Friday, July 06, 2012
Cambridge?
It's been suggested to me that the 'Cambridge Memory Championship' joke is wearing a little thin now, and I should probably call it something different. Any ideas? I don't really want a location-specific name, because it'll probably move again. Some websites have called it "Ben Pridmore's Memory Competition", which really doesn't strike the right tone at all, so it really does need a catchy 'official' name.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
The TV CV
I thought I needed a definitive list.
This is every TV show (and a couple of other interesting things) I’ve been on for memory-related reasons, not counting local news or radio shows (which I’m on practically every day, it feels like), or things that I was filmed for but they decided not to use after all (I really wanted to be on the Gadget Show, gadget-hater that I am…).
It's a source of great pride to me that these have all come about as a result of people calling me and asking me to do it, and sometimes even giving me money for the privilege – I’ve never chased anyone to ask if I can be on telly, please. And they tend to cluster around the times when I’m not working or doing anything more important – I do still regret turning down Harry Hill because I had to work in my real job, especially since in all fairness my bosses would have been fine with me doing it, I just wanted to make a point to myself mostly that I didn’t put memory stuff ahead of what actually pays my bills…
9 August 2005
Steve Wright – Radio 2
This is worth mentioning, because it’s my first appearance on national radio, and they even paid me to do it! (Local radio give you a cup of tea) Also, the other guest on the show was Natalie Imbruglia, although I didn’t get to meet her, as she pre-recorded her interview. Still, fame at last, eh?
6 February 2006
Child Of Our Time – BBC
My first ‘real’ national TV exposure, including coverage of me at the 2005 World Memory Championships, and interviews in which I talked vaguely and uninterestingly about memory and learning techniques.
July 2006
Caldeirão do Huck – Brazil
Saturday night Brazilian TV got me an awesome holiday in Rio de Janeiro, and a big black cloak that they unfathomably wanted me to wear while memorising a pack of cards for an audience of excited and scantily-clad women. They let me keep the cloak, too!
May 2007
He’s the Memory Man – Current TV
The channel for people with short attention spans has a really rather cool ‘pod’ about me, that I think is still doing the rounds five years later. I’m the number one geek we all love, or at least I was at Christmas 2009!
19 September 2007
This Morning – ITV
Card-memorising with Philip Schofield (who’s one of my childhood heroes from his Children’s BBC presenting days) and Fern Britton.
October 2007
The Panel – Ireland
The Irish equivalent of Have I Got News For You, except that it has two extra guests each week who come on and show off their stuff. Why they picked me I can’t imagine, but being described as “the ultimate geek” was well worth it. Also, it got me a trip to Dublin!
12 December 2007
Blue Peter – BBC
The pinnacle of everyone’s ambition, to appear on Blue Peter! It was awesome, except that I spectacularly failed to remember anything and made a complete fool of myself. But hey, I got a badge! Socks the cat sat on my lap! What more could anyone dream of?
10 January 2008
The Mentalists – Channel 5
Completely awesome documentary about memory competitions, filmed throughout 2007 and focusing on me, Gunther Karsten and Ed Cooke. It portrayed me as the cool-and-relatively-normal one of the three, and involved a lot of following me around the world with a camera, but was worth it. Essential viewing for anyone who wants to see what our peculiar world is like!
29 January 2008
Extraordinary Animals – BBC
It’s safe to say this one made me more famous than anything I’ve ever done. Winning the world memory championship is okay, but losing a memory test against a chimpanzee? Awesome. Anyway, I would have won if it had been a fair contest. Or if I’d cheated by bribing Ayumu with a banana. Didn’t get to go to see him in Japan for this one, my half was filmed in the director’s house in London.
29 January 2008
Richard and Judy – Channel 4
The chimp thing was so exciting to everyone in Britain that I spent the day doing the rounds of local TV news and radio, culminating in an interview with Richard and Judy that evening. Richard greeted me with “Good to see you again, Ben. We’ve met before, right?” Actually, we hadn’t, but it’s good that he was playing it safe, not wanting to look stupid.
18 August 2008
Superhuman: Genius - ITV
Documentary following me around in 2008 (along with four other “geniuses”) – repeated so often that I got sick of seeing it, especially as The Mentalists was better. But hey, it’s the one that everyone has seen, and it’s the one that got me a reputation as a barcode-memoriser, so it can’t be all bad!
January 2010
Memory Documentary – NHK, Japan
I can’t find the title of this thing, but it involved me and Boris going to Japan, having our brains scanned and doing lots of filming, plus a lot of footage of memory competitions of 2009. The filmmakers, especially the director, are really really good at their job!
