Post Restant What are you still doing here? We've moved - and can now be found at Brandnewsoup.com. We'll be waiting. We love you!

Pencarrow Head This morning I took off on a walk. It was a gloomy morning but I took my camera because I finally bought a little backpack on the weekend, so's I can take stuff (lunch) with me on walks. The weather cleaned itself up and I stood on a point overlooking the entrance to Wellington Harbour after about a 2 hour walk in. I see this spot from my front window every day and got TSO to look through the telescope and check me out jumping up and down like something out of Flashdance from our front window, some ten nautical miles on the other side of the harbour. Nice morning. Still unemployed, then...

Menacing Nomenclature Needed The current carry-on with the gang murder at Sydney International Airport has highlighted one of very few things that I've picked out as wanting, here in my new homeland. See, the media here uses slightly childish common vernacular names for a few key groups that really, had they a choice, you feel would like to be described in slightly tougher terms. Drivers of trucks, a group seldom associated with womanly connotations, are commonly reported as "truckies". It just seems soft, eh? Childlike. And now, in broad daylight in the busiest airport in Australia, someone has been murdered in cold blood by what's being described as a "bikie"! Can you stand it?! Cute! (is it bikie or the slightly more cheekie "bikey"?) I think I would like to tickle a bikie. I think a bikie would be a cheeky little scamp. I solemnly suspect that a bikie might even be a little animated character with a beard and a scale-size little leather jacket, in fact. A bikER on the other hand - now a bikER threatens me. You can bet your shirt, Mac, I'm going the other way when a bikER comes in the frame! Brrr! BikER - RUN! Trucker! Jesus! Muscles! Moustaches! Arse-cracks! B.O.! Wild armpit hair! Truckie? Heehee! Hello, little fella! Who's a little driver man, then?!! Gerroutofit ya rascal! What's next? Might I be slain in my bed by a Murder-ie? Where's all my stuff? Am I the victim of some nasty little Burglar-ie?" "Don't write me a ticket, officer, I'm only a likkle speed-ie". It makes all the difference. Truly, it does. I may campaign for change.

Jaded? I found myself today, whilst reading an article about Jade Goody's impending date with the reaper, feeling sorry for her. I felt guilty and dirty too. It's a huge question that deserves a lot more room than I'm going to give it here, but why? Why do I care? Why do I feel rotten about her plight. I watched the series of Celeb Big Brother in which Jade, her raspy, haggard old mother and her posse of dimwitted co-tormenters made rather massive errors in judgment, apparently temporarily unaware that the whole nation was in the room with them, and racially bullied former Bollywood starlet Shilpa Shetty. Apart from the fact it made immensely enjoyable viewing for the likes of me - reality leches, it divided a nation. I do recall people actually defending her, saying it was just the kind of thing young people say and that the fact it was on Big Brother was the only reason to call bullshit on it etc. Be all that as it may, Shilpa Shetty herself, right to Jade's face and live on camera, cut right to the heart of the matter. It was only because Jade was of obviously diminished worldliness that she never got it and retired to her bed then for the rest of her natural. Shilpa Shetty, in response to a comment Jade made about her questionable "celebrity" status, said "yeah? well, you know what you're famous for? THIS" (sweeping with her hand around the shoddy set of BB). I felt a little sad for Jade then too - because "Shilpa Poppadom" (Jade's words) was 100% right and the truth was heartbreaking. It definitely put an unsavoury taste in my mouth for subsequent series' of BB. So, with a rake of cervical cancer running amok in her veins, A quick scan of the UK media sites would appear to suggest that Jade Goody is still making a show of her life. Even as it spills out of her and she counts the remaining days. I find it a little distasteful that it's been so very public an illness but you don't have to look too far to discover why that is. It's what we've trained Jade to do - as consumers of celebrity and enhanced "reality" TV. At the moment of negative diagnosis, you can almost hear Max Clifford's gear wheels cranking out the possible media deals and TV options. Jade Goody is a monster almost 100% created by us - no demand, no queue of hopefuls looking to be humiliated by production teams much smarter than them and adept at editing out anything intelligent that might pass their lips. Pass the auditions by being tragic enough and your reward is carte blanche to work your tits and stupidity out live on national TV. But anyway, yes. Affected, strangely, by Jade's hovering mortality. (You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find a decent picture of Jade Goody)

Today's Mood

Bonnie Wee Song A couple of times in the last few years, I've heard covers of "It's A Heartache" made famous by Bonnie Tyler. First, Rod Stewart was on X-Factor as a mentor and did a balls-out version of it with little more than acoustic backing. Then, here in NZ, a mother of four did a great version of it on Stars In Their Eyes NZ which I also loved. When on a weekend in the Coromandel last year with Pete & Soph, Pete and I knocked out a pretty together version of it too. It's an awesome, timeless pop song, to be honest - written by Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe - Bonnie's producers, and I find that I love it quite considerably. Since being here in New Zealand, I've heard the odd snippet about The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra but never seen them live yet. I love the Uke too, you see, and the thought of a dozen grownups with a Uke the piece, playing classic hits really appeals to me. Imagine my surprise and delight then, to discover that the WIUO have covered Bonnie's classic:

Obama-Me Go ahead. You know you wanna..

This Much I Know Sodastream Is The Boys Can you remember Sodastream? When I was a kid, I wanted my parents to get one so badly. Making your own carbonated beverages? Are you kidding? I wanted to get busy with the fizzy in the worst way possible. I would have donated a limb to the cause if I'd have thought it helped. When TSO and I set up home together here in NZ we found one in Farmers one day and stood, looked at it, then at each other and went "fuck yeah!" We've been living with our 'Stream for over a year and I cannot recommend it enough. Forget orangeade, ginger beer, whatever - what about sparkling water? What about never running out of fresh Tonic to make love to the bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the freezer? What about the side benefits of no plastic bottles going into the landfills? Great stuff - and the gas bottles for it are freely, cheaply available almost anywhere, even though it may not seem they are... Bamboo Is My New Lover When Rory was born, we bought this little singlet for him that claimed to be made of 95% bamboo and 5% spandex. It's proven to be the best thing out - it's soft, keeps its shape, and feels like luxury. We saw some sheets made of bamboo fabric with a high thread count in a Christmas sale at Nood and, on a whim, decided to get them, hoping perhaps they'd feel even half as soft as Googie's singlet. Boyohboy - did they deliver? I am dreaming of bedtime from about 12.15pm every day and positively whimper with anticipation as I ready for lights out. I couldn't be happier with them and plan to never ever sleep on anything else unless I'm away from home. I've always loved bamboo - wrote an article on it once and fell in love with its utilitarian charms, renewability and unpretentious strength. This just makes me love the big green bastard all the more. It's the little things...

