Sunday, November 29, 2009

Lego!

Star Wars fever has hit the household! Who needs to spend the huge amount of cash on a lego star wars kit, when you can just build your own!

'Spill points are on offer if you can name the spacecraft, and who would typically fly them?

Also, what's the best thing you've ever made from lego?

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33 comments:

saneshane said...

I'm staring at the after shock of a lego garage explosion - (our dining room chairs have been covered in the black version of that vinyl table cover)

Unknown said...

ON the left that's Darth Vader's (although to me he will always be Dark Vador, his French name) personal spacecraft. On the right, is it called an X-Wing fighter? That would be flown by... shoot, what's the name of those fighting the Empire. Republicans? La RĂ©sistance?
The best thing I've made form Lego/s, is a space station. The best lego thing I destroyed was a not too dissimilar X Wing spacecraft, for which I got punched in the head by my brother. I'm sure he told me it was mine, so I assumed I could do as I pleased.

nilpferd said...

Mara got bored with lego pretty quickly, in the meantime if she uses it at all it gets shovelled into multicoloured piles whenever she needs animal feed or "indiscriminate heaps of stuff".
Which is admittedly pretty often.
Creativewise she's had a lot more mileage out of a US construction system called Jawbones, but her modelling material of preference is painted junk.

Personally I was a Meccano addict as a kid, though I did covet the neighbour's lego technic kits.

saneshane said...

Me and Z-boy made a good monster the other day - or it could have been our abstract era Kangaroo sculpture or indeed a new wave 'godzilla - (very angular)... LogNak got run over by an ambulance.. we hadn't built a hospital yet.. so no happy ending.

nilpferd said...

I'd arrange to have LogNak flown over here for treatment.. we have numerous specialist monster wards filled with state of the art equipment.. but the Lego Rescue Helicopter I painstakingly built for Mara the night before christmas 2005 is currently serving as dinner for a croc and 4 tigers.. can LogNak hold on until we convert the large cardboard box in the living room into a boat?

nilpferd said...

PS- if we need to, you know, amputate anything- do you mind if the horses get the cut off bits? Only they haven't really had much of a look in, with the croc and the tigers hogging things..

saneshane said...

the crocs don't get much here any more... the hippos have taken on a great deal of the eating time

(this might/does have something to do with z-boy looking at the screen when the croc tried his stepping stone routine that you posted a little while back)

as for cardboard boxes.. we keep trying to collect then for the eventual move.. but they still accidently turn into a secret mission hideouts - with viewing holes - exterminating lazors - and baddies repelling boshers. (all achieved without harming anything - except the boxes)

Blimpy said...

'spill points to Ejay!

Mini McF calls him "Dark Vader" too.

nilpferd said...

damn voracious, those hippos.. I have the same problem box-wise.. keep carting loads of packaging down to school for the kids to use making things, then Mara brings it all back home again, turned into underground hideouts for foxes, luxury condos with outdoor swimming pools, adventure playgrounds, monster hospitals.

nilpferd said...

By the way, anyone else not own a single one of the OMM 50 best albums of the decade?
Feel free to kick me off the 'Spill if that makes me seem embarrassingly iconoclastic. (promise I won't start a sweepstake "who can first convince Nilp to buy one of these albums before christmas.." thread..)

Blimpy said...

@nilp - i have 16 of them!!

nilpferd said...

I think I'd be pushing it to have 16 albums recorded after 1999.. not surprisingly, none of them are on the OMM list.. I possibly have one track from the Gotan Project album on a compilation, maybe that counts..

treefrogdemon said...

I have one - Love And Theft. Very surprised to have any!

nilpferd said...

I figure the list is eclectic enough to catch most 'Spillers- the jazz, electronic and African picks just fail to match anything in my collection, though.

DarceysDad said...

Re OMM's 50, I have:

The Grey Album (fileshare)
Sigur Ros' ( )
Polly's Songs...Stories...
Bon Iver
Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid
SOAD's Toxicity (somewhere!)
Sufjan's Illonoise
Antony & The Johnsons
Tom W's Orphans
Radiohead's In Rainbows (43p)
Kings Of Leon's Aha Shake...
Ali Farka Toure's Savane
Songs For The Deaf
LCD Soundsystem (HATE IT!)
Johnny Cash's American III
Gorillaz' Demon Days
Jay-Z's Black Album (still wrapped!!)
El3phant
Amy's Back To Black
Arcade Fire's Funeral, and
The Strokes Is This It? (apposite title, imo)

How many is that? Twenty-one, I reckon. How many of them get any kind of regular outing? Five, maybe six. I wonder what that says about me?

;o)

nilpferd said...

It says regardless of quibbles about whether you opened the packaging or not, you're unfortunately out of the running for "Spillconoclast of the year".. ;-)

any other contenders?

Unknown said...

Erm, 32, if I count the Gotan Project which I'm sure I have somewhere, but not in the iTunes library.

nilpferd said...

Next!

