August 18th, 2010 by Dave
Went to see the A-Team last week. Its frikking AWESOME!!! To be fair I was pretty excited when I heard that they were making this so I had pretty high expectations. I must say I wasn’t disappointed. Its really just a good old fashioned action movie. I thought the plot was well paced and the action scenes were amazing. I would say that its more of a “re-imagining” than the prequel it appears to be. In the TV program there are a lot less guns and no-one died. I suppose you could say the characters in the film were more caricatures of the characters in the show. They all seem to have notched it up a level, Murdock seems crazier here than in the show and Face is borderline sleazy but isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, which (if I remember) is a bit of a change to the TV character. If you haven’t see it, you really should, if you like a good action flick then you wont be disappointed…remember your popcorn! On a side note another action movie worth seeing, though you’ll now need to wait for the DVD is The Losers. Based off a comic book……does no-one have original ideas any more?? Its also worth a watch. now I’ll just sit back and wait for someone to make a Thundercats movie…….
Tags: action, explosions, movies
Posted in movies | No Comments »
July 27th, 2010 by Jacq
What a weekend! Spent Saturday plonked in middle of field in Lochearnhead surrounded by some seriously stunning Scottish scenery(try saying that drunk!). Hills on three sides and a loch on the other. What a crackin’ highland games. The Balquidder and Lochearnhead event is up there with the best of the year. It was a highland games in the traditional sense. The Clans native to the local area were there dressed up to the nines in blazing tartans adding some technicolour the occasion. The organisers were great, the locals were fab as were the million and one Spanish tourists who had decended on the Lochside. What made it really special was that there were no carnival shows! There was no recording of an over excited Dutchman shouting “Scream if you wanna go faster” on the waltzers..followed by ……yes….screams from kids who wanted to go faster!! Bliss…
I know the kids must love it….but there is only so much Soft Cell Tainted Love one can listen to without wanting to chew off one’s own arm.
After about two minutes (or so it felt ) sleep we headed back up to the Kingdom for the gathering at St Andrews on Sunday.
We were bathed in sunshine for the duration and were able to watch lots of the events from the tent which was dandy. Controversy hit the games when a local resident tried to “throw” the visitors race by pretending to be from Hong Kong….needless to say the MC was not buying any of it!….
We had a nice guy with a kids stall beside us which had one of those machines where you hit the base with a hammer and if you hit it hard enough, the bell rings….Kids were playing with it all day wining oversized blow up balls of spongy danger and stuffed animals.. About 4 o’clock an old lady (and I mean old) passed by the stall being helped to walk on both sides by her daughters.. She was crooked and looked about 150.
The old yin made her way to the hammer machine and asked how much.. Despite looking about as strong as a mini gem lettuce, the old gal paid her £2 managed to hit the bell…We couldn’t believe it, she could barely stand, but is clearly taking more than aspirin every morning with her weetabix! Amazing!
Thanks to every body who bought at the weekend and supported Urban Pirate…we had a blast! x
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
July 22nd, 2010 by Jacq
After the gazebo debacle, we thought, thats it….things will be on the up, but then it happened, something else.
It came in the form of BurntIsland Highland Games. Let me set the scene.
When you think of Highland Games, like me I’m sure you think of clans coming together – drinking usige beatha from a quaich. Flashes of tartan against a backdrop of heather covered hills. The haunting sound of pipes travelling through the pea soup mist. Well, let me tell you, like me you would have been disapointed.
It rained…it rained a lot. There were a lot of grown men wearing tracksuit trousers with dress shoes(can some one explain that look to me please). We were put in a pitch beside a man selling bath-towel sets who claimed they had been designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh himself! Now, I’m no Mackintosh expert, however I am fairly positive that in between designing Glasgow School of Art his masterpiece and Hill House, Charlie was not sitting in front of his drawing board pondering which designs would look good on the side of an avocado bathroom suite.
Burntisland just wasn’t how I remembered it as a child. School trips on hot June days, screaming on the waltzers and eating chopped pork sandwiches washed down by irn bru warmed at the bottom of my school bag.
Some of the stalls were doing great business; unfortunately we weren’t selling sweets, candy floss, Mackintosh Bath Towels, inflatable hammers…or pedi-eggs. But heh there’s always next year!
To top it all off, when coming back(depressed) from the loo at the end of the day (they charged me 30p wot happened to spend a penny!)….I managed to slip on the muddy path of the links and fall face first in the mud. A few lovely boys came to my aid but it was too late. I was covered from the waist down in good old Fife mud and not in a sexy lady wrestling sense.
However, we won’t be beaten..We will be back on the road this weekend stronger and annoyingly more enthusiastic than ever! Stopping off at Lochearnhead and Airth on Sat and St Andrews on Sunday… If you are around, please come and say hello…meeting people is the best bit of this whole thing……Let’s hope the sun shines! Jacq x
Posted in Highland Games | No Comments »
July 22nd, 2010 by Jacq
Well, this is the first blog for a while so let’s do a news round-up of some of the good bits!
