Kermit's Blog

Back to regular blogging!

Right now I’m in possession of a good sleeping pattern (which is a rarity for me).  Last week was a bit all over the place as I was cramming in as much as I could into a uni project I had to do over summer for extra credit to get onto Games Design next month.  Hopefully they’re not too critical of my work (considering it was for foundation art), and hopefully I’ll get at least 40% (a pass) to get on to Games Design (where I’d definitely be more comfortable and in my own element than I was doing a variety art course).

Anyway, I should get my results back from that soon I presume, and hopefully things will go smoothly and I’ll be on Game Design starting next month.  If not…then I’ll have to start looking for a job, and work for a while, and apply directly onto Game Design for a 2011 start (and work on some portfolio stuff in the meantime).

Below is some of the stuff I drew as part of my project I was doing over summer.  The fruit stuff is “still life” and the Nintendo stuff I deem “inorganic [man made]“.

Aside from uni work I’ve not really done much else recently. In fact, the only time I left the house in the last week (apart from to hand in my uni work on Fri) was when I went on a walk to the doctors earlier in the week to pick up my anti-depressants prescription.  Ironically though, that walk was nice.  Listened to the latest SRK podcast, and the weather was nice that day.

I’ve watched quite a lot of films in the last week too.

Recently watched:

• Gamer – Kinda lame tbh…I love Michael C Hall in the show Dexter, and Gerard Butler is a hella cool guy, but the plot was a bit weak imo…I just didn’t really get into it so much.
• Planes, Trains & Automobiles – Steve Martin and John Candy, at there prime.  In a John Hughes film.  Obvious win.
• Hancock – I enjoy a bit of Will Smith on screen, and I hadn’t seen this before…so for that it gets bonus points.  The film itself was pretty good though, not something that would be in my top 50 of all time (if I had such a list), but decent enough to warrant me picking it up on DVD for a good price with intent to watch again some day.
• Hot Tub Time Machine – This was better than I expected.  Like the 80′s setting, and the weird sci-fi-esque plot mixed with a nice comedy rich plot made it a good watch.
• I Love You Phillip Morris – Awesome!  Based on a true story too.
• Kick-Ass – I highly enjoyed this.  I was worried going into it that it wouldn’t live up to the hype, but it definitely did, and I’ll definitely pick this up on Blu-Ray at some point soon.
• Last Action Hero – Never watched this before until last week.  Arnie is awesome, and it was a very watchable Arnie movie, it wasn’t one of his best though.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey – I’ve never seen this ‘classic’ before either.  Watched it last week and really didn’t know what to expect.  I’m stuck for words to describe the film really, but it is definitely a classic.  Very eerie tone to it too.  Good stuff.
• Futurama: “Bender’s Game“, and “The Wild Green Yonder“.  Last year I didn’t get round to watching these 2 straight to DVD Futurama Specials (I did watch the other 2 though).  Highly enjoyed them though, and I’m loving the new series currently on TV too

Right now I’m watching “Tetris: From Russia With Love“, as well as working on a little Street Fighter related side project of mine.

Although I think I’m going to put them both on ‘pause’ whilst I have a shower, get some Diet Coke, and make some Popcorn

More blogging to come soon…

Adios

I meant to roll this blog out within a few days of the actual day itself…

I mentioned in the last blog [July 24th] about the rehearsal, so this is all about the day itself.

Anyway, here goes.

July 25th, I was best man for my good friend Pete, and his marriage to his long time girlfriend Emma (whom has also become a good friend of mine).

===

I woke up on the Sunday morning at 8:05am.  I know the time exactly because I used “Windows Task Scheduler” to wake me up.  I set it to play “White Wedding” by Billy Idol to get the day started.

I showered, played some Wii, then got ready.

Pete picked me up at mine, and we (me, Pete, and Andre [Pete's sister's BF]) went to get breakfast at a small café in the city centre.  We initially wanted to go have an American style breakfast at Frankie & Benny’s, but those guys weren’t open till 11am, so the small café it was.

