4 words that have the initials R, A, T and M.
You’re a fool if you can’t fill in the blanks.

As pretty much the only reason I wanted to go, Rage Against The Machine were always going to the highlight for me, and while there was a risk that they’d be a letdown because I was looking forward to it so much - they weren’t. Just amazing. My only complaint (apart from the lack of volume that afflicted everybody on the main stage) is that we could’ve/should’ve tried to get closer to the front because we seemed to end up in a patch of people who were happy to stand with their arms crossed and only appeared to know Killing In The Name. Eejits. Bouncing around to Know Your Enemy, Sleep Now In The Fire and Guerrilla Radio, we must’ve looked a tad odd to the statues behind us but it’s Rage for fucks sake.. etiquette and inhibitions had no place there. The whole set was great, and featured everything you’d expect right through to the rant during Wake Up (although really, surely it’s getting too late to mention Bush & Blair?). It’d be hard to single out highlights, but coming out and doing Bombtrack in the jumpsuits was loco, and the Freedom/Killing In The Name encore was fever pitch.

Epic. Definitely one to remember.

It’s a bit shit that the band have a ‘no filming’ policy going on because it means that for video footage, you have to resort to shaky hand cam stuff on youtube. Like this.

Rage aside, we managed to catch a few other bands across the Friday and Saturday. Worth a mention; Manic Street Preachers, Justice and Dizzee Rascal. Slightly mentionable; Queens of The Stone Age, The Ting Tings, The Killers, Bloc Party, Jack Penate, The Wombats, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, Hifi Handgrenades and Santogold. Utterly forgettable; Editors, Ida Maria, The Subways, The Enemy, The Fratellis, countless other ‘The’ bands. I’m sure there were other people worth seeing but as I’ve said before, it’s not really my ’scene’ so I’m not really fussed. But I did have lots of (mostly Rage inspired) fun. Good times.

Wu-Tang to headline next year(?)

(plenty of photos/video here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/)

It wouldn’t be right to let such an awesome spectacle go completely unnoticed; although I think that the BBC are managing to single-handedly cover enough Olympic action for the whole world. Apparently if you were to take every televised minute and written sentence that has been produced by the BBC about this years Olympic games, turn them into tiny people called Olymbits whose natural inclination is to stand on each others shoulders Cirque du Soleil style, then climb up the Olymbit stack, you would actually bump into God and the baby Jesus in the sky. Apparently.

I actually love the amount of coverage the beeb are putting out this year. Non stop live coverage online for every event, mostly with video footage - 6 different live streams on the red button on tv - hours of dedicated coverage on the terrestrial channels - and 5 Live doing the business for the radio. It’s loco. All your needs catered for. Unless you’re not a sporting person of course. Actually, scratch that because surely no-one can deny how good these games have been. Pure entertainment and so many amazing feats I wouldn’t even know where to start with a list of my favourite things thus far. Though it would probably be something like…

The opening ceremony.

Managed to see bits of it while we were in Paris, and the sight of Li Ning running around the inside edge of the stadium roof was brilliant. Unless we have someone running in the London Eye like it was a giant hamster wheel, I don’t think we’ll be able to top that in 2012. (more pictures here)

Argentina coasting to the football final
After the mini dispute with Barcelona regarding Messi was sorted, they’ve not looked back, winning every game on the way to Sundays final against Nigeria and are moving one step away from retaining their Olympic title. I’m not a big Argentina fan (blame it on this) but they deserved to beat Brazil in the semis yesterday. Ronaldinho has been a bit of a non-event which doesn’t bode well for Milan this season but who knows.

Yelena Isinbayeva jumps insanely high (with a pole)
Helped in it’s greatness because of the ‘gonna kick her butt’ comments by her American rival who really couldn’t compete..

“For the first 90 minutes of the competition Isinbayeva did not attempt a vault but sat trackside, her baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes. When the bar reached 4.70m she decided to stop passing and cleared the height at her first attempt. By that point seven of the 12 competitors had been knocked out.”

