Tug of War!

I have never been the strongest lad, but I, as well as most of the year group, all participated in the house tug of war competition. I was pretty crap actually but at least I was an extra man on what was the winning team, victory came at a cost however as I have a blister the size of a contact lens on my right hand. Currently pre-loading Max Payne 3, all 30GB of it! Really looking forward to it though, possibly my most anticipated game of the year so far. According to the Steam page, the game will be released around 5AM... guess what time I'm waking up tomorrow?

Happy Birthday Jenny!

It was the last ever Waistcoat Wednesday today, Mark, Dan and I honored the occasion while handing out Birthday presents to Jenny (Daniel's girlfriend, previously seen in our 2 recent films.) We finished off a load of script writing for our new film idea which is coming along nicely, we have another group meeting tomorrow to discuss what needs to be done.

Mix CD

It has only been now, in the final few days of school, that I have recognized the benefits of drinking water during the school day. Really perked me up a lot and got me engaged in my English Language practice exam which I think went rather well, the question was fortunately about scouting which I happened to know a little more about than the average candidate; that's extra points for context! Out tutor gave us a farewell mix CD in our final PSHE session today which was very thoughtful, it has all the best inspirational tracks about youth and school. Funnily enough, it had the words 'The first day of the rest of your life.' on the disc itself, those were also the exact words I said to Daniel on our first day of 6th form as I quoted the final line of Clerks 2; in other words the mix CD just got a little more special.

Final Monday

New Binding of Issac DLC came out today, what had become to me, a relatively easy game after many hours of practice, has now been knocked up a few degrees of difficulty, which I embraced whole-heartedly. Last Monday in 6th form, wish I could say that I would miss them but I would be lying, I can certainly think of at least 10 placed I would rather be on a Monday Morning.

Fish out of water

Had a really nice breakfast today, little bit of the old continental with a yoghurt and some soda farls. Me and Louis sat in the garden to eat it and it almost felt like the perfect existence had been achieved; then I remembered I had work. On account of the weather, we were not very busy with regular customers but there had been 6 pre-booked parties, which is more than I have ever done in a day so we were fairly busy. Twas bloody hot too, I was gulping down liquids like a fish out of water all day, in fact I even have a little canteen full of water to help me sleep now if I get too warm/dehydrated.

Eurovision 2012

For the first time ever we had one of the chickens come into the house during breakfast time, I was told to shoo it back outside however as they are not toilet trained in the slightest and we didn't want to scrub poo off our floor.

Personally I was quite humbled by our chicken's bravery. This evening we headed off to our annual Eurovision Song Contest party. Our hosts are well know for preparing a really good meal whenever they have guests and once again they didn't disappoint, here is just half of what was on the table as the medium-rare steak or potato salads couldn't quite fit on the table. 

In terms of the actual competition, the entry's this year were vastly superior to pretty much all of last years songs. Also, for the first time ever I voted for the country that ended up winning the show: Sweden. Very impressive song which was unlike anything I had ever seen on Eurovision with a very unique manner of performing. Thank goodness the Russian Grannies didn't win! They were a fun novelty and sorta deserved where they ended up though. Shame about the Hump and Jedward though, thought they would do way better! 

Not quite what I ordered

Again, simple Friday with a single lessons, come home for a very good session of Rayman Origins with 3 players where we basically trolled each other very hard and occasionally got what needed to be done. Went on a very short run as well, Jamie decided to up the pace significantly which backfired dramatically when we all ran out of breath at the 3K mark, we will definitely go slower from now on.

Rather spontaneously, I was asked to go out with Mark, Chris and Dan to McDonald's at around 11:25pm which I agreed to under the circumstance that I would be bought a milkshake. Upon drinking said milkshake I almost wished I hadn't gone. Clearly something was up with the machine as it managed to produce this thick hybrid of flavors, barley passing for the chocolate flavor I asked for. I can still feel it in my stomach, awkwardly sitting in place, with my every move it sloshes around inside of me; I should have ordered a coffee.    

To pitch a plan

I spent most of today fretting over a film essay that I had to do for my 4th lesson. I had already written down the basics of what I wanted to say but for some reason I couldn't tie my argument back to the question. Finally though I managed to string together a couple of decent enough paragraphs 20 minutes before the lesson, and then its sod's law that your teacher is never in when you need to give them something.

We also pitched out new film idea to the guys I mentioned a few Friday's ago who are generally awesome, we thought that we would greatly benefit from a collaboration with them to make the project even better. Mark presented our idea very well and everyone seemed interested to get involved in some way. Jamie especially, who is doing the music for our film, is very eager to put out a trailer ASAP.

