Friday 28 August 2009

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Post Bag

Here at Complimentary Wine we pride our selves on the quality of our readers' contributions.

So this week I've been sifting through the old post bag and I've managed to pull out 2 different Poetry Lookylikes that have been sent in by our viewers.

Here they are along with the letters that accompanied them.



Dear Sir/Madam,
My partner and I have recently been conducting sporadic Google image searches in an attempt to find a decent usable image of a Zombie.
In doing so it had come to my partner's attention that several members of the recently reanimated share a very similar gate to one Byron Vincent.
This discovery lead me to question whether or not Mr Vincent is in fact one of them. Can you clear this up for me.
Yours sincerely,
John Owens (Berks)

Oi Tosser,
I've seen yu bloody lookalike thing, Bet yu think it's right clever and that, don't yu? Well it ain't yeah, and nor are you!
This is the 3rd time I've sent this in and so far you just ignore me. Tim Clare/David Baddiel Just look at the pictures yeah.
Job done.
Cat (Leicester)


If you yourself wish to submit contributions you can email our editor directly.
johnberkavitch@yahoo.co.uk


Tuesday 25 August 2009

Lesterval


So as you're all aware there are lot of festivals going on these days.
Essentially what this means is that pretty much where ever you live in the country you can find a festival near you.
Usually they're tucked away somewhere just off a B road in what's normally described as "a secret location"

Now in Leggy we like to do things a little different, because of this our very own Festival; Summer Sundae is held not in a secret location but in a much more assessable place, Victoria Park in town.

This leads to some fairly interesting paradigms.

For example,
Camping.
See a lot of Leggy folk'll camp for the duration of the weekend. Even though 90% of them probably live less than half an hours drive from the site itself.

This might be less strange if the festival wasn't situated in a residential area and therefor is required by law to finish playing music at around 11pm.

I personally opted to stay in a house and a few other poets who where performing at the festival came along too.

I'm gunna talk a bit about the phrased and confused tent, host to the spoken word at Summer Sundae but before I do here's a couple of decent Leggy bands who played at the weekend.





















Phrased and Confused
These lot run the spoken word section at summer sundae but unlike other festivals they don't just book poets to fill slots. They actually commission 4 sets of Artists to create new work specifically for the festival.

Last year featured Andy Craven-Griffiths and this years line up played host to Sound of Rum.
I helped arrange accommodation for the Rums as they seem to be spending most of there summer sleeping in other peoples tents throughout various fields across the UK.
We also had Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare on separate occasions.

The highlight of the sleepovers for me was when Tim and Kate Tempest from the Sound of Rum got embroiled in a high paced poetry sleep off.


Kate took an early lead using the unconventional technique of synchronising her heart beat with that of the cat sleeping on her lap,


But Tim had been preparing for this match up over the previous 2 days and after what must have been literally tens of minutes Kate
conceded leaving Tim to do a victory lap of the living room floor.

Monday 24 August 2009

Twin Peaks

Now if you were at least a teenager in the 90's then you probably already watched this.
I was but for some reason I didn't (think it's got something to do with spending most of my youth walking down train tracks and climbing in and out of abandoned buildings).

Any way, following the advice of a few friends I finally downloaded it.

Only 30 x 45 minute episodes in total.
Yeah exactly what I thought only 22 and a half hours in total.

Apparently the best way to watch twin Peaks is in one go and on acid.
I've opted to do it over a week and because I've got other shit to do I also decided to forgo the acid in favor of an almost inconceivable amount of skunk.

See story wise it all starts fairly straight forward.
Laura Palmer the high school sweetheart is dead and in comes F.B.I Agent Dale Cooper to try and find out who done it.
For most of the first seasons 8 episodes it's the character of Cooper that's keeping me interested. Mainly because he seems to use his dreams as a legitimate way of solving crime, (remember in 1992 when it was made there was no such thing as DNA or the Internet so Dreams were considered good solid evidence).
Anyway I'm pretty sure that the Palmer murder plus several others had all been solved by part way through the second season but Agent Cooper is still investigating something, (not sure what), by this point I've become too distracted by the dancing midget who speaks backwards and all the faces that keep morphing out of everyday objects, but I do know he's playing a game of chess). By the end I'm not so much trying to figure out who done it I'm more trying to figure out what exactly they've done.

Anyway I wont ruin it.
here's links for the first season.
credit to the uploader


If anyone wants links to season 2 hit me up and I'll put them on here.
But trust me this shit is amazing.

