were well worth it too; I was surprised they worked as well as they did to be honest – most impressed.
On the seat back thingy I finally got to see Monsters vs Aliens which I annoyingly missed down the cinema. And as we were nearing our destination I sat back and watched Kooza too. This may be stating the obvious but some of those performers are awfy good. The wheel of death folk were spectacular, they even had me gasping at one or two points. Stunning stuff.
Regarding the seat back entertainment wotsit. I had a huge bullock of a man sitting next to me and he looked quite dim. At one point he was fiddling with the handset and looking dumbly at his screen. Which was blank. He kept looking at the screen and then at the handset and then at the screen again. All with a blank look on his face. Now the “on” button wasn’t on the handset it was on the bottom of the screen. I helpfully, I thought, leaned over and jabbed his on button for him. He looked very confused and then annoyed and then confused again.
Turns out that his screen was on but the LCD screen didn’t allow me to see it from my viewing angle! Luckily he didn’t get annoyed when we figured out what was going on. Well done me again. Sigh.
Once landed (in an excellent airport – it has about 9 gardens, one of which is a butterfly garden!) I was going to meet up with a couchsurfer who was landing from Kuala Lumpur at roughly the same time. I had 24 hours in Singapore so I though seeing it with a fellow traveller would be a good way to spend the day. He had said he knew Singapore a bit so could show me around. Well we met up, got the train into town and then he had to sod off. Nice.
So I wandered a bit and then went to the zoo.
Now just about the only thing I really knew about Singapore was that it is somewhat clammy. Ross Noble went on and on about this somewhat in his show from there. (I agree with him that the Merlion is a bit rubbish too) When I landed I was in the air conditioned airport and then the air conditioned train. The first I noticed of this clamminess was when the train doors opened at over-ground stops and the air rushing in made it feel like the moment you enter a sauna. Hot and damp. Lovely mix.
But it wasn’t sunny. The photos I got show it as quite gloomy. Strange atmos really.
The zoo was right good tho. Saw a few animals including a saki monkey, some shagging baboons, a couple of pygmy hippos and more. Slightly depressing white tiger exhibit sadly. One of them was just pacing left and right – poor thing probably had too much energy to be cooped up in that size compound. Oh yes they had polar bears too. In Singapore! Talk about wrong habitat.
Next to the zoo was the “Night Safari” which was all about the nocturnal animals. This had a nice, if overly worthy, show about the night timers.
Oh yes there was a woman there at the zoo who was the exact image of Ginormica from Monsters vs Aliens. Only she had black rather than white hair.
By this time I was getting more than a little tired. At one point I fell asleep in the zoo’s cafe. I also managed to fall asleep on the bus from the zoo to the train station.
I got back the airport with a few hours to go before check in so availed myself of the facilities there. And they’re fantastic. Sadly the transit hotel was full but there was something called the transit lounge. This offered showers and short term beds for a low price. A bed! I’d had about 4 hours sleep in the preceding 2 days. So I had me a 3 hour snooze (could have done with much more) and a lovely shower thus making the onward journey much nicer for whomever got to sit next to me on the plane.
Singapore was an interesting stop with far more to see than I managed. Possibly worth a return visit one day. Maybe I’d lump in a Malaysia visit too.
Photos from Singapore (not that I’m best happy with them tbh) here.
Permalink
06 Sep 2009
Posted in Life, People, Reviews at 8:55 pm by alby
Life continues to be fun.
I’ve spent the last couple of weekends with R and her daughter (N).
Last weekend was spent visiting Lincoln with R and meeting up with my folks for a meal and a couple of drinks. The Bank hols was spent with both of them at the Beacon Hill Wood Fair. This was a strange event of “learning about woods”. It should have been awful but was actually a nice way to spend a day.
N got to see a scary green wild man telling stories, me and R got to eat nice food including a self-made pizza and some proper burger. After that N went climbing and very nearly rode in a cherry-picker. Then we watched some countryfied version of the World’s Strongest Man with some butch lumberjacks chopping logs for our amusement.
As I said, very strange.
This weekend was spent in Derby watching some stuff at the “Derby Feste“. We saw the opening thing which had 2 groups of kids wandering into Derby square and playing an annoyingly repetitive riff over and over and over and over…..
