A common thought I find myself having is “what is wrong with people?” I have this thought because I see people (or hear about people) doing things which really makes me sigh. Two things occurred today which really fit into this category. For sake of making it easier to read, I am splitting it into two parts. This part is about the attacks on a mosque in Portsmouth.
I read the story about the poppy burning on Remembrance Day with disgust. We dedicate two (one when the two combine) to bow our heads in remembrance for the brave men/women who lost their lives/injured themselves defending this countries interests in WW1, WW2 and subsequent conflicts. Whether or not you support the conflicts of the 21st Century in Afghanistan and Iraq, this time of year is also a good time to remember the people who have lost their lives in these conflicts as well. That is all this time of year is for, to remember these people. So, as I read this story about the people burning the poppies - I was angry. But the people that I was angry at were the people that burned the poppies – not all Muslims. I suggested in my post on September 11th that I suspect these people aren’t real Muslims and Muslim extremism is not the mainstream view as is portrayed in the media in this country. That is a side point but I believe there really needs to be more focus on the people who do not support extremist Muslims: just focusing on the worst of them fuels the hatred that allows groups like the English Defence League to grow. I honestly hope and believe that the majority of Muslims do not support groups that wish to harm the people of this and other countries.
With this view of mine being as it is, I heard via Twitter that there was a protest today outside the Jami Mosque in Portsmouth. This is following the poppy that was spray painted on it yesterday. The fact people are protesting against this Mosque and feel it is acceptable to protest it and attack it is as bad as the people who think it is acceptable to burn poppies. Maybe people will disagree with that view but I really don’t care – that is just how I feel. I heard the news about this protest and I was angry again. Why people think that these Mosque and the people that run it, even the people that worship there have anything to do with what happened in London is beyond me. Oh, could it be that Muslims burned poppies, and these people are Muslims therefore they are instantly connected. That is a really idiotic point of view. The Imam for this Mosque told the BBC he was mystified why his Mosque was targeted; he also gives his view on the issue better than I could. I will link the story rather than do selective copy/pasting. You can read the story by clicking here (Thanks to Dave Hartley for showing me this link). I think Muhammad Muhi Uddin is absolutely right in the statements he has given in this story. However I can answer his question. He says that he does not know why people have targeted his Mosque. I’m afraid to say that I do – it is because we live in a world that is really quite scary where some people believe everything they are told without questioning it. I said earlier I believe there should be more media focus on Muslim people who do not side with extremist Muslims – a perfect example is in the story above with Muhammad Muhi Uddin. I do not know the man but he seems to be a perfect example of what I am talking about. However, the media do not focus on people like this man; they focus on the “scary evil Muslims that just want to kill you and your family”. They believe the English Defence League when they say that this country will become a Muslim country if we don’t “act now” or whatever it is they say. So when they see a story like the one from Thursday, they instantly think “all Muslims are to blame for this!” Of course there are just people that are complete dickholes as well who don’t seem to realise this sort of behaviour is wrong and unacceptable! That is why the Jami Mosque was targeted – because people are stupid, ignorant and racist. I could post a disclaimer like I did on the last blog but I don’t feel the need to this time because this blog is long enough already. Can I also just say I'm really sad to see there is a Portsmouth chapter of the English Defence League? I don't know why I thought there wouldn't be one, but learning there is one makes me sad
I will post about other little things during the week
Soundtrack of this blog – Ray Davies – See My Friends
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Some People... (Part One)
A common thought I find myself having is “what is wrong with people?” I have this thought because I see people (or hear about people) doing things which really makes me sigh. Two things occurred today which really fit into this category. For sake of making it easier to read, I am splitting it into two parts. The first part is about homophobia in football.
The first of these things occurred when I was sitting in a Wetherspoons about to have breakfast this morning. An investigative story on Sky News came on the TV which covered homophobia in football. It is something which sadly still exists and is likely going to continue existing for some time to come. The story basically focused on the abuse that football fans would likely give to openly gay footballers. I would like to think that, as a football fan, we are not all tarred with the same brush but I fear this is the case. I would like to state that I would never dream of seriously holding a footballer’s sexuality against them because at the end of the day – it honestly does not matter what sexuality a person is. Seeing this story made me feel sad that we live in a world where a person feels that they couldn’t have a successful career in their chosen field because of something they cannot control or choose. Max Clifford was focused in this story because he said that he has had 4 footballers coming to him asking for advice – all believing that what I just said was true: if they came out, their career would be finished. The overall theme of this part of this post is that I am really sad this is the case.
Two further things came from this story. Firstly, there is a campaign video out from the FA (I think it is direct from the FA but the channel was on mute) relating to this subject. The video shows a male swaggering through a work place office, insulting gay people as he passes them. He then gets in the lift and shouts something (the reporter spoke over this bit and therefore I am unsure what was said). Text comes up on the screen saying “This behaviour is unacceptable here”. The video then changes to the same swaggering man in a football stand yelling homophobic abuse at an unseen player on the football pitch. The text then reads “So why should it be acceptable here?” This is such a good campaign video because put bluntly, it is not acceptable. I think it is the best way the FA can get this message across that homophobia at football isn’t acceptable. The second aspect of the story I wanted to draw attention to was a quote from the President of the Croatian FA from earlier this week. He said: “While I'm a president of the Croatian Football Federation, there will be no homosexuals playing in the national team." This is such an appalling attitude to have towards something which honestly is not a problem. When it comes to football, my main concern is that players play well, and that the team I support plays well. I really could not care less whether the players are straight, gay, bi or anything else for that matter. It doesn’t matter to me – I don’t see why it should matter to anyone else. I don’t wish to come across here as preaching from a mount upon high. I am someone who has and still does use shock value in jokes I tell in social situations where occasionally I have used the word “faggot”. This word is a derogatory word for a homosexual – however in the context I am using it, it is not the meaning I attribute to it. I see “faggot” as an offensive word the same as “cunt”. These words are seen as offensive and I use them as such – I don’t use the word “faggot” to offend gay people – if it does I apologise but that is not the intent. If my use of that word offends homosexuals or anyone else for that matter then the context should be analysed. When this happens, I am confident that the original meaning of these words will not be relevant to the context in which they are used. Does this excuse the use of them? In a social circle I feel it shouldn’t. I am not saying you have no right to be offended by them – but please look at the context in which they are used before demonising me. There is I believe a very small amount of times I’ve ever used that word in the presence of homosexuals anyway – and most of those occasions have been where I have not known that a person involved in the conversation was gay – and were all I believe followed by an apology. I would also just like to state that no-one has had a go at me recently for using these words; I am just clearing up my view in case someone attacks my position on this matter by saying that I do use offensive and derogatory words towards gay people. I use the words, but they are not used in a context of which a homosexual should be offended I hope. Again, I hope that I have not come across as preaching from a mount upon high, I just wanted to share my view on this matter. Homophobia in football should not be a problem in the 21st century and it is very sad to learn that it is.
Soundtrack of the Blog - Ray Davies - See My Friends
The first of these things occurred when I was sitting in a Wetherspoons about to have breakfast this morning. An investigative story on Sky News came on the TV which covered homophobia in football. It is something which sadly still exists and is likely going to continue existing for some time to come. The story basically focused on the abuse that football fans would likely give to openly gay footballers. I would like to think that, as a football fan, we are not all tarred with the same brush but I fear this is the case. I would like to state that I would never dream of seriously holding a footballer’s sexuality against them because at the end of the day – it honestly does not matter what sexuality a person is. Seeing this story made me feel sad that we live in a world where a person feels that they couldn’t have a successful career in their chosen field because of something they cannot control or choose. Max Clifford was focused in this story because he said that he has had 4 footballers coming to him asking for advice – all believing that what I just said was true: if they came out, their career would be finished. The overall theme of this part of this post is that I am really sad this is the case.