January 2010
Wonder Wonder – NHK, Japan
Sort of a sequel to the documentary, this consisted of showing clips from it to celebrities in the studio and asking them brainteasers about memory, and then bringing me in again (another trip to Tokyo!) to talk with them about it and take part in a sushi-memorising challenge.
28 October 2010
Where Did I Put My… Memory? – CBC, Canada
I still haven’t seen this one, actually. It features interviews with me and coverage of the 2009 World Championship.
April 2011
The Best House 123 – Fuji TV, Japan
The star, Ken Mogi, came to my house to talk about memory, and I demonstrated a couple of the usual tricks. Didn’t get a trip to Tokyo out of this one, but it was still fun.
10 September 2011
Epic Win – BBC1
Okay, I’m there in the capacity of contestant on a game show, and I’m not including my starring role on The Weakest Link in this list, but the difference is that a) the Epic Win people asked me to be on the show, rather than the other way round, and b) it was completely awesome and epic in every way. I memorised a lot of barcodes and lay down in a mockup till to have them swiped over me. Brilliant, and different.
14 November 2011
“Scale It Back” by DJ Shadow featuring Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon
(music video)
By far the best music video ever made, being an enactment of the mental images I create to memorise a pack of cards, and featuring me burbling unconvincingly about what’s going on. Well worth watching if you’re remotely interested in memory, as well as if you like really quite cool music.
28 March 2012
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
(promotional video)
A really rather cool publicity exercise for the modern art gallery featuring me memorising the layout, artists and works of art, and including animated sequences illustrating my thought processes while I’m doing it. Involved a great visit to Bilbao!
16-17 June 2012
LISTE art exhibition, Basel, Switzerland
(art?)
I was a piece of performance art exhibited by Rubén Grilo, memorising details of the art fair and talking about the mental story I created to do it. It doesn’t get more modern-art than that!
This is every TV show (and a couple of other interesting things) I’ve been on for memory-related reasons, not counting local news or radio shows (which I’m on practically every day, it feels like), or things that I was filmed for but they decided not to use after all (I really wanted to be on the Gadget Show, gadget-hater that I am…).
It's a source of great pride to me that these have all come about as a result of people calling me and asking me to do it, and sometimes even giving me money for the privilege – I’ve never chased anyone to ask if I can be on telly, please. And they tend to cluster around the times when I’m not working or doing anything more important – I do still regret turning down Harry Hill because I had to work in my real job, especially since in all fairness my bosses would have been fine with me doing it, I just wanted to make a point to myself mostly that I didn’t put memory stuff ahead of what actually pays my bills…
9 August 2005
Steve Wright – Radio 2
This is worth mentioning, because it’s my first appearance on national radio, and they even paid me to do it! (Local radio give you a cup of tea) Also, the other guest on the show was Natalie Imbruglia, although I didn’t get to meet her, as she pre-recorded her interview. Still, fame at last, eh?
6 February 2006
Child Of Our Time – BBC
My first ‘real’ national TV exposure, including coverage of me at the 2005 World Memory Championships, and interviews in which I talked vaguely and uninterestingly about memory and learning techniques.
July 2006
Caldeirão do Huck – Brazil
Saturday night Brazilian TV got me an awesome holiday in Rio de Janeiro, and a big black cloak that they unfathomably wanted me to wear while memorising a pack of cards for an audience of excited and scantily-clad women. They let me keep the cloak, too!
May 2007
He’s the Memory Man – Current TV
The channel for people with short attention spans has a really rather cool ‘pod’ about me, that I think is still doing the rounds five years later. I’m the number one geek we all love, or at least I was at Christmas 2009!
19 September 2007
This Morning – ITV
Card-memorising with Philip Schofield (who’s one of my childhood heroes from his Children’s BBC presenting days) and Fern Britton.
October 2007
The Panel – Ireland
The Irish equivalent of Have I Got News For You, except that it has two extra guests each week who come on and show off their stuff. Why they picked me I can’t imagine, but being described as “the ultimate geek” was well worth it. Also, it got me a trip to Dublin!
12 December 2007
Blue Peter – BBC
The pinnacle of everyone’s ambition, to appear on Blue Peter! It was awesome, except that I spectacularly failed to remember anything and made a complete fool of myself. But hey, I got a badge! Socks the cat sat on my lap! What more could anyone dream of?
