Theatre

Another interest or hobby of mine is theatre. I have no idea why I enjoy it as much as I do. I have a vague recollection of seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat as a child and listening to an old cassette of The Phantom of the Opera but it wasn’t until I saw The Phantom of the Opera in 2003 that I truly fell in love with musical theatre. After that I fell in love with many shows including Les Misérables and La Cage aux Folles and gained an interest in foreign casts and show such as Elisabeth and Tanz der Vampire, I’ll go into that more later.

From the moment I walked into the opulent theatre that is Her Majesty’s I fell in love with The Phantom of the Opera. It somehow struck a chord with me, all of it. The story - a copy of the classic Beauty and the Beast tale, where the beast battles a handsome hero for the affections of a pretty young lady. Unfortunately losing this time. The score seduced me right away, I had almost grown up listening to Phantom on cassette but live it blew me away from the overture that induces goose bumps and the hair on your arms to stick up to the lush lullaby of an etr’acte, it is all splendid and rich, full of vibrancy. I could listen to it 24/7 and not get fed up. The score is complemented perfectly by the gorgeous sets and costumes, painstakingly crafted by Maria Bjornson. She left a lasting legacy befitting a a sadly departed talent like hers. The final piece of this jigsaw is the cast, Phantom was ruined for me because when I saw it for the first time, at the time, I had the honour of seeing John Owen-Jones in the title role, what a performer. He captured my imagination like never before and I will always remember my first time, he has since reprised the role and I hope to catch him at some point. He set the standard for the Phantoms I have seen and thus far he has yet to be exceeded. The rest of the cast were superb but he stood out to me. I do not care too much about the rest of the cast I am a Phantom fan (or Phan) through and through.

My other musical love is Les Misérables, I had the pleasure of seeing it as part of a school trip in conjunction with our French and Music departments. I enjoyed it the first time I saw it, I was vaguely familiar with bits of it after watching the Tenth Anniversary Concert on VHS in school. I would’ve enjoyed it more had I not been on a school trip and being amongst my friends we were not giving the show our full attention and were messing about a little in the stalls. Since that first time I have been back to see the show numerous times and enjoyed each, the show touches on many facets which I can relate to and it really is an emotional roller coaster. It inspired me to read, I have since read an unabridged copy of the novel by Victor Hugo and it took some reading but I understand the show better now and appreciate it a lot more. It is brilliant and I am sure Victor Hugo would be pleased of the show, given the novel is 1400+ pages long, the musical is a superb adaptation and captures the emotion of the novel.

After falling for these two shows I branched out and picked up copies of foreign cast albums of both like the Swedish cast of Phantom and Vienesse Les Misérables. I enjoy hearing the shows in langauges other than English, it opens your eyes to new performers I would otherwise have not had the pleasure of hearing. Subsequently I found myself drawn to foreign theatre, German language shows in particular, my first foray besides Phantom and Les Mis was Tanz der Vampire. It is a show based on Vampires as the title alludes to, it is a rather comedic show and rather different in terms of score compared to Phantom and Les Mis. The score was provided for by Jim Steinman and has a few of his hits with artists such as Meat Loaf repackaged in the show, Die Unstillbare Gier uses the tune from ‘Objects in the Rearview Mirror My Appear Closer Than They Are’ and Totale Finsternis seems a direct translation of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. It is a glorious show with the brilliant Graf von Krolock, bumbling Professor Abronsius and beautiful Sarah, how peasants give birth to drop dead gorgeous daughters I will never know.

Tanz spawned my interest in German theatre, I do not understand German entirely but that doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of the shows. I have sampled most and found myself enjoying Elisabeth, Ludwig², Rudolf and lately Rebecca. I live in hope that the forthcoming West End production of Rebecca will mean some of my favourites will come over here as well. I would love to hear them in English. Only qualm is I do not want them to alter much from the German versions like the huge Broadway flop that was Dance of the Vampires.

My interest in theatre is not only contained in listening and seeing shows, I do collect memerobilia and autographs of my favourite performers. I have the signatures of some of my favourites like Michael Crawford, Colm Wilkinson, Philip Quast, Howard McGillin, Patti LuPone to name a few. I loved searching ebay and finding an old brochure and snapping it up cheap as chips. I was fairly lucky with my buys, I had one big box lot for £30 which contained 8 brochures and 4 programmes. Four complete original and replacement casts of Phantom from 1986-88 and four rare brochures from Basle, Far East Tour, Hamburg and Vienna.

Sadly my enthusiasm for it has waned lately and I haven’t gone as often as I should or would like, I usually find something occurs at home which either prevents me from going or puts a dampener on my intended trip. Perhaps this year I may drag myself to see an old favourite or perhaps discover a new one.

MMA & Martial Arts

My main sporting pursuit that I enjoy is martial arts, both tradtional and modern. My first love is striking and I studied the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do for many years culminating in the rank of a first degree black belt. I would have liked to have gone further up the ranks but I had to choose between school and sport, I had never bothered to take it back up, which is a shame because that was where my talent lay. Double graded in my first ever grading, countless trophies, black belt within four years and a 13 year old instructor teaching people in the thirties towards their blackbelt grading. I would be a third degree by now and well on the way to my fourth.

Over the past few years I have become interested in MMA or mixed martial arts, I have watched almost every single UFC event since UFC 38 (could've been 36) when they came to the UK for the first time. I remember the excitement in the dojo at the time and watching the event on Sky Box Office,  Mark Weir's flash knock out win is an abiding memory as well as Matt Hughes' slam on Carlos Newton where I believe both were out cold, Newton from the slam and Hughes from the choke. 