Sunday 23 August 2009

10 Frames a Second for 3 and a half minutes.

So I'm making a new Stop Motion at the minute.

Now if you yourself have never made a stop motion animation,
then you've never known the lonely repetition and continual RSI inducing mouse clicking that comes with it and I for one envy you.

I'm currently producing about half a seconds worth of animation for every 45-65 minutes of photoshop time.
It is the very definition of painstaking, but that's what makes it worth it.

Anyway, I thought I'd break you off a little something and show you a few good ones that you may/may not have already come across on Youtube.


Muto Blu


The Pen Story


Wolf and Pig


Her Morning Elegance


Minilouge

And as you've made it this far I might as well show you a bit of the one I'm doing.


Icarus 1st bit.

Saturday 22 August 2009

For those not on Facebook.

I thought I'd share my favorite Facebook Photo album with yu.
It's simply called,
Me and Cats.

If anyone has a Cat that I can hold for a photograph please do get in touch.
Also if I'm not your facebook friend then add me up eh then you can see the album as it progresses.









Kiara












Mole












Bott












Vito













Whispers
















Unknown


Tuesday 11 August 2009

Letter to the Editor.

Dear Sir,
I have been reading your publication for a short while now and am amazed and indeed distressed that you continually ignore the fact that Poet, Rapper and all round word champion PolarBear bears an uncanny resemblance to 2005 X-Factor winner Shayne Ward.
I feel that your readers have a right to know the truth.

What's big and Chiggy?

So I was at the Big Chiggly this weekend.
Second year I've been here and to be fair my experiences are pretty different.
In 2008 for me the big chill was the most boring of all the festivals.
I'd describe last years festival as slightly less boring than trying to think of an analogy for how boring it was that is that isn't just as cliché as watching paint dry.
Anyway this year has pulled it back for the Chiggly.
It was actually quite a lot of fun.
I've got couple of pictures I took on me phone in my more aware moments so here we go.

It was only once we'd gotten there that I fully realised how stupid I'd been not to bring wellys.

I'd gone along with Dreadlock Alien and as we rolled into the car park by the artist accreditation booth we became instantly stuck in the mud.

We struggled unsuccessfully to Perseid the van to start moving again but no good.

Some fella who was near by tried offering advice and moral support but still no good. He parked on the path behind us and put his wellys on.

Turns out he was Mr Hudson.

Nice guy and clearly not as stupid as us.



Now when yu get inside amongst the other folks it's always good to look like yu having a good time.

I've been rocking this Hawaiian shirt I got at the start of summer,

thing is it seems to attract other men in Hawaiian shirts.

Crazy.










One Day my own back will be this hirsute
















Now when I'm at festival I like things a little different.
for example I like to drink my wine out of a bag. But some folks take it too far and like to breath there air out of illuminated bottles through a plastic tube in there faces, but then it's horses for courses I s'pose.

Best thing to do when yu feeling the heat is to pop on a little one piece snakeskin number and try slow boiling yu balls in the sunshine. Big Look.












Now if there's one person you're almost always guaranteed to bump into as you wander between camp site and toilet, in the time when it's now too late to actually get any sleep in that boiling little canvass coffin I call my home, then it's this fella.

This is Dave,
From club Dave.

Sunday 2 August 2009

Summer cont....


Ok 3 more festivals done in the last 2 weeks.

Secret Garden Party, Camp Bestival and Kendal Calling.



Although I only actually stayed overnight at SGP, the other 2 where litterally 10 hour round trips for 10-20 minutes of actual performing.


Proper lost highway business,


My favorite time on stage in the last few weeks was during Hammer and Tongues show in the Antic Alley at SGP. The 2 hour show started at 2am on the Friday night and I rocked up with Kate Tempest. She did a couple of poems and was well recieved then I was offered a crack o't' wip and was unable to get more than about 8 lines in to anything before my brain decieded that it wssn't gunna happen and my legs decided that I should probably just have a sit down. So that's what I did. Just sat down, on the stage and stayed there till the end. Kate stayed to and no one seemed to mind me interjecting to pass comment and ask questions of the folks on stage.
So thank you to Angry Sam and Michelle for letting that go on.
Also if anyone wants me to come sit on there stage at any event in the next few weeks let me know cos it can be done eh.

Quick Lookylike to finish.


Dear Sir,
Surely I cannot be the only one who has noticed the striking similarity between the poet Kate Tempest and one Zac Hanson (circa 1997). Can this just be coincidence or are they in fact the same person?