Tuesday 11 September 2007

There are already games that go with certain movies: the Withnail and I drinking game, the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon thing, and I dare say plenty of others. Tonight I came up with one for that more humble of dramatic enterprises, EastEnders. It's based on the fact that pretty much anything Phil Daniels says could be a line from Blur's finest hour, Parklife. (Well maybe not their finest hour, it still sounds like a blatant XTC ripoff to me.)

To play the game you need a guitar, and enough skill (not much) to play the Parklife riff. If you need help, there's guitar tab helpfully printed in the CD booklet; if in doubt, play an E chord at the 12th fret and wiggle it around a bit. Wait until whatever members of your family watch the thing are settled down in front of the UK's favourite serial drama. Then hide in wait outside the room with guitar at the ready. When Phil Daniels appears on screen, stroll in playing the Parklife riff, and (this is the difficult bit) the object of the game is to time it so that his line finishes after three and a half bars so that you get to sing 'Parklife' immediately after, which will then make it sound just as though his line, however unlikely, was part of the song. Trust me, the sense of satisfaction when you get it right is quite tangible.

I've been reading McSweeneys 23 and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (as recommended by Comic Book Guy in Moncton). Both repay the effort. And Guy Pratt's hilarious My Bass and Other Animals for tour stories and music anecdotage.