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triskellianThe weekend has been action-packed. On Friday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smiorgan and I went to see Prisoner of Azkaban, to general feelings of 'meh'. It's my favourite of the books (although I haven't read OotP - gave up in disgust), but my least favourite of the films. The pacing felt off, and there were sections where important bits of plot (like Buckbeak's trial) were skimmed over - one minute Buckbeak's mauling Draco, the next Hermione's dropping in a casual 'how did the trial go?' There was a trial? How did that happen? Was Lucius involved? And I agree with frax (I think it was she) in finding the difference in geography from the earlier films odd, although it wasn't too jarring for me, since I've only seen each of the others once, and not recently. Ron and Hermione's budding romance was a bit overplayed, but I did like the acting from (and direction of) the three main kids and Draco - I like the way they're starting to turn into moody, sex-conscious teenagers. The Dementors, as everyone else has commented, came straight from the Rent-a-Nazgul department, which is a shame because I see them quite differently. Sirius and Remus were both pretty good, although again, neither quite enough like my mental image of them. And, as in the book, the whole 'only one person is going to die tonight' scene pissed me off. How hard would it be to actually tell Harry that it's not him Sirius is after?
On Saturday, I drove into London to collectkauket for another bridesmaid dress fitting, with a minor incident on the motorway on the way... There was a police car sitting on a bridge over the road, just before a junction. As soon as they saw it, everyone slowed down to 70mph. (Note for non-Brits: the speed limit on British motorways is 70, but almost no one observes it, and there are rumours that police cars are told to drive at 60 or 80 to avoid disrupting the flow of traffic. The average speed is more like 80.) When I'd just passed the bridge, the police car left it, and came up the sliproad onto the motorway. Everyone was still going at 70, everyone thinking 'Is it me they're after? Did I see them in time? How fast was I going before I slowed down?' The police car zoomed off (at 80, at least), but everyone continued cautiously doing 70, until we passed the police car on the hard shoulder, having pulled over a big flash Jaguar. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, and sped up again.
I tookkauket to Luton for her dress fitting, and then she, blondeccgirl and I went up to Milton Keynes in search of underwear and shoes to wear to the wedding. We're all three interested in shoes (although two of us almost exclusively wear boots), and with bra sizes large enough to not be able to buy the pretty bras in nice fabrics stocked by most shops, so we wandered around, exclaiming at lovely shoes and grumbling at lovely bras. secretrebel and C both later told me how glad they were that they'd not been around. They'd have been bored to tears.
I successfully bought wedding shoes (and a matching bag. I'm a bit embarrassed about having a matching shoe-and-bag combo), and ordered wedding underwear. Which is pretty good, cos I was starting to think I'd never find shoes I liked, and would get married barefoot (which still has appeal), and never find appropriate underwear in my size, and have to... well, I suppose I would've had to buy some of the standard ivory 'bridal underwear', all of which I hate. Damn off-the-shoulder dress ;-)
On arrival back in Oxford,kauket and I met up with smiorgan and onebyone, to talk about wedding music. kauket and onebyone are DJing for us, and the wedding music session mostly took the form of us shouting band names at each other, while scouring smiorgan and my music collections.
"The Chilis!"
"Yes, they're at the top of the list"
"The Dandies!"
"So are they."
"Guns n' Roses!"
"I'm not writing them down"
"You have to"
"OK, but I'm writing them very small"
and so on.
So we'll have a shod and underwear'd bride, and music to dance to. Should all turn out fine ;-)
And then on Sunday, in the pouring rain, we went into London to see the Chilis play Hyde Park. We drove to the park & ride, and waited for a coach to London, along with lots of other people obviously doing the same thing (all armed with our regulation 500ml-and-no-more water bottles). A coach went by with "Sorry. Coach full" on the front. We debated, and eventually drove into London and abandoned the car at the first underground station we encountered. A much better plan. Not least because all the coaches we went past on the way back were also sporting their "Sorry. Coach full" signs.
