Pretty cool, this. Saw it on Mimi in NY's blog (she's a Brit journo-writer in Noo Yoik, who does some stripping on the side. Good blog). You tick the places you've been and it turns it into a world map, so you can weep at how ill-travelled you are. I sneakily included Morocco, because I'm going there in March, and Africa was looking a bit grey.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Apocalypse Bau(er)
Watched the first couple of episodes of 24 series 2 last night. One of Tony Almeida's first lines was "Jack Bauer? He's inactive." I'm watching this and thinking, Almeida, you're so full of shit, Bauer's blatantly not inactive, he couldn't be inactive even if he was six feet under. But then cut to Bauer and he's wearing a lumberjack jacket and sporting a thick ginger beard. I'm like, Tony, you were right, this guy's, like, totally washed up. Then Jack goes home and curls up on the sofa clutching a photo of his dead wife.
It's a testament to both the plot development speed of 24 and Jack Bauer's tendencies to go totally mental that 15 minutes later (this is real-time, remember), Jack has not only returned to CTU and shot a suspect in the chest with no provocation, but has also sawn the head off the corpse with a hacksaw. (Brilliantly, when boss George Mason protests, Jack accuses Mason of "never getting his hands dirty".) About half an hour later, he's managed to break some guy's ankle with his bare hands, and can barely disguise the "I haven't done that in ages"-style glee on his face. "Jack's back," says one of the terrorist goons. Indeed.
It's a testament to both the plot development speed of 24 and Jack Bauer's tendencies to go totally mental that 15 minutes later (this is real-time, remember), Jack has not only returned to CTU and shot a suspect in the chest with no provocation, but has also sawn the head off the corpse with a hacksaw. (Brilliantly, when boss George Mason protests, Jack accuses Mason of "never getting his hands dirty".) About half an hour later, he's managed to break some guy's ankle with his bare hands, and can barely disguise the "I haven't done that in ages"-style glee on his face. "Jack's back," says one of the terrorist goons. Indeed.
Artist impression
Hey look, I’ve become a watercolour painter without any formal training! Hurrah!
The Stockwell Flats, watercolour
The Stockwell Flats, watercolourRemixed in Artrage
Monday, January 30, 2006
"Salman Rushdie's arsehole"
Went to see some Manchester comedy on Saturday night as part of Sarah's friend Sarah's birthday. Well, the comedy was at the Manchester Comedy Store - in fact the three stand-ups were a Geordie (Paul Tonkinson), New Zealander (Jared Christmas) and a Canadian (Tom Stade). No matter: children, what I wanted to talk to you about today was the strange series of scenes which unfolded before my lagered eyes during the show's interval.
When the compere called for a break, all the people I knew dashed out for pints, and I was left sitting with birthday girl Sarah and two of her friends from university, both called Rachael. Neither of the Rachaels had produced any kind of laughter during the performance, which, if you ask me, was a pretty extraordinary feat of humourlessness. Sarah, who, remember, had organised the evening, turned to ask if they were enjoying it (and it was pretty decent stuff actually).
"No, we're not," said Rachael 1.
"Not really our cup of tea," said Rachael 2. There was a pause.
"How much do we owe you for the tickets?" said Rachael 1. Cruel.
I decided I should leave such hideousness and climbed over a seat to get away and piss. On my way to the toilet, I went past a small stage which held a singer-guitarist who was singing some lame ballad. Standing directly in front of the stage, with his back to the singer, was this wiry-but-hard-looking skinhead, dancing and singing, inexplicably, The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight over the top of the strummings behind him. "I said a-hip hop hip to the hippy hippy to the hip hip hop and you don't stop..." he crooned.
The singer finished the tune to a largely indifferent room. "You're supposed to clap at the end of the song," he prompted the crowd, with a slight note of anger in his voice. He then did little to help things by launching into an ill-advised rendition of David Gray's Sail Away With Me.
Outside the toilets was another shaven-headed goonda. A girl was lifting up his shirt and explaining patiently why she thought he probably didn't need a hernia operation.
Following some satisfying toilet relief, I walked back past the troubadour. The skinhead was still at it, but had been joined by an almost identical-looking friend. "Salman Rushdie's arsehole!" shouted the first skinhead to the audience. No one replied, presumably out of a combination of fear and drunken apathy. "None of them get it," he complained to his friend. I went back to my seat to watch the second half.
When the compere called for a break, all the people I knew dashed out for pints, and I was left sitting with birthday girl Sarah and two of her friends from university, both called Rachael. Neither of the Rachaels had produced any kind of laughter during the performance, which, if you ask me, was a pretty extraordinary feat of humourlessness. Sarah, who, remember, had organised the evening, turned to ask if they were enjoying it (and it was pretty decent stuff actually).
"No, we're not," said Rachael 1.
"Not really our cup of tea," said Rachael 2. There was a pause.
"How much do we owe you for the tickets?" said Rachael 1. Cruel.
I decided I should leave such hideousness and climbed over a seat to get away and piss. On my way to the toilet, I went past a small stage which held a singer-guitarist who was singing some lame ballad. Standing directly in front of the stage, with his back to the singer, was this wiry-but-hard-looking skinhead, dancing and singing, inexplicably, The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight over the top of the strummings behind him. "I said a-hip hop hip to the hippy hippy to the hip hip hop and you don't stop..." he crooned.
The singer finished the tune to a largely indifferent room. "You're supposed to clap at the end of the song," he prompted the crowd, with a slight note of anger in his voice. He then did little to help things by launching into an ill-advised rendition of David Gray's Sail Away With Me.
Outside the toilets was another shaven-headed goonda. A girl was lifting up his shirt and explaining patiently why she thought he probably didn't need a hernia operation.
