Pancake Day

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that it was Pancake Day. I always enjoy Pancake Day, as it involves eating pancakes, and I have quite fond memories of the event as a child. It used to be something I really looked forward to, but, as with all yearly events and holidays, not so much any more. My favourite filling used to be orange juice and sugar if I remember correctly, yesterday I just went for plain golden syrup on my pancakes. Good stuff.

Also yesterday, I witnessed what must be one of the worst films ever made - Freddie as F.R.0.7. It's a British animated film about a prince who turns into a frog who turns into a secret agent. The featured review on the IMDb page sums up many of my thoughts. The storyline, and even characters, were not coherent whatsoever. Sometimes I wonder how such films manage to be released. I didn't see the whole film, but I doubt that the concept would have been any more enjoyable had I watched from start to finish. Even though the film was narrated by James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, it's extremely low quality. Apparently the studio thought of doing a sequel, but the film flopped so badly that they didn't bother.

Further reading: Pancake Day Wikipedia article and Freddie and F.R.0.7 IMDb page

I'm tired

Ever since starting back at university a couple of weeks ago I've been quite tired. I think it's because my week has gradually become so that I'm doing something regular on just about every night of the week. I've only just realised, and this is both good and bad for various reasons. Oh well...

I finally got round to uploading a picture of myself wearing the previously mentioned t-shirt which looks a lot like this web page. Just use the link at the top of the sidebar on the right to go to my Blogger profile and view the photo.

My band has a photo shoot this weekend. We thought it'd be a fun thing to do, and the day will produce some shots for when we get featured in magazines and newspapers and stuff. I like reading newspaper articles on bands and music - the majority are usually quite interesting. I also think band photos are super cool. They make people look like they're part of a group, a team, like they're important. I always imagined being in such photos as a kid. Hopefully the photos will turn out well.

Friday

It's the end of another week. I have quite a few things to do this weekend. I have to pick up some new hi-hat cymbals from a drum shop in Rotherham. The manufacturer's website describes the cymbals as having an "Explosive, clear and open sound with a meaty and cutting chick", which is the kind of sound I'm going for (I like reading descriptions of cymbal sounds like this, it's interesting to see sounds put into words).

It's been surprisingly hard to get hold of the exact cymbals I want, and as I've ordered them by putting down a deposit I have to purchase them without actually having a chance to test them out beforehand (I have listened to some audio samples on the manufacturers website, but it's not the same). In my experience, specific drums and cymbals are quite hard to get hold of. Shops generally carry only popular lines, are often more expensive than internet shops and there aren't that many drum shops around. The alternative, buying through internet shops, means you can't test items out before purchasing them though. This shop in Rotherham is relatively big, and it's good to see so many drum related objects in one room.

Also this weekend, I have the podcast to record and I should be going to an all day metal festival in town with a friend.

Recently, a friend and I restarted work on a documentary we originally conceived just under a year ago. It's going to be a documentary about what's fashionable and cool, much inspired by the work of Morgan Spurlock, Michael Moore and other similar documentary makers. We did some filming a while back, but we've been too lazy or had too many commitments to make any real progress on it. I've always liked documentaries - they can be much more engrossing than movies because they're dealing with real life - and I'm quite excited to start work on this project again.

Something weird happened to me this week. In fact, it's happened before, and it involves people singing to me, for whatever reason. Now, it's not something that happens very often, but when it does it makes me incredibly embarrassed for no real reason. My friends and I were talking about The Beatles, and I mentioned how I didn't like them. So my friend proceeded to sing practically the whole of Hey Jude to me. Everyone just sat there and looked at me and I just got totally embarrassed and felt lame. Any advice as to what to do when this happens?

Also, I read recently that Rage Against The Machine, one of my favourite and most personally influential bands, are reforming for a performance at a Californian music festival called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April of this year. I was really surprised to hear this. Maybe it's because I wasn't a fan of RATM whilst they were together and have no experience of them being part of current or new music. In a way, I kind of like the fact that they're not together any more. Their last album really wasn't that good.

My friend Ben Nuttall recently put up a link to this blog on his blog, so I thought it'd only be fair to mention him back. In fact, it might be a good idea to put up my own 'blog roll'. Ben's cool, he's into parkour and Tenacious D.

Snow and stuff

Finally, I looked out of my window this morning and the ground was covered. It's the first day of proper snow we've had this winter. But now the initial surprise has worn off I'm left wondering why snow makes people so happy. Obviously there's now the possibility for snowball fights or building snowmen or snow dens, but I have stuff to do and don't have all day to spend playing in the snow. Maybe there'll be the odd snowball fight at university today.

I just received an album in the mail, the self-titled release from a band called Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster. They're a really cool combination of hard rock and southern rock, so it ends up sounding like some hillbillys playing metal. But it's really cool, the two styles work well together. I recently saw them at a show supporting Norma Jean and was pretty impressed. I would have bought an album at the show if they hadn't been £15! They put on a good show, and there was one especially cool band member - this guy wore a Hawaiian shirt (in a metal band) and performed some pretty out-of-fashion dancing for most of the set, but I've never laughed so much at a show before.

I watched The Breakfast Club last night. My friend had told me it was really good and I really like 80s films so I made a point to tune in. It was pretty strange. The whole film took place in one location and much of the communication between characters was largely pointless arguments. But by the end of the film these 5 wildly different characters had all changed and become good friends. In one way it was quite simple and trivial, but on the other hand it was quite realistic and true to life. I've never really seen a film like it before, but I enjoyed it.

Further reading: The Breakfast Club IMDb page