Be Excellent To Each Other

As per title, not seen on tv though, seen in reality with your own eyes, at the scene.

Some things you see in life are the things you'll remember forever. They can be memorable for any reason. Outstanding beauty, amazing power, or anything!

Mine are:

Seeing a space shuttle lift off in Florida (all be it from about 5 miles away)
Seeing a twister and an electrical storm cloud (again in Florida)
Seeing Blackpool promenade and Pleasure Beach from the air as I flew a plane over it (nothing special usually but I was actually flying the plane, and it was a once in a lifetime experience!)
The former site of the WTC buildings and all the tributes in New York
Seeing my baby boy for the first time


What about you guys?

Seeing you die a slow, painful death.

-edit- this is spam, right? If not, I apologise profusely.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate.

No, really, Niagara Falls is pretty pro. Take That concert was jawdropping.

The birth of my children
Meeting Bill clinton stoned out of my gourd
When I went to see the sistine chapel they were restoring it and we got to go up on the scafolding, we were so close my dad could have reached up and touched it.
The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, everyone needs to see this painting, it's actually hard to explain how huge this thing is - you normally see the pictures on the net or in books a couple of pages away form the mona lisa and kind of assume it will be like that - it isn't.

I am off to Italy on Thursday, so I will look....

I originally saw the post (and the other one by someone else who joined yesterday) and thought spam , went to look to see what junk they had in their sig files only to find nothing there.

I didnt know if they were spam and a mod had already got to them or if they were legit so i ignored them , going by the other posts this person has made theres someone real behind it (they may just be here to flog bestival tickets or may actually be new members - if so "greetings" - and dont mind us we're just used to most new people being spambots)

Nope, nothing done here. Everything legit. Sorry, MrHobbs - we get a lot of spammers.

At least I gave him the traditional Beex welcome.

You obnoxious cunt.

In 2001, Sheffield Wednesday scoring 5 goals against Stockport on Carlton palmer's return to Hillsrorough as manager of Stockport. Did we get drunk after that.

Sheffield Wednesday beating United by one scrappy, scrappy goal inthe FA cup in the year 2000.

Ggood question, so hey there Mr Hobbs.

And you saw a twister you say, and a supercell electrical storm? Everyone on Beex should know how jealous that makes me. I am eating sour grapes by the bucketful at the Green-Eyed Monster Cafe.

Would have loved to see a shuttle launch too.

So, what have I seen?

Vimy Ridge was particularily affecting. Went on a High School trip and I still remember it well. Massive war memorial there.

Climbing up Misery Ridge on Smith Rock in Oregon and seeing nothing but cloud underneath, which melted away in the sun to reveal rivers and trees and a glorious amphitheatre of a golden rockface. Got some of my best photos out of that one.

Saw a fat man walk along eating a big pie.

I met Patti Smith and Tilda Swinton, that was pretty amazing. They have incredible presence.

I've seen the great outdoors of the new west, with creaking old abandoned pioneer houses, highways that go on forever and white picket fence suburbs and trailers. Nothing special there, perhaps, but oddly beautiful for an outsider's eye.

Port Sunlight in the mist outside Liverpool. A worker's village built by the Lever Brothers and, almost devoid of cars and filled with Edwardian houses laid out like a Roman city around a temple, one of the oddest 'timeslip' feelings I've ever had. Wish I'd done photography back then.

Mervyn Peake's self portrait, seared into me.

Rossetti's Persephone.

The Retreat from Moscow

Gassed by John Nash.

My grandad's green camper van parked across the road from The Shepherd's Rest in Hinchcliffe Mill, Holmfirth back in 1985-86 around abouts.

My grand-auntie Marie Louise handing me a plate of fresh shelled prawns at my Grandad Van's buffet back around the same time. Revelatory experience.

An eagle circling her nest in the mountains of Austria.

Flying over a great expanse of white in Minnesota, of egg-shell blue lakes in Canada, of Pac-Man shaped irrigated circles of crops in the mid-west, of vivid blood red scarlet cranberry fields in Vancouver, of homesteads in the hills around Portland, mist crawling over the ridges.

Being under a canopy of more stars than I ever thought possible in Virginia City, Nevada, in the cool night air.

The sound of a freight-train passing by and the howl of a coyote as I look out to the Cascade mountains at night in Redmond.

Watching a plastic beetle on a spring leap up from its suckered position on the coffee table back in Fartown, Huddersfield, as a child. Walking home from school with this miracle of fun in my pocket.

The painting shifting from Dorian Gray to a hideous skeletal figure in the black and white film, as Dorian's body lays dead on the carpet beneath, which I saw as a child at Arndale Grove, Holmfirth. It terrified me.

Seeing 13 shooting stars in one night at Hay-on-Wye.

