Trust Tommy

I heard this phrase recently, but I’m not 100% sure where. I think it may have been a blogpost, I’m really not certain.

It gels well with the people over the past while (when you think about it, I’ve been blogging on one site or another for 2 and a bit years) who’ve felt the need to inform me I’m ‘wasting my life’ because I spend it blogging. ‘Why write about life when you could be living it?’ is a favourite argument of theirs.

In truth, I probably do spend inordinate amounts of time on a computer. And yet, I’m perfectly OK with that. Blogging and recording is what I do.

Photo owned by Claudio Matsuoka (cc)

Getting back to the quote, I think it’s untrue. Life’s what you make it – people have this complex of making sweeping generalizations about life, and what’s right and wrong. If you don’t do it their way – you’re wrong.

Recording life gives me enormous pleasure. I do it with everything – it started out with blogging, and recently it’s branched out into movie making and also just recording what I’m thinking. I created a disk image file on my computer yesterday. It looks the same as all my other disk image files, except it’s password protected and filled with text edit files of what I’m thinking. You could say that this is what the blog is for, but then you forget; what you’re reading here is what I choose to let you read about me, not exactly and all of what I’m thinking.

I feel that what’s going through my mind now is important – this is how I felt on a certain day, and I want some evidence of that.

Memory is a funny thing. As one gets older, you have more things to remember, and the brain has an annoying habit of clearing out the old stuff to make room for the new. I hate the thought of memories just being ‘wiped’ and I have no control over it. I mean, yes, some things will stay. I remember a wedding I was at when I was very little. I remember being in a wicked cool McDonald’s, which had a playground adjacent to it, around the same time. Except I’m not sure whether that McDonald’s was in the same country. Or even if they were the same year. During one event I could have been 3 and the other 4. It worries me that I can’t remember. I don’t think it’s Alzheimer’s or anything like that – I bet lots of people are the same. We remember things from long ago, but it’s only what our brains feel is important, what sticks out.

I don’t want to just remember what my brain deems is important – I’m greedy, I want to remember everything.

Dublin, you need one. Anyone got any idea what the song is?

Oh yes, happy Hallowe’en, all.

..but not to a kill, because I’m not James Bond and this isn’t Paris.

Apologies for the less-than-desirable quality; I forgot my Flip! and I’ve had to make do with my iPhone to satisfy my otherwise insatiable need to record.

Yes, very odd and incredibly out of character post, but whatchagonnado.

I’m in Hungary this week, you may have noticed/heard. I met a Hungarian women who’d married a Scottish man who owns a Scottish pub here. Because she learnt English in Scotland, she has a rather heavy accent.

Hearing her speak was a rather funny occasion, simply because of the absurdity of the situation. I felt it unwise to laugh but boy was it difficult.

For those who’ve been in a similar position; I hear ya, and this is for you.

Tommy’s Top 5 methods for not laughing at inappropriate moments

1. Induce physical pain

Bite your lip. Grind a piece of your cheek between your molars. If anything squashes the urge to LOL quickly, it’s physical pain. That sounds so masochistic, but it’s all in the interest of remaining PC, I assure you.

2. Empty your lungs of air

If you’ve no breath, there’s nothing to fuel the lulz! :)

3. Use reverse psychology

By telling yourself something like: “This is funny! Laugh some more!” you end up finding that it was never that funny anyway.

Photo owned by Lucy Boynton (cc)

3.5. Get back in control

With point 3, the problem with uncontrollable is the fact that it’s just that: uncontrollable. If you choose to laugh, you can then stop it.

4. Recite

Throughout 15 years, I’ve been able to recite, word for word, curtain to curtain, 3 stage shows. When I’m bored, I’ll often begin one and see how far I get through it. It works wonders in waiting rooms and such. It also works while you have a fit of giggles – you can’t murmur ‘we begin on Christmas Eve…‘ while laughing, or even ‘I really don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about...

Recognize those shows? Mini competition in the comments, first correct comment wins a prize!*

5. When all else fails…

Claim a neurological impairment.

*Prize not included

Today, myself and Dad took a trip to Hungary Zoo. I haven’t been to the zoo in aaaaaages.. it’s at least 6 weeks by now, since that September trip with Aoife.

