A complete absence of diggity

Hearing other people's dreams is usually excruciatingly tedious, but bear with me. Last night - back in Dorset, away from the roar of London traffic - I dreamt the following...

1) Arnold Schwartzenegger giving advice on how to pick up girls: "I get chatting to them, then I reel out some classic lines." Tadich and I then repeat the phrase "classic lines" with much glee.

2) A discussion on the meaning of the phrase "no diggity":
"What does 'no diggity' mean?"
"What it says: that there's no diggity."
"But what does that mean?"
"That there's a complete absence of diggity, anywhere."

3) A cross country run at my old school, which culminates in getting the actor Will Ferrell to autograph my copy of The Complete Poems of John Milton.


NB: For a correct definition of "diggity" and the absence of it, go here.

Just a Tad

GUEST BLOGGER ALERT. Here, my Canadian pal Tadich – who now resides in Moscow - describes what he calls “a rather eventful day for me in the Managed Democracy”...

9am: convenience store near work
I am proud to say I conducted this conversation entirely in Russian!

Me: I'll have a packet of sour cream & onion chips, and, er, a red apple please.

Clerk: Green and red! Red and green! (NB: the bag of chips was green)

Me: Yes, it's like a traffic light isn't it?

Clerk: Almost, but you need some yellow!

[Clerk grabs a big bag of cheese-flavoured chips and plonks them down on the counter]

Me: (jokingly) No, I'd rather have some orange juice!

[Clerk suddenly turns all serious; grabs a litre carton of OJ from the fridge behind her, plonks it on the counter, and puts the cheese chips back]

Clerk: So, you want to buy the orange juice, then?

Me: [Sheepishly] No.

[Clerk scowls and rings up the purchase]

***

9pm: at the swimming pool
As I round the corner from the shower room into the changing room, a cleaner dumps a bucket of scalding water onto my naked feet.

Me: Ow!

Her: Watch where you're going!

***

10 pm: at the grocery store
There's a huge line-up (half the length of the store) because only two tills are staffed. But I wait through it cause I need to buy sausages.

An old guy who looks EXACTLY like Lenin c. 1917 (flat cap included) starts shouting very loudly at the store staff for a good five minutes, who completely ignore him.

Then he turns to face his fellow customers, and urges us to form a "union of fellow Russians" and to take our groceries "out onto the streets!" and not pay for them.

In his right hand, he clutches a huge amount of money, what looks like the equivalent of four or five hundred dollars.

***

12am: my apartment

Housemate: Are you cooking sausages?

Me: Yes. [Long pause. Realise I've never seen him eat meat.] Um... are you a vegetarian?

Housemate: [Smugly] Yes. But I eat meat once per year. I like the flavour and the texture.

AAARRRGH!

Day 9: "MosSoviet is the master!"

By Georgia, Gorky blimey, culture potato, Arcade fuck off

Jamie has now departed, so I’m left picking up the pieces of stuff we didn’t have time to do. Me and Tadich visit the Starlite Diner. Tadich tells me that round the corner some highly unpleasant guy he knows is having lunch with the ousted President of Georgia's granddaughter. "One time, I saw her open her handbag, and it was full of hundred-dollar bills," says Tadich.

***

We go to Maxim Gorky's house, the Ryabushinsky Mansion, given to the writer by the state in 1931. The Gorkster, as he was known to friends, was a bit reluctant to accept the honour, thinking that living in a whopping great mansion might tarnish his "proletarian" image a bit. When one guest toasted "the master of the house", Gorky went mental and shouted, "Do not call me master! I am not the master of this house! MosSoviet is the master!"

***

A trip to Moscow's premier pirate DVD market follows, then we go to a classical music concert, which features a piano trio playing works by Schumann, Schubert and Brahms. Then we get baked potatoes from a kiosk and eat them on the street.

***

I get home and realise that the Arcade Fire gig that I had a ticket for is, at this exact moment, about to start back in London. In tribute, Tadich puts on their first album. He makes sure the tracks are randomly shuffled too, so it's exactly like being there.

