Album cover game...

Over on that other drain on my valuable time, Facebook, Stephen Newton tagged me with an album cover game. With randomly generated band name, album title and image, anything could have happened, of course. But I now find myself wanting to form the band and write the songs for Eglisau's debut! If I've not already tagged you over on Facebook, consider yourself tagged now (instructions below) and see if you can top this:

CREATE YOUR BAND NAME & ALBUM COVER

To Do This

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Sunday evening feeling #17...

She & Him - This Is Not A Test

For those of you who tried

But didn't make it

Settle down it's never what you think

The summit doesn't differ

From the big, dark valley

And the valley doesn't differ

From the kitchen sink

Mr Paul Harris, a blind man...

Stories abound in the world of print media of dummy headlines and picture captions that subs never got round to changing before the newspaper went to print. 'Insert headline here' and Caption: Caption are the least worrying of these. I seem to remember, although I might be making it up, that 'Insert picture of fat cow here' snuck through in my day.

The story of Mr Blind Man, which is Hull's latest national media appearance, comes from a similar place. Council tenant Paul Harris, who was registered blind last year, go the reports, was sent a letter from some maintenance contractors. The letter addressed him as Mr Blindman. Apparently this was a 'database error' on the contractors' part. Yes, of course it was. I've just heard Mr Harris on the radio. He sounded, quite understandably, a bit upset. I do like this quote from him, which, in summing up his dismay at how this could have all happened, made me laugh like a little schoolboy:

"You wouldn't send a letter to a person who's got Down's Syndrome saying Dear Mr Down's Syndrome would you?"

Well, these contractors might do that. And who knows what dummy picture caption a sub might come up with.

tinyurl.com/dfbwmf

See you on the other side...

We trotted along to Hull Truck last night to say au revoir, ta-ra and goodbye to the old place and catch up with a few Truck faces 'n' friends. The beer flowed a little too quickly, due to some pleasantly silly prices that proved impossible to resist. There were lots of people there with an emotional attachment to the building and one last Bouncers and all that ale was a fitting, if alarmingly drunken, farewell. Exciting times lay ahead, as Hull Truck and its audience moves from this:

To this:

Sunday evening feeling #16...

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
Just hear this and then I'll go:
You gave me more to live for,
More than you'll ever know

No context...

What a difference a few words can make. When I saw the following pop up on twitter, I had an internal rant about Tessa Jowell and found it quite unfathomable:












But, of course, Jowell wanted nothing of the sort - she wants the rules scrapped:

Lucky sods...

Friday 13th? Eurgh. Went to see first game in Hull FC's Super League XIV campaign tonight, a tough contest against Wigan. Hull were, I thought, outstanding and, despite the ref's attempts to ruin the game, it was a superb, ding-dong, 80 minutes, with the auld black and whites running out 18-12 winners. Top four finish is on the cards, surely, he said, perhaps a little too early in the season to be taken seriously. But remember where you read it first. It was blinking cold - a good excuse to buy a new, retro, Hull FC hat from the club shop (I also, very stupidly, left my gloves at home, despite laying them out in readiness several hours before kick-off) and we made the KC's playing surface look like a rugby pitch, rather than that poncy bowling green the Tigers like to play their Premier League footie on.

The voice of treason...

An unintentionally amusing column in today's Hull Daily Mail by 'the Voice of Reason', demonstrating how woefully out of touch they are when it comes to modern methods of communication. Twitter, says the Mail, "points to the pointlessness that modern technology allows us". And this, remember, from a newspaper dubbed UK Multimedia Publisher of the Year. "Given the numbers of people now getting sacked (being made redundant, surely!) the Voice wonders whether these sites are filled with the bored unemployed," the Mail whitters on, tediously. "Or," it bemusingly harps on, "disturbingly, if the trend points to a bizarre new world in which no one really communicates by talking anymore, but just sends text messages." The Mail pleads with those that like to tweet, who won't, obviously, be reading, "Don't bother clogging up the Internet highways with your junk" 'the Voice' insists. Clogging up the Internet highways?! How fucking old is 'the Voice' and has s/he ever been online? Meanwhile, blogging is described as a "distinctly odd phenomenon". Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. But hardly a surprise - a traditional media organisation is never going to support the democratisation of publishing, is it? Nor just accept a threat to advertising revenues and readership without a fight (the Daily Mail's constant scare stories about Facebook and the evil internet appear with irritating regularity). Nor advocate the dissemination of free information. The regional Mail needs to remind itself that newspapers are in terminal decline and bonkers columns like this pretty much provide the reason why. It's a miracle they ever stopped using hot metal at Northcliffe. Adapt or die, you prehistoric editors. And realise that Twitter and other online applications, tools and methods of social networking and communication are not just meaningless chatter but part of a growing culture of sharing information, of telling people what's happening, where, as soon as you can. Y'know, a bit like newspapers used to be. Before they started to feel superfluous and on the verge of obsolescence. Still, 'the Voice' is the voice of the UK Multimedia Publisher of the Year, so I suppose s/he must know better than a mere blogger and twitterer.

