Osmosis - Phyiscal Theatre

Okay I always get a little worried about doing posts about some of my less than mainstream interests. In another life (post 16 was another life to me) I studied contemporary dance; I lacked what some would call talent at dancing but I did really love the more analytical side of it and I still really love dance and physical theatre.

This summer Hannah and I went to visit my brother who lives in Stockholm, although he turned out to have to be in London for the same week (go figure - that's right I wish I were an American Cheerleader from the 90s), and we managed to catch some of the Culture Festival they ran. One of the items that we caught completely accidentally turned out to be some of the finest physical theatre I have ever seen. It's from a French Company called Osmosis and the piece is called Alhambra Container. Please see the clip below for a bit of it (note: this clip was not filmed by me, I just found it on YouTube)

http://www.osmosiscie.com/osmosis%20gb/

Lomography/Newburgh Quarter

So a month ago Hannah and I took a trip to the Newburgh Quarter they were doing a Lower East Side swap - So some shops from the boutique shops in the Newburgh quarter sold their wares over on the LES and vice versa, all sounds pretty interesting right? it was a little underwhelming on the day we went but we did manage to get our first glimpse inside the Lomography store, which we actually took another visit to yesterday, I believe the visit had something to do with my Birthday and of course Christmas being next month but I don't want to kill the surprise by speculating.

Anyway here are some Photos from the Lomography store.

Pop Life @ Tate Modern

Jeff Koons' Rabbit

Quick photo-update with photos from the new (at least it was new when I actually went) Pop Life exhib at the Tate Modern.

These photos had to be taken sneakily as with many exhibitions these days they don't allow photographs. It seems a little odd that at an exhibition of art created for popular consumption you can't take pictures.

Murakami x Kanye

Keith Haring's Pop Shop

Better to say nothing than to say something wanky

Daniel Johnston @ Union Chapel

For some reason I have never been very good at talking or indeed writing about music - this is probably why I let my last blog, a music blog, die. Part of my problem is I think people sound like dicks when they try to talk about music, I was at a Daniel Johnston gig last week when I heard some guy in the toilets discussing the opening band who he seemed to like and then he said;

" The guitar didn't dominate the song the guitar just laid the foundation"

There was more wanky things he said about the band but this is all I can accurately remember. At that point I decided that I really didn't want to be at risk of saying things like that, so instead I am not going to talk about the music I am going to put some photos up and direct you to Last.fm pages. Lazy? Definitely but if that's how I avoid saying something wanky.

Kings of Convenience @ Hoxton Bar and Kitchen

Final Fantasy @ Field Day

Santigold @ Field Day

Flickr!

My Flcikr account will only hold 200 photos! I am currently unemployed and as cheap as it is I can't really justify any extra expense like a pro account, so if photographs from my earlier posts start disappearing that is the reason. Argh, hopefully won't be too long until I have a job now though and I will be posting about the wonderous things there are to do in London on a weekly basis as well as obtaining a Pro Flickr account.

I genuinely contemplated blogging about my weekly TV schedule earlier just because I really had nothing else to write about. Then I realised that I do actually have quite a few photographs that I haven't blogged yet, so please excuse the lack of text in the next few posts.

Oh my TV schedule by the way:

Monday - University Challange and Flashforward
Tuesday - Breaking Bad
Wednesday - True Blood and Generation Kill
Thursday - Curb Your Enthusiasm and Misfits (this one only starts this week but I'm sure I'll love it - superheroes for the ASBO generation)
Saturday - The Thick of It
oh and Ace of Cakes whenever I manage to find it on!

Also if I lived in the US or had some way of seeing programmes that are not yet shown in the UK I would be watching - Californication Season 3; Bored to Death; Glee.

Long Time No See

I wonder how many blog posts start with some kind of apology for not writin. I am going to hazard a guess at around 90%. Anyway, if you hadn't guessed this is my "sorry I haven't written a while" post.

Last month I quit my job (which was going nowhere) in the hope that I would find something better soon. So in the mean time I am a little on the poor side and going out to give myself things to write about unfortunately costs money. So for now I will update with things like reviews of music, movies and tv shows (True Blood is my current TV obsession). I'm going to start by doing one of those "I am currently watching/listening/eating" memes (I apologise if I am inadvertently stealing this meme without giving appropriate credit)

So here we go:

Watching... True Blood of course, I originally started watching it a while ago and the soapy non episodic feel kind of wound me up. I watched it this time round though and it has sex, blood, vampires, what is there not to like? Oh Anna Paquin that's a perfectly reasonable thing not to like.

