Party Like It's 1994

Do you remember S*M*A*S*H? What about These Animal Men? What, were you not reading the NME in 1994?

Seems like there were a few people that were.  One of them has made a film about them called Flawed is Beautiful and to launch it he got both bands to play one of those gig things.

Now I don't know how much of it was nostalgia, of forgetting that I wasn't a teenager any more or how much of it was that These Animal Men are just an amazing live band, but that gig was absolutely phenomenal.

Surfing the Geekgeist

Oops, it appears that I'm doing something that's sort of hip.  Accidentally of course.

Turns out that over the last couple of years there's been a growing movement of people that aren't using computers for gaming, preferring instead actual interaction and doing table top gaming - you know? Boardgames. But like for grown ups. It seems boardgames have gone through a bit of a revolution over the last twenty years, with a lot more emphasis on strategy rather than luck.  

About a year ago our pubquiz team retired and we invested our meagre winnings into Settlers of Catan, since then we've geeked out somewhat - only it turns out we were actually being cool. In an effort to make myself less cool, I figured I should write about the boardgames - sorry TTGs - that we've been dabbling in.

Settlers of Catan / Ticket to Ride / Carcassonne
These are the big three gateway games, the ones that get you hooked.  Plenty of People have written plenty of words about them. You've probably played them already. All three are ace, now let's move on.

Pandemic
So this game you don't play against other people, you play with other people against the game. You know, like in Knightmare, or the Crystal Maze. Only on a table top. It is frustratingly tough.

Tikal
The first time I played Tikal it was super fun. I would talk concept but the make believe / role play aspect makes my skin crawl a little bit; let's say it's like Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones was a centimetre high wooden cylinder and leave it at that.  The next time I played it just seemed really slow - whilst most of the other games here are turn based, you will still be doing things on other people's turns, here you can nap.

Machi Koro
However you describe it, it is going to sound like Monopoly. It isn't like Monopoly. Monopoly is long, slow and rubbish; this is short, fast and great.

Puerto Rico
So this is like a next level game.  I felt like I should have taken A-Level economics before playing this. Or maybe instead of playing this. It's gone back on the shelf until I've sunk further into the tabletop mire.

So what next, any recommendations gratefully received.

Faggots and Peas

It seems that every time I go to Cardiff I walk away from any obvious signs of life to go to a beard-achingly-hip pop-up in an industrial premises. Last time it was Pyramid Scheme, a literary event in a print studio. This time it was Brewfest, the trendiest beer festival that I've ever been to.

In my head beer festivals are about barrels. You find a space - be it a marquee, a corner of a pub, a church or a school hall - and you fill it with barrels. Loads of them. In massive horizontal piles. Then you get served beer by a guy in a Camra poloshirt. This wasn't like that. This made a warehouse into a career fair for microbreweries, only with way more decor.

I'm staying in Pontypridd which was absolutely buzzing as the Lido has reopened. Had lunch in Ponty Market - the café advertised itself as "The Place for Faggots and Peas" which I kinda wanted to take a picture of but worried that that would make me look like a class tourist so figured that I would blog about it instead. I'm an idiot.

You Can't Go Wrong With a Footwear Song

I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe again. This time I saw this:

Messrs Brimson and Wilson - Shamefully I really quite enjoyed this. Two quasi-music-hall, lowest-common-denominator comedians telling averagely funny jokes before going "weird fringe" and doing a song about inflatable shoes.

Sofie Hagen - Warm and funny. The best thing I saw on Day 1.

Joel Dommett - thoroughly enjoyable, however the structure of the show was so similar to Sophie Hagen's that you couldn't help but compare the two.

Simon Slack - He reminded me of someone I went to school with so my highlight of the set was imagining that someone who once had a very promising future was now dancing in their pants in the back room of a club for coppers. Turns out it's not him. Sadtimes.

Full Scottish at Ryan's Bar - not strictly speaking an act, but worth sharing. 

The Walking Dead - more a lecture about the impending zombie apocalypse than a comedy show.

Kane and Abel - not been to a magic show in years.

Ben Clover - Ben's a mate so obviously this was great.

Russell Hicks - This guy managed to do a funny hour's set with essentially no material. Day 2's highlight.

Simon Munnery's fylmshow - he's one of those comedian's comedians that I've been meaning to see for years. Not certain that I wholly got him. He had two guests (whose names I missed), the first one may have been Njambi McGrath. It might not but she was really good.

Alternative Comedy Memorial Service - I found this mighty enjoyable. However I got the impression that I was missing out on a whole heap of injokes.

Mickey Scharma - We were aiming finishing with Liam Williams, but didn't realise there was a queue. Ended up here instead. Not quite the big big bang finale that we had planned.

"Like You, but Good"

Standon Calling time again.  Once again I saw virtually nothing, well done me. 

This year's highlights: 

Ezra Furman - this is the kind of nonsense I've always loved. I'm unsure how he has managed to release three albums before he's dented my awareness.

Malory Torr - a pretty voice singing pretty country songs - what's not to like? 

DJ Yoda - forty five minutes of euphoric pop hiphop mash up.

Poetry Goes Pop - a high-brow / low-brow panel show that didn't always work, but when it did it worked super well. Consequently I've had the Jabberwocky to the tune of Wrecking Ball stuck in my head for two days. 

Piggy Platter - I can't remember the name of the foodstall that sold this - Maple pork, maybe. It was tasty and massive and frankly set a new precedent for festival food which will probably never be superseded.

Caistor St Edmund

Norwich is a city that likes a dragon. Even without the GoGoDragons roaming the streets there is definitely an above average number of dragons in that there city.

Norwich is a bit of a weird one.  I went quite a lot as a kid but I had never explored the city as a grown up.  I'd always discounted it as just a slightly bigger version of Chelmsford. Which is somewhat false. The city was dripping with both history (with its Norman castle and enormous cathedral - Chelmsford cathedral could probably do a three-point turn inside Norwich cathedral) and culture (there seemed to be cinemas everywhere).

There just seemed to be a buzz in the town, at least when comparing it to the last similarly sized British city that I went to (which was Coventry a couple of weeks ago.  Now this is unfair, I'm comparing Norwich on Pride Saturday to Coventry on a Thursday afternoon. However Coventry didn't shower itself in glory when I asked at the tourist information what I should see if I only had a couple of hours - "it's after three, everything's shut now." Anyway, back to Norwich). I wandered out to the edge of town to get to the Sainsbury Centre.  This suburban, provincial art gallery was stuffed full of famous names. I know that this was a special exhibition and not the regular collection but three Michelangelos and a Titian?  Really?  That's just showing off.

Birthday Thoughts

A decade ago I lived with a guy called Nick and his extensive collection of Detroit techno singles in an uber-hip Manchester loft apartment. A fair chunk of my best flat-sharing anecdotes come from that year.  Here's a very small one:

"I'm just bobbing to the shop. Do you want anything?"
"Nah, you're alright, cheers."
"Catch you in a bit."
Nick returned home five days later - lucky I din't need milk.

Today would have been Nick's 40th birthday. It would have been a hell of a party.

The phrase "Rest in Peace" doesn't seem appropriate - it pretty much misses the point of Nick - but you get what I mean.