Two further things came from this story. Firstly, there is a campaign video out from the FA (I think it is direct from the FA but the channel was on mute) relating to this subject. The video shows a male swaggering through a work place office, insulting gay people as he passes them. He then gets in the lift and shouts something (the reporter spoke over this bit and therefore I am unsure what was said). Text comes up on the screen saying “This behaviour is unacceptable here”. The video then changes to the same swaggering man in a football stand yelling homophobic abuse at an unseen player on the football pitch. The text then reads “So why should it be acceptable here?” This is such a good campaign video because put bluntly, it is not acceptable. I think it is the best way the FA can get this message across that homophobia at football isn’t acceptable. The second aspect of the story I wanted to draw attention to was a quote from the President of the Croatian FA from earlier this week. He said: “While I'm a president of the Croatian Football Federation, there will be no homosexuals playing in the national team." This is such an appalling attitude to have towards something which honestly is not a problem. When it comes to football, my main concern is that players play well, and that the team I support plays well. I really could not care less whether the players are straight, gay, bi or anything else for that matter. It doesn’t matter to me – I don’t see why it should matter to anyone else. I don’t wish to come across here as preaching from a mount upon high. I am someone who has and still does use shock value in jokes I tell in social situations where occasionally I have used the word “faggot”. This word is a derogatory word for a homosexual – however in the context I am using it, it is not the meaning I attribute to it. I see “faggot” as an offensive word the same as “cunt”. These words are seen as offensive and I use them as such – I don’t use the word “faggot” to offend gay people – if it does I apologise but that is not the intent. If my use of that word offends homosexuals or anyone else for that matter then the context should be analysed. When this happens, I am confident that the original meaning of these words will not be relevant to the context in which they are used. Does this excuse the use of them? In a social circle I feel it shouldn’t. I am not saying you have no right to be offended by them – but please look at the context in which they are used before demonising me. There is I believe a very small amount of times I’ve ever used that word in the presence of homosexuals anyway – and most of those occasions have been where I have not known that a person involved in the conversation was gay – and were all I believe followed by an apology. I would also just like to state that no-one has had a go at me recently for using these words; I am just clearing up my view in case someone attacks my position on this matter by saying that I do use offensive and derogatory words towards gay people. I use the words, but they are not used in a context of which a homosexual should be offended I hope. Again, I hope that I have not come across as preaching from a mount upon high, I just wanted to share my view on this matter. Homophobia in football should not be a problem in the 21st century and it is very sad to learn that it is.
Soundtrack of the Blog - Ray Davies - See My Friends
Monday, 25 October 2010
Pompey Pains, Hangovers and Capital Trips
Oh Portsmouth,
My only Portsmouth,
You make me happy when skies are grey
You never know just how much I love you
Please don’t take my Portsmouth away...
This was a concept which as a Pompey fan was in a very small place in our minds. If I’m honest with myself, the thought that Pompey could go out of business was a small thought in the back of my mind but never really given any serious considerations. There was even talk that a deal was in place and just needed signing off to take Pompey out of administration and into the ownership of Chanrai. And then on the eve of Friday, 22nd October, a press release was released (that seems a strange thing to say) saying that Portsmouth FC was to be liquidated. Suddenly this little thought given no serious thought became the main thing I was thinking of. Seriously consideration now had to be given to a life without Portsmouth FC (or rather, a life of speaking about PFC in the past tense). It’s hard to describe to non-football fans what it would be like to lose your club – hell it’s even hard to explain it to football fans of clubs that are not and will never be in trouble. The best way to put it would be like losing a loved one (either a family member or a partner). You have a relationship with a club and when that relationship comes to an ugly end, it’s going to hurt. This is where I would go into my thought process of my Friday evening when I found out about the liquidation plans – however these next two photos will explain why that just isn’t possible...
Picture One: http://twitpic.com/1xbegz
Picture Two: http://twitpic.com/2zw1sb
That is not a 100% accurate representation of my Friday evening on the grounds the bottle wasn’t brand new. But it had about 500ml in there. That was quite something and forgetting the next day involved many a train journey and screaming teenagers, the whiskey flowed. Pompey FC was going out of business and I was determined to toast its downfall along with the downfall of my sobriety.
Morning came, and the sun rose. This was something I didn’t think would be possible in a world without Pompey FC (despite the fact that the club still existed but essentially were on death row). I heard news that the administrator of PFC was saying there was nothing to be worried about. I dismissed this as the word “liquidation” is a word to be concerned with. Anyway, this morning was now filled with sadness, unease and of course, a hangover. I had a train journey to make with the promise of fried foods at the end of it, courtesy of Wetherspoons (well, they were gonna cook it, I still paid for it). Me and Dave (who was not hungover) heard news of promise on the journey to London but again, could not be sure. How can anyone be sure until the paperwork declaring that the club is not going out of business is signed, sealed delivered and yours (hang on, that last bit is from a Stevie Wonder song). Signed, sealed and delivered at least! This news came through thick and fast a few minutes before kickoff. The deal was done – so the weight was off the shoulders, and the hangover was for nothing (which I must confess, did wind me up somewhat). What can be drawn from this? Scaremongering and playing with people’s emotions works; what a fucking horrible message to draw from this situation. But that is the message it would seem. Still, I can proudly sing that I am Portsmouth Till I Die! I know I discussed the virtues of short blogs, and they are easier on the fingers. But this is gonna be a long one. As I’ve now discussed up until the moment we arrived in London, but why were we in London this Saturday? Speaking of which, how did the Tuesday London adventure go? Read on...
Ok, so we arrived in London and the journey there was fairly painless (well, as painless as a train journey with a hangover can be). We had decided to come up slightly earlier than we needed to and visit random tube stops with no real purpose. There is still a mission both me and Dave have and that is to find a Wetherspoons which we visited on a previous London weekender – but that mission failed again on this trip (all the information I have on it is that the ‘spoons in question is literally next door to a major station’s exit, or one of its exits, and it is huge!) Anyway, we did pop by Leicester Square which led to an impromptu walk down Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster and around the general area before strolling back to LS. KFC was the food of choice before heading to the tube to head to Hammersmith. Who would have thought the Leicester Square tube at around 6pm on a Saturday would be busy when it is raining? Anyway, got to Hammersmith after Dave was almost killed by a couple who were essentially using him as a standing mattress (which I thought was hilarious) and then decided to cave. It was near 7pm and my hangover was still going strong as ever. I relented and dropped by a Boots and bought some aspirin. On reflection, they did very little to help me but you know, when you pay 40p for aspirin – you get what you pay for. I paid 40p for aspirin and refused to pay 50p to use a toilet; got to love London at times. After a fair bit of time outside Hammersmith Apollo looking at the queue and thinking: “fuck that” we decided that a trip to a nearby pub made sense. We found a nearby Wetherspoons and sat down for a drink (non-alcoholic for me, the hangover might have disagreed with me drinking alcohol). Anyway, killing time in the Wetherspoons was cool (it was either that or seeing Twin Atlantic). Having successfully avoided TA, we headed back to the venue. There were about 6 people outside smoking which I observed were all the adults who were at the gig taking a break (I’m quite hilarious at times). The reason for the journey was here.