Listening... Jamie T's new album, Kings & Queens. It took a while but Jamie certainly didn't suffer, like many do, from 2nd album syndrome and I would say this far surpasses the ffirst particular not to the track Emily's Heart and Jilly Armeen.

Drinking... not coke (as in cola). I have given up fizzy drinks and I am not feeling great about. Instead I'm drinking mineral water and tea (vanilla black mostly but also earl green and sencha)

Reading... Belching Out The Devil by Mark Thomas, goes hand in hand with the above

Last week - (Power Game and Hide and Seek)

So I'm a little late (as usual) writing up about the activities for last week and as I'll explain below I have very little to write on one of them.

Power Game - I was off seeing Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords fame, doing standup (seriously disappointing but I don't really want to review that), so my parents very kindly went in my place they however had very little to report. As I said in my last post you could either join in with the gambling action or you could observe from the bar area. My parents went for the observation method and quickly discovered the issues with this method as there were only a couple of sets of headphones with each monitor so they didn't really get to report much. All that said however the ICA bar is a great bar and they had a nice time drinking instead.

Hide and Seek -

It must be said this is not what I know as Pervasive Gaming (that is a longer conversation though and one for anoter time), this was what I would call a Social Gaming Festival and it was great! We arrived at The Royal Festival Hall at 8pm on the first evening of the festival. The Clore Ballroom looked somewhat like a University Societies fair.


After a misjudgement on our part of how the player allocation worked we ended up managing to sign ourselves up for 2 games towards the end of the evening and had to go and grab some sushi in the mean time. When we returned the ballroom had calmed down a little and it was time to get down to the gaming!

Our first game was called Parse the Parcel - this actually had nothing to do with unwrapping presents.

This game was a team game, two teams of 5 were sat opposite each other and 7 parcels were handed out (3 cubes, 2 spheres and 2 triangular).

Quick rules of the game: each team had a set sequence of spheres, cubes and triangles that they had to put the shapes in. Players could pass the parcels horizontally or to their opposite player (but not diagonally).

The action: I'm not sure any of our team had a clue, neither did the other team for that matter but miraculously they seemed to beat us every time. So much so that Hannah got so agitated that she hurled a spherical parcel at the head of an opposing team member, who was so stunned she could barely talk. - social gaming gets violent! (most things get violent around Hannah though). Final score was 5 -3 to the other team... we still feel quite bitter although not quite as bitter as one of our team who referred to members of the other team as cunts.


Our 2nd game is a more well known game (apparently), known as werewolf although the variation we played was Super Secret Robot Werewolf (aka Battlestar Galactica Werewolf). There were 18 of us. We were each handed a role card, a third of us were given Super Secret Robot ("Cylon") cards the rest of us were given Crew Member cards. There were two phases of the game; a night phase - where the Super Secret Robots silently select one of the crew members to kill; and a day phase where the crew members accuse someone of being a cylon and throw them out of the air lock.

Action: This was a long game so I won't tell you step by step but insults and accusations were flying. One guy almost got lynched for having a quiff another young girl was almost lynched for being quiet - it should be said that this quiet young girl was actually a cylon.
I was assigned the role of crew member and at first, being the kind of guy I am, I was unwilling to throw possibly innocent people out of the airlock. I was, however, quickly brainwashed by the mob mentality and it wasn't too long before I led the mob in the successful killing of two cylons, at which point my reign as leader of the mob came to an abrupt end when I was zapped

.
All in all it was a really fun night and should you get the chance to attend another one of Hide and Seek's events you should definitely do so. http://www.hideandseekfest.co.uk/

Drisk's Weekly Thing's To Do in London (Working Title) 26th July

So lots of other places publish a list of great things to do each week. A lot of these lists seem to almost be the catwalk list, I mean it all looks like great and really fucking cool but you'd never wear it out of the house. - I got a little lost in the analogy there I just mean I'm tired of these lists of ultra-cool things to do in London. I'm clearly not that cool so have decided to do my own ready-to-wear collection of things to do each week.

This list will be made up of events/shows/activities that I will either be attending or, in the case of one of today's entries, would go to if I wasn't already going to something else.

1. Liliane Lijn: Power Game @ The ICA - Tuesday 28th at 7pm

Okay an obscureish event at an art gallery possibly wasn't a great way to start my prêt-à-porter colelction of activities but I always find the ICA a completely unpretensious place to go whether you're there for an exhibition, movie or gig there always seems to be a nice variety of people and they have a great bar/cafe area.