Since getting into UFC I have watched as much MMA as I can, I love the now defunct Pride FC fighting organisation, something about the ring and the fights, that make me yearn for more. Yes some fights were freakshow fights, others mismatches but the excitement from the crowd was immense. Plus you had legends like Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva, Kazushi Sakuraba all in their prime. My favourite fight so far and a very exciting one at that is Don Frye vs Yoshihiro Takayama, they brawl from the first bell, not everyones cup of tea admittedly due to the wild and as goold old JR would say slobberknocker nature of the match. It was an exciting 6 minutes where each man gave his all, not often you see two men both holding eachothers head with one hand and pummeling their foe with the other. 

It is a shame the Pride FC is now defunct, I would have loved to have experience the thril of seeing a Pride event or Grand Prix (GP) live. I have started to collect DVDs of the events and have started to build a nice little collection, I have all the Pride GP tournaments.

I enjoy watching Strikeforce, Dream, Sengoku and K1 events too, sadly they don’t get broadcast much over here so I have to usually trawl online to find a stream or the events on Youtube the following morning. I like Strikforce because it is home to two of my favourite fighters ‘The Last Emporer’ Fedor Emelianenko and Alistair Overeem, I enjoy watching them fight and am very much looking forward to the forthcoming Strikeforce Heavyweight GP, hoping for a Fedor/Overeem semi final with either Sergei Kharitonov or Josh Barnett facing the winner in the final.

I would like to take up a ground based martial art in the future, I am well versed in the technicality of the stand up through my extensive Tae Kwon Do training and forays into Muay Thai and boxing but on the ground I have little idea, I pick up a little through watching the fights but I feel to truly understand and appreciate that aspect of MMA I will need to get myself versed and have a go for myself. I would like to take up BJJ or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to give it’s full name but sadly where I live is lacking a decent gym so I may take up Jiu Jitsu or Judo.

I may review some of my DVDs in future blogs and give my opinion on recent events. I am not an expert on martial arts, just a fan like everyone else.

Gaming

I can remember the excitement when I unwrapped my Playstation for the first time, the grey console with two slim remotes. The first game I ever played was Crash Bandicoot, battling through the levels onto the the final of facing Dr Neo Cortex, gorging yourself on apples along the way, I also have fond memories of the title called Porsche Challenge. I found it very tricky, I have never got on well with racing games, much fun was to had with it especially when family members playing for the first time would move their arms like a steering wheel when cornering. Those were fun times. Nowadays I split my time between my primary console of a PS3 and my XBOX 360. I use the PS3 more, namely because I can use the online features for free, whereas you have to pay a subscription for XBOX Live.

I enjoy playing multiplayer online, I am by no means the best or consider myself any good but I enjoy the challenge of pitting my wits against the World. Yes I do come off second best more often than not but that is part of the fun, I’d happily take 20 losses for 1 victory. I have found online play very addictive since I bought Black Ops, I completed the campaign first then had a first foray into the online World and haven’t looked back since.

I have been enjoying the challenge of collecting trophies, when you do a challenge, complete a mission you are sometimes awarded a trophy. These vary in colour; bronze, silver and gold. If you manage to collect all of them in a game you can earn yourself a platinum trophy and ‘plat’ the game. Sadly I haven’t managed to plat any games, closest so far is Assassins Creed II which I have 95% of the trophies, 2 very difficult ones left to collect. I do hope to plat at least one game.

Lately I have enjoyed the recent releases especially Call of Duty: Black Ops, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and Gran Turismo 5 (Which is do now regret paying £130 for a signature edition) as well as some others I have picked up along the way like God of War Collection, Batman: Arkham Asylum, FIFA 11 and others. I have been well and truly bit by the gaming bug.

I can see how people think it a waste of money and time playing video games but to me I get much enjoyment from it and who am I hurting whilst doing so? Some choose to waste their money on cigarettes, alcohol and clothes whereas I am happy to get a new game. This is piror to me starting to save seriously for my trip abroad, now I am saving every penny for the trip so no more games for me, my trip is far too important.

I may come to this again at some point down the line and may do further blogs on my love of gaming as well as talk about specific games.

My PS3 trophy card

Hello, first blog

Hello

Here comes the typically awkward first blog, I have no idea what to type so I'll ramble on and see where it gets me. I doubt anyone will actually read this but anyway here we go.

As you can guess from the address my name is Tom (Thomas but I prefer Tom), I am 21 and from the former Welsh mining town of Merthyr Tydfil. First I would like to say what a depressing and dismal place to live, a cold, dark and glum town with little hope and prospects for a future. I am escaping it soon, which I will go into detail about in later blogs.

I enjoy a multitude of hobbies, sports, reading, travelling, gaming, country pursuits and theatre to name just a few. I will go into detail of each in later blog posts, I was going to detail them in this one but it got rather long.

A little more about me, I have a beautiful girlfriend called Nati, who I have dated for over 5 months now. I have known her for many years and we both held feelings but sadly due to reasons out of our control we couldn't be together. In June/July we could and decided we didn't need to be asked twice and here we are 5 months later and getting deeper and deeper in love by the second :) She lives away which is a bit difficult but we overcome it and cope pretty easily. I'm soon going to stay with her for a few months to see how things go and if they go favourably I will make it a permanent stay. We can see no reason against the permanent stay. Everything has gone to plan and we have had lots of pleasant surprises that make us believe in destiny. It can sound cheesey but it is how we feel and it's God's will for us to be together. You don't both wait 3 years for nothing :) I can see us happily together for an eternity. It is our dream and we both feel like it has come true thus far. I love her, truly do :)

I think I'll finish my introduction blog on that happy note, thank you for reading.