275 - life update 🎭⌛🍷
the last rays of summer shine brightly, poetically caressing thy face
Hey there, !
Grab a drink, settle in, we goin' back to LIFE UPDATE mode:
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It's been a good month to enjoy the last rays of summer. Daylight Savings just hit and I think it was the first time that I've really felt the darkness come in the next day. I was playing DnD and it was so dark at 5pm I thought we'd missed dinner! Alas, time marches on. Overall? Well yes, I'm well, thank you for asking , with my thoughts consumed mainly of how I balance my social life with my work with my own rest time with celebrancy stuff. At the moment the balance is off (as you'll see in the next dot point) but we persist!
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Bit sad, but no progress on the celebrancy front since last time - still at 2/12. I need to keep pushing...likely I'll have to get an extension but there are SO MANY practicals to do agh. I'm chunking through the writing but the performances take a while to organise and do. When I'm back from my trip I'm gonna have to really put down some time to get through all these practicals!
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I really like watching comedy shows - if this isn't nice, what is? I remember my love of comedy was born during a golden period of channel 10 when Good News Week, Thank God You're Here, and then the Comedy Gala were on tv, and I watched EVERY MINUTE OF IT, JERRY. Since then, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (that's currently on) continues to be one of my favourite events of the year. I've been going for years, and watching some of these comedians grow (both in terms of their style but also their life) is really quite nice. Like you're checking in an old friend, y'know? Some quick reviews:
- Jin Hao Li: 2.5/5 - I was very excited to see him because he had sold out shows at the Edinburgh fest last year, but perhaps because I was in previews he was obviously very not comfortable. He kept getting distracted by latecomers, or phones or something, and he wasn't able to get back on the horse and just do his show. I don't know whether that's a jitters thing, but I just wish it was better hahaha.
- Lou Wall: 4/5 - genuinely a surprise for me as I signed up for this on a whim because I had time before Michael Hing; they perform this wonderful bit about an incident on Facebook Marketplace, and it keeps getting better and better. Highly recommended new find for me.
- Michael Hing: 4.5/5 - it's just nice to be in the hands of someone who's just...so good? I've watched every standup show he's performed at the MICF, and he don't miss. Just some great storytelling and nerdy humour, well written, well performed; he knows what he's doin'. A guaranteed fun time.
- Guy Montgomery: 4/5 - one of the cleanest comedy sets I've seen in a long time; a whole hour with very little comedy on drugs, sex, racism or anything tawdry in that domain. Perhaps influenced by the fact he's now on ABC so he needs a bit of a cleaner comedy style, but it's still really good!
- Luke Mcgregor: 3.5/5 - it's been 7-8 years between his last standup show and this one and it kinda shows. He's still got his own awkward style of comedy, but it's probably one that I wish had evolved a bit more over time. Then again, do what you know best, right? He had a limited run of shows anyway, so it was probably just for the diehard Luke fans :D
- TBC - Paul Williams, Tom Cashman, Noah Szto; hoping to catch a few others if there's time :D
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Sonnet update - I now know 5 Shakespearean sonnets by heart (absolutely smashed my goal no biggie) - 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), 29 ("When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes"), 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediment"), 128 ("How oft when thou, my music, music play'st") and 130 ("My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). I think I'll go for 10 by the end of the year, hey? There are some non-Shakespearean ones that I thought would be fun to learn - Emily Barrett Browning has a famous one (Sonnets from the Portugese 43: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways") as well as one by John Milton ("When I consider how my light is spent") which was the solution to a Black Widowers short story.
It's been nice to train the memory a bit and learn the words, but it's also fun to play with different interpretations and styles of performance for each of them as you commit them to memory and gain a greater understanding of what is trying to be conveyed. What is trying to be said through this sonnet? How are you able to draw from the same emotional well to inform the reading? I think all those things are quite important to the actual performance of the sonnet as well, and it kinda helps with when I'm performing the celebrancy ceremonies I've written.
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I'm off to Korea and HK in a few weeks time, which is very fun and exciting and has been something lovely to look forward to. As always, there'll be some replacement posts that'll come out...or not, depending on my mood :D
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And then in no particular order, a smorgasbord of places I've been out to, to explore this wide, big city of Melbourne that has a shit ton of events going on; went to see Graham Norton, headed out to the Heide Market, the Finders Keepers Food Market, a cool vegan restaurant next to Queen Victoria Market, my first time at Moomba...just so much to do in the brief lasting moments of Summer.
- Lastly, I know you've all been waiting for it so HEEEEEERE'S GANDALF:
Chat soon :)
📋Today's Question
Same one as every life update, Pinky:
NB: for anyone following, the CYOA is being developed as we speak! It'll be a time heisters story where many hijinks will occur. I'm really gonna just treat this as asynchronous DnD except you only get one choice per email, so let's see how it goes ^^
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Asteroid City - 3.5 stars - quirky and fun Wes Anderson film packed with cameos and stars that you know and love. Very weird in lots of ways with a story set in the middle of the desert where a UFO lands, but also very starkly a film inspired by COVID (quarantine from contact with the UFO). Interesting film, not a must-see but still recommended :)
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Duc Nga Tofu - niche recommend but I came across this tofu brand at the Finders Keepers Food Market, and it low-key kinda slaps. They make tofu (obvi) but they also make these 'tofu chips' which are literally just fried in a chip shape, but when you bake em for a while they're really good. Add a bit of hot sauce or sweet chilli sauce, whatever, and they're delicious to eat on their own! They aren't stocked everywhere (mostly the west) but if you find it it's really nice tasting tofu. Melbourne-based as well, let's gooooo!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? - like, really, what if? Fun hypotheticals are always interesting to ponder.
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The Slow Collapse of Critical Thinking in OSINT due to AI - the most pertinent part of this article that I think applies to all domains using AI:
The study revealed a clear pattern: the more confidence users had in the AI, the less they thought critically. In contrast, the more confident they were in themselves, the more likely they were to question the output, verify the information, and think deeply about the task.
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Air filters create huge educational gains - EVERYONE OF YOU GO OUT AND GET AIR FILTERS, STAT. STAT MEANS NOW!!