I suppose he have to start with the video of me being eaten by a goat.. do I have a choice? :)

With that out of the way, let’s view some of the other animals :)

Even if the iPhone could manage decent close-up photos, I doubt you’d get much of this map – it’s in Hungarian.

Cute little gophers.

The camels, who ate little green things kids gave them. Did anyone know that the humps on their back jiggle? How do people sit on them?

These were two people who were in the teeny tiny monkey’s cage, and it was fun to watch the little things scamper up and down the people and across the wire cage.

Guinea pigs (actual ones, not what I begrudgingly do with Mom’s salads :P) and their homes.. and looking at that photo.. a blue bus. That’s odd!

Kind of proud of this photo for it’s artistic-ness: The big yellow sign warning that these beasts will eat you for supper if you allow them, and the lonely wolf in the background.

Being mooned by animals of elephantine proportions. No, I shall not be letting this joke any time soon :)

I asked him if he was the rhymenoceros. He said no. Dang.

And he ain’t no hiphopopotamus. Fail

Not technically true, actually, because it’s past midnight here in Hungary. Still, it’s a nice (and most true) sentiment. Plus, ‘daddy’s taking us to the zoo laterontoday’ sounds lame.

:)

…something beginning with E

if you said ‘entire city’, you were right! :) Well, entire cities perhaps. Buda and Pest are separated by the river, which you can make out in the photograph.

This was taken on top of a large-hill-slash-small-mountain yesterday. Weather was clear and sunny. You could see everything, from the lego brick apartment blocks to the industrial funnel of the big plant.

Why yes, I do need a proper camera. If you know of one under 100€ which can record movies and works over USB, let me know.

I’ve always loved going to see shows. I’ve always loved acting, even if I knew I’d never do it for a living. It’s one of those things I want to do in my free time, like riding a motorcycle.

One thing that I never understood about shows and the theatre are autographs. They’re barely legible and your 15 seconds spent in the company of the star are spent with him with his head down in concentration, while you think of something witty to say. They mean so little to him.. I don’t know why they mean so much to fans. In short, I think they’re bad mementos of your brief meeting with your hero. I’d prefer something more personalized, like a photo with my favourite actor. Of course, this means nothing, and you’re perfectly entitled to like and collect them.

Photo owned by net_efekt (cc)

Granted, they make sense. You have a stage door and (based on the only time I ever found myself outside a stage door after a performance) about 30 adoring fans, signatures are probably the best way of imparting some part of you to them.

But that’s just it. Autographs are something this guy does daily. It’s probably something he’s practiced on old napkins since the age of 12. What’s personal about that?

I think pictures are better. If you’re in the photo all the better. If you’re not in the picture, it’s still a visual testament to you being there, and him being there, and you now have something concrete from that event. Autographs are just so much less personal than that. If the picture in question is of you and your favourite actor, well that’s so much better, right? It’s you, and him, together.

I’ll be the first to admit this has been a weird post. What brought it on? Well, I’m incredibly superstitious when it comes to these things, afraid if I say too much about a glimmer of a plan, I’ll jinx it. All I’ll say is me meeting my favourite actor is less unlikely than it was 24 hours ago. Here’s a hint, of sorts. I know I’m being all weird, but this is what happens. I say too much, it all falls to pieces and I’m left with the disappointment. So, we’re going to remain tight lipped until some more of my latest hair-brained scheme becomes concrete.

What do we think about autographs though? Silly or worthwhile?

Thanks to the swine flu, I didn’t leave the house all week, starting Sunday evening. By Saturday though, cabin fever was threatening to raise my actual temperature back into the danger zone. I decided that the cinema would be an excellent escape, and loaded up the local cinema’s ‘Now Showing’ website to see what was on. I’d read a review of Fantastic Mr. Fox that morning which looked promising. (Demolitions expert? Since when?). That was on at 9, but since it was 6, I wasn’t sure if it would be booked out, so I looked at other films. Up was on at quarter to 9, so I decided to arrive at the cinema at 20 to 9, and see what the story was with being booked out. I tweeted the plan and got several responses recommending Up.

In the end, we arrived at about 25 to 9 and chose the earlier film, purely because it was earlier.