- The Guardian

She then went on to sail over 5.05m (16ft 7in) for a new World Record. See, that strikes me as kinda cocky (and rightly so) but not as cocky as..

Usain ‘Lightning’ Bolt

How can someone not even really try for the last 10m or so and still get a World Record in the 100m(?) At least he worked hard for the 200m record last night. Both are unreal achievements but the latter in particular is probably more memorable. Michael Johnson, while commentating on the race, seemed happy for the Jamaican but surely deep down he’s curled up in a ball, hugging his gold shoes and weeping.

Natalie du Toit comes 16th in the 10k swim
16th doesn’t sound especially impressive but if you know about her, you’ll see why I think this is worth a mention. Good stuff. It’s the first year that the 10k outdoor swim has been an event, and I can think of few events that I’d least enjoy doing. Utterly knackering.

8 Golds, (7 World Records, 1 Olympic Record) for Michael Phelps
Not to mention approximately 173 drug tests too I’d imagine. Not that I’m trying to imply anything. He’s clearly not on performance enhancing drugs, he’s just a machine sent from the year 2029 by a race of artificially intelligent computer-controlled machines who want to crush every humans will to compete in swimming competitions in order to dominate the medals table in all future Olympic games. And speaking of the medals table..

Great Britain is 3rd
With 17 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze (at the time of writing). Kudos to everyone involved. So many individual success stories and noteworthy moments but I’m happy to leave it at a general level of praise. Does this mean we get a massive bronze medal at the end?

Just three days left to go til the closing ceremony on Sunday and I’m sure it’ll be on a par with the opening. Politics aside, it looks like China have done a great job hosting this and heaped the pressure on London to match it in 4 years.. I’m sure it will. I mean, the logo is a great start isn’t it(?) What could go wrong(?)

Anyone know how to get tickets for the opening ceremony…?

It’s been a chockablock couple of months in terms of new musical offerings and while it’s beyond me to comprehensively review everything I’ve been listening to lately, I wanted to mention a couple of things in no particular order, with examples!

Doomtree - Doomtree
Easily one of the most talented collectives in hip hop right now, Doomtree finally blessed us with a group album (self titled). It’s rather good. As with a lot of their stuff, there’s a big punk influence meshed with the straight up hip hop and it works gloriously. P.O.S. is probably the most noticeable face of the crew but there really is no weak link to be found.

The Game - LAX
3 albums and countless mixtapes in and Game is still superbly embodying almost everything you love about gangsta rap. There’s still no Dre reunion but to be honest, I’ve given up noticing. You can criticise The Game’s lyrics as much as you want - (the consistent name-dropping is getting to almost a parody of himself by now) - but one thing he’s always shown is an ear for a quality beat, and to his credit, while not necessarily stellar, he’s never weak on the tracks.

GZA/Genius - Pro Tools
Not a great album title, and to be honest, not a great album on the first couple of listens, but that’s probably because I can’t help but compare every GZA release to Liquid Swords and that’s not especially fair is it(?) There’s no denying that there’s just something lazy about his delivery these days though, and it’s a shame because lyrically, he’s still a beast.

Ice Cube - Raw Footage
Listening to this album it makes me wonder how the fuck films like Are We There Yet? ever got made. Ice Cube clearly isn’t meant for the kids. It’s a welcome return to form and is the reason I said that The Game is ‘almost’ everything you love about gangsta rap.. Because as much as he idolises NWA, his content isn’t a tenth as good as Cube at his peak (or even remotely close to his peak). Peep the video for Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It. Brilliant.

Also in rotation and worthy of a listen (and maybe a future more detailed post);

• Nas - Untitled (didn’t really live up to the hype but still, not bad for his NINTH ALBUM!!! mental.)
• The Wackness - Soundtrack (nothing new to be heard but a good one for reminiscing to when it wasn’t all business..)
• El-P - WeAreAllGoingToBurnInHellMeggamixxx2 (free on the def jux site and even better than the first one)
• One Day As A Lion (a fairly decent stand in for new RATM material)

It’s nice working in an environment that can produce something like this. I remember vaguely talking to one of the people behind this earlier in the year and while I thought it sounded like a fun idea, that was about it. Who’d've thought that the project by Boredom Research (via the National Centre for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University) would end up covered by so many people.

