Israeli Art and Prairie Dogs

Imagine my surprise when I received an event invitation from a guy I haven't physically seen for about four or five years.

He wanted me to come and check out some Israeli Art, though for some reason failed to reply when I inquired whether he was going.

After getting in touch with other mutual friends, who also hadn't seen the man in question for an age, it turned out that I would have company so I happily trotted off to Edgware Road on Sunday at four.

It was quite a small gallery but I'm not going to complain because it was free.

The first picture to catch my eye or rather to be pointed out to me by, I think, Shem was, well let's say interesting.

It was entitled Yogi Style, I'll let your imagination run riot on that one.

Another one depicted a woman farting while being passionately kissed, great stuff the weekend after Valentine's Day.

There were a fair few nude pictures and even more generally odd ones, I quite liked the picture board of the woman pulling her organs out of her stomach and making friends with them - it seemed she had about six kidneys at least.

Also all importantly the man of the hour, no not the artist, Michael was in attendance.

So we had a nice chat and it turned out that he's engaged to the Italian girl that he told me about in my third year of University.

Not content with an evening of Israeli Art I head off to stir up some action in Kings Cross.

My destination: The Cross Kings pub where I found a bunch of who I shall call Language of Prairie Dogs fans.

I had been led to believe that they were coming on at eight, as it turned out that was when they were meant to turn up, they didn't come on until 10.30.

As for the other bands, well no one was awful, but one of them seemed to be a bit of a Keane covers band - so maybe that's not true...

There was a beardy couple who were quite attractive in their own way and performed a perfectly passable set.

There was one guy who sounded like he was New Cross who did a set of mostly African inspired music which I thoroughly enjoyed and actually got me dancing.

Then Matt, Dean and Hayden finally mounted the stage for their five songs.

Lovely stuff.

Then I went home.

Juno

This film starts and ends with a chair, more or less anyway. This says a lot about the tone of the film, it’s quite quirky and irreverent. It’s got a great indie soundtrack for a pretty solid indie movie.

The basic premise is that Juno (Ellen Page) has sex with a guy called Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and gets pregnant and then has to deal, with varying degrees of maturity, with the consequences.

It turns out that all you need to produce three positive pregnancy tests is well pregnancy obviously and a very large amount of Sunny D.

I still can’t find any explanation for why she has a Hamburger phone, apart from maybe that’s what you do if you’re about to become a food obsessed whale.

After finding out she is pregnant she forgoes an abortion down to some blueberry-flavoured condoms and the fact that babies have finger nails.

So this leaves her with the option of getting a good couple to adopt the baby. Needless to say she find a worthy couple and gets to really like the adoptive father to be.

Things don’t run as smoothly as planned of course, but with parents as supportive as Juno’s they don’t need to.

All in all this is very sweet and funny film. Maybe it gets a little too sweet in places, but it doesn’t make you gag – just mostly laugh and gesticulate at the screen. It’s a sad state of affairs that parents would rather have their child addicted to hard drugs or expelled from school than have a baby at 16.

There are some good one-liners and the performances are generally very convincing.

Also it’s nice to see a film that deals with a mother to be, even if she’s giving up her baby, so sensitively and affectionately.

Here is the final version.

Not enough freebies to be truly well...

Me and Nargis, the new dynamic duo - well maybe not, went to the University's Well Being Day yesterday.

I did quite a few stories on Welfare campaigns at my old Uni. so I'm no stranger to the general ethos, but I've never been to a whole Day event before.

We turned up at about a quarter to ten and promptly got talking to the rather portly organiser and then a Homeopath.

She was really lovely and she directed us to her students who turned up a little early, the event wasn't meant to start until ten.

I have nothing against Homeopathy, but these girls did start off a little gushy.

"It’s energy based healing."

"The body itself is an amazing healing system."

"More the energy compound which is retained within the body."

No I don't understand that sentence much either, bad Journalist, should have asked more questions.

"We believe that it works and it’s effective."

Well you'd hope so really wouldn't you?

"It gives you the strength to cope with the stresses and anxieties of student life."

Ah good, I'll throw away the Prozac now.

For us it didn't end there either, they got really worried about being misrepresented and actually given what I've just written maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on that point.

In the end their tutor came over and asked to see my shorthand, which at the time I struggled reading back so she let it go.

Then it was the turn of the RSPB.