Up begins with this queer little short video. I loved For the birds but this one confused me. It details some clouds who make babies for all the animals, and then the storks deliver them. There’s this one cloud, though, who’s grey to their white, and gets all the crap babies – the alligators and porcupines. It’s odd, to say the least. Not helped by being totally factually incorrect too.. Babies don’t come from clouds, my mom told me one day.. they come from cabbage plants!

After that, the movie started. I won’t be all spoilertastic here, and go into specifics of everything, but I’ll give you the gist.

An old man who’s always longed for adventure finally goes on one, accompanied by a stereotypical kid played for laughs. They come across a talking dog (and *that*, ladies and gentlemen, is where all the SQUIRREL! jokes come from: talking dog + no attention span…) and a bird called Kevin.

That’s fleshed out over its 96 minute running time, of course, but that’s what’d go on the DVD’s back cover, anyway.

The kid is done well, with the boundless energy we all love/hate. The man is a stereotypical grump, but who becomes more lovable as the movie. We’ll never get along though; he has a cooler cane :( (see picture)

The best parts I found were the ones with the dog, Dug. He was the comic relief though, so there you go. He was so good, in fact, the best thing about the movie.

At this stage, after Ratatouille and now Up, I’m convinced that Pixar are the ones you go to for kid’s movies, which also appeal to dads too. With music, I often talk about the ratio of good songs per album. Adam Pascal’s Civilian is an example of a high ratio, while The Blizzards only have about 5 good songs over 2 albums, which is a low ratio. Pixar’s good to bad movie ratio is very high indeed, which, I believe, is the true mark of talent. Anyone, after all, can be lucky with a once-off hit.

Go check it out :)

Unfortunately not as cool as snakes :(

iPhone on Airplane mode? Check.

Ok, we can begin. The clock tells me it’s 17:30 but with the stupid hour going back, is that 16:30 or 18:30? I think 17:30 may be correct, because Apple supposedly does this all for me. What would be nice is that while it did that, it told me what was going on. You know, I could wake up the morning after the hour change to a little system message:

“Hi Tommy, how are you? That’s great to hear, oh, I got you the 12 new emails you had and the 40 RSS items, freshly pressed after the dog brought them from the front door. Oh, you know that silly little hour thing they were talking about on Twitter? Yeah, I just let 1am happen twice, so you’re cool. Love, Your iPhone.”

God I’d love that. Anyone want to make me an iPhone app? :)

I pause in my furious, one handed tapping, deciding that my current sitting position isn’t very comfortable, and to twist into another one. We tried to sneak into the emergency row at the start of the flight, but boyish faces have the downsides of being just that: boyish, and the hawk-nosed Hungarian stewardness was all over me within 30 seconds, demanding to know how old I was, but not in the cool way Simon Pegg did it in Hot Fuzz. I fleetingly consider taking licence with my age, adding one to it and becoming 16. “You need to be 18″ the stewardess tells me waspishly after I admit I’m not Macaulay Culkin, er, I mean, actually 15. Seriously, how is that kid 29 or something? I bet he got that all the time; being eternally young, thanks to Home Alone, when he was old enough to have kids.

As I swap from trying to have my legs stretched out to having them underneath me, I decide that the song playing on my iPod Shuffle is no good. I hit next and on comes Adam Pascal. Not him exactly, the song begins with the weird murmurings of a didgeridoo and the same few notes being played on some distant piano. Just as you’re getting lulled by the sheer repetitiveness of the simple music, the guitar and drums start off and Pascal’s vocals begin. I for one am convinced that Pascal did this on purpose. The serenity that gives way to thundering drums just screams “…and that’ll teach you to fall asleep listening to me!”. His voice is weird, I know a few good singers in real life, but whose singing voice is so incredibly staged, it’s grating. Like, it’s as if ‘this is my singing voice, and this is my talking voice’ and they sound nothing alike. I find Adam Pascal’s voice weird because it’s so raw and untouched. There’s nothing staged about it – you can tell that he just walked into the recording studio and did it. None of the rigmarole you hear about with other artists.

This was written on Sunday evening (it’s just coming up to 6pm, or it 5, or 7? I’m so hopeless) but I’ll set it to publish on Monday morning because the thought of a holiday without blogging is unthinkable. I need a holiday somewhere remote, with no reception, or, more hilariously, somewhere so cold my fingers fall off before I’ve finished the http://. Can anyone type on their iPhone with their toes? I’ll wanna talk to you.