Roundup Well, Ive been an absent friend, friends. I've been on a bit of a roadtrip covering a fair bit of the south island. We left on Dec 15th and got back yesterday, the 31st. New Year's Eve was a muted affair - TSO and I and a bottle of bubbly, along with a dire struggle to stay awake long enough to wish each other a happy new year. We'd been up early and traveling all day but you know, I'm over going out and needing to make a effort at celebrations. Anyway, New Year in New Zealand is a bit strange - usually we'd be camping so wouldn't know any better but last night I realized there's no televised celebrations or any kind of special programming. I suppose it's good that people are instead outside doing something nice. It's great to be back in our little clifftop nest and it was amazing to be on the ferry, sailing past looking up at our home, after spending the last few months looking down at the ferries from the back here. Anyway, when the accounts are toted up and all is said and done - 2008 wasn't the worst year of my life, I'd say. This picture about sums up. It's us, in an orchard in Cromwell, picking delicious, juicy cherries on Boxing Day. I'll try and be a bit better at this blogging thing in 2009.

VBS Hey! We've been fans of Vice Magazine for a while here but, as Elvis pointed out to us recently, they've started a video site as well with all kinds of grrrrreeaat Documentary films on it. We suggest the guide to sex section and a docco about OAP porn in Japan. also the Americana section has a great one on a junior taxidermist.

Santa in Jeopardy TSO sends me this story today which just about illustrates the spirit of the season as it exists today.

Mumbai Snackists Apart from the overwhelming guile and desperation that drives people to go to such flat out brazen methods as those employed in the recent attacks on the city of Mumbai, there is one factor mentioned in almost every report I read in the weekend’s papers that I can’t help getting hung up on. The attackers were heavily armed, carrying immense amounts of ammunition and, as though to give evidence that they had been premeditating a long siege – fruit and nuts. Almonds were mentioned in one report, though whether or not they were smoked, salted, raw – criminally underreported. TSO and I had a few laughs imagining the court dialogue should any of them end up in the dock: Defence Lawyer: “did you or did you not, knowingly, purchase 2 kilograms of trail mix at the Islamabad north 7-11 on the 24th of November, 2008?” Prosecution Lawyer: “Objection your honour - My colleague freely bandies about terms like ‘Trail Mix’ without a single shred of evidence of M&Ms in the evidential Zip Lock bags nor even as much as a single chocolate chip.” “I’ll thank you to stick to the term ‘Student Mix’ until further elucidation has been recorded as fact.” If these maniacs ever get their hands on the likes of power bars or vacuum-packed freeze-dried meals intended for camping, we may all have to change our way of life.

Contd... Thanks, Robbie, for the follow-up

Hang The Prophet This is an hilarious example of financial myopia.

Ripped To The T*ts I've never had much of an opinion on women body builders, really. I know a lot of men who spit and fume at the mention of 'ladybuilders' but I used to work the nightshift on a boring machine with a guy that was into getting big. He'd leave his magazines sitting around and, you know, you'd read the back of your fag packet a hundred times a night so those mags were great. This was in the days of the lovely Gladys Portugues, Rachael McLish and a few notable others. I thought they were lovely, which they were, but they were also pretty much naturally-attained muscle - kind of a turn on. In my book at any rate. But we've gone too far, haven't we? We've booted the living arse right out of the whole thing, male and female alike. Our unslakeable modern thirst for excess has turned bodybuilding, perhaps more than most sports, a sufferin' cartoon. Today, someone sent me this URL in an email. Go ahead, check it out - a catalogue of grotesqueries, all of whom, no doubt have put a lot of time into this look - often at the expense of their very femininity, it appears. Is it a body dysmorphic thing - the reverse of where anorexics see themselves as fat - maybe these ladies are driven by a recurring negative image in which they are over-feminine striplings? Either way, they'd have trouble getting a dance at the Barras. Just sayin' like.

David Gillanders Some great images of Glasgow and a few other locations here. Just remember to read the little "About the project" bit before you check out all the images. Amazing.

Doo, Doo Doo, Lookin' Out My Back Door The new digs - awesome. this is, no shit, taken from my back door though the 180 degree view of this is equally breathtaking from the kitchen sink, dining table or indeed the shower. We have a telescope and binoculars at hand at all times and the half-moon beach in the background in the second photo? It's Breaker Bay and we are here to tell you there's a rather spicy nudist/gay male scene down there that'd blind saint...

Obamanation Man, I know everyone in the Blogosphere today will be talking about it but Jesus H Christ, did you catch that victory speech from Barack Obama yesterday? It's a throwback to the days when being a politician wasn't just being a businessman - when you had to be able to speak. And by God can this man speak? I watched it twice and twice was in tears - of hope and gratitude that I live in a world in which something this good could happen. And my prior fears that some man-made catastrophe might befall Obama before he could seize the reins have been allayed. I mean, it's going to be sleeping with one eye open from now on for him, don't get me wrong, but the sight of those thousands of hopeful faces and the dawning realization that he has to have a helluvah lot of friends for this to ever even happen, make me think that putting him in peril would threaten some massive social disorder and chaos. That cheers me. Awesome stuff.

