Category Archives: Assorted Ramblin's

Film Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

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iron man 3 poster

I must first confess that I am predisposed to love this film. I’ve been very satisfied with the recent crop of Marvel movies; even the weaker entries like Captain America were still very enjoyable. I’m delighted that we’ve finally reached the point where superhero films tend to be good (we’ll skip the abysmal shitstorms of X-Men 3, Green Lantern and Ghost Rider and the disappointment of Superman Returns and the last Batman) – partly that’s because they can look right. Great care has been taken to transfer comics to the screen without the garish costumes and without carrying over the (now) convoluted plots and multiple worlds problems of the comic series. Film makers are also putting good actors in all roles, and although they’re basically action flicks, the scripting and screen writing is much better. The Avengers series are all pleasingly linked (now under Joss Whedon‘s care) and the stings at the end of credits have been reason enough to see them all.

So – Iron Man 3. I’ve read a number of disappointed reviews and friends have told me it just ain’t that good. I was a bit worried. Number two in the series wasn’t great, certainly not as enjoyable as the brilliant introduction to Robert Downey Jr‘s smug, snappy, flawed Tony Stark. Iron Man 3 is set after the events in Avengers Assemble and we have a wonderful stressed, PTSD suffering Stark hiding away from the world. Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is running Stark Industries and the other Avengers are nowhere to be seen. The time is ripe for terrorism! The Mandarin is the bad guy and there are folk who have been medically enhanced to be super-hot (not just Guy Pearce hot, but burning hot).

This film is about Stark and how he relates to the world in the wake of Loki’s invasion. Most of the first half of it is setup and character detail for Stark, Potts and the bad guys. It’s all brilliant, as usual Stark’s cockiness is deflated by lab accidents (his new flying component armour results in decent slapstick throughout the film), by jealousy and sulky pettishness. There’s a lot of relationship tension between Stark and Potts which rings pretty true for someone suffering from trauma. They both get given great lines too. Once the film’s action kicked in as well I was thrilled. The total destruction of his home, his arsenal and life is surprisingly affecting.

From there we end up for a while in a very odd-seeming sub-plot where he gets aid from a young lad. In any other film this would be terrible. It’s never good when a hero gets a child sidekick, but that is subverted wonderfully. Stark is incredibly mean to the kid; it’s very funny and sad. It’s a nice way of exposing another side to the increasingly brittle Stark as he puts the kid down and has panic attacks.

There’s very little else I can say without giving away vital surprises. Suffice to say that this the best role Ben Kingsley has had (possibly…) in my lifetime. He’s a fine rent-an-athnic Englishman and he really nails this one. I can also assure you that the trailer-promised multi-suit showdown is very satisfying, with the CGI-smash being huge but strictly background to the one on one punchup between Stark and The Mandarin. Fans should be as happy as I was to point out the different suits – the big Hulk suit made me smile. Oh, and Pepper gets some cool stuff to do too (though she and the other female character do mostly need to be saved, which is a bit of a let down).

Watch it! I loved it and still do days later. I may even revisit Iron Man 2 with the knowledge that it will be improved upon enormously. Oh, and do stay for the sting after the credits. It’s not a series linker like the others but it made me laugh.

Related articles

Lego Blog: Lunchtime Building

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Packed Lego

The best lunchtime activity I’ve found is Lego. Reading is okay, but the phone rings. Writing is what I want to do, but the phone rings. Lego however… Lego drowns out the noise. That gentle shake of the case and the consequent rattle and shickling of the bricks gives me a very pleasant warm sensation. It’s nice. So for the last few weeks I’ve been toting a nice metal Ferrero Rocher tin with an assortment of Lego Friends, a bit of Chima and some other random bits and bobs. It’s a nice mix of odd bricks and colours and is proving nice to build and dismantle from.

An Idle Beginning

Without really intending to, I’ve been developing a story of sorts from my random buildings…

Deep in the suspiciously black and white tiled space…
It’s lonely out there.

Setting the Scene

Going Hunting

This one seemed at it’s best out in the wild. The Lego Friends heads are frustrating to fit into ordinary Lego funtime. They fit well on a spike though. Our brave hunter has succeeded. He also has a bucket of water. Victory!

The next set became a bit more complicated. I’m pleased with the water section – it’s something to do with all those weird crystal Chima things. I just want to take them apart. But it gave a pleasing depth with the tall tree adding to the effect.

I’m looking forwards to further building, it’s good fun and very relaxing. Next I shall build robots again!

I see you…
The fearsome invader takes a break
Aha!
Maybe someone else is watching
Maybe I could take a paddle…
Related articles

This week, Monday 13th May 2013

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I Tawt I Taw A Busy Cat

Pudding MittensMy mistake – now I am busy! Last week was filled with the stressful misunderstandings that employment seems intended for. As such – not a lot of fun. Boo and tits to that. Next week looks to be far more full of activity, in addition to whatever diurnal nonsense transpires. I start teaching the next MissImp Improv Beginners course on Monday (with m’pal Parky) which will be ace but does further compress the week’s free time. I shall maintain my schedule!

What with all that marvellousness I’m saddened to say that I am already returning to a largely zero alcohol existence in order to remain sane and healthy. I am disappointed by this, not least because I adore the bottle of Singleton I opened this week. Oh well, at least the Bavaria 0.0% alternative I’ve settled on is only 25p per can…

Something that did sadden me this week was news of Ray Harryhausen’s death. It’s rare that I use the word tragedy, but that’s how his death feels. Although I have not one skill in common with the great man, his films have always inspired me and when I think of monsters, they are his.

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Shankicide: Shivving with Death Poetry

Back to a few poems of gentle frustration.

Wednesday Lego Blog: Lunchtime Building

Some people relax at work by going outside; I have a travelling Lego case.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Eight: Running Blind

Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye

Friday Film Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

Ron’s back! And he has friends as well as splendid new enemies.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

I like a good old rant and normally I turn to Shankanalia to achieve that, but the week before last some stuff happened that really crawled up my urethra. What I found pleasing about ranting in this case was how diverse the subject felt. Before I knew it I’d banged out a thousand words on the stuff – hence last Tuesday’s sort-of-essay on Interpretation. I’m concerned that continuing to find space even for the little writing I’m doing at the moment is going to get harder – how do other people keep it up?! (And why is there no interrobang key on my keyboard?)

This week I hope to steer The Desert Crystals more or less back on course. This nasty skywards turn was never part of the story! I guess that’s why people plan ahead. My stories always feel to me much more like the stuff I do on stage with MissImp.

Last week’s scribbles

Desert Crystals1Storytelling at The Glee ClubTuesday Autofiction: Accusation and Prejudice Context and judgement afflict us all, how should we make decisions?

Wednesday Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action When I get to monologise on stage it gets weird, quickly.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Seven: This Hellish Hole Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye.

Friday Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013) It’s Die Hard in the White House!

