Totallytheatre.com – two top boys! September 30, 2008

Very proud of my theatre-luvvie brother this week as he’s launched his website totallytheatre.com after months and months of hard work.  All his previous experience on Price Drop TV has come to fruition as his video clips look really quite good (glad he’s ditched the purple suits though).  I’m not sure what it is about my older siblings and risky work changes, but there seems to be a pattern emerging.  First my older sis changes career from BBC to outward bound instructing to wine merchant, and now my bro has swapped singing, dancing and acting for the virtual world.

Here’s hoping that totallytheatre.com is a great success. It looks fantastic, with lots of whizzy embedded video, and a whole host of interviews and behind the scenes stuff – there doesn’t seem to be anything out there competing with it either.

On another note, yesterday I watched the Bruce Parry BBC2 Amazon programme.  I totally love this guy!! He is so genuine and completely respectful of the cultures he is going into.  His enthusiasm is so infectious to the point that people really adopt him into their world – last night the loggers in the Amazon were talking about  setting him up with their sisters and he revisited a tribe he met two years ago, coming across his namesake, a toddler named “Bruce”.  Bless!

My Week in Media January 8, 2008

Inspired by this blog and finding it interesting to see what people are consuming, media wise, I thought I’d have a stab at detailing what I’m taking in:

 What I’ve Read:

• The Blair Years – extracts from Alistair Campbell’s diary
• Dipping into The Thunderbolt Kid by the utterly ace Bill Bryson
• The Times, irregularly, but particularly for the sports coverage and T2 features
• Times Higher Education Supplement
• Brides magazine (did you know there are no less than 835 gorgeous wedding looks?)
• The apple tree pruning section in my gardening book, with the hope I won’t kill off the thing when it comes to hacking time

What I’ve listened to

• Radio 2 and Five Live on the way to work (flicking between the two according to how interested I am).  Always Radio 2, Chris Evans, on the way home
• On the MP3 – some Amy Winehouse, Fratellis and Human League
• The Idlewild album
• Random tunes on YouTube, which the boy has picked out as potential wedding bash dancefloor tunes – including Egyptian Reggae, Teardrop Explodes and Julian Cope

What I’ve watched

• A bit of light hearted GMTV if I have time in the mornings
• Sense and Sensibility – proving to be a great watch
• How to Look Good Naked with the loveable genius that is Gok Wan
• Gloucester being well and truly (and deservedly, worse luck) beaten by Bath on Sky Sports – down the pub, I hasten to add

What I’ve surfed

• Most news websites, on a daily basis! Particularly liking Google News at the mo
• People’s pics and status updates on Facebook
• Rugby websites: namely Gloucester RFC, the RFU and Olney RFC
• The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music’s forums, for advice on how to teach a pretty difficult piano piece to my student – very useful, if you’re interested

Boo, just realised I have already broken my NY resolution for less lists….

Another b2b joins the mix… January 3, 2008

Just heard that another friend of mine had the question popped over New Year and is now a bride to be (b2b)!!  It’s soooo exciting when you hear of another fellow bridezilla joining the gang – there’s now four of us with impending nuptials and we’re busily arranging trips to wedding shows and swapping tips on our fave websites.

Oooh it makes me all misty eyed when I hear of another engagement, I guess it takes me back to when the boy asked me to marry him….

There we were on a surfing trip to north devon and that morning I was in my wet suit as usual (possibly the worst ever clothing known to woman), with grey skin from a hangover and bedraggled hair.  Despite this, he popped the question and as soon as I’d got over the shock and mumbled an acceptance we got totally wiped out by a massive wave! 

Anyway, back to reality for a mo – here’s my fave wedding website. The forums section is brill although I was horrified to discover that some b2bs have set up their own wedding websites with all the info, biographies, pics, how they met, the wedding party details etc.  It’s all a bit too much like swimming round in your own glee for me.  Anyway, I was intrigued, so spent all of 2 mins uploading some stuff to a dummy website for me and the boy and clicked to see the results.  Yep, just as naff as the other wedding websites I’d seen – so quickly and ashamedly took it off air, and resumed browsing forum entries about burnt orange colour themes, feather bouquets and bridal shoes.