PigPog

It’s now 7.20. I’m a little dazed and starstruck after spending a couple of hours in the company of the mighty Beatallica.

The signal was a little erratic – Krk’s solos came over perfectly, which was great, but once Kliff and Ringo joined in the sound became more like white noise. I tried to record the call, but all that could be heard was interferance.

After the show I was fortunate enough to speak to Krk. As I was sat up in bed at the time with Michael by my side I made an incredibly lame-ass remark about sharing a bed with Michael and Kirk. There, Krk, is a prime example of me attempting to use my sense of humour to hide how nervous and starstruck I was speaking to you . After Krk went off to see to his guitar, I spoke to Jaymz. "Good show!" I said. "You’ve never sounded more English" said Michael. Sadly their signal wasn’t as good as mine, and despite wandering around the club to get a better reception, the conversation ended when I lost Jaymz.

Many thanks to Krk, Jaymz and Lisa for taking the time out to speak to us, and many more thanks to Patton for making the call possible. Although I didn’t hear all of the songs, I could tell that Beatallica are abso-effin’-lutely excellent live and if you get a chance to see them, do so. They are two of the best bands in the world.

Well, who’d have thought it. There’s a 4.55 on a Sunday Morning too! The world’s a funny place at this time of day. My head’s a funny place this time of day. I woke up about 10 minutes ago and decided that getting on the ‘puter was the best thing to do to shake off the last of my slumber. Because I’m up at this time on purpose. I have a reason to not be in my warm cosy bed with my warm cosy man dreaming of warm cosy things.

I’m waiting for a phone call.

A few months ago, a session of serendipitous (that’s a long word to attempt at this hour) surfing found me stumbling across a band called Beatallica. I found them listed just above The Beatles on a guitar tab site. "That can’t be what I think it is," I muttered while typing the name into Google and landing on their web site, but as soon as I saw their logo I realised it *was* what I thought it would be. The ‘B’ and ‘A’ had the familiar sharp edges you’d normally associate with Metallica, and the ‘T’ in the middle was just enough to suggest that it might also have something to do with a certain 4 cheeky moptops from Liverpool.

We set to downloading their collection of MP3s (available free, in an act of kindness not normally associated with either of the bands who inspire them) and I clicked the first one with caution. What we were about to hear was either going to be fantastic of effin’ awful. The first song I picked was Sgt Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band. It rocked. And whoever it was doing the vocal was doing a better Hetfield than Hetfield himself does nowadays. Or maybe it *was* Hetfield. Maybe Beatallica are Metallica in disguise, having a bit of a laugh? Er, no. I headed over to their Forum and left the band a message to tell them how awesome they are. Jaymz Lennfield, the man who out-Hets Het, was the first to respond. Then followed Krk Hammettson, a fella who has plenty talent to be worthy of being named after two of the world’s greatest guitarists. Emails and other messages were exchanged and conversations were started with other fellow Beatallibangers.

And this is why I’m waiting for the phone to ring at this ridiculous time of day. Beatallica are playing a gig *right now*. Patton, another Beatallibanger is there with a phone and assuming he’s still sober enough to dial the digits, should be ringing any time.

Life never runs out of opportunities to be creative, be it with paper, food, sweet wrappers, or finding ways to listen in on concerts in other countries. More soon after the phone call.

ipod: “Thanks to the success of our Special Edition U2 iPod, a slew of other artists are now clamoring to have signature MP3 devices of their own. Pre-order your favorite today.”

Yahoo! News – Millions of Bees Spilled on Vegas Freeway: “LAS VEGAS – A truck carrying 12 million honeybees hit a wall on a highway ramp, dumping its load across the pavement shortly before the evening rush hour.”

(Via JWZ)

Mind Hacks: The Social Yawn: “All animals yawn (see animalyawns.com) and in humans yawning seems to be contagious. Seeing another person yawn, or even just reading about yawning can make you yawn.”

I discovered a while ago that you can make cats yawn, but Mind Hacks have gone into far more detail about the whole thing. Unfortunately, reading about it made me yawn.

Seth’s Blog: The top 1,000 things to know

OK, so it’s only slightly about creativity, but it’s an interesting question – "What are the one thousand teachable things that every third grader ought to start learning so she’ll know them all before before she graduates from high school?" There’s a few creative things in there, which is good.

b3ta.com: "I really like eggs." – I’m not sure why it’s so funny, but it is. If you’re from the UK, anyway.

I’ve updated the ‘About Sam’ page, so anyone out there who has just started reading my blog and is thinking "Who is this woman?" can find out more about me, should they feel so inclined.

26 Things : Christmas Hunt 2004

Sh1ft.org regularly do photographic projects, and 26 Things is a recurring theme – they list the things, it’s up to you to interpret them and take photos of them. You have to find your own place to host the pics, and there’s no prizes, but it’s still quite a popular event. This one is fairly well under way – running for the month of December – so best hurry if you want to have a go.

Just realised that there was a bit of a gap there – we had nowhere to put projects for you to try. Here we are talking all about creativity, and we’ve nowhere to put those little creative projects like the dragon I posted earlier. So we’ve added a Projects section, and popped the little dragon in there. Enjoy.