Anotherblog

Busy

Where does all the time go? I have podcasts to edit, old records recorded to computer that need to be exported to CDs, Film Forensic reviews to write, new films to watch, websites to update, short films to put onto youtube, and every week I make very little progress. I keep thinking that I ought to set aside an hour a day for my Hobbies, but I’m not sure I have even that much time nowadays. Perhaps I should try sleeping a little less.

Archery

Ah yes, the inevitable result of having a few weeks off: a rather spotty return. Still, it was enjoyable, and I *almost* got an all-gold at 50m - missed only one arrow, and that by a centimetre.

Frank

Went to see Jim Woodring, the creator of the comic/cartoon character “Frank” at the opera house on Friday night, with Jade & Jon & Kate. Good stuff! Peter Hollo of Fourplay did some funky loops with his electric cello along to one of the cartoons, a hypnotic series of morphing semi-faces, and there were several more musical live performances along with cartoons. Jim Woodring gave a bizarre monologue over a series of artworks on the screen, and then appeared for audience questions.

I really wasn’t expecting what he would look like. I figured he’d be something like Crumb, or comic book guy, or someone much younger, but he looked rather like Colonel Sanders - white hair, neat white beard, immaculately dressed, and he had the unblinking stare and unusual outlook on life that reminded me of Chris F. Apparently, each of the Frank comics is very carefully written out in advance, but if Woodring at any point realises what the comic is “about”, he will immediately abandon it as being insufficiently interesting. I’d be more sceptical of this, but that is exactly how the comics appear, so fair enough. He really is after the goal of apparent lurking sense, just out of reach (and later on, he will most often realise that there was sense behind it, just that he didn’t realise it at the time.)

It has made the Frank comics both more accessable and more obscure for me. The fact that he has acknowledged the semi-sensical nature of his work does make me rather more relaxed about trying to understand it, and I think makes it slightly more enjoyable to just enjoy the dream logic. Jade thought that his monologue was utter wank, but was entranced by the comics/cartoons themselves, which she hadn’t seen before. I could see her point - it *was* wank - but it was provocative, and I’d be interested to read the transcript, because it contained some beautiful turns of phrase.

Tired!

Yes, I’m pretty tired. Went to see “Ying Tong Iddle I Po” with Jade & Jon & Kate on Tuesday night. It was quite decently done. Jade was unfamiliar with the Goon Show, but they avoided overloading the show with in-jokes. It had a dramatic structure similar (as Jon pointed out) to the Singing Detective, set around the year 1960 when Spike Milligan had his breakdown.

The actors playing Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe were very good, but Spike’s accent dropped, distractingly, a few times, and his delivery was oddly halting. Still, it was good and packed with jokes and good drama, and from reading Spike’s memoirs, accurate to his character (which may have been a surprise to those only accustomed to his comedy persona).

Last night was our usual D&D session with the lads, and very enjoyably it went too. Up to 5th level now. My character has been largely useless, a consequence of taking an illusionist type in an adventure mostly packed with undead. Still, it were fun, and we shellacked the monsters that had been bothering us *hugely* up until then - in quick succession, killed two boss monsters, both of which we had retreated from previously.

Just filmed a lunchtime seminar of David MM doing a live Irregular Webcomic - got to find some time in the next week or so to edit together a podcast of it. And I’ve got a really short bit of video to put up on youtube as well, Mr Coker demonstrating a silly trick with a plastic spoon. At least creative things are moseying along, even if my more ambitious projects are stalled…

Oh! And David MM published the Irregular Podcast that I wrote and we performed while he was away. He liked it! Which is nice.

Cousin’s a comin’!

My cousin Kat may well be finally coming to houseshare in August! This will be rather cool - we got along very well when I was in Brisbane at Christmas, and we made vague plans that if she ended up in Sydney she could stay with me. And now it’s finally going to happen (probably). At the moment she is - believe it or not - a censor for “Big Brother”. When she’s done cuttin’ out them cusswords, she’s coming to Sydney in search of fame and fortune. Hooray!