Unlikely Loveliness This evening, TSO is attending a function and taking a her first ever night out on her ow since Rory was born. Me and him have had some great laughs then his bath and bed routine as normal, only without a feed from his mammy at bedtime. He was having none of the bottle gubbins I tried to feed him, no sir, not a bar of it. So, in frustration as much as anything, I brought him out here and cranked the stereo up. The Guillemots' "Trains To Brazil" at first made him go "huh?" rather than "waaaaa". Then Patti Smith came on and I thought fuck, here we go again....but to my great surprise, "Horses," at full volume, knocked him right out! I was getting into it myself like, almost forgetting about the fact I had an unhappy boy on my hands, and maybe that movement attributed to Patti's narcoleptic effect but out he was, in two songs flat. It was the sweetest feeling having my son fall asleep in my arms, and knowing he already has a discerning taste for the good sounds in life. I could almost fall asleep myself now....

Expressions I Could Go Without Happily It's a new one and only used by politicians and those in high finance apparently but "going forward" could go anytime. It's filler, it means nothing and it's just fucking smooth betyond belief but not in a good way. Eg. Heard recently: "Ehr, we have addressed that issue in our policies very recently and going forward we expect real change in that and a few other key areas".

The Camera Eye The nicest thing about being in gainful employment again is the ability to buy something occasionally. I just bought one of these and I love it. Having two f-stops on the lens on front of your camera is such a huge privilege and usually costs a mint, accordingly. Thankfully I have my man Photosushi to advise me in these matters and for a small fee, I discovered, one can gain two f-stops and live happily ever after. Here is the kind of thing that my new lens can capture.

Having A Manburger While you're waiting for me, why don;t you have a hamburger...

Sharpies My old mate Pistol is known for, once he has a skinful on him, showing the lads how the Sharpies used to dance in his youth. Now I'd never heard of Sharpies and I kind of thought they were something Pistol made up to excuse his dancing moves. Then, in the latest edition of Vice Magazine, there were a series of photos by Aussie Snapper Rennie Ellis and among them was this shot, which made me laugh out loud because I can totally see this motley lot doing the type of dance Pistol described. Then I was just laughing at the memory of him dancing like that, mind you... There's some real ordinary, honest gold among these shots, I found. I especially liked this colour one of some kids at Burleigh Heads in 1978 that really brought to mind the video that Elvis posted at Photosushi recently. I recommend all of you of a certain age watch it.

Progress I've been a bit slack but here's the latest pic of the wee man. He's doing fantastic. Watching his progress, the tiny little skills that you sometimes think humans can just do, is fascinating. He's like a wee science program. He's full of smiles, laughter, excitement, curiosity and drool and truly is the light of our lives. There's the thing right there - a cliche like that came to my lips as easily as any words ever did and I don't feel even remotely like a cock for saying it.

Britain's Vainest Man "We've got a big bed coming cos I'm a big guy, yeah? and sometimes I might have more than one female in the bed, yeah?" Well, my nights' viewing last night included a documentary called "Britain's Biggest Spenders" which lifted the lid on a peculiarly modern British hubris. Basically what it is, right, is people who've not had any money suddenly get heaps of it and make a total arse of themselves. Nothing new in that, right? But the kicker is that this condition of new wealth appears to bring about the onset of a peculiar brand of myopia whereby it is impossible for the victim to see that the rest of the world, particularly people who make TV documentaries, are taking the piss something terrible and generally laughing loudly at the nouveau riche monkey in the Prada outfit. Now on this show we met a chap called Scott Alexander. Scott is rich and big. "I'm a big guy" said scott. "That's how we roll" said Scott of his diamond-rusted Rolex "it's sick" he said of several items of his clothing. He's a huge brute who was a personal trainer to the stars but is now best described as either a mogul or a tycoon. I'm completely entranced by Scott. He's my new fascination for the week and I'v made it my business to take a good look at his act. He, like pretty much everyone else who's ever had plastic surgery, wants TV stardom pretty badly. He starred in this documentary and, on the back of it, apparently took to the couch of every chat show in the land to talk about himself, his beauty, his wealth and anything else to do with himself. He even went on Russel Brand which is a good, if blatant, example of the kind of pisstake he is willing to stand for the sake of TV minutes. Check it out here. Scott, in the show, had a shiny cap of thinning jet-black dyed hair, perma tan, the ubiquitous dazzling white uni-denture that every makeover now includes and wore he most fascinating clothes I've ever seen. There are clips from the show on Youtube, for example this and this. Oh, it's all so David Brent it's not funny. Gervais should see this, actually. I encourage anyone who sees value in a man so upwardly mobile, to punch the man, the name, the number, into Youtube and take a look at the offerings. So yes, Scott "No1" Alexander is my new muse and you might be hearing more about him here. In the meantime, I would like to point you all to his personal website which, tellingly perhaps, bears the URL scottalexander.tv. We reckon Scott wasn't happy with his look after seeing the docco because in every photo or appearance since, pretty much, he's had the blonde crop in place of the thinning dyed-black Guido-do. Notice especially, if you will, the links to all of his TV appearances down on the left and I personally recommend the "Become Successful" section of motivational bon mots. "We've got a big bed coming cos I'm a big guy, yeah? and sometimes I might have more than one female in the bed, yeah?"

No Way Sis I'm as critical as anyone of Oasis' last few derisory recorded outings and hey, I'd like to see them pack it in and Noel Gallagher make the solo album I've been waiting decades for but I'm only an armchair critic. Someone in Canada has apparently become incensed by the state of affairs and has had a right go! I love how Liam gives it the schoolyard "holdmebackman!" antics but stops short of actually landing a blow! Hahaha, ten seconds earlier he's spitting and posturing and generally looking hard as nails. If someone lamped your brother, wouldn't you instantly go in heavy til you marked them? Sadly, my first instinct was to re-watch and find out if it was an old Canadian mate of mine TK who's a stage invader from way back and was probably even in the audience. It wasn't him.

Holden Sharing the iTunes library of one of the runners in Berlin, I came across the album "Chevrotine" by Holden - a French outfit I'd not heard of. One song on the album "Ce Que Je Suis" grabbed me - and it's the one playing in the background on their site which you can find here. You can also catch the video for it here on Youtube.