I truly did not know what to expect from a live My Chemical Romance show. I’ve been very outspoken about them in the past and a lot of that was due to having not listened to that much of the music and joining the hate emo brigade. When I matured somewhat, it occurred to me that MCR are actually a really good band. Anyway, someone played with the lights before MCR came on and the crowd screamed. My hungover head disagreed with the high pitched nature of the scream – especially knowing that this was just a lights test. I now dreaded the band coming on stage. Sure enough when they did the screams were deafening which hurt. The actual show was really bloody good. All the songs I knew really well from MCR were played which was nice (right now I can’t single out one highlight because honestly there were so many). There were some others I recognised as well and the new stuff sounded really good (with an honourable mention going to Planetary (Go!)). In an old school moment – when the band played Welcome to the Black Parade, I was stood saluting (this will make no sense whatsoever if you didn’t come to route/chaos in 06/07 and spent time with the friends that I did). The gig was just awesome and a solid 10/10 for their performance. One thing which I do honestly believe is that I’ve never seen a band do what MCR do to a crowd. I’ve seen bands like Metallica/Iron Maiden come really close with people clapping, cheering and signing along (thinking about it, Iron Maiden – Fear of the Dark is probably the closest I’ve seen to whole crowd participation). But MCR did something to that crowd which I’ve never witnessed a band do before. From front row to back, there were people singing, dancing, clapping and (unfortunately for me) screaming. Would this be the same in the o2 arena? Hard to know truthfully – but the atmosphere was electric just like the performance. One of the best live bands I’ve seen (I’ve been to fewer gigs in 2010 but pretty much all of them have had bands that are great live). The journey home was fairly painless aside from how long the fecking train took to get from London to Portsmouth. I’ve been on trains from London to Manchester that were quicker! Some of the stops are stupid. However what was entertaining was if one of these pointless little stations would come up, me and Dave would make jokes about it and someone sitting right near us would get off there. Always awkward, but pretty damn funny at the same time. My Chemical Romance is a great live band and the trip was well worth it. Would I go to see them again? Definitely.
So that is the second London trip of last week discussed. Seems strange to work backwards but now I’m going to review the first one. This trip was the first midweek London trip I’ve done without taking holiday from work since early 2009 when I did it twice in 2 weeks. Slight bit of context for this trip – 1) We knew just over a week before doing it that we were going; and 2) I worked 7.15am-5.15pm the day before travelling up to London. Surely there had to be a good reason for this? The reason was to see Stone Sour – a band I’d not seen since 2007 and didn’t think I’d get the chance to see this year (I love SS but not enough to pay £30+ to see them + A7x who I don’t like). They then announced they were doing a tiny show in London in a room that holds 490 people for MTV and that tickets cost £14 (with fees). This gig was worth the pain of working a 10 hour day, then travelling 90mins and tubing across London and back with the end result being not getting home until gone 1am. Anyway, this gig fell on a Tuesday which isn’t exactly a fun day at work to begin with but with the good grace of the other decontamination tech, I was able to escape slightly early so I could get sorted and make the train station for the desired train, which I did. Journey up to London was fairly smooth (thinking about it I’ve said that twice in this blog – I don’t recall any journeys where the outbound leg has been a bastard). Anyway, the travelling to Camden went by fairly painlessly as well (the tube was surprisingly quiet but I guess most of the work traffic will have dispersed by 7.30pm). We had a slight issue in that we got to Camden town station and had no bloody clue which way to go then. After a quick check with Google Maps, we were sorted and on the way. The venue, Dingwalls, is a decent distance from the tube station which is good to know for any future gigs that I happen to go to there. Got to the venue and there was a bastard of a queue (always the way with ticketless gigs). The actual venue in itself is very strange in that it’s all standing but it is on different levels. We got as close as we could and waited for SS. All I can say is holy fucking shit! The gig was superb. Again, another example of a very tight live band with the ability to take over the entire venue (granted not as impressive as the earlier example due to the size) but the atmosphere was much the same as the MCR gig I discussed earlier. This gig had more of a party atmosphere about it and is up there as one of my top gigs of all time. The setlist was near perfect for me (almost everything I like from Audio Secrecy, and the best of their first two albums). There is no song I’d lose from the setlist, but I could easily add 3 or 4 more. The gig was just everything I hoped for and more! The journey back from this one was a bit of a bugger as there was a replacement bus service from Havant which was due to make 3 stops which ended up making about 9. One of those did end up benefiting me somewhat but still, annoying. As I said in the previous posting Wednesday morning was not a work morning for me so everything ended nicely. Two awesome London trips and another two awesome gigs this year. These gigs rank in this year’s chart at 2 (for Stone Sour) and 3 (for MCR) which is quite something. Both fantastic gigs but Rammstein @ the MEN arena is still the best one so far. Next up, Thursday night and the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster!
My only Portsmouth,
You make me happy when skies are grey
You never know just how much I love you
Please don’t take my Portsmouth away...
This was a concept which as a Pompey fan was in a very small place in our minds. If I’m honest with myself, the thought that Pompey could go out of business was a small thought in the back of my mind but never really given any serious considerations. There was even talk that a deal was in place and just needed signing off to take Pompey out of administration and into the ownership of Chanrai. And then on the eve of Friday, 22nd October, a press release was released (that seems a strange thing to say) saying that Portsmouth FC was to be liquidated. Suddenly this little thought given no serious thought became the main thing I was thinking of. Seriously consideration now had to be given to a life without Portsmouth FC (or rather, a life of speaking about PFC in the past tense). It’s hard to describe to non-football fans what it would be like to lose your club – hell it’s even hard to explain it to football fans of clubs that are not and will never be in trouble. The best way to put it would be like losing a loved one (either a family member or a partner). You have a relationship with a club and when that relationship comes to an ugly end, it’s going to hurt. This is where I would go into my thought process of my Friday evening when I found out about the liquidation plans – however these next two photos will explain why that just isn’t possible...
Picture One: http://twitpic.com/1xbegz
Picture Two: http://twitpic.com/2zw1sb
That is not a 100% accurate representation of my Friday evening on the grounds the bottle wasn’t brand new. But it had about 500ml in there. That was quite something and forgetting the next day involved many a train journey and screaming teenagers, the whiskey flowed. Pompey FC was going out of business and I was determined to toast its downfall along with the downfall of my sobriety.
Morning came, and the sun rose. This was something I didn’t think would be possible in a world without Pompey FC (despite the fact that the club still existed but essentially were on death row). I heard news that the administrator of PFC was saying there was nothing to be worried about. I dismissed this as the word “liquidation” is a word to be concerned with. Anyway, this morning was now filled with sadness, unease and of course, a hangover. I had a train journey to make with the promise of fried foods at the end of it, courtesy of Wetherspoons (well, they were gonna cook it, I still paid for it). Me and Dave (who was not hungover) heard news of promise on the journey to London but again, could not be sure. How can anyone be sure until the paperwork declaring that the club is not going out of business is signed, sealed delivered and yours (hang on, that last bit is from a Stevie Wonder song). Signed, sealed and delivered at least! This news came through thick and fast a few minutes before kickoff. The deal was done – so the weight was off the shoulders, and the hangover was for nothing (which I must confess, did wind me up somewhat). What can be drawn from this? Scaremongering and playing with people’s emotions works; what a fucking horrible message to draw from this situation. But that is the message it would seem. Still, I can proudly sing that I am Portsmouth Till I Die! I know I discussed the virtues of short blogs, and they are easier on the fingers. But this is gonna be a long one. As I’ve now discussed up until the moment we arrived in London, but why were we in London this Saturday? Speaking of which, how did the Tuesday London adventure go? Read on...
