Sunday, May 7 2006, 16:02

Scotty, John, and the 12m elephant

Scott arrived in London last week, although sadly his bags didn't make it over from Miami until the following day. Luckily for Scott, his insurance company were happy to cough up $500 for an interim wardrobe so we headed over to Covent Garden for a quick shopping spree which knackered both of us. While Scott got to have a little power nap, John and I prepared hotdogs and pizza for a little soirée as a prelude to the night out on the town that Scott had been looking forward to for some time. I hope it was ok... he looked a bit broken by the time we all hit the sack ;) Scott's in Scotland at the moment, trying haggis right now, I hope.

Back in London, it was John's birthday on Saturday, and a small group of us made our way over to Kew Gardens to enjoy a pleasant afternoon of strolling along in the rain (!). All jokes aside, we had a really enjoyable day, despite the constant drizzle: admiring the plants in the Victorian hothouses, enjoying lunch in the rain at the Orangery, taking in George III's little Kew Palace (which reopened only last month after ten years of restoration), and just generally wandering and enjoying the views. Needless to say, my feet were a bit sore by the time we got back to John's place. We had mere moments to spare to eat something and wash it down with some pink champagne (naturally) before going out for more birthday drinks at Element in Soho.

Just to break the habit of a lifetime, John managed to get me home on Sunday morning before dawn, and as a result we got to enjoy Sunday a bit. I don't know if any of you had heard of The Sultan's Elephant that was on over the weekend, but it was well worth a look. Christian had seen it on his travels earlier in the afternoon and had gushed so much that I couldn't miss it. John and I made it to Horse Guards Parade in time to find somewhere to stand as thousands of people filled the area. We didn't have to wait too long before a gigantic and lifelike 5m girl turned the corner and came into view, followed shortly by the amazing 12m elephant, and behind that a band playing the accompanying soundtrack. It was huge! The elephant towered above us, swinging its animatronic wooden trunk just as you'd expect of a real elephant, and even sprayed the watchers below with great jets of water. We were fortunately spared as it passed. I don't really know the story behind the entire spectacle, but we watched as the girl got into her rocket and blasted off, with the elephant waving goodbye. Incredible. I'll put the other photos up here ASAP.

Pictures from Kew and Element Bar

Friday, May 12 2006, 10:29

Heartwarming - go and see it NOW!

On Craig's recommendation, I went to see Confetti at the cinema last night with Matt and Pete. I'd seen the posters on the Tube seemingly everywhere, and although I thought, "not another British romantic comedy about weddings!", something about the picture drew me in. It's a film about three couples who enter a wedding magazine competition to have the most original wedding. It was excellent! I loved it :) I kept turning to Matt and squeezing his arm and making gushy exclamations of delight, so it clearly hit the spot. Of course, I'm a sucker for weddings anyway, so it's probably something of a minor miracle that I didn't need to reach for the tissues after watching three of them, one after another!

The film stars a few actors you may recognise - Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide, the shy porn star in Love Actually), Alison Steadman (Mrs Bennet from Pride & Prej), even Pam Ann makes an appearance; and with two fairy godmother wedding planners, there's something for everyone.

It's so goddamn heartwarming - go and see it NOW!! (gush over)

Thursday, May 18 2006, 11:43

Carnival of Crap

It's Eurovision time again, and this weekend Eurovisiojunkies will come leaping out of their closets for one night only, humming Waterloo and brandishing scorecards with frankly terrifying zeal. I know that my delight at this annual carnival of crap bewilders many of my friends, who simply can't see that it's so rubbish, it's wonderful.

In recent years, the format of the competition has changed, largely thanks to the entry of a bezillion Eastern European countrylings eager to prove their Euroness by entering their foremost papstarz (sic). Now, the least successful countries from the year before have to fight it out in the semis to get through to the final on the weekend. Luckily, the UK is spared this humiliating ritual by being granted permanent entry to the final along with the contest's other major financial contributors, France, Germany, and Spain.

What's new this year is the format of the scoring round. As I explained to John yesterday (John's another sceptic), previously, the studio presenters would go LIVE by satellite link-up (much more impressive and amusingly prone to disaster in the 80s) to the various national studios to get the results of that country's jury or (as is usually the case now) telephone vote. Then we'd sit through a nail-biting few minutes while that country's announcer would slowly allocate the scores, from 1-8, then 10, and 12, to each of the entries. Obviously, the announcer couldn't pass up this potential break into show business without some pathetic quips or flirting with the studio presenters.