When we got off the tube, it was absolutely pelting down with rain, and everyone in the entire world was trying to find a pub near Hyde Park in which to get dry and drunk before the gig started. We gave up on 'drunk' and settled on 'dry' in a cafe serving utterly exquisite chocolate cakes. We stayed there for some time, gradually collecting other people we knew, before deciding to brave the rain for support act number 1, Chicks on Speed. The path into the arena was a big circle, and we speculated more than once that we were actually in hell, and were going to have to walk round the arena, in the rain, forever, but luckily this turned out not to be the case. Also luckily (by all accounts we heard), we didn't actually get there in time for Chicks on Speed (they were bottled off, no doubt grateful for the 'plastic bottles only' rule), but we did get there in time for me to spend my last pennies till payday on a T shirt (which I'm wearing as I type, and enjoying very much. Who needs food when you have a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt?)
The crowd was immense. More people than I can even begin to estimate numbers for. Whenever anyone wandered off, they had to call on their way back to ask someone to raise the umbrella (purple and silver, so quite distinctive) as a navigation aid. The rain stopped, and the sun started to come out, and then James Brown (support act number 2) came on stage. James Brown. Godfather of Soul and all that. And he was much more energetic than anyone has any right to be at his advanced age (I didn't even know he was still alive until I found out he was supporting), and pretty damn good, though I didn't know many of the songs he played.
And finally, the Chilis themselves appeared. Anthony Kiedis, to our great disappointment, in a suit. To our great relief, he gradually removed bits of it over the course of the set. There were lots of tattoos onstage. Lots. Kiedis obligingly turned around just after I'd remarked toventa that I wanted to see the eagle on his back, and I've since discovered that one of Flea's tattoos is a triskell, which naturally makes me extremely happy.
I was expecting them to rock, and they did. There weren't many songs I know well in the set, since I mostly know Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and it looked like they weren't going to play anything from that album, but the encore brought Under the Bridge, and, last, my favourite song of the night, Give it Away, with enough energy in it to keep me going till we were on a train, heading back towards the car, and home.
smiorgan and I went to see Prisoner of Azkaban, to general feelings of 'meh'. It's my favourite of the books (although I haven't read OotP - gave up in disgust), but my least favourite of the films. The pacing felt off, and there were sections where important bits of plot (like Buckbeak's trial) were skimmed over - one minute Buckbeak's mauling Draco, the next Hermione's dropping in a casual 'how did the trial go?' There was a trial? How did that happen? Was Lucius involved? And I agree with frax (I think it was she) in finding the difference in geography from the earlier films odd, although it wasn't too jarring for me, since I've only seen each of the others once, and not recently. Ron and Hermione's budding romance was a bit overplayed, but I did like the acting from (and direction of) the three main kids and Draco - I like the way they're starting to turn into moody, sex-conscious teenagers. The Dementors, as everyone else has commented, came straight from the Rent-a-Nazgul department, which is a shame because I see them quite differently. Sirius and Remus were both pretty good, although again, neither quite enough like my mental image of them. And, as in the book, the whole 'only one person is going to die tonight' scene pissed me off. How hard would it be to actually tell Harry that it's not him Sirius is after?On Saturday, I drove into London to collect
kauket for another bridesmaid dress fitting, with a minor incident on the motorway on the way... There was a police car sitting on a bridge over the road, just before a junction. As soon as they saw it, everyone slowed down to 70mph. (Note for non-Brits: the speed limit on British motorways is 70, but almost no one observes it, and there are rumours that police cars are told to drive at 60 or 80 to avoid disrupting the flow of traffic. The average speed is more like 80.) When I'd just passed the bridge, the police car left it, and came up the sliproad onto the motorway. Everyone was still going at 70, everyone thinking 'Is it me they're after? Did I see them in time? How fast was I going before I slowed down?' The police car zoomed off (at 80, at least), but everyone continued cautiously doing 70, until we passed the police car on the hard shoulder, having pulled over a big flash Jaguar. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, and sped up again.I took
kauket to Luton for her dress fitting, and then she, blondeccgirl and I went up to Milton Keynes in search of underwear and shoes to wear to the wedding. We're all three interested in shoes (although two of us almost exclusively wear boots), and with bra sizes large enough to not be able to buy the pretty bras in nice fabrics stocked by most shops, so we wandered around, exclaiming at lovely shoes and grumbling at lovely bras. secretrebel and C both later told me how glad they were that they'd not been around. They'd have been bored to tears. I successfully bought wedding shoes (and a matching bag. I'm a bit embarrassed about having a matching shoe-and-bag combo), and ordered wedding underwear. Which is pretty good, cos I was starting to think I'd never find shoes I liked, and would get married barefoot (which still has appeal), and never find appropriate underwear in my size, and have to... well, I suppose I would've had to buy some of the standard ivory 'bridal underwear', all of which I hate. Damn off-the-shoulder dress ;-)
On arrival back in Oxford,
kauket and I met up with smiorgan and onebyone, to talk about wedding music. kauket and onebyone are DJing for us, and the wedding music session mostly took the form of us shouting band names at each other, while scouring smiorgan and my music collections. "The Chilis!"