Each group had their own mascot. One had a bird thing. The other had what we assume was meant to be the Derby Ram. In reality it was a bloke in a costume carrying a huge sheeps head thing. It was rubbish. Really very bad. It looked like it was manky from years of lying in a cupboard and patched together with bandages. It was horrible at best and scary at worst. Just nasty.
Anyway after about 3 months of them playing this tedious riff they headed off again, still playing it. We zoomed off to a small park where the fest had set up a stage.
Once there we found a small group of folk. Some of them clearly just liked hanging around the square normally and seemed mildly annoyed at this intrusion into their Sunday afternoon. The rest had, like us, a mild curiosity at just what was going on.
One small group seemed to be a juggling group. They had one guy juggling 3 teddy bears and then a couple of them doing quite basic diabolo tricks. After an hour or so they all stood up and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing catch with not 3 balls each, not 4 balls each, but 1 ball between them. Very poor. Earlier in the day I’d been thinking about going over and chatting but even my measly juggling skills would have shown this group up badly.
So the fun on stage starts. A hip and happening guy comes out giving it all “Come on Deeeerrrrrbbyyy!!!!” to muffled “hello”s and such from the mainly apathetic crowd. He witters on with some (I guess) street vocab for a bit until very few know what he’s on about. At this point he decides to do the “tell the crowd what to do” schtick that I loathe.
So we have to cheer when he shouts one thing and scream “Derby Feste” when he shouts another. N loved it, for about 3 minutes. When you’re boring to a 4 year old then you really need to change your spiel.
Then who shows up but the parading kids and their loathsome riff. Yes they’re still playing it, still annoying as hell.
The musicians turn out to be part of a Latin band that starts the show. Some good music and some dodgy singing later they depart to be replaced by a duo doing ukelele covers (oh the originality!). This would have been good if they’d bothered doing anything any good and maybe shortening some of the long songs. EG they did Thriller in its entirety. Come on guys give us a break and boil it down to the bits we know; that way we might not get bored off our tits with you. And no, we won’t be buying your CD.
After this we had a tired 4 year old on our hands so we went home. I don’t think we missed a lot.
Photos from Wood Fair here.
Permalink
27 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 7:12 pm by alby
Saturday afternoon and evening was the public show at the BJC. This year was the 22nd BJC show, hence Catch 22.
I was in an unusual position as I got to see both shows; in my self-appointed “I’m taking photos” role. My plan was to try 2 angles of shots, 1 at each show.
In the end it worked out that I ran out of battery during the second show so I got more from the first. This was a shame as the lighting seemed to be less helpful to getting good pics in the first show. Mind you that probably serves me right for having a camera with rubbish low light capabilities and a cheapish lens.
There were a few notable differences between shows but the main two were that show 1 was quieter but show 2 was generally more droppy but the better atmos gave me a better time.
Act 1 – The Juggling on Tap Orchestra
I’d seen one of their number (Stuart Pemberton aka Heston Blumenthal) at the previous BJC on one of the open stages (what became known by me as “The Italian Show”) and commented that he was bloody good. I’d heard before this BJC that he was in the show but what I was surprised by was that he had a pair of friends on stage with him.
He did bounce juggling and tap dance whilst one pal was a bongo player and the other a flautist. I’d say this was my fave act. Wasn’t the most technical juggling but the packaging was excellent. Bounce juggling, drums and tap dance served us well for a few mins before the addition of flute added a little extra. Very very good indeed.
Act 2 – Ronan
Poi from someone who realises that movement and choreography is key to a poi routine. Some nice contact stuff included and I’m told some of the stuff he did was very hard (not a poimonger so I don’t know). If you “don’t like poi” then I’m sure there was something in this act that appealed to you. It did me.
Act 3 – Audrey Decaillon
From France. Despite having been around the juggling world for some time I have to admit I’ve never heard of her before. Technical stuff was very good. Loads of club manips and some nice foot rolls and catches. An act with more personality than most too. I rather liked it. Strange combination in her character of vulnerability (particularly highlighted by her choice of costume), anger and assertiveness.
Act 4 – Komei Aoke
Be afraid! Contact and body popping at first and then into balls and dance and then rings and that. All very “street” it was. Very nice indeed. I’d be surprised if Komei isn’t a lot of people’s fave act of the night. He was the only act that had the majority standing at the end of it anyway (that I remember). Well worth seeing him if you haven’t. Whisper it quietly though, he could have maybe cut down the rings section.
