Sunday 25 January 2009

My new favourite night

EVERY FRIDAY

I headed here for Owen's birthday, dressed up as a hippy - I think I pulled it off, even with the daisies I had painted on my cheek! The music, the venue and of course the company ended up making it a very special night.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Songbook 3 & 4



I suppose the good thing about sitting at a desk all day trying to finish 3 essays and a play is that sometimes, while procrastinating and looking at all sorts of stuff on the net, you stumble across some really lovely music. Coconut Records is Jason Schwartzman's new band, he was previously in Phantom Planet and is also one of my favourite actors. (You might know him from I Heart Huckabees and The Darjeeling Limited, both great films.) Hector Projector is totally new to me, but I loved his video, which he animated himself. Two very talented guys!

Saturday 3 January 2009

"Yet across an immense ethereal gulf..."


The 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Welle's version of War of the Worlds is famous throughout the media and art world for allegedly causing mass panic amongst all those who heard it. According to wikipedia there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy."

Whether you believe in the panic or not it's a truly brilliant piece of radio. It utilises its own form, including newsflashes, weather reports, the opinions of experts, the voices of an outside broadcaster and ordinary people, to make an intense and suspense-filled drama. I especially like the ending, where after the studio broadcaster finally falls silent, (after reporting people running and diving into the East River 'like rats,') another voice is heard, an amateur radio operator: "2X2L calling CQ ... Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there ... anyone?"

I'm currently using the broadcast in a stage play I'm writing for my creative writing portfolio. It takes place on Halloween, October 30 1938, the date when the broadcast went out and will use only one location, the living room of an American family living in New Jersey where the Martians land. The play is really going to focus on the different reactions of the family members when they believe a real Martian invasion is happening outside their window.

Friday 2 January 2009

This is it


Cardiff University's student paper, to which I have dedicated a lot of my spare time over the years! If you squint you might be able to make out my name on the byline. I'm currently news editor, which is hard work but allows me to get really involved, perhaps more so than some of the other section editors because it is such a large section. We have 7 pages to fill with (hopefully) interesting stories and totally design ourselves each week.

By the way, in case you're wondering gair rhydd means 'free word' in Welsh. If you like you can check it out here: http://www.gairrhydd.com/ I will probably publish some of my articles on here in the future.

Songbook 2



I'm a massive fan of this song, Buckie High by Boards of Canada, mainly because it reminds me of the truly blissful time I spent hanging out in West End on Roatan, one of the Honduran Bay Islands where I spent my gap year.

Happy new year


I saw in the new year with the help of a lot of champagne and surrounded by friends. It was a ridiculous night with our lovely hostess Alex having to scrub cat poo out of the carpet at one point, she lives with four cats so it had to happen some time!

My thoughts have rested on new year resolutions this morning and this year I think I'm going to make a very simple one - to enjoy and appreciate my last term of university as much as possible. It's going to be over before I know it and I'll certainly miss it when it's gone.