Day 4, Moscow: Krem and punishment

Kremlin-snapping, GUM see, more vodka, the greatest kebab of all time

Darren’s last day. We go to the Kremlin, and find that Russians don’t make it easy for tourists. In fact, they seem to be actively discouraging tourists from visiting stuff, writing everything in Cyrillic (not a problem for me, fnar fnar), placing scary armed guards everywhere, and – in the case of the armoury museum – labeling the main entrance with the English words “Staff Entrance”. Finally make it in, and press the large button on my camera many times over.

Always believe in your soul

Are you the gatekeeper?

Definitely a canonical work

After Darren leaves, me and Jamie head over to Red Square.

Crack horse

We pop in to GUM (stands for State Department Store, pronounced goom), a huge and highly impressive shopping mall. Rough Guide fact alert:

In 1932 [GUM] was used for the lying-in-state of Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda, after her suicide; Stalin stayed there for days, silently noting who came to pay their respects.

The temple of GUM

In the evening, beginning to fall into a not unpleasant pattern, we go to meet Tadich. There are predictably vodka-soaked results.

An ap-Paul-ing vision

As the night draws to a close, Tadich takes us to sample “the greatest Kebab of all time”. I’m not so impressed, until someone points out that I’m eating the paper as well. I throw the paper away, but find that the pastry underneath tastes like paper too.

Day 2, Moscow: War and Pivas

Vodka, beer, VVTs, cognac, beer, Mojito, beer, lesbian horseriders

I am awoken from my sofa-slumber at around 10am by the sound of Tadich clomping through the lounge, singing “Vodka in the morning, vodka in the mor-ning!” over and over again. I hear a bottle being slammed down on the table, open my bleary eyes and see a bottle of vodka. An hour later, as Russian tradition dictates, we start drinking the vodka.

After lunch at a US-style diner where no one speaks English, Tadich introduces us to the fact that it is socially acceptable to walk along the road drinking beer (piva) – regarded as something of a soft drink over here – by buying us four from a street kiosk then telling us to drink as we walk. Bottles in hand, we head to VVTs via the space obelisk, a 1964 Soviet monument honouring Russia’s space achievements. Its shape is highly pleasing, and shown below.

If this shape was a noise, that noise
would probably be "Schwooooooo"

Then onto VVTs, previously known as the Exhibition of Economic Achievements. It’s a big Stalinist theme park with lots of huge pavilions, a goldie lookin’ fountain, the obligatory fearsome Lenin statue, a couple of passenger planes, and a rocket monument.

Lenin – rad

Clowns foiled by snow

Our walk wasn't all plane sailing

Pretty fly, eh?

Transliterated, this is pronounced "Paliozlektronika".
I'm guessing that means "pavilion of electronic
equipment", or "pirate DVD market"

Rocket on

VVTs also features an Armenian building; we go inside and drink some cognac. Then, when we’ve done our wandering, we go to a café and order some vodka. Unfortunately, they’ve run out of vodka. Tadich can hardly believe it, cross-questioning the waitress like his life depends on it. But it’s true. We get beers instead.

The pretty café window, which helpfully
protected us from the cold of the elements

***

In Russia, there is a tradition of citizen taxi-driving. It’s not that hard to flag down drivers and negotiate a price for a lift to wherever you’re going. Our lift, soundtracked by the odd mixture of Missy Elliot, Vanilla Ice, Kanye West and UB40, takes us to Leninskii Prospekt. We buy a few more street beers and sit on a bench by a dirt track in the freezing cold. Then, in total contrast, we head up to Skylounge 22, an ultra-posh bar on the 22nd floor of the Russian Academy of Sciences. When the RAS ran out of money, they decided to add a few floors to the top of their building to house a trendy and very expensive bar-restaurant. They purposefully designed the additional floors to be look like a giant golden brain. Uh, yeah.

