My new blog happened

In case anyone was interested, my new blog happened:

http://elmoshappyplace.wordpress.com/

There may still be a time and a place in the future for opinioncake!

So we’re still getting views?!

Just came back on to wordpress after a long hiatus. Seems we are still getting views (a few a day, but pennies always add up) which I was mildly amazed by. Initially though “oh, maybe I’ll make a new blog, a casual one for myself” but I may/may not back track on that now.

Thanks for anybody taking the time to read any of this stuff which is more than a year old.

Elmo

Album Of The Month: June + July 2012 – Channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean (but I’m not happy about it)

Apologies for the absence of album of the month in June, but nothing was worthy so there’s no point in me putting any effort in writing it if artists aren’t going to put any effort into producing a strong album. As a result, I’ve decided to just merge the two months of June and July and just pick one album from the two (I hope this doesn’t seem like I’m being lazy).

Fings I Dun In The Cardiff Area: Episode 1

So, I haven’t written anything for a while…
After having a conversation with a reader (who also happens to be a friend and potential future writer), I made the executive decision to have more things to do with stuff local to us writers on here and at the time of writing this includes a Cardiff Devils post from Jones, a Cardiff City FC post from Fishilar, a Welsh Rugby post from Winwood aaaand then I had to think of something to contribute too instead of taking a back seat.
Originally, I was going to write just about domestic cricket after I went to a god-awful T20 cricket match last Sunday (17/6/12) but, to be honest, nobody want’s to read about negative things going on in their area (and nobody really wants to read about cricket either), so here’s me talking about things I’ve attended in Cardiff recently and also talking in a very biased manner about some of my friends “talents”.

Album Of The Month: May 2012 – Rize Of The Fenix by Tenacious D

When it comes to this time in the month each month, I reflect on the past 4 weeks of musical album releases and promptly lose the will to live. At the time of writing, for example, the “top selling” album in both the iTunes and Amazon.co.uk charts is…wait for it…The Sing EP by Gary “Take That” Barlow and The Commonwealth Band.
You know there’s match fixing and the like in sports? Anyone else think there is such a thing as “chart fixing”? Nope, just me then. For me, it is so unfathomable why this is No.1, or why following it in the top 10 in at least one of the above-mentioned charts is Fall To Grace by Paloma Faith (on my just-created music credibility scale, somewhere between 0 and Jessie J) or still (STILL!!) Adele who is reigning over the no.10 spot on Amazon.co.uk and, according to Amazon.co.uk, has spent 535 days (at time of writing) in the top 100! 535 days! Then people having been listening to her for more than a year? Just because of the effect this would have on the nations mental health (probably shown in suicide rates), I find this hard to believe but surely this adds more weight (get it? More weight? Adele? No?) to my chart-fixing theory? Just a little?
As a result of the above rant, I fail to take the popular music charts seriously – hence why I have chosen Rize Of The Fenix by Tenacious D as the album of this month.

Album Of The Month: April 2012 – ummm…

As the title suggests, April was a sub-par month as far as album production goes. Poor. Perhaps with some better publicity then more people might have known about some half-decent albums but nothing that’s really taken the month by storm anyhow and I didn’t really want to give the coveted album of the month title to an album with the only reason being “someone had to win it”. Have there been some notable singles this month? Yes. Some well known artists with new albums this month? Yes. Does any of this mean that they’re worthy of such a prestigious title? Nope.

Album Of The Month: March 2012 – Breakfast by Chiddy Bang

    

Chiddy Bang - Breakfast (Album cover, taken from http://www.wikipedia.org)

This is the inaugural “Album of the Month” article/post. I don’t know with any amount of certainty who is going to be writing it each month, whether we will all agree on who’s album was the best album of the month or whether any of the other writers will agree to writing a monthly post as I’ve just thought about it and decided to start writing without any form of conspiracy. With this first album of the month, I’m fairly certain my fellow writers would agree that there’s only one winner. Please note: Saying what the album of the month is is probably difficult having not listened to every album produced in any given month, so I guess this series of posts should be called “Favourite album of the month”, but it’s likely that as time goes on, our opinions probably tend towards fact.

NHL & EIHL – Play-Off Predictions!

With the end of March fast approaching, so are the NHL and EIHL (British Elite Ice Hockey Leage) play-offs! Quite an exciting time of the year for sports fans and  the most exciting time of the year for ice hockey fans – both North American and British. With the play-off line-up for the EIHL all but confirmed and the NHL line-up and seedings almost sorted (but for some hotly contested 8th seed battles), I have taken it upon myself to predict how this years Stanley Cup and EIHL play-off trophy races will pan out and, eventually, see how wrong I was.

Ranking The “Frat Pack”

Ben Stiller, Jack Black, The Wilsons, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd.
Collective term: The Frat Pack (Wikipedia.org:  group of male Hollywood comedy actors who have appeared in many of the highest grossing movies since the late 1990s). Basically, America’s most famous comedy actors who often appear together, hence the “Pack”. Between them, they have played starring roles in some of the top comedy films of the last 10-15 years – Anchorman, Dodgeball, Zoolander (debatable) and Tropic Thunder to name a few. Here, I am ranking the actors in terms of who instantly makes the movie better, who is generally funnier and who my personal preferences tend towards (not going to lie).

My Take On Wales’ Six Nations Grand Slam Bid

I never tend to really put much faith in Welsh team sports – I always end up being disappointed in some way or another, even when they win. I am pretty cynical of Welsh sport. Especially rugby, the national game. Yes, they’ve won the Six Nations a couple of times in the last few years and yes, they made the semi-finals of the recent Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Yes, they do have a squad of moderately to very skilled players (some, not too smart, but skilled all the same) and yes, they have already beaten every team put in front of them so far in this year’s Six Nations tournament and won the Triple Crown (in the Six Nations, a trophy is awarded to the home nation – Scotland, Wales, England or Ireland – who beats all the other home nations) while doing so. These reasons seem to be more than enough for every other Welsh citizen to be convinced of their northern hemisphere rugby dominance and to be convinced that they’ll win this years Six Nations at least and maybe achieve the grand slam (defeating every team in the competition) along the way, but they are not enough for me.