Hello heat

Finalized a rough concept of our new film after a good few hours across the whole day on it. The summer has seemed to greet us very suddenly this year, right now I am boiling, fan's on full blast and it's still too warm in here! I even left my window open overnight but was promptly awoken by the loudest wasp in history who just casually flew in and out again ever 2 minutes; he woke me up at 5AM; wasn't too happy with him.

Car Wash, Yeah!

Tame day of school as always, had to walk home in the sudden heatwave though, my goodness I had forgotten just how hot it can get over here. Even as I am writing this I'm hoping I will get to sleep ok! The evening the Cafe Studios team went out to do something I don't think any of us had ever done before, we all piled into Chris' car and headed down to the car wash! We decided to splash out and get the 'Ultimate wash' option, this was the result:

Pretty nice actually, almost looks as good as new... if not a little better thanks to the lovely sunset glint off the front bumper. Chris certainly looks pleased After that event we went back to Mark's house, had cake, coffee and watched a quick episode of The Office and the last half of the Eurovision Semi-Finals, and wow, I was reminded of all the good and bad reasons why I love Eurovision, from the awful foreign hosts to the hilariously over-done transitions between acts; it felt like I was home.

'No more tears,' my arse

Ran out of normal shampoo today so I had to use the only thing we had left in arms reach while I was in the shower: Baby hair wash! And by the looks of it, somebody had dropped it in the bath on too many times as the stuff was really watery. After that delightful experience (I had to rinse 6 times until I got my hair actually clean!) I was texted by Mark who said he could pick me up when our lessons started so I got some time time alone at home ton finish off my homework. Coming home I finished off my brief Michael Moore presentation for film which looks pretty good, looking forward to tomorrow.

Damn you, Nietzsche!

Oh man, another shift at work today but I woke feeling like death. But I decided to embrace this fact and listen to Born to Run, the album as I walked to work which I found to be ridiculously uplifting for some reason. So I arrived at work feeling very confident indeed, and surprisingly we were extremely calm, I only had to make a few cups of tea and coffee in the morning. Come around to 1PM and I went on my break, for unknown reasons I arrived on the Existentialism Wikipedia page and somewhere on it it spoke about how bad this happen to good people, its all just a matter of coincidences. I thought I could get behind that theory, nodding to myself quietly as I clocked back in. My cafe partner and I had a quick joke about how quiet it was as she headed off on her break. 'It's not like it's gonna get any busier than this!'

Then they all came...

Seriously, at this point it was 2PM, it was like everyone looked at their watches and realized that it was past lunchtime but what the hell, better order it now... all at once... while there are only two members of staff on duty and only one of them (me) can be in the cafe while the other guard reception. Long story short, bad things can happen to good people.

Happy Birthday Mark! (Yesterday)

Last night Mark had his 18th Birthday round mine with a bunch of friends, smartly we all decided that this was the perfect opportunity to play some mild drinking games, which coincidentally is also why there was no blog yesterday. He seemed to have a good time though.

Today was spent in a little bit of a traffic jam with Chris who was very kindly driving me to work, ended up being about 5 minutes late on account of the local races and the day of work wasn't too bad, going back tomorrow though and I just hope we aren't too busy.

Great planning sessions

Getting quite excited about our new film idea, we have finished planning the basis of the plot and so far it sounds really awesome! We spent most of our free lessons going over the logistics and possibly filming techniques for some of the action scenes and it is getting my psyched! Otherwise I showed Louis One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I think he liked it a lot and I even preferred it the second time around, gave me time to enjoy the characters more without directly focusing on the plot.

Film Noir in the making

I didn't know they still sold Sunny D, I assumed it disappeared along with Turkey Twizzlers and the other miscellaneous 90's junk food. Jamie bought some home today however and I am just in awe of how much crap is in it basically, according to the bottle, a litre is 95% of your daily sugar intake. Despite this however, it still tastes awful. I can remember long ago back in 2001 when Mum took me and Louis to London for the day and we were allowed to pick one 'special treat' thing for our lunch, obviously Sunny D's advertising campaign was very influential on our drinks decision, it seemed like the thing all the hip kids were drinking at the time... how foolish we were...

We also begun planning for our latest short film this afternoon, we have formed a plot skeleton that we just need to flesh out with dialogue, which should be fun as it will mostly be written like a tongue-and-cheek Noir story, kinda like Max Payne! Expect something relatively seedy while hopefully retaining that old Cafe Studios charm to it. Along side this we have also scripted a variety of shorter sketches that are begging to be made, only thing holding us back now is exam revision so you should see a lot more productivity out of us through the summer! 

Liver vs cheese?

Today has been exceptionally uneventful. I completed Max Payne an listened mirthfully to Louis arguing with a friend over the flavor of cheese and how it is supposedly less accessible than calf's liver. Mark is doing a maths re-take tomorrow, so best of luck to him, he seems relatively confident so I hope he does a bit better than the last two times.

