Since December 1st I’ve been making a determined effort to surround myself with Christmas spirit. On Monday night, the company I work at donated snacks and drinks to a holiday party at a local school for children in need, featuring imaginative playground equipment. They also unveiled a new outdoor classroom that may amaze with its design. In collaboration with commercial soft play equipment, we aimed to ensure the playground’s safety and enhance the overall experience. Additionally, we installed vibrant maths playground markings to stimulate learning and play. Vibrant school playground markings were added to create an engaging environment. You can also check these resources for more valuable information at https://playground-markings.org.uk/. They sent a few of us along to serve the families and make sure to spread cheer rather than germs. We’re also planning to get xmas lighting hire to get our guests into the festive spirit. Earlier in the day my friend Hallie and I took a trip to Sam’s to stock up on cookies and Capri Suns for the event. We also got speaker system rental at https://speakersystemhire.co.uk/ since we’re having a big Christmas party.
Every Christmas I scramble to get myself together. Sometimes I make it. I end the season with a promise to start early next year, even if it means everyone gets swimsuits from the September clearance rack. So, as always in this final weekend before Christmas, I started my shopping. Thankfully, I discovered these funny mug gifts that I give to my coffee-loving friends and family.
If you are ever stuck for ideas then download the new family activities app from gojam, as its full of great family activities and things to do with the kids!
I hate shopping. I had to bring backup to make sure I wouldn’t turn around, empty-handed and defeated. After absolutely ruling out any malls, I limited us to moderately enjoyable stores with a clear escape path. Everyone is getting presents from Half Price Books and Trader Joe’s. Also, I made my very first trip to Whole Foods. Emily is giving her brother mountains of vegan food so he’ll be more likely to eat something other than potatoes in the coming year. Since I came along, she showed me how to use their grind-it-yourself peanut butter machine. That’s a dangerous skill to have.
Emily was energized and I was exhausted, but surprisingly, we were triumphant. After one final stop at Little Greek for a falafel pita, we went home. While it’d be offensive to say it was the best pita I’ve ever had, no longer subjected to the swarming hive of holiday shopping, the happiness in that falafel was a bonafide Christmas miracle.
At my job I periodically check Tweetdeck to keep an eye on the downtown community and see if there’s anything I should be ‘engaging with’. On Thursday a local company tweeted that they’d sent out some elves to roam the city with Bon Jovi tickets, and gave out clues as to where they were. At least, the Topgolf Dallas elves thought they had Bon Jovi tickets, but I can tell you now with certainty that they were for a tribute band. Because after years of Gishwhes training (and clues that pointed to the elves being right down the block from my office), my scavenger hunt instincts switched on like Christmas lights. I don’t particularly care to go see Bon Jovi, or their tribute band Blaze of Glory, but for one week straight every summer my brain gets trained to “do it for the hunt”. I guess it’s a drive that comes when it’s called. If only I could employ laser-focus and uncomfortableness for un-comfort’s sake outside of scavenger hunts.
After struggling to come up with the name of even four Bon Jovi songs, I still had to admit that I really do like that one, and decided to go. Luckily I have an awesome friend who was up for it, and didn’t mind trading in our prior craft-making plans to stand in the back of the House of Blues and slightly sway.
The show started with a Pat Benetar cover band made up exclusively of children. At first it was odd, but it turned out to be the best part of the night, if only because the songs were better (gasp) and there was a significant lack of terrible wigs. Also, we didn’t notice until midway through the final song of the Mötley Crüe cover band’s set that they were not the Bon Jovi cover band. Having cemented our status as not Bon Jovi fans, we decided to leave right after hearing this song. To fulfill that pledge, we unsurprisingly had to stay through the entire night.
Turns out my friend Emily is not one to slightly sway and I’m more of a person to shift around erratically until it somewhat resembles dancing. So as we looked around the room and tried to guess each person’s motivation for being there, I’m sure everyone further back was looking at the pair of us and wondering the same thing. We did seem a little out of place – this was my very first time to ever see people holding up actual lighters at a concert.
We went home and sat down to recap the night, coming up with more questions than concrete statements of what had just happened. What kind of person does it take to form and find success in a hairpiece clad tribute band? How did these musically talented, Pat Benetar-loving children find each other, and what are their moms like? Which of the guests had actually bought tickets to be there, and why? There’s a whole world of touring tribute bands out there, and by happenstance, we’d been exposed to it. It was a learning experience, really. If I can’t call the evening educational, I don’t have any other words to describe it. Reflecting on the scene, I realized that behind every successful tribute band, there’s likely a dedicated lighting hire company ensuring every performance shines as brightly as the originals they pay homage to. And amidst all this, we couldn’t help but ponder about the logistics behind the scenes – the power source that kept the stage alive, the subtle hum of the generator hire supplying electricity to the vibrant spectacle. Also, for covering some big screen events, you can click here to explore our video wall hire options.