A Wee Cheeky Tagine For oor tea the night, we're having a wee beef Cinnamon tagine that we tried about a month ago and which was lovely. We don't have these little hatted tagine dishes, mind, but one more go around with this recipe as tasty as last time and we might become right tagine-headz and have to set ourselves up with just such a pointy Moroccan rig. The main recipe can be found here but there are tons of them and I've already butchered this one up pretty bad - throwing in a pinch of smoked Spanish paprika and replacing the raisins with more traditional dates and even a wee splash of Cab Merlot which rounds out the cinammon a little and adds some depth. If anyone has had any success with a tagine recipe, I'd love to hear about it. We went for tagines at a Moroccan place in East Berlin last year on a winters' night and lord above - it's the business - stick tae yer ribs as my mam would say.

Puppetry I really like this song. The rest of the album is honourable in its pedigree and influence but this song really stands out. I'm a sucker for the big, soaring orchestral backed-ballad, sure, but this has little bits of all kinds of late '60s pop in there while narrowly avoiding being retro pastiche which is a tricky thing to do. My hat's off.

Third Degree Burns By the Christ, you couldn't have predicted that. It's such a delicate subject and, well, Gest is involved. Oh dear.

Maisey Rika Sometimes on TV here, on the Maori Channel, you come across blinding flashes of great stuff - strong documentary footage primarily but occasionally good music. Last night at bed time, we tuned in to the Friday night karaoke contest (The Maori Channel is very under funded, generally) called "Homai Te Pakipaki" just in time to catch their special guest. Maisey Rika is a 25 year old kid (but a deep, old soul at the same time) from Whakatane, mother of one and my lord can this girl sing? Her voice is enormous - a wavering, delicate effortless thing weaving in and out of Arabic trills and classic soul-isms as if the two entities had always lived together. And she has a social conscience - the song was "Children Of Romania" written after she'd seen a segment on the news about the plight of orphans in Romania. Can you believe this girl is not huge? She doesn't even have a deal, it appears. the chances of that lasting are remote, surely. Here is Maisey, in her bedroom with her pal Scruph on guitar. Oh I hope they are careful not to over produce her or fit her into a style to market more easily. This needs delicacy.Her message when the host thanked her and praised her work was so beautifully simple "No need to thank us, we're just the messengers."

Platonic But Chronic A number of months back, we would walk daily past the makings of a new Greek restaurant up the street here called "Plato's Greek Taverna". TSO and I shared many a gag about the prospects for the place - fuelled mainly by the lighting set-up. Around the front entrance of this place, upon which someone was obviously spending a lot of money, were an array of recessed LED lamps that were always turned on, even at that stage of construction. They were the type that sort of throb away, changing colour steadily. Seriously - studded around the front door jamb, recessed into the concrete with brass fittings, so a lot of effort. Someone was sure about the idea of having each customer washed in a ghastly pale light as they entered the place. We reckoned that anyone that would green-light such a terrible idea had no place in the restaurant industry whatsoever and that the place was sure to be utter shite. Imagine how we howled a few weeks back when the first reviews started pouring in and they were universally scathing. People didn't just not like this restaurant, they fucking detested it. They wished it harm. One we read in one of the weekend supplements was hilariously Wildean in its put-downs. This one from the Herald, whilst also not good, is positively philanthropic by comparison. I started to feel sorry for the place and thought that maybe these reviews were the result of the reviewing community merely sticking together on a fixed opinion. These online independent opinions, however, seem to bear out that Plato's does truly appear to offer a poor value for your Souvlaki dollar. I thought things had hit an all-time low for Plato and his taverna. Then, yesterday in the papers, we read that Tongan rugby giant, the great Jonah Lomu has had to run the beleaguered chef to the ER after he's lopped his own fingertip off! Buried at the end of the article is the nugget of information that the chef is part of an apparent huge bloodletting as a result of the reviews. Looks like they machine-gunned the kitchen at least for the initial rush of ill-will when they opened their doors. I'm watching Plato's carefully. I might even go in there and eat though after my beloved Berlin Greek food haunt "Ach Nico Ach", everything else is but a philosopher's spectre.

She-Cars
There's a dawning realization within me about the trend of re-issuing classic cars. Have you noticed that they instantly become a girl-car? The New Beetle, (which I've recently discovered is referred to in the US as a "Ladyug" - bearing out my theory) - how often do you see a guy driving one? I've noted that from the start. The original beetle was very much a people car(despite this, which is fine, and even this here) and even the ones you still see around are driven as often by men as women and young people. Why, then would he re-make instantly become a car for Triple L's (Leathery Ladies who Lunch)? Then the same became apparent of the new Mini - I saw a few guys in the higher end ones at first but quickly they also became very largely the domain of the fairer sex.

The latest one, I've noted this week, is the re-issued Fiat 500 (Bambina). I'm able to actually witness the transformation here though. There's a cafe on Ponsonby Road called Bambina that is popular with cashmere-bedecked and shirtneck-open people of a certain age. Now the Cafe predates the car release but I noticed that either the owner has bought one, perhaps as a promotional device, or a regular customer drives his there every morning. I've seen him, a long, tanned, bald-headed, pearly-toothed devil prizing himself out of the little red compact a few times now on my morning walks, right out front of the place. And, you know, I try and make allowances and think of the environmental good he's doing but there's no getting around it, he cuts a ridiculous figure. He just needs to be a woman, it's simple, really.

and it's a funny thing, for I don't hate the way any of these cars look, quite admire them in fact, but I just can't see me driving one - it's no use, they're down indelibly in my psyche as chick-mobiles already. And let the record show that I am a fan of the original beetle, had two, restored one, passed my driving test in one. I've had heaps of other small cars and never felt up nor down about it.