We all had a traditional english breakfast type get up, along with some pure OJ and some coffee’s, I’m not a coffee guy, but I figured I’d join in the caffeine antics and try some random latté thing.  Good times!  Although I asked them for “No Tomatoes” and they gave me “No Beans” along with a damn tomato, but oh well…

After eating, Pete dropped Andre off, and then me and Pete went to Asda to kill some time.  It was probably about 11am by this point, and we didn’t need to be at the church till 2pm.  So we killed time in Asda (which is a chain of supermarkets for anyone outside the UK), we bought some cookies, I got some beers, and Pete got himself some travel insurance for his honeymoon trip the next day (convenient!).

After ASDA it was off to Pete’s house, to get ready, to set the big day in motion.

$

In Pete's Room, pre-getting ready

Pete working on the order of what he'll say for his own little speech

I was pretty much by Pete’s side the whole day, we was like a [good] wrestling tag team, we drank beers, we constantly got asked by people if we were nervous (nervous wasn’t the word to describe it though, we were both quite casual and laid back about our roles we had to play that day), and we ate cookies!

Best man necessities, Cookies & the rings ^_^

It was a nice exciting atmosphere at Pete’s house though.  His family are cool friendly people, plus the day meant a lot to different people, so it was a good day.
Anywho, once me and Pete were suited up, we had some beers, posed for some wedding shots, and was at the church by 2pm.  We said some hello’s to friends whom were already there etc, then me and Pete took our front row seats, waited for the church to fill up, and waited for Emma to arrive.

The wedding service itself didn’t take as long as I expected, not that I expected it to drag on…but I thought that by the time it was over that we’d be glad to get outside for some air.  Yet it went by quite quick, it even had a comedy moment when the priest accidentally asked Emma if Pete would be his wife (audience laughed).  Hehe.

View from the Best Man seat

Once the holy part was over, and the legal signatures were done, it was off outside for many, many wedding photo’s.  After that it was off to this suave Italian place called “Tino’s” in Preston city centre for the reception/ after party.  I’d never been in Tino’s before, but inside, the place was really nice.  It was a cool place to have a party, but would definitely be a cool place to go on for like a date, or a nice meal out or something.

Mucho’s alcohol was consumed on the premises by all, and the atmosphere was great.

My friends; Brad, Drew Moss, Me, Pete, & Emma

I definitely have to give Tino’s props on the buffet though, some of the food they had was absolutely awesome, the meatballs especially…they were better than Subway’s, and I FREAKING LOVE SUBWAY’s Meatball Marinara.

Once the speeches came along I was ready to go.  I never really do any public speaking, so I don’t have experience in doing it…and even though I didn’t really know perhaps 85% of the people there, I wasn’t nervous to speak.  My speech wasn’t too long, and it wasn’t offensive or rude, plus I’d worked it so that it ended on a note to encourage Pete and Emma to throw us [everyone there] all some more parties for there anniversaries.  So whenever you mention parties, you always win the crowd the over.  Plus Emma’s Dad had mentioned he was a bit nervous about doing a speech, so after trying to give him words of encouragement about it, I couldn’t be hypocritical.

During the speeches

Once all the speeches, toasts, and thank you’s were said and done.  It was back to hanging with friends, mingling, and drinking.  Pete and Emma surprised me with a “thank you” bottle of Jagermeister, which was awesome!! Although once I flashed the Jager at the table I was sat at (with my friends; DD, Brad, Drew Moss, and Brad’s GF Claire), it was like blood attracting sharks, so it was devoured within about 5 minutes by us all ^_^ hehe.

There was a lot of random drunk dancing and hilarious conversation to be had as the night got deeper, and I got hella excited when they played “Journey – Don’t Stop Believing”.  I constantly used to ask for rock clubs to play that song in the years before they would actually do it, and then out of nowhere it became such a mainstream song here in the UK recently…but I managed to bury my head in the sand and not the  Radio overplaying of it to kill it’s awesome-ness.

Some reception pics below of the night going on…notice my hair getting crazier (messier) as the night goes on…heh.

It was a great day though, mostly for the fact that Pete and Emma finally got married…
…but another reason the day was great was in it’s way that it brought together a lot of friends.  Friends whom haven’t hung out together all at the same time for years.  That makes me want to try and get more friendly gatherings on the go once I get my next batch of uni money or something.