A strangely shaped bulk under a blanketed coffee table in the dim light filtered through the curtains of my parent's bedroom on Christmas morning. I know with a thrill of pleasure that it is an Amiga 500 and monitor.

Seeing Concorde break the sound barrier over Torquay.

Rattling up and down the hillside tramway in Scarborough.

Marshal Ney Supporting the Rear Guard During the Retreat from Moscow by Adolphe Yvon.

Two French policemen violently arresting a man outside our school coach in Paris.

Ball lightning in Upperthong, West Yorkshire - a crackling sphere of blue that drifted down the road, suddenly zipped up to the power lines and along and then vanished with a sharp crack.

Richard 'Twice Nightly' Whiteley in a marquee tent at a polo match in Yorkshire with a young buxom blonde woman on his lap, doing his trademark 'Heh heh heh' laugh.

All these moments, etc...

I’ve seen lots of things in my life.. some memorable, some not but THE most memorable/moving “thing” I’ve seen is my then... soon to be wife standing next to me at the altar in church on our wedding day.

That was pretty special that.

Poof.




Me too.

Don't know if it applies, but riding my first decent tube while bodyboarding is one of the most memorable moments. It seemed like it lasted a minute while it must have been 5 or 6 seconds. It was the most enjoyable feeling i ever had.

I was in port sunlight yesterday. As it was the summer festival, it was rammed with cars. The landlady of the pub was telling us they've never seen so many people

Among others:

The Yellowstone canyon, and most of the sulphuric springs and geysers, especially in particular the Grand Prismatic Pool and the Morning Glory (snigger) pool.

Seeing a wolf through a guy's highly expensive telescope, and seeing a bear run about half a mile from me.

The Shenandoah Valley and the Virginian Piedmont

British Sea Power performing in Oxford in 2008

Looking up at vast skies full of stars in Yellowstone

Looking down at a full Royal Albert Hall as the audience cheered us

The stretch of coastal path in Cornwall from Chapel Porth to St Agnes and up to Perranporth: my favourite views and walk in the whole world.

Oxford from the tower of the University Church, on a bright spring day when the sun is making the sandstone golden.

Watching a sunset from Little Round Top on the Gettysburg battlefield, then walking across the battlefield at night amidst the flickering and mysterious glow of millions of fireflies.

Dartmoor. It's the bleakest place on earth.

And probably loads of other things too.

EDIT And hello MrHobbs

Breasts I can remember them all vividly. I have seen 29.
Blue October in concert.
Prince Live.
Sunset on Montego bay.

Welcome Mr Hobbs.

A pissed up bloke taking ten minutes to take his kebab from the shop counter, stagger to the door then fall face first outside the huge shop window.

My daughters first recognisable drawing 'Lollipops, Daddy!'.

Looking down at the surrounding peaks popping through cloud from the top of Helvellyn.

Akihabara.

Hillsborough being turned into a swimming pool when bramall lane was fine.

This. UEFA 2008. Fans in Piccadilly, as seen from my office at the time.



And flying over the Pyrenees at dawn on my way back from Africa.

60 Buddhist monks on the giant Rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Shuttle launch
Lava hitting the sea at night in Hawaii
The top of Mauna Kea
The Byodo-in Temple
Vulcan HK558, the Eurofighter and the Red Arrows all in flight
Rammstein live
Slieve League
Group B rally cars, banned for being too fast, lined up alongside each other on a start line and then hurtling into the first corner
My favourite ever hockey player, Ray Bourque hitting my second favourite ever player, Cam Neely into the boards about three feet from my face.
A packed Turf Moor as one realising that Burnley were finally going to get promoted out of Division Four and doing Mexican waves around the ground for the last ten minutes of a match against Cardiff. The most surreally emotional experience ever, compounded by the players looking up at the stands and wondering what the hell was going on.
The 747-400 that I was going to travel halfway around the world on
The view from the top of the CN Tower
The wall separating the two sides in Belfast
The Italian Chapel on Orkney
The Hong Kong skyscraper light show
The entirety of the drive to Milford Sound
Customs at the border near Buffalo, travelling from the US to Canada. And the only person on the bus being taken away for further questioning was a Hassidic Jew in full regalia.

Who only had one?

Sorry to say that I'm going to turn up the depressometer.

The most memorable thing I've seen was the look on a 17 year old kid's face as we tried to keep him from drowning in his own blood while we waited for an ambulance to arrive after some scum had crushed him up against his house wall with a car.

Er. Back to your regularly scheduled awesome things!

'The Machine' at Diamond.

Oh yeah, standing on the Burj Khalifa's viewing platform, and looking up at the Burj Khalifa actually.

Hello all, thanks for the (reasonably ) warm reception!

I'm not a spammer and I'm not selling anything, just after a bit of chat!