ShariVari said...

I have about sixteen. There are some good albums on the list, despite the numerous quibbles i have with it.

I'd struggle to think of many indie-rock albums of the last ten years better than TV On The Radio's Dear Science. That, Sound Of Silver and Stankonia are the only ones i really love.

Blimpy said...

Blimpy said...
listening to an album on spotify is a bit like watching a film on itv. ... do I want to get used to this?

i really should have got off the couch, gone upstairs, and just found the bloody Streets CD.....

November 23, 2009 9:41 PM

Blimpy said...

see? i was listening to Original Pirate Material just 6 days ago!!!

steenbeck said...

LEGO!!!! lego lego lego lego!!! I like the nice soft-focussed lighting in your picture, Blimpy. Very dreamy. I'm going to have to post some pictures of the stuff we've made! I'm with you, BLimpy - we'll look at a $300 set and say--we have almost all of those parts. Mostly though, we just put all the sets in one huge box and make crazy spaceships an other vehicles. Although we did have that ongoing project of the lego city using every single lego. Never reached completion, though, sigh.

I think I have maybe 12 of those albums, but I'm not counting very precisely. Some I do love a lot, though.

Sharivari - if you're still reading, I'm always very impressed by your comments on the various Guardian blogs. Particularly those "Best of the naughties albums" blogs. You're so smart and not-at-all bullying. I always take a certain RRfamilial pride in reading your comments. You know so much about so many genres!!

Mnemonic said...

I've got 16 of them and still play most of those fairly frequently.

ShariVari said...

Thank you, Steenbeck - that's very kind.

Unknown said...

I second what Steenbeck said, SV, you are one of the few who make checking out the comments worthwhile.

Abahachi said...

I have one and a half: the Esbjorn Svensson, which is great, and the Primal Scream which I thought was barely passable when I first bought it and now haven't listened to for pretty well the whole decade. And it's not as if I haven't bought any new albums in the last ten years, and not just jazz.

Anonymous said...

Carole here, from work.

I've got four of the OMM Top 50; The Strokes, Amy's Back To Black, the Polly Harvey one and the Destiny's Child one(no idea why, I don't remember buying it).

To be honest, I can't think of many I don't have that I'd want, the Dylan one maybe, but I've heard it and Modern Times, Together Through Life and Time Out of Mind (which I do have) are all loads better.

I used to think that I was a Radiohead fan but I realise now that I am actually a The Bends and OK Computer fan.

bishbosh said...

Dunno about the Lego, but how do you like them apples on the tablecloth?! Sweet.

I have 9 of the (supposed) top 50 albums of the decade:

1) Bon Iver: Good back story; music a bit samey after a while

2) Elbow: Can't listen the whole way through but some lovely songs

3) MIA: Paper Planes is good; after that I start suffering from 'clatter' fatigue

4) Antony & The Johnsons: Gorgeous; and not too long

5) LCD Soundsystem: I'm not quite as extreme on this one as DsD but am only really fond of "All My Friends" and "Someone Great"

6) Johnny Cash: Worth it for his version of "I see a darkness" alone

7) White Stripes: Meh

8) The Winehouse: Classic tunes, so why do I never reach to put this album on?

9) Arcade Fire: Love love love it

So that's two out of nine (out of 50) that I love unreservedly. Maybe I'm more of a singles man. Or maybe nothing is as precious as the music you scrimp and save for as a teenager - and then listen to endlessly because you can't afford to buy anything else.

Chris said...

Although there are a couple more in the household, I own a mere three of those albums. Do I have to stand for re-election to the Spillthingy League?
Of those three, two are my least favourite PJ Harvey and Primal Scream albums and the other is Badly Drawn Boy's effort. I suspect that the fact he's a local had something to do with that purchase: I've seem him a few times in Chorlton eateries, always wearing that hat. Seems like a nice lad.

TatankaYotanka said...

By the way, anyone else not own a single one of the OMM 50 best albums of the decade?

Ok nilpferd, me neither, we can hold hands if it gets frightening.

I have other albums from the decade by a few of the artists on the list ... and there may be 10 or so that are in the house courtesy of Mrs & Master TY ... but no, a big fat 0 for me - strangely - in a decade when I probably bought more music than in any other but where my tastes drifted far more firmly out of the mainstream I suppose.

nilpferd said...

*Nilp. looks rather wistfully at dunces hat, rips it in two, hands TY a piece.*

We'll have to take turns sitting in the corner, though.. you first..

AliMunday said...

Dunno about the albums but young Munday recognised the space craft straight away.

Darth is Daft Vader in our house because he lives in the corner with the weapons of mass destruction, and his feet fall off every time I hoover (which isn't often, to be fair).

AliMunday said...

To my surprise I've actually got 2 of the OMM Top 50 -

Savane (Ali Farka Toure) and
Songs for the Deaf (Queens of the Stone Age)

What that says about my taste, I don't know. Please don't speculate unless it's constructive.