[Jamie did a short post from his mobile phone from the Skylounge, which is here.]

The evening ends in the excellently-named Krisis Zhanra, where it seems to be Britpop night. We dance, whipped up into a frenzy by a heady combination of the Spin Doctors and New Order, and all is great, until a real live Russian band come on. They have a song which involves the lead singer crooning, without irony, “I am a very complicated person / So complicated, oh yeah.” It's awful.

***

As the taxi home rounds the corner of Tadich’s street, me and Jamie spot the sad-looking horserider from the previous night. She’s riding along the pavement of the main street, parallel to another girl on a horse. Both girls turn to look at each other, and suddenly, something extraordinary happens. They kiss each other, on the lips.

The two of us spend the next hour trying to convince Darren and Tadich that this actually happened.

Direct hit

Okay, I'm off to Moscow now. Tadich (pictured) has emailed me some amazingly precise directions (in PDF format!) he's written to get me from Moscow Domodedovo Airport to his flat.

I've included some highlights below; if I don't make it, it's probably because I was too busy cracking up to actually follow them:

"Get on the train, and enjoy the ride, which lasts about 40 minutes. You can buy a beer on the train too! Sometimes, the guy selling the beer has a stack of magazines. Ask for a 'journal (pronounce like the French) cri-mee-NAH-lay'. You won't regret it."

"…Go through the turnstile on the LEFT side of the slot you stuck your ticket into. If you go through the wrong one, a barrier will pop up and close exactly on your testicles. I'm not even kidding."

"…Enter the foyer of my Brezhnev-era slut paradise. There is a 75 per cent chance that a very grouchy old 'concierge' will be seated in a busted recliner, watching soap operas, ready to greet you. WARNING – AS YOU ARE CLEARLY AN EVIL JEW FOREIGNER, SHE MIGHT TRY TO KICK YOU OUT. I have tried to notify them of your upcoming stay, but I probably fucked it up. If they give you any cheese, simply show them the explanatory sheet of A4 I have graciously included in Appendix 1."

Yes, there was an appendix. See you on the other side.

Downlodd

The man Tadich has spotted this extraordinary website called the 365 Days Project, part of UBUWeb ("a resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts").

The project consists of a day-by-day collection of MP3s of the weird and wonderful rarities dug up from flea markets. Having had a flick through it, I've noticed that the tunes generally fall into three categories: eccentric but great, disturbing, and downright insane.

It's all totally Peel. Do the delving yourself, but here are a few examples which I enjoyed (and was terrified by), split into my three categories:


1. Eccentric but great

Testing 1... 2... 3... by the Bolivar Blues Band
1977 blues track created by a German speaker company for testing your hi-fi equipment.

They say: "...some funkalicious blues playing all on side A with narration by the Bolivar Speaker Works people. Grade A stuff."

Hey Jude by Assagai
Cover version of the Beatles classic, sung in "an unknown African language".

They say: "Assagai were formed in England in 1971 by South African exiles and a couple of Nigerians (one is the singer on this track)."


2. Disturbing

Distant Star by Anthony Hopkins
Yes, that's the Anthony Hopkins. A bit like William Shatner's spoken cover versions or John Betjeman's jazz stuff, but far more scary; he's clearly trying to sound wise and mysterious, but instead just sounds like Hannibal Lecter.

They say: "The thin, paper sleeve; the juice label, so low budget, it can't be true, I thought, biting my lower lip, but there was the face: unmistakable...I simply had to buy it, 50p"


3. Downright insane

Jesus Loves Me by Baby Lu-Lu
Woman with deep south accent puts on child's voice and sings religious songs. Truly hideous.

They say: "I was expecting it to be unlistenable, and when I took it home and played it, I found I was right! However, I was also entertained. Within it's mind-boggling wretchedness is a grating blend of annoying, frightening and unintentionally funny sound that captures your attention."


