We definately love Katamari

Friday (and all last week) we've been revisiting Animal Crossing (Gamecube) with the DS wireless version released recently. Forgotten how cute it can be. Have read recent stories of people selling virtual items on Ebay which has reached a new height of strangeness.

I.T. Crowd on Channel 4 didn't really live up to my expectations. Quite an obvious idea about nerdy office geeks though can't quite think if anyone had done it before. It had Father Ted humour all over it (obviously with Graham Linehan writing, directing, producing and making the tea for everyone). Chris Morris (Brass Eye) did the best performance and the Irish guy did cut close to some people I work with (including myself), though the usually brilliant Richard Ayoade's (Garth Merenghi) character was just annoying. The 3 central character formula just seemed a little tired and done too many times before. Other highlights for me were the mangled feet joke in the second episode. C- = must do better.

Saturday evening was celebrating my uni mate's 31st birthday at a 'dinner-party'. The last few meetings with our 'Groove' collection (named after our student Monday night at the old Centro bar in Southampton where James DJ'ed rare groove, Stu did hip-hop to house and I did deep, french and latin house) had been re-enactments of our student days, getting so mashed and sleeping on living room floors. Even our favourite groupee had the respectable nick-name of 'Drunk Jim' to give you the impression of those heady student days. Although there was a more sedate setting and slightly different characters attending, I had prepared for the worst bringing some mexican beer and rose wine. Arrived after the most infuriating directions taken from Google maps (never again), we arrived almost last to a tightly packed house of familiar faces from yearly reunions. First sign of change was the absence of Vodka in the house with hosts offering me gin as an alternative (sorry I refuse to drink G&T). James and Sarah had squeezed a long table for 14 people and a great mexican feast was served. With only 6 years from graduating the conversations went from past degree studying exploits through to typical 'where are you working now' then on to house prices to cycling the Jurassic coast in Dorset. By 11pm only one drink was spilled only through the disguised gap in the table.

Sunday was laziness to the extreme. Straight after an 11:30am breakfast we switched the PS2 on to play We love Katamari and hardly did anything else. Had played a preview of this in Tokyo (don't you know) back in October and loved the concept. Basically you're rolling a sticky ball collecting things along the way to make the ball bigger - just like rolling a ball of snow. Between the bouts of ball rolling is a bizarre Japanese story of a king all to some swing music ala Sinatra meets Jap-pop. First stages you're rolling up pins, lego bricks and batteries. Other stages you get roll up pets, trumpets, traffic cones then people. Last few stages you go to buildings, bridges and super-tankers. Best game in ages though after several hours we had overdosed on it.

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