I read with interest that the obviously newly-formed Bambina Owners' Club of Auckland had a drive out from Bambina Cafe whereupon "after coffee on the strip, Lynne Parker (from Occhiali Optical) and six other owners then drove to Matakana to visit Morriss and James followed by lunch at Heron's Flight Winery. Lynne told Ponsonby News that "although the weather wasn't great, we had a fantastic day meeting all the other Bambina owners, especially when Continental Cars had prepared a small quiz to test our knowledge on facts about this incredible small car". Tell you what I wouldn't mind being signed up for the next one.

But whether it's the advertising that is targeting ladies because they control the purse strings or just the appeal of not-really-nostalgia but take a look - the re-release car becomes a girl's car within about a month of release. You'll see what I mean once you start to take note.

Tiki Talk A song by a kiwi artist, currently popular, that I rather like. There's waay too much skankin goes on in kiwi music by half but when it's with a tune and not fifteen fuckin minutes long, I can forgive it. Heavily tattooed at the best of times, the album cover features Tiki Taane here with a full (non-permanent) 'moko' facial tattoo done by Inia Taylor, a friend of TSO, whose shop I walk past every morning. He's widely held as the best trad 'tatatau' artist in NZ and also did the facial tattoos for "Once Were Warriors" which is where TSO and he know each other from. The streets of Grey Lynn where I live here, are currently dotted with lifesize moko stencils in spray white with "Tikidub" written underneath. It's such a small place, New Zealand. I'm coming to like that about it. (And yes, Robbie, I am thinking about getting some more ink...)

John Cougar
Man, I just listened to a one hour retrospective on the wireless (National Radio NZ) of John Mellencamp (nee Cougar) and, you know - that stuff is nice. My eldest brother Ian was a huge fan and then my second brother Brian got into him too so he was, like Lynrd Skynrd, The Undertones, Springsteen, Lone Justice with Maria McKee and a few mis-matched others, omnipresent in my formative years. So I've tended to write him off as something from a generation before but, that early stuff he made in collaboration with Mick Ronson - Jack & Diane etc - there's gold among that stuff. You don't hear it for years then it comes on the radio and you realize how well formed a tune it is you're listening to.

He's coming here later in the year and the posters are all over the place already. I'm not that into him that I'll be going, you understand, but fair play to him for being around still - I think he had a heart attack a few years back - clinging to the wreckage just like the rest of us...

Babydreams
I've wondered, since about day two of this little chap's existence, what is it he dreams about? He's definitely dreaming about something in particular for his little sleeping face goes through a maelstrom of emotions at times. Seriously - what do babies dream about? It's possibly a good argument for the notion of reincarnation and past lives - are their little subconscious minds soaked with memories of past lives? Are our dreams not informed almost entirely by experiences in our waking lives? Sure they are. How could you imagine a house or a person or a street or a car, if you'd never seen one or socially and emotionally understood it in some kind of context? He was smiling in his sleep long before he ever smiled awake - for example.

So I've got this sneaking suspicion that sometimes he's dreaming about, say, a past love affair, the loss of a loved one, a memorable party - grownup things like that. Perhaps, as I once did, he imagines he's happily out on a rowboat with John Lennon only to end up in a canal-side hotel, chasing the white-suited and hirsute former Beatles lead singer and guitarist through a melee of toppled chairs and tables with a machine gun, intent upon mortal malice? This was well after someone beat me to it, I hasten to add.

Ultimately, I know I would poo-poo anyone's explanation if they started to give me one. I mean - it's a light-off-fridge-door situation isn't it? I reckon this is just one of those things that you need to accept in life.

Somers Town
Auckland Film Festival is off and running as of yesterday. I've heaps of plans to see as much as possible from the stellar lineup of features but yesteerday, to celebrate the kickoff, I watched Shane Meadows' "Somers Town". Regular readers will know we are bullish on the topic of Shane Meadows' body of work and he's had our strongest endorsement on every film so far. So we are perhaps the choir awaiting the message from the pulpit but once again we walked out of one of his films feeling good and thinking about things slightly differently which is really all we ask from a visit to the pictures. I'd also like to draw attention to the soundtrack by sure to be new hit, Gavin Clark. (Check out "Low Are The Punches" on that site)

Somers Town is an hilarious sketch of the nature of loneliness in the big city. Thomo - a restless kid from Notts who may have been wide at home but whom is lost in London, played frighteningly realistically by Thomas Turgoose from "This Is England". There he meets Marek - the disenfranchised, sensitive, shy son of a Polish labourer working on the St Pancras European rail link development. The unlikely pairing throws up some hilarious moments, aided and abetted by a select few supporting characters, one hilarious neighbour memorably played by Perry Benson who - really - the sight of him just cracks me up in anything I've seen. Great slideshow from the film with a clip off the soundtrack here.

There's a creeping feeling in me that Meadows is in danger of being accused of making the same film over and over with his sketches of restless youth against the backdrop of the murky macro corners of working class Britain. Me? I'll pay to watch that as many times as he wants to make it because I am utterly transfixed by the accuracy and tenderness with which he paints young British characters. Film making with a good yarn, realism and social commentary wins over fatly-funded grandiloquence, heavy-handed overdrama and, generally, overdone cinema with me every time.

Loach has a new flick in the festival as well - can't wait.

Things I Could Live In A World Without, A Series

For despoiling that tiny juicy oral explosion. For bringing negative to mind during an overwhelmingly positive moment of fruitery. For taking something so perfect and sweet and innocent and injecting inconvenience and damnable real life - damn you to hell, grape seeds. I hate you and all you stand for.
Apple seeds know their place - they stay close to the center where no man goes. Same with the Melon family - and there are thousands of them per piece! A peach stone is huge but it stays stanchly in the wings til the end of the experience but you? You're only in a small piece of fruit - there's nowhere for you to go and I understand that but by Zeus, there is nothing I hate more than biting into a grape and finding one of you bastards. I had a big bunch of Chilean red grapes last night and - la uva era deliciosa! It was one of the best things to happen this week - I was enraptured by the whole experience. And not one of you in sight - take a hint - you're not needed - time for you to pull the ole 23 Skidoo.