There were also inevitable breakdowns in communication, technical hitches with the perennially crap computer-generated scoreboards, and of course you had to allow for the scores to be repeated by the plastic studio presenters in English and French. It all took a long time, allowing us all time to neck our drinking game penalties. But this year, while the announcer is flirting with the presenters, scores 1-7 will go straight into the scoreboard, and the announcer will confine their pronouncements to scores 8, 10, and 12. Not much time left to get your drinks in! Oops.

But much remains unchanged. The rigidly smiling shiny hosts (this year, Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas) will bounce their elaborately scripted cheesy repartée between each other, the various songs will on the whole be utterly shite, the costumes some product of diseased nightmares, the videos corny, the hair improbable, and over all, the unfailing scathing commentary of Terry Wogan, loosing comedy barbs at the performers, the presenters, and anyone else who foolishly sticks their head over the parapet. I can't wait! :)

Tuesday, May 23 2006, 14:47

Eurovision monsters and the kitchen ogre

Eurovision was all it promised it would be: a glittering parade of the improbable and comical, whether you're incredulous at the sheer obvious parochial voting (e.g. Ukraine, "Who else can we give 12 points to but Russiaaaaaaaaaaaaa!") or just at what passes for music on this benighted continent.

My personal favourite of the evening was Sweden, who again gave us yet another ABBA-tastic brew of disco pop meets dance from the School of Steps. If you missed it, it's here on youtube.com. But Sweden was blown out of the water by this year's winners from Finland, Lordi, who looked pretty revolting; their victory proves that it's not just UK voters who have a sense of humour ;) Their video's on youtube.com as well - worth watching from 2mins in just to see the lead singer's wings pop up (how I laughed)!

Our pitiful entry, a bunch of schoolgirls led by middle-aged w*nker rapper, Daz, got a deserved crappy 26 points.

John and I were part of televisual history of a different sort yesterday - we went to see The Kumars at No. 42 being recorded. If you don't know it, maybe you know its imitators, The Ortegas in the US and Greeks On The Roof in Australia. I hadn't actually seen the show, but was quite excited to see yesterday's guests, Felicity Kendall (of The Good Life fame and Rosemary & Thyme shame) and foul-mouthed obnoxious chef, Gordon Ramsay.

I had no idea John was such a Felicity fan, but she is lovely and wonderful and it was very entertaining to watch her tell the Kumars about her childhood in India, and winning Rear of the Year Award (twice). I also had no idea that John was such a frothing Ramsay-hater on account of his contempt for veggies (here's the Telegraph on how he made a veggie eat parma ham!); Gordon (we're on first name terms now) was fun to watch too, although he described all of his dishes as "amazing", and described his famous TV ranting as "passion", and pretended that he did indeed not hate our herbivorous friends (which didn't fool John for a moment). I still consider myself lucky he didn't go for him in the Green Room later...

Friday, May 26 2006, 11:28

An orgy of fuschia

Last night, John and I went to see Puccini's Madam Butterfly at the English National Opera. The production was by Anthony Minghella (of The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley fame), and was rich with dazzling colour; in the words of the Independent reviewer:

"Laid out in a black lacquered box like a Victorian lepidopterist's specimen, the sheer volume of stiffened, stretched and sculpted silk on stage is fetishistic: an orgy of fuschia, coral, lime, gold, turquoise and ultramarine fans, kimonos and obis from designer Han Feng."

It was visually very impressive and made more interesting by the use of Japanese bunraki puppets for some of the characters. I'm not sure about watching opera in translation though... For this version, the translator has had to strike a happy medium between getting across the concepts of Puccini's script and squeezing it into the requisite number of syllables to fit the score - inevitably whatever mellifluence the original Italian (may have) had is compromised. The translation is variously panned as "dire", "crude", and as is invariably the case with sung English, you can't hear the words anyway! So if we've got to keep looking at the surtitles to read what's being said, it might as well be in Italian...

John was a bit disappointed to have been distracted in the beautiful scene with cherry blossoms and paper lanterns while he was watching a little old lady barf in the row in front, which I thought was hugely entertaining once the initial alarm that it might be something serious had passed :) Indeed, it was a thorougly enjoyable evening despite the uncomfortable seats - but for £8 each, one mustn't grumble!