Talent...

Some people are just unbelievably fucking good at what they do. Don't forget to tell them.

Talent comes in all shapes and sizes too. Mike Vallely is one of the uber talented few (I wish I could do this!):

25 Things...

Yes, it's happened to me. I was tagged, over on Facebook, with this 25 Things About Me meme and was unable to resist talking about, well, me. Yawn.

1. The first single I ever bought – at the age of six - was Benny Hill's Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West, a moving song with a strong sense of narrative. Oh, the irony, when I worked for a time as a milkman. That's two things, isn't it? If I run out at the end I'll take that second one back.

2. The first album I ever bought was by Mike & Bernie Winters and I bought it when we were on a family holiday in Scarborough. The weather was so hot that, when I got it home, the LP had warped and was completely unplayable, so I never did hear it. Which is probably a good thing.

3. Because I hated football, I used to lend my rather swish Adidas United football boots to a friend at school called Andy, who didn't have any boots of his own, to get out of the lesson.

4. I drove a Mini into the back of a Volvo once, leaving the Volvo completely unharmed and the Mini a write off.

5. I have a first class degree but nobody has ever asked to see the proof.

6. I hate people that borrow things from me long term because they heard 'I want them back as soon as possible' as 'please keep them forever'. Please return: Curb Your Enthusiasm Series 4, Maus, Deep Purple In Concert, Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun, the Christopher Guest box set and all that other stuff. Or I'll kill you. All of you.

7. I once took the lid off a Big Mac and found that the burgers were covered in ink.

8. The 'c' word has been censored from the last three plays that I have written.

9. I was a member of CND.

10. I miss every dog I ever owned and look forward to meeting all of them again on whatever plane exists outside of this one.

11. I once lost consciousness in a green room and regained it only to find that Agyness Deyn was looking down at me. In a somewhat misguided show of concern, she passed me another beer.

12. The first gig I went to was Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Oz.

13. Madras, my favourite curry, makes me hiccup every time without fail.

14. I own a Fender Telecaster. I don't own much. But you can have it, if you want it, and if it will make you smile. Happiness is all we have, really, remember that.

15. Peter Kay, before he made it, sent 400 words about Laurel & Hardy to me in the post.

16. I dislike ambitious people and find them very disturbing.

17. I don't think that we should be reviving 400-year-old plays in contemporary theatre spaces.

18. I think that ice hockey is the greatest team sport ever invented.

19. When I used CB radios in the late 70s and early 80s my rather cute and cuddly 'handle' was Bloodsucker.

20. The significance of the number 42 is beginning to drive me mad.

21. I think that there are too many coincidences for all this to be a mere coincidence.

22. I have hated every moment of being employed by other people.

23. When I had an office space in a loft I spent more time going up and down stairs to visit the fridge than I ever did working.

24. I knew exactly when my dad died, even though I didn't make it to the side of his bed in time. Because I saw the lights go out and felt him moving on.

25. I know that it will never be as good as that first standing ovation. Ever. No matter how hard I try or how good I may get.

Sunday evening feeling #15...

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
So let the people talk
It's Monday morning walk
Right past the fabulous mess we're in
It's gonna be a beautiful day

No tractors...

To Toys R Us on the hunt for a red tractor for Finn, who is a fan of Little Red Tractor and, of late, red tractors in general. When I was a lad, the only toys you could get from a toy shop were tractors or golliwogs but we found neither on the shelves today. The latter, thankfully, are seldom stocked these days for reasons obvious to all but Carol Thatcher and HM The Queen. But where are the tractors at?

Embarrassing Auntie and Christian Bale...

Another day, another headline-grabbing incident over at Television Centre:

Oh Carol...

Carol Thatcher is a racist and her views are as outmoded and outdated as blackface minstrels. No debate required. But what did we expect from the daughter of Maggie Thatcher? Whether being a racist means that you can't contribute to The One Show and enjoy the company of Adrian Chiles in a BBC green room is a different debate.

Short post re short film...

Was on the radio today to plug Single Span and appeal for a Ford Cortina Mk II. A few emails in response, none of which related to the car unfortunately. So, if you do have one...

In the classroom...

To a college in Hull to help to promote a digital media journalism HE course. Shockingly, none of the students we spoke to had heard of twitter, which I found a bit odd.

Super snowing Sunday

Look what I found when I looked out of the window at half-time during the Super Bowl:

Already getting excited about my drive to the office tomorrow.

Eurgh...

Now, I love my food. But I'm afraid I would have to draw the line at eating the contents of this can:Sausage, yes. In Lard. No. Thank. You. This unhealthy mix is available in my new favourite bargain basement retail outlet - B&M Bargains. When M saw the tin she thought this product was manufactured by Wrestlers, rather than hot dog specialists Westlers. I like the thought of a load of retired wrestlers placing sausages in lard. Although I don't like the innuendo.

Sunday evening feeling #14...

Chairlift - Bruises
I got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue