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Another really fun gig from Fran and the boys, playing songs old and new. The sound mixing was really poor though, and I especially noticed it at the start. However, the sheer enthusiasm of their performance annulled these problems, the guitarist even managed a crowd surf-whilst playing the guitar, Fran was all over the stage (and even fell over the drum stage), and for the last song, ‘Why does it always rain on me?’, Fran got everyone to pogo under threat of death by sniper from the celebrity box. Great stuff.

Rome, the eternal city. A weekend really isn’t enough as there’s so much to see, but it gives you a great taster of the good life. Everything was really fantastic, the only gripes were that the room+bed were Lilliputian in dimension, and there was some night bird from hell that kept making ghoulish whooping sounds all night long that echoed around the inner courtyard of the pensione.

Wilco have to be one of the best bands around that I know of. Years of experience, beautiful mature songwriting, endless sonic experimentation to add texture to the songs (and they do it live really well), blistering solos, mellow moments, rocking moments, Jeff was in a good mood too so fun banter with the crowd…these guys really are a class act.

That’s right, I quit the gym today. I’ve been going less and less since New Year (I always like to oppose popular trends), and now that the weather is getting towards more summery conditions, I want to be outside more!

I went once last week, and tonight I went again just to give it a go. I cycled for 10 mins, looking around at all the people grimacing indoors in the vast sweaty hall of pain, and decided that I just did not have one single ounce of motivation left in me. I can now run outside without freezing, instead of on the hamster tread, I can play Tennis instead of Squash, and I’m never going to get bulky without eating 10 meals a day and pumping iron like an Austrian madman. So why bother?!

The third installment in the “Loser” trilogy by Aki Kaurismaki delivers pretty much what you expect after having seen the other two films.

The visual style again shows great love and nostalgia for the 50’s, the interior shots painted in lovely shades of muted red, green and blue. In this film the effect is slightly oddly juxtaposed as Kaurismaki shows alot of shots around the shopping malls and subways around central Helsinki, which clearly place us in the present day.

We get weighed down as we watch the loser protagonist trying to get ahead in life and the sparse dialogues with lengthy pauses and 1000 yard stares. There are moments of relief, like the glorious answer given to a girl when she asks the protagonist what prison was like. Although I think it only really works well in Finnish.

Not bad, but a bit tedious and obscure.