Pie pie pie! (thanks)

Last night, Devon and Annabel had a sort of hybrid Thanksgiving dinner/soirée down at their incredibly swanky and clean1 flat. I'm a little hazy as to the real meaning of Thanksgiving (something about slaughtering indigenous peoples or somesuch), but I was certainly giving thanks for the sheer variety and quality of PIE available. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie with a hazelnut crust (I know. Luxury!), apple pie and some other kind of pie-esque thing that I didn't have the intestinal capacity to try.

On a completely different tack, a friend of mine is moving into a new flat soon, so I felt I had to show her this.

1. As opposed to our flat, which is furnished entirely in brown, and can most accurately be described as 'dank'.
   

BOB IS ALIVE! Turns out Jeff found him and let him go outside. Josh took a picture of him though, so with any luck I should be able to prove I'm not just making this shit up.

Praise Jebus! The weekend wasn't as catastrophically awful1 as I had predicted. So much for the power of science.

On Thursday morning I was woken up from my post-Scotland-defeat hangover by a text message that said, rather succinctly: "Do you like classical music?". A few painfully slowly typed messages later and I had been invited to see Madama Butterfly on Friday night with Kate and a friend of hers. It was my first opera, so I was intrigued to see what it would be like (beyond the classical music and sung narrative, I mean). The music and singing were really impressive; the acting less so. I'm aware that an opera singer's first love must be with the music, but dear God: it was like watching a daytime Channel Five soap. Much agonised wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anyway, regardless, it was definitely worth it. We all had a few drinks in the Basement afterwards and chatted about it, like honest-to-God adults. Scary.

After farting around with the binding angles on my board more or less continuously while I was in France last winter, I hilariously managed to strip the thread of one of the inserts, so I took it into Snowlines on Saturday to have it fixed. I am now positively gagging for a bit of snow-based action.

On Saturday night we went to yet another ceilidh, this time for the birthday bash of a friend-of-a-friend. I (and most of the Mafioso that came along) was pretty knackered, and, crucially, stone-cold sober. This is not a good way to approach a ceilidh. The band were good musically but seemed to have a "let's do obscure dances" axe to grind. A few of us were press-ganged into dancing with some Scottish girls (okay, they didn't have to ask all that hard) and even we (as natives) had bugger all idea of what was going on. Couple this with a maybe 40% foreign crowd and we're talking about a ceilidh that redefines the notion of chaos.

Anyway, regardless of this, it more or less turned out all right in the end; we all wandered into Negociants for a couple of eye-wateringly expensive beers, and all was right with the world.

So: another mixed bag, but kind of a luxury selection of Thornton's chocolates as opposed to a cheap-ass Woolies pick 'n mix.

Oh, I almost forgot. RIP Bob the Invulnerable Cricket. Sometime last week, probably of starvation or overwhelming nausea at the sea of rotting pasta behind the cooker. No flowers.

1. Admittedly, I'm at work as I type this, but I'm in a fairly love-all, serve-all state of mind, so I'm being philosophical about it.
   

Last night the Roquefort Files helped save the world, while the Scotland football team failed to save anything.

So we got drunk, and it was good.

This weekend was something of a mixed bag. Statistically speaking, next weekend is probably going to suck the big one. To wit:

• Mon Sep 01: "Bit of a fun-filled extravaganza over the past week or so..."
  
• Mon Sep 22: "That was a fine weekend, I have to say"
  
• Mon Sep 29: "Another decent weekend for the Roquefort Files...".
  
• Mon Oct 06: "...it seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually, it was".
  
• Mon Oct 13: "Another good weekend. Something is definitely going on". This is the point I get wise to inevitable doom.
  
• Mon Oct 20: "The weekend: good and bad". Uh oh.
  
• Mon Oct 27: "...a pretty decent weekend". Bucking the trend for a last gasp of happiness.
  
• Sun Nov 02: "I'm off to do some work". Ah. Working at the weekend.
  
• Mon Nov 10: "Summary: gig good; everything else standard issue". Uh oh x2.
  

If I was anal enough to plot this on a graph, I think it would show a) I'm in trouble next weekend; b) I'm incredibly sad.

So I won't.