Lego

Lego Boxes1As I mentioned last week I’ve been mostly fingering my bricks at lunchtime. Well, that and having a jolly good re-sort over the weekend when I found another suitable box. Categorising your Lego really does bring out the OCD in a person.It’s insanely satisfying to sift through the boxes, removing colours and shapes to whatever insane demands your organising brain screams at you. I go mainly by colour, or utility of colour. I’m very fond of woodland stuff, so greens and browns all get mixed in together. Blacks and greys (all 20 shades) get separated out, as do white and tan. I also segregate little fiddly bits that I think might come in useful, and when I’m building that can become rather full. Primary colours I use least of all and am least fond of so they get heaped up together.

I have much more time for the pastel stuff of Lego Friends, but I don’t have enough to justify a separate box. What shall I do?! Oh, there’s a missing box as well – I keep oddments of minifig accessories, transparent parts and well, things I like in another box. I’m limited to what I can stuff under the sofas, although a worrying amount is currently in models at present. And Jabba’s Palace and a LoTR set remain unopened upstairs…

Improv Comedy

Due to rage last week I missed Fisticuffs – probably for the best as I wasn’t fit for company. We did have Gorilla Burger though which seemed to go well. It’s evidence of my broken mind that I couldn’t tell whether it was going well at the time. I am now better. Excitingly we begin the Improv Beginners course this week. We have a dinky group of 7 so far, and it would be nice to get 8 or 9 but if not, those delightful 7 will have a lot of attention lavished on them. Woop. I’ve taught lots of introductory workshops and endless weekly jams but I’ve never had this particular intensity of time with a group. I’m looking forwards to it.

Media Intake

Books

The_Air_WarI could resist no longer. I tried to, but I could not. I finally succumbed to the allure of The Air War. I’m so glad I did, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s eighth book in the Shadows of The Apt series is heartbreakingly awesome. The battles are magnificent and the emerging weaponry is terrifying. I’m very afraid even more of my favourite characters will die. I’m also afraid that I’ll read it too quickly, so I am absurdly limiting myself to only reading it in the evening. I recently acquired the first book Empire in Black and Gold on Kindle (I have all of them in paper) so I can re-read that at my leisure.

Films

I saw Avatar again on TV this weekend. God, it’s awful. Not only did its effects appear to have dated really badly, but it was quickly evident just how shallow and weakly done the story is. The characters are of almost no interest and it’s so predictable and so much a muted rip off of many other films – Pocahontas being the most notorious comparison. Personally I think Ferngully was better.

A much better rewatch was X-Men First Class. I loved it at the cinema (in quality it managed to achieve somewhere between X-Men 1 and X-Men 2 – we shall not speak of X-Men 3), and I think it’s maybe even more enjoyable at home. It was very pleasing to see young Professor X and Magneto hanging out in bars. It’s shot like a ’70s movie but with modern pace and sensibilities, which really makes it pack a punch. I believe the next one is just around the corner.

Events and Excitement

Knickerbocker GloriousKnickerbocker Glorious – Saturday 18th May

11:00am – 3:00pm at The Fountain, Cathedral Quarter, Derby.
Music, pirate tales and more. All free, all outdoors.

MissImp in Action – Friday 31st May

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Weeks That Have Come Before

Register for the MissImp Improv Beginners Course Now!

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Reblogged from MissImp Nottingham Comedy:

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The next Improv Comedy Beginners course starts on Monday!

That means you only have two days left to register for the course - eek! This is a complete introduction to the skills and fun of improv comedy. Your teachers will be Nick and Parky, two of the faces most often seen at The Glee Club for MissImp in Action. Over the six week course we'll teach you how to play games, inspire others and feel brilliant about what you do.

Read more… 126 more words

image Join up today and learn to improvise!

Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

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Olympus Has Fallen I love the Die Hard films, except for the most recent one because it was terrible, dull and contained none of the traditional wrong place, good man doing what has to be done themes (they actually list those in Die Hard 4, perhaps that’s why they thought they couldn’t do them anymore). Why am I on about Die Hard? Because Olympus Has Fallen is a Die Hard movie. Since we saw the trailer we’ve been calling it Die Hard in the White House. It makes the film even more fun.
Our main dude (Gerard Butler) is an ex-Secret Service presidential bodyguard who becomes ‘ex’ after saving the president (Aaron Eckhardt) but not his wife from an icy death. All very unfortunate, but told concisely and well enough that you begin to give a damn about the characters. Fortunately he now works at the Treasury next door to the White House. This will come in handy.
Terrorists! Koreans! Hurray. American gung ho movies are at their most amusing when picking on their Oriental foes (almost as good as having Brit bad guys). It’s so full of hatred and relish in their ultimate defeat. It’s fun to cheer on the bad guys too. Especially in this as they are vastly more competent, prepared and likeable. We are delighted by the vision of a plane strafing Washington DC with machine gun fire (though it’s oddly bloodless, especailly compared with what comes later), a coach load of tourists pulling guns out and shooting the utterly inept Secret Service guys, cops and anyone else nearby. Their insurgency is swift, slick and increasingly bloody. There are lots of head shots to enjoy.
Thank goodness we have Gerard Butler. He’s able to sneak in the back, shooting folk in the head, during the takeover of the White House. He’s gruff, tough and best mates with the president’s kid. There’s no particular need to dwell on the rest of the story – the bad guys are holding the president hostage in his bunker, nuclear weapons, techno-blinkie-thing of doom etc. The action is fast and fun – as I said before, it gets pretty bloody and there is also the sort of beating up of women that Hollywood films are really keen on at the moment. All that aside the action is well choreographed and grim. Butler gets some amusing quips in, as does the baddie played by a glacial Rick Yune. It plaays out predictably and no doubt receives applause in the US cinema.
Personally I never get tired of seeing the White House blown to pieces, and that’s in this a lot. I’m sure it’s supposed to be gritty realism, but the main message is how incompetent the president’s top staff and everyone in the military except for that Scottish guy who used to be mostly naked and oiled. Oh no, that’s 300. Oh well. What I was most consistently amused by were the accurate and critical comments of American foreign policy and selfish wealthy attitudes. These come up several times and are just laughed off. There are also the usual terrible decisions of their military commanders, and the general wickedness of America’s enemies.
There are a whole series of perplexing judgments, not least the decision to withdraw the Seventh Fleet and pull out of South Korea. The USA’s responsibilities apparently end with preserving the life of their figurehead. That same commander in chief tells his colleagues to give up their super secret codes without a fight and praises them for their strength. Weird. It’s very entertaining bollocks and I chuckled along happily throughout. Watch it, enjoy.

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Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action

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Use Your Braaaaaaiiin

Storytelling at The Glee Club
I like making stuff up. Sometimes it’s with pen and paper (keys and metal?), sometimes it’s just with an audience. I find both to be much the same. One of the differences is that if I’m on stage I can’t just wander off and make a cup of tea or play Plants vs Zombies for an hour. Well, I could, but I’d have to justify it pretty hard. I like the live stuff – there’s no possibility of editing it unless I think about the story as I go along, and it’s probably quite clear that I don’t think ahead. What does work is setting the scene. Once I’ve done that I can come back to it again and again. As with everything we begin with words and add more. Remembering what has happened so far is important on stage because I can’t flick back through the story so far for names and places (I fail at one of those in this story!), partly because repetition is important for reinforcing a theme and reminding the audience (and me) what is happening.

