The what? June 28, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Rants , add a commentThe Happening has to be one of the lamest serious movie titles I’ve ever laid eyes upon. It’s possibly the exact opposite in movie titling mistake to Snakes on a Plane.
In the first, you’ve got the most general title for a film/book/play ever conceived. I mean seriously, how many of these things are there were there is no happenings, no events? I can’t think of anything where something doesn’t happen, where there is no happening. Things must happen in order to create something interesting, it’s just the way these things work!
On the other hand, you’ve got Snakes on a Plane, which essentially sums up the entire movie before you’ve even planned out your weekend. I’ve not seen it, so I can’t be sure but I must assume that there is a plane, which through some kind of event (happening if you will) has been filled with, presumably, many snakes. Samuel L Jackson, being the bad ass that he is, will somehow save the day and get rid of said snakes, probably with some tasty phrases thrown into the mix. I don’t really think I need to see the movie.
Back to The Happening – you may aswell have just called it “Event” or perhaps even “Title” or “Movie”. Seriously guys, lets sort this out, maybe it was just an attempt to make the title so vague people would go and see it just to find out what it’s about, on a whim perhaps, I can’t imagine that anyone is going to assume some kind of original and mind bending cinematic experience with a name like that.
They are May 20, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Internets, Rants , add a commentScientology is a cult.
I really don’t know what to think of this. It’s the kind of thing I expect to happen in other countries (read: America) where they like to go around suing each other but I really can’t believe this. How can calling something what it is possibly be a prosecutable offense? It just pisses me right off.
I really feel like this would be a good time to write an angry letter but given that I have no idea where exactly I would send such a letter I’m not going to. I’m not gonna ramble about Scientology because I doubt that anybody much on the internet still thinks they do any good in the world (other than perhaps taking money from stupid people…) but the fact that they have this kind of grip makes me angry and not just a little scared.
I’m not about to go quietly however…
Choas in a shack April 19, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Music, Opium Toad, Rants , add a commentSo yeah, first band night style gig last night. We got there at about 5, arriving at a wooden building with Thurgarton village hall written on the side. Things got even better (/sarcasm) when we got inside to see what looked more like a southern American’s house’s veranda as a stage, complete with my first drum kit by Tomy. Seriously. Really. Tiny. Drum kit. 2 toms and two cymbals, with a bass drum that was probably smaller than the size of one of our drummer’s larger toms on his own kit. This was of course the point where we understood why we couldn’t take our amps, there just wasn’t enough space on that stage. There was barely room to move never mind have more amps than the two Marshall half stacks.
I was kind of just in hysterics at this point, the whole thing just seemed so silly. There was essentially no lighting, only a tiny stage complete with tiny drum kit and at this point my amp hadn’t arrived yet. Oh yeah, the “backstage” (really more to the left of the stage) was basically a cramped room filled with stacked chairs. After having dumped our stuff we were essentially just hanging around until we found out some friends were on the bus and were gonna be getting off at the pub so we all headed down there which is also when our singer arrived. We were actually one of the few bands that actually arrived on time in a complete fashion, with one not fully arriving until a while after we had come off.
After waiting around for a while we headed back to the hall leaving a couple of people behind (non band members) to stay lookout. We gave our opinions in the sound check and were told that no one was allowed to change any of the settings on any of the amps. Hooray for every band’s every song sounding the same! With that in mind there was very little point going out and testing things for myself. We had also been informed that anyone wanting to set up their own effects would have time taken out of their set (wtf?) and initially decided to go without them because they weren’t that important.
Then we remembered the killing in the name solo.
Shiiiit.
So our lead guitarist hurried to get his multi effects plugged in. I had been informed that it was starting at 7 but 7 came and went with not much of a crowd built up yet. I think we probably went on about quarter past. We had been told that we had 20minutes for our set, which was fine since our songs average about 4 minutes each and if you chuck in a bit of time for tuning up between our first 2 songs then that’s fine.
