Odds and sods

I went to see a rehearsed reading of a comedy play last night. It’s called Odds and Sods and it’s written by two friends of mine, Tom Brogan and Fraser Campbell.

It was on at the Ramshorn theatre in Glasgow.



It’s about a day in the life of a bookies in Glasgow. The play is about the individual characters in the bookie shop but it also runs along a central story line.

The characters are:

Sandy, the bookie. An alright kind of guy, been a bookie all his life, loves taking the money off his punters.

Janice, the daftie. Sandys assistant, a lovely woman with a heart of gold, a brain of mince and a hidden talent for Japanese.

Sheila, the moocher. Sheila likes to flirt with the guys for their stake money, but she’s actually hiding something.

Frank, Mr Solid. A taxi driver who grafts hard and likes the occasional flutter at the bookies. Mr dependable is also hiding something.

Jordan, the pop star. Back in the day Jordan was on top of the pops, he has aspirations to get back there but he spends most of his time in the bookies.

Milton, the nutcase. Milton has crazy notions, he believes he has a gambling addiction and Sandy’s taking advantage of his “illness”. His life goal is to open a “bouncy strip club”.

Shug, the loser. Poor Shug, seems like he never wins. He only wants one big win, just to show he’s not a loser all the time.

The dialogue flows nicely between the groups of characters telling all their stories as it goes along the main story line.

Shug, sick of being a loser, puts on a mad bet with his last pound. An accumulator! Each bet crazier than the last. We follow the progress of the accumulator, as each of Shugs bets start to come in the punters get more excited and Sandy gets more nervous.

I really enjoyed the play, it was very well written and very well acted. The jokes were free flowing and the story was well constructed.

This was only a rehearsed reading so the actors were all holding scripts though they were only referring to them now and again and not reading from them. It was obvious they’d rehearsed it before and knew most of their lines. It all went by really smoothly with the occasional extra swear and stumbled over word (“Janice” missed a cue but we won’t mention that).

All in all I really enjoyed it and I’d really like to see a full production of it.

Tom, Fraser, make it happen.

Paisely Art Gallery and Museum

Paisley has an art gallery and museum, who’d a thunk it?



I went for a little look around this afternoon while I was on my lunch. It’s quite good, small, but quite good.

There’s a room which is split, most of it features old clothing from the war and before. The other part of the room features ancient Egyptian artefacts including a mummified adult foot, baby foot and hand, which is a bit creepy.

This room also features Buddy but I’ll come back to him in a bit.

There’s a room with paintings of landscapes from around Scotland, some are excellent and others are ok.

There’s another room featuring artwork by local students from nursery kids to high school kids. Some of these young artists are very talented.

Another room here seems to have different exhibitions at different times. Today it was the history of magic in Paisley and Scotland.

The exhibition organiser cornered me as I entered the room and told me all about the stuff in there. Did you know that the magic circle has a Paisley branch? Neither did I.

Apparently magic has a long history in Scotland. It was also so much nicer back then, there were magazines and books from the ‘20s with titles like “Parlour Magic” and “Magical Pleasantries” I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one called “Magic’s Lovely”.

There’s a large room dedicated to looms and weaving and shawls. Obviously the most famous thing about Paisley is the Paisley pattern. Paisley also has a rich history in loom work, especially shawls.

In another room off this one there was a load of high school girls making what I assume were shawls though they looked more like ponchos.

So, back to Buddy.



Buddy is a lion, a large, stuffed, mounted, slightly threadbare lion. He is the only stuffed animal in the museum that has a name card next to him and he features heavily in the gift shop.

I’m not entirely sure of the importance of Buddy because there is no story attached to him that I could see.

Apparently Buddy is going to be 80 this year and he was named Buddy in a competition for kids to mark his 70th birthday in 1999.

If you’re in Paisley and you’ve got a spare half hour the Paisley art gallery and museum is well worth a visit. Obviously it’s free to enter like all museums in Scotland but it does have the best donation box I’ve ever seen.

You’ll have to go and see it for yourself if you want to know what it’s like.

Watchmen

Well I finally did it. After getting all excited about going to see Watchmen for a couple of weeks I finally went and saw it.

And I was…disappointed.

It was ok but I was expecting great.