Act 5 – Witty Look
I’ve seen bad clowning in my time and the first 2 mins of this act had me worried. Luckily I was as wrong as I’ve been in some time. This pair of clowns and unicyclists had me in fits of laughter. The skills they showed off weren’t half bad either. Doubles unicycling as I’ve never seen before (see pics). Whoever came up with booking these 2 deserves a pat on the back.
Act 6 – Tempei Arakawa
Very snazzy diabolo routine. More droppy (as most of the show was) in the second show which does leave me able to legitimately use the line “He’s good but he’s no Tempei” again.
Act 7 – (Belgian) Martin Heasman
His very snazzy 3 ball routine. I’ve seen this routine 4 times now (now I think of it, quite possibly every public showing of it) and I still love it. Also the only act I remember being less droppy in the second show.
Act 8 – Strictly Dumb Prancing
An act I’ve heard about but never seen. And the word of mouth wasn’t wrong. Funny and skillful acro with 2 well developed stage personae which worked very well. It’s this act that showed me that it’s possible to wear someone like a belt.
Act 9 – Koba
Clearly skillful juggling but it didn’t seem up to the standard of the rest of the show. Probably pleased a lot of ring jugglers (although we did also have Komei and Toby doing rings too)
Act 10 – Toby Walker
Ludicrous hard technical juggling. 7 balls with head bounce and more. I’ve never seen Toby do a whole act on stage before so this was a real treat to finish off the show.
I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Void kept things going (again better with the later audience) and managed to confound the odd expectation.
Even the bits in the show that didn’t quite live up to what else was there wasn’t bad stuff; just not as good as the rest. When the worst you can say about a show is “the worst bits were good” then it’s been an awfy good show. A fantastic evening.
Pics: here.
Permalink
26 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 9:57 pm by alby
I’m firmly of the opinion that the BYJOTY show is one of the highlights of a BJC. I’ve seen 4 of them now and all 4 were notable shows. This one was helped out by being in a theatre; indeed it was the first show of any kind in the new venue. Nice.
The show’s compere was Nina (ex of last year’s BYJOTY). If you’d only known her as “that girl who did a cigar box routine whilst wearing high heels” then you’d not have recognised her. Clearly still new to the compering game and apparently nervous. Use of a prompt card all night was a negative (as was her inability to correctly name English cities!) but she got on with it and introduced acts well enough.
On to the acts then. NB The show was all very ball and diabolo biased. There wasn’t one clubs act there, shocking. Oh and back to only one girl again too. (NB My spling may be well off on some of these – don’t worry yourself)
1 – Ken Carlile – Diabolo.
A man with an act. A great start as he did what looked to me as pretty hard diabolo stuff with a character and humour. This guy ended up as my choice for BYJOTY but at the time I was thinking – wow this is going to be a good show if they all live up to this standard. Top stuff.
2 – Brook Roberts – balls.
When he came on my first thought was “ooh another Reuben”. Good skills but not so sure of himself as he could be with practice. One to watch, certainly.
3 – Joe Marks – diabolo
One of the younger competitors. Some attempt at a character and costume but I think nervousness made him sort of get his head down and get through everything without too much interaction with or recognition of the audience.
4 – Boosh – Balls and telephone
Another “act” with some thought behind it. It didn’t move me much though and the skills weren’t as “look at this!” as some of the other acts. But then understatement can be a virtue sometimes.
5 – Rob Wooley – Contact
Odd schoolboy thing going on here. A different act this one with crystal contact stuff and some balancing on sticks going on. Nicely thought out and some decent skills.
6 – Danny Cooper – Diabolo.
Another young one. He didn’t so much as perform as run through his repertoire. Basically he got his head down and ignored the large audience in front of him.
7 – Sarah – Balls and rings.
This looked like Sarah but she seemed to be wearing a dress. A spangly black number. It can’t be Sarah surely? But that’s what the woman said. Coo. maybe it is then.
She did her thing with style and looked like she was proper happy to be up on stage. I do like watching her perform. It’s so nice to see a girl up there doing technical hard throwing and catching rather than poi or hooping.