Word Lies

I’m not a very visually-oriented person; when I imagine I don’t see pictures often, I mainly see the words I’d use to describe it. Some words seem weighted – “dawn” is one, and it was the first word that popped into my head at the start of the monologue below. From that all sorts of nonsense is drawn forth. The style of monologues we often do during MissImp in Action are what we call ‘insert word’ stories. The audience are given magazines and when pointed to during the story they provide us with a few random words or phrases, we have to seamlessly fuse them into the story. I use them to twist and tilt the stories – I like to use those phrases to justify or explain. That inevitably leads to some mental contortions as the plot changes completely. It’s fun.

Sad In The Rain

Hope you enjoy the story:

MissImp in Action is performed on the last Friday of every month at The Glee Club in Nottingham by MissImp, Nottingham’s improv group.

Autofiction: Interpretation

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This Is Not A Work Related Post

Interpretation

Just wanted to be clear about that. Apparently it’s important. Perhaps to be even clearer, this is a fictionalised account of the sort of thing that might happen to a person. When I reach out for a name, perhaps when I can’t quite remember someone’s name, or when I allocate a default, it’s usually Dave for a man and Julia for a girl. I don’t really know why. Maybe in my head they are everyman names – certainly they’re fairly common, but more importantly they don’t conjure any specific connotations for me. That makes them useful, I can project what I fancy for characterisation when on stage and since they are average-type names I find them empathetic and sympathetic – they are just like everyone else.

 

Of course, that doesn’t stop other people from having different assumptions. It’s possible that a reader or audience member might think that I thought all Daves were insane skin harvesters or that all Julias enjoyed knitting during stockbroker meetings. They might even assume that since they themselves share a common name that this is in fact a judgement upon them, and respond to it as if they themselves were the focus of the scene. The question, I guess, is which of these opinions is the more important or accurate, and whether we ought to grant the audience member the right to make those assumptions?

Impractical Criticism

I fondly remember the enjoyable pointlessness of GCSE and A Level English Literature in which we were told about the various interpretations there are of characters and themes in Shakespeare, Chaucer, Webster, Austen and many others. We were encouraged to root into those works and dredge up whatever connotations and assumptions we could justify, using the flimsiest or most complex interpretations we could. While we could easily present a case of racism (or whatever) against the author we could equally easily cry post-modern bollockisms and reinterpret the work in the light of the death of a fishing village in Portugal.

Were any of those ideas true? We found evidence, sure, and chose to interpret it along a set of assumptions. Were they what the author intended? We had no way of knowing as the author had not been thoughtful enough to provide a full justification of their work. Even if they had, we were still encouraged to disregard it, interpret their own explanation in the context of the war, the incipient homoeroticism of the age, a letter inn a newspaper that criticised their love of daffodils. So the author’s intent became the least important aspect of their work.

Their Shoes Are The Wrong Size

I personally think that is total bollocks. Sure, you can partly understand a piece of prose in the context that it was written, but ultimately unless you can get into the author’s head (which you can’t) or ask them about it (you probably can’t because they’re usually safely dead before we rip into them), you either like or dislike the piece of art. That’s it. “I like this book because it reminds me of a sheep in a river”. Fine. But “the sheep, stranded in the river represents Nazism stranded at the end of WWII in the faster flowing ideological tide of communism” is just a load of wank.

Incredible Credulity

It gets worse of course. If one abstracts a sentence or two from its natural context and submits it, anonymously (for fear of prejudicing the reading, one can only assume), to some critical body with powers to act upon the content of the phrase – what would we expect to happen? Undated, timeless, free of context and reference – what is the sensible course to take with such a quote? In GCSE history we were taught to analyse the sources of information. Highly prized was the motive in supplying information. Anonymity makes something impossible to check for accuracy (was the phrase written by the named author?), context. Anonymity itself makes the item suspect. Especially if it is possible, or even likely that a remark taken out of context and handed to a prejudiced observer, might seem to imply a criticism or abuse.

Judge. You Must Judge. At Once.

On receipt of such an item what should that reader do? Ignore it? Well, someone has taken the time to draw one’s attention to it. We shall assume the earnestness of that someone – that they are merely trying to be helpful. Without context it would be difficult to judge malice, surely. So this ‘thing’ – with no context, history or evidence of its source, what can we do but assume, assume like banshees shrieking in the wind. It is obvious therefore that the cited phrase is in breach of some agreement, that the unnamed, unreferenced person or organisation that we assume (from the hidden prejudices of our our mind) is in someway ourself, or the organisation that we represent. Therefore the phrase is offensive, and the author (of whom we yet have no proof) must be both blamed and reprimanded.

Our first move must be to censor (admittedly without cause or certainty), to enforce our rules (which we may not have yet read through, to be certain that the quoted offence does indeed transgress those rules, and to thereby attain the moral highground), and to reprimand the individual identified by an anonymous source for an action whose date, context and existence are as yet undetermined.

It doesn’t sound like a great plan does it?

A Polly Oggy

Is it just barely possible that we might have acted inappropriately in our presumption of guilt, of thoughtless credulity at the offered evidence, of ignorance of our own rules, of prejudice in our assumptions about the intentions and meanings of another’s thoughts expressed in ambiguous and non-referential terms. Might we even be considered foolish for such an action, for colluding with the (more likely) malicious intent behind such an action as lifting a phrase out of context and sending it anonymously to one with the power to punish the author (apparently without proof or investigation), for harrassing, bullying and attempting to impinge on the freedom of an individual to express themselves without fear of censure or censorship when they do in fact comply entirely with the rules we failed to check before acting blindly?

Yeah, maybe. Hope that person isn’t really pissed off…

This is a fictional account of something that might have happened somewhen to somebody.

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This week, Monday 6th May 2013

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Summertime and Living Is Queasy

Zoetrope1The weeks flash by like crudely animated horses in a Kinder Egg zoetrope. Consequently I can barely recall what I’ve been doing… it was a quiet week in the evenings at any rate and a modicum of progress has been made. A modicum ain’t much no matter how you quantise it. I’m going to assume I did loads and that the sheer weight of effort has overwhelmed my primitive memory.

This has been my last zero alcohol week too… I am disturbed to find that there are a few of those beers that I really do like. The last one I came across was Bavaria 0.0%. It’s delicious. Even better it’s sold at the insane, face-slapping-awake price of £1.50 for 6 330ml cans. That’s cheaper than any other soft drink I can think of. It’s about to become my regular non-beer drink for the summer. Seriously that price blows my mind. It has a creamy smooth texture which I suppose is most like cream soda. I’m sitting in the cinema with two of them set to accompany Iron Man 3…

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Autofiction: Accusation and Prejudice

Context and judgement afflict us all, how should we make decisions?

Wednesday Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action

When I get to monologise on stage it gets weird, quickly.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Seven: This Hellish Hole

Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye

Friday Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen

It’s Die Hard in the White House!