Ok, so we arrived in London and the journey there was fairly painless (well, as painless as a train journey with a hangover can be). We had decided to come up slightly earlier than we needed to and visit random tube stops with no real purpose. There is still a mission both me and Dave have and that is to find a Wetherspoons which we visited on a previous London weekender – but that mission failed again on this trip (all the information I have on it is that the ‘spoons in question is literally next door to a major station’s exit, or one of its exits, and it is huge!) Anyway, we did pop by Leicester Square which led to an impromptu walk down Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster and around the general area before strolling back to LS. KFC was the food of choice before heading to the tube to head to Hammersmith. Who would have thought the Leicester Square tube at around 6pm on a Saturday would be busy when it is raining? Anyway, got to Hammersmith after Dave was almost killed by a couple who were essentially using him as a standing mattress (which I thought was hilarious) and then decided to cave. It was near 7pm and my hangover was still going strong as ever. I relented and dropped by a Boots and bought some aspirin. On reflection, they did very little to help me but you know, when you pay 40p for aspirin – you get what you pay for. I paid 40p for aspirin and refused to pay 50p to use a toilet; got to love London at times. After a fair bit of time outside Hammersmith Apollo looking at the queue and thinking: “fuck that” we decided that a trip to a nearby pub made sense. We found a nearby Wetherspoons and sat down for a drink (non-alcoholic for me, the hangover might have disagreed with me drinking alcohol). Anyway, killing time in the Wetherspoons was cool (it was either that or seeing Twin Atlantic). Having successfully avoided TA, we headed back to the venue. There were about 6 people outside smoking which I observed were all the adults who were at the gig taking a break (I’m quite hilarious at times). The reason for the journey was here.
I truly did not know what to expect from a live My Chemical Romance show. I’ve been very outspoken about them in the past and a lot of that was due to having not listened to that much of the music and joining the hate emo brigade. When I matured somewhat, it occurred to me that MCR are actually a really good band. Anyway, someone played with the lights before MCR came on and the crowd screamed. My hungover head disagreed with the high pitched nature of the scream – especially knowing that this was just a lights test. I now dreaded the band coming on stage. Sure enough when they did the screams were deafening which hurt. The actual show was really bloody good. All the songs I knew really well from MCR were played which was nice (right now I can’t single out one highlight because honestly there were so many). There were some others I recognised as well and the new stuff sounded really good (with an honourable mention going to Planetary (Go!)). In an old school moment – when the band played Welcome to the Black Parade, I was stood saluting (this will make no sense whatsoever if you didn’t come to route/chaos in 06/07 and spent time with the friends that I did). The gig was just awesome and a solid 10/10 for their performance. One thing which I do honestly believe is that I’ve never seen a band do what MCR do to a crowd. I’ve seen bands like Metallica/Iron Maiden come really close with people clapping, cheering and signing along (thinking about it, Iron Maiden – Fear of the Dark is probably the closest I’ve seen to whole crowd participation). But MCR did something to that crowd which I’ve never witnessed a band do before. From front row to back, there were people singing, dancing, clapping and (unfortunately for me) screaming. Would this be the same in the o2 arena? Hard to know truthfully – but the atmosphere was electric just like the performance. One of the best live bands I’ve seen (I’ve been to fewer gigs in 2010 but pretty much all of them have had bands that are great live). The journey home was fairly painless aside from how long the fecking train took to get from London to Portsmouth. I’ve been on trains from London to Manchester that were quicker! Some of the stops are stupid. However what was entertaining was if one of these pointless little stations would come up, me and Dave would make jokes about it and someone sitting right near us would get off there. Always awkward, but pretty damn funny at the same time. My Chemical Romance is a great live band and the trip was well worth it. Would I go to see them again? Definitely.
So that is the second London trip of last week discussed. Seems strange to work backwards but now I’m going to review the first one. This trip was the first midweek London trip I’ve done without taking holiday from work since early 2009 when I did it twice in 2 weeks. Slight bit of context for this trip – 1) We knew just over a week before doing it that we were going; and 2) I worked 7.15am-5.15pm the day before travelling up to London. Surely there had to be a good reason for this? The reason was to see Stone Sour – a band I’d not seen since 2007 and didn’t think I’d get the chance to see this year (I love SS but not enough to pay £30+ to see them + A7x who I don’t like). They then announced they were doing a tiny show in London in a room that holds 490 people for MTV and that tickets cost £14 (with fees). This gig was worth the pain of working a 10 hour day, then travelling 90mins and tubing across London and back with the end result being not getting home until gone 1am. Anyway, this gig fell on a Tuesday which isn’t exactly a fun day at work to begin with but with the good grace of the other decontamination tech, I was able to escape slightly early so I could get sorted and make the train station for the desired train, which I did. Journey up to London was fairly smooth (thinking about it I’ve said that twice in this blog – I don’t recall any journeys where the outbound leg has been a bastard). Anyway, the travelling to Camden went by fairly painlessly as well (the tube was surprisingly quiet but I guess most of the work traffic will have dispersed by 7.30pm). We had a slight issue in that we got to Camden town station and had no bloody clue which way to go then. After a quick check with Google Maps, we were sorted and on the way. The venue, Dingwalls, is a decent distance from the tube station which is good to know for any future gigs that I happen to go to there. Got to the venue and there was a bastard of a queue (always the way with ticketless gigs). The actual venue in itself is very strange in that it’s all standing but it is on different levels. We got as close as we could and waited for SS. All I can say is holy fucking shit! The gig was superb. Again, another example of a very tight live band with the ability to take over the entire venue (granted not as impressive as the earlier example due to the size) but the atmosphere was much the same as the MCR gig I discussed earlier. This gig had more of a party atmosphere about it and is up there as one of my top gigs of all time. The setlist was near perfect for me (almost everything I like from Audio Secrecy, and the best of their first two albums). There is no song I’d lose from the setlist, but I could easily add 3 or 4 more. The gig was just everything I hoped for and more! The journey back from this one was a bit of a bugger as there was a replacement bus service from Havant which was due to make 3 stops which ended up making about 9. One of those did end up benefiting me somewhat but still, annoying. As I said in the previous posting Wednesday morning was not a work morning for me so everything ended nicely. Two awesome London trips and another two awesome gigs this year. These gigs rank in this year’s chart at 2 (for Stone Sour) and 3 (for MCR) which is quite something. Both fantastic gigs but Rammstein @ the MEN arena is still the best one so far. Next up, Thursday night and the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster!
Monday, 11 October 2010
Reviews and Forecasts
I mentioned before that I’d bought a ticket to see Jason Manford very early on this year. I’m not 100% how early on in the year it was but I’d happily guess February. Which means since then, I’ve seen Skindred, Trivium, Jeff Dunham, RATM, Bill Bailey (x2), Airbourne and been to Sonisphere! That is a lot to get excited about before Jason Manford. But I was still; whenever it came up in conversation (whether it was talking about his DVD or the show itself) me and the others who were going would talk about how awesome it should be. Interestingly he had no support. Now I’ve been to comedy shows before in big rooms such as Guildhall and there was no support, but it still seems strange. Anyway, the night before Manford came to Portsmouth – the dinosaur which inhabited a place on Southsea common burned (or was burned) down. This led to some early jokes about that. The show was very good. One of the main highlights for me was him taking a stab at Southampton and admitting he will do the same to Portsmouth when he plays in Southampton (got to admire his honesty). I don’t honesty recall an awful lot of his material right now but it was a good show. I’d definitely recommend going to see him live if you get the chance. He did about 2.5hrs in Portsmouth. It is quite funny because he has a joke on the DVD about someone from the city at a show letting the city down (I made sure to wear shoes just to ensure it wasn’t me). Some of the conversations with the crowd were really quite funny but some were plain weird. I don’t recall the context but someone shouted out about Coco Pops. This might be creative license, but I think it confused Jason slightly before he retorted “COCO POPS, THEY TURN THE MILK CHOCOLATEY!” Not to be outdone, during the Q&A, the coco pops man decided to have another go at being funny and asked him if he preferred werewolves or vampires (a clear Twilight reference). The response was funny (“neither really. If I had to choice a mate I’d prefer a milkman. I’m always low on milk!”) The purpose of highlighting that was that I thought it was funny a previous joke of Jason Manford’s was about someone letting the city down, and this man acting like a complete knob-head – letting the city down. Anyway, it was a really good show and well worth the wait. We discussed going again the next night but money got in the way and also I think it was sold out. Shame – still, Soton next year is a possibility (not actually discussed this with anyone!)