8 – James Laurence – Balls
White balls and black tee shirt. It’s a cliche for a reason. Nice 3 ball work and some character. Still needs some work but he’s got the seeds of something good there.
9 – Folkert Erkelens – Diabolo.
More diabolo madness from a young Turk (sorry Nederlander). I didn’t quite get how he qualifies for BYJOTY entry but he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t. Confident stuff but again more a string of tricks thrown together than an act. Another one to watch I reckon.
10 – Mats – Footballs
Clown from Wales! Points for picking a slightly diffent prop from the rest. An odd style of doing some stuff and then “ta-daa!” with arms outstretched with a “there look at that, applaud scum” look on his face.
11 – Ben Morgan (aka The Notorious B E N) – Diabolo
I thought this was the second cross-dressing act at a BYJOTY but it turned out he was just acting a hip-hop style rapster type gangster thing (am I out of my cultural reference comfort zone? you bet I am). Floppy hat and a big smile endeared him to the crowd and he then managed some tricky stuff with no major worries. Very nice. Not sure about the costume though.
12 – Reuben – Balls
We’ve seen Reuben before. BYJOTY before, Crawley and a variety of vids online (where he uses actually interesting music rather than whatever’s on his iPod at the time). The act was the same “standing still whilst managing ludicrously zippy ball tricks” as he has done before. But he looked more confident and happy up there this time. The assembled jugglers loved it. Rousing noise by the crowd at the end and you knew where the smart money was for the overall BYJOTY title.
So to the awards:
Silvers, golds and Judges choice awards are by a panel of judges.
BYJOTY is by audience vote.
Gold awards
None – 5 years of zilch in gold then.
Silver Awards – (none of which I would disagree with, nor would I add anyone else)
Ken Carlile
Sarah Biskup
Ben Morgan
Reuben
Judges Choice
Reuben
BYJOTY
Reuben
As I said earlier I didn’t vote for Reuben for BYJOTY. He’s certainly a worthy winner but for an overall act with character and style I put Ken above him on the night. I know at least one of the judging panel agrees with me on that. But hey ho. That’s the fun of this game, we all find different things to like more.
Many thanks again to Luke for running with this.
Pics here.
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Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 9:49 pm by alby
Finally got some time to write stuff and edit pics!
Wednesday was a work day and I was to pick up Mats and teh Biskups in Leicester before heading to Norwich for the delayed BJC this year.
Mats has been local in the past so “knows Leicester”. Hah! At 5.30 he was supposed to have them both at my work (taking an hour off the trip should I have had to go home and then to Norwich). Quick phone call and they’re miles away in the wrong bit of Leicester completely. Still not as far as they would have been if they’d gone to my house tho.
After a decent drive and registering I went to put my tent up before it got too dark. At least 1 person approached me for advice on twinges before I’d even got to the campsite. Nice to know I’d be useful at least.
Met a few bods and pitched near to some nice folk. Whilst putting the tent up Mini was stomping around letting us all know that “The Sharpe Twins”(sic) were going to do a show. Looking over from the tent they seemed to be performing in the dark. I got there more or less as they finished. Ah well, an evening of hugs and hellos ensued.
That was day 1 really. No open stage and I didn’t stay up for renegade.
Thursday – Woken by 2 annoying teen boys in the next tent. Wittering about “Meat slurry” and trying to sound big and clever by using pointlessly over-long words. V tedious (and yes it did remind me of my teen life).
Day was spent alternately chatting and snoozing and with a big wodge of clinic time being done.
I was down to do a gym ball workshop too but this didn’t happen due to me not having heard I was doing one and thus hadn’t taken any gym balls along. As it was a few folk turned up and we did a basic Pilates thing instead until the combination of Mandy and Liz (stars) came up with 1 gym ball and a pump between them so we did a few of the sillier exercises to round off our session.
I briefly managed to say hello to Duncan (from Canada) too just before he disappeared off to move home from Edinburgh. Sorry to see you go Duncan, hope to catch up with you again some day.
After a day wandering through the site (one tent had the very large words “I piss myself” daubed on it) the evening was spent with the Lugeburf crowd (a good lot of them were there) chatting and ta to Kate for supplyage of beer. Best decision of the day was when we all thought “curry after BYJOTY then!”