A Dirty Lowdown Ripoff
I had hopes. The firs time around I never even entertained the idea of an iPhone - that was just too much money for a phone. It was too much money for a phone AND an iPod actually. Well, I kind of tried to justify it to myself for a while even so, but nah, I'm not fit for that kind of price ticket.
Imagine, then, my delight and boyish exuberance when the new iPhone was announced and at a helluvah reduced price tag. I'm in, says I, at last I am in. I registered with Vodafone a month ago to get updates on this most closely guarded secret in Vodafone history. They were unable to tell me how much it might cost etc. I only signed up for a contract with Vodafone a month ago, actually - had been on their extortionate pay-as-you-go rates for long enough to find myself with several new holes in back.

Yesterday, then, the big email came out, the big rollout will happen at only three stores countrywide here in Aotearoa, the first country in the world to sell this worldwide-simul-release product. In the US, this phone is to retail at $199 US which works out about $270 NZD. I would go 3 hund, I decided, to allow for bad exchange rates and for to have myself an iPhone.

The pricing schedules? For the $199 US model - Here we go;
On the 250 monthly plan the phone is $549 and you commit to 24 months at $80.
Total: $2469 NZD ($1859US)
On the 500 Plan the phone is $449 and you commit to 24 months at$130.
Total: $3569 NZD ($2757 US)
On the 1GB plan the phone is only $199 but you again commit to 24 months at $250.
Total: $6199 NZD ($4670 US)

At least you never need to worry about your phone bill for two years after putting up this kinda poppy.

Excuse me but who the flying FUCK pays $250 a month for cellphone usage?!! And secondly, doesn't Apple price fix their products? How can someone so drastically over price their kit and get away with it?!! It's gouging in the worst way - blatant small-country-small-minded filleting of the consumer. I think what they're saying with these prices is that they only want a certain kind of customer having an iPhone. My plan, which has way more time and texts than I'll ever use, costs $35 a month, to give you an idea of how expensive this base plan is.

Why can't a person just pay the retail price of the phone and use it on any Vodafone plan? How would that be a burden on anyone? Me? I'm now calculating how to buy one from the US and unlock it - actually a guy at Avondale market here can do it for 40 bills. I predict a lot of cracked iPhones all over the world.

Testing this is a test post to check out the new Blogger widget in Dashboard. Awesome

Karaoke If nothing else, history will show eventually that I'm a huge fan of two things in this world - Gene Pitney and karaoke. I was browsing the latest clips of Gene (we fans, we call him "Gene") on Youtube the other day, then, and I came upon this charming little performance of "A Town Without Pity". Choice. I'm now on a kick to discover as many great karaoke performances as possible on Youtube - if anyone knows any, fire them in.

My Little Muscle Man

I realized it'd been a long time and that I'm dishonouring my former pledge of a weekly photo. It's not that there aren't digital reams of them being taken, you understand.

Barriers
What is it with some people at the grocery shop, not being able to stand that gap between your stuff and theirs on the conveyor? I had one tonight that threw herself bodily across the rubber belt to delineate the DMZ between our stuffs. The grocery shops never ever seem to have enough of them here either. There's one, usually. I left around eight to ten inches between our things because I could immediately see she was of a birdlike disposition, shifting from one foot to the other, glaring at me etc. But this borderline was plainly insufficient and she threw her hand across like a barrier arm, elbow down on the counter lip! Even though the customer before her wasn't halfway done yet.

Inexplicably worried, I put my own hand out, in the area between our things, not knowing what for, feeling foolish, looking around to make sure nobody else was seeing this. She was glowering by this stage and started to wake up to the silly way I was fearing her. I became indignant. I withdrew my hand insouciantly, leaving the glaring eight empty inches between hers and mine. I couldn't look at her any more, though, so I studied the hair of people two rows down.

As she had her groceries packed and was walking off, I could feel her eyes burning right into me, so I cast a glance up at her and smirked. I don't often smirk either.

I swear I heard a snort.

Roastin'
There's something to be respected about a nation able place a bare-faced value on a thoroughly pedestrian item of culture without feeling self conscious about it. When I first came to New Zealand for a visit, I recall laughing out loud the first time I asked what was sold at a Roast Shop and being told what it was. I suppose I expected something exotic, something oriental - duck perhaps, or something gamey like wild boar, 3 partridge on a skewer with a red wine glace... To be told it was roast beef dinners, well, I took a minute to think about it, let's say.

Whats more Gran and Grampa in the food pantheon, than the humble roast beef, spuds and mixed veg? Come on, what is more old-mannish? I personally would not ever think to make myself a roast meal. No sir. Not if a roll of meat, sack of spuds, a bowl of frozen mixed veg and a few sweet potatoes sat beside a roasting tray and roll of tinfoil on my fucking counter, would I come up with a roast dinner, to be brutally frank! And I'm nearly an old man myself, for Chrissakes. I know some people are really passionate about it. My old pal Snowman in Canada, say. That boy could destroy a roast dinner just by looking at it. You'd find him on a Tuesday night, his apartment flooded in steam and beefy fumes, setting himself up with a full roast meal.

But in almost any stripmall, any row of shops in Auckland and in New Zealand's small towns too, I've noted, you' find a shop dedicated to serving up the roast dinner on any given night. Tonight the wee man went down early and TSO and I were sitting here trying to weigh up our options for a takeaway. We crossed off KFC, hamburgers and Chinese pretty much instantly and we make a pretty nice curry ourselves here most weeks, so.... TSO threw out the Grey Lynn roast Shop up the road here. I snorted but then I thought, maybe...

She sensed my weakness and ran the car up there in a heartbeat, keen to get back to one of her favourite takeouts and, you know something - it was fucking awesome! Roast spuds done in a big, industrial oven, crisped to perfection on the outside, fluffy on the inside, bit of kumara, bit of pumpkin, mixed veg, delicious scratch-made gravy with just the right mix of sweet and an edge of vinegary-saltiness at its peak. And the beef? Endless shaves of perfectly cooked, tender, juicy, silvery beef - Jesus Christ, it was beautiful. Fifteen bucks, one meal, saw both of us contentedly in burping country, "unco' fu' an happy" as Rabbie Burns would have it. We even had a few shavings of the best crispy pork crackling I've ever tasted as a condiment. Apparently their roast pork is the real ticket, but on a Friday night with scores of big hungry islander boys done workin for the week - there wasn't a sniff to be had.

