Shiny football sticker disappointment

I'm resisting the temptation to collect the stickers for the upcoming European Championships. Mainly because of the cost, but also because Topps - the company that now has the rights to produce the stickers - has introduced deliberately rarer stickers and 'variations' (different version of stickers) to collect as well. And that annoys me.

However, I'm not averse to free stickers. On a day trip to England yesterday I ended up with some freebies from M&S when I bought some food.

(In Cymru M&S are giving away stickers of Cymru players. I haven't got any of those. Yet.)

As anyone who has collected stickers like this will know, you get a special joyful feeling when the pack contains a "shiny" sticker.

My thrill was short-lived in this case. The shiny sticker was... advertising M&S food!

Ah, well. Less than 3 weeks to go to the Euros.

July 2022 month review - sporty summer

The Welsh for July is Gorffennaf - literally gorffen (end) and haf (summer), which given how it always tends to rain in August seems right. This July we had a three day heatwave that badly disrupted things and is possibly a sign of things to come unless humanity can collectively get its priorities in order and prevent the climate changing drastically. 

The heatwave coincided with the Grangetown Zoo. We also had a visitor stay with us during the hottest few days. She was a good deal younger than us so Cathy and I took advantage of having a helpful young person around and bought new phones. My previous phone had served me well since I bought it in January 2016. If this phone lasts a similar length of time it should be good until 2028. 

July was also a sporty month. I enjoyed watching the Euro 2022 football tournament, although I didn't get around to putting up the wall-chart for this one. It was an excellent tournament and a great example of how football is football, regardless which gender is playing it. The goal of the tournament was an audacious backheel that actually made me yelp with shock it was so unexpected. 

I had decided not to go to any friendly matches in the run up to the new season. My first game of the season was therefore at Taff's Well who were playing Ynyshir Albions in the league cup. 

My first goal of the season was a toe-poke from three yards out after the Ynyshir goalie dropped the ball from a cross. I went with my friend Paul, who also accompanied me to Barry's first league game of the season, over in Ammanford on a Friday night. A long trip after work!

On the last Saturday in July, I went up to Cwmbach to watch Cwmbach Royal Stars play in the Welsh Cup. I went with my friends Sara and Leanne, and we took their twins, who were too intent on watching the game to pose for a selfie.

We also met up with Allan, who is the club photographer and committee member. He is a great source of local football knowledge. I met Allan through my previous job and had been promising to go up to watch  Cwmbach for ages, so I was glad to finally make good on my promise and see him again.

To cap off a great game, Leanne won the half time raffle!

In addition to all the football, BT Sport were generous with their coverage of San Diego Padres games this month. I watched four and a half Padres games - against the Twins, Dodgers, Mariners and twice against the Giants - but I only saw them win once! I was beginning to think I was cursed until I finally saw them win a game at the fifth attempt of watching. 

And I shouldn't forget the two Blood Bowl games I managed to fit into the month as well.

And finally - and what a way to finish off - I got to meet up with my buddy Connor for a Saturday as well. 

Connor brought me some belated birthday presents, including the epic Lego minifigure at the top of the post, which he had designed himself on the minifigure printer in the Lego Shop in Birmingham. He really timed his visit perfectly because both the Lego Shop and The Entertainer toy shop were giving away free Lego on the day he was in town. A double free Lego day doesn't come along very often. We made the most of it!

In the Heights marks our return to cinema-going

Cathy scored us some preview tickets for a film called In The Heights last week, which marked our first trip to the cinema since the beginning of March 2020. That 15 months gap has probably been the longest stretch between going to a movie theatre in absolutely ages. 

We got into the cinema and Cathy suddenly asked me if I knew how long the film lasted for. I looked it up, and said "Well, it says here it's two hours and twenty three minutes long... and it's a musical!" We looked at each other in mild, apprehensive horror. Neither of us particularly like musicals. Oh, well, it was a free preview, and how bad could it be?

It turned out it wasn't bad at all. It was excellent. Mild spoilers follow.

The film is set in Washington Heights in New York City, a predominantly Hispanic immigrant neighbourhood. It's written by Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton, which everyone raves about but I have yet to watch.

The story really pulls at some big themes, especially the tension between loving your community and simultaneously wanting to escape it to something better, with associated feelings of disloyalty and guilt for daring to dream of somewhere better. 

The character have a mix of dreams. Characters dream of setting up their own businesses, returning to Peurto Rico to open a bar on a beach, or even just gaining American citizenship because they are 'undocumented'. A father is willing to sell his business, built up over years, to pay for his daughter's tuition at university. His dream is that she will eclipse him, and there is a powerful moment when he tells her that she is better than him because of her hope for the future. 

