BBC iPlayer and why I love it

I'd like to say how much I love BBC iPlayer. It's bloody great, and I'm going to now dedicate a blog to the programmes which I mainly watch on it, all three of them, and they're all reality television programmes.

Now, I can sense some of you already shaking your heads at the fact that I watch reality television, but no! This isn't Big Brother we're talking about (well, it's BBC for a start, and we all know Big Brother is a Channel Four programme), but the following three programmes.

Great British Menu - A cookery show, where two chefs compete against each other to cook a meal for my culinary hero and many other top chefs from across the world, at The Gherkin in London.

The Apprentice - A show, where 16 of the country's best (read completely incompetent idiots) businessmen and women compete to land a job as an apprentice to Sir Alan Sugar.

Funny Business - A comedy talent show, looking for a welsh comedian, who goes on to win a £30,000 contract with the manager of The Comedy Club who promote comedians and own comedy venues across the country.

Now then, let's discuss these shows in a bit more detail, or to be exact, no discussion, just my opinions.

Firstly, Great British Menu, we're onto the last of the heats at the moment, and for all but one episode, I've predicted the right winner (the episode I got wrong being the Welsh episode, neither of the chefs where Welsh anyway, they just lived there!). At the moment they are in Northern Ireland, and the two contestants are Danny Millar and Noel McMeel, and my money is on Danny Millar. I like underdogs (Noel has been in it before and has more experience of the competition), also, the welsh competitor who lost had been in the competition before, and she lost the last time around, and the Noel lost the first time around, so I've got a feeling that he will lose again.
The emphasis this year is on modern British cooking, and whilst both have some modern techniques in their cooking style, Noel presents his meals in a very classical way (and some I would call somewhat twee), whilst Danny's meals not only employ modern cooking methods, but also push boundaries of what people come to expect, desserts are tomorrow, and then judging on Friday, and we'll find out if my tips are right then, the proof is, as they say, in the pudding (ho ho ho).

The Apprentice is something I've only gotten into this series, but I'm finding it compelling viewing, and a fellow blogger I've come to know about through Rhys' blogs has already blogged about it.

I can't really comment much on the contestants (known as candidates in this programme), because as a foodie, this business stuff isn't something I'm too familiar with (unlike how I can comment on chefs and cooking styles)... however, what I can say, is that I wouldn't employ a SINGLE person on this programme, I wouldn't even put them in charge of organising a piss up in a brewery, nor would I leave them to plan a shag in a brothel. They are a hopeless shower of shit, who seem to have some crazy idea that brainstorm diagrams, showing how they could promote things, spend all day in an office, and then panic when they've planned it all, yet not gotten on with it.
The level of bitching on that programme too, it makes me want to kill. Grrr, it's fascinating, but really, the people on that programme make me despair!

The final programme I have to comment on, is Funny Business, which was great, although I do not agree with the winning contestants. Not in the slightest do I agree.
The first winner was the skinny bloke, I think he was called Rob. How he won, I don't know. He just regurgitated jokes that have been going for years, that I heard when I was in school. The second winner (because they were indecisive twats) was called Kev, I think. He was a bit smutty, but that doesn't bother me... what bothers me is that he wasn't all that funny with smut, in the semi's and the finals, he made mistakes, in the semi final, he totally forgot his lines, and they put him through because he recovered it. In my opinion, he should have been dropped from the competition because of that, and sent to do more gigs, practise in front of more people and not forget lines.
I think the overall winner should have been the guy who went on last, I can't remember his name, but he did a joke about him looking like Elvis Costello. I liked him, I like Elvis Costello, he's good, and he was funny (not Elvis Costello, I've never heard him tell a joke, I'm talking about this comedian who did a joke about him looking a bit like Elvis Costello)

In short, BBC iPlayer is great, because I live in a place where the TV doesn't receive signal that well, and the only thing I watch on it is Doctor Who, and when I'm not watching that, Matt is playing on his Xbox with it.

This has been my longest blog in fucking ages, and my fingers are tired.

Kris

Coffee and Croissants can fuck off

All you need is a cup of tea, none of that pansy French coffee nonsense. It will set you up for the day, I tell ya!