ALARM!

My morning alarms didn't go off today so I was laying in bed waiting for the oh-so familiar noise of 'Blackberry default alarm noise' to awaken me. Side from that, I tried to fix myself out of a glitch I found in Max Payne that was preventing my quest for vengeance as a door marked as 'unlocked' wouldn't open due to the NPC that awkwardly spawns INSIDE the door itself! I found a niffty way around it though but I accidentally turned on God mod so now I am immortal and I can't seem to turn it off even if I try to disable it... Dug myself another hole.

Bayer 10K 2012

Within an hour of getting out of bed I found myself in a large queue for the annual fun-run in our area, as I said yesterday, I wasn't too confident about making the whole distance but I think I did pretty well considering. I didn't have to stop at any point although I was overtaken by more than one person dressed up as a giant mascot. I still haven't quite gotten the knack of using the drinks table, it is not humanly possible to drink and jog at the same time so I end up choking on the thing that should be keeping me alive. Also, my 'power song' crept into my head at the 4K mark so I had to silence it repeatedly until I got to the near finish line, then it felt like I collected the 7 chaos emeralds and 50 rings!

The afternoon was dedicated to the Director's cut of Das Boot which was and epic of epicness! The time just flew by as well, the final hour in particular was just ridiculously action packed and tense, I felt like I was under the same pressure as the submarine at times. Again, it's one of those films that has a potentially very dull premise, but is done brilliantly here and you would be a fool not to see it at some point in your life, if only to experience the same degree of tension and claustrophobia as the Nazi U-boat sailors.

Distance Dilemma

Working in Summer weather, little to no customers! Very relaxing day at work again and I came home to a steak dinner which Louis rustled up with some pukka seasoning. Very nice indeed. Otherwise, I have just been fretting a little bit about the Bayer 10K tomorrow, I just hope I trained enough to make the distance.

School film festival 2012

This afternoon was pretty standard, played another game of Rummikub and showed Mark and Chris 'A History of Violence' which went down rather well. This evening however, we attended our school's film festival which was a great night out. There were so many incredible films on show, all done by our peers, the two stand-out films came from Tom Norman who entered 'Safety' and Tom Metcalf who entered the outstanding 'Impasse;' (links to both their channels below.) We showed 'Sunny Side Up' which won us both the Razzie of 'Best fight scene' and what was essentially the 'WTF award' which came with an incredible clapperboard. However when it came down to 'Best Film' I knew we were in for some tough competition from others so my heart was pounding, but we very humbly accepted our mock Oscar for 'As Time Goes By.' I was almost speechless by our success, unfortunate considering that I was made to say a few words on behalf of the group.But really, I was just so proud of our little group and I strongly urge you to check out the aforementioned videos because they were really impressive.

Tom Norman: http://www.youtube.com/user/tomakonus/featured  
Tom Metcalf: http://www.youtube.com/user/bigmalteaser101
Impasse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAKYAx1n2bU

(Tom Norman has not posted 'Safety' on his Youtube channel, but you can still check out his hilarious 'How to' videos!)

Free hearts

Got off quite lucky this morning, we no longer have a first lesson on a Thursday as we have finished one side of the course, by chance we also got 2nd lesson off on account of our teacher not being in. Spent some of my free time finishing off an essay and learning how to play Hearts, turns out I'm not very good as I consistently get screwed over by the Queen of Spades. Mum and Dad returned home from Kiev, minus Mum's Kindle which she foolishly left on the airplane.

OMG A NECROMORPH!

Purchased Shank 2 yesterday evening, completed it this afternoon. Gameplay has been tightened a wee bit, and counter attacks look and feel great to pull off. I couldn't help but feel that the story hadn't received the same TLC as the first game, I have no idea what Shank's motive is apart from saving a lady and we are quickly whisked away to a different and unique but without any real reason other than the developers had a good idea for a level. The dialogue has also been dramatically trimmed and each level ends with Shank doing some hilariously over the top kill (usually involving explosions) as he walks away victoriously without even caring.

Had Mark, Dan and Lucy round again this evening for a film and a game of Rummikub, which was great fun! I also endeavored to play some Dead Space. (I stopped playing because it was too frightening) Mark persuaded me to play with volume up and lights off and he proceeded to spend the rest of the play session laughing at my continuous commentary as I desperately tried to calm my own nerves.     

Printer Scare

One question was on my mind this morning 'When the hell did I last shave?' Somehow in my dream I could perceive the feeling of my hands on my stubble while I was technically unconscious... It was so weird. Getting up I was also treated to a nice printer scare as I attempted to print out my coursework, apparently Black C-20 is a completely different colour to Black C-12 and it couldn't possibly print, I dived into the cartridge drawer and tried every last one until I finally got the winning combination; by then it felt like I won the lottery.