Ceres(Fife)…was in a word, brilliant.. We arrived at stupid o’clock in the morning to be given such a warm welcome it made getting up at 6am worth while.
Ceres if you have never been there is tiny! The event field was about the same size as a school footy pitch, but what Ceres lacks in size it makes up for in personality. It was sunny, the customers were lovely and people were just loving the designs. We went home happy, sunburned and looking forward to next year’s games.
In between then and now we have been touring quite a bit….Glengarry(lets not talk about that..no really), Cupar, Luss, Stirling, Loch Lomond. We met some fabulous people from home and away and had a great time at all of the games.
We met the Ghurkhas in Alva which was totally special and one of whom left the stall chuffed to bits with his map print tee-shirt which I think he was wearing home – no bag required!
But I’m digressing; let’s get to the here and now. And what a keeker of a time we’ve had this past week. Some ranting follows but please indulge me.
Having discovered a little too literally in Cupar that the tent wasn’t waterproof, we treated ourselves to a new gazebo.
The website said that this thing was all singing all dancing. It was waterproof, hurricane proof, bullet proof and did everything short of putting your lipstick on for you.
Alas it wasn’t true. We got a gazebo yes, it did have a frame and a cover and yes, some sides too.. But that’s where the similarity of it being a gazebo ended. Call me cynical, but when I think of a roof being waterproof, I think of something that doesn’t have holes in it. I think of something that doesn’t look like it has been in a fight with a half man half Alsatian in an east end pub. We were disappointed ( correction I was fuming…David was disappointed).
Crux of the story is….Gazebo people(you know who you are) saga on going…but we will fight the good fight! Jacq x
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 23rd, 2010 by Dave
So my latest outing, attempting to bring my art to the masses, was situated at the Southside Festival next to Victoria Park in the south of Glasgow. I was looking forward to this one for a number of reasons, a) it was only 15mins away from where I live/am based, 2) it is a festival that is free…ie, loads of people and c) it was to be the hottest day in May in Scotland since records began!!
So the day began at a nice and healthy 8am, no need to get up at stupid o’clock, although Jac felt the need to get up at 6 to get herself ready……I dunno….Anyway, loading the van was nice n easy, only had a few boxes, things are starting to streamline! When we got there there weren’t many other people setting up, so seemed pretty empty but people soon started to arrive. Most of the stalls had been taken up by around half 10, the majority of those were charities, however the pitches either side of us were still empty. That didnt last long, I was just in the process of telling Jac that we were the only ones selling the specific type of products when we noticed that someone was about to start setting up next to us.That person was none other than Gillian Kyle (you can find her website at gilliankyle.com). For those that dont know, she sells items, such as tote bags and t-shirts, that have been branded with illustrations of Scottish products. Gill is a thoroughly nice person and even gave me some advice for places that I could go to help promote my stuff. It was quite a nice looking section of stalls if I do say so myself, Gill had her items which were predominantly white contrasting with mine which were predominantly dark (I had put up a marquee side behind me to protect from the wind) it was almost like a wee boutique in itself.
The day progressed nicely, lots of really positive feedback from customers and visitors. Jac was out front sunbathing whilst I decided to play it smart and stay in the shade. I had decided against the kilt for this occasion purely based on the weather, it was crazy hot, was starting to sweat whenever I went for a wee wander. However Scotland being Scotland there was a slight problem with the weather, namely the wind. It wasnt too bad to begin with, however it did start to pick up, and in doing so had started to destroy one of the stalls next to us. The stalls were common market stalls, metal frames covered by a tarpaulin. The wind had caught the tarp next to us an was pulling apart the metal frame. The event person on hand wasnt doing much help, whose only suggestion to solve the problem was to take the tarp off the entire row of stalls….which quite frankly was just mental. In doing that would have put everyones stall in jeopardy, had it rained (which it didnt in the end) and it would have been biblical rain due to the crazy heat, everyones stock would have got wet, also the wind would then have just been blowing everyones stuff around…So it came down to yours truly to solve the problem. Tie the metal frame together so that it doesnt come apart…..It baffles me why people try to solve problems that would end up causing bigger problems. It’s like using a hammer for a thumb-tac….bizarre.
After that like fiasco, everything started to calm down. All that needed to be done was to take apart the stall and pack up. This also ended up being really easy, I think I’m getting the hang of it! The next event I’ll be at is the Highland Games in Cornhill, which is near Banff and Macduff, in two weeks. So its a crazy o’clock set off time for that one. The difference with this one is that I shall be accompanied by my father, due to Jac setting up an indoor carboot sale…Fingers crossed for a good weekend.
Tags: events, southside festival, tour
Posted in Music, The Biz | No Comments »