Roast shops then. Sign me up. I'm a believer.

PS - I've just learned that contrary to the image I had in my head, Roast Shops are not a remnant from a bygone age here in Aotearoa. No sir, their proliferation is a recent development, apparently, certainly within the last decade or less. That just makes the whole thing all the more awesome.

Shooting Back The other day on the news there was a piece of footage in which some Israeli settlers were stoning a family, including a rather mature lady. The report said it was part of a campaign to give video cameras to Palestinian families living day to day with illegal settlers next door, to allow them a voice and an ability to document their lot. The project is called "Shooting Back", rather unfortunately, and the most harrowing clip for me was this one. The most jarring thing about the whole project is that it's not an Al-Jazeera production or is it even run by a Palestinian concern. Rather it is B'Tselem - an Israeli human rights NGO formed by academics and lawyers in that country fed up with the way the Knesset is enabling the haranguing of often innocent people.

Indulge Me

I'll try and keep it down to one a week, I promise. Isn't he awesome though? No really - I mean, come on....

Good Lovin' You know, I've read volumes on what the best pop song ever might be and generally I agree with every single opinion on the matter - there are so many. But surely, when the book of pop is read, this is the best pop song ever? I just danced my way through the dishes to it on oldies radio and you know, it just never gets fucking old. I feel like one of the over-energetic go-go girls in the background in this clip every time I hear it. Awesome

Just Asking...

Are blonde or red dreadlocks ever a good idea? I've thought abut it for a long time now and in that time, had several recent sightings of red dreads and one blonde yesterday. I can't think of single good example.

Oh, And Ehm...

Meet my son, Rory Manu Hannah. He was born on May 26th. He's awesome but I'm not going to go too mad with the boasting and prideful talk. I am though. Proud as "a dug wi twae tails" as my dad says. He's healthy as a horse and so is TSO. The thing is that at the time it was all going down, I was full of things I wanted to say and maybe I'll write them down yet, cos they were pretty vivid. But for now, this is wee Rory.

Electrifying

This might be a longer post than normal but I read this thing in a local magazine here that really had me in stitches and wanted to share it. It ain't hosted anywhere online. I've painstakingly transcribed it for you so read it you ingrates..

From The Ponsonby Flat White, Issue 75, June 2008
"Last weekend I saw something at Larry’s Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest.
The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Julie. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized Tazer. The effects of the Tazer were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse effect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety....?? WAY TOO COOL! Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed. I learned, however, that if I pushed the button AND pressed it against a metal surface at the same time; I’d get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs. AWESOME!!! Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Julie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn’t
be all that bad with only two triple-A batteries, right? There I sat in my recliner, my cat Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh and blood moving target. I must admit I thought about zapping Gracie (for a fraction of a
second) and thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?

So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses p e r c h e d delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and Tazer in another.
The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries. All the while I’m looking at this little device measuring about five inches long, less than three or four inches in circumference; pretty cute really and (loaded with two itsy, bitsy triple-A batteries) thinking to myself, ‘no possible way!’ What happened next is almost beyond description, but I’ll do my best...?

I’m sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, ‘don’t do it dipshit,’ reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny little ol’ thing couldn’t hurt all that bad. I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and . . . HOLY MOTHER OF GOD . . WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION . . .WHAT THE HELL!!!
I’m pretty sure The Hulk ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed me on the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs? The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.

Note: If you ever feel compelled to ‘mug’ yourself with a Tazer, one note of caution: there is no such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself! You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor. A three second burst would be considered conservative? A minute or so later (I can’t be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point) I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape. My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. The recliner was upside down and about eight feet or so from where it originally was. My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I had no control over the drooling.

Apparently I shit myself, but was too numb to know for sure and my sense of smell was gone. I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head, which I believe, came from my hair. I’m still looking for my nuts and I’m offering a significant reward for their safe return!!

P. S. My wife loved the gift, and now regularly threatens me with it!

‘If you think education is difficult, try being stupid.’"

Awesome stuff.

Gehls Gon Woild As they gaze on endless online footage of fit, bronzed, lascivious young American girls on spring break, getting wild and caning it, do the pale, peroxided girls of Perth, Australia become down at heart? Do they capitulate and throw in the towel saying "genes, their genes are better? Do they 'eck as like. A spot of McCarthyism there, from our good friend Sarah. Cheers. It's plainly the best dance battle ever. The reactions of those around are even funnier than the dancing. Mind you, the dancing is pretty special - that brunette will rue the day she rose to the challenge. Sore knees in the morning though...

I Can't Stop Running
I'm not the most environmentally concerned man in the world, but I do like to keep things relatively in some semblance of a line. I recycle (on the days I can be bothered doing battle with Auckland's notoriously give-a-fuck garbage men), I keep the shower flow well down, I boil only enough water to do me and, if I'm alone, I sometimes even flush only after two pees, but that's between you and me. The one thing I find utterly impossible about the green life, though is switching off the tap when I'm brushing my chops.
I am aware that I'm wasting x amount of litres of clean, precious agua in doing so, but I cannot for the life of me, find it in myself to turn that tap head in a clockwise direction and stem that flow. I've worked at it, believe me. I have stood there in silence, my gob full of white foam, dripping into the sink but it's useless. I'm an impostor in the environmental bathroom when it comes to it. I think it might be to do with my hating small blobs of dried up white dental alabaster be they mine or others. I've also never mastered the art of walking about brushing my teeth. I envy those clean-shirt-fronted bastards that can walk about, carrying on a conversation while scrubbing their ivories. On the odd occasion I've tried it, I've ended up with foaming cascades of bleaching spume all down myself. No, I need to be half cocked over the sink with a spigot flowing to shoo away the stream of white, or else (in my mind) I'd be there half an hour afterwards scrubbing the sink off.