This piece was originally staged in 1974 at theRoyal College of Art as part of the Festival for Chilean Resistance. This performance is an unrehearsed piece where 20 guests are invited to bet real money on their perception of the power of certain words. Members of the public are also invited to join but will need to put down a minimum of a fiver to play, alternatively you can watch all the action from the bar (this would be my preferred option).

The game is played with a deck of cards; on each card a word is printed and players are asked to place these words in a hierarchy of power. - This is about as much as I know about how the whole thing works and as I am otherwise preoccupied on this night it may be all I ever know about it. (My parents will be in attendance though so I will hopefully be able to give you some form of feedback)

Liliane Lijn, Power Game, 2009

2. Hide & Seek Festival @ Royal Festival Hall - 31st July - 2nd August

Hide&Seek ran their first event in 2007, in 2007 this was London's first pervasive gaming festival.

Quick explanation of pervasive gaming - it should be noted that while I am very interested in the area I am still pretty new to it and it's still a developing field, so apologies for any mistakes I make. Pervasive gaming is [very] basically a game that is interwoven with our everyday lives and use modern communication technology to achieve an interface between the virtual and the physical. It must be said that Hide&Seek don't seem to adhere to a strict definition of pervasive gaming and are mroe interested in the social aspect. ANNNNYYYYWAYYYYY...

Hide&Seek runs all weekend with a programme (click for programme) of events for each day. Games include:
- Secret Agent: a game where players are given an ear peiece and must follow orders received through the ear piece in order to win a game (although first they need to discover how the game is won)
- Papparazzi - participants use their stalking skills to snap photos of 'celbrities' indulgin in scandalous activities to earn points. (I recently heard some good reviews from a similar game run in New York's pervasive gaming festival)

Sunday is family day, it's almost enough to make me wish I had kids.

http://hideandseekfest.co.uk/

Here's a video from hide and seek advertising the 2007 game, you'll notice his definition of pervasive gaming is different to mine



3. Field Day Festival @ Victoria Park - 1st August at 11.30am

I was starting to think this week would never come but finally it is the week of Field Day.

Other than having one of the best line ups of any festival this year (my highlights being Malcolm Middleton, Final Fantasy and Santigold), it also seems like the kind of thing I would go to if there was no music at all. Field Day have gone out of their way to create a unique festival experience which has a more rural village fete feel than any other festival despite being in Hackney. I'm even quite excited by the food they're going to have there with Sourced Market coming down along with representatives from Borough and Broadway Markets.

Full Line up at http://www.fielddayfestivals.com/lineup/

Sorry I got a little carried away on this one but I'll keep them more concise next time.

DoodleBar

It is becoming increasingly hard to find cool things to do in West London, yeah we have Book Slam but that only happens once a month and yeah there's Notting Hill arts club and all those other things we all went to in our teens but I'm sorry to say I'm a little past all that. So it's always nice when somewhere new opens up.

Doodle Bar opened at the beginning of last month in what I can only really describe as a car park in the middle of Battersea. The premise is simple; cheap beer, music and white washed walls and pens where you can draw whatever and wherever you like (yes this includes on the staff) - This doesn't result in as much cock drawing as you would expect.

Doodle bar [I think] runs general chill out and doodle nights on Thursdays and Fridays, Yoga on Mondays, Life Drawing on Tuesdays (maybe?), and ping pong some other evening - check out their events calendar at www.thedoodlebar.com

SW Coast Path

It took 2 swollen ankles, and a soleful of blisters for me to realise that there was probably a reason I was born in the city and perhaps 100 miles of coastal hiking isn't for me.

I'm currently reading Murakami's (Haruki not Takeshi, I do love them both though) "What I Talk About When I Talk about Running" and there's a section in the book which says:

"... as an action than deviates from the ordinary yet doesn't violate basic values, you'd expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view on life, its colors and shape, should be transformed"

This is exactly how I felt as I was drenched with sweat and my ankles were giving way and the above kind of thinking became my mantra... "This is a life changing experience, This is a life changing experience, this is a life chang..." - in this section of his book Murakami goes on to say the Sixty-two mile run that he had done achieved the kind of transformation he talks about. I, however, did not experience such a transformation just a huge amount of discomfort. It occurs to me that maybe you just need to push yourself a lot harder to achieve that kind of transformation but then it also occurs to me that I'm pretty happy with my current outlook so I might save it for a year or two.

