Four Day Weeks
I don’t know if there’s something inherently oppressive about working five days a week, but when I’m freed from it it make s a huge difference. I suppose in part it’s knowing that only leaves two days for fun and nonsense – a balance which screams abuse of human rights to me. It’s easily argued that we have our evenings (and the mornings before work – assuming you are able to fnction before midday) available, but really the evenings have to soothe the scars of the workday and weekends are inevitably spent catching up on sleep. I’m increasingly convinced this is just nuts. If it were easy to ditch the working day and segue into evenings of undistracted and worry-free fun then it wouldn’t be so bad. I’m quite busy at work at present and it’s harder than ever to detach. But this week and last week are both four working day weeks which feels better.
To the end of purging the day I’ve taken up Tekken Tag Team again. I may have to go all the way back to Tekken 3 (for the PS1) which is before they mixed up some of the special move commands that I’ve never adapted to. Either way it’s been very satisfying to plug in the ole’ PS2 and feel the familiar perfect design of the Playstation joypad once more. I’d forgotten what a perfect game it is, although it really doesn’t look as good on a 32 inch TV as it used to at university’s 14 inch giant television. Half an hour of relentlessly kicking the shit out of the old favourites may be my new solution to blacking out the daytime.
Lego
I spent my day off on Friday surrounded by Lego (and last night come to think of it…) I’ve decided to adapt the Lego Winter Village Toyshop into a Spring or Summertime toyshop. So I’m completely re-roofing it (which was the nightmare of building it the first time round, so that’s a great plan!) and rebuilding the chimney with better colour matching bricks and maybe fiddling with just about everything else. It’s going to be like that axe, you know – the one where we replaced the blade and the handle several times but it’s still the same axe. It’s proving an excellent learning process for getting surprising shapes to fit together; I’m rather pleased with the new roofs. The shot here is a mid-progress view. I’ve since replaced the window sills, added new framing for the windows and some stuff at the side. Fun!
Improv Musing
We had a really fun gig last week at The Glee Club in Birmingham’s Studio Theatre with Newton Europe. It’s a great club and a veery nice room to perform in, though we did nearly kill each other on the dinky stage (we could have removed it, but it’s useful to be elevated sometimes). It was a pretty crazy crowd of people taking their commitment to having fun very seriously. They were very up for scribbling lines for us, and I enjoyed haranguing them to write more. I’m finding that a good part of my warm up is going out and playing amongst the audience before the show starts. We had a fine time including references to the business’ process improvement work – it was a particular pleasure to be endowed with the role of a performance improvement consultant and to berate Ben for placing a bucket underneath the sink for throwing up in: it’s much more efficient to just use the sink. It all went down very well and the audience were generous with their praise. Feelgoods!
♥ Last Week’s Scribbles
I finally managed to write about the gorgeous Lego Palace Cinema. I’d recommend it to just about anyone… I need to record some more stories for Flash Pulp as well. They’re back to a weekly Flashcast again and I’m already a week behind. I’ve had some lovely feedback for the Alex Trepan story they recently serialised so I need to delve into Alex’ back catalogue and maybe even get motivated to write some more…
This week, Monday 17th February 2014 – the dubious value of partworks collectable magazines.
Pulp Pirate 21 – FC 96 Fish Ships Out – part 3 of my Alex Trepan series mixed in with pulpy wonders.
Lego Blog: The Palace Cinema 10232 – possibly the very best Lego set ever produced.
Events and Excitement
Friday 28th February
MissImp in Action – live improv comedy show
Thrilling all-action end of the month show sporting the best of MissImp inventing scenes and playing games.
The Glee Club
The Waterfront
Canal Street
Nottingham
8.30pm (doors open at 8pm) – £4.50 in advance/£6 on the door (£3 students/MissImp)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1419935891573539/
Sunday 2nd March 2014
Ten Thousand Million Love Stories
A two person, multi character improvised longform with Heather Urquhart and Jules Munns. This is a show about love, what it means and how we succeed and fail in it.
The magnificent Heather Urquhart and Jules Munn from the award-winning Brighton improv group The Maydays bring their two-person show to Nottingham. Ten Thousand Million Love Stories is a joyous performance from two actors at the top of their game. Preceded by the Fancy Pants Jam – a performance by Heather & Jules with local improvisers.
“The perfect balance between realism and comedy slapstick, these two comfortably jumped from one character to another, without ever losing their flow. The show was as funny as it was impressive” Brighton’s Finest
The Corner
8 Stoney Street
(off Broad Street)
Nottingham
6.30pm Fancy Pants Jam
7.30pm Ten Thousand Million Love Stories
Entry: £5
https://www.facebook.com/events/502130516564097/