Create good times with your friends

Just wrapped up a blog on the online assholes of the video gaming world [here], and now I’m blogging about the real world.

Although this could potentially be a short one, as I got things to do…

Most importantly.  Finalise my best man speech.  :)

Tomorrow will be the first wedding I’ve been to in quite a long time.  In fact it will be the first wedding I’ve been too since I’ve been legally allowed to drink.  I couldn’t of made a greater comeback (other than actually getting married myself) than my guest starring role as a best man .

Yesterday I was at the rehearsal.  It was the first time I’d been in a church or any religious place in perhaps about 10 years, it was kind of strange.  I can also confirm that churches still smell of wood.  The priest was a bit of a laugh, I think he did a good job at making sure no one was worried about the big day itself, and I feel pretty proud to have a front row Pew (that I believe is only for me and Pete), plus I have to sign some legal document too (marriage certificate perhaps?).  So yeah…my involvement is good.

I’ll have to bring my A-game tomorrow, as a few of my friends will be there…  If I do a good job, then maybe I’ll get some other best man offers in the pipeline.  As I don’t think I could go back to just being a guest at other weddings after this…heh (I’m kidding).

Expect a blog covering the wedding (perhaps with some pics hopefully) next week.

Moving on…
The dancing Futurama animations above are my segway into my shock surprise of Futurama having started a new season without me know.
The show got cancelled a few years ago by FOX, and Comedy Central bought it out, but had to wait a while before they could contractually start making a new season for TV.  In the meantime they did some new extended length episodes on DVD (some were great, some weren’t so), but I’ve not kept up to date on the TV series for a while and out of nowhere I found it it was back earlier this week.  So been having a catch up on what I’ve missed so far.  I’m only 3 eps in so far, but it’s nice to see new stuff from the Futurama peeps.

Oh and speaking of returns, I had some Mountain Dew earlier this week.  It’s not been available in the UK for quite a few years now (I think someone said it’s due to some of the ingredients for the flavour not passing the UK’s strict food laws), but I guess they’ve managed to get around that because now it’s back, although as an energy drink.  It has that familiar Dew taste though (not sure it’s 100% spot on, but it’s definitely more like Dew than anything else), and I’m down with caffeine, so I’m all for it.

Do the Dew!

Right.  The clock’s ticking it’s way to late-ness.  So I’m gonna wrap this up, and work on my best man speech.  Then I’m gonna go to my pal Drewboi’s round the corner and play some Super Street Fighter IV, and order a Pizza or something, have a regular “dudes night” before my full day of “best man-ness” tomorrow.  ^_^

Adios Amigo’s

Kermit

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Kermit is currently/ recently:

Watching:

• The IT Crowd
• Futurama
• Banged Up Abroad
• G4TV Icons
• Toy Story (in marvelous Blu-Ray)
• Zombieland (also in Blu-Ray, and for my 3rd time in aboot 2 months)
  

  Current Mood: Fine & Dandy

Playing:

• Super Street Fighter IV (360)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
• Pokemon Heart Gold (DS)
• Final Fight (XBLA)
• SNK vs Capcom (NeoGeo)
• Street Fighter Alpha 3 Arcade (MAME)

I don’t know why I bothered with the title for this blog to be honest.  It’s currently 11:50pm, and I know full well it will take me more than 9 minutes to finish this blog >_>.

Ah well, if you’re reading this sentence then I presume you’ve made do with this inadequate titling and are willing to bare with me for the rest of these words that I’m typing out here now.

So, right now.  I’m eating a bowl of Shredded Wheat bitesize.  I eat them straight nowadays.  When I was a kid I used to sprinkle a tonne of sugar on top.  In fact when I was a kid, I put sugar on practically any cereal, even some that were pre-sugared for me.
I’m a big fan of cereal though,  I’m a big fan of breakfast on the whole to be honest.
Although one problem recently though is that I’m not as compatible with Milk as I used to be (my body might need to update it’s drivers?).
Throughout my life I’ve never really been keen on drinking milk, just something about it that made it a bit sickly for me.  In fact, back when I was about 15 I once had a contest with my friend Brad to see who could drink the most milk, knowing full well that I would be throwing up from that ordeal.  This was back in the days when me and my friends all got our “lolz” from doing stupid things like that.