Anyway, back to this weekend. On Friday, Jeff randomly bumped into Nina, a Dutch friend of ours that we're going to visit in Amsterdam next month, which is a bit of a coincidence. Josh was in a beer monster type of mood, so we recruited some of the usual suspects and went on a minor bender with Nina and her boyfriend.

I was woken up the next morning by a text message arriving on my phone from Kate, who'd just got her bike back from being repaired, and wanted to go for a ride somewhere. I scrambled out of bed, had a shower and met up with her on Leith Walk about 40 minutes later. (I'm still vaguely in shock that she doesn't burst out laughing every time she sets eyes on me.) We cycled down to Newhaven and had a couple of pints in a nicely cosy little pub and then a couple more in a pub near my work, and then I cycled home. Illegally, I suspect.

That night, the Mafia headed to a party (with a supposedly French vs. Greek theme - your guess is as good as mine), but I was still in the throes of one of those afternoon-drinking hangovers that you get if you don't just keep on drinking, so I wasn't quite on top form and I headed back fairly early.

Josh and I went to see The Matrix Revolutions on Sunday night. Hmm. I'm in two minds about it - it was certainly much better than Reloaded, but if you, say, use the rest of the cinematic oeuvre as a yardstick, it was really pretty awful. The sheer spectacle of some bits was incredible, but a paper-thin story didn't help matters. On the way home though, I saw possibly the funniest thing ever. There was a heap of full black rubbish bags on the pavement, with a note pinned to them reading:

"WHAT PART OF 'DON'T LEAVE BIN BAGS IN THE STAIRWELL' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, ASSHOLE?"

So not a total loss.

I was making a cup of tea the other day and I heard what sounded like a grasshopper or cricket chirping somewhere in the kitchen. I circled about, trying to find it, and it sounded like it was behind the cooker.

What the fuck? A grasshopper behind the cooker? It stopped chirruping whenever I got near it, and started up again when I moved away.

This was four days ago and it still seems to be there, obviously surviving off those bits of stir fries that get enthusiastically stirred into the air and down the side of the cooker. I'm calling it Bob the Invulnerable Cricket, or Tenacious B.

I went to see Grandaddy (of the criminally under-represented electro-country future-shock pop/rock genre) at the Carling Academy in Glasgow on Friday night. I got to Neil's flat a bit late, after a slightly frantic hoon to Renfrew to pick up some tickets from Mart and then back into the city centre. We met up with a couple of Neil's mates and then headed to the gig.

I managed to miss my second support band of the week, but hey; I'd already seen them. We had a couple of pints - not Carling, thankfully - while we were waiting for Grandaddy to arrive and then wahey! Straight into the fun. It was an excellent gig - they're not a jump-around-the-stage band but they'd picked the set from their most straightforwardly crowd-pleasing tracks, and the crowd loved it. The venue was packed, and the audience obviously all wanted to be there, unlike the slightly odder Snow Patrol Liquid Room gig. The screen above the stage was showing suitably quirky videos and it all came together really well. They played two encores and finished off with He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot, which, apart from having a cracking name, is probably one of their best, most Grandaddy-ish tracks.

Top stuff. I'd definitely go to see them again.

After the gig we wandered into Barfly, just across the river. (Hannah bought a pie en route, and kindly left me a bit. I have never enjoyed a pie quite so much. Post-gig euphoria + lots o' beer + hunger -> pie is great. Mmm pie.) Apparently Death Disco was on that night but Alan McGee wasn't and being the like, really cool dudes that we were, we left.

This was a mistake. Neil and I ended up in some hellish dive that cost an arm and a leg to get into. Coupled with the fact that we were by now completely trollied, it was time to go home.

I drove back around lunchtime (after watching the slightly depressing Scotland-Australia game that morning with a particularly evil, lurking hangover) and stuck some Jimi Hendrix on the stereo, which made the M8 almost bearable. Saturday night was pretty standard; we met up with one of Jeff's archaeology mates, the two Allys and my sister for a few drinks, but nothing spectacular. Sunday was one of those lost days...I didn't do anything in particular but seemed to spend the whole day occupied with pottering around the flat.

Ah well. Summary: gig good; everything else standard issue.

Party update #3:

Some of Michelle's pictures, hijacked by your correspondent.