We are announced by a maths teacher at our drummer and singer’s school, who we decided when looking from the back looked much like two children standing on each other’s shoulders. It was the long coat that did it, and probably the young looking face. It was a slightly lackluster announcement but we went out fine with some applause and everyone plugged in. So far everything was pretty much fine, we go into our first song, Killing in the Name. I think we played mostly fine, a few small mistakes from me but Tubb (lead guitar) nailed the solo. I quickly whipped the tuner out of my pocket after the song was over and returned to standard tuning whilst the singer was doing a bit of introductory stuff for members of the band (as you do).
Problems arose when I plugged myself back into the amp only to find myself muted. I quickly warned the drummer not to start the song whilst I started jostling with the lead to make sure it was plugged in. I eventually jostled it into a position that worked but it was not a pleasant experience. Anyway, we went into Apple Tree and everything went well, I got into the song more than I did with Killing in the Name with some headbanging at certain parts.
Of course, there were still more surprises to come. After finishing the song we were informed from those offstage that we could only do one more song, despite the fact we had only about half the time we were promised and had a small argument over the song to play last. We chose not to do Ace of Spades simply because Nick (the bassist) is quite bad at remembering the rhythm to the intro (and actually I don’t blame him, it’s quite tricky to remember it even though it’s so recognizable) so we did Cavemen Rejoice instead.
We went into the song fine and played fine up until the bridge where I used my whammy bar on a held chord and of course…my lead cuts out. I’m then left trying to play the bridge and fiddle with my lead to get it to work which eventually succeeds and we finish the song and go off stage.
We were all royally pissed off at being cut short and generally the way we had been treated but our drummer took it one step further (drummers, what are ya gonna do with em eh?) and confronted one of the organizers which lead to a bit of pushing after which our drummer stormed out and punched the wall.
Twice. He left some skin behind too.
He then left with a couple of others to go to a nearby friend’s house to put a plaster on his now bloody knuckles whilst we hung around a bit, eventually choosing to follow their route to try and find them. At this point two random members of the audience shook my hand and congratulated me. Dunno if they were taking the piss but who cares eh.
After eventually finding our drummer and him having a chance to talk over his motivations with the guy he confronted they shook hands and that was pretty much the end of it. I actually think he handled the situation quite well really all in all, we were all annoyed and he articulated our feelings very well.
We basically just hung around for the rest of the evening, which was pretty fun in itself. I actually really enjoy the company of a lot of the people who were there, they are generally very friendly and likable and I had a good time doing that.
We did sort of have the last laugh in a way because the organizers (not particularly popular people it would seem, probably reasonably like us y’know) put themselves last in the running order, behind all the bands filled with popular people. Essentially, after the second to last band finished there was something of a mass exodus outside with only about half the original crowd hanging around to see the final band of which most of them were just milling about chatting anyway. They also played a really really long set, like 40minutes or so, filled with typically bland songs to a rather lackluster audience.
Although some audience members returned everyone was rather apathetic towards the organizers and even with the length of their set they still finished 20 minutes early. Essentially there is no way that our <4 minute song needed to be cut out and that was basically the icing on the cake.
Oh, did I mention, one of our friends was trapped outside almost the whole night because they wouldn’t let him pay on the door. The woman in charge of that also did a terrible job, apparently band members were supposed to have something written on their hand to be let in but she never even informed us of this and she did have a chance to because she came and spoke to us directly at one point. The whole thing was a ridiculous show of how not to run one of these things and that has left us very determined to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Wow that’s a wall of text. It’s probably riddled with mistakes because its taken so long to write that I really don’t have time to check it over, I need to be getting on with coursework.
In summary: We played well and I’m pleased with that, it was just everything else that badly organized and executed.
Oh internet you pesky fiend! April 12, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Internets, Misc, Scraps , add a comment
Really now, I challenge you to find a single thing “the internet” doesn’t encourage. Go on, Mr Inquirer, this should lead to some very interesting Google queries.