The Blur "Coffee & TV" Milk carton is awesome

Still, back when I was a kid, and say…up until about 4 years ago, I still was able to drink a lot of cups of tea, and chain bowls of cereal with ease.  Where as now if I have too much milk it feels as though it’s just sat inside me looking around not knowing how to be digested.  I also have problems with Cheese too.  Cheese is delicious, I love it!  Though if I invite to much of it to the party inside my stomach, then I feel as though it’s going to be sat in the warehouse for a while.
Lactose Intolerant?

In other personal health news, I’ve not felt 100% this past week.  Not quite sure why, but some days I just felt like I was trapped inside that specific feeling you’d get when you stand up quick after being sat down a while and you feel dizzy.  No idea why, and wish it would go away too, as it’s sometimes interfering with my productivity of getting any tasks I need to get done simply because I don’t feel up to doing them whilst my mind isn’t fully working.
Perhaps this is the early days of some serious illness?
Perhaps I’m too much of a hypochondriac?

This time next week I’ll possibly still be drinking after having played the role of “Best Man” at the wedding of my friend’s; Pete & Emma.

Whilst on the subject, here is a Best Man video from YouTube.

Not sure if that video is “staged” or “real” but either way…I’ll try not to make that sort of stand out impression on the day, heh :p.  More on how that went in a future blog…

I got constantly bombarded today by my little bro Max asking me to complete levels for him in “New Super Mario Bros DS”.  He’s got something like 1/3 of the way through the game, and because the game gets gradually harder as you go along he’s running into levels he can’t do.  Now…instead of trying and trying over and over (and thus improving your own abilities at the game in question), he just comes to me and asks me to do them for him.  I tried explaining to him that they’re only going to keep getting harder and that he just needs to keep trying until he can do them, but he just tried to downplay the logic in that and re-asks his initial question, and I don’t have the heart to say “no” as it would upset him.
:p
I was younger than him when I was getting my ass handed to me in the original Super Mario Bros on the NES, yet I didn’t have a “please do it for me” person, plus we didn’t have save points back then so if I got far….and died, I had to start from scratch!  My little bro’s just don’t know how lucky they’ve got it (in terms of having less video game frustration to persevere).

Also one major bummer this year has been the fact I haven’t been to or seem to be going to any music festivals in 2010.  Last year i had my first taste of music festivals, and it was awesome, and something I very much wanted to be all over in 2010.  Yet due to the combination of not having enough friends being as openly eager about certain festivals when I was, paired with the fact that I had no money to get a late ticket when some people where telling me they were going to one, and if I wanted to come :p.
Lames!
Hopefully I’ll rectify things and go to 1 or 2 at least in 2011.  As well as hopefully going to Las Vegas next summer for “EVO” an annual fighting game tournament of epic proportions.  Should get a few days of tourism whilst in Vegas too, which would be my first time in that good ol’ Sin City.

If fortune cookies are anything to go by I’m due several good things to happen, yet recently I don’t seem to recall anything that they could’ve been referring too :p.  They’re almost starting to make me believe that fortune cookies are not actually a reliable source for news.

Anywho.  I’ll follow up with another blog in a day or 2.

Till then…
…Adios Amigo’s

Kermit

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Kermit is currently/ recently:

Current Mood: Bleh! I should go to sleep maybe?

Playing:

• Super Street Fighter IV (360)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
• Pokémon Heart Gold (DS)
• Split/Second (360)

Watching:

• I.T Crowd – Very much enjoying this season so far.
• Hillsborough – 1996 filmed drama on the events (mainly afterwards) of the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster, had quite an all-star cast of people from various other British TV shows, as well as Christopher Eccleston (who was in “Gone in 60 Seconds”, as well as other things).

In terms of my own expectations for blogging.  I’m behind.
I’m long overdue a new post.  Same goes for my video game blog (Currently Playing) too.

I’ll get on with it though, eh.

