Jun 30 2008
Back To Kilkenny
My hectic social schedule continued unabated this weekend. I had a day off work on Friday which helped in my recovery from Thursday night (Jay Z concert in the RDS and random blogger drinks). Or should that be Thursday morning? Andrew and myself, listening to 90’s tracks from some old Now! albums until four in the morning, clearly needed some time to recover.
Friday was a little less frenetic, but we did get to see Wanted. A very modern action thriller with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McEvoy, Wanted has a brilliant mix of original action and surprisingly effective acting, for a throw-away actioner. But, of course, like many Hollywood movies today, they aren’t pitching a one-off throw-away, they are sowing the seeds of a franchise. Personally, I loved the movie and, while there were plenty of questions that remained unanswered, the essential story played out perfectly to conclusion and I don’t really see how a sequel could add anything to the mix. For a fun, intelligent action movie, give Wanted a go.
Saturday saw us hit Kilkenny again (for the second time this month and the second time in my life). We seem to have fallen for the town. It’s big enough to lose yourself in it’s winding streets and ample bars, but small enough that the natives are pleasant and friendly and you can keep your feet firmly on the ground. From its funky hostel to its endless number of live venues, Kilkenny is a town that rivals Galway for a fun night out.
Apart from finally grabbing a few drinks with Mr Ken and Rossa (for the first time since meeting them at the Blog Awards), the main reason we were down was to see Devious Theatre‘s production of Trainspotting in the Watergate Theatre. I’ll try to post my review later today, but, in short, we were blown away – they staged an amazingly professional production, with solid acting, clever set use and perfectly utilised music. I would have gone down just to see the play alone.
After the show, we hit the infamous Cleere’s for a few beers, some cheers and there was no fear of it being too dear with four beers a mere score and furthermore we let out a roar as more was poured, which struck a chord and no one was bored. From there the night soared.
The ‘we’ of the piece was Lottie and I, Anthony, Mary, Andrew and Tanya, but we wasted very little time in adding to our group, recruiting from the cast of the play.
We left the bar and trekked to Ken’s house for a house party like no other. Every room in the place was crammed with cast, crew and friends. Music blared (strangely a lot of old 90’s tracks were heard first – perhaps Ken was on a similar 90’s nostalgic trip to myself and Andrew). We befriended Begby, from the play, also known as Niall (apparently pronounced Neil) and danced the night away. Niall’s air guitar skills are unparalleled.
I may have mentioned it before, but I really do love meeting new people – it borders on being a hobby. So many unique points of views and opinions on everything, so many differing personalities, so much variety in how people react to different situations. In the space of two minutes on Saturday night, I found myself going from head banging away with a few randomers to listening to one of the sweetest voices ever from the Maggie Gyllenhaal lookalike, Jess (a member of Devious Theatre Group) as she serenely played the piano at the back of the sitting room.
One of the sadder parts of my weekend: I broke my camera. I really loved that camera. 🙁 But, I did manage to get a few nice photos of Tanya and Lottie before it broke:
Sadly, I managed to get similar picture of Andrew:
We were still going at 7am 8am 8.30am before heading back into the city to get 45 minutes sleep. Although, we did manage to add to that 45 minutes when we went for food and hair of the dog…