10 January 2008
The Mentalists – Channel 5
Completely awesome documentary about memory competitions, filmed throughout 2007 and focusing on me, Gunther Karsten and Ed Cooke. It portrayed me as the cool-and-relatively-normal one of the three, and involved a lot of following me around the world with a camera, but was worth it. Essential viewing for anyone who wants to see what our peculiar world is like!
29 January 2008
Extraordinary Animals – BBC
It’s safe to say this one made me more famous than anything I’ve ever done. Winning the world memory championship is okay, but losing a memory test against a chimpanzee? Awesome. Anyway, I would have won if it had been a fair contest. Or if I’d cheated by bribing Ayumu with a banana. Didn’t get to go to see him in Japan for this one, my half was filmed in the director’s house in London.
29 January 2008
Richard and Judy – Channel 4
The chimp thing was so exciting to everyone in Britain that I spent the day doing the rounds of local TV news and radio, culminating in an interview with Richard and Judy that evening. Richard greeted me with “Good to see you again, Ben. We’ve met before, right?” Actually, we hadn’t, but it’s good that he was playing it safe, not wanting to look stupid.
18 August 2008
Superhuman: Genius - ITV
Documentary following me around in 2008 (along with four other “geniuses”) – repeated so often that I got sick of seeing it, especially as The Mentalists was better. But hey, it’s the one that everyone has seen, and it’s the one that got me a reputation as a barcode-memoriser, so it can’t be all bad!
January 2010
Memory Documentary – NHK, Japan
I can’t find the title of this thing, but it involved me and Boris going to Japan, having our brains scanned and doing lots of filming, plus a lot of footage of memory competitions of 2009. The filmmakers, especially the director, are really really good at their job!
January 2010
Wonder Wonder – NHK, Japan
Sort of a sequel to the documentary, this consisted of showing clips from it to celebrities in the studio and asking them brainteasers about memory, and then bringing me in again (another trip to Tokyo!) to talk with them about it and take part in a sushi-memorising challenge.
28 October 2010
Where Did I Put My… Memory? – CBC, Canada
I still haven’t seen this one, actually. It features interviews with me and coverage of the 2009 World Championship.
April 2011
The Best House 123 – Fuji TV, Japan
The star, Ken Mogi, came to my house to talk about memory, and I demonstrated a couple of the usual tricks. Didn’t get a trip to Tokyo out of this one, but it was still fun.
10 September 2011
Epic Win – BBC1
Okay, I’m there in the capacity of contestant on a game show, and I’m not including my starring role on The Weakest Link in this list, but the difference is that a) the Epic Win people asked me to be on the show, rather than the other way round, and b) it was completely awesome and epic in every way. I memorised a lot of barcodes and lay down in a mockup till to have them swiped over me. Brilliant, and different.
14 November 2011
“Scale It Back” by DJ Shadow featuring Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon
(music video)
By far the best music video ever made, being an enactment of the mental images I create to memorise a pack of cards, and featuring me burbling unconvincingly about what’s going on. Well worth watching if you’re remotely interested in memory, as well as if you like really quite cool music.
28 March 2012
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
(promotional video)
A really rather cool publicity exercise for the modern art gallery featuring me memorising the layout, artists and works of art, and including animated sequences illustrating my thought processes while I’m doing it. Involved a great visit to Bilbao!
16-17 June 2012
LISTE art exhibition, Basel, Switzerland
(art?)
I was a piece of performance art exhibited by Rubén Grilo, memorising details of the art fair and talking about the mental story I created to do it. It doesn’t get more modern-art than that!
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
The Cambridge Memory Championship 2012!
A 2013 update - if you've been directed to this page looking for the 2013 event, please click here instead. Thanks!
It's getting later in the year, as I try to find the best gap in the memory competition schedule, but this year's Cambridge competition will take place on Saturday October 20, not in Cambridge, but in the same place as last year, the delightful Attenborough Nature Centre!
Most of what I said last year still applies, so here are the details again:
The traditional friendly memory championship that always takes place on the first Sunday in May in Cambridge, England, will this year take place on Saturday October 20, 2012 at Attenborough Nature Reserve near Nottingham. England. See the nature reserve's website here
The competition will only take place if enough people want to come! So please let me know right now if you want to take part!
The entry fee will be £30 (or free of charge for people who have never taken part in any memory competition before) - it might be less than £30 if there are a lot of competitors, because I only want to cover the costs of hosting the competition, not make a profit! This fee includes a hot lunch.
The venue is quite close to my house - free accommodation is available on my floor, if you bring your own sleeping bag. If you prefer a hotel, there's a nice place just over the road from me: Rockaway Hotel or plenty of guest houses in Beeston or Attenborough.