Another thing I was reminded of after reading Craster's post was seeing a cat get its head ran over by a car and it twisted and turned so much when the neighbour came to scrape it up on a shovel it fell in two!

Oh yes, hello!

A fat woman in a towelling tracksuit, encouraged by her mate, throw herself into the road and bounce like fuck off a car along Blackpool promenade at eight o'clock one Saturday morning.

I can't really remember things though.

"There is no spoon, chuck! Go for it".

Everything memorable happens in Blackpool, apparently.

There, or Burnout Paradise, anyway

Welcome!

(And that's about the only contribution I can make to this thread as I can't think of a single memorable thing worth mentioning.. I should probably get out more)

I have seen Grim... and Gaywood jumping up and down on plastic horses in an arcade.

Heh, one of my memorable things was seeing an American chap take off in a jetpack just a few yards from where I was stood and fly halfway up Blackpool tower. It was quite the spectacle, the noise and the blast from it was immense.

is brilliant!!

New person! Hello!

I have seen these things, using my face:

A woman I loved reading a book, not realising anyone was watching. Just quietly, intently reading. I remember that even better than the post-sexytimes parts.

The view of Stirling and its surrounding hills from the Wallace monument. I could have stood up there all day.

A woman trying to sneak into a restricted area through a one-way door who eventually pulled it off, but didn't realise it was one-way (as opposed to simply locked), and in an effort to cover her tracks, managed to lock herself back out again (I watched the whole thing, too busy laughing to call security).

Our family car, mangled to buggery and looking for all the world like the scene of several grisly deaths, as my sister and I somehow walked away from it completely unharmed after spinning out and crashing on a busy motorway (also, the two men who came to our help who simply walked out in front of the speeding traffic, daring anyone to complain as they hauled a couple of kids out of the wreck).

The forest behind an uncle's house we used to visit every year... but especially the year we went to visit and found that the forest had been cut down. It was just gone.

A fuckload of blood spraying out of my head, through my fingers, after being twatted in the face by a rock. I remember that very vividly, even after about 16 years.

The look of impotent rage, and just a little fear, as I walked out of a bullshit detention by an incompetent teacher in front of the whole class, and turned back at the door just to see it.

Coming home after school once to see my mum in the front room, bouncing on a trampoline, and my sister in the middle room, throwing treats to the dog, who was sitting in the middle of an inflated paddling pool inside the house, and not really thinking anything unusual was happening until my friend pointed out that this was a little strange.

My oldest friend laughing until he cries. Every time.

That is pretty weird. Most normal people have the paddling pool in the front room, and keep the trampoline for the middle room. You oddball.

A lot of really good friends, for whom I had agreed to arrange a comedy night, just doubled over and struggling to breathe through laughing so much.

The look on the face of our teams goon/enforcer/fighter who, when asked to pose for a photo with a five year old girl, happily knelt down to do so. At which point she pulled the best ever fists up pose as if she was about to knock him out.

Standing in the exact same spot as this guy:



seeing exactly what he was seeing then*. Also, I was there at 6am, just as the sun was rising, a blanket of mist was creeping across the canopy of the jungle and a cacophony of howler monkeys were awaking.

*sans space ship, obv.

You have been to Endor Yavin 4?


Where is that really? (Hangs head in shame for not knowing)

You've been to Yavin 4?!

Temple IV at Tikal, Guatemala.

Tinkers 2010.

Tinkers 2012 is gonna be in Guatemala, btw. We need some end of the world party action!

I'll start saving.

Also:

Standing on top of the World Trade Centre Tower 2 in August 2000. Amazing then, retrospectively poignant now.

Neurosis, playing at 3am at Dynamo Open Air festival, Eindhoven, 1996, after being awake for 45 hours. I'm not sure if everything I saw that night was actually real, though... but still the best gig I've ever seen.

Being at a festival in Belfort, watching Ozomatli playing on the lake site stage and seeing what looked like the apocalypse approach from the distance. Every single person at the festival ran for cover inside the main tent as the most insane storm I've ever experienced blasted around us. Apparently, it destroyed a load of stuff when it hit Strasbourg and killed someone too.

The Sagrada Famalia in Barcelona (twice). Best piece of architecture I have ever seen. Utterly mind fuckingly mental.

The "event" at Tinkers 2010 (of which I am sworn not to speak)...

And a whole bunch of personal things which you lot won't find interesting.

Whole story:

Jesus. That's horrible. I mean properly, difficult to conceive horrible. There is no excuse for Line Dancing.

Similar to Crasters story, seeing my then best mate fly six foot in the air off the bonnet of a speeding car. The car came behind us, so I didn't see the impact, just the flying friend.

Keep the thread alive, and I'll do saccharine sweet next week.