Magic Tournament

I hosted a Time Spiral/Planar Chaos/Future Sight tournament on Friday night - the biggest one yet, ten of us playing! It went very smoothly. We got through all the games of the people who were not at work (and who we could not therefore play later at leasure) and I drafted a fun mono-blue deck with a stuffy doll and shapeshifter shennanigans. It’s doing pretty well at the moment - I’m in with a chance to win the tourney, but there are two or three other contenders too…

A pleasant weekend

…especially since I finally got my weight down enough so that I can have sweet things again. But it’s oddly different - now that my biggest craving is for coffee, and coffee is exempt from the “no sweet things” rule anyway, it’s not as big a deal if I can’t have sweet things. Guess I was really after the caffeine more. It’s still good to be able to have sweets again, but after a coffee every morning for the last two weeks, I’m not really interested in V any more. Huh. And I’m getting better and better at making lattes, too.

So yes, a pleasant weekend: caught up with Jon & Kate, did some more archery (and did OK despite having missed it for about two weeks, thanks to the vacation), and spent some good time with my girlfriend (about whom I have written a song, in which I attempt to enumerate her secret ninja powers.)

Back from holidays

Ah, that was nice. I spent a week at Emerald beach (near Coff’s Harbour) in the excellent company of Dave, Fiona, Jimbo, Simon, Evan, and Sara-Jane. Brilliant. Totally relaxing, beautiful weather, really fun company. I made a short film with Sara-Jane, composed a song with Evan, played computer games and beach cricket, and played a whole lot of classical guitar. Just a marvellous week off, and one that passed just as quickly as I was afraid it would.

The food was a particular standout, I think. Dave and Fiona in particular like to do interesting dinners, so there was home-cooking almost every night with various people’s involvement - I did the cooking for the BBQ, but failed to come up with anything for a proper dinner. Something for next year, I think. We had pancakes for most breakfasts, and I went slightly crazy with chocolate and put on approximately 3 kilos, mostly lost now thanks to the usual no-sweets thing.

However! One thing that particularly stuck with me was coffee. The Canberrites brought their own espresso machine, and made cappuccinos every morning. I got more and more into coffee and less and less into V, and by the end of the holiday my coffee addiction was more or less complete. I bought an espresso machine, a Sunbeam EM4800, which is a slightly newer version of the Canberrites machine. So far it has made several really excellent coffees. I’m no expert, but they’re at least as decent as the ones I was getting from Delifrance! Of course, the coffee I’m buying is also rather decent, which is probably more of a factor.

Archery, iControl, muffins

I realised I wouldn’t be able to do archery for a while, so I got up early this morning and headed over. And I did reasonably well, and enjoyed it, but I’m still in the process of getting over this stupid illness. Big hacking coughing fits in the morning are not entirely compatible with good archery skillz.

And then, more activities not entirely compatible with big hacking coughing fits: we recorded another podcast at lunchtime. I was pretty pleased with this one - I wrote the script in a big rush and I think the guys (Andrew C, David K, David Mc, Loki) did a good job with it, and we had time enough at the end to improvise a couple of interviews. I used the iControl properly for the first time, and it did, in fact, prove to be a time saver and very useful. My one complaint is that it doesn’t completely do trimming of the tracks - I still have to use the mouse. But the jog wheel certainly helped with everything. Bodes well for the coming week!

Finally, I made some apple and cinnamon muffins yesterday. They were very nice. But then the muffin maker died.

Running out of squash partners

Ted left the country, Ian B. is unable to play squash due to bad knees, and my friend Paul is unable to play due to his achilles tendon. I am without squash partners, and am currently relying on archery for my fitness fix. I think I need more. I do like squash, of course, but I was also enjoying badminton, and table-tennis can be surprisingly aerobic. I’m still not sure about jogging - I enjoy more than I’ve ever done before, but I can definitely feel it in my shins afterwards, even with the good quality shoes.

Maybe time for something completely new. Perhaps I’ll give tennis more of a go, though I certainly didn’t pick the right time of year for it. Resume rock-climbing? Or DDR?