If you’re unfamiliar with ‘Real Snail Mail’, it’s basically this:

An e-mail is sent to a tank containing snails fitted with RFID chips. If and when a snail wanders by the e-mail collection site, its RFID chip will pick up the message. Then, if and when that snail wanders by the drop-off point in another area of the tank, the e-mail will be delivered (at that point, via the Internet, of course).

Genius! I believe it’s just had it’s proper exhibition at siggraph 08 but the snails have been hard at work for months now, with varying success. You can check the progress of each ‘agent’ (and add your own message!) at the official site - Real Snail Mail.

It’s ridiculous.

Still going through photos from Paris and getting them onto flickr so feel free to stroll over now and then. I quite like this one. It’s funny going into the room where it is because there’s suddenly this mass of people who you just know are only there to see the Mona Lisa and nothing else. Y’know, like they’re on a coach tour of Paris and are trying to fit in all the big things. I wont lie, there wasn’t a massive amount in the Louvre that I was fussed about seeing but I’m happily ignorant about art. The Egyptian sections were great and it was nice seeing the Venus De Milo (though all I could think of was the Gummi de Milo) but I was really just too tired to take in much else. It’s overwhelmingly big (the museum) and there’s so so so so much to see if you’re into that type of thing.

Regardless, more photos to come!

I’m not sure if I really should admit this but I went to see High School Musical Live at the Hammersmith Apollo last weekend. And it was fun. There. I’ve said it. So what(?) If I say that it had some breakdancing in it does that make it better?

I really don’t think I’m the target demographic for something like that, and based on a quick scan of the audience there, I’d be about 95% right. However, there were a handful of other people like us who presumably were just there because it seemed like an entertaining way to spend a Saturday night that would have otherwise probably descended into watching the X-Factor or more Olympics.

My point for coming out with this (no homo) is just to say that despite the kiddie-centric theme of the show, it deserves kudos for being an incredibly slick operation. I’ve been to tonnes of other theatre based entertainment forms but few that were put together so seamlessly with so much going on. It was no Illyria but still, mad props (literally and figuratively). I suppose that’s what you expect from a massively-invested-in international smash hit Disney thing. Also, it never ceases to amaze me how much energy some people have; jumping and singing and smiling like a loon must really take it out of you.

So yeah, it was fun. It goes on a vaguely national tour soon I think so if you’re comfortable with your sexuality, go and see it. Oh, and it’s got Letitia Dean in it. Superstar. What more could you want?!

Just a brief bit of randomness that made me smile because I’m slightly unsmiley right now.

Photoshop managed to successfully fuck me over by corrupting a file I’ve been working on for a good couple of months. That’ll learn me for not making copies / saving versions. Bah.

Anyway, as I said, this image made me smile.

It’s funny cuz it’s true.

Spent the weekend just gone in gay Paree and had lots of fun. It’s slightly odd that I’d not really been before (except as a very very young child) considering it’s a mere 40 minute flight away from Southampton (or a painstaking 6 hour flight/coach home via Birmingham - but the less said about that the better). Thankfully, the weather pretty much held out and we did the whole tourist thing in fairly decent sunshine and almost no rain. By ‘tourist thing’ I mean, queuing to get up the Eiffel Tower, queuing to get into Notre Dame and queuing to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre amongst other things it was fun. Most of the sights are within walking distance, but we ended up getting the metro to most places after the first day. Probably one of the nicest/easiest public transport systems I’ve ever been on. Good stuff.

Venturing into cafes for brunch or a quick pit stop occasionally only served to remind me how bad my French is but we got by with some really nice (if not a tad overpriced) meals. I’m so so so glad we never actually got ’round to ordering Steak tartare though. Ewww.

A selection of photos from the thousand or so that I took will be up on Flickr in dribbles over the next week or so, so have a look over there for the goodness. Til then, enjoy the 1 that’s attached to this post. Les parcs à Paris sont magnifiques!