The costumes and set looked good but I expected the whole thing to look good.

I’d heard bad things about it, like you’d only get it if you’d read the book and the character development isn’t really there. I wasn’t too bothered about that because a, I’ve read the book and b, I was expecting a visual treat akin to 300 and sin city.

But it just never happened that way. The film was too long, way too long. And the story seemed disjointed.

There were some good points though, these were:

Casting; excellent
Costumes; excellent
Acting; excellent
Scenery; excellent

Also the highlight of the film for me was Rorschach, (he's the highlight of the book for me too) I thought the guy who played him, Jackie Earle Haley, was excellent.

But all in all it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

My viewing wasn’t helped by the fact that I could feel the hatred for the film emanating from my wife sitting next to me (she’s not read the book).

All in all I’d say it’s worth seeing just don’t waste your cash at the cinema to see it. Get the DVD and watch it at home where you can pause it to go to the loo or make a cup of tea.

Lookalikes

Or a poor excuse to shoehorn in an evil Frankie Boyle joke.

Andrew LLoyd Webber and Droopy



Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry



John Sergeant and Jo Brand (though as you can see from the pictures she is clearly much shorter)



Indesit Moon washing machine and the Death Star



Janice the muppet and Donatella Versace



Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana (if she'd survived the crash)
Thanks Frankie Boyle!

Brilliance of nature

Isn't mother nature brilliant?

Check out these bad boys!

The Hawaiian happy face spider.



Dead Leaf Butterfly



Violin Mantis



This is a type of orchid (Chiloglottis formicifera) pretending to be a wasp



Owl Butterfly



This is a fish apparently

Pink dolphin

I just stumbled upon some images of an albino dolphin, and it's pink!



As if dolphins weren't cute enough already!

More pics can be seen here

Drawing

I like to draw pictures in Photoshop using vectors. Here is a small collection of some of my pictures. The rest can be seen on my website.
Click each thumbnail for a bigger complete image.

Tattos

I have several tattoos, well five, on my arms. I'm going to get more as and when I can afford them.

Here are the ones I have in the order I got them done.

This one is very loosely based on a dragon as I was born in the Chinese year of the dragon.



This is one I got done to mark the year that my son was born.



This one is a switch, it's kind of a Matrix/simpsons cross over idea I had. The idea originally came from the Simpsons house of horror episode where Homer buys Bart a cursed Krusty doll that has its evil/good switch set to evil*. The Matrix part comes in because the idea is that I'm switched off and therefore out of "The System".



This one I got to mark my wedding to my lovely Mrs, she has a matching one. It's kind of three things in one, it's vaguely heart shaped, it's supposed to look vaguely like two people intertwined and it's also our initials, S and J.



This is my most recent tattoo. The stars represent my family, the two hollow stars are my wife and stepson and the two solid stars are my son and daughter.



*see the resemblance?

WOO HOO!

I done it. A full week of posting something every day.

Fair do’s todays post is a bit on the thin side but it still counts right!

Mp3 player

One of the best things about owning an mp3 player is walking down the street with the music blaring in your head and pretending that you’re in a movie.

Life’s so much better when you have your own personal soundtrack. Try it sometime, it’s ace.

It makes you feel like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, or one of the Simpsons in the countless movie, strutting in time to the music, parodies they do.



When you’re walking along the street, and you’re walking in time to the music, you feel like everyone should be looking at you and going “wow, look at that guy, he’s so cool”. Except of course nobody else can even hear the music let alone know you’re walking in time to it.

So you end up feeling like a bit of a bell end; a silly immature bell end. But it’s still fun.

So far I’ve only just done it to whatever song happens to be playing at the time. I might start tailoring it. Charlie Brooker recommends walking around your house in the dead of night with some Halloween music cranked up in your earphones. I might give that a try. Sounds like a right giggle*

Or perhaps put on the Benny Hill tune after a comedy misunderstanding has somehow led to a group of scantily clad nurses chasing me down the street.

Next time you’re walking down the street and a good song comes on your mp3 player, start strutting like Travolta.

I’d recommend Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand, Aisha by Death in Vegas and Can You Feel It by The Jackson Five.

*actually I imagine it would be quite scary, combining the creepy music with the inability to hear anything due to the headphones.