The competition will start promptly at 9:00am and finish at 5:00pm, and will be a national-standard 10-discipline championship (15 minute numbers, 10 minute cards, etc).
The nearest airport is "Nottingham East Midlands", but it's actually not very near Nottingham and it's difficult to travel from there to here by public transport. Birmingham Airport is better, you can get the train to Beeston (for my house) or Attenborough (for the competition venue) very easily.
Obviously, like all memory competitions, it won't stick to that "strictly nine to five" schedule, although we kept quite close to it last year. But please come along, it's always a fun day's memorising and chatting with like-minded individuals!
It's getting later in the year, as I try to find the best gap in the memory competition schedule, but this year's Cambridge competition will take place on Saturday October 20, not in Cambridge, but in the same place as last year, the delightful Attenborough Nature Centre!
Most of what I said last year still applies, so here are the details again:
The traditional friendly memory championship that always takes place on the first Sunday in May in Cambridge, England, will this year take place on Saturday October 20, 2012 at Attenborough Nature Reserve near Nottingham. England. See the nature reserve's website here
The competition will only take place if enough people want to come! So please let me know right now if you want to take part!
The entry fee will be £30 (or free of charge for people who have never taken part in any memory competition before) - it might be less than £30 if there are a lot of competitors, because I only want to cover the costs of hosting the competition, not make a profit! This fee includes a hot lunch.
The venue is quite close to my house - free accommodation is available on my floor, if you bring your own sleeping bag. If you prefer a hotel, there's a nice place just over the road from me: Rockaway Hotel or plenty of guest houses in Beeston or Attenborough.
The competition will start promptly at 9:00am and finish at 5:00pm, and will be a national-standard 10-discipline championship (15 minute numbers, 10 minute cards, etc).
The nearest airport is "Nottingham East Midlands", but it's actually not very near Nottingham and it's difficult to travel from there to here by public transport. Birmingham Airport is better, you can get the train to Beeston (for my house) or Attenborough (for the competition venue) very easily.
Obviously, like all memory competitions, it won't stick to that "strictly nine to five" schedule, although we kept quite close to it last year. But please come along, it's always a fun day's memorising and chatting with like-minded individuals!
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Vicious cycle
You know, one thing I can't do is ride a bike in the cool no-hands way that people do. Which is a shame, because one of my secret ambitions is to learn to ride a unicycle, and ride it to work on a daily basis. It'll look really groovy. But I'm pretty sure a first step to that would be riding a bicycle without holding the handlebars, and I'm sort of scared to try that...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
World Memory Championship news!
Yes, it looks like there will be a world memory championship this year!
Hi all, Thanks for your patience. We are really pleased to announce the details for the 21st World Memory Championship.
It will return to London for the Olympic and Queen's Jubilee year. The dates are confirmed as December 14 15 and 16, 2012
The venue will be The Lilian Baylis School, Kennington Lane, London.
The area is very close to the centre of London and is furnished with many reasonably priced hotels and restaurants.
Bringing the World Championship to a school in central London creates a magnificent opportunity to inspire and empower the capitals schoolchildren and create role models for young and developing minds.
Further details will be released soon
Say what you like, I think it can only be a good thing for the competition to return to its roots as a low-budget affair in a school's assembly hall - it badly overreached itself in the last couple of years. From this kind of starting point, maybe we can build a more stable and successful regular competition? Anyway, that's your World Championship, I don't know yet if I'll be there, but I'll let you know.
Hi all, Thanks for your patience. We are really pleased to announce the details for the 21st World Memory Championship.
It will return to London for the Olympic and Queen's Jubilee year. The dates are confirmed as December 14 15 and 16, 2012
The venue will be The Lilian Baylis School, Kennington Lane, London.
The area is very close to the centre of London and is furnished with many reasonably priced hotels and restaurants.
Bringing the World Championship to a school in central London creates a magnificent opportunity to inspire and empower the capitals schoolchildren and create role models for young and developing minds.
Further details will be released soon
Say what you like, I think it can only be a good thing for the competition to return to its roots as a low-budget affair in a school's assembly hall - it badly overreached itself in the last couple of years. From this kind of starting point, maybe we can build a more stable and successful regular competition? Anyway, that's your World Championship, I don't know yet if I'll be there, but I'll let you know.
Monday, June 25, 2012
How the cool kids talk
To prepare for a job interview a couple of weeks ago for a job that would require me to speak German (I didn't get it) and also to prepare for the trip to Basel, I got a "Perfect Your German" book-and-CD course. These things always boast "genuine German speakers" doing the talking, but one thing I realised when listening to the recording on this one is that speaking German as a first language is all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily mean the voices are good actors.
