Weird what you think of...

I don't know what made me think about this.  I'm lying here attempting to nap, and for some reason Lily Allen's stage set-up at Glasto came into my head. I tweeted at her at the time, probably a little bit sanctimoniously, but I was a bit taken aback by the light-up giant baby-feeding bottles!  The blokeface was also disgruntled, especially on discovering that rather than it being some weird tongue-in-cheek thing it was actually a homage to her husband's contribution to parenting their children.  My problem at the time was that there are loads of ways for dads to parent babies, why focus on bottles?  Now, though, a month later, my thoughts on this are a bit more complex.

First up, while it might seem nice of Lily to publicly thank him for his help, the way I see it he was simply being a partner.  If we as a society want to argue for equality in parenting we have to drop this idea that men who are actively involved with their children's care are special. How many tributes do we see from male artists lauding their baby-mothers' assistance in raising their kids? Barely any, because that's the normal way of things.  Lily I'm glad you appreciate Mr Cooper but he's not Superdad, he's just a dad.

Secondly I know that Ms Allen breastfed for a certain amount of time. I wonder if she realises how hard the various breastfeeding support organisations have worked in the past to make it even possible for most women to even try to breastfeed, how low rates were, how close we were to losing the skills and support needed.  I wonder how much help she had to be able to breastfeed.  Part of the work of the support organisations has been to encourage partners of breastfeeding mothers to find ways to parent without interfering with breastfeeding, all the countless other things that babies need other than feeding.  For Lily to so publicly say 'hey my man's brilliant, he does night feeds' just kicks all that work, all those volunteer hours, in the face.  That just seems ungrateful and rude, to me.

A reight good neight out

This is what happens to my blogs. I keep up for a while then a post gets long and drawn out, and I lose track, and stop.  I will try harder.  And now back to a post from 2 months ago...  oh good grief, it's last year now! Oh well, might as well post it anyway...

Rather than drag my post for last week out, I figured it would be easier to give a damn good night out the justice of its own post.

A while back, I bought an offer for a booth at Mix Karaoke, they come up cheap on Groupon and Living Social from time to time.  (Karaoke, they all scoff!  There's a snobbery about it, I know.  The stereotypes of the TV talent show wannabe, the drunken tourist somewhere in Asia warbling their way badly through My Way and the pub dj hamming it up, yes they're all there in public karaoke bars.  But a) so what? If they're enjoying their 3 minutes of spotlight and not getting tomatoes thrown at them, good for them, and b) a private party in a karaoke booth isn't really like that.  It's more like having a jukebox full of cheesy songs to belt out, or not, and dance to, or not, as you see fit, and there's only your group who know or care whether you can hit that high note.  It's a blast, really.  Go do it.)  Anyway, I thought that half term would be a good time for most of the people I was going to invite, a group of fellow mums from around Leeds, and some a bit further afield.  Sadly only 4 of us could make it, but by the time I'd got yesses and noes from everyone, one of the further-afields, Yvonne, had booked a hotel and I said I'd go halves with her, so that nailed down the day, which happened to be last Friday.

The only slot I could book the booth for was 7pm, a little bit early, so I aimed to meet Yvonne from her train, check in and grab some quick food.  I thought that somewhere at a food court would be reasonably quick, and the nearest thing to that in Leeds is the Trinity Kitchen, which has a branch of Chicago Rib Shack, among other things.  I figured that would be the best thing for not triggering my gluten intolerance!  And yes, their baby back ribs are gluten-free, hurrah.  They're also very, very messy to eat.  Why I bothered putting make-up on before I ate, I do not know, because I had to wipe half of it off to get rid of the bits of sauce from my face.  And my hands were completely covered, thank goodness for M&S citrus hand wipes that I don't go anywhere without these days!  (They're the best thing for getting diesel smells off your hands.)  Oh, and when they say 'spicy chicken burger' apparently they do mean spicy.

From there it was a quick walk, via a couple of shops to try to get some plasters as I was attempting to break some new shoes in, haha, to the karaoke bar, where Suzanne was waiting for us.  We hung around outside for a little while until Jay turned up, and then went inside... Suzanne and I had been before so we knew that a private booth meant a room, with a door, with its own karaoke machine and big-screen telly.  Jay was expecting a reserved table in the main bar, so the room was a pleasant surprise for her.  I hogged the mic a fair bit, because I do like to sing, and I know others aren't so fussed as me, lol.  We did a fair number of classics, Take On Me and Fat Bottomed Girls being good examples, and had a riotous time with our fizzy wine and nibbles, before being turfed out to finish our drinks in the main bar, where we became backing singers to the guy doing The Great Pretender.

