Blog: This Isn't Culture, It's A Laugh

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This weekend just gone has featured a whole HEAP of varied and various CULTURED events what I/we have done. It kicked off after work on Friday when I went to see "Eight Days A Week" AKA The Beatles Touring Film. There's been LOADS of publicity about it so I was very surprised to see that it was only showing for ONE day in most places, with only ONE cinema in central London showing it any other time. Turns out the reason for this was that the Thursday night showing was a LIVE SCREENING, so I guess they expected most people to go THEN. As it turned out the showing that I went to was SOLD OUT, so I suppose I wasn't the only person who EITHER was busy on Thursday OR wanted to see it WITHOUT a tedious hour of "famous people arriving" beforehand.

Anyway it was BLOODY GRATE from start to finish, with several things that I hadn't seen before and AMAZING sound. Cor! The live gigs especially were REALLY exciting, and when we had the half hour Shea Stadium gig at the end it was difficult not a) applaud b) SCREAM. Also it was just nice to SEE them again - The Beatles feel like a bunch of PALS who we're lucky enough to see every so often (my big theory about why The Beatles are the BEST: they never set themselves apart from anybody else in an effort to be cool, so when they found The Secret To Existence or A New Sound they SHARED it with everybody else, rather than trying to be COOL and MYSTERIOUS), so it was lovely to spend an extended period of time in their company.

Saturday was Open House Day, which is when lots of normally CLOSED buildings open their doors so that the rest of us can have a good old nosey... I mean, so those of us interested in Architecture And That can be further our educational interests. This year The Drafts Of My Design and I went to have a look at Here East. It WAS the media centre for The Olympics in 2012, but now it is... well, sort of the same, but with Loughborough University chucked in and various ideas about mixing Big Companies Needing Creativity with Creative People Needing Support. We started off watching a slighty Tossy corporate video about it, where people used a LOT of Five Dollar words to say "We are a bit poncey and don't really know what we're up to" so I was a BIT cynical, but then we went on the tour and I was completely WON OVER by it all.

It's an AMAZING also HUGE place - our guides, Roger The Senior Architect and Jake The Young Wunderkind Architect were ACE were full of FACTS and also had that thing where they were happy to TELL us stuff without being CONDESCENDING. They told us how the whole DESIGN of the building was done to disguise how MASSIVE it was by using similar ideas to DAZZLE SHIPS and cor blimey but it worked. You wouldn't notice how VAST the building was (apparently bigger than Canary Wharf lain on its size) unless you went inside like what we did and saw the ENORRRRRMOUS great hangar-sized spaces lurking INSIDE the other vast office spaces. I took some pictures but they came out as HUGE DARK NOTHINGNESSES, which is a) accurate but b) not particularly illuminating.

Anyway it was BRILL and we celebrated by going to Mason & Taylor's on the other side of the building for BEER, BEER and CHIPS. Hoorah!

Then on SUNDAY we went to look at a Paralympics Fun Day and a RAVE, two separate events on the South side of the Olympic Park. The Fun Day was just some GAMES to play, but the RAVE was a HUGE thing consisting of loads of big tops hidden behind a VAST wall that was A COLOSSAL BLOODY RACKET. Bloody heck, you could hear it from MILES away and what you could hear was AWFUL. I was never a fan AT ALL of The Rave Music when it was current, and I must say that time has not improved its CHARMS. It sounded like a very very drunk GIT shouting into a dustbin while fifteen early ringtones go off at the same time. PLUS BASS. We looked at it from afar, then went home. Who knows, maybe in another 30 years Ron Howard will summon experts to do a RAVE retrospective, with Giles Martin remixing it all to sound better. He will have one HECK of a job on his hands!

posted 19/9/2016 by MJ Hibbett

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(NB this isn't me saying "ooh the young people's music is awful" - RAVE is liked by people MY age, so there!)
posted 18/9/2016 by MJ Hibbett

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