When it introduced a dialogue between two seventeen-year-olds and then came the voice of a middle-aged man exclaiming "Mensch, ich bin vielleicht froh, dass die Sommerferien morgen anfangen!" I actually laughed out loud. You can just picture a 40-year-old dressed in trendy clothing and trying to sound cool.
When it introduced a dialogue between two seventeen-year-olds and then came the voice of a middle-aged man exclaiming "Mensch, ich bin vielleicht froh, dass die Sommerferien morgen anfangen!" I actually laughed out loud. You can just picture a 40-year-old dressed in trendy clothing and trying to sound cool.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The squirrels are dancing again!
The Victoria Centre in Nottingham has an absolutely beautiful "Time Fountain" decorated with ornate birds and squirrels and things - every fifteen minutes it chimes and the dancing animals spin round to music. Or at least they're supposed to, but it broke down about a year ago and never got fixed. But no more - it's working again now! Dancing squirrels make me feel that all is right with the world again! The birds I can take or leave, but squirrels? Yay!
Oh, and also, while I was cycling back, two young boys with a pedal-powered go-kart challenged me to a race. See, children like me! That one yesterday was probably a grumpy adult in disguise.
Oh, and also, while I was cycling back, two young boys with a pedal-powered go-kart challenged me to a race. See, children like me! That one yesterday was probably a grumpy adult in disguise.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
My feelings are deeply wounded
I was unlocking my bike from the bike-parking thing today and there was a small girl playing around them, so I smiled at her, which provoked her to go and hide behind her mother, saying "I don't like that man!"
This is hugely upsetting - children almost invariably like me, for some reason, even if I don't like them. I feel terribly hurt by this rejection.
This is hugely upsetting - children almost invariably like me, for some reason, even if I don't like them. I feel terribly hurt by this rejection.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Queen's Park and Rangers
Like most people, I'm really not interested in Scottish football at all, but I have been following the prolonged saga of Rangers and their amazing ability to get into more and more trouble as time goes on. It is a bit difficult to keep up with what's happening, though, because my usual first port of call for sports news is the BBC website, and in their strange way of occasionally being enormously biased for no obvious reason, the BBC are hugely anti-Rangers at the moment. But even so, and even if you ignore the BBC's assertion that Aberdeen have said they'll vote against admitting the new company to the Scottish Premier (the club themselves have loudly denied ever saying anything of the sort), there really does seem to be a possibility that Rangers won't be allowed to play in the SPL next year. Which is really unfathomable and goes against any kind of common sense, at least in the 'people want to make money and don't care about companies just not paying their bills and then wriggling out of it somehow' kind of common sense that football usually applies.
Still, I don't see why nobody's suggested Rangers applying to the English league instead. They've been whining about wanting to be allowed in there for years, and playing in the lower reaches of the English league has to be more lucrative than playing in the lower reaches of the Scottish. There are games there that are attended by two people and an apathetic elderly dog. Called Hamish. Actually, someone has probably suggested it by now, and someone else has probably told Rangers where they can put that suggestion if they do make it, but I haven't heard about it, and what I don't hear doesn't count as reality.
And as for the Scottish Premier League, what all those integrity-of-football people should do is go back to the olden days when Queen's Park, the amateur team who 'play for the sake of playing' and are run by a smaller number of slightly less dodgy businessmen, were allowed to play in the top division every year and were exempt from relegation. They could form a rivalry with Celtic, and everyone would be happy.
Still, I don't see why nobody's suggested Rangers applying to the English league instead. They've been whining about wanting to be allowed in there for years, and playing in the lower reaches of the English league has to be more lucrative than playing in the lower reaches of the Scottish. There are games there that are attended by two people and an apathetic elderly dog. Called Hamish. Actually, someone has probably suggested it by now, and someone else has probably told Rangers where they can put that suggestion if they do make it, but I haven't heard about it, and what I don't hear doesn't count as reality.
And as for the Scottish Premier League, what all those integrity-of-football people should do is go back to the olden days when Queen's Park, the amateur team who 'play for the sake of playing' and are run by a smaller number of slightly less dodgy businessmen, were allowed to play in the top division every year and were exempt from relegation. They could form a rivalry with Celtic, and everyone would be happy.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Superheroes
I never tire of looking at the stats page on Blogger and seeing what google searches brought people here to this strange corner of the internet. "Black superhero with a bird theme" gets you a picture of me in my superhero-bird-themed T-shirt. If anyone else comes looking for that, then the hero you're thinking of is probably the Falcon, but hopefully you found that out without my help.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Tickling the tastebuds
I'm back home from Basel now, and my first thought on entering my flat is "oh my gosh, this place is filthy!" That's what happens when you spend a weekend in a flat that's actually nice and tidy. I'm going to have to clean up, there's no getting away from it.