"Yes, they're at the top of the list"
"The Dandies!"
"So are they."
"Guns n' Roses!"
"I'm not writing them down"
"You have to"
"OK, but I'm writing them very small"
and so on.
So we'll have a shod and underwear'd bride, and music to dance to. Should all turn out fine ;-)
And then on Sunday, in the pouring rain, we went into London to see the Chilis play Hyde Park. We drove to the park & ride, and waited for a coach to London, along with lots of other people obviously doing the same thing (all armed with our regulation 500ml-and-no-more water bottles). A coach went by with "Sorry. Coach full" on the front. We debated, and eventually drove into London and abandoned the car at the first underground station we encountered. A much better plan. Not least because all the coaches we went past on the way back were also sporting their "Sorry. Coach full" signs.
When we got off the tube, it was absolutely pelting down with rain, and everyone in the entire world was trying to find a pub near Hyde Park in which to get dry and drunk before the gig started. We gave up on 'drunk' and settled on 'dry' in a cafe serving utterly exquisite chocolate cakes. We stayed there for some time, gradually collecting other people we knew, before deciding to brave the rain for support act number 1, Chicks on Speed. The path into the arena was a big circle, and we speculated more than once that we were actually in hell, and were going to have to walk round the arena, in the rain, forever, but luckily this turned out not to be the case. Also luckily (by all accounts we heard), we didn't actually get there in time for Chicks on Speed (they were bottled off, no doubt grateful for the 'plastic bottles only' rule), but we did get there in time for me to spend my last pennies till payday on a T shirt (which I'm wearing as I type, and enjoying very much. Who needs food when you have a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt?)
The crowd was immense. More people than I can even begin to estimate numbers for. Whenever anyone wandered off, they had to call on their way back to ask someone to raise the umbrella (purple and silver, so quite distinctive) as a navigation aid. The rain stopped, and the sun started to come out, and then James Brown (support act number 2) came on stage. James Brown. Godfather of Soul and all that. And he was much more energetic than anyone has any right to be at his advanced age (I didn't even know he was still alive until I found out he was supporting), and pretty damn good, though I didn't know many of the songs he played.
And finally, the Chilis themselves appeared. Anthony Kiedis, to our great disappointment, in a suit. To our great relief, he gradually removed bits of it over the course of the set. There were lots of tattoos onstage. Lots. Kiedis obligingly turned around just after I'd remarked to
venta that I wanted to see the eagle on his back, and I've since discovered that one of Flea's tattoos is a triskell, which naturally makes me extremely happy.I was expecting them to rock, and they did. There weren't many songs I know well in the set, since I mostly know Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and it looked like they weren't going to play anything from that album, but the encore brought Under the Bridge, and, last, my favourite song of the night, Give it Away, with enough energy in it to keep me going till we were on a train, heading back towards the car, and home.
Damn You Chilis People!
Date: 2004-06-21 06:58 pm (UTC)