At first I tried to ignore them, telling myself that someone else in my apartment block must have gotten tired of stealing my newspaper and had decided to get a subscription of their own. I was able to delude myself with this for a few weeks, but then I had to face facts: my subscription has not run out. You know the saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
By this time I was much jaded about the quality of content in these papers, so now when they come I open them up in front of our recycling bins and immediately chuck all the sections I am never going to bother with. Basically, this leaves me with the Arts and Lifestyle sections (both of which I merely skim). My flatmate enjoys having these parts of the paper around because it gives her something to read when she's got 10 minutes to kill before heading off for a social engagement, and I like to cut articles out so I can pretend to myself that this is the kind of life that I am living. And so the pile of newspaper slowly starts it's growth to person-sized yet again.
Snark though I might, I must admit that sometimes the A2 is littered with awesomeness, as it was a couple of weekends ago (though today it was littered with cockroach). That paper a couple weeks ago had reviews of shops that I've been meaning to go to for over a year, a controversial piece on Midsumma, and an article explaining new fads in games. Now, I love playing games. My domino's set is one of my most cherished possessions, and my flatmate and I frequently spend the evening battling it out over the Scrabble board (she beats me every time, but I'll get her yet!) My previous flatmate and I had a few good rounds of Monopoly (we were much more evenly matched at that). Plus, the day I whooped Lady Cop's ass at Battleship will always be a treasured memory. So I was pretty psyched to read about what these new game fads were.
Of the five trends the article described, I can't say as I find much appeal in Cos Play or 'No Lights, No Lyrca'. But I definitely want to check out Settlers of Catan and geocaching. Secretly I am a total geography nerd and I dream of being one of those retirees who occupy their time and money scouring the globe to find their next geocach. I'd totally do it now, but it's definitely an activity that requires a car. So much like Goldie Locks, I came to the last fad and found that it was just right!
Secret Wars is really more of a spectator sport than a game, but I won't hold that against the article that informed me of it's existence. Basically, it's a draw off between two artists, generally of the graffiti genre. The idea is that each artist draws a picture of something awful happening to their competitor, and the best picture wins. When I read that, I was immediately hooked. After all, that is pretty much what I did with one of my friends for all of Chem 30 and the second half of grade 12....
It started off as my friend trying to slag me off, and soon turned into an elaborate story line about two super villains vying for domination over each other. We took turns drawing comic strips whereby we would do something horrible to each other in order to claim victory. Once we had completed our strip, we'd hand it over to the other who would then attempt to exact even more extravagant revenge. To this day I am convinced this has been the best use of my creative talents, ever. At no point is my PhD going to involve me and David Bowie running over our enemies with trains.
Unfortunately, my friend lost the first page of the comic (I'm sure she remembers this differently, but I don't lose anything, ever, so as far as I'm concerned any other explanation violates the laws of physics). I still have the second page, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and by that point our storyline was wearing pretty thin. I have produced a few solo venture comics since then, all as gifts for other people. The next time I decide to break out my mad stickman drawing skillz I'll be sure to keep a copy of my work for myself!!
Upon reading the description of this Secret Wars phenomenon, I discovered that the next event was only a week away. After checking out ticket prices, I fired off an email to Lady Cop, who I knew would be just as excited about this as I was. We booked our tickets and off we went!
If I had to sum up the event in two words, I was say it was "pure awesome!" It was set at Thousand Pound Bend, which really lent itself perfectly for this type of event. The DJ was phenomenal! He kept the hip hop pumping all through the night, which left me turning to LC every other song going "OMG! I love this song and I haven't heard it in years!" I'd forgotten how much good hip hop came out in the early 2000's. And anyone who doesn't love hip hop from the 90's probably doesn't have a soul. But let's not forget about the artists, both of whom were very talented and put on a great competition.
This event was the first round of the semi-finals and saw Scale face off against Pierre Lloga. They had 90 minutes to produce their work, using only black ink/paint on white.
That's Scale starting off picture. It was really interesting watching each artist's vision come to life right before our eyes. You've got no clue of what the end result will be when it starts out, and these two artists had quite different styles, so their works came together in very different ways.
At the start of the competition I was cheering for Pierre because I preferred his artistic style over Scale's. But I did have to admit that I thought Scale's concept was more interesting. Scale had Pierre locked up in an asylum, restrained in a straight jacket, whereas Pierre had Scale being chased by a crazy chainsaw murderer.
About half way through the competition Scale won over my support... by drawing Hello Kitty on the cell wall. I mean, you just can't compete with Hello Kitty. I also really liked that his concept was looking in on Pierre through a security camera in his asylum cell.
It was a close competition the whole way through though, with crowd support seeming to be favouring Pierre. Several times the MC came out to get us to cheer for our preferred artist, and to throw out prizes to whomever could be the most obnoxious in the crowd (it goes without saying that LC got a shirt).
As the competition came to a close, we counted the artists down to when they had to step away from the canvas. Both completed works were very impressive and involved quite a good effort at getting down to the nitty gritty details. It was obvious why they were both battling it out in the semi-finals! But it was up to the judges to decide who the winner would be...
The judges were unanimous: Scale was moving on to the next round! The crowd support remained strong for both artists, but Pierre's supporters cheered the loudest, giving him the accolade of crowd favourite. Both artists made an amazing effort and provided us with a very entertaining and enjoyable evening. LC and I are hoping to make it to the next round of the semi-finals and the grand final.
Here's the artists' finished works, decide for yourself who you think should have moved on to the next round:
Like I said, pure awesome! It certainly makes me want to break out the pencil crayons and get those pseudo-artistic juices flowing. But for the time being, my pencil crayons are strictly engaged in colour coding my data. One day I'll get back to my true talent of drawing stickman comics, one day.
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