Why were they at a Well Being Day, well: "Getting outside and being at one with nature is very good for your soul."

Also, "we’re not a bird watching organisation.

So we’re doing quite a lot to dispel that myth.

We do have a lot of members that do that."

So that set me straight.

And made me giggle.

But the ultimate giggle factor has to be reserved for the Yakult man.

Yes of course you've seen the adverts, but did you know: "A Bulgarian named Metchinoff first looked into Yakult as he discovered Bulgarian peasants who were living longer were eating fermented food."

Oh yeah and the giggle moment: "We can’t make claims, but we've got 72 years of history behind us."

What do you mean, of course I'm convinced, it's yummy sugary loveliness.

Finally we saw someone from the Stop Smoking service, but to be honest I wasn't all that interested in that not being a smoker myself.

There were loads of other stalls, one of which gave us some free - if awful - energy bars.

But after all that excitement we were relieved to head back to campus with our modest collection of stories.

Skins

I am going to try and blog about something more meaningful soon I promise.

In the meantime...

Skins started again on E4 last night, so I'm back to watching really crappy, in this case teen, drama.

I must confess that I quite enjoyed the last series of Skins even though it was completely implausible and fell into the category of teen drama that was so far from my experiences as a teenager as to be doubly ludicrous.

I missed the first couple of minutes as I was coming back from somewhere, so I missed the initial revelation that Tony was still alive.

My brother will be disappointed after he and his friends dressed all in black with a banner reading "Tony is Dead" aimed at the near by flat as a spoiler, not so clever now hey..?

All was going ok until about half way in when Michelle and Sid decide to have a conversation about Tony and the aftermath of his accident.

The acting was bloody awful.

In fact I think they should both probably win bad acting awards, I couldn't really choose between them.

So when it finished I was even more in a need of a shower than an hour and a half of Yoga had warranted.

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd was the first gothic musical I've ever seen.

As with most Tim Burton this is a beautifully shot piece of gothic cinema.

I must confess that in the early stages I found myself quite impatient for the film to end, but I think that was more to do with my restless mood than the film itself.

I was a little sceptical of Johnny Depp's singing ability as his first song was little more than tuneful speech, but he warmed up and by the end I was quite impressed with his vocal performance.

The songs flowed easily with the action and didn't feel forced at all.

It was far darker than your average musical and so proved to be something quite unique.

I was a bit disappointed with the fake blood, it was too bright to look real, but given the amount that was being thrown around it was probably for the best as the sight of something more convincing may have made it all just a bit too much.

This is a musical for people who don't like musicals to my eyes I don't see how anyone could fail to enjoy it.

The fabulous life of Lily Cole

You know you tell yourself that you can't have it all, well for some people maybe that's not true.

I'd never heard of Lily Cole up until a couple of weeks ago.

That's hardly surprising as she's a model and what I know about fashion could easily fit on the back of a post-it note.

So how did I get to hear of her?

Well I sometimes see the articles on msn after logging out from my e-mails and there it was a list of the richest people under thirty.

Lily Cole isn't even 20 yet and has signed a deal that sees her as the new face of M&S.

She was the youngest model to appear on the cover of Vogue when she was 16.

But I started off talking about having it all, well not only does Cole have a multi-million pound modelling career, she’s off to Cambridge University in October.

She's even in St. Trinian.

Jealous, maybe just a little bit.

Another reason to love Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett proved he was a man after my own heart when he said on an interview for Radio 4's Today Programme that he thought Public schools should be abolished.

I've thought this from the moment that I found out that fee paying schools existed.

Bennett referred to the self confidence that seems to be in bred into public school students, which I too encountered for the first time when I went to University.

Essentially you are setting up parallel realities for people, dividing society from the very earliest point.

I was introduced to Alan Bennett as a teenager doing my Drama GCSE.

My Drama teacher played us an excerpt of his Talking Heads series.

Even from that short clip I thought they were lovely: tender, moving and realistic.

I saw some more on TV quite a few years later and I keep meaning to dig out the full set.

Then my mum encouraged me to go and see the stage play of The History Boys, unfortunately it was all sold out, but some time later they brought out a film version which I did get round to seeing.

I enjoyed The History Boys, but still prefer Talking Heads.

Alan Bennett writes about every day people so it is perhaps not surprising that he is championing the aspirations of every day people as well.