August drought…

No, I don’t mean to bring up the weather, which has been proving that England is as far from a drought as Mother Teresa is from being a Nazi. I’ve not written many articles at all recently, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve had nothing to say or plain too much to say. Anyway, I figured I’d sit down and tap one out like the good old days.

Summer has been pretty busy, considering, and I’ve gotten a lot done. At the moment, I have about 4 jobs which are as varied as they come. Soon I shall be starting as a care assistant for mentally handicapped clients, which sounds pretty daunting but is nothing compared to the sheer amount of work I’ve had to put into clearing out my Mum’s old house.

Having my mum up and leave at a week’s notice has uprooted a collection of Lego that I was hoping to ignore well into my late 30’s. Now the collection has been thrown uncaringly in a bunch of boxes and I’ve been attempting to sort through it with the help of Greg. It’s a nostalgic but exeptionally tedious affair that is only really alleviated by the fact that I get to construct the old sets again to make sure all the bits are there before I sell them. In amongst the massive boxes of lego (which are now emptied out in my mum’s old bedroom) I’ve found many relics of a lost childhood and more old batteries then I’ve ever seen in my life. Pogs, yoyos, action men, intermingled K-nex, pokemon figures, digimon figures, toy cars, several monopoly pieces (all from different sets) and a collection of pieces of plastic from… other things.

On top of that I’m supposed to be doing web design for my aunt, some work on my portfolio, finish a website I made for a pokemon MMORPG and draw up the graphics for a Brewery! Oh my, there just aren’t enough hours in the day… well, in my day, which seems to be 2pm to 2am.

Problem…

I… cannot… sleep…

Jeff Bryan: Biography

Hey guys, I have a bit of an odd one here, but I’m going to post it anyway because I want a couple of people to read it.

Those of you who know me might know what I mean when I used the term ‘roleplaying’ in relation to myself, of which I am not referring to any RPG genre or Dungeons and Dragons club (though I have been known to frequently discuss those too). What I actually mean is a form of interactive story telling, where you take the role of a character in a giant story full of other characters and carve out as interesting tale as you can before you get him killed by running into a gang of giant unhappy lizard-men. Anyway, I have been roleplaying for a long time (try 5 years) and it’s a way for me to write a lot without hiding it away. It’s also an escape, access to a different, consistent world in which I have a part of it. I would reccomend trying it if you like writing, if not? Stick to reading harry potter fan-fiction.

Still, I have recently written in a new character and what comes with this new character is a new character biography. I’m pretty pleased with what I have, though I think it ends rather flatly, so if you’re interested expand this article and have a read.

The knight is darkest before dawn.

Come hither, child… let me tell you of something… something Dark… Dark and Knighty… It is… The Dark Knight. It is… awesome.

I have just come home from the pre-showing at the Odeon. I was one of the lucky few who got to pay twice as much to see the show a few days before anyone else. No, I am not jaded, for I was given a tricksy poster that changes when you walk past it, which is awesome and makes me feel like I have a magic mirror in my room. Not only that, but I would happily pay that money again to encapsulate that feeling of pure exitement.

I entered the cinema and was given this awesome magic poster. I was exited, and my anticipation built slowly as I waited through the 30 minutes of adverts. 30 whole minutes! 15 of which were just that annoying Radio One advert, that really is fucking annoying, I was almost going to shout out at Judge Jules but then… Then! The film began.

Folding out perfectly, we begin with what might be considered an introductory scene. An awesome opening, folding out into the first ‘act’ of the movie. Oh yes, this movie has ‘acts’. Now you may want to consider taking a piss before you see the Dark Knight. It is a brilliantly long film, and the need to pee can be somewhat annoying when you’re rooted firmly to your seat. The consideration to piss yourself arises, because that’s how awesome this movie is. I would piss myself for this movie.

Christopher Nolan has made the most mature Superhero movie ever made. We saw Iron Man. We loved it, it was smart, it was a brilliant movie, but it is nothing like the world that Nolan builds for his Batman to roam in. We see a much more sinister setting, perhaps due to the gangster run Gotham we’re brought back into since Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne is smart, but he’s not faultless, he’s been grounded again. You thought Ras Al Ghul was a dangerous opponent? You have yet to meet the new, and very much improved Joker.

Heath, you certainly went out with a perfect game. The Joker is scary. We have now lost entirely the camp, evil uncle that we’ve become accustomed to with our previous incarnations. The influences from the darker graphic novels is defined perfectly, in fact our on screen Joker even bests the better portrayals on paper.

I feel lucky, lucky that this movie was amazing… Lucky that we have been blessed with two brilliant superhero flicks in the same year. Rejoice, my brethren, for this movie will overload your brains with Uber.

Uber rating: 10/10

It’s the best thing since Sliced Beard.

Story Tetris.

I have now finished the third series of My Name Is Earl completley, and I have to say I was surprised at how good it was considering I had been told it wasn’t as good as the first two series’. Perhaps it’s because it’s something I’d like to be writing myself, but there were lots of parts to it that really struck me as clever. The settings change, but they manage to write around a lot of the situations flawlessly, and though a couple of the endings were predictable, they were only so because they were exactly what needed to happen.