Following some satisfying toilet relief, I walked back past the troubadour. The skinhead was still at it, but had been joined by an almost identical-looking friend. "Salman Rushdie's arsehole!" shouted the first skinhead to the audience. No one replied, presumably out of a combination of fear and drunken apathy. "None of them get it," he complained to his friend. I went back to my seat to watch the second half.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Lessons learned from... A Cock and Bull Story
Post-post-modern metatheatricality is funny, but Brydon and Coogan doing Al Pacino impressions is funnier.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Poetry Corner
In Memoriam Chris Penn, Hollywood actor
Farewell then, Chris Penn
You were the star
Of the film
Beethoven's 2nd.
When I say "the star"
I mean, after the dog
And the kids
And Charles Grodin.
Reservoir Dogs
Was your best known film
You played
Nice Guy Eddie.
Now you are
Nice Guy Deaddie.
With apologies to E.J. Thripp (aged 17 ½)
Farewell then, Chris Penn
You were the star
Of the film
Beethoven's 2nd.
When I say "the star"
I mean, after the dog
And the kids
And Charles Grodin.
Reservoir Dogs
Was your best known film
You played
Nice Guy Eddie.
Now you are
Nice Guy Deaddie.
With apologies to E.J. Thripp (aged 17 ½)
Monday, January 23, 2006
Don't write, speak or blink
Yesterday evening I was in the middle of watching Back to the Future Part III - I'd just got to the bit where Doc asks Clara Clayton to dance - when I got a call from Tim, a friend who I met whilst attempting to find myself in India back in 2003. When you hear the phrase "let's have a pint in Stockwell" you probably wouldn't immediately picture a darkly-lit incense-filled room filled with piles of exotic looking cushions, pints of San Miguel, a hookah of mango-flavoured tobacco and a game of chess. But somehow that was what happened.
After the game - Tim won, quite easily I suspect - he told me how he'd been working in SOAS library a few days ago when the wave of existential confusion that he's been experiencing for most of January finally overcame him. He began to rapidly scribble a short story about five friends, one called Fruity, onto the page in front of him. After several minutes of intense writing, the ink in his pen ran out. But he carried on writing the story regardless, despite the terrified looks coming from the guy sitting at the adjacent desk. I wondered whether perhaps this was the kind of thing that might precipitate an existential crisis, rather than prevent one, but apparently writing something which no one will ever be able to read, which will never even exist, was "very cathartic". A silent story, he called it.
This reminded me of a tale I'd heard sometime last year. A friend of a friend used to be a very talkative as a child. Her older brother found her constant chattering incredibly annoying and tried to think of ways he could get her to shut up. So he told her that all people have a limited number of words they're allowed to say and if they use up their allowance of words, they'll die. His trick worked, the flow of words was stemmed, and she became a reticent and silent child.
Tim responded by telling me about the lie his brother told him when he was younger. It was that repeated blinking would build up your facial muscles and give you very strong and defined cheeks. But Tim didn't want to have big toned cheeks that stuck out, so from that moment on, he tried to avoid blinking.
It was only this morning that I realised: our boardgame may have finished, but we were still playing what can only be described as Anecdote Chess. I also began to wonder whether perhaps the bar staff hadn't put a special something in the hookah.
After the game - Tim won, quite easily I suspect - he told me how he'd been working in SOAS library a few days ago when the wave of existential confusion that he's been experiencing for most of January finally overcame him. He began to rapidly scribble a short story about five friends, one called Fruity, onto the page in front of him. After several minutes of intense writing, the ink in his pen ran out. But he carried on writing the story regardless, despite the terrified looks coming from the guy sitting at the adjacent desk. I wondered whether perhaps this was the kind of thing that might precipitate an existential crisis, rather than prevent one, but apparently writing something which no one will ever be able to read, which will never even exist, was "very cathartic". A silent story, he called it.
This reminded me of a tale I'd heard sometime last year. A friend of a friend used to be a very talkative as a child. Her older brother found her constant chattering incredibly annoying and tried to think of ways he could get her to shut up. So he told her that all people have a limited number of words they're allowed to say and if they use up their allowance of words, they'll die. His trick worked, the flow of words was stemmed, and she became a reticent and silent child.
Tim responded by telling me about the lie his brother told him when he was younger. It was that repeated blinking would build up your facial muscles and give you very strong and defined cheeks. But Tim didn't want to have big toned cheeks that stuck out, so from that moment on, he tried to avoid blinking.
It was only this morning that I realised: our boardgame may have finished, but we were still playing what can only be described as Anecdote Chess. I also began to wonder whether perhaps the bar staff hadn't put a special something in the hookah.
Friday, January 20, 2006
I invent The Demobiliser, save world
After two pints of Alpine lager last night, I invented a groundbreaking new product which I'm calling "The Demobiliser". It's basically a mobile phone that has a breathaliser in the handset. When you drunkenly reach for your phone to make the kind of call you'll regret in the morning - to ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, teetotal family members, people you haven't spoken to in seven years and so on - your phone will breathalise you, see if you've had too much and if you have, temporarily erase the "bad numbers" from your phone.
It would of course be marketed with the line, "The Demobiliser: simply breathtaking".
This seemed like a good idea last night, but is it really? Today I was walking along the street holding a polystyrene box containing a baked potato. The thought that suddenly appeared in my head was: "All my hopes and dreams are contained within this one box." Can you really trust a brain that comes up with meaningless rubbish like that?
It would of course be marketed with the line, "The Demobiliser: simply breathtaking".
This seemed like a good idea last night, but is it really? Today I was walking along the street holding a polystyrene box containing a baked potato. The thought that suddenly appeared in my head was: "All my hopes and dreams are contained within this one box." Can you really trust a brain that comes up with meaningless rubbish like that?
Thursday, January 19, 2006
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