The night was still fairly young when our time was up, so after finishing our drinks in the main bar, doing backing vocals to one of the regulars' rendition of Somebody To Love (I think that's what it was! Memory problems you know) I suggested wandering up to the Belgrave, a super-hip bar and music venue, which has a really nice roof terrace, where we drank ale and cider, and got chatting about geeky stuff with a couple of women from a leaving do at the table next to ours *waves over the interwebs to Hannah and Kirsty* 

All in all, a brilliant night, must do it again.

May 24th to 30th

A much belated post for last week, which is clearly what happens when I go out on the razz on a Friday night.  The placeholders were:

More rugby

Godzilla

X-men

Karaoke, Belgrave

Chuck

Even more rugby

The karaoke and Belgrave bits may well get their own post. We shall see.

Rugby though!  It's a bit late in the day really to go over the games from a week and a half ago now, but they were belters, with much shouting for Northampton Saints who we adopted for the Premiership battle in lieu of one of our teams, Gloucester for me and Quins for the blokeface, being in the running.  The observant among you will notice that I've extended this weekly round-up to 8 days, that's to include the Premiership final from Saturday, and that covers the 'even more rugby'  We were happy with the result, and both controversial TMO decisions, but the controversy will no doubt rumble on a long while...  The French Top 14 final was a complete anti-climax after that, except for the result being an entirely fitting end to Jonny Wilkinson's on-pitch professional career.

Godzilla got its own post, just in case you missed it it's here.  A properly brilliant film.  I didn't get round to writing a review of its own for X-Men: Days of Future Past, I guess I just wasn't quite as impressed by it. Not that it isn't good, it is, it really is, James McAvoy is brilliant (though he looks a lot like he's still sobering up from doing Filth) the action sequences and effects entirely good enough, but it just wasn't as *great* as Godzilla.  And it didn't feel like an ensemble film in the same was as The Avengers, for example, it was very much about Wolverine, Professor Xavier, Magneto and Mystique, and the other X-Men were very much in supporting roles, I guess Beast stands out among those.

It's nearly next week already!  Oh gosh!  Right, calling that a day for last week, will blog Friday night separately...

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Whew!  I am so glad we didn't give up on this series, it started so badly, cheesy scripts, dodgy effects, woefully stereotypical characterisation...  it's only our love of Phil Coulson, and curiosity about how he was brought back from the events of Avengers Assemble, that kept us watching and then, suddenly, like Dollhouse, it shifted a gear or three and it all got so much better, more enthralling, less cringe-worthy.  And the run-up and the finale were really, really great.  Don't give up on it.  They wouldn't give up on us.

Now.  I have a few things I'd like to mull over about all this, but I hate spoilers myself so I'm taking it 'under the fold' so to speak.  If you don't want to be part of the discussion, don't click the 'read more' link!

just a quick one...

to quote a friend, I fucking love this band:

Godzilla. No spoilers, mate.

When the film finished, I turned to the blokeface and said, quietly so that the 7yo boy behind us didn't hear, "That's another of your shit films, mate!"

I didn't really mean it.

When Gareth Edwards' debut, Monsters, came out at the cinema, we went to see it.  The trailers had made it look like a classic alien-invasion action flick, but what we got was a beautifully made road-trip romance with monsters as the backdrop and circumstance, so at the end, someone behind the man turned to his friend and said "That was another of your shit films, mate!"  Not what he was expecting, at all.  It's become something of a running joke in our household, though, so thanks to said mate from us all, it goes along with "that was rubbish, I'm not making/eating/buying that again" when we've cleared our plates.  Edwards deserved the upgrade to fully-fledged studio-funded directing, and boy has he made good on the trust handed to him.

Godzilla has all the right ingredients: action, family melodrama, fabulously realised monsters, stunning reveals, brilliantly atmospheric cinematography and set design and a great, not-cheesy script.  Throw in a great cast of not-too-big stars and you have a winner, an absolute belter of a film, as I said earlier on twitter.  Familiar faces do pop up throughout, including that one guy you've seen somewhere before but now you can't place where in the film he was so you can't even look him up on the film's IMDB page.  Alexander Desplat's soundtrack is suitably bombastic and scene-setting, borrowing in places from Jaws, but not in a bad way.

Two thumbs way, way up for this one, and it's definitely a big-screen experience, if you can get to see it, do!  Mate.