This will be a bit of a speed run blog too.  As in I’m going to try and get through it a.s.a.p.  No background entertainment TV or switching over to twitter for distraction, as I have some Potato Wedges and a Pizza in the oven, and I want this post ONLINE! before those guys are oven baked.

First up.  I turned 24 on June 30th.  Yahoo, to that.  Age doesn’t bother me.  Sure I’m getting older on paper, but in my head I still remain the same colourful imaginative immaturish guy that I’ve always been (in my head).

Although that’s partly a lie, as things aren’t always colourful in there…in fact recently I’ve been on something like a 10 day bad dream streak.  Some days I’m about to die, some days I’m in deep jail time like trouble, or at the least things are just going really bad for me.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a notable streak of bad dreams before.  Plus these aren’t recurring dreams either, it’s something new every night.

Speaking of night.  It’s 00:23am here right now, and my sleeping pattern was sacrificed this weekend in order for me to watch “EVO 2010” live (via stream) online.  Evo is the biggest annual fighting games tournament on the calendar.  It’s run by some amazing people, it’s an amazing gathering of fans of Capcom beat em ups (as well as others), and the crowd it gathers are amazing.  GET HYPE!!
Might need to do some long staying up if possible to try and get my sleeping pattern back to something decent, as today I woke up at 6pm (after going to bed at like 9am).

Moving back to my birthday though.  Things were quiet, but good.  Didn’t do anything major in order to celebrate it, but I got some nice gifts, and had a good day.  My ladypal surprised me from afar (as she’s in the USA over the summer) by having a huge “Mario” cake delivered too me.  Which was DELICIOUS!!

Cake of Win

Also, it’s always weird to read certain birthday cards too.  Like how my parents (whom like I always get the impression are disappointed with me, or something of that nature) got me a card that said something along the lines of: “you are so great that if you wasn’t our son we’d try to adopt you”.  It’s so out of character for them to say something like that, to me at least, but still over analysing cards aside.  Great day.

2 Gifts of Win!

A few days after my birthday it was my homeboy Peter’s Bachelor Party/ Stag Do.  We all went to “Haydock” (horse race track) to drink and gamble.  Then came back to Preston to hit up the city clubs after that.
It was the first time I’d ever been to one of these gambling happy race track places, but it was a good laugh.  Dressing up smart, drinking all day, seeing Pete literally get whipped, good times!

Pete's current Facebook profile pic.

Although i’m gutted I didn’t get to meet boxer Ricky Hatton like Pete and some of the others there did (as i wasn’t with them at the time they bumped into him).  Wanted to ask him about his involvement with WWE earlier this year and how much creative control he actually had with that.  Yeah…bet that question would’ve caught him off guard.

It’s just under 2 weeks now till Pete’s wedding, and as I’m his best man (another first for me), I need to get cracking on some sort of short wedding speech thing.  It’s on my “to-do list” this week.

I guess I’ll have more time on my hands during the weeks now that the World Cup is over.  I was loving that whilst it was on.  I don’t really follow Football as much these days, but every 4 years when the World Cup rolls around I dive in deep.  I love international football, especially when every continent in the world is there to represent.  It was awesome seeing some underdogs cause upsets, and seeing some players really make a name for themselves and become break out stars whilst the whole world was watching.  When it got down to the final yesterday I was personally rooting for Holland to win.  As I feel Spain are a bit over-hyped,  it was a very tight game though, and Spain have won 2 major trophies in 2 years now, so congratulations to them on that.  …now roll on Brasil 2014!!

Torres didn't dive here, he was Gief'd!

If you’re reading this blog in facebook, you won’t see the above image properly.  Click Here

Anyway, it’s not long till my food will be heatified, so I best wrap this blog up.  Expect more here and on Currently Playing in the next days/ weeks though.  Fo’ Sho!

Adios Amigo’s

Oh and a shout out to those whom don’t actually no me in real life but follow my blog as some form of entertainment *high five

Kermit

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Kermit is Currently/ Recently:

Watching:

• 2010 Fifa World Cup
• EVO2010
• G4TV Icons
• Superman (1978 movie) – Never properly watched this before, but it was entertaining, and has me wanting to see more Superman stuff.
• Jerry Seinfeld: I’m telling you for the last time – Stand up special he did not long after the end of Seinfeld.  :)
• I’ve also watched quite a lot of Ricki Lake, Judge Judy, and Jeremy Kyle in the past week.  Watching other peoples drama is always a nice reminder that I’m not living that kind of drama.