Why am I telling you this I hear you ask? (that's a cue for you to ask that out loud, then you can carry on reading) Well, it's because a wonderful thing just happened, and I feel it really shows the connection we have here at the studio. I put the kettle on, without telling Roo, I went upstairs to get dressed, I came back down dressed, and Roo was in the kitchen making brews for us both. Tea is such a wonderful thing! Who would have thought that a few dried leaves stewed in water could bring such unity amongst people?

Another reason for blogging today, is to share with you all some pictures of my bands gig on Thursday at The Blue Room, I think this one really sums me up as a person;

Mildly Dangerous

Ooooh, look at me, I'm such a rebel aren't I?

Well, I can't be bothered chatting much more, but do check out the rest of the pictures here

Kris

Last Nights Gig

Well then, last night Peter Simple played our second gig ever, and my god it was immense. I'll post our set list later on in this blog. I'm really enjoying only doing vocals, and using my guitar every now and then. It means I can really jump about, get into the audience, skank, injure myself in varying ways with microphones and act out my songs a bit more (I think in the style of musicals, most of the songs I write feature characters, which in my head have a back story and such)

The set list for last night was;

• Theme from Bottom
• The Ballad of Sonny Gritts
• Can You Feel The Love Tonight?
• Getting Everything But Having Nothing At All
• Monkey Man
• Where The Hell Are You?

We started off a bit shaky and tentative, but it really got good (although I forgot lyrics to Getting Everything But Having Nothing At All) towards the end, with my personal highlight being Monkey Man, it's at that point where I really jumped about, I climbed things and jumped off them, cutting my lip open (like in the old days with TEPODD) when I landed, sang the "la la la's" with my mate Jake, skanked with strangers. I think during that song, we definitely sounded at our best, the band was tight and well rehearsed, and everything was good!!

After the gig it was time for a couple of drinks, I say a couple... I dare not open my wallet to get an idea of how much money I managed to spend on alcohol, I'm hoping that I was bought drinks more than me buying them. There was drinks at The Blue Room (where we played) over a game of GIANT WOODEN CONNECT FOUR (which I lost all three games I played haha!), then we were going to go to Frenchmans Cove, but decided not to and to go to Scrooges, where I was bought a gin and tonic... then it would seem we went to The Tache, I have vague memories of it, but it's confirmed by the stamp.

Anyway, enough of me wittering on, I'm bored and need a brew.

Kris

Well, I've been up for over an hour already today

I've been up for an hour already today, which at 10.40am is a rather shocking thing, it's going to be a rather quick blog post as me and the guys at the studio are going to look around a hotel that they are considering getting for us to live in, (although then I will need to pay rent, so if you're an employer and reading this blog, gizza job mate).

So far today, I woke at 9.25am when the new Mac Pro came for the studio, now I think I've mentioned this before, but I live in a recording and rehearsal studio, it's an interesting life indeed. Recently their PC decided to melt, so it was an ideal time to get on with the upgrade on the studio of getting a Mac Pro, which are much better (apparently) for using to record music and media editing stuff.

The Mac Pro was supposed to arrive with a projector for the HUGE projection screen which is now on the wall facing me as I type... safe to say, it didn't. What it also didn't come with, which wasn't something it was supposed to come with, was a PCI Express Card (I think that's what it is called, Dan keeps saying it on the phone). The PCI Express Card is needed for them to be able to do music based things on the Mac... thus rendering the studio temporarily unable to record bands, which is no biggie, since nobody is in until the bank holiday weekend, but it means that Interracial Buttsechs (our studio band to test new equipment) can't make any music, our next song is going to be a jazz song in 3/4 time.

Anyway, I must dash, hotels to look at and such.

Kris!

Living in a recording studio

I don't know if anyone reads this, but yeah. If you don't already know, I no longer live with my dad (partially on account of him driving me batshit crazy), and I now live at Rock Hard Music Group's recording studio. It's an interesting life, takeaways at least twice a week, living with a mental rotweiller/german shepherd cross, which spends half it's waking hours shitting and pissing inside the unit. Oh yeah, it's a warehouse too.

Today however, I made a start of getting them used to eating healthily, and made a nice Mediterranean style warm salad, it was very nice indeed :)

Band stuff, well, we've been rehearsing quite a bit, the band is ever increasing in size too, we have a gig on Thursday at The Blue Room in town.

I'd blog more, but we're listening to some tunes on youtube, and I have beer to be drank. If I don't blog more, email me at kristoff_ska at yahoo dot com

Kris