May 17th to 23rd

This week's catch-up reminders were:

Much Ado

Karaoke

Rugby

headphones

festivals

Ticket buying

I guess the order of that lot's a bit disjointed, and I think I might just leave festivals for another post now that I've seen this year's Glasto line-up (I'm glad I'm not going, I'd have to clone myself about 4 times I think) but anyway, I'll start at the beginning.

 We watched the Joss Whedon adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing last weekend as part of the secondborn's English Lit exam prep. Bit late, given that the exam in question was on Tuesday, but anyway. It's quite a dark one, as Shakespearean comedies go, less fantastical than Midsummer Night's Dream, less whimsical than Twelfth Night. The plot revolves around deception, some benign and humorous, some very cynical and not funny at all. The adaptation was done so well, though it was distracting spotting all the Whedon alumnae. The strong cast work their roles well, from sharp-tongued Beatrice to dim-witted detective Dogberry, and the switch of casting a woman as the bad-guy's confidante Conrade doesn't harm things at all. There are some moments of brilliant physical comedy to add to the wordplay, and the setting of stylish, understated luxury suits the plot and sets the mood. I think I'll watch it again with the subtitles on though, just to keep up with the language and learn some more Shakespearean insults.

Karaoke! OK! I'm just saying that I need to use the Living Social deal I bought for a night at a karaoke bar. The last one I bought went unused as it wasn't organised in time, must not let that happen! The place has been done up since I last went, really looking forward to it. I was prolly going to say something about songs...

The problem with doing placemarkers for a weekly round-up is not always remembering what I was going to say about the thing. So earlier on when I started typing this, at the beginning of tonight's Amlin Challenge Cup final at Cardiff Arms Park (and before watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Castle, both excellent tv series that no doubt will get a more in-depth mention at some point), I had to wrack my brain a bit and then oh! Yes.  Last weekend's semi-finals were A Bit Nuts.  And Nigel Davies getting sacked, unsurprising but still...  But the thing I really wanted to say was something the eldest said the other day about football's centrality to 'lad culture' and the contrast with rugby's fanbase, it's much more varied in sex and age.  The blokeface remembers hearing someone in the legendary Shed at Kingsholm (I'm a Gloucester fan, he supports Harlequins.  I don't even know why but that's the way of it...) telling someone else off for swearing.  In the same way as roller derby leaves all the violence on the track, and then parties hard afterwards, rugby is the same way, there's no segregation of fans, there's no culture of violence between fans.  Rugby league has the same kind of reputation and atmosphere.  I'm writing this while catching up on the second half of the match, and as Stephen Myler lines up a kick at goal, a shout from the crowd was shooshed by the rest of the fans.  Can we all just appreciate for a moment the camaraderie and respect and actual fun here?  Yes?  Good.

So on to headphones!  *rant alert*  Dear Samsung, what possessed you to make your phone headphones with symmetrical leads?  And why can't I use the Nokia ones that I've been using with my Sony?  Oh and why was I using Nokia headphones with a Sony phone?  Because when I bought Sony headphones they only worked with an iphone so I gave them to one of the kids.  If anyone can recommend some decent in-ear headphones that work with the Galaxy S4 with phone controls and asymmetric leads so that I can take them out but still keep them handy, that come in at less than £30, I'd be really, really interested.  Really.

(and while I'm on the subject I will lament the demise of Breo's headphones, my Neptunes are on their last elbows, sadly.  Something with the same size ear-cups and similar sound quality for around £30 would go down well...)

Festivals, yes a separate post I think!  And then I can justify a Live at Leeds recap, maybe tomorrow while the secondborn is at Slam Dunk North.

Which leads me on to ticket buying!  I bought 1 ticket for said Slam Dunk, and 2 tickets to see The Maine at The Cockpit at the same time.  Because one of the tickets was e-ticket only, the others had to be too.  What?  So now if I want actual tickets, which I do, because they're nicer, and handy to have something for band members to sign if you happen to chat with them afterwards, I have to cancel that purchase and lose the booking fee, and then rebook.  Oh and I had to ring and get a letter from the ticket company so that the e-ticket for the thing tomorrow can be used by the secondborn, who I was buying it for.  What a flaming faff!  I know there are issues with touts and I know that it's my fault for not reading the small print, so the lost booking fee's going to be an idiot tax, but the fact that I can't buy a ticket, rock up myself with my ID and say 'I've bought this for this person' without getting a letter in advance is just a bit OTT I reck!

Right.  Time for bed.  And I will post more about music next week, I promise!  I still haven't listened to that Fort Hope album, for a start...