The View From Lower Down

 Recently I was asked the following question: What would you tell your younger self, and at what age? I have two correct answers to this question. Age 16 - Don't do sciences for A-Level. You'll find it boring and you won't use it Age 14 - You can't act. Get into writing. That's something you're actually good at! The story of my doing A-Level science is a good story (but wasn't good at the time), but that's not what this post is about. We're currently on my inability to act. First, a little backstory... I was part of a drama club for 11 years, and in that time we performed many plays and musicals. However, towards the latter end of that time, we stopped being able to afford the rights to proper musicals, so we had to write our own. We'd already experimented with doing variety shows (a selection of songs, dances, monologues and sketches).  Some of these were very good and they were all loads of fun to perform. My personal favourite bit was when I w...

I have already published a post with a transcript of my brother's summary/review of Avengers: Infinity War , which also spilt into Avengers: Endgame . Below is the same transcript, but I have amended some of the innaccuracies. The actual transcript is untouched, but I have added some comments in red, factual but also including my trademark sass: WARNING: SPOILERS (OF VARYING ACCURACY) FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR AND AVENGERS: ENDGAME BELOW I'm going to briefly do the plot, and I say briefly because I can't honestly remember most of it because despite it being a 3 hour film, it's inherently complicated, it doesn't make much sense, and gets quite silly.  With that said, he's going to condense two 3-hour movies into one 10-minute rant. Right. So, the film starts out, we're on some strange planet, possibly the moon, possibly not. And there is the man with no nose, who looks a bit like Voldemort, but isn't and I don't know his name but he seems quite sini...

I said in my previous post that my brother was going to describe Avengers: Endgame . He actually ended up flitting between Infinity War and Endgame with no discernible order. This is the full transcript of that. My interruptions are in italics and I have also included some of the sound effects and noises on the recording in [square brackets]. WARNING: SPOILERS (OF VARYING ACCURACY) FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR AND AVENGERS: ENDGAME BELOW At certain points he describes characters instead of naming them, and I know who he's talking about and have subsequently told him, but I've left that out deliberately. I will, however, clarify that as he hasn't seen The Avengers or Age of Ultron, he sometimes refers to Infinity War and Endgame as the first and second movies. I do the same for the sake of clarity. So begins the transcript. I also left in some dialogue from before the description: Josh's take on The Avengers, Take One. [Long Pause] Go! Oh! So. Hang on. Am I describing th...

So my brother came up with a brilliant idea for a post. I will interview him, he will tell me the plot of Avengers: Endgame and I will upload the transcript of that conversation. To tide you over in the meantime though, I asked him to name all the main Avengers. There are six; he managed 14. Probably most entertaining is him trying to remember Hawkeye, and somehow thinking he was played by Liam Neeson. For comparison: Source:  https://9gag.com/gag/6390968 My personal favourite though is his third suggestion. See if you can guess who he was talking about, and how he got there. Answer in the next Avengers post (I may decide to do other posts before then). Thor Black Spider The Gruffalo Spiderman Loki The Guy with the Arrow - no - the Phoenix - no - The Falcon - he's played by Liam Neeson Chris Pratt Captain America "They go for a picnic and everyone disappears" Thanos and his One Child Policy - He wanted to retcon this and clarify that he does not think that Thanos is an Av...

 That title only works if you say it out loud and pronounce boules correctly (and I'm not even sure about that). I am a poet but I am not aware of this. The Rules of Boules Here's a brief explanation of the rules for anyone who hasn't heard of boules (probably most of my target demographic). Warning: badly drawn diagrams approaching. Ingredients I've forgotten the actual word. You will need: A number of players (you and friend(s)). We will call the number of people playing n. n x 2 balls. Each player needs two balls which should ideally be marked in some way (colour, stripes etc.). One smaller ball. This is the jack. A large (preferably flat-ish) playing area. This is sometimes called the green, mostly because it usually is. The diagrams will use two players, with the jack being black, player 1's balls being red and player 2's balls being blue. Object Get your balls (or boules) closer to the jack than the other player. Gameplay Firstly, one player throws the jac...

 Listen up, let me tell you a story The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - 4 A story that you think you've heard before The Simpsons Movie - 4 We know you know our names Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - 4, 8 And our fame Fight Club - 4 And our faces Aladdin - 4, 5 All about the glories Ferris Beuller's Day Off - 4 And the disgraces Monty Python and the Holy Grail - 5 I'm done, 'cos all this time Spongebob Squarepants - 5 I've been just one word in a stupid rhyme Looney Tunes - 4  So  I picked up a pen Deadpool - 4 And a microphone The Holy mountain - 4, 5 History's about to get overthrown Robin Hood: Men in Tights - 4 Just thought I'd diversify my audience a bit. Granted, it could be considered false advertising; this post is not about musicals and is even less about Six . Most of the above screenshots came from this video . Preface: For the record, I came up with this idea completely independently, but I've since discovered that at least one person has come up w...

This is an offshoot of another post; my brief history of Ratatouille: The Musical . This post replaces Part 5 but is its own post because it is best to divide it into its own separate sections. There are multiple references in this post to the full version of the Ratatouille musical including timestamps. They refer to this video . Disclaimer: This is not a review, but it does contain some (constructive) criticism. Remy is not a ratatouille So firstly, re the  Remy, the ratatouille, Controversy - The way they get around this is  not  what Emily suggested ( see the other blog ). They instead use it to reference (SPOILER ALERT) Remy's restaurant at the end,  La Ratatouille . This is one way around it, but IMO it doesn't matter.  Most people won't care, just like they don't care that the list of colours in  Joseph and the unnecessarily long title   contains FIVE different shades of brown (brown, ochre, fawn, chocolate, russet), FOUR shades of red (red, sca...