Anyway, while I was there, I was persuaded by the artist Rubén Grilo (who exhibited me at Liste and whose work you should all go and admire) to try gazpacho, which I previously only knew of from jokes on Red Dwarf and the Simpsons. I'd always sort of assumed it was exactly the same as the tomato soup you can get from a Heinz tin, only not heated up, but actually it's really quite nice! I'm going to order it the next time I'm eating in a fancy restaurant (which, as you know, I do as little as possible). This new culinary delight comes hot on the heels of some other friends persuading me to try a bit of kiwi fruit a couple of weeks ago - I've always maintained that I don't like it, without ever having eaten any, but in fact, it's not all that bad after all! Tastes much more like strawberries than anything green has any right to. I still don't trust it.
Anyway, while I was there, I was persuaded by the artist Rubén Grilo (who exhibited me at Liste and whose work you should all go and admire) to try gazpacho, which I previously only knew of from jokes on Red Dwarf and the Simpsons. I'd always sort of assumed it was exactly the same as the tomato soup you can get from a Heinz tin, only not heated up, but actually it's really quite nice! I'm going to order it the next time I'm eating in a fancy restaurant (which, as you know, I do as little as possible). This new culinary delight comes hot on the heels of some other friends persuading me to try a bit of kiwi fruit a couple of weeks ago - I've always maintained that I don't like it, without ever having eaten any, but in fact, it's not all that bad after all! Tastes much more like strawberries than anything green has any right to. I still don't trust it.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Basel: City of Roadworks
Basel is a very nice city, but I can't believe how many roads all around town are currently halfway through being dug up. Is it a once-a-year thing in Switzerland, that they rebuild the whole street system from scratch?
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Hanging in the gallery
Hello everyone, I'm sorry I haven't blogged anything for the best part of a month. It's been quite an eventful month, all in all, so I've got an excuse, but rest assured, I'm back in business now.
I'm writing from Basel, Switzerland, where I'm doing strange memory things in an art exhibition. Isn't that the same thing I did in Bilbao a few months ago, you ask? No, not at all. That was a promotional video for a modern art gallery. This time I AM modern art! It's a performance project organised by an artist who specialises in art about the description of art, or something like that (I'm not an artist), and it involves me reciting the names of all the galleries and artists represented at this exhibition and describing the mental pictures I create to help me remember them. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, come and check it out at the "Liste" young artists' exhibition!
Since there is also a gigantic art fair here at the same time, all the hotels are fully booked, and I'm staying in a flat sublet by some enterprising locals, along with a couple of other art-wallahs. It's a flat that can only be described as 'interesting' - it's part of a huge ancient house, and it has three bedrooms, a kitchen and nothing else. Bathroom, you say? No, there's a toilet outside the front door in its own little room, and the shower is in the kitchen. No, really, a shower cubicle in the corner of the kitchen, next to the sink and the oven. I've never heard of such a thing, but you can't deny it's very modern-arty.
I'm writing from Basel, Switzerland, where I'm doing strange memory things in an art exhibition. Isn't that the same thing I did in Bilbao a few months ago, you ask? No, not at all. That was a promotional video for a modern art gallery. This time I AM modern art! It's a performance project organised by an artist who specialises in art about the description of art, or something like that (I'm not an artist), and it involves me reciting the names of all the galleries and artists represented at this exhibition and describing the mental pictures I create to help me remember them. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, come and check it out at the "Liste" young artists' exhibition!
Since there is also a gigantic art fair here at the same time, all the hotels are fully booked, and I'm staying in a flat sublet by some enterprising locals, along with a couple of other art-wallahs. It's a flat that can only be described as 'interesting' - it's part of a huge ancient house, and it has three bedrooms, a kitchen and nothing else. Bathroom, you say? No, there's a toilet outside the front door in its own little room, and the shower is in the kitchen. No, really, a shower cubicle in the corner of the kitchen, next to the sink and the oven. I've never heard of such a thing, but you can't deny it's very modern-arty.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Oh oh oh, look at this look at this!
I've just found a caricature of myself on the internet that I didn't know existed!
Click here!
It's a bit out of date, since it's talking about my 26.38-second world record, which is sadly ancient history now, but isn't it awesome!