Comedy is all well and good (very good actually) but I hadn’t seen any live music since Sonisphere until last week. Bill Bailey has music in his act but I consider that as a part of the stand up show rather than seeing live music. Anyway, one of the bands I thought I’d definitely see at Sonisphere was Lacuna Coil. Before Soni, they had announced a Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms date but I thought I’d give that a miss as I’d be seeing them at Soni and I’d seen them at the Wedge at the tail end of 2008. However, then stage times were announced and they clashed with Evile. This was tough because I loved both bands. I opted for Evile as I hadn’t seen them since the passing of Mike Alexander (which has just passed its one year anniversary – RIP Mike!) This worked out quite nicely for me because it meant I could justify spending the money going to see Lacuna Coil. However Chimaira were due to play the Wedge the day after LC. My original thought process was that gig takes priority as I’d not seen them do a headline show (just a support and festival slot) where with LC; I’d seen them 3 times previous. Anyway, long story long, Chimaira cancelled their tour so LC became top priority again. I’d like to take this time to thank Chimaira for cancelling their tour as LC were fantastic! I cannot believe I even second guessed myself about going. They released an album in 2009 called Shallow Life which not only did I not know about, I only heard it in July for the first time. The album is superb, probably their best yet. There are a few fantastic songs on the album which come across great live. I’m Not Afraid; Survive; I Won’t Tell You; Underdog; and Spellbound – all fantastic songs. They played a fair whack off Karmacode which is by no means a bad thing! Slaves to Gravity supported and they seemed cool as well.
I said in a previous blog that I am aiming to squeeze one more London trip out of this year. I then managed that and am going to see MCR later this month (in less than 2 weeks to be exact). I somehow managed to squeeze in another. I love Stone Sour. They have released 2 awesome albums (I’m still unsure on Audio Secrecy. It’s a good album certainly but the jury is still out on whether it’s awesome). I really hoped they would tour post Download 2010 as I was unable to get there to see them (and actually I’d probably have missed them in favour of Aerosmith had I gone). They announced an arena co-headlining tour which sounded good aside from one major elephant in the room....AVENGED SEVENFOLD AS THE OTHER HEADLINER?! As a famous dragon from the Den would say: “A’m OOT!” (How lame, I do apologise). Anyway, I have no desire to see A7x again after their “performances” at Twickenham and Wacken supporting Iron Maiden. I was never that much of a fan anyway, but the self titled album just turned me off them completely. I haven’t listened to the new album truth be told but I’m just not interested. Anyway, I had resigned myself to another Stone Sour-less year. Haven’t seen them since Download 2007 and it appeared this streak would continue. BUT! They announced a special headline set for a show at a venue called Dingwalls in Camden. In a nutshell, this band that are touring arenas, are playing in a little room in London just a touch bigger than the Wedgewood Rooms (487 capacity!) Oh how win. I arranged to have a week on Wednesday morning off work as well which is nice. So Stone Sour and MCR make up the London trips this month with a little 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster thrown in at the end of the month for good measure. Excellent!
Final unrelated thought – Am I alone in hating X-Factor? I know this is something I’ve probably spoken about before. And this might seem somewhat surprising as I did mention a previous contestant from the show on the last blog (I was criticised for writing about that, but I see that as more of an immigration and hypocrisy issue than one which relates directly to X-Factor). I’m not going to waste my time on this too much but I really don’t see the draw of this show but the social networks become seriously bogged down with people expressing surprise, or their joy/dismay at picks. At the end of the day, it really doesn’t fucking matter. They’ll pick who will make them the most money, regardless of singing ability. Is the contest fixed? There’s a good chance it is – who cares though? If it is, stop giving them your money, simple!
I’ll do my best not to give them a mention again but my word bookface and twitter were overtaken with this bollocks over the weekend!
Comedy is all well and good (very good actually) but I hadn’t seen any live music since Sonisphere until last week. Bill Bailey has music in his act but I consider that as a part of the stand up show rather than seeing live music. Anyway, one of the bands I thought I’d definitely see at Sonisphere was Lacuna Coil. Before Soni, they had announced a Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms date but I thought I’d give that a miss as I’d be seeing them at Soni and I’d seen them at the Wedge at the tail end of 2008. However, then stage times were announced and they clashed with Evile. This was tough because I loved both bands. I opted for Evile as I hadn’t seen them since the passing of Mike Alexander (which has just passed its one year anniversary – RIP Mike!) This worked out quite nicely for me because it meant I could justify spending the money going to see Lacuna Coil. However Chimaira were due to play the Wedge the day after LC. My original thought process was that gig takes priority as I’d not seen them do a headline show (just a support and festival slot) where with LC; I’d seen them 3 times previous. Anyway, long story long, Chimaira cancelled their tour so LC became top priority again. I’d like to take this time to thank Chimaira for cancelling their tour as LC were fantastic! I cannot believe I even second guessed myself about going. They released an album in 2009 called Shallow Life which not only did I not know about, I only heard it in July for the first time. The album is superb, probably their best yet. There are a few fantastic songs on the album which come across great live. I’m Not Afraid; Survive; I Won’t Tell You; Underdog; and Spellbound – all fantastic songs. They played a fair whack off Karmacode which is by no means a bad thing! Slaves to Gravity supported and they seemed cool as well.
I said in a previous blog that I am aiming to squeeze one more London trip out of this year. I then managed that and am going to see MCR later this month (in less than 2 weeks to be exact). I somehow managed to squeeze in another. I love Stone Sour. They have released 2 awesome albums (I’m still unsure on Audio Secrecy. It’s a good album certainly but the jury is still out on whether it’s awesome). I really hoped they would tour post Download 2010 as I was unable to get there to see them (and actually I’d probably have missed them in favour of Aerosmith had I gone). They announced an arena co-headlining tour which sounded good aside from one major elephant in the room....AVENGED SEVENFOLD AS THE OTHER HEADLINER?! As a famous dragon from the Den would say: “A’m OOT!” (How lame, I do apologise). Anyway, I have no desire to see A7x again after their “performances” at Twickenham and Wacken supporting Iron Maiden. I was never that much of a fan anyway, but the self titled album just turned me off them completely. I haven’t listened to the new album truth be told but I’m just not interested. Anyway, I had resigned myself to another Stone Sour-less year. Haven’t seen them since Download 2007 and it appeared this streak would continue. BUT! They announced a special headline set for a show at a venue called Dingwalls in Camden. In a nutshell, this band that are touring arenas, are playing in a little room in London just a touch bigger than the Wedgewood Rooms (487 capacity!) Oh how win. I arranged to have a week on Wednesday morning off work as well which is nice. So Stone Sour and MCR make up the London trips this month with a little 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster thrown in at the end of the month for good measure. Excellent!
