Eurovision!
Roller Derby!
Patience :-)
Hank Green's new album
So let's start with Eurovision! Wow! Little bit of history: the past few years, the first- and second-born, the blokeface and myself have watched Eurovision together. It started when dh astounded the two offspring by predicting the votes with scary accuracy between the Eastern European countries, and developed from there. The eldest's bestie from college is also a fan, but her boyfriend had never seen it before, so they were both invited to join us, via the roller derby, more on that in a bit. It's a week later now and there are few stand-out acts, Iceland with their colours, Netherlands being in Copenhagen via Nashville, Britain's entry was actually a good one for once, what on Earth were France thinking?! And Poland, oh lol, wonder what the bet was, 'how close can we get to soft porn on live international tv?'And then, of course, the winner. Conchita Wurst's Rise Like a Phoenix. Not the best song, I think, or even the best performance, but I voted for her, all the same, because of the context, and it was good enough to be a worthy winner, . What a massive yah-boo-sucks to Putin's regime and Russia! (I did feel very sorry for the Russian girls getting booed, but the monstrous irony of their lyrics does temper that quite a lot...) We were there! We were part of it! We saw that happen, a gay man's full drag persona, complete with beard, won a Europe-wide competition at a time when there is a lot of homophobia, and bigotry in general, in certain areas of the continent. (I will choose to file the information that the general public actually voted mostly for Poland, it was the countries' panels of judges that voted for Conchita, and bless them all! And then, because the secondborn is studying History IGCSE*, it occured to me that in 30 years, maybe less, given that Bosnia's mentioned in her textbook and that was around 20 years ago, there might be questions in History exams: 'Explain the impact on international relations of Conchita Wurst's victory at the Eurovision music competition in 2014' and how amazing would that be? I really think it could be seen as an Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment, depending how events unfold over the next few months between Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world.
So the boyfriend's first experience of Eurovision was an exceptional one. I doubt that it will ever be the same again. It's probably as well for him, specially as a musician, if he doesn't watch it ever again, lol.
* We have home-educated offspring, the I stands for International, it's a form of GCSE equivalent without coursework components so it's easier for non-schooled people to sit the exams.
Right, on to Roller Derby. For those not familiar with this sport, it's featured in the film Whip It, I recommend it as a cool coming-of-age film with a fantastic comedy supporting performance from director Drew Barrymore, go watch it, then come back and finish reading this blog. We started going to bouts a few years ago when we discovered that Leeds Roller Dolls' home bouts were at our local sports centre in Huddersfield, our first event was the Great Yorkshire Showdown tournament, so it was pretty much a full day of derby, a brilliant introduction to the culture and the sport. The culture deserves a mention, roller derby has been regarded as the sport for the kind of people who don't do sport, the alt scene types, so there's a certain grunge-y, punk-y feel to proceedings. As the sport has gradually become more professional over the past few years, this has faded a little but the roots are still there, the slogans on the backsides of the players' spanky-pant shorts, the funky leggings under the actual uniform that used to just be logo-printed t-shirts, the pun-laden names like Fuzzin' Boots for the member of the squad who is a police officer in real life... The sport involves skaters, on quad skates rather than inline, slamming into each other in an attempt to score points or stop the other side from scoring, as they skate round an oval track marked on a sports hall floor. If you want to know more, head to your local league, you should be able to find it on the WFTDA website
Since Leeds moved back to Leeds, we haven't been to as many bouts, and last week was the first this year that we could get to. As the bestie and boyfriend hadn't been to see roller derby before either, we took them with us for their first taste. I made them sit in the suicide seats (this is sitting on the floor at the side of the track, with a fairly high risk of being landed on by skaters or referees, lol) as we saw Leeds' first team, the Rebel Roses, take on Hot Wheel's A team. It was really, really close in the first half, but Hot Wheel eked out a decent gap in the second half to win 196-164. The second meet involved the French team Nothing Toulouse (did I mention the puns?) who were really, really good, a class above the Rebel Roses who couldn't match them in any way, one of their jammers was far more slippery and speedy than any other present that day and their tactics in helping their jammers through Leeds' blocking far more effective than the current trend in UK leagues of hanging back and leaving the jammer to try to bust through on their own. Leeds did suffer from having their bouts back to back, they were exhausted by the middle of the second half, but still they were just thoroughly outplayed and lost 111-194. At this point we had to leave to shop for noms and get home in time for Eurovision, so we didn't get to see Hot Wheel lose to Toulouse. Looking forward to the next bout we can get to, but we'd be looking forward to it more if the tactics were more like Toulouse' pack, it's far more entertaining to watch the pack get into it with each other to help their jammer through than seeing a jammer beat fruitlessly against a well-formed wall and waste power-jam after power-jam.
So, on to Patience! From alt culture to Gilbert and Sullivan with a simple entering of text... the wonders of the internet. That would have taken a lot more effort to segue into in real life! Someone I know from G&S stuff posted a photo of the Huddersfield G&S Society's production of Patience, which was my first full-length production when I joined Meltham Parish Church G&S, and funnily enough, the women in the photo had the same costumes on, everyone seems to use the same costume company, lol. Patience isn't one of the better-known light operas but it's a good 'un, I'm looking forward to it coming round again. I'm sitting out the next production at Meltham, The Mikado, I've done 4 now, and 4 Spring Shows with a gap last year, and I just need a break from it to commit more time to business and home, and not be completely mentally exhausted when it comes to my and the youngest's birthdays in November! I will be keeping up with events though... Meltham has something of a lack of male singers, particularly tenors, so if anyone local fancies joining a really friendly group and performing on stage, do get in touch with them.
And lastly for last week, Hank Green! (If you don't know who Hank Green is, and you're on the internet, are you on the same internet as the rest of us?! He's one half of the Vlogbrothers, the other half being John Green, the author of various novels including The Fault in our Stars which has been adapted for screen, the film comes out in June. They're founders of the Nerdfighter movement, producers of great videos on science, and run the Don't Forget to be Awesome network of artists. They never forget to be awesome.) We pre-ordered his album Incongruent a few weeks ago, and I got the email for the download last week, while up to my eyeballs in helping the secondborn with her exams. So I downloaded it, unzipped it, stuck it in the right place on the server... and then I haven't had chance to listen to it yet. Need to upload it to the phone then I can play it in the car because Bluetooth! Streaming! OMG technologeee!!! but seriously, it's probably the only time I'm going to get to listen to it. In the meantime I'm going to reminisce with this from the Glasgow leg of the TFIOS tour:
And that's it, I'm done for tonight! See you next Friday, if not before. Don't forget to be brilliant.
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