Click here!
It's a bit out of date, since it's talking about my 26.38-second world record, which is sadly ancient history now, but isn't it awesome!
35 Up
The last two Mondays in a row, I've found myself idly channel-hopping just as "56 Up" was coming on, and I've enjoyed it a lot. I remember watching the 42 one, back in what must have been 1998, and finding it interesting, but it's even more fun to catch up with what these people are doing now. The whole project of charting people's lives at seven-year intervals was a downright genius idea, and it's great that the majority of those original seven-year-olds from half a century ago are still willing to talk about themselves for the entertainment of viewers around the world.
It got me thinking about myself (most things get me thinking about myself, I'm disgustingly self-absorbed), and while I originally thought it would make me look pretty unimpressive, actually I'm thinking I might come across as more groovy than I actually am - they record it late the year before, it seems, so my 21 Up in late 1997 would have found me enthusing about the newly-founded MSO and my having won a silver medal at a competition that sounds more impressive than it was; 28 Up in 2004 would have come just at the time I was winning the World Memory Championship for the first time, and 35 Up last year would have seen me making a music video for DJ Shadow and being downright awesome! That actually looks like a genuine progression in my life, rather than the general bumbling around cluelessly that I've actually devoted my 35 years on this planet to, and it makes me feel a great deal better about myself!
It got me thinking about myself (most things get me thinking about myself, I'm disgustingly self-absorbed), and while I originally thought it would make me look pretty unimpressive, actually I'm thinking I might come across as more groovy than I actually am - they record it late the year before, it seems, so my 21 Up in late 1997 would have found me enthusing about the newly-founded MSO and my having won a silver medal at a competition that sounds more impressive than it was; 28 Up in 2004 would have come just at the time I was winning the World Memory Championship for the first time, and 35 Up last year would have seen me making a music video for DJ Shadow and being downright awesome! That actually looks like a genuine progression in my life, rather than the general bumbling around cluelessly that I've actually devoted my 35 years on this planet to, and it makes me feel a great deal better about myself!
Friday, May 18, 2012
I'm old!
Since nobody seems to want to give me a job at the moment, I went up to Nottingham this lunchtime and got collared by the market research people who hang around the city centre quite regularly. So if they change the flavour of Walkers salt & vinegar crisps and you don't like it, that's my fault, sorry.
Thing is, the form they filled in had just two different age categories - 18-34 and 35-80! It is really, really terrible to be 35 and classed among the 'old people'. I'm just going to bed now, it's nearly two o'clock.
Thing is, the form they filled in had just two different age categories - 18-34 and 35-80! It is really, really terrible to be 35 and classed among the 'old people'. I'm just going to bed now, it's nearly two o'clock.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Memory competitions get scientific!
I'm reliably informed that the UK Memory Championship will happen on August 23-24, at the Science Museum in London.
That's an absolutely excellent place for a memory championship, and I'm very impressed that they've arranged it! In the distant past, apparently the pack of cards that Andi Bell memorised in a world-record time was once on display at the Science Museum - Andi once told me an anecdote about what happened when he went to see if it was still there, but to be honest I can't remember what it was. I'm sure it was funny, though.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive...
That's an absolutely excellent place for a memory championship, and I'm very impressed that they've arranged it! In the distant past, apparently the pack of cards that Andi Bell memorised in a world-record time was once on display at the Science Museum - Andi once told me an anecdote about what happened when he went to see if it was still there, but to be honest I can't remember what it was. I'm sure it was funny, though.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
capital letters intrigue mungu
Hey, I've just noticed something today! The "teach yourself" books and things are now "Teach Yourself" books and things! Teach Yourself Capital Letters must have been a great success!
You might recall that I was my usual irritating and pedantic self about those capital letters when they asked me to adapt "How To Be Clever" into a "teach yourself", but perhaps now I should write to them and say I'll do it after all?
You might recall that I was my usual irritating and pedantic self about those capital letters when they asked me to adapt "How To Be Clever" into a "teach yourself", but perhaps now I should write to them and say I'll do it after all?
Monday, May 14, 2012
Brother Louie Louie Louie
I woke up this morning with the song "Brother Louie" by Modern Talking playing in my head. The funny thing is that this song has never penetrated my conscious mind in the slightest - I listen to Absolute Eighties radio every now and then, so I'm sure I've heard it in the background a few times, but I had to search on the internet to find out what it was and who sang it. I've got some kind of subconscious dream DJ in my brain with unusual tastes, obviously.
