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Old Heatonian – finding amusing crap on t’internet – so you don’t have to!!

Obsession

Regular visitors to the home of Barman Dom will no doubt have noticed his obsession with the ‘Hero’ range of XBox 360 games – notably ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Guitar Hero:World Tour’…

Anyone who has spent any time in an arcade playing ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ or games of its ilk will immediately recognise the format of the games – just hit the coloured buttons in response to visual cues on the screen.  The games come with appropriate controllers – Guitar Hero for example comes with toy guitar with 4 coloured buttons on its neck.  Guitar Hero: World Tour even comes with a toy drum kit to hit!!

Well, in order to help fill the void until yet another expansion pack arrives, I have found what must be the ultimate expression of the genre:

And while we are at it – here’s a ‘Seperated at Birth’ for you all to mull over while I try and think of something funny to write:

Seperated at Birth?

Thought of the Day?

Music Teachers Ruined My Life

“Don’t think of yesterday
And I don’t look at the clock
I like to boogie-woogie, uh, uh
It’s like riding on the wind
And it never goes away
Touches everything I’m in
Got to have it everyday”

M L Ciccone 2000

Friday 17th April saw Mrs Funk and I pay a visit to the Kings Arms to watch band de jour ‘Misspent Youth’ perform…

Misspent Youth is without a doubt Mrs Funks favourite pub band, as she likes to watch the drummer lose his stick while performing a particularly complex lick.  I think overall they are good, but as stated previously on this site, they play FAR too many Dire Straits covers for my taste.

Anyway, it got me thinking about my own musical career.

I always fancied myself as a bit of a singer, and at middle school I joined the school choir in order to hone my skills.  However, my career was shortlived – I still cry myself to sleep sometimes when I remember the moment when Mr Sutcliffe – school maestro and leader of the choir – stopped me in the corridor and asked me in no uncertain terms to ‘desist immediately from coming to choir practice, as my voice was breaking and I sounded absolutely awful.  Truly truly terrible’.

Another sensitive 11 year old, dreams crushed and life warped irrevocably by an unfeeling music teacher.

I withdrew into myself, tears welling every time the choir performed at morning assembly, wishing that I was there, up front, singing my heart out for the school.

So, I joined the drama group, and my abilities as a thespian soon catapulted me into leading roles, not least of which was my role as the ‘Plum Pudding Flea’ in the schools production of ‘The Owl and The Pussycat Went to See‘.

The Plum Pudding Flea was the baddie, and much of my role involved me bounding around on one leg and shouting at the audience.  Much to the chagrin of Mr Sutcliffe, the role also involved me singing a solo song – ‘I’m Stuck!’, which I sang when my character got stuck in a honey trap (which unfortunately didn’t involve me being seduced by a sultry bumble bee in an effort to get me to slip up and reveal my dastardly intentions in the heat of sexual ecstasy – it just wasn’t that kind of play!).

My voice by this time was broken irrevocably, but was very loud – leading me to be named the ‘loudest schoolboy in Bradford’ by the then Lord Mayor.

Fast forward a few years to my first day at Upper School.  A nervous and sensitive young lad I was, trapped in a class of strangers, walking down the corridor of the music block with a pack of people I had only just met that day.  All of a sudden, Mr Holland, a large elderly gentleman and head of the music department popped his head out of his classroom, took one look at your faithful narrator and boomed:

‘I know you!!  You were that Plum Pudding Fairy weren’t you’

I could have died of embarassment, and the tears welled as I remembered my treatment at the hands of Mr Sutcliffe.

Another 13 year old, dreams crushed and life warped irrevocably by another f**king music teacher!

It took a good 2 years before the name calling and random acts of plum pudding flea related mindless violence finally stopped.  A girl I dated briefly after a mixup at the school disco muckied her ticket when she asked me to give her a rendition of ‘I’m Stuck’ before she’d snog me!

Anyway, that’s why I don’t like music teachers.  I do like music though.  One of my favourite tracks of all time is ‘Baker Street’ by poor mad Gerry Rafferty, particularly the masterful saxophone solo which punctuates the sublime lyrics.  It’s one of my (sadly) unfulfilled ambitions to learn how to play the saxophone solo from Baker Street, and maybe just sit on the corner of Baker Street and play it, just for the love of it.

(Note:other impossible musical ambitions include playing the theme from All Creatures Great and Small on the piano)

Anyway, this brings me nicely back to the Misspent Youth gig last Friday:

They f**king CRUCIFIED Baker Street!  I may never forgive them, no matter how much they get me ‘rocking all over the world’ with impromptu Status Quo covers!

I bet the lead guitarist is a music teacher…

Introducing…

Local character Fanackapan, not content with being immortalised via the ‘Wall of Dave’ in the Kings Arms, has recently started his own website…

www.fanackapan.co.uk apparently seeks to address the lack of content about our hero on the woefully inadequately updated (at the moment) Old Heatonian, and serves as a braindump for the often bizarre thoughts that roll around his fevered mind.  Check it out – your brain will never forgive you!

Moving on, I found this article on an American newsite.

Given that the Kings Arms will soon be closing for a few days to get some essential maintenance out of the way (and hopefully, fingers crossed, the installation of the Mighty Dyson Airblade in the gents bogs), perhaps landlord Andy will consider installing similar equipment in the public bar, although aerosol Stella would be a better choice as far as I’m concerned…

INSTALL IT AND THEY WILL COME!!

Facebook Etiquette

Money Worrys

In these unprecedented days of deep recession, with redundancy looming in even the most secure of companies, money has been in everyones thoughts recently…

RHQM – landlord of the Kings Arms – was certainly thinking about money yesterday, when he cut short his visit to the newsagents to ensure that Fanackapans record bar tab was cleared.

We did have video footage of the complex transaction taking place.  However, unfortunately, it has been lost to the ether. Never mind though – we’ll get it next month!

The Lotto Bingo game run by the Kings Arms has run for a record number of weeks this time round, with the jackpot up to over £1200. Which sounds good, until you realise that there is a large proportion of the players waiting for just one number, so it is likely that if won this week, it will be shared amongst many.  I personally am waiting for 2 numbers, and with my luck running as it is I’m not holding my breath.

In other news, it appears that a mini war of attrition has broken out between Dribbly and the ‘Bunmaker’ (aka ‘Bakerboy’)…

Apparently, in response to a comment by Dribbly that he appears to get ‘very merry’ quite early on in the evening, Bakerboy pointed out that he considered Dribbly to be a drain on the NHS with his poorly foot.  Dribbly retorted that ‘he wouldn’t be taking any criticism from the village Bunmaker, and he should shut his face’.  I predict hairpulling and indian burns in the near future!

So life goes on.  The hosting package I use to host Old Heatonian and other sites which I administer has been moved to a brand new machine somewhere in a datacentre in London.  The move didn’t go quite as smoothly as I would have hoped, which accounts for the recent downtime on this site.  But everything seems to be okay now (fingers crossed!)

All Pied Out

Beer unfortunately takes a weary toll on a man, and so updates on this extraordinary day of live posting from the 17th annual Master Pork Pie Bakers competition must cease now. To paraphrase Alf Moyet- ‘We’re all pied out, We’ve got a belly full of pastry and a handful of jelly…’

Posted by Wordmobi