I am pleased to say I am not hungover today and so very much owe you all a proper blog. The problem here is that spending a day hungover you tend not to do very much at all. Normally the day is spent feeling very sorry for yourself while smelling like the night before and eating food that contains 99% fat in the hope it will soak up any remaining toxins. I like to think I bucked that trend. At about 1pm my friend Mat told me about how good the new Streetfighter 4 game was meant to be. For some reason there and then I decided I was going to buy it despite not having any money and not wanting to leave the house. The former is a problem I have encountered before and not dealt with very well. See the blog from a few days ago about having no willpower. I don’t have enough money to pay my credit card bill on time, but using some sneaky measures scraped just enough together for the purchase. Prioritising is important. Debt collectors coming round is fine but I have to have beaten Akuma before they do.
I donned my outdoor gear (ie a coat) and raced towards Blockbusters with a determination that was unknown 30 minutes previous. Blockbusters didn’t have it because they are useless and I look forward to the inevitable day when everyone downloads all their TV and the place has to close. Yeah I said it Blockbusters! To be fair I should’ve expected it, as our local dvd renting chain store looks a bit like if someone at the job centre shelf-stacked some of the dodgy dvd’s they had been selling at the pub. Its such a decrepit centre of broken dreams and terrible low budget sequels that it is falls close to Argos in the retail pathos stakes. Things have obviously hit an all time low though as when I went in one of the staff was getting his 3 year old son to hoover the shop floor. Now the child seemed to be enjoying it, and I would assume he was the son of the staff member on account of the contact between them. There was a part of me that was very scared I had stumbled into a sweat shop paedo ring. While I wanted to be concerned, they didn’t have Streetfighter so I left them to it. Child concern could happen later, now I needed to punch things on a machine.
My mission then involved a brief check in Argos, where I discovered the missing link. It was behind a till and unable to operate said till due to its webbed hands and fish like monkey brain. I was going to ask them if they had it in stock but was scared they would try and eat me. So eventually beyond all reason I took a 30 minute bus ride to a GAME where I knew they wouldn’t let me down. They didn’t, but they did insult my intelligence by asking if I wanted to buy a game guide for SF4. Of all the games you would need a guide for, surely one that is based on hitting the fuck out of someone does not need a strategy? I guffawed at her stupid question and went on to quip how I have been playing these games since the 90’s and as I have not grown up mentally since then should still be as good. Tragically I’m not and upon returning with my prize spent the afternoon swearing at the telly and wondering when I got so shit at hitting people virtually. It seems that as the technology in the gaming world has got better I have got much much worse and would probably have been better off throwing sticks at the missing link in Argos.
Once I had prized myself away from the Xbox, last night was spent going to see Keith Farnan’s show Cruel and Unusual at the BAC. I hadn’t had a chance to see it in Edinburgh and Keith’s ace so I sad I would head along. The show had some great reviews and both me and Layla really enjoyed it. What we didn’t enjoy however was the techie of the show being the rudest person in the crowd. Firstly, despite (as Keith told us post show) having a two hour tech rehearsal, all the projections and tech stuff screwed up 20 minutes in. This happened again and again with the tech man running to the stage and back several times and never really being able to fix anything. This delayed Keith’s show by about 30 mins which was a shame but didn’t ruin it. What did distract more than that, was that inbetween pretending to fix things, he would sit at the back of the audience and talk all the way through! Surely to work in a theatre you must know some theatre etiquette. It would appear that this man was only a few evolutionary steps along the line from the Argos fish-beast in terms of manners. If you get a chance to go and see the show, do because its great, and if that techie talks through it, do what I should have and wire him up to the circuit board and hit him with a leatherman.
I’m off to Wrexham today then Leeds again Friday and Saturday. I’m staying with Layla’s brother, sister-in-law and nephew. Her nephew has an Xbox and while I pretend in my head that I might get some writing done away from home I think we all know I will instead be getting pixellated bruises from a 16 year old. Better than the real bruises and stab wounds you would get from the 16 year olds in our area.
Lastly as I owe you from yesterday – Chortle Awards Breakdown: Roy Walker spoke to me (he asked where someone else was but it still counts); Frank Skinner was the best host they’ve had in ages; Greg McHugh knows about modern art; Tim Arthur is a Casanova amongst men; I shouldn’t accept gigs when drunk; at least two people say they still liked my preview in Feb which is nice; Claire Nightingale works in all the jobs; everyone does know everyone via six degrees as proved by Emma; I now know 3 more people’s faces in realness that I only knew virtually before; finally, if you refuse to leave a kebab shop as its closing, they will give in and serve you.
