Remember remember that movie V for Vendetta

Across the past 4 days people have been celebrating Guy Fawkes day by blowing lots of things up. There's fireworks shooting off constantly after about 5pm daily. We went down to the park on Saturday evening to partake in the awesome legalness of blowing things up in public. On the way we stopped by a corner store who's banner boasted 'discount fireworks! sold here!' It was really crazy to see that many explosives for sale, all wrapped up in exciting packages with a brief description of what you can expect from it like "spins into the sky and erupts in a celebration of colours!" We got the lot- cherry bombs, fireworks, launchers, spinners, sparklers and some mysterious ones that we just lit, ran and hoped for the best. We had a wholesome evening in the park with champagne while taking turns in some very juvenile antics. We even managed to coordinate a few impressive displays. Any direction you looked, fireworks! Very fun indeed.

Our house

Here's some pictures of our place in Arsenal.

[ click here ]

There's a fox under my bed

The other day we did our first big supermarket shop except we did it online to be delivered to our place. The delivery charge was free because we spent over a certain amount and it sounded awesome in theory. They delivered a completely incorrect bunch of stuff. Bags and bags of someone elses groceries. I realised this initially when I saw a jumbo pack of diapers. Anyway a couple of calls to their incompetent support staff later and they said they would re-deliver our missing items (most of our order) and asked us to politely re-bag and return the stuff they sent to us that was clearly from someone elses shopping. I put a bunch of token stuff in there, some canned goods, the diapers, a jar of pickled cucumbers. Jez and McGee got home and started picking out stuff that I had selected for return. We briefly discussed the moral issue involved and whether a heartless multinational corporation deserved to have their wrongly sent goods back. Later that evening as we enjoyed some baked goods for dinner that we didn't pay for we admired the ridiculous amount of stuff that we had to look forward to for the coming weeks. Lots of organic fruits, tortilla ingredients, chocolates, juices, that mistake was the best thing to ever happen to us. I kinda regret returning the pickled cucumbers though they could have been delicious in a sandwich maybe. But we're good people. We care.

So this morning McGee woke me up, frantic, saying she heard something under our bed. I looked underneath it while fearing for my life and didn't see anything. Then I went to the bathroom and when I returned she assured me that there was in fact something under the bed. We made lots of noise and 'it' darted out our very open window. It was a fox. A massive, adult fox. And he was just starring at us. Then he did a crap and started peeing, while still looking at us, like he was upset that we'd interrupted his slumber. As you might know it has been my life-long dream to have a fox as a pet, and I asked McGee if we could keep a cub if say we stumbled upon one that was injured, without its parents, looking like it could really use our help. Then we could take it home and nurse it back to health and buy him a collar and all the rest of it. She said no.

A visit to a goth club's bondage night

We went down to the Purple Turtle in Camden, a goth nightclub to see a friend's band which is called Rapid Fiction. He maintains that he answered an ad and that the band name had already been in place. I suggested Vapid Friction. Anyways it was very dark with DJ Fruityloops playing stuff he had cooked up after doing some basic tutorials. He played his generic crap while getting into it way too hard, with embarrassing results.

Each of the bands attempted/wished to be Robert Smith in their own special way. That was pretty much it. There was a terrible striptease that was literally 'your mate who decided to read an online guide on stripping 'and give it a shot. All the patrons were dressed up as either a poor man's David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Robert Smith or combinations of those three. The ladies were trying to wear as little as possible while attempting not to look self conscious. Everyone was really polite and friendly though. I guess that's what happens when goths grow up and get jobs. My favourite was this synth pop goth band with the front man who dressed up like Billy Corgan except his clothes were clearly made by his mum. He was doing these hilarious dance moves while just doing more of a spoken word than singing, featuring such memorable repeated lines as 'The clown can no longer laugh... laugh'. Genius. I on the other hand laughed, and laughed. It was a good night out.