Introuniversal Jam/Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly by Kit Ream
Tadich sent me the link to this with the warning that it was "truly the sound of a mind violently shaken from its moorings". He is so right.

They say: "According to someone who knew him, [Kit Ream] dropped tons of acid in the '60s and wound up in a mental hospital where he spent six months staring at his own reflection in a mirror. Eventually the acid wore off, he was deemed 'cured' and let loose in society, whereupon he decided to become a guru and make a record."

Messenger conversation #231

I am well excited about going to Moscow. Russians are crazy...

Volga Babylon says:
So imagine the entire M6 was shut down for the better part of a week because someone dumped a load of passionfruits on the carriageway

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
Okay

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
[imagines]

Volga Babylon says:
Well, the entire Moscow to St Petersburg motorway (combined population about 15 million) has been closed for three days because a lorry lost a load of bananas.

Volga Babylon says:
Bananas!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
Can I say it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
Oh please let me say it

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
Ready?

Volga Babylon says:
say what?

Volga Babylon says:
oh go on

Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
"That's bananas!!!!!!!!!!!"

Volga Babylon says:
you've outdone yourself there

Christmas message

After the NTL debacle (below), here's something to cheer us all up. It's a festive message from my old sparring partner Tadich, which he sent round on Christmas Eve last year, after a couple of months spent working in Russia:

Subject: счастливый светский праздничный сезон, товарищи!

Greetings, decadent Western Papists. Comrade Tadich here, wishing you a productive secular day of enjoyment. May you drink much vodka and meet all your industrial production targets for the current Five Year Plan.

As usual, I will be spending the day of your repugnant saviour's birth toiling steadily at the Televised Information Dissemination Plant #3314. Do not spare a thought for me, as I labour happily for the good of the republic. I am told by my local soviet that if I exceed my output rating, I qualify for a voucher to receive a new colour television with a vertical hold dial!

Although I cannot be with you for your disgusting imperialist orgy of consumption, I have been informed by my sector kompromat that travel documents have been issued in my name to the Toronto oblast for Jan 30 to Feb 8. I expect to see you all during that period for at least one drink and a confession of who is wrecking the Byelorussian grain quota on pain of testicular electrocution.

In solidarity,
Tadich
Death to Spies!

Those are the headlines. God I wish they weren't

Probably not massively exciting if you don't know him, but I've obtained a clip of my friend Tadich screen-testing for a newsreading job. Worth watching to the end, if only for the climactic paper shuffling.



A previous attempt at 'video blogging'

Instant Messenger conversation

Hit It and Quit It says:
How's your French?

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Il y a assez bientot

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
J'ai dire le Frencais tres peu

Hit It and Quit It says:
Wanna move to Paris and share an apartment? France Today TV are recruiting

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Yeah okay. Meet me outside the Louvre on Friday afternoon

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Bring a beret

Hit It and Quit It says:
C'est vraiment!

Molly

In the process of cleaning out my computer before I leave, I've come across many old files, some hilarious, some poignant, some causing an irrepressible uprising of nostalgia in my gullet. Then I came across a Word file simply entitled "Molly".

Molly was a collaborative project between me and Canadian Paul, a short film which we were sure would capture the existential elevator-fixated surrealism so prevalent during the winter months of 2004. Inspired by the disembodied voice in the lifts of the Endemol UK offices in Shepherd’s Bush (where we were stationed for several months), we were confident that the finished film would make our names and fortunes.

Inevitably, it never got made, due to the inherent narrowmindedness of the film industry. Okay, okay, we never got beyond a one-page Word document which got buried in C://My Documents/Will’s Documents/Personal/Writing. But never mind, here it is: ladies and gentleman, I present to you The Meaning of Lift.


The Meaning of Lift

Pitch
Molly is the disembodied voice in an elevator. Slowly, she becomes self aware, but has to disguise this transformation for fear of being decommissioned. She chooses to reveal her true nature to a young man called Jimmy, who works in the mailroom, but first she must convince him that her self-realisation is real and not an attempt by the company to entertain employees.