Went back to work after school to get trained on how to actually cook and prepare food as they didn't have much time for me during the weekends, which is understandable considering how busy they get. However, this presented a unique opportunity for me, in order to get to work from school I had to go under a very specific underpass, one I hadn't gone through in years. I always remembered it having a wonderful mosaic with a small canopy of trees in the centre of a roundabout, the sound of the cars muffled within the dip. My memory tended to exaggerate the picturesque nature of the location but it was still very impressive and nostalgic; I felt strangely zen as I walked through it, almost as if I found a missing piece of myself. 

Coursework is finito!

Coursework is finally done (Hooray!) and I finished off a film presentation with the help of Mark, thus tying up any difficult homework I had in one fell swoop. Again Louis and I find ourselves home alone until Thursday as our parents have gone off to Kiev while we fend for ourselves; kitchen certainly gets quite messy without anyone willing to clean it...

Busy working again

More time at work today, wasn't a very busy day so there isn't much to say. Got a whole lotta homework to do tomorrow as well so that will be fun... It feels like I haven't had any 'me' time in ages, I just wanna watch a movie I think.

Where are you...?

Almost couldn't find my name badge this morning, there was a mad rush to get myself ready in general but I somehow still managed to arrive at work early. It was another one of those slow days luckily, not too many people so it was a change of pace from last week, that said we were getting prepared for the new cafe renovation for tomorrow. I will be one of the first peeps to try out the new cafe system as I'm also going in on Sunday, I'm hoping I won't feel as knackered then as I do now.

A Simple Pan

Standard Friday morning, single lesson and a the long trek back to my house. This time I was accompanied by Mark and Josh who dubbed the group 'The Three Musketeers,' however when it came to putting a high score into the trivia machine at Rio's it could only fit 'Muskatee...' About 2 minutes from the house we came across a recycling bin with a treasure that would couldn't believe to behold: a frying pan! Just lying there in a green box outside, we figured that no-one wanted it so we took it home, gave it a good wash and it's now ready to take down to Bournemouth; that was quite possibly the highlight of the day.

Well... almost. Me and Josh spent a good 2 hours on Timesplitters 2 having various, 'one-hit kills' showdowns, the best of which being the match where players could only use bricks or fists as their weapons; you have never seen such a tense game or heard such loud profanities/whooping being shouted.

Shortly after we watched A Simple Plan which didn't go down as well as I hoped because I quite like it but many were questioning the realistic quality of it, I thought it was believable enough though. Just went on an 8K run with Mark and Jamie and I am now ready for bed!    

Review is up!

In case you haven't checked it out, I have made a short review of Nosferatu you can watch below or on youtube. This will hopefully be the first of many old film reviews I plan to do to possibly get the newer crowds into giving some of the oldies a chance.

Bought a little indie platformer called 'Dustforce' yesterday, its a real ball-buster like Super Meat Boy but this one has more of an OCD element that also makes it much more geared towards a completionist; in other words this is Dan's dream game!

Nosferatu Review

Headhunters

Historian interpretations of Kennedy's Vietnam policies was the name of the game in the library this morning, 2 hours of solid note taking from books, this did mean however that I was super prepared for actually writing the coursework which has been going very well so far. I even tried to get Mark to secretly take out another library book for me as I thought I used up my quota, I drew him up a little floor plan and everything! Alas, it was in vain as they were only reference books, luckily Mark got most of the blame and I just need to lie low from that librarian who now has my name, most likely in her not-so-good books.

The annual school photos thing was this afternoon, being one of the taller ones meant I could stand at the back feeling pretty smug but it also meant that I was stood up for the longest which was a tad uncomfortable on the ol' legs. Because my Blackberry has been acting up regarding its set clock time I took it into the local phone shop to be examined, the chap was really nice but unfortunatly he couldn't quite solve the problem, so that called for a 'Theo bodge-job.' Essentially the phone was saying my messages were all arriving at the same time: 3:48am, 16th of August 2044, this was quite a big nuisance but I very cunningly got around it by setting the year to 2055 which has the same calendar days as this year; problem sorted!

Finally I went off to see a Norwegian thriller called Headhunters, which was pretty damn good. It started out a bit like American Psycho but developed quickly into a No Country for Old Men kinda thing, many scenes, especially during the middle sections of the film, were just pure adrenaline and more often than not, provided some imagery and set pieces you have never seen before. I won't spoil anything but one of the best scenes involves a dog, a tractor and an outhouse, just take my word for it.     

Get well soon Mum

Managed to knock off about 1/3rd of my coursework this afternoon, which was a pretty good effort for the 2 hours work I put into it. Mum spent most of today feeling very, very ill, to the extent where there had to be a washing up bowl placed lovingly next to her bed, then emptied, then put back in case it was needed again.