I am extremely jealous that you guys went to spring in the valley and had an awesome vines adventure in my absence. It was awesome to talk to you eventhough I was on 27 hours without sleep at the time, and I apologise for not being with it. I sure do miss the vines.

A visit to the London Jazz Cafe

We met Jezz at the Jazz Cafe last night to see this event called 'One Taste'. The idea is that about 3 - 4 bands play a short set of about 4 songs each. After that they get on the stage together to play some improvised stuff followed by an interval, and then the three bands perform a short set each again, in a different order. Really interesting sounds. This one group had a pan drum, sax, drums and double bass. Some great music, was really refreshing to hear. The venue is excellent - it's quite small and dark with one bar and a small stage. There's a staircase that leads up to the restaurant where you can eat while watching the bands perform below. Pretty intimate setting, the people performing are right in the middle, close to the audience and the acoustics are excellent. Bonobo have a 1 week residency there next month so I'm really looking forward to that.

The worst job ever (but we're back on the internets!)

Hey everyone,

Literally got the internets back up and running minutes ago in our new place. Turns out ENVY is the biggest crock ever. They actually lied about having positions as editors, they don't! All the editors that work there are freelancers or are working for other companies. It was all very dramatic with this girl that I started with (who was getting 60k a year working in real estate) walking out after crying. A bunch of people left and so they called this emergency meeting type deal. Turns out they hired a whole group of new people myself included because their existing staff left after a very short inning as well. Basically there was really no possibility of getting a decent post production job and being there meant not editing and adding to my portfolio. Then they decided that the newest people would have to take the new shift of 7pm - 6am for two months, 6 days a week. I got the hell out of there. I was able to speak to some senior editors during my time there who assured me that the way to getting into film is to do exactly what you want to do, now. So I got a contact for an agent who actually got back to me and will be finding me editing work. Aparently you start off with reality tv and crap like that but still, stuff to add on my show reel. I'm told that being a runner just gets you a labeled as a poorly paid shitkicker. If they're looking to hire an editor, they're probably going to pick the guy with a showreel that shows steady progress rather than some guy who can prepare an editing suite really well and fast. So lesson learned. In the meantime I'm doing part time design work which is always functional.

Anyways we're in our new place in Arsenal and it is completely awesome. Pictures to come. Hope everyone is well.

New house, new (new) job

So today is my last day here at Wall, and next Tuesday I was to start a new job f**kin* ages out of central London. Seriously, like really far away. It was some mediocre job as well animating and designing menus for DVDs. I was mostly dreading the commute. Like 90 minutes each way taking 3 different trains and a bus. BUT a couple of days ago I got called in for a trial day at ENVY Studios UK which is this really high profile post-production house that does a lot of BBC and Talkbalk Thames TV shows, as well as movies. I really love a lot of the programs that these people make so I was nervous about the trial, it's an actual 'start your career in the TV industry' job. The position is literally at the bottom. Poorly paid, you get to be everyones' bitch but you can move on up in a pretty direct fashion. Get in there anyway you can, meet people, learn what you need to know and then move up until I'm editing or shooting a cool TV show would be the plan.

So I went in on trial yesterday and impressed people and I start on Tuesday, which I'm really excited about. I'm gonna be really poor but I'm working in film & tv, for real. And it's in central London, REALLY central. It'll take me under 30 minutes to get there, one train followed by a 2 minute walk. Also while I'm there in that position, you get to pick two things that you will get trained in, as their way of enticing you to stay within the company. I'm going to pick cutting tv drama/comedy and music production.

Tonight Marissa & Damon are having a going away party for us because it's the last couple of nights we'll have living with them. I have some idea of what that's going to be like. We're moving some our stuff over on Sunday and we move in on Monday. It's a really nice little house and I'll put lots of pictures up next week. The weekend is going to go really fast and I'll be serving angry film people Soy Mocha Lattes with a hint of coconut in no time.