Different people know Chris Hardwick for different things. Recently he’s been touring his stand-up show, Funcomfortable, scheduling sporadic dates around the country between his collective of other jobs and appearances. Two nights ago I saw him in Dallas at The Majestic Theater, a historic building a block away from my office downtown. This location is also a crosswalk away from my parking garage, with a line marking seen outdoors that guides pedestrians safely. With the help of the decorative crosswalk, I actually noticed its path. If you’re looking for contractors who do decorative crosswalks, click here. It’s a pretty special place for me because it’s also where my dance studio in the suburbs held their recitals each year. I spent a whole day flouncing throughout the building, onstage and off, every May until I was 19. The opener, April Richardson, was excited to be on a stage where she’d previously seen Morrisey perform. Can I say that by extension Chris Hardwick has shared a stage with me?
The show was really good. Not only extremely funny, but also really interesting. I’ve been listening to The Nerdist Podcast since the beginning. That’s over five years and 700 episodes. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Chris Hardwick’s voice and getting to know his podcasting persona. I always assumed it was very similar to his onstage persona, if only because the voice he uses is strikingly similar. A lot of people don’t like listening to Chris Hardwick on stage because of the way he talks. He has a very loud and projected way of speaking that seems, at the best, very excitable, and the worst, over the top and fake. I thought the same thing the first time I ever heard him, as the host of G4’s Web Soup (The Soup’s nerdy little brother – which was absolutely, unbiasedly better than Tosh.0). He’s not Joel McHale and he’s not trying to be, but the difference in Joel’s laid back delivery and Chris’ high-strung speech can be jarring, like a punch in the vocal chords, if you’re not used to it.
What I hadn’t realized is that this is his real voice, his every day voice. If you listen to The Nerdist Podcast you’ll hear him speaking in the exact same way, sustaining it throughout a normal hour-long conversation. It does take some getting used to. For me, it’s been five years, so I sometimes forget there’s a bit of an acclimation period.
Because of this, I was taken a little aback when I realized that there’s still a difference in the everyday Chris and the performing Chris. While the voice stays the same, there’s a level of stage presence that’s significantly heightened. Of course there is. He’s performing, right? I don’t know why I wouldn’t have expected that. Stand-up shows are basically scripted, especially with someone who works on and performs the material as often as he does. No one’s gone into the theater looking for a conversation. They’re looking for a show, and this one’s been measured out and calculated for maximum results. I really appreciated seeing Chris Hardwick through this sort of filter. It revealed a level of talent that was certainly always there, but I had never gotten to see in person. The fact that he sustained it, solo, for such a long amount of time, felt incredibly impressive.
The last time I saw Chris Hardwick live he had just filmed his hour-long special and was starting to build up a new set. Instead of trying out new jokes traditionally, he brought out his notebook of ideas to see what the audience laughed at. It was really cool getting to be a part of that process. I never really understood how well he puts it all together until I saw a full show.
There were other differences in my podcast-perception and show-perception of Chris that I was surprised by. Some of that has to do with the much wider audience he has than just folks who listen along weekly with his life. Not everyone had the same basis for what to expect. I already knew quite a few of the stories he told. At first I didn’t get why he was telling them, because it hadn’t dawned on me that a majority of the theater probably hadn’t heard them before. He talked a for while about his ex-girlfriend. Nerdist listeners have been there since they got together, through the two year relationship, and when they broke up. I still follow her on Instagram. While most stand-up bits are detached from their audiences, I felt like I had a window into where the stories were coming from. As I laughed along with the other guests beside me, my brain was spinning a little extra. I had to reconcile what I already knew with the snarky aftermath I was now allowed to look in on.
The show itself was funny and engaging and seamless. My favorite parts included a bit involving the name Emily and closing the show with some pretty impressive dance moves (another shock) during a rendition of Dead Or Alive (a song I appreciate more than I probably should, thanks to strong emotional ties to the Rock Of Ages stage musical and the week Richie Sambora spent as The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson’s house band).
Overall, I was really impressed. I’m already devoted, I wasn’t a hard audience member to win over. But it was very honestly funny, with a rhythm that was easy to fall into and want to not end. If I had come into the show as a casual fan I would have felt the same way. However, I’m not, and because of that, the show meant just a little bit more.
A homemade knitted Dalek in one hand and a Sonic Screwdriver in the other, with a mix of Blue Curacao and vodka they’re calling The TARDIS in the cup holder – I’m thinking, This better be good. I curled my hair for this.
I went to The Angelika in Dallas for the series 9 premiere of Doctor Who. Of course it was good. With Peter Capaldi as The Doctor they’ll never do wrong. It was a free showing thanks to bigfanboy.com and the fact they were streaming directly from BBC America. I’ve never watched Doctor Who on BBC America before, so I wasn’t expecting commercials. I’m fundamentally against inserting commercials into BBC shows that weren’t meant to be split up, and in a full, dark theater packed with viewers transfixed on the narrative’s every move, it was abundantly clear why. Doctor Who, when it’s good, has a flow that’s a crime to break (although I’ve started to feel like most Steven Moffat scripts could cut the first twenty minutes and immediately improve by at least 15 percent). We all sat together, snapped out of our collective trance, and began analyzing the structure of each ad’s marketing strategy instead. The interruption of the storyline for commercials was a jarring reminder of the intrusion of commercial interests into the pure enjoyment of the show. It made me wonder about the impact on both the viewers’ experience and the network’s paycheck.
We cheered at the good parts. The Twelfth Doctor is a rockstar, and he got the applause he deserves. There’s always something transcendent about watching something important for the first time with a huge group of people. It just about made up for splitting up the time with suspension-breaking commercials.