Final unrelated thought – Am I alone in hating X-Factor? I know this is something I’ve probably spoken about before. And this might seem somewhat surprising as I did mention a previous contestant from the show on the last blog (I was criticised for writing about that, but I see that as more of an immigration and hypocrisy issue than one which relates directly to X-Factor). I’m not going to waste my time on this too much but I really don’t see the draw of this show but the social networks become seriously bogged down with people expressing surprise, or their joy/dismay at picks. At the end of the day, it really doesn’t fucking matter. They’ll pick who will make them the most money, regardless of singing ability. Is the contest fixed? There’s a good chance it is – who cares though? If it is, stop giving them your money, simple!
I’ll do my best not to give them a mention again but my word bookface and twitter were overtaken with this bollocks over the weekend!
Saturday, 11 September 2010
9 Years Later
Before starting this post, I would like to post my condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives 9 years ago today in New York and Washington. The September 11th attacks on the USA will never be forgotten by anyone. The people who lost their lives that day and in the subsequent days afterwards may be gone, but they will never be forgotten. A friend of mine posted on Facebook that even now, 9 years on, looking at the footage is still shocking. I feel this feeling of shock may take a long time to disappear, if it ever does.
I tweeted about watching 102 Minutes That Changed America. I watched it twice. For those who haven’t seen it and have no idea what it is, it is handcam footage of 9/11. The documentary starts just after the first tower has been hit, and tracks the 102 minutes that follow in real time. It is one of those shows that you know is horrible (you see footage of people jumping from the towers, the 2nd tower being hit and both of them falling) but you cannot stop watching. When watching it for the 2nd time I expressed relief for never having gone through anything even half as bad as that. I simply cannot imagine what these people were going through – watching 102 Minutes helps you to understand as best as you can without being there I guess.
Of course, 9/11 is a significant event in history. Just like some significant events (and some insignificant events) – people consider that 9/11 has a conspiracy theory attached to it. Already this morning I’ve seen someone post that the US government should be ashamed of itself. Now, if that was in the context of suggesting it has been 9 years since these attacks at the world is still as volatile as ever, I would agree the US government has failed. However this is of course suggesting that the US government is to blame for the attacks (Al-Qaeda would probably say they are at fault for 9/11 with their middle east policy – that is not the context I am inferring, more that the government allowed people to attack the towers and kill thousands). I’m not out to call all people who believe conspiracy theories stupid – but to believe them without any real basis is questionable. On YouTube there are quite a few videos “proving inconclusively” that the attacks were caused by the US government – I’d imagine that is why its tucked away on YouTube and not being debated in the corridors of power (oh right, its being suppressed – I’m with you.....) I’m not saying it is not possible that there was more to these attacks than some pissed off extreme Muslims (if indeed, you can even call members of Al-Qaeda Muslims), I’m just saying it’s unlikely – and to suggest you have complete utter solid conclusive proof that it was the US govt or Israel or aliens (could have been right?) on YouTube completely defeats your argument anyway. If you believe in conspiracy theories, today is not the day for them. Today is a day to remember the people who lost their lives in this tragedy.
Some other thoughts
• During the World Cup, I gambled a little bit and aside from one good win, it was a story of lost money. It was then I thought “maybe this isn’t for me” as the win/lose ratio was very poor. However the new football season has started and we’re well into the football league and I started gambling here and there again. For me, betting on football is better than playing the lottery. Granted, if you win the lottery you tend to win fairly big (jackpot wise) and as a rule this isn’t the case when you are betting 50ps or £1s on football – it is more likely that a win will occur. I appear this season however to be a black cloud on betting. I bet in accumulators usually. It is better returns if you can get games come in though so it is good. The story of the beginning of the season was just getting nowhere near the good results. I tend to do 6-7 games and the standard return would be 3 or 4 coming good but not enough for the win. The latest strings of bets have ended missing 1 or 2 games. I’ve decided that I need to bet on different games if doing more than one accumulator and to keep it to a max of 5. Granted, I have a 9 game one on this weekend but I also have a 4 game and a 5 game one on. This sounds quite bad on the face of things but I am quite sensible about it. I still feel shivers when I go into a Ladbrokes branch (my bookie of choice) and see people drop 100s of pounds on football and horses. It is the exact feeling I get when I see people lose big at the casino – a mixture of feeling bad for them and feeling good that it wasn’t me that lost big. Will the black cloud of betting strike again? I tweeted this earlier, but I apologise in advance if I have screwed teams over by backing them.
• I was doing some shopping in Sainsbury the other day and noticed they have Christmas stuff out. Words cannot describe how much I hate the fact shops start promoting Christmas in September. Still better than Selfridges and opening their xmas goods shop in August last year (didn’t read if they were doing that again, so I presume they did).
• It is exactly one week until I make the journey up to London again to see Bill Bailey in Leicester Square Theatre. I seriously cannot wait for this; it is going to be a good one! I’m pretty sure I will have seen most of the jokes when I saw him earlier this year, but I’m not complaining, the man is a genius.
I tweeted about watching 102 Minutes That Changed America. I watched it twice. For those who haven’t seen it and have no idea what it is, it is handcam footage of 9/11. The documentary starts just after the first tower has been hit, and tracks the 102 minutes that follow in real time. It is one of those shows that you know is horrible (you see footage of people jumping from the towers, the 2nd tower being hit and both of them falling) but you cannot stop watching. When watching it for the 2nd time I expressed relief for never having gone through anything even half as bad as that. I simply cannot imagine what these people were going through – watching 102 Minutes helps you to understand as best as you can without being there I guess.
Of course, 9/11 is a significant event in history. Just like some significant events (and some insignificant events) – people consider that 9/11 has a conspiracy theory attached to it. Already this morning I’ve seen someone post that the US government should be ashamed of itself. Now, if that was in the context of suggesting it has been 9 years since these attacks at the world is still as volatile as ever, I would agree the US government has failed. However this is of course suggesting that the US government is to blame for the attacks (Al-Qaeda would probably say they are at fault for 9/11 with their middle east policy – that is not the context I am inferring, more that the government allowed people to attack the towers and kill thousands). I’m not out to call all people who believe conspiracy theories stupid – but to believe them without any real basis is questionable. On YouTube there are quite a few videos “proving inconclusively” that the attacks were caused by the US government – I’d imagine that is why its tucked away on YouTube and not being debated in the corridors of power (oh right, its being suppressed – I’m with you.....) I’m not saying it is not possible that there was more to these attacks than some pissed off extreme Muslims (if indeed, you can even call members of Al-Qaeda Muslims), I’m just saying it’s unlikely – and to suggest you have complete utter solid conclusive proof that it was the US govt or Israel or aliens (could have been right?) on YouTube completely defeats your argument anyway. If you believe in conspiracy theories, today is not the day for them. Today is a day to remember the people who lost their lives in this tragedy.
Some other thoughts
• During the World Cup, I gambled a little bit and aside from one good win, it was a story of lost money. It was then I thought “maybe this isn’t for me” as the win/lose ratio was very poor. However the new football season has started and we’re well into the football league and I started gambling here and there again. For me, betting on football is better than playing the lottery. Granted, if you win the lottery you tend to win fairly big (jackpot wise) and as a rule this isn’t the case when you are betting 50ps or £1s on football – it is more likely that a win will occur. I appear this season however to be a black cloud on betting. I bet in accumulators usually. It is better returns if you can get games come in though so it is good. The story of the beginning of the season was just getting nowhere near the good results. I tend to do 6-7 games and the standard return would be 3 or 4 coming good but not enough for the win. The latest strings of bets have ended missing 1 or 2 games. I’ve decided that I need to bet on different games if doing more than one accumulator and to keep it to a max of 5. Granted, I have a 9 game one on this weekend but I also have a 4 game and a 5 game one on. This sounds quite bad on the face of things but I am quite sensible about it. I still feel shivers when I go into a Ladbrokes branch (my bookie of choice) and see people drop 100s of pounds on football and horses. It is the exact feeling I get when I see people lose big at the casino – a mixture of feeling bad for them and feeling good that it wasn’t me that lost big. Will the black cloud of betting strike again? I tweeted this earlier, but I apologise in advance if I have screwed teams over by backing them.