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

I’m chasing myself to keep up at the moment. The mornings are a time of blind gaping until shower and coffee are absorbed. Maybe I need to get up earlier… Hmm. But yeah, I spent last week catching up. I didn’t write The Desert Crystals Part 6 until Wednesday evening. I just didn’t manage to start it earlier. I suspect it might be a bit weaker than some of the other chapters. I will do better! Once I’d found the time it wasn’t a struggle to write, which remains encouraging and enjoyable. I fancy the prospect of this becoming a very long running series, though that might make it tricky to catch up with should someone come into it half way through. Sorry!

They say you should write what you know. I’ve never decided if that limits or exposes you – I think it can be both. Clearly what I write about are not events that I have or could have experienced, but I do try to write my characters in ways that I can conceive of. Their feelings are sometimes mine, and their reactions and responses are, as in improv, things that I can imagine doing or saying. Whether another person can know that this this is the case, or guess it from what’s given in stories and these autobiographical bits is unclear to me.

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsMinifig MadnessTuesday Shankata – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically Just a few more angry rantings for you.

Wednesday Lego Lego Blog: Minifigure Madness A little delve into my Lego heap and some playing with hair.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Six: The Sweet Night Air The beasts in the night!

Friday Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers  Perhaps the final three no alcohol beers I shall ever drink…

Lego

Lunchtime build 1I really enjoyed getting my minifigs out last week (if you know what I mean) and taking pictures of them. Oddly I don’t recall playing with Lego as a child in the same way as I would with Star Wars, Action Force and Transformers toys. It was the building and disassembly I enjoyed. So I think that hour with swapping heads and hair was more than I used to play even back then.

I’ve been taking a travelling case of Lego to work with me for the last week – see the awesome gold Ferrero Rocher box in the picture. It makes for for a very relaxing half hour’s play at lunchtime. I’m not great at relaxing, but the sound the Lego makes as I turn tht case over sparks a flame of joy in my heart. I’m focussing on miniaturisation due to time constraints using a heap of Lego Friends stuff and Lego Chima.

I also watched a couple of Feminist Frequency podcasts recommended by a fellow Lego enthusiast about Lego’s messed up gender segregation. Really interesting and right on the mark. Check ‘em out:

Improv Comedy

No Fisticuffs this week, which was a sadness but a blessed night off too. I ran last week’s improv jam though and tried to fuse what Parky and Lloydie have been focussing on for the last month into something new and cool. My aim was sychronisation of minds, that elusive group mind concept which is tough enough to get with people you know well and a step harder with near-strangers. So it was to be an intimate, intensive affair. I was therefore thrilled when we got abruptly shifted out of our regular space (some art installation thing) and into The City Gallery – a tiny venue. Then twenty people turned up. I could have compromised my plan, I chose not to, except for dropping a warm up game that required three times the space for half as many people.

We played a series of familiar exercises. First a form of rope, in pairs identifying the key groundings for a scene – names, activity, place and feelings. There was a lovely energy and the setups were simple, funny and concise. Next came justification and agreement. I borrowed Jules Munn’s simple “that’s because” exercise, in which every exchange begins with justifying what had just been said. These get hysterical and ridiculous quite quickly. I found mine returned repeatedly to hippy attitudes in the ’60s Odd. Finally we moved on to inspiration, patterns and games: word association in pairs again but spread out through the room. The cycle begins with a statement and the association follows that, responding both to the word that you hear and holdng the initial statement in the back of your mind. Tricky, but it produced a lot of laughter and really interesting patterns and wheels of ideas.

Those exercises and the habits of grounding, justification and inspiration lead into three person sets of scenes. Each set was preceded by a quote from one of three books I’d brought. The trio would then word associate (focussing on each other) until they felt ready to begin the first scene. The three scenes were mostly fairly short, but they all got to the point and were set up quickly and smartly. Whatever we did seemed to work!

Come And Learn…

Mebbe you’d like to improvise too? Well, Parky and I shall be running the next MissImp improv beginners course starting on 13th May for 6 weeks. If you’re interested, and you should be – check out the details here: http://missimp.co.uk/improv-comedy-training-in-nottingham/improv-comedy-courses-in-nottingham/

Media Intake

Books

I finished the second of Terrence Zavecz’ Cretaceous Station novels, Hunter’s Moon. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first, but I still enjoyed the dinosaurs (feathery!) and the lists of scientific articles at the end of each chapter to back up his research. I moved on to a collection of short stories. Still chewing my way through them. I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished it.

Events and Excitement

Gorilla Burger – Thursday 9th May

7.30pm at The Corner, Nottingham.
Improv for everyone – on stage!

MissImp in Action – Friday 31st May

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Weeks That Have Come Before

Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers

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Optimism: The Glass Is Half Empty, But It Can Be Refilled

3 Alcohol Free Beers_headerNot content with finding a few good non-alcoholic beers I was convinced that someone else must do a good one – there’s no way I could have found a winner so fast (Erdinger). Well, I did. Yay me. I’ve found three more alternatives (and no I’m not drinking fruit juice) to proper beer. This is my last week of not drinking alcohol and I cannot wait for whiskey and real beer again.

Holsten Pils Zero Alcohol Beer

Imagine my relief when I found pubs in Nottingham with an alternative to Beck’s Blue! This seems to be the only other regular alternative. It’s not bad, and they have it in my Thursday regular The Cock And Hoop. Like most bottled pub beer it comes in a 330ml bottle, which I find a pitiful quantity. I realise that groups of men wearing identical checked shirts regard this as the natural accessory to looking like an identikit over-the-hill twat in town. However, for the rest of us who normally drink from glasses and don’t have a bandy legged swagger, this is a disappointing amount to be charged almost as much as a pint of decent ale for.

The price/volume is all I’ve got to complain about when pressing this to my lips. It tastes fine – like most of the poorer pilsners it doesn’t taste of a great deal, but it is quite refreshing. I’m happy to chug a couple in the pub. The next day though – wow. I have never had hangovers like the headaches I seem to get after this stuff. Might just be me, so I’d be interested in hearing if others get zero-alc hangovers. Kind of annoying…
Rating: Highland Cattle

Bitburger Drive Alcohol Free Beer

I’ve been asking for recommendations during this period of self-imposed torture. Remarkably most people offered Beck’s Blue (I now disregard every opinion they put forward) or Bitburger Drive. I finally tracked this one down in the Kean’s Head. Delightfully the barman provided a range of fancy glassware to make me feel better about drinking it.

I like ordinary Bitburger, it’s clean and refreshing. This ‘driving’ version is also a smooth drink, but has a bewildering dehydrating property. I swear this stuff was wicking away the moisture from my mouth even as I drank it. Incredible. If they put Bitburger Drive in sports t-shirts they would actually work. It gives me a slight dilemma, because it did taste fine (like the Holsten Pils) but I was coughing and had to get a glass of water to go with it. Very odd.
Rating: Camel

Kopparberg Alcohol Free Cider

3 Alcohol Free Beers_cleanI know what you’re thinking – that’s not beer. And you are correct. It certainly is not beer. It was the only alternative to the deathbrew Blue at a Wetherspoons and I was feeling experimental. I don’t often drink cider, not after the 12% white cider my Dad brewed when I was a teen, but I figured this would be like Appletise or something. It’s a 500ml bottle so looks sensible in a pint glass and I felt like I fitted in again. It was lovely until I tasted it.

