Geekery

This year's theme for Christmas is Geekery.  We have had a year of lots of geeky things with me becoming oh so techie with my studying as well as some fabulous shows.

Tonight is a wonderful celebration of the food and music of the world of geek.  I couldn't choose a sensible three courses, there's so much inspiration out there and mad thoughts of my own.  So there's sort of endless courses.  It's also our fake Christmas Eve tonight (we are away for real Christmas) so eating and drinking and relaxing will be very high up the agenda for days.  Yippee!

That's our Christmas tree in the picture.  It's very geeky.  It has a tardis plushie, some iPhone ornaments (you can see the Facebook one, there's also Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ and a cute Instagram one).  A family of robots. A teenage mutant ninga turtle (crocheted) and some Mario mushrooms.  A felt stuffed pacman chases some ghosts around the bottom of the tree; the minx.  A lego bauble.  A pantone bauble.  And some comic characters (Wolverine pictured) including the Green Arrow who I keep calling the Green Lantern as they're the 'same thing' because it's very funny to annoy my hubbie.

My favourite is the most obscure: a mini version of Jayne's hat from Firefly.

Fairy stories

The theme tonight is fairytales.  We shall search the bands out there who have been influenced by that childhood bedtime ritual of a story before going to sleep.

One thing that is clear about fairy stories is that there are some that are really quite twisted.  This is a good read from the Guardian.

Recently both Grimm and Once Upon a Time have surfaced in TV land.  The latter being our favourite, and because of who's making it, there's Lost and Buffy alumni throughout, which makes it more fun.

The Hand-Me-Downs (fictional band)

I am doing a Design module at the moment as part of my degree.  My assignment I sent in today was to design a t-shirt, a really interesting and involved process.  My final design ended up being a t-shirt for a fictional pop punk girl band called The Hand-Me-Downs!  I spent a bit too much time deciding the names of the band members and what they might play, so tonight I have put together a playlist of what they might rock out to at their gigs.

He is gonna love this theme, he loves these types of bands.  I am cooking as well (I know!) as he is getting drunken at a racing day up at Newbury Racecourse.

What the heck do a bunch of girls in a band eat??  This will be challenging.

Four Seasons

As we hit the cold of the Winter season this week (Winter began on the 21st November, I believe), time to reflect back on the seasons of the year through the medium of food.  He gets Spring and Autumn and I am Summer and Winter, so let's see if the meals we choose reflect the season well.

The music will, naturally, include Vivaldi's Four Seasons and anything else that crops up.  I wonder if the music will reflect how the season feels?

This is a really quite cheery theme I think.

Music Game

My friend Piia introduced me some time ago to the Music Game concept.  A group of people bring n songs each to a gathering - the songs should be something new, interesting and unlikely to have been listened to before by the others.  Each one is played in full, and the others write down what they think, who the artist might be and a score out of ten, then discuss, then onto the next person.  Yes, a way to make listening to music feel like work :-)

The reason why this is great fun, is because you're doing a blind tasting, um listening, so if you think you love or hate such and such a band you would have a prejudice before the song starts.  This gives it a frisson of unknown and you're more likely to follow up the artist and see what else you might like by them.

An extra rule is that we try to add things in that are a bit out there, or that we're not even sure we like ourselves.  And we definitely don't pander to the other person even though it might be their fave song ever.

So we'll do the same with the food - things we haven't made before (two courses each) eaten in absolute silence as per the rules so as not to give away enjoyment levels. Well, heh, not really.  But we get to grade everything tonight, so red pens at the ready.

Iceland Airwaves 2012 (in absentia)

We didn't go to our fave music festival this year.  Partly because we had blown a million dollars on Texas earlier in the year, partly because last year it hadn't hit the same spots it had before and partly (mainly) cos I am poor as a poor, poor income less gal.

So tonight, we will visit Icelandic festival virtually.  The  Reykjavik Grapevine (an awesome english language fun free newspaper that's a must have if you're visiting) has this songlist from the festival.

For food, he's cooking up a couple classic Icelandic foodstuffs.  So if he is doing food and the music is done, what am I doing again?  Just sitting here drinking Reyka vodka huh?  Hard life.

Lady Luck

Tonight the subject matter is good fortune.  I left my laptop on the tube this week – I was super over tired after Secret Cinema and had been a dozy bint all day.  The horrifying realization and the angst… it’s like my laptop is an integral part of my life, and of course it is.  And certainly more so since I turned Apple.

After a frenzied couple of days, a guy called Sam called me, he had found it and tracked me down, and I picked it up tonight in Brixton.  LOVE HIM.

I had been thinking humanity was evil and horrible and imagining some moral-less douche backward cap wearing wannabe criminal wiping my mac and selling it on.  But, the reality was a guy who also had a mac and knew what it would feel like if he were in the same situation.  I tried to give the guy money, whiskey, but he was just doing it all out of the kindness of his heart.  I gave him a hug though – a connection from one human to another for doing a kindness.  Plus he was cute ;-)  Haha, sorry hubbie xxx

So the theme this evening is good fortune.