Mixed in with this, are themes around gentrification and the changes being made to poor neighbourhoods in the name of progress. That really resonated with me as my neighbourhood changes and big plans are put through by the council that will displace people and nibble away at parkland. But the story makes the point that areas always change as people flow through them and this is part of the life-cycle of any community.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the music. There are some fantastic song and dance sequences and the mainly young cast all carry it off with depth and feeling. A few recognised Hispanic actors appear, including Jimmy Smits. The only one that jarred was seeing Stephanie Beatriz as a nail stylist with big hair, because I'm used to seeing her as the scary Roza in Brooklyn NineNine. After the initial shock though, she was very good and it's nice to see actors playing completely different roles. 

Overall then, I not only survived a two hour and twenty three minute musical, but I would happily watch it again. Because of covid restrictions the auditorium was only about a quarter full. We had to leave gaps between rows which meant nobody kicking the back of our seats, and nobody with big hair sitting directly ahead of us. I could get used to that kind of cinema experience! 

Midnight Oil cover charity single - free to download at Amazon

Hey up. I've been a longtime fan of Midnight Oil, so it's cool their classic Beds are Burning is being covered by various people to raise money to comabt climate change.

And you can download it for free at Amazon (for a limited time). There are other tracks too. Phantom Limb are a bit funky and worth a free listen to. The Amazon downloader takes a second or so to install and then feeds the tracks directly into your iTunes or Windows Media Player depending what you got.

FREE Star Wars Lego!

The Daily Mirror are currently running a promotion giving away free Star Wars Lego. Saturday's model was a Stormtrooper on a speeder bike. I thought 'I want one of those.'

I went to the WH Smiths in town to buy a paper and pick up the model, but they had run out. Then I had a brainwave and went to the Smiths store in the Central Station. They had oodles of them. The girl on the till asked me if I had kids and if I wanted more then one. I couldn't lie and say I had kids, but I did say 'Well, if you're giving them away...' So she gave me three.

And here they are flying in formation with an Imperial dropship model I got given last Christmas. Oh, yeah, the Stormtroopers are gonna get you!

New Kids on the Comeback

So after about 15 years, New Kids on the Block have released a come-back single, Summertime. It’s a bit too late to become a summertime smash, and I doubt it would have anyway. But I have to admit the song isn’t bad. It could certainly give other pop songs a run for their money in the quest for chart success.

I was expecting it to be terrible, when Cathy told me about it. She was quite excited about it, having been a massive New Kids fan in her youth. When she found the video on Virgin Music On Demand, I agreed to watch it out of loyalty to her more than anything else. But, like I said, it was okay, bordering on alright.

The video kicks off with the ‘Kids’, all very grown up now of course, in various exotic locations, like on a yacht, in a helicopter, etc. getting a phone call, then all tipping up at a beach-side club full of scantily-clad women to perform the chorus. Like you do. There’s even some boyband dancin’ at the end to show they’ve still got it. The lyrics about ‘do you remember that summer’ are purposely designed to remind their now-growed up female fanbase of life as a 13-year old when everything was a bit simpler.

Another song I’m liking at the moment is the soundtrack to an ad for a new computer game called Mercenaries 2 (watch the ad on Youtube). I googled it and discovered that the song had been especially commissioned for the advert. You could download the full-length one from the official website, but that didn’t seem to be working. However there are other places you can get it on the web. So, now I’m rocking to it.

Notes on a Scandal

The best bit about this firstmovies film preview was the free tub of Green & Blacks vanilla ice cream. Although I did have to eat it before the pizza that Cath had kindly wrapped up for me to take. (I rushed from work to Fair Do’s for a Director’s Meeting, then home, you see).

On to the film: The acting was of a high standard. Pretty much what you’d expect from Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and (mmmm) Cate Blanchett. But the story itself, with its undertones of lesbian stalking, wasn’t so good. As a psychological thriller, it wasn’t particularly thrilling. It may have been better if the eponymous ‘scandal’ had been the opening scene, with the rest of the character’s involvement seen in flashback. That might have made Dame Judi’s machinations a little more thrilling.

And on that note – a scandal involving a married female teacher and a 15 year old boy obviously does echo real life, but I can’t help but feel that the law of sexual inequality comes into effect here. If the scandalous central character had been a married male and the object of his lust a 15 year old girl, then I doubt this film would have been made. Of course, such a taboo won’t have been broken by such a mediocre film, but, unless the stereotype of the predatory male is nonsense, perhaps it should be.

The thing that tips Judi Dench’s character over the edge is the death of her cat combined with her unrequited interest in Cate Blanchett. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be ironic, having a firmly closeted lesbian driven to the edge of madness by the pet’s passing brings to mind a whole number of bad taste ‘pussy’ jokes. And I think I’ll leave you with that thought.

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