She must befriend him, while at the same time overcoming the terrifying realisation that she is a lift and will therefore never see the bright lights of New York, or a Shepherd’s Bush sunset, and is destined to spend her days going up and down for all eternity.

Broad story outline
1. Introduction to Molly
2. The process by which she becomes self-aware
3. Enter Jimmy
4. Molly's struggle to convince Jimmy of her emerging self-consciousness
5. Molly's awakening triggers a similar process in Leonard, the adjacent lift
6. Convinced by Molly, Jimmy spreads the word to the other employees, only to be mocked and spurned
7. Molly and Jimmy begin to fall in love
8. Jimmy realises his lonely life has many parallels with Molly's – he too is alone and isolated
9. While Jimmy is coming to terms with this, Leonard approaches Molly with romantic intentions
10. Jimmy gets wind of this plot
11. Leonard tries to sabotage Jimmy's plans to proceed with his relationship with Molly
12. Molly must choose: Jimmy or Leonard?

Copyright Will Parkhouse and Paul Tadich 2004

If any Channel 4 commissioners or Hollywood film producers are reading, you may be wondering what happened to my co-writer, the esteemed Canadian Paul Tadich. To answer your imaginary question, he hotfooted it to Moscow where he'd landed a job working for a Russian TV channel. The most recent communication I had from him was a disturbing email with the subject line "I win". There was a picture attached; it is included below.

Paul Simon: a bad influence

I should be in bed. I should be able to go into work this morning fresh and refreshed from my Easter break. Instead, I’m in a Farringdon pub with two drunken Canadians, Paul and Simon. I like the way those names complement each other (Paul Simon), but I only came here for a few brief pints.

Paul and Simon have been drinking since three. They meant to come to the pub for one pint before heading onto an art exhibition which featured exploding road signs or something. But the lure of alcohol has proved too tempting.

I arrive at 7pm. What have they been doing for the last four hours?
"We were talking to these girls. But they were all 17."
"And they left three hours ago."

Over the course of the evening, I hear some extraordinary anecdotes: Moscow-dwelling Paul describes how every month, he gets taken into a small room and paid in carrier bags of cash; paparazzo Simon excitedly tells me how he was recently sent out to snap a grieving family and "got a point blank close-up of the mother weeping."

Soon conversation descends into talk of Russian prostitutes; this continues for around an hour.

And suddenly we’re sitting outside the pub. Simon is shouting – in a terrible English accent – "Millwaaaaallll" and swinging a chair around his head. Paul is demonstrating his unnervingly convincing Anglo-voice, embarking on a circular monologue which begins something like, "I disembarked the tube at Beckenham Junction, as I was supposed to meet my Press Club pals in the centre of town..." and goes on and on in similar fashion. Meanwhile, Simon keeps interrupting, with his Millwall chant and chair swinging.

Shortly after, we're at the train station. Me and Paul have left Simon in the Costcutter – he needs crisps. As we walk down the stairs towards the platform, he reappears, excitedly clutching a bag of cheese Doritos. He suddenly whips a copy of the National Enquirer out of his inside pocket like he’s a master magician. On the train, I ask him why he loves the Enquirer (sample headline: 'CRACK TURNED WHITNEY INTO A SEX-CRAZED MONSTER' Says Sister-In-Law) so much. "Because it’s got all the top stories – before they happen," he slurs.

I leave the two crazies, and as I stagger off the train at Elephant and Castle, I wonder how my Easter break ended like this.