Anyway, I can't let this distract me from all the important things I need to do! I've got a post-it note on my coffee table with the following cryptic instructions on it:
LISTE
Russian voice thing
French translation
Othello
And these are all things I've volunteered to do but haven't done yet. And there are other things I forgot to write on the list, too.
"LISTE", which may or may not actually be written with capital letters, is an art fair in Switzerland in which I'm going to be a work of art - memorising everything else that's in the exhibition as some kind of clever statement on how reducing art to its bare information is in fact an artistic process itself. Which is a brilliant idea, but I need to get to work doing the memory if it's not going to be like a painting that the artist forgot to colour in.
"Russian voice thing" is a little thing that I said I'd do for some Russian student acquaintance of Mike's, involving listening to various British accents and explaining what they sound like.
"French translation" involves the upcoming French edition of How To Be Clever that a French fan is generously working on as we speak - memory competitions still haven't really taken off at all in France, despite the efforts of a couple of individuals, so maybe this will be some kind of breakthrough!
"Othello" is that board game I talk about sometimes, the national championship for which I still need to settle on and book a venue for.
I'm also planning to arrange a Cambridge Memory Championship in the same place (Nottingham, not Cambridge) as the othello, at the same kind of time (September, but not the same weekend, because I want to be involved in both), but I wanted to wait until a date has been announced for the UK Championship, because there really needs to be more than a week or two between them, and there's also going to be the Swedish Championship at the end of September. Last year they only announced the UK event three weeks before it happened, but it was after Cambridge, so it wasn't really my problem - this year the German Championship is in July, so I didn't really want to do that this time. October might also be a possibility, depending on if and when the WMC happens.
I also need to find a proper job with some kind of urgency, because I've got no money, and the various memory things that give me money occasionally, while wonderful in themselves, aren't really a stable career. Let's face it, I haven't done any memory training for about six months, so I'm not going to win any competitions in the near future, there's only so long I can trade on "used to be quite good at memorising a few years ago".
As you can see, rather than sitting down and doing any of these things, I've chosen to write a long blog about it. I hope this inspires my readers to tell me to get on with things, and to check up on me regularly to see if I've done them.
Anyway, I can't let this distract me from all the important things I need to do! I've got a post-it note on my coffee table with the following cryptic instructions on it:
LISTE
Russian voice thing
French translation
Othello
And these are all things I've volunteered to do but haven't done yet. And there are other things I forgot to write on the list, too.
"LISTE", which may or may not actually be written with capital letters, is an art fair in Switzerland in which I'm going to be a work of art - memorising everything else that's in the exhibition as some kind of clever statement on how reducing art to its bare information is in fact an artistic process itself. Which is a brilliant idea, but I need to get to work doing the memory if it's not going to be like a painting that the artist forgot to colour in.
"Russian voice thing" is a little thing that I said I'd do for some Russian student acquaintance of Mike's, involving listening to various British accents and explaining what they sound like.
"French translation" involves the upcoming French edition of How To Be Clever that a French fan is generously working on as we speak - memory competitions still haven't really taken off at all in France, despite the efforts of a couple of individuals, so maybe this will be some kind of breakthrough!
"Othello" is that board game I talk about sometimes, the national championship for which I still need to settle on and book a venue for.
I'm also planning to arrange a Cambridge Memory Championship in the same place (Nottingham, not Cambridge) as the othello, at the same kind of time (September, but not the same weekend, because I want to be involved in both), but I wanted to wait until a date has been announced for the UK Championship, because there really needs to be more than a week or two between them, and there's also going to be the Swedish Championship at the end of September. Last year they only announced the UK event three weeks before it happened, but it was after Cambridge, so it wasn't really my problem - this year the German Championship is in July, so I didn't really want to do that this time. October might also be a possibility, depending on if and when the WMC happens.
I also need to find a proper job with some kind of urgency, because I've got no money, and the various memory things that give me money occasionally, while wonderful in themselves, aren't really a stable career. Let's face it, I haven't done any memory training for about six months, so I'm not going to win any competitions in the near future, there's only so long I can trade on "used to be quite good at memorising a few years ago".
As you can see, rather than sitting down and doing any of these things, I've chosen to write a long blog about it. I hope this inspires my readers to tell me to get on with things, and to check up on me regularly to see if I've done them.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Modesty? Self-deprecation?
Why when you go to eBay's homepage does it proudly claim to be "one of the UK's largest shopping destinations"? I mean, eBay is a pretty big deal, isn't it? Surely it could describe itself as "the largest" something or other without stretching the truth too much? No end of smaller shopping destinations do that!
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