Though I whinge and complain I am happy I did it, a slightly more relaxed timescale would have made the week far more enjoyable. We had so much distance to cover each day that it was very difficult to justify standing around to take decent photos but here's a few of the not-so-blurry ones. (some more can be found over on my Flickr)

Cafe Crawl - London 2009

I had promised myself I would do a non eaterie post as my next post but I am a slight sucker for chronology and feel that although I could write about last week's hiking trip that I should write about Cafe Crawl 2009 first.

Despite the cool, official sounding title Cafe Crawl 2009 actually just involved Hannah and I going to a number of cafes that we fancied and ranking them using a rather rudimentary scale. (as I seem to have misplaced my moleskine right now I will come back to the scorings another time).

We oringinally planned to go to three cafes and eat at all of them... ordinarily this wouldn't seem such a feat as my appetite is usually more than adequate for such a task but on this day it just didn't quite happen. This does not, however, mean that we went to fewer cafes (2 cafes would not have made much of a crawl after all) it means we added a fourth. - This does make sense but Drisk logic is sketchy at the best of times so considering it's gone midnight on a school night I won't bore you trying to convince you.

The cafes:

The Tea Box: this is a really lovely little tea shop in Richmond. The cafe delivers what you would expect of the name, it has a huge menu of different teas, including an earl grey infused hot chocloate (which was surprisingly good). The decor was pretty much what you would expect from a tea shop in richmond - reserved but in a slightly antiquey stylish way. The whole concept has been well thought out from the tea timers to let you know when your pot of tea will be at a certain strength to the spoons with little tea pots carved into the end. The food menu was also really great it gave me an opportunity to feed my month long craving for eggs benedict, the menu also included lots of interesting dishes including earl grey boiled egg. All prices were really reasonable and eveything was of a very high standard.



Beas of Bloomsbury: This is regarded as one of the best bakeries for cupcakes in all of the LDN. These guys didn't let us down particuarly with an £8 option that gets you tea, a cupcake, a few brownies, a scone and a couple of meringue type sweets. When we did actually score i think we gave this place a 9 for food taste, the food was really great (I quote: "the most amazing scone i've had" - Hannah Chung). The decor certainly wasn't as nice as The Tea Box and it didn't really seem to have all that much of an atmosphere. This place would be perfect to pick up some stuff and then go down to the nearby park to stuff your faces with one (or two) of their wide variety of flavoured cupcakes.

Betty Blythe: This is the point at which we realised we hadn't adequately prepared ourselves for Cafe Crawl 2009 (we have taken it into account and will train for the next effort) and couldn't eat any more. Hannah was also on a bit of a tea high even so I think we drank some bottled iced tea. We also sat inside and didn't take any pictures so I think it's actually a little unfair of me to talk about this place. But it didn't look as good as I had been led to believe from their website.

Daylesford: We have actually been to Daylesford already and it is our (I think I can speak for Hannah on this point) favourite cafe in London (so far). I have already blogged about this so check out that post.

Next Cafe Crawl will be held in the 2nd week of August and will be coming straight from Stockholm!

Birthday at the dogs

Always in pursuit of a more interesting venue for a night out than the local wetherspoons, I suggested to Hannah that we should take a trip to the dogs for her birthday and also being one for more interesting places to go and always willing to placate my schemes she agreed that it would be a great venue for her birthday. It did however result in her mother thinking that I may be a heavy gambler which is possibly not the image I wanted to promote but anyway... fun was had by all and we didn't even lose all that much money and we actually forgot to drink so it ended up as quite a cheap night all in.

(Warning: These photos were taking with the iPhone and where some people seem to do amazing things with iPhones I am not one of these people)

Hannah's Birthday

So today I spent a great day with Hannah and I bought her birthday present - I realise it's lame that I didn't do it as a surprise but I wanted to make sure I got the right one...

Snog Yogurt

So looks like my blog is becoming the blog of the eateries that Hannah and I go to but when they look like this I'm pretty cool with that.

This is Snog Yogurt's new store in Soho.

Daylesford Organic

Okay as always I am behind on my blogging but a few weeks ago Hannah and I went to this rather wonderful organic food shop for breakfast. If I lived near Sloan Square, I would eat there every day... although if I lived in Sloane Square I don't think I would be able to afford to eat full stop!

I had a pretty good poached egg and hollandaise (I skipped the mushrooms)



Yeah so check out a Daylesford I think they have them in quite a few places but this one is the Pimlico Cafe just down from Sloane Square. http://www.daylesfordorganic.com/