• I was doing some shopping in Sainsbury the other day and noticed they have Christmas stuff out. Words cannot describe how much I hate the fact shops start promoting Christmas in September. Still better than Selfridges and opening their xmas goods shop in August last year (didn’t read if they were doing that again, so I presume they did).
• It is exactly one week until I make the journey up to London again to see Bill Bailey in Leicester Square Theatre. I seriously cannot wait for this; it is going to be a good one! I’m pretty sure I will have seen most of the jokes when I saw him earlier this year, but I’m not complaining, the man is a genius.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Pompey Got 99 Problems...
You know when you have one of those days where the only sensible remedy is to write about it on the internet? Oh, that’s not a thing in 2010? Never mind. I’ll write some stuff anyway. At least it is not a poem or a twilight related sack of shit
Pompey have played at home 3 times so far this season and in an uncharacteristic move, I’ve been to all 3! I never went to Fratton Park often when Pompey were in the Premier League. I do regret that but at the same time, I don’t. Some people will argue until they are blue in the face that real fans go to as many games as possible – I disagree. Some people, me included, couldn’t and still can’t afford £38 a game or £600-700 for a season ticket. I went to cup games when I could because the club used to reduce the ticket prices just to get people through the door. Anyway, the tickets are cheaper on a game by game basis so I can afford to go to a lot more games. I can’t afford a season ticket again but I can afford to go to the odd game. Don’t know if you can count 3 in a row as “the odd game” but oh well. The performance against Reading has a lot of positives about it and the draw was a cruel result. Seeing Ciftci score was good as well as he’s young and looks full of promise. One thing which was annoying though was the team just seemed to switch off about 75mins in. That is not good! The game against Crystal Palace flipped between cool and dire. Still, was cool to see Pompey win on penalties. Was also cool to see Edgar Davids play live. The latest offering was against Cardiff which to be honest was alright (nothing special) up until they scored their first goal (I say they scored – we scored for them as we felt sorry or something). Their second goal was just hideous and the least said about it the better.
The overall comment I have to make is that if major changes are not made soon, Pompey will suffer consecutive relegations. The team is just not very good at the moment and it pains me to say that! The team can play well together but they just haven’t done that much this season. In a nutshell, what Pompey need to do is this:
• Complete the Wilson deal. He was at fault for the first Cardiff goal (despite it being an own goal). He doesn’t want to be here anymore, so sell him to Stoke and bring in Lawrence and Kitson (I don’t like the fact we would have 4 former stoke players in our first team, but needs must!)
• Sell any other player that doesn’t want to be at the club! Pure and simple
• Use Kanu properly!
• If we get Lawrence, organise the midfield so he can play properly
• Shoot Sonko.
This wasn’t actually intended to be a Pompey blog, but I’m talking Pompey with a friend on MSN and it just happened. Anyway, I mentioned at the top that my Sunday has been fucking terrible. Here’s why:
1. I had bets on today’s games which died early.
2. I had an 11 game accumulator, and 9 of them came in *shakes fist*
3. My Xbox red ringed!
All of a sudden, I’ve forgotten what else I was going to say. I’ll leave it there for now
Pompey have played at home 3 times so far this season and in an uncharacteristic move, I’ve been to all 3! I never went to Fratton Park often when Pompey were in the Premier League. I do regret that but at the same time, I don’t. Some people will argue until they are blue in the face that real fans go to as many games as possible – I disagree. Some people, me included, couldn’t and still can’t afford £38 a game or £600-700 for a season ticket. I went to cup games when I could because the club used to reduce the ticket prices just to get people through the door. Anyway, the tickets are cheaper on a game by game basis so I can afford to go to a lot more games. I can’t afford a season ticket again but I can afford to go to the odd game. Don’t know if you can count 3 in a row as “the odd game” but oh well. The performance against Reading has a lot of positives about it and the draw was a cruel result. Seeing Ciftci score was good as well as he’s young and looks full of promise. One thing which was annoying though was the team just seemed to switch off about 75mins in. That is not good! The game against Crystal Palace flipped between cool and dire. Still, was cool to see Pompey win on penalties. Was also cool to see Edgar Davids play live. The latest offering was against Cardiff which to be honest was alright (nothing special) up until they scored their first goal (I say they scored – we scored for them as we felt sorry or something). Their second goal was just hideous and the least said about it the better.
The overall comment I have to make is that if major changes are not made soon, Pompey will suffer consecutive relegations. The team is just not very good at the moment and it pains me to say that! The team can play well together but they just haven’t done that much this season. In a nutshell, what Pompey need to do is this:
• Complete the Wilson deal. He was at fault for the first Cardiff goal (despite it being an own goal). He doesn’t want to be here anymore, so sell him to Stoke and bring in Lawrence and Kitson (I don’t like the fact we would have 4 former stoke players in our first team, but needs must!)
• Sell any other player that doesn’t want to be at the club! Pure and simple
• Use Kanu properly!
• If we get Lawrence, organise the midfield so he can play properly
• Shoot Sonko.
This wasn’t actually intended to be a Pompey blog, but I’m talking Pompey with a friend on MSN and it just happened. Anyway, I mentioned at the top that my Sunday has been fucking terrible. Here’s why:
1. I had bets on today’s games which died early.
2. I had an 11 game accumulator, and 9 of them came in *shakes fist*
3. My Xbox red ringed!
All of a sudden, I’ve forgotten what else I was going to say. I’ll leave it there for now
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Foreign Festivals. A Justification
Nearly a week has gone by since being at Sonisphere and I miss that festival feeling. I know I’m not alone with this mindset but a festival to me is a great holiday. Literally the only aspect I don’t like 100% is camping (I should state that I’m not the sort of person who doesn’t like getting dirty, I just don’t like having a sore back). I don’t remember the comedian, but a fairly famous comedian has a joke about holidays being too long. Your standard festival is Fri/Sat/Sun of music, maybe a day or 2 before, and maybe a day or 2 after to recover. Basically, a week is needed for a festival (I find anyway). Sonisphere served as a great holiday for me this year and I had a great time there. But I now have my mind wandering again. Last time this occurred with relation to festivals, I ended up spending 2 separate weeks in Germany...
I’m not someone who chooses a festival based purely on its atmosphere or reputation. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been to Glastonbury. I’m sure I’d have a great time when there but there is never usually enough announced beforehand to make me think “YES! This is the festival for me” (I should point out at this stage; I have used a festivals reputation to discard a full weekend at a festival. I speak of course, of the Reading/Leeds festivals. I have friends that like it, but it is not for me). A festival is chosen by me based not on campsite atmosphere but who is playing at the festival primarily! Campsite atmosphere is a factor but there is a certain degree of making your own atmosphere and it fitting in with your surroundings. One of the reasons Sonisphere was so good for me is the campsite we had was pretty damn good (and I did have reservations, they were all pretty much quashed).