More and more I love self referencing in series’ like this, My Name Is Earl has got an almost Simpson-esque collection of sub cast members that really bring it to life. I love seeing older characters return in a different episode, all chipping into the story in amusing ways. Not only the characters are here, but the stories and events too. It’s great bringing older things to the newer series, but in series 2 and 3 you see the new episodes go back to the old ones and add more depth to parts of the story we’re already comfortable. It might get a little confused, but I personally love seeing everything fit into place.

Perhaps it’s because I play tetris too much. Anyway, very watchable.

- teh Beard.

Who the fuck’s going to blow the donkey?

I am currently watching Clerks II and wishing I was better at writing dialogue. It’s a good film, it somehow manages to retain the same feel of Clerks I, the inane banter between two people who hate where they currently are, the slightly indie feel to the whole movie, whilst building it to a larger and more watchable level. Kevin Smith is right in thinking he’s matured as a film maker, though I would still use the term ‘matured’ carefully, knowing him. Here’s looking forward to Red State.

- teh Beard.

Forwards and backwards.

I was talking to Georgie last night, and while we bantered on about how late it was, and past relationships, and all the usual catching up jazz that you talk about when you haven’t spoken to someone in a good while, we approached the topic of old friends. She said something that made me smile, not a happy smile but a knowing one, she said she was surprised at the amount of people who have now matured.

I immediately thought, “bah” because I had been writing my last blog post earlier that day and was rather caught on how everyone I’d been hanging about with had gone one of two ways: Forwards or backwards. Still, rather then dismiss it I thought about it and realized just how many of the people I know have matured enough. I also wondered if I’ve matured at all since Toynbee, but if you think about that you have to account for my dual levels of maturity when it comes to being silly and that just gets complicated.

I guess not everyone is running off to university, but in a way everyone our age now has to confront the fact that they are becoming an adult and if they don’t go with it they’re going to have a very difficult path ahead of them. Last year was good for me, in that sense, because I struggled with this but had the benefit of a relationship to stop me going over the edge.

We also brought up Ben Johnson as a subject, and I explained a whole lot of back story which, coupled with talking about Emily, got me really nostalgic and depressed. I think it was about this point that ‘Foundations - Kate Nash’ came on, and I decided to call it a night before I died of a brain anurism. Anurism? Well, if that’s how you spell it at least.

- teh Beard.

A fresh start…

There seems to be some kind of weird misconception between some of the people I know that it’s perfectly fine to be relentlessly rude to someone as long as you don’t have a very high opinion of them. Granted, that these people take this approach is not news to me, they always have been - and hopefully for them - will not always be complete cock nudgers. We can but hope.

Still, it’s a little sad to see that not everyone I used to hang out with has grown up… at all. Of course, it’s probably not helped by the fact that my opinion of certain other people has been raised quite a lot by talking to them for a short while. My main example being Dave, of whom I used to share a passionate sense of mutual hostility. I’ve been told it was due to many different things, because quite often I would query just what Dave took particular offense to when we first met. I have always presumed it was a case of company opinion proliferation, or in words that probably make more sense when I string them together: Peer pressure.

Dave joined with a group of older Toynbee students who, chances are, all told him exactly what they thought of me (but have never made clear to me) and this affected how he approached me. Of course, I am quite a loud character, and it has never been easy for me to make the impression I wanted to, so he might be forgiven for taking me for an idiot immediately. I suppose the thing that makes a difference now is that Dave is a lot friendlier and I actually consider him a friend, even if he took his sweet time coming around to this stage.

I have a theory about that, actually.

This funny thing happened at the end of Toynbee, all the people who I clearly remember torturing my childhood self esteem suddenly decided that all those years of bullying and taunting had concluded into what now became a close relationship! Yes, everyone was suddenly my best friend and I was told how much I would be missed. Now, I don’t believe for a moment that any of these people actually meant what they said, in fact the cynic in me would say they were probably sad that they couldn’t badger me anymore, but I try to reserve the cynic for movie reviews.

What’s somewhat worse, and something I did not realize as immediately, is that a parallel thing happened with all the people who had always been polite and friendly with me. Suddenly, all these people I had a level of respect for were being rude to me in College. I was, of course, completely blown away by this. What has happened to these people? What has college turned these people into? These were questions I asked whilst posing dramatically… Which was probably not helping their opinions of me, either. I have often mused over this with people like Joe and Nathan, and while I’ve been writing up this blog I realized something new: It happened in Primary School too.

It seems like at the end of a massive juncture like that, everyone takes the opportunity to adapt themselves and take a fresh start… Of course, I don’t think suddenly deciding that it’s alright to be a condescending, arrogant prick is a particularly good fresh start, but who am I to say what people should do? Some people juggle geese.

- teh Beard.

I dream of being chicken soup…

I had a really weird dream when I fell asleep in the bath this morning. I dreamed that I was a big piece of chicken in a pot of my Nan’s chicken soup, and it was nice and warm and slowly getting hotter and hotter. I liked the heat, though, cause it was sinking into my skin and muscles and pulling the tension out of them completley. I was, of course, tired and relaxed, so this was very soothing and lovely. Then my muscles had relaxed so much they just came off of my bone, and all the skin on my arms and legs came away, and then all the muscles just peeled off me. It was odd, because it was such a nice feeling of relief as all the pressure was lifted away from my whole body. I was just floating there in the broth, letting it completley have me.

It was a weird dream, and the first one I have been able to remember so clearly in a good long while. Not sure what compelled me to post it on my blog, perhaps just because it’s quite amusing.

Again, again!

Everything that this inspires is wrong…