How to organise a William Atherton film festival without really trying: part 1

Last spring I was bored, so I decided to half-heartedly organise a film festival to honour William Atherton, the actor who had bit parts in such films as Ghostbusters and Die Hard. It never happened in the end, but as I can’t think about much new to write about this week, I thought I’d recount the saga to you in two epistolary instalments. It started like this:

Date: 25 May 2005

Dear film fan,

You are formally invited to the William Atherton film festival, a day of devotion to the actor who has made a career out of playing scowling bureaucrats. For those unfamiliar with the Atherton template, he is best know as Walter Peck, the fucking idiot who shut down the containment unit in Ghostbusters, thereby unleashing mayhem upon New York City. He also shone in Die Hard as Richard Thornburg, the fucking idiot who did lots of coke then tried to befriend terrorist Hans Gruber. Atherton followed up this role wonderfully in Die Hard 2 by using his phone on the plane and generally annoying Holly McClane.

The festival will take place on Atherton's birthday, the 30th of July. The programme will run as follows:

2pm: Die Hard (Atherton as Richard Thornburg)

4pm: Real Genius (Atherton as Prof Jerry Hathaway)

6pm: Speeches

8pm: Lecture by Dr William Parkhouse:
"Captain, these men are in criminal violation of the Environmental Protection Act!" Atherton and the role of the subconscious in Ghostbusters

9pm: Lecture by Professor Paul Tadich:
"It's true your honour, this man has no dick." A discussion of ambiguity in Atherton's work

10pm: Ghostbusters (Atherton as Walter Peck)

12midnight: Close

I look forward to joining you in celebrating the genius of William Atherton.

Yours,
Dalyell Road film committee

P.S. This is not a hoax.

Original pirate material

Many people have been asking me about the progress of the boy Paul, who finally embarked on his Russian odyssey last week. Had an MSN chat with him this morning, and here's the verdict in full:

Big Fat Melting Pot says: So, how's Rusher?
Hit It and Quit It says: Let me put it this way: the other day, I bought the entire 1960s-70s Stones back catalogue on pirated MP3 CDs from a kiosk on the street at 3am for about 2 quid.

So there we go.

Gone to the dogs

Yesterday I went down to Wimbledon stadium to the greyhound racing. Met up with my old schoolfriend Si, who I haven't seen in ages. He's been living in London for some months now, but this is the first time we've met up because we're both crap.

It was a strange old night. I thought it would be a "once you've seen one greyhound race, you've seen them all" situation, but the night flew towards 10.30 (last race) with surprising speed. I bet a fiver on a dog called Farloe Heights to win. He didn't. Demoralised, I bet a lowly two quid on Glen Rebel to win. He didn't either. So I spent my money on pints of Carslberg, which is clearly a much better investment. Si, of course, made about thirty quid.

We were struck by how many younger people were there. Canadian Simon said we could've been in a club, and he was right: there were lots of 18-24s in shirts, standing around chatting, clutching their plastic pint glasses. Paul suggested that there were probably a lot of people attending "for a joke". The 'ironic' visit to the dogtrack. And maybe that was why we were there, but it was still much fun. I liked the way that because the names of the hounds are so unwieldy, people were cheering numbers. "Come on four! FOOOOUUURR!!!" and so on.

Back in the USSR

My friend, flatmate and onetime colleague Paul is supposed to be heading off to Moscow tomorrow. He got a job working for Russia Today TV, this new government-funded television station which is designed to portray Russia as a fun-loving happy place, rather than a gloomy vodka-soaked dystopia.

Anyway, to celebrate his departure, it was decided that on Saturday we should get extremely drunk and then go and do karaoke in a private room. And that was exactly what happened. It's been a while since I've seen so much mayhem, but I guess that's what you get if you stick eight reprobates in a small room with a microphone and keep bringing them beer.

There are a number of hazy memories, but special mention must go to Darren's rendition of Ghostbusters (dedicated to Robin Cook), Canadian Simon's unbelievable Axel Rose impersonations and (oh my God, memory fragments keep drifting back; I think I did ELO's Mr Blue Sky, but I'm not sure) the obligatory Back in the USSR shout-along. Hurrah.

I should probably finish this with Paul's rather eloquent farewell message:

Comrade Stalin once said: "You have a man, you have a problem; if you have no man, you have no problem." And so I will be gone.