My experiences of UK festivals have generally been positive. The reason for this is that I’ve never been a victim of anything bad at one. Granted there have been a few attempts (including one I believe at Soni) but nothing has ever happened to spoil my festival experience. I have read horror stories (and indeed witnessed horror stories) of theft at festivals. That tends to be as bad as it gets at the type of festival I go to (I’ve heard of assaults and rape happen at others). But on a much smaller scale, festivals of all kind in this country can have an aura of relaxation, of free spirits. But it can also be one that is quite threatening (especially on the last night as once again, people prove themselves to be complete cunts). The thing which amazes me about this is that the people that partake in the cunt activities are the same ones that moan the loudest when the festival has to bump up ticket prices to afford the extra security they require to try and prevent incidents like the one they helped to cause!
I’ve been to two festivals in Germany. Rock AM Ring and Wacken. Both of these festivals had their pros and cons, much like the festivals here. However on honest reflection, I feel they are still both my favourite festival experiences. Granted, there was an awful lot about RaR which wasn’t all that fun. The epic walk to the arena and back each day is probably the main one. People at Download moan they had to walk a mile or so and at Sonisphere, it was a moan about it being uphill. Rock AM Ring had hills, bridges and autobahns (!) but more importantly, 4.5miles from where we camped to the arena. The lack of signposting probably another and the absolute randomness of the wristband collections. Of course with certain people, there was also a language barrier (a fair whack of people spoke fluent English though). However, as a rule, it was a much better experience (at both – I haven’t moaned about Wacken because I don’t feel I need to). Sonisphere was my best UK festival yet but it is not the best I’ve been to.
Foreign festivals better than UK:
• Price – Download costs near £200 for weekend/camping. Sonisphere cost £162 + £10 for Weekend/camping/early entry. Wacken cost me £100 for that. Rock Am Ring cost £130.
• Travel – Granted, festivals abroad do require (for the most part) a flight. However, factoring in the fact it costs less to buy a ticket, this isn’t so bad. Lufthansa is charging £90 for flights. Festival travel here can cost £20 if you know someone driving.
• Band times – Some people argue that festivals should be able to run later than they do. Indeed, in Download’s case, there is no reason as far as I can see why the festival cannot run later than 11.30pm. Abroad, bands play on open air stages until 3/4am, in areas that aren’t that far from where people live.
• Campsite atmosphere – Both German trips have involved helping neighbours setup, talking to neighbours about nothing. The only UK festival where that happened really has been DL07 – where we talked to a neighbour about being sent to the festival by his daughter who couldn’t go. He missed Motley Crue and had to watch My Chemical Romance.
• Incident free? – Granted, this could just be because I’ve had nothing happen to me, but at the two festivals I was at in Germany, nothing bad was reported. No assault, no theft. It was a much nicer and more relaxed place to be.
Will my next festival be in the UK? Honestly I’m not sure. As I said earlier, it really depends what the festivals here have to offer. This was written because as I type, the final day of Wacken is coming to an end, and despite the awesomeness of Sonisphere, it was not a patch on the festivals I went to in Germany. Would it be Germany next time? I quite fancy doing some other European festivals. Such as Hellfest, Graspop Metal Meeting, Novarock (though actually, its 2009 lineup was vastly superior to its 2010) and Metalcamp. I discovered other festivals as well this year which seem interesting. Main Square Festival in France and Bilbao BBK seem very good. Both of which I wouldn’t be opposed to going to if the lineup is right.
There’s no real point to this, I just felt like justifying my case for going abroad for a festival next year
I’m not someone who chooses a festival based purely on its atmosphere or reputation. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been to Glastonbury. I’m sure I’d have a great time when there but there is never usually enough announced beforehand to make me think “YES! This is the festival for me” (I should point out at this stage; I have used a festivals reputation to discard a full weekend at a festival. I speak of course, of the Reading/Leeds festivals. I have friends that like it, but it is not for me). A festival is chosen by me based not on campsite atmosphere but who is playing at the festival primarily! Campsite atmosphere is a factor but there is a certain degree of making your own atmosphere and it fitting in with your surroundings. One of the reasons Sonisphere was so good for me is the campsite we had was pretty damn good (and I did have reservations, they were all pretty much quashed).
My experiences of UK festivals have generally been positive. The reason for this is that I’ve never been a victim of anything bad at one. Granted there have been a few attempts (including one I believe at Soni) but nothing has ever happened to spoil my festival experience. I have read horror stories (and indeed witnessed horror stories) of theft at festivals. That tends to be as bad as it gets at the type of festival I go to (I’ve heard of assaults and rape happen at others). But on a much smaller scale, festivals of all kind in this country can have an aura of relaxation, of free spirits. But it can also be one that is quite threatening (especially on the last night as once again, people prove themselves to be complete cunts). The thing which amazes me about this is that the people that partake in the cunt activities are the same ones that moan the loudest when the festival has to bump up ticket prices to afford the extra security they require to try and prevent incidents like the one they helped to cause!
I’ve been to two festivals in Germany. Rock AM Ring and Wacken. Both of these festivals had their pros and cons, much like the festivals here. However on honest reflection, I feel they are still both my favourite festival experiences. Granted, there was an awful lot about RaR which wasn’t all that fun. The epic walk to the arena and back each day is probably the main one. People at Download moan they had to walk a mile or so and at Sonisphere, it was a moan about it being uphill. Rock AM Ring had hills, bridges and autobahns (!) but more importantly, 4.5miles from where we camped to the arena. The lack of signposting probably another and the absolute randomness of the wristband collections. Of course with certain people, there was also a language barrier (a fair whack of people spoke fluent English though). However, as a rule, it was a much better experience (at both – I haven’t moaned about Wacken because I don’t feel I need to). Sonisphere was my best UK festival yet but it is not the best I’ve been to.
Foreign festivals better than UK:
• Price – Download costs near £200 for weekend/camping. Sonisphere cost £162 + £10 for Weekend/camping/early entry. Wacken cost me £100 for that. Rock Am Ring cost £130.
• Travel – Granted, festivals abroad do require (for the most part) a flight. However, factoring in the fact it costs less to buy a ticket, this isn’t so bad. Lufthansa is charging £90 for flights. Festival travel here can cost £20 if you know someone driving.
• Band times – Some people argue that festivals should be able to run later than they do. Indeed, in Download’s case, there is no reason as far as I can see why the festival cannot run later than 11.30pm. Abroad, bands play on open air stages until 3/4am, in areas that aren’t that far from where people live.
• Campsite atmosphere – Both German trips have involved helping neighbours setup, talking to neighbours about nothing. The only UK festival where that happened really has been DL07 – where we talked to a neighbour about being sent to the festival by his daughter who couldn’t go. He missed Motley Crue and had to watch My Chemical Romance.
• Incident free? – Granted, this could just be because I’ve had nothing happen to me, but at the two festivals I was at in Germany, nothing bad was reported. No assault, no theft. It was a much nicer and more relaxed place to be.
Will my next festival be in the UK? Honestly I’m not sure. As I said earlier, it really depends what the festivals here have to offer. This was written because as I type, the final day of Wacken is coming to an end, and despite the awesomeness of Sonisphere, it was not a patch on the festivals I went to in Germany. Would it be Germany next time? I quite fancy doing some other European festivals. Such as Hellfest, Graspop Metal Meeting, Novarock (though actually, its 2009 lineup was vastly superior to its 2010) and Metalcamp. I discovered other festivals as well this year which seem interesting. Main Square Festival in France and Bilbao BBK seem very good. Both of which I wouldn’t be opposed to going to if the lineup is right.
There’s no real point to this, I just felt like justifying my case for going abroad for a festival next year
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