Sour cream update #1:

Still clogging up the fridge, only now it's gone off.

The Roquefort Files went to see the mighty Snow Patrol last night at the Liquid Room. I managed to remember my ticket once I was already half way there, so after going back to the flat to get it I got to the gig about 8.15 pm or so, missing the support band. Apparently they were crap, so no great loss.

Dom's Gig Summary^TM: "gig: great. starfighter pilot (the song they always finish on): good. beer: expensive and shit. strange people pointing and clapping: odd.". The best bit for me was Gary Lightbody's solo An Olive Grove Facing the Sea; a nice song, and actually better with just the one guy performing it.

I've been to see them three times now (sad, I know) and the audiences at the gigs seem to age about five years between each one. The first time I went to see them everyone looked like little nu-metal kids; the second time they'd graduated to early 20s indie-dom and last night seemed to have a typical pale Scottish indie scene crowd - mid 20s onwards. Weird.

Embarrassingly, I'm going to see SP a fourth time tomorrow - they're supporting Grandaddy at the Carling Academy in Glasgow. I must be getting west coast withdrawal or something.

Party update #2:

Andy's photos of the party.

Party update #1:

Who's the baddest gangster?

Mmm. Hmm.

Josh's take on the party.

< fx: Orff's Carmina Burana >

Saturday witnessed the event - nay, the phenomenon that is the semi-annual Hat/Comedy Facial Hair Party. We're getting pretty good at this by now, and the whole flat moved like a well-oiled machine throughout the day to buy fucking shitloads of booze and mixers (a good 100 big ones' worth) and to rearrange our embarrassment of chairs into a more party-friendly configuration. We borrowed an extra record deck from a friend and Josh set up the trademark two-deck one-CD bad boy DJ booth that has served us well in the past.

I had the old pre-party anxiety after about 9 pm (yeah, I know. Too early. I'm a square) when the only people there were the ones that really had no choice but to come (flatmates, girlfriends, you know who I mean), but a brace of beers sorted that out and then, as if by magic at 10 pm, the place just filled up. It was briefly astonishing to see the sheer number of people that turned up over about an hour or so. Zero to par-tay in record time for us!

Party observations:

• Whisky sours: just say no. Have a white russian instead.
  
• Further to the previous comment, bringing a bottle of kahlua will make you the favourite party guest, at least until someone else turns up with an even bigger bottle.
  
• Open a fridge onto your forehead hard enough and it will hurt. A lot.
  
• Cigars make you look cool. Steal them if you have to.
  
• Vodka sours: just say yes. Especially after a few white russians have softened you up. Also, the alcohol will dull the pain of your throbbing forehead.
  
• Teeth marks go away surprisingly quickly if administered in a 'playful' manner. See also previous comment about alcohol/pain relationship.
  
• My left arm hurts. I am not entirely sure why.
  

There were perhaps marginally fewer people than last time, but it was still enough to fill the entire flat (minus Josh's room, which was already filled with everything breakable or valuable we own). Up on last time, I reckon, was what I'm going to call the friendliness ratio. It's especially gratifying to see a good mate get acquainted with one of your own previous lady friends while one discovers that the date set up by said mate actually wasn't the crushing disaster that it had first appeared to be.

Which is nice.

A load of new people turned up about 3.30 am, including a couple of DJs to relieve Josh of his duties for a while, and things finally started winding down around 5 or 6. I flaked out about 5.30 (I think); getting completely hammered on a variety of expensive, complicated drinks will do that to a man.

This morning (ish) I was rescuing my CDs from around the flat, and some brave soul had compiled a set consisting of:

• Mogwai
  
• Jesus & Mary Chain
  
• The Thrills
  
• Looper
  
• The Charlatans
  
• Teenage Fanclub
  
• Primal Scream
  

Obviously trying to commit some bizarre kind of musical party suicide.

On a final note: coming to work just as it starts getting dark the day after a good party is quite possibly one of the most soul-crushing experiences it's possible to have. And so ends this rambling, not-entirely-coherent account of the weekend's entertainments. I'm off to do some work, or possibly hold my head in my hands muttering "For fuck's sake. It's Sunday," a lot. Haven't decided yet.