What do you get.....

If you cross a monkey with a pig?

Well, not literally, but it's a good opener right?

Do you know the story of Monkey?

Well, I used to watch the series "Monkey" when I was a kid. A really oddly dubbed Chinese adventure about a cannibal, a pig, a monkey and a genderless disciple of Buddha, crossing India to find the holy scriptures.

Obviously, as a kid, none of that bothered me too much. The cool thing was all the great fighting action, and of course the monkey could fly about on a cloud!!

Honestly, I wasn't on drugs during that period of my life!!

So last night I went to Manchester to see: Monkey - Journey to the West.

It's a crazy "circus opera", whatever that means!!

A mix of martial arts, acrobatics, animation, music and singing, and cool costumes and sets. Three very cool people collaborated to bring us this show as part of the Manchester International Festival; Damon Albarn (Blur and Gorillaz), Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl and Gorillaz), and Chen Shi-Zheng (Director).

Of course, I could rattle on about it all day, but maybe that's already been done more comprehensibly and more eloquently than I could ever manage:

Here

and

Here

All I will say, is that if you get a chance to go and see it as it sets sail around the world, then you'd be mad not to. It's unlike anything you will have seen before.

In other news.....

I have fallen so far into the Big Brother existence, that I now do my grocery shopping online, with a corresponding luxury or rationed shopping budget, and have it delivered at a synchronised time to that of our dear housemates. I am permanently pissed on cider, and live in a caravan.

My friend Emma is going away tomorrow. Boo hoo. She is going "Darn Sarf" for about six months to learn something about how to tell the difference between a healthy dog and a manky one. She will be missed, and the gutters of Huddersfield will be very empty without her drunken antics!! The mobile phone shops in Huddersfield are already going out of business!!

I am getting through lots of smoked mackerel. It's a poor substitute for cigarettes, and they are much harder to light, but they contain so much less tar!!

Smoking tally - Haven't updated for a while so don't even know the figures myself.....

Let's see:

Days smoke free: 109 (nearly four months!!)
Cigarettes NOT smoked: 4360!!!!
Money NOT spent: 1145 GBP (2302 USD; 2415 CAD; 283858 JPY)

That makes me feel a bit better, and it makes the cost of going to see monkey last evening..... completely free!! Woohoo!!!!

Hello darlings.

Cast your mind back. Back to posssibly November 2006. You there yet? Good.

I was sitting at work, wondering what to do. I had been politely asked not to play motorcross games all day. I read, somewhere, that "The Producers" was about to start its national tour, and that Peter Kaye was to be included in the cast.

I lokked further into it, and found that the first night of this tour, would be in Manchester on February the nineteenth, and yes, Peter Kaye would be playing the character of Roger DeBris.

I booked the tickets, and kind of forgot about it.

I can't believe how quickly the nineteenth of February came around.

So, last night, was a trip into Manchester, to see Mel Brooks' classic musical romping comedy at the Palace Theatre.

How was it? Marvellous, darling. Simply marvellous.

If, seeing Peter Kaye, dressed as either a woman resembling the chrysler building, or as a camp german dictator, would tickle your fancy, then you can't really go wrong.

I was a quite outstanding theatrical performance.

The highlights for me, were the number of people who had obviously never been to a theatre before, and obviously were only going now, to satisfy their Peter Kaye curiosities.

1) A couple who dressed as if they go to a theatre every night of the week, but who obvisouly had no concept of how "seating" works - thereby, to reach their aisle seats, they promptly joined at the opposite aisle and stumbled across the entire row's feet to reach them. They both looked a little embarrassed when they took their aisle seats!!

2) The couple who were seated next to us, actually asked Dawn if the whole thing had finished, as we got up during the intermission!!! I don't think they got it!!

All in all, a fantastical, musical, colourful, extravaganza, of epic proportions. You could certainly do worse.