Galloping Executives

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Miranda Hart

Mini Ninjas

Pia-Pia-Piano

It’s a little known fact that I used to play piano/keyboard when I was a much younger lad. Unfortunately due to family illnesses and whatnot, there was no way in which I could’ve continued the lessons. When it became possible again, I’d moved on and lost interest. My keyboard gathered dust in my room for several years apart from the odd tinkle, which usually involved a recital of one of the few songs I remembered, My Heart Will Go On from the Titanic soundtrack.

(No, this isn’t me.)

Lately I’ve been inspired to take it up again and this time learn to read music properly. It’ll take time but I seem to have picked it up again quite quickly from where I left off. I guess it’s one of those things that you never truly forget how to do.

Ever wondered what The Daily Mail would look like as a London Underground map? Neither had I, but it’s still interesting to look at just the same.

Click for large version!

BBC reNews Website

Today the BBC launched their all new and improved news website: http://bbc.co.uk/news

The overall design is much improved. I always felt with the last design that it was stuck at the beginning of the decade…

Gleeful

When Glee first arrived on E4, I was fascinated that such a unique and funny show had made it’s way over to the UK on a mainstream channel. In recent years, most US serials I have enjoyed are only shown on obscure cable channels.

With Glee, at first I had my reservations because of the random bursting into song which was actually not meant to happen, according to the writers. 

What makes this programme for me, is the characters that get perhaps less screen time than they deserve. Jane Lynch is incredible as Sue Sylvester. Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) also can sometimes have me in stitches.

I am concerned though, that I’ve felt less of a fan since the second part of Season 1 started screening over here in the UK. I’m not sure what happened exactly, for this to occur, but I think a lot of fans were expecting it to continue to be non-repetitive, which it didn’t.

It seems to me that every episode is about one or many of them have an identity crisis which leads to them singing about it all to make them feel better.

Will Schuster’s (Matthew Morrison) love life seems to have been put on hold in terms of the storyline the minute that Emma (Jayma Mays) discovered that he made out with Shelby (Idina Menzel) in a little moment of sexual frustration. Apparently Emma does re-appear in the finale, just to tie off the loose end, but a bit rushed I think.

Each week Glee introduces a new storyline between the characters and many of them don’t progress. The only storyline that has been fairly constant is the relationship between Rachel Berry (Lea Michelle) and any other jock-type person in the Glee club.

I was quite enjoying the storyline between Kurt and his father, tied in with Finn and his mother moving in with the Hummels. The last we saw, Finn was being kicked out for spouting off some homophobic nonsense when he saw how Kurt has decorated their room. Did he actually move out? What happened to the relationship between their parents? That wasn’t covered.

So, the haphazard storylines has sort of led me to start to loose interest in the show itself and only really pay attention to the music.

The one thing that I will never really dispute is the soundtrack. Glee has reinvented so many songs that many of us might have forgotten about or never really appreciated. Many of the tracks, I now prefer to the original versions of the same song.

I can safely say that since January, the Glee albums have been played almost on-loop.

With the finale tonight, I am hoping that it won’t be a predictable end. I’m semi-hoping that they don’t actually win at ‘Regionals’. I think it would undermine the message of the show a bit, which is that sometimes, no matter how much you want them to, things just don’t turn out the way that you planned.

I’m really am hoping to kind of feel the magic of the pilot episode again, and that everything that I loved about it to start with will be re-cemented for me.

For next season, I’m wanting the group do sort of gel a bit better. To me it seems like regardless of how many hours they all spend together, they don’t really seem to know each other. A few didn’t even know each other’s names until recent episodes, which confused me a bit.

At least one thing I can count on with the finale of Season 1, I love the soundtrack. I love the Journey Medley and the re-recording of Don’t Stop Believin’ with the other cast members.