slä-pē sɛkənds

as a thursday rolls around and i realise that i have not updated my blog for a while i recall that thursdays are the days i talk about games. and then i had a wee flashback. a couple of weeks ago i was interviewed by the lovely jay richardson for (scottish arts magazine) the list. he texted me to say that he was going to ring me slightly later than agreed because he was trying to get his head round "my insane card game post". oops.

i think one is supposed to use a blog for flagrant self-promotion but, while there will be a degree of that, i don't really see the point in not actually writing about anything but oneself. there is, of course, an argument that all writing is about oneself. my counter to this is "cat sat on mat". that's definitely about a cat. (he's on a mat in a sitting position). but, regardless of its stupefying effect on comedy journos, i will plough on regardless!

so, today i will be discussing another poker variant wot i made up. i made it up years ago (probably seven) with a friend called kerri. it's called sloppy seconds and it's monstrously silly. first of all you need to know how to play poker. if you don't, go away and come back after you are basically there. second, it is a five-card draw game. we all cool? ok... you look at your five cards and decide on which two cards (and only two) that you are going to pass to the left. then you reassess and swap two with the deck. twos are wild. can you see how mental this game is already? TWO mandatory swaps of TWO cards and TWO is wild. sloppy seconds.

on new year's eve, i made everybody play a hand of this for a fiver. bruce took home £35. brilliant. stupid, yet brilliant.

and on a shameless self-promotion front: my show in edinburgh.

musics

after the lovely wateracre (of whom more when the next tom:foolery gigs start!) and further to my last music post, i don't really have an album of the year for oh nine. so i've decided, like him, to look at the stats. not as simple as it appears, really, as there is not really a huge amount of data. but, according to my iTunes most played AND released in oh nine, here is a list:

1. bruises - chairlift
2. one night in october - little comets
3. always like this - bombay bicycle club
4. jiggery pokery - the duckworth lewis method
5. you're not coming home tonight - first aid kit

now, in terms of albums of the year... only one qualifies. i haven't listened to the chairlift album, but humphrey dreadful says it is poor. neither have i listened to the first aid kit or bombay bicycle club albums. i don't know why. and i haven't listened to the little comets album because it doesn't exist yet. (i am SO ahead of some curves). so by default, my album of the year is the duckworth lewis method.

but. i didn't listen to it that much. if we have a look at my stats for top five listened to tracks since we got this computer (in oh nine), none of them were released last year...

1. the world's greatest - an incredible cover of an r kelly song (who incidentally has just come on my spotify... eerie) by the god that is bonnie 'prince' billy.
2. hook - blues traveler
3. let's dance - david bowie
4. only wanna be with you - hootie and the blowfish (shut up!)
5. alone again or - love

all wonderful songs. so, in search of more data, i went to my last.fm profile page. this includes music that i've listened to on spotify:

1. dancing in the dark - bruce springsteen
2. standing in the way of control - the gossip
3. hook - blues traveler
4. does this ean you're moving on? - the airborne toxic event
5. frankie and albert - taj mahal

once again, not many of them were released in oh nine. in fact, only one: the airborne toxic event (which was released in the uk in january, but in america before that). it is, though, a phenomenal album. a lot of critics were super sniffy about it, saying they'd learnt the lessons of the strokes and arcade fire too well. well, give a fuck. it's a good record. and easily my favourite of the year. it's just odd that not a single album in the eleven months after january made an impact. here's a video of them performing one of the tracks acoustically. weirdly, it sounds a lot like this bob seger track to me. and if you've never heard bob seger, get a grip.