Current Mood: Fine. +check my colourful lounging about pants.

Playing:

• Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii) – Absolutely amazing, one of the best platformers of all time, and a fine evolution of all things Mario.
• Super Street Fighter IV (360)
• Split/Second (360)
• Tatsunoko vs Capcom (Wii)
• Earthworm Jim HD (XBLA)
• Street Fighter II (Wii VC)
• Pokemon Heart Gold (DS)

Listening to:

• A lot of 90′s music and Reggae, they seem to be installed within me as “Summer type music”.

Seinfeld.

A comedy sitcom revolving mostly around 4 characters (Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine).  A show that specialises in turning small aspects of day to day lives and social interactions into amazing and hilarious plots for it’s episodes.  A show that ran for 9 great seasons from 1989 to 1998.  A show that still nets Jerry Seinfeld millions in royalties and such to this day.  A show to whom Larry David also deserves a lot of credit for..

Anyway, enough on trying to sum up the show for now.

Seinfeld first came into my life in the mid to late 90′s.  I caught the show in syndication on Paramount Comedy or some other network we had on our cable service, and saw it several times as a pre-teen/ teen.  The show is definitely not aimed at someone of that age, so naturally it didn’t jump out at me as must-watch TV back then.  However as I grew older I understood more (same goes for any tv shows aimed at adults) so I appreciated the jokes and laughs.  It definitely stood out to me as a cool show, yet perhaps due to its network, its timeslot, or the fact my friends just didn’t get it back in those days meant it was something no one my age would be talking about.  Yet ever since those days I did have it bookmarked as a great show I should properly watch at some point.  Plus one of the first comedians I properly got into was Chris Rock (also in the late 90′s in my early teens), and Chris Rock had stated in several interviews and such that Jerry Seinfeld was someone who he admired, plus he’s mentioned the show [Seinfeld] in a couple of his stand up specials.

Anyway, fast forward to 2009.  Last year I got into “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as I’d heard a couple of people rave about it in forums, and noticed a couple of actors/ actresses whom I’ve IMDB‘d had been on the show, plus it was from HBO who have a great record when it comes to delivering “must-watch-tv”.  It was through watching Curb Your Enthusiasm that I learnt of how Larry David was one of the creative minds and one of the key people to thank for Seinfeld and it’s success.  So I told myself once I was done marathon-ing (over a few months) through the entirety of Curb Your Enthusiasm (up to it’s current finished season) that I would move onto Seinfeld afterwards.

Now…as I came to the end of my watch through of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I started to feel a slight sense of emptiness growing inside me in a “what new show could possibly make me laugh and give me this much enjoyment when I’m done?” kind of way.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 coincidentally happens to revolve heavily around a fictional reunion of Seinfeld, so this furthered my desire to watch Seinfeld, and once I was done with Curb I got straight onto it.

Over the past 4 months or so I am now only the “Finale” away from having completed Seinfeld (through Season 1 to Season 9), and once again I feel as though I will struggle to get that same flavour of comedy from a TV show anywhere else.  See you really need to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld to see how it differs from your average sitcom like say “Friends” and whatever.  Sure enough there are other comedy series I absolutely adore “Father Ted”, “Flight of the Conchords”, “Spaced”, “How I Met Your Mother”, “Big Bang Theory” and others… but Curb, and Seinfeld are in separate incomparable leagues to other shows (in my opinion).  I’m not trying to argue that Curb, and Seinfeld are the best shows there is, but I do rate them very highly, but just on a scale of there own sort of thing.

Anyway.  I just HAD to do a blog that was PRO-Seinfeld, as it is a show I’ll no doubt re-watch many a times over the rest of my life (same goes for Curb Your Enthusiasm).

Now if you’ve read through this blog (yes you, whom is reading this very sentence).  I URGE you to feed any curiosity you may have gotten from this blog post and start watching Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you’re a person, and you live a regular life, then you’ve got many “lolz” in store for you.