I avoided renegade again but there was the fire show. A decent number of people I chatted to were going along to have a look but weren’t expecting much. It turned out to be better than most were expecting. There were still rather a lot of pointless body moves but a couple of the poi acts were bang on with their pairs moves and there were lots of pretty shapes being made. The finale was quite nice too with fireworks and flames shooting off all over the place. Definitely a step up from many fire shows I’ve seen but still not sure that it holds my attention that well. I don’t have the “ooh fire” factor any more so it’s just pretty lights moving around. I’d rather see that in a theatre rather than in a courtyard. Mind you Luke did make the point that it was fun to see a fire show and not be freezing whilst watching. The man with the fire wheelbarrow was quite fun too (if a little limited).
Friday – woken up by annoying teen boys in the next tent. This time they were cooking bacon and seemed to be bollocksing it all up right royally (and noisily). And one of them kept sniffing which is so bleedin’ annoying. I dragged myself out of bed and handed him some bog roll, much to his surprise. But he did accept gratefully and apologised for his sniffing. Ta.
More clinic time but no workshop afterwards so more napping done.
In the evening me, Kate and Graeme went into town for the BYJOTY show. I managed to wangle my way up into the balcony on the pretence of doing the photos. The show was ace but there’ll be another post for that.
Afterwards a whole bunch of us found ourselves a nice Indian place (Ali Tandoori) – thanks to the man in a pub for the recommendation. Again a lovely evening with nice folk but this time with excellent food.
Back to the site for renegade, chatting and more beer. Later I was introduced to some of Lizzah’s new southern pals and we played a bizarre dice game.
Renegade started off with Jay hosting but after a couple of uninspiring acts I gave up and went to bed.
A short while later I heard Jay announcing Ben Beever to the stage. Ah well that’s the problem with renegades; you have to endure the rubbish to find the odd nugget of worthwhileness.
Saturday – woken up by annoying teen boys in the next tent, complaining about the mess in their tent – for about an hour. Note – not “doing something about the mess in their tent” just “complaining about it”.
As I was woken early I needed yet more nappage through the morning.
Wandered into town with Lizzah for the games and then the show.
We did get to Pizza Express for lunch but they totally failed to live up to their name and we left before they got round to coming to ask us for our order. We ended up in the Norwich market where we found a chip stall – it just did chips. And nice ones they were too.
The games were a surprise for a few reasons. Firstly I was watching them, second I was in one game, third I came about 2nd or 3rd in it – it wasn’t very obvious to be honest. I was sat next to Luke and we watched the first round of club distance passing. They were all pretty awful and Luke seemed actually offended at how bad the first round was. “Come on we can do better than that” so he got me involved. It was the first time I’ve juggled for months and we came about 2nd. Not bad I reckon.
I left shortly afterwards thus missing what turned out to be the shortest 5 club endurance game ever when a sudden gust of wind blew up at the exact moment of the start of the game meaning only 1 person got more than a flash.
The games were ok. The compere was audible (credit due for not succumbing to the usual problem of not being heard easily) but I didn’t think the order of the games was too hot. The first one took some organising whereas maybe a quick and easy round of unicycle gladiators would have been the ideal “splash” intro to the non-BJCers in the audience.
Later he put the hardcore ball games together so we had first up 5 ball endurance. Followed by 7 ball endurance followed by 9 ball endurance. The problem with this was that the only people who could take part in the 7 and 9 ball games were also in the 5 ball game and were very good at it so were in it for a long time hence getting tired. Maybe it’d have been better to split them a bit to give them a rest before the harder games.
Anyway I’d gone shopping at this point to find myself another memory card for my camera. I was hoping to get lots of pics from the show later so thought a card for the show would be a good idea. Unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned on the cost of the larger cards. I would have needed a mortgage extension to get the 16Gb card so I settled on a 4Gb card instead. Big enough for something like 1400 pics so that’d do.
To the show venue at 3.30 for the early show. Show description coming in another post though so I’ll leave the show there for now. Oh apart from one item of non-show note. I got a text message telling me that 2 lovely people (Rob and Annette) had had their baby (welcome to the world Nico) and the text was written in a “just happened” style. I dashed downstairs to share the news with other folk. First person I met who’d know them was Lynne who responded with a blase “Oh yes that was yesterday”. Thus stealing my thunder somewhat.