My first impression was that Willy Wonka had produced a drink to kill small children with diabetes. So sugary that my teeth instantly hurt. It has no flavour other than sweetness. If you got a brick of Haribo sweets and threw them at your own face it might replicate the drinking sensation. That’s not fair – it’s more like Swizzels and Matlow’s Double Dipper in drink form. I drank it with a straw.

Sadly I had to abandon this one about halfway down the glass as I couldn’t taste the food I was eating and the sweetness gave me a headache. The aftertaste, reminiscent of Lemon Tango used as mouthwash, stayed with me through half a packet of gum and toothbrushing. Impressive. I don’t know what Kopparberg is usually like so I can’t speculate about how badly, or accurately they’ve converted it.
Rating: Sugar Glider

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Lego Blog: Minifigure Madness

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Wrooargh The Bricks Of Change

Minifig MadnessMinifigs, minifigures, Lego men (and women). They are an amazing complement to the sheer joy that the bricks can bring. They have improved over the years too. I’m sure when I was little there were only two faces (smiling and not smiling), nowt but yellow in the physog department and accessories were either walkie-talkies (still ace) or things that might be guns.

The recent blind bag series that Lego have brought out (we’re up to series 10 now) have made my obsession with Lego acceptable to my partner, who is now in a bag-squeezing frenzy to find Medusa. We don’t dick around by buying tonnes of them – blind bags are an abomination and a vile exploitation of enthusiasm. Screw them – just spend a bit of time in the supermarket fondling the packets.

I’ve acquired a decent little collection of minifigs over the last few years, plus a handful from the decade before (in which Lego purchases were an escape from crippling depression and guided by alcohol). I thought it might be nice to ramble about a handful of favourites. I’ve mostly left out the newer bagged minifigures because I reckon they get enough exposure. 

Joy

Tr…umpet!
My Gun Is Bigger Than Yours
Take Me To Your Neon Dealer

Fabuland Heffalump

Does anyone else remember Fabuland? It was the Duplo animal headed weirdness of the early-mid ’80s. My mum found this chap for me in the wreckage of my youth. I don’t know why he doesn’t have eyes. There is the suggestion of them though. Perhaps in the darkness of boxes skin grew over his eyes… I’m sure that’s it. I loved these guys. I also have the crow figure but he’s so badly scratched I can’t show him here for  fear of affrighting you.

Space man, I just want to fly away (or something)

The little blue dude here is from a Lego Space jumper I had, he’s got a plastic press stud on his back and came unstuck constantly. Terrible idea for clothing. I had tonnes (maybe four) of these guys and always loved the zip on the suit. It’s nice to see how far spacemen have come in Lego. Next to him is the recent hot pink spacelady. New faces, detail jobs on full front, back and legs. Awesome face, good hair and a quite different helmet.

Aliens

These chaps didn’t seem to hang about for long, but I adore their faces and the chest images. The interestingly shaped helmets, some of which were transparent have remained some of the coolest things that Lego ever made. They came with a rather nice flying saucer that I must rebuild one of these days.

Increasing Awesomeness

Honey Trap (oh)
Vanilla Ewok vs Chocolate Ewok
Chicks Got Cool

Lego accessories, paint jobs and hats have come a very long way. We’re almost seeing some gender balance in the recent minifigure series. The Bee Lady is one of several brilliant costumed figures Lego have put out (I used the Godzilla costume here). The hat is rubber, like the new Yoda heads and a few other hair accessories (see the Friends below). She also has wings. Wings. Gorgeous all round.

A Nice Bit of Skirt

The new ‘skirt’ pieces for lady figures has made them easily identifiable in blind bags, but it also makes the model rather lovely too. The Wicked Witch of The West is very satisfying, and has a nice broom. The other figure here is a vampire hunter – the lovely garlic clove and ripped clothes add texture and freshness to all of these figures. Her hair is also rubber and has a crossbow bolt in it. She was one of the first figures I saw with two faces – both with a scar.

Just More of Everything

Vanilla Ewok vs Chocolate Ewok

The Ewoks were the first figures I saw with the short legs now in general use for Hobbit, leprechauns and so on. The Ewok paintjob and detail has improved from their first appearance as well. Logray is much cooler than unidentifiable forest shadow. It’s almost like Lego were slow to realise how much everyone would love the Star Wars range. I believe they know now.

Hats On, Hats Off

Creepy Halloween
Phew, they’re just people…

The Green Goblin and the Apeman Costume show the details improving over the years, along with a sense of humour. The sweaty little ape costumed fellow is a winner, with nice paunch on the front and a splendid helmet. The Green Goblin is from a few years ago and you can see that in the moulded but unpainted helmet. He’s got a great face and armour though (and the back of his head is painted).

Lego Chima – the new Fabuland?

Thunder, Thunder..
Zombie animals?
Aw yeah.

I’ve only got a few of the Chima dudes, but I pulled in when I realised the faces were helmets and they had dual expressions underneath. Everything about these guys is brilliant – detail all over them, plus the faces, masks and they often cool things like wings and weapons you have to assemble. The faces are a bit odd. The croc dudes are genuinely scary and the lion’s eyes worry me.

Lego Friends Reunited

I blogged about Lego Friends last week. I’m still keen, especially once I realised that although the heads can’t be swapped, the hats and hair can be… I could do this literally all day:

Hi, we’re girls.
Quick Change
This seems okay
YES.
Sexy and I know it
Chavs
 

This week, Monday 29th April 2013

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I Have Travelled Back In Time From 2542

Another week of gentle hell… work is properly scrambling my brain at the moment – so badly I’d actually forgotten we had a show on Friday until lunchtime. Nicht so good. It is incredible to find that although I only rate myself average in my general IT skills and common sense that our organisation manages to recruit so many below the 50% mark. It shouldn’t be possible. Nonetheless… a week of increasingly stupid questions, inattention and lack of comprehension skills combined to make me wish I was drinking. Speaking of which – it’s my last zero alc week! Hurray!

Aside from that, this has been a good if rather busy week of improv activities and nights out. We  finally celebrated my other half’s birthday – we were severely delayed by the happy acquisition of work, but at last we found a suitable evening on Saturday. Also – had Wednesday out to wave off a good friend who is working in New York for a month. Lucky devil. It’s nice to be out and about but it does make it difficult to get anything done, especially when most of the day is wasted on work… The coming week looks very much like we have only one evening out. Bring on the Lego.

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Shankata – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically

There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.

Wednesday Lego Blog: MiniFigs Old and New

Grubbing about in my box I’ve found some lovely older figures.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Six: The Sweet Night Air

The beasts are out! Dare our heroes enter the sky cliffs? (probably)

Friday Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers

I found more; they’re okay.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Zero update. Almost. Since I’ve taken to my five day schedule I’m mainly writing just to keep up with it! That means I’m failing to scribble enough extra stuff to genuinely plan ahead. I don’t know how I’m going to fix that – maybe some evenings at home will help. What has worked for me and writing is setting myself targets. I don’t really have much personal sense of ambition and I am not a ‘driven’ person so normally being told I have to do something matters not a toss to me. It’s weird then that if I set myself a target and promise it to the anonymous wonder of the internet that I feel responsible. So mebbe I need to set myself an additional random 300 word story per week aim…

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsFull setTuesday Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.

Wednesday Lego Friends: My Best New Friends For girls? Don’t be so sexist. They’ve got lovely coloured bricks.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Five: The Obsidian Eyrie Will death save young Jacob Bublesnatch, or will the horrors take him?

Friday Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson A delightfully surprising read.

Lego

Holy Legalooza! Series 10 Lego Minifigures are out! I am looking at the 8 of the little devils we’ve acquired so far. It’s going to be one hell of a hunt for Medusa and the wild goose chase Mr Gold. Mwha haha! That’s perhaps too many exclamation marks for so short a paragraph.

I had a lovely time talking about Lego with my pal Parky and his daughter on Saturday. We all like Lego Friends. It’s also nice to show off my Lego to someone who really gets it.

Improv Comedy

We went for some  freeform improv at Fisticuffs on Tuesday which produced a couple of great narratives, including a fun story about a pair of birds with differing attitudes to being watched while mating.  Then we played with the Aliens Vs Predator (AVP) script, which is terrible and produced true strangeness. Very good fun though!

We had a fucking excellent show on Friday at The Glee Club. In part that was due a lovely audience filling up the space and being really responsive, especially to the compering duo of Lloydie plus ‘Voice of  God’ James, but we also had a special guest: the lovely (and diminutive – look at the photo) Heather Urquhart from The Maydays, though we know her best from giving us incredible musical improv workshops with Joe Samuels. It’s an absolute delight and huge tilt to have someone new on stage; we’re still enjoying the freshness of Ben; and Heather made beautiful scenes with the team. I regret not having any scenes with her specifically… sad face. Next time Gadget, next time. Still, I had an especially fun Samurai/Geisha scene with Martin (I was the Geisha!), shouted at Ben, told a time-travelling story and rollercoastered happily with Marilyn in accents and genres! I declare aceness.

MissImp in Action with Heather

(L-R) Me, Ben, Heather, Martin, Marilyn, Lloydie at The Glee Club Nottingham for MissImp in Action

Very soon – in fact in a week or so, Parky and I shall be running the next MissImp improv beginners course. It runs for six weeks on Mondays starting 13th May (we’ll probably skip the bank holiday Monday, but that will be up to the group). It’s the third MissImp beginners course and we’re really looking forwards to spreading what we know like comedy butter onto the minds and souls of a new group of improvisers. If you’re interested, and you should be – check out the details here: http://missimp.co.uk/improv-comedy-training-in-nottingham/improv-comedy-courses-in-nottingham/

Media Intake

Books

I finished off The Heroes of The Valley by Jonathan Stroud; I enjoyed it, especially the consideration of how myth and legend grow but felt it oddly lacked the bite and excitement I was hoping for. Not to be deterred, I plunged into a novella by Neal Asher Snow in the Desert. I think I must have read it before, but it was still a satisfyingly odd little scifi tale of one albino whose testicles are desired by others. As I said, it’s been a busy week so I next chose by plunging into my Kindle. There I found the second Cretaceous Station novel by Terrence Zavecz- Hunter’s Moon. I still love the dinosaur setting, but sadly it’s being overwhelmed by some dodgy writing. I’m not sure if it just needs a brutal proofread but it lurches between past and present tense from sentence to sentence and there are a lot of typos.

It sounds a bit petty to moan about spelling and bad proofing, but I find them off putting. It’s hard to edit your own stuff; I certainly find it almost impossible to find the time during the week, but then I’m writing fast and loose – that’s my excuse. A lack of editing seems to be a feature of many independently published ebooks I buy. I want them to be better! Can I help?

Films

Just the one this week: we finally caught Oblivion at the cinema. I don’t really have much to say about it. I love the clean, retro-future ’70s designs and (a bit like The Host) there’s a really good alien invasion story in there somewhere. There was another one of those stupid American trailers that go on for ever and tell you the entire story, which definitely helped undermine it. Actually, even without that the ‘twists’ are incredibly obvious and predictable. There’s some nice scenery and chases (I love the Terrahawks style drones and the noises they make) but there is no tension at all. Sad really.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action - Friday 31st May

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Weeks That Have Come Before

Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson

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Bauchelain

I have a bit of downer on fantasy as a genre. I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger and it just ran out of new ideas. Everything felt rehashed: irritatingly unpronounceable names, set in one of maybe five identikit fantasy worlds, probably a Viking thing. I just didn’t care anymore. Rare books and authors escape that (note – George R.R. Martin is exactly the blandness I’m talking about) – either by virtue of their humour and loving parody of the genre (like Terry Pratchett until he started repeating himself after about eight books) or an astonishing sideways leap from the genre (Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s Shadows of the Apt).

My other half and I acquire random bargain books for each other and get maybe twenty each birthday or Christmas. This was in my Christmas heap, and I didn’t know the author’s name, quite liked the write up on the back, noticed that it was short stories and put it on the heap. I should have read it sooner. I’ll start by saying I knew nothing of the Mazalan Empire series until after I’d read this, and will likely pursue them once they are meaningfully cheaper on Kindle.

There are three novellas here, which follow on chronologically from each other, though with some substantial gaps between the second and third. The first is a detective story set in the wonderfully named Lamentable Moll. A series of terrible murders provide a guide into the lyrical writing style and black, bleak sense of humour Erikson soaks every sentence with. The main character, or at least the lens for the story winds up as the manservant for the eponymous Bauchelain and Korbal Breach. They are a splendidly wicked, murderous pair of necromancers who seem to be generally on the run. I gather that they appear in the main series, but these stories are sufficiently stand alone that I perhaps enjoyed them more with not knowing the overall tale and their place in it; I suspect I’ll be disappointed if they don’t feature heavily.

The second is a sea voyage (which as a shift reminded me of the change between The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequel Red Skies Over Red Seas), with a doomed crew carrying the dark magicians through a sea filled with huge monsters, supernatural enemies and a very bloody resolution. I loved it, and want more of the rest of the crew. The third story sees Bauchelain and Korbal Breach deposing the ruler of a peculiar city which has I suppose gone health and safety mad, banning all dangerous activities and vices. I enjoyed the last slightly less, perhaps just because it had fewer thrills in contrast to the awesome sea voyage.

None of that summary above gives you a sense of the dark wit and grim playfulness of Eriksons’s prose. The characters’ names alone had me smirking and the delicious amorality of the antiheroes is thoroughly enjoyable. Since I haven’t read any of the rest of the series I don’t know what the overall story arc is but I immediately fell in love with this complex world of crazy politics, religion, magic and monsters. This is everything fantasy is supposed to be but so rarely achieves.

Steven Erikson

Get The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Breach at Amazon.co.uk

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Lego Friends: My Best New Friends

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My Lego Hunting Spear Is Sharp

Full set

If you read this often you’ll know that I delight in hunting down Lego bargains. Partly that’s because Lego is insanely expensive, especially compared to the US – I frequently see the exact same numbers on price labels, except with sterling instead of dollars. That’s hurtful, although I can’t dispute that there’s huge value in Lego, I’m not convinced that an extra fifth is appropriate. Partly it’s because I genuinely love it when I’ve paid less.

Tesco has been good to me of late. It’s where we usually find the next series of Lego minifigures first, and has been the source of many reduced items. I still haven’t opened the Attack on Weathertop set (or my Jabba’s Palace) which I feel demonstrates awesome self-control; I’m waiting for the perfect building day… So imagine my delight when I checked out a bargain advertised on Hot UK Deals (which despite the frequent arsehole flaming often has good Lego notifications on it) and found they had reduced the £10 Lego Friends sets by 75%, plus the mini set bags and a handful of the weird Lego Chima sets by the same. Joy. Joy. Joy. Well worth the frantic dash between work and going to improv jam on Thursday. I acquired an heap.

Lego Friends Are My Bestest Friends Forever

mini sets

I’ve admired the Lego Friends sets for a while. I did get the mini animal bags a while ago because they’re dinky little sets with a good number of bits. I wish I’d got more at Tesco because they’re packed with lovely blues, golds, greens and mustard yellows. There are a bunch of the light sabre handles / telescope pieces and more greenery is always welcome. Mind you, I don’t know what use I would have for dozens of squirrels and turtles. At 75p they presented superb value for brick and the more I think about it the more I’m kicking myself.

I picked up four of the formerly £10 Friends sets and while I am of course judging the value for money based on the crazy £2.50 per box I got them for, there are a surprising number of bits per box. Check out those gorgeous purple curtains in the magic set – you can almost taste the velvet. The vanishing bunny trick is neatly accomplished.

Shazam!
The Great Heap
Here, have a banana.

You Shall Play With Pink Girl Parts

I know the Lego Friends stuff is aimed at girls, which I find a little sad. Are girls really so well instructed in gender bias that they won’t even look at toys without pinks and ponies? Evidently Lego have decided so, as the minifigures that come with these are very different from our usual bricky pals. The overlarge head and curved body are very familiar from the mutant Barbie and all the rip-offs since. They don’t have enormously deformed breasts which is probably a mercy.

I don’t know if they’ve released any male figures yet, which might be cool. It’s odd, especially because of late Lego has released far more clearly female characters, although the bias is still very much for male figures. I think it’s disappointing that Lego have had to market to boys and girls separately. From a brief review of some literature available about gender interests at early ages it’s very unclear what kids are naturally drawn to, or where their parents’ biases are already interfering in their choices. Maybe I just want my nieces to be into robots and monsters.

The Lego Friends sets feel quite different to other Lego sets and have lots of accessories, as well as the aforementioned awesome new colours. It seems closer to fulfilling Playmobil’s intention of having toys for almost every human endeavour. And that’s the bit that pisses me off I think – that the activities in Lego Friends (ponies, holiday camp, cafe/restaurant) are female aspirations whereas police, aliens and franchises are for boys. Grumble grumble.

Here, have a banana.
The Great Heap
Shazam!

Put The Gender Down And Step Away

lego frendz

I’m really looking forwards to using the colours as highlights in other designs. I’ve also seen the new Friends heads used in exoskeleton / space suit / EVA builds, adding a more human face into the construction – very cool. So these are the sets I got – pony worship, magician, Kendo practice (girly? I’m confused by the gender roles Lego promotes) and dog training.

Lego Friends is clearly awesome and not just for girls, just like all Lego is clearly brilliant and all should play. I think the designs, and the different box shape (smaller, more efficient with more sides) probably deter young boys. Certainly the incredible look of scorn I got from a six year old when I was buying them suggested that. My also buying Chima stuff seemed to mollify the brat however. More on Chima another time…

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This week, Monday 22nd April 2013

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Captainface2

Blah Blah Words


Life without alcohol… it’s okay. That said I have been waking up with crippling headaches for most of the last week, so either my tolerance for the magic dop has reduced to the point that a bottle of 0.05% beer is giving me a hangover, or I’m broken in a different way. Either way, it’s a super start to the day… Once I’ve recovered from that and blundered to work everything seems to be alright. I don’t feel any different, but I imagine the health benefits will be invisible and detectable only in about thirty years time when I fail to die a year early.
I have had a week of being highly vexed by people’s inability to undertake basic comprehension tasks, or example reading a question and then answering it. You know what, it’s a reading problem. A terrifying proportion of the supposed humans I have to deal with work are unable to make themselves understood or to receive information via language. Maybe they are all psychic and simply acquire their information directly from other telepaths. That would explain why my primitive arrangement of symbols so befuddles them. Yeah, that must be it.

This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry

There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.

Wednesday Lego Friends: My Best New Friends

For girls? Don’t be so sexist. They’ve got lovely coloured bricks.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Five: The Obsidian Eyrie

Will death save young Jacob Bublesnatch, or will the horrors take him?

Friday Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson

A delightfully surprising read.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Last week was good! I’d written the Goldfur McRoo story quite a while ago, in reponse to my sister complaining that my pirate stories aren’t suitable for children. I’m fine with that, but there does seem to be a general expectation that pirates are for kids. It’s perplexing since there’s nothing about pirate life (still less the adventures of Captain Pigheart) that are mite-friendly. I have read pirate stories for young adult fiction and enjoyed them, but I have no desire to write a story from a child’s point of view. Anyway, Goldfur is my solution. Apparently the language awkwardly straddles reading skills for ages 6-14 (which is a little depressing), but I think it’s quite sweet.
I’m really getting into The Desert Crystals now. It’s a satisfying challenge to do 800-1000 words of a story in its own right and continue the series. We have diverged enormously from the direction I had in mind, which I find amusing and intriguing. Since I started with the end (or almost) in chapter one, then I somehow have to wrangle it. Hopefully the story now has a life of its own, and picking it up each week gives an opportunity for tangents and new characters. We’ll see how long it lasts for!
My beer review last week got a lot of hits, which is gratifying and some nice feedback – thank you humans! I feel I can be as honest, brutal and playful as I like when reviewing a mass-produced product. I very much hope the makers of Beck’s Blue read and are annoyed by my mockery. I’ve had one other zero-alc beer since, but once I’ve got a bunch in my belly I’ll do another review.

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsGoldfur - MontyTuesday Goldfur McRoo: Terror of The Subterranean Tunnels A pirate story for children, featuring a tiny fuzzy pirate beast.

Wednesday Pulp Pirate 18 Back on ye olde Flashe Pulpe podcast with another piratical tale.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Four: The Frothing Horror The search for the missing crewman begins.

Friday Beer Review: Four Zero Alcohol Beers  Three good, one very very bad beer.

Lego

I have once again expressed my terminal indecision and dismantled the house I’m building in order to reconstruct the upper floor again. I am happier with it now! It’s not finished though. The upper floor requires walls and I need to figure out some kind of removable roof. I also need to include some kind of washing facilities.
My dear friend Tesco has been kind this week, slashing a load of Lego Chima and Lego Friends with 75% reductions. So I got 7 sets and 3 mini bags (which I already had but they have such pretty colours). More of that on Wednesday!

