Something For The Weekend

Seeing more good stuff - The Tate Triennial and playing at being a luvvie

Move mouse to the left, move mouse to the right. Count total number of paperclips, adjust screen monitor settings. Check outlook, update twitter. Eat mouthful of dry supermarket sandwich, drink mouthful of tea that you forgot had gone cold. Get crumbs of said dry sandwich between the keys on your laptop. Attempt to remove the crumbs with (in successive order) plastic ruler, metal ruler, pen, pencil, staple, post it note and finally used envelope.

Never again have a lunch break like the above. The UK is chuck full of things that last around 40 minutes. On Thursday we headed down to Tate Britain to try and enlighten ourselves and learn more over lunch than the recommended daily amount of salt that is contained in a tuna and sweet corn baguette.

Our supposed photo shoot is scuppered by the fact that you can’t take photos in the Tate, but don’t let this put you off. Around 100 years older than it’s more celebrated cousins (Tate Modern, St Ives and Liverpool), this may actually be the most accessible of the family Tate. To the casual art observer, modern art curators appears to hedge their bets between the comic style escapades of Lichtenstein and the absurdity of the modern British Artists. They seem to hope that their pithy 50 word write ups will keep us interested.

This isn’t so much of a problem in Tate Britain. The scenes are recognisable to us, they simply look appealing and heaven forbid seem to actually have been painted using brushes (rather than a potato peeler held upside down in bio degradable hemp and organically sourced violet juice). They are pleasant to the senses and in a refreshing change, no one bumped me with a oversized rucksack and there were no unorganised scrums around the most popular of pieces.

It’s just the right size for a 40 minute perusal and for some reason you come out a tad happier than when you went in.

The Triennial is on until 26th of April and the entrance to the gallery is dominated by an enveloping mushroom cloud of pots and pans. Rather than stack their gallery full of oversized sculpture, the curators here seem to pick and choose only best. (cue spontaneous mass applause).

Best of all there are free tours at 12:00, 14:00 and 15:00. Helping you come back to the office full of insightful anecdotes (without even having to try) and giving you and excuse to fill the afternoon with dramatic hand gestures and dramatic scarf wrapping.

Sean Collins

12/02/09

Sean and Dan are escaping the shackles and trying to fit in more good stuff. Follow their adventures at  http://sftw.typepad.co.uk/

Never Forgotten - No need to wait for the summer stadium shows

Nervous, very nervous would be the best way to describe walking into the theatre to see Never Forget. Not because I thought it would be a bad show, more because I though that I might embarrass myself by joining in too much. Sadly I was so right, and I don't even like Take That.

At the moment, the West End seems full of musicals set to the tunes of formerly top selling bands, with We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia dominating both the box office and the headlines. Never Forget though may well beat them to the crown of the most fun show out there this year.

There is definitely a difference between shows that are funny and shows that are fun. This falls fully into the later category. It's the story of a group of friends who try to raise money by entering themselves into a tribute band contest. Imagine someone managed to condense a years worth of Coronation Street storylines into a 2 hour stage show and you have some idea of the plot of the show. If it can happen to these boys, then you better believe that it will. Only on stage (or possibly the East End of London) do you ever consider having business meetings in a strip club!

This is definitely one of those shows where the audience are up on their feet for most of the show. Don't worry, no matter how much you fight against it, you'll be joining them. Even when the entire stage turns into a giant shower!

Get your mates together, have a few drinks before hand and get down to The Savoy Theatre before this show closes. It really is that good.

Sean Collins

Never Forget is at the Savoy Theatre until November 15th 2008
Book tickets here

Following in the footsteps of Bond and the hamster, the world's largest Indoor Skydiving venue

I never had the desire to jump out of a plane. I never wanted to feel the wind beneath my hair. I certainly never trusted my hand eye coordination to save me from certain doom. When it was suggested to me that I should do this excursion, the conversation went a bit like this;

Dan "This week we want you to go indoor skydiving"

Sean"No chance"

Dan"No seriously, we want you to go into skydiving"

Sean"No chance"

Dan"Get a move on, you're going to miss your train"

Sean"Nope"

Dan"Move, Now!"

So after a quick diversion to the toilet (and to next), I set off to the centre just outside Bedford

Back to High School

We broke out our pom poms last night at the Hammersmith Apollo for the High School Musical stage show. While my 4 and 3 year old companions knew everyword, I hadn't even seen the film!

Host your own hot dog eating championships

 Uncle Sam Wants You!
Even if you’re not from the US you can still have a great time on the 4th of July.  Celebrate just like the Yanks and you’ll be having fun in no time.

 

Take on your own Amazon

We were beginning to get fed up with people coming back from their holidays and telling stories of how they swam with dolphins, climbed waterfalls or went white water rafting! It's not they aren't great things to do, it's just that we were starting to get a bit jealous.

So if we couldn't afford a holiday to the real Amazon, where could we do it over here? We also set ourselves a limit. It had to cost under £50 each including travel and a post raft beer.

Host your own Canada day party

Canada Day, Eh?
Okay, so even if all Canadians don’t insert the fabled ‘eh?’ into every spoken sentence it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to do it on Canada Day.  There are plenty of other ways to soak up Canadian culture as well

Find your favourite album cover

Ever fancied gathering your mates together and reshooting your favourite album cover, but with you as the star? Here's a few ideas of ones that you can remake quite quickly.

Become a Gladiator

Let's be fair, I don't look much like an athelete, certainly not a Gladiator. In fact on my last visit to Thorpe Park the staff had to double check that I could fit in the rollercoaster restraints (not one of my finest moments). I thought that my sporting days were long gone, until someone mentioned Zorbing. Surely even I could do that!

What's your top 3 at Chessington World of Adventures?

It was strange walking back into Chessington world of adventures after a gap between visits of nearly 15 years. Part of me wanted all the rides that I used to love to still be there, while the other half didn’t want to ruin the great memories that I had of the place. I wasn’t disappointed.