After the late show me and Lizzah were both starving and looking for food. We ended up at 3 Ways Lebanese restaurant which turned out to be rather good. Recommended.
Back to site for beer and renegade. I left when the uninspiring acts just carried on being uninspiring. Tired so to bed. As I was walking there I heard them announce Komei to the stage. Ah well again.
The night was very difficult to sleep through as the show seemed to have energised everyone. Shame it couldn’t have energised them away from the tents though. So I had to put up with lots of shouting and screaming and drunkeness – part of the deal I suppose. At about 4am the annoying teen boys in the next tent came back shouting something about a man who gave them some sort of chilli flavoured foodstuff. “That man is awesome! I’m going to give him a Dr Pepper!” This last sentence had someone else coming back at him (from inside a different tent) with “Dr Pepper is minging – urgh!” Thus began a spirited discussion between opposing world views.
Later they moved on to chatting about Haribo and how the word should be used by Hari Krishnas instead of Gouranga. They eventually concluded that shouting “Haribo” would cause more happiness than “Gouranga” does. Hard to argue with that I suppose.
Then one of them got into an infinite loop of worrying that every time he swore he’d lose the game and swore about this therefore he lost so swore again etc etc… Ad nauseum.
After this they moved onto phoning one of their friends, giggling at how funny it would be to wake someone up. Har har.
After that interlude they went onto a “Who can sing the highest note?” competition. This was annoying but it turned from annoyance to entertainment quite quickly as these 2 drunken fools’ contest degenerated into 2 boys squeaking a lot and giggling even more. I was in hysterics. Ah bless ‘em.
Tired on Sunday morning I was. And I don’t think the man ever did get his Dr Pepper.
Sunday was a very quiet day of mellowing and packing. I’d managed to get teh Biskups and Mats to pack up before 12. We weren’t going before 3 as Pol and Freddy were to do the closing show. It was originally due to be on in the big top, then as we were sitting there we were told it was on in one of the gyms. The gym was packed but the 3 of us managed good seats on a table at the back.
Pol and Freddy were excellent. Lots of 2 person manipulation stuff with a very thick layer of clowning on top. Clearly very well practised and very entertaining.
A very fitting end to a very good weekend.
Thanks to all who contributed, even those 2 teen boys in the next tent.
Pics here (show and BYJOTY pics to come later).
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25 Aug 2009
Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 7:59 am by alby
There is loads to write and loads of pics to sift so there’s not much from the weekend here yet. It’ll get there sometime this week.
So in short.
- BJC was excellent.
- BYJOTY was excellent.
- Catch-22 was excellent.
- Weather was excellent.
- Company was excellent.
- A sizeable bunch of US Christians don’t seem to realize that Jesus’ schtick was the forgiveness and mercy thing.
- England cricketers can actually play occasionally.
- Lebanese food is excellent.
- as is the food at Ali Tandoori, Norwich.
- There is no 10th thing.
More later!
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24 Jun 2009
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 8:42 pm by alby
I have been remiss in my reviewage of recent events so here’s a catch-up for you.
A week and a bit ago was L2! The second Lestival.
It’s still a great venue with oodles of space, even more so this year as the weather was pretty good (compared to last year’s wash out).
Sadly then the biggest downer for the day was the turnout. Just not very full. A shame considering that there have been so few events this year. I’d expected more folk gagging for a good event. Ah well.
The day was pretty full with doing trips to shops and putting signs up and running a workshop.
The workshop was excellent. I did my gym ball exercises thing again which I think might have to be a returner for future years. Fun was had by all. At least that’s what came across on the day.
After chips came the show.
Highlights were the Germans. Two acts one was Felix doing clubs and a book. A strange little wotsit but with plenty of ideas and skill. Die Fussballartisten were the headliners and they ran loads of lovely little football tricks incorporating handbalancing and the like. Sadly the lady of the piece (Miriam) didn’t do a foot to foot ball roll when handstanding in a splits position (mind you if it worked it’d count as a major cool trick).
But the star of the show was Jon Peat. Stunning series of utterly ludicrous 3 ball tricks. Zippy music, some drops (but nowhere near as many as on previous occasions) and some level of personality. Top notch.
So a great little convention. A shame it wasn’t a great medium convention.
Maybe next year.
Photos here.
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