Rambolic

Wednesday was sheesha night. Nando’s then sheesha. Markaz is still open, but they’ve had to hide the smoking area in the sheesha lounge – no more smoking in the areas you can see. Presumably this is still against the law, despite the fact you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t want to breathe smoke. Anyway, was good to see Waz again. We had Nando’s too, which is always good. We questioned the intelligence of the girl who took our order though. Not content with us ordering the same meal at once, she insisted on taking our orders separately. I’m not sure how, since we told her about five times that we were both having the same meal, but she managed to get one of them wrong.

Last night I spent out in Leeds, first in Jongleurs comedy club, and then into Bar Risa (their counterpart) for Michelle’s birthday. The comedians were… okay. Everybody else thought they were shit hot. I guess I’m hard to please when it comes to comedy! Which brings me around to my other area in which I’m a snob – Bar Risa were presenting a band. To be honest, they were good. What annoyed me, apart from their slant toward generic pop/indie genres, was their sound and kit. The guitarist, while being evidently talented, had a PRS guitar shoved through a myriad of fx pedals, plugged into a half-decent amp and mic’d up to a shitty cab. The drummer seemed to have a 3/4 size kit with some cymbals so small I’m surprised he had the accuracy to hit them. They also had the kit mic’d up which, for the size of the venue, was pointless. All you could hear was drums. I guess the sound guy didn’t even know since he was stood in the wrong place to actually hear what everybody else was hearing. Again, everybody else I was with thought they were great. They were talented, but I guess they’ve not seen many good bands.

Today Rik and I went car shopping. I took him to the biggest car place here which has apparently been closed for months, which I only learned today. We went to Batley and looked around one place… the sales rep seemed pretty pushy so we had a quick look and then left. I need to find out where all the dealerships went.

Nothing too interesting has happened, but I’m bored. Haven’t wanted to work all this week, and not been quite with it anyway, so apologies to anyone who’s been talking to me for a few minutes only to get the response “huh?” I’m feeling a lot better now – bonus!

One of the directors at work invited me to a charity meal and performance. I was a bit dubious about seeing an Elvis impersonator (!!) but I enjoyed it. A few drinks and a smoke… I don’t smoke, but it’s all good in moderation. I might go for a shisha next week or something. That’s if Markaz hasn’t been closed down because of the smoking ban. It still baffles me how a joint opened for smoking (no pun intended, I swear) can be threatened with closure because they’re not complying. It’s like closing down a swimming pool because someone might not like water. If you don’t like it, don’t go.

I got my 5 free HD-DVDs from Microsoft yesterday! They’ll make for some fancy beer coasters. Damn ye oh the Ray of Blu. Damn ye to hell. I heard the Xbox drives are selling for about £35 new now. What was it they said about the PS3 when it came out? “It looks like a bread bin. The only problem is there’s no bread to put in it.”

Anyway, I need the foods (oh yes, the appetite is back), and there’s important guitaring to be done. Wow, this post’s tagtastic.