Improv Comedy

I missed Fisticuff’s last week so I could go to a meeting about the Furthest Point From The Sea Festival on 29th June. I’m sort of involved as an organiser, but really I’m just moral support. When that comes round we’ll be having an improv slot in the comedy tent (plus a Captain Pigheart slot) and we’ll have improv workshop space during the day.
Parky ran this week’s jam where we had a good mix of old and new improvisers which resulted in surprising and funny scenes. I felt pretty relaxed and on the ball for the couple of scenes I did. That bodes well for the show at the end of this week. I suppose one result of being so busy at work is that I’d barely noticed we’re at the end of the month already.

Media Intake

Books

I’m still staving off The Air War with random books. I found The Stone Man by Luke Smithers in the Kindle store and tore through that last week. It’s an intriguing story about a (you’ll never guess) Stone Man who appears in Coventry and then walks across the country destroying everything in its path. I enjoyed the story telling, which is almost all from one perspective, that of a reporter who turns out to be sensitive to the Stone Man’s presence. Good book! I did find the main character rather unlikeable and the repeated notes about his Asperger’s just seemed odd. It’s quite possible to be focussed on a goal and not really care about people without having to put the character somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Strange.
I’ve now moved on to The Valley of Heroes by Jonathan Stroud (author of the magnificently entertaining Bartimaeus trilogy). I’m near the beginning and waiting eagerly for the exciting stuff to kick in. I suspect I’m just being impatient, but the Norse-like medieval set up is something I’ve grown tired of in books. I wanna see the monsters.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action - Friday 26th April

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

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Beer Review: Four Zero Alcohol Beers

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Sulking

I admit that I approached the business of low (less than 0.5%) or no alcohol beers from a bad place. It’s not my choice, but the doc, in his infinite wisdom has decreed/proposed/suggested a month of not drinking. It sounded horrific. It is proving (at a week and a half in) to be… not so horrific. That said, last night I was at the most excellent The Exeter Arms in Derby. It’s a Dancing Duck Brewery pub and they have just won two CAMRA awards – best pub in Derby and something else; I forget. They were handing out free half pint of beer tokens in celebration. I gritted my teeth and enjoyed my Fentiman’s Victorian Lemonade. It’s a great lemonade – but free beer? FREE BEER? I am strong in my resolution.

Zero Alc

I immediately smashed the bottle rather than ruin the camera with Beck’s Blue.

Finding and Trying

Few pubs seem to stock a low/no alc beer, and generally I’m completely with them – what’s the point? Why not just have a soft drink than some emasculated ale? There’s a texture and taste to beer that I actually like. I don’t drink to get drunk (although I do like that too); I find it a refreshing and pleasant mild narcotic. It’s a low drug dose (usually) and quite manageable without trashing one’s faculties.

I realised that fruit juice or tea just don’t have the same quality for drinking of an evening and I don’t want something with half a pound of sugar in it (you can shove your diet sodas where the sun don’t shine pal, they’re unilaterally vile).

The four beers below are the only ones I’ve found and tried so far. It’s a start right? Read on for Nanny State, Czech Pilsner Lager, Erdinger Alcohol Free and Beck’s Blue. I’m using an animal rating solely because it amuses me – and I’m rating them against each other, not against ‘normal’ ABV beers. Just in case you care. I think you’ll be able to figure out which ones I liked.

BrewDog Nanny State

My sympathetic friend David acquired these for me at the Nottingham BrewDog. They are pricey – £3 for 330ml. Amusingly, the seriously strong punk brewers only produced Nanny State to mock the media response to their irresponsibly strong beers a few years ago. As ever, the media were being twats.

They describe it as an “insanely hopped imperial mild“, which I find appealing as a description. It certainly is hoppy, and I find that many of BrewDog’s lighter coloured beers are intensely hoppy, which is great if you like that sort of thing. Personally I prefer their darker 5am Saint, but I’m generally a fan of IPA-type beers. Nanny State has very tasty dry, fruity flavour and went down very smoothly. Pretty damn good.

Rating: Armadillo

Sainsbury’s Czech Low Alcohol Pilsner Lager

Sainsbury’s had half a dozen different low/no alc beers – most of them are awful miniature bottles of French biere pisswaters so I ignored those. I’ve always like the cleanness of Czech and Polish lagers; they’re a world away from the inconceivably awful Fosters and Carling that sports fans use to deaden their senses.

This is actually brewed in the Staropramen brewery (and bottled by Marstons) and is the low-alc version of the already quite acceptable standard strength lager Sainsbury’s sell. I like it. It’s smooth, clean-tasting and very refreshing. For £1.20 for 500ml I felt very happy with it.

While it certainly doesn’t have the richness (I don’t know, a folded silver and gold flavour!) of Staropramen, or Zywiec I shall certainly drink it again. I mean, I’ve got two and a half weeks to go.

Rating: Albino crow

Erdinger Weissbrau Alcohol Free

Apparently our German pals have been brewing splendid low alcohol wheat beers for ages and tout their isotonic and vitamin-rich health benefits. At least that’s what it says on the label. I do like their regular versions, especially the darker Erdinger, and was pleased to find it in Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Without question this is the best of the bunch – it’s texture is delightful: rich and just the right kind of cloudy on the tongue. It goes down a treat and, y’know what, I feel isonicised by it. It really gives the qualitative feel of drinking beer, and since it’s low calorie as well as isotonisch and vitaminhaltig I do believe I’ll have another.

I’m seriously considering having Erdinger Alcohol Free as a regular drink even when I’m back on the booze – I could drink it at wor in the Summer! YES. It does seem like the ideal chilled after-sport drink. So much tastier than Lucozade. £1.59 for a 500ml bottle (Lucozade’s new ‘Dual Fuel’ is £1.50 for 500ml! I guess that ain’t bad for gas and electric).

Rating: Archaeopterix

Beck’s Blue Alcohol Free Corpse Juice

I’m only including this one in the interests of balance. The supermarket had this next to Skol which probably says it all. Dismayingly this is the only low/no alc beer I’ve found in pubs yet. Presumably the manufacturers have tested the beverage on customers and correctly settled on 275ml, which is a just barely tolerable volume to suffer through. It’s sold for between £3-4 for six bottles, or about £3 a bottle in the pub (it does take up three quid’s worth of space).

This is a relentlessly foul shaken-donkey-jizzing in your mouth experience. Incredibly they have made a drink which makes regular Beck’s (already a worthless stain on a bar) into a drink you might consume if you found yourself prostrate in a desert, but if possible I’d hack open a camel with my teeth and suckle its hump butter instead. I would rather drink salt water until I vomit than drink Becks Blue again. The very touch of this bilious carbonated poison almost broke my doctor’s prohibition.

Becks Blue is awful. Presumably if you already consider Beck’s lager to be drinkable you are so lost that you might be able to drink this.

Rating: Sea Slug Choking A Mudskipper