In the pub the other night I was telling Tony (I think) about the bloke who got up on stage and danced through a song at the last gig Ben Folds did in Sheffield. It was one of the great impromptu moments you get at gigs occassionaly; the dude made every smile by dancing as if nobody was watching and didn't out stay his welcome. Anyway, by chance I stumbled on a video of the moment on You Tube:
There's a version with better sound here, but shot from further away. Ben Folds is playing at the Roxy on 8th July. Me, Liv, Phil, Jane are going, hopefully some of you other cats will be there too, he puts on a good show.
I saw Happy Go Lucky this evening. It's a really enjoyable film about a 30 year old primary school teacher who maintains a positive outlook on life. You could be forgiven from the trailers for thinking that she's just a bit dim, but in fact the very opposite is the case. Her bright disposition, honesty and trusting nature shines a light on others, allowing her to look below the surface in order to help and guide people when necessary, and make a positive difference to people's lives. Being a Mike Leigh film I actually had a vague sense of foreboding througought, expecting that she'd die of cancer at the end or be hit by a car or something, but I don't think I'm spoiling the film by saying that nothing bad really happens, just the usual ups and downs of life for a primary school teacher. So, I'd highly recommend it to everyone. Mind you, I highly recommended Toscana on Divisions Street, and we went back for Jane's birthday, and they were crap. The food was still nice, but the service was shocking. The same two waiters as before, but in the few weeks since I was there, the vague sense of antagonism between them has grown into full blown animosity, and sadly the customer is the victim of their feuding. Three hours it took them to server us 2 courses. I'd have liked dessert and coffee, but none of us had the required four hours to spare that it would have taken. Still, we had a fun time, none the less. Hopefully one or both of the waiters will move on and Toscana can live up to its potential.
I've not been watching The Apprentice. It's an hour long, and as much as I occasionally like laughing at hapless chimps on the telly, I resent having them in my living room for that amount of time. I am enjoying Andrew Collings's weekly recaps of the show though. He neatly condenses 60 minutes of idiocy into a few paragraphs of incredulity.
I nearly always have lunch in The Winter Gardens, and given that it is attached to the Millennium Galleries sometimes pop in there for a butcher's. They often have small free exhibitions on that are quite cool. There's one at the moment about mapping that's really interesting, it has some fantastic visualisations of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". Someone else has already taken the time to create a good blog about this, so I'll just link to their site to save me the bother. It is worth clicking on the high-res versions of the images, as there's some real cool ideas behind the visuals.
In Britain, there's Italian restaurants and there's Italian restaurants, and there's Italian restaurants.
In most Italian restuarants you get crap "British Italian Restaurant" food such as pasta with stodgy, tepid, bland sauces and ice cream with a wafer for dessert. In these restaurants it's best to order pizza. In some Italian restaurants, they serve nice "British Italian Resturant" food, like pasta with rich tomato and olive sauces, or great pizza. In these places it is best to choose whatever you fancy, as it'll probably be nice. In a few Italian restaurants, they serve food that tastes like the kind of thing you are served in Italy. Simple, delicious, unpretensious cooking. In these places, it is best to avoid pizza, not because it will be bad, but because you can get pizza whenever you want, and so why not try a delicious authentic main course?
La Toscana on Devonshire Street is somewhere between the last two. It's a tiny place; it was the Mash House a few years back, then became the Pasta Bar Express, the sister place to the Pasta Bar in Sharrowvale Road. Now it's a cosy little Italian. It's small, but they easily coped with our table of 9 on Saturday night. Despite the name, the menu didn't seem to be particularly Tuscan, more generic Italian. And it was simply, delicious, unpretensious cooking, if not always necessarily 100% authentic.
Service was OK and very friendly. There were two waiters, a stereotypical Italian waiter "Your tagliatelli and Pancetta, my friend. Bon Appotito!" and a stereotypical Yorkshire waiter "Here's you pasta and bacon. Enjoy your meal."
So, there's a lot of crap Italian restaurants in Sheffield, there's a lot of mediocraty, and there's suddenly a lot of chain Italian restaurants too. There's Nonna's which has really nice food and definately falls in the "Italian" Italian resturant category, but it's pricey and full of wankers.
So, if you want a nice Italian meal in a cosy retaurant without breaking the bank (our bill was just £25 a head for 3 three courses including service and wine) then I heartily recommend La Toscana. I'm bothering to write a review, because it's so small that you will probably miss it, and it could probably do with the word of mouth. They have earnt it.
The Roxy in Sheffield reopened last night as a music venue. Basically, it's the Leadmill only much bigger. This is a good thing, as it should attract some bands that wouldn't normally come to Sheffield which you'd have to go to Manchester or Leeds to see. I'm not sure who the opening band were, though I do know that they were fucking awful. I mean, really bad. Not just "it's not my cup of tea", but actually bad. They were followed by a badly misjudged DJ set, with an embarrasingly bad MC who basically just kept saying "This one's for the ladies" over and over again. The main band of the night - Reverend and the Makers - are an odd thing. The band is tight, and they have some good songs, but the lead singer is just such an absolutely massive cock. He was unreal, he had the life views of a 14 year old boy and his in between song banter consisted of saying things like "Listen, yeah? Don't listen to what you hear in the media, yeah? Think for yourselves, yeah? Do you hear me? Think for yourselves!" and "I've worked in Atkinsons, I've worked Norwich Union, I've worked in the steel industry. Wank Wank Wank. You want my advise? If you don't like your job... yeah... leave, yeah? Because this is Sheffield - Steel City, yeah? This is what it's about." Oh shut the fuck up you stupidly massive cock, and you can shove your child like poetry up your arse too. You wouldn't mind all this pathetic wank so much if he could sing, but he rarely approached anything that might be considered as in tune. After the gig, as I was wandering up past Tudor Square to meet up with Liv, and Stupidly Massive Cock and the Makers were doing an acoustic gig outside The Crucible. I didn't hang around, I just took a picture and headed into town.
I hate throwing food away, and doing say makes me feel all guilty. A voice inside me says "Chris - you make me sick. There's millions of starving people in the world and you are throwing away food, because you selfishly bought more of the stuff than you could possibly eat, you asolutely selfish pig." Lettuce often ends up in the bin, because there's only so much lettuce you can eat before it goes all flacid and unappetising. But worry no more! I read on one of my favourite foody blogs today that lettuce can be revived by immersing it in a bowl of cold water, which through the magic of osmosis will transfer water back into the wilted leaves re-strengthening them. Imagine that! In fact, you don't have to imagine, you can watch a video of the effect on You Tube.
I don't much about the music of Spoon. In fact, my only introduction to it has been through this fan video by Adam Buxton off of the Adam & Joe Show. It made me chuckle. I quite liked the song.
I come across a number of interesting, fun, clever, stupid links on my travels around the internet, but can never be arsed to blog them as it's too much effort. However, Friend Feed has aleviated nearly all of that hassle. So, subscribe to this feed and you'll get all the links that I think worthy of your attention. It will be just like old times, when this blog was nothing but a repository of links to other sites. Anything else I post on the internet, like new photos will also show up in the feed.