I can almost get away with a trickle but it has to be on.

Give Yourself A Treat
At the end of a working week, as you sit up on the couch watching telly, unwinding, you may hear the distant tinkle of the chimes on you local mash van. Go on, let yourself go, just this once...

"A so-called "mash van" in the UK shows off its new "mash cone" with sausage, mashed potato, gravy and peas in an ice cream cone." From the BBC News website.

In Other News The small town nature of the news here in New Zealand, in general, makes m smile. But this, well, that's total dog and pony show stuff.

Pan Pipes My Arse
I remember as a green immigrant in Munich at the tail end of the '80s, being utterly captivated from time to time by the roving bands of Peruvian buskers with their exotic stringed instruments and batteries of pan pipes. They generally ran in packs of 9 to 15 persons with each specializing upon his own instrument. Oh my young mind fairly swam with images of the high Andes and the soaring Condor, a lump never far from my pink Scottish throat and my hackles more often than not teased to an erect state at the heartfelt sound of the traditional tunes they played.

Then over the years, as the world became a more familiar place to me and I ascertained that seeing them in other countries was no coincidence, there was a dawning realization that the fuckers were everywhere. Some were as good as the ones in Munich, some seemed a little lacklustre here and there but hey, we all gotta eat and I could live in a world with countless roving packs of tiny Incas in ponchos and immensely brimmed hats. But if there's one set of things I hate, folks, it's fucking laziness, musical mediocrity and greed. And this is what I'm starting to think: Peruvian buskers are a lot of bloody rubbish nowadays. And greedy.

They average two or three to a pack now, they've done away almost completely with the interesting ut hard-to-master stringed instruments, preferring to milk the living shit out of the pan flute and strum lazily along on shite electric guitars with tacky chorus pedal effects. All of that is bad enough but sweet baby Jesus, it's the backing tracks that've replaced the other ten members of the pack that bother me the most. I saw a set today that were taking half hour breaks, leaving the backing tape running and if they hadn't been sitting on their lazy little arses there drinking coffee, you wouldn't have known they weren't there. The backing tape has everything: drums, bass, panflute, guitar... I'm not sure the little bastards aren't just miming now, you know? Lazy, gotten, so they are. Oh! and gone, also, are the haunting traditional tunes. Lately they appear willing to reach no further than Gheorghe Zamfir's back catalogue and playing endless variations of the Simon And Garfunkel pan-heavy classic "El Condor Pasa".

And before I end this rant, what the fuck is with them dressing up like dime store Indians from a Henry Ford western allasudden? Gone are the poncho and humble fieldhand titfer and in their place are fringed buckskin suits, gaudy beads, costume-shop Sitting Bull head dresses and face make-up! These today had a girl doing the hoop dance! What does the culture of north American plains Indians have to do with pan pipery? I've had it. To quote Corrie hero, butcher Fred Eliott "They'll not get a peh....ah say they'll not get another penny outta meeeee..."

Impressed

I'd all but given up being impressed by film. However I finally got to see "There Will Be Blood" and boy-oh-boy am I full of the joys of the cinema again? Man, Daniel Day-Lewis - what needs saying? That he's the best living actor bar none? That he's pulled off a character portrait that nobody else alive could have done? Come to think of it, I can't think of any actor now dead that could pull off Plainview either. I was mesmerized by every eye-movement, every cheek twitch, every chew of his tobacco. EVERYTHING this character did, mattered desperately. His character, married to this fantastic story sets a new standard and I'm very much afraid it's back to being underwhelmed for discerning cinema-fans for the time being. All of the other Oscar-nominees this year that I saw were flawed in some way (mostly in editing - "No Country"... would be a pretty perfect picture but for an area of flatland the size of Utah in the middle of it) but I have nothing bad to say about "There Will Be Blood."

So, three cheers for Daniel Day-Lewis for being a real actor, worthy of as much adulation as we can heap on him and for showing up those we consider the top of the acting game these days for raw boys. And three cheers for having my cinema constipation shifted in a big way and remembering what it is to be enraptured in a red velour seat in a darkened room.

The Moose

About 1.5 human years single white-patched city boy with country heart seeks companion for friendship and maybe more? Me? Fast, light, friendly. A real man's man. You: compliant. Likes: beef, possum guts, smelly offal, cat food, legs, car rides, chewing/licking ears and the smelly part behind them, meeting other dogs, chasing acorns at Western Park. Dislikes: vacuum cleaners, lying on hard floors, big black dogs, sudden movements, anyone who walks past my house (for about fifteen seconds).

Recently...
I'm remiss. I'm one remiss mister. I've been taking to the life down under, enjoying having summer in wintertime. I've been being outdoors a lot. We've moved into a new home here, in Grey Lynn, central Auckland. It's an amazing area, within walking distance of a place called Ponsonby Road which appears to be a desirable area to be close to. Having been here since January, mind you, I've only made its acquaintance in the passing, really. The house is an old house but its had some love and affection over the years, a tradition I'm keeping up by giving it a paint. Exterior only. I'll post a picture when I've finished. It's a great place to stay but a slightly unconventional set-up inasmuchas Jane, the landlady, lives in the sleepout in the garden - a converted stable. She keeps a dog, a flat coated Fox Terrier called Bruce who's part of the deal, really, part of the goods and chattels. I'm glad that's the case. He's good company. There's also a cat called Daisy who's actually a Tom but by the time the true genital count occurred, the name had stuck. This is a picture of me lat week, at Piha Beach, with Bruce. I had just discovered he's a bit afraid of the surf. He became frantic when TSO went to take a little paddle at the lip of the ocean. Bruce was flipping out, literally, backflips, jumps, barks as though to say "what the fuck? Are you watching this? She's going right into the beast's gob, man. Do something!"

Tropical Relief

Stick the folowing ingredients in your blender for a minute for a wild explosion of tropical tastes:
- The milk of one fresh coconut
- The meat of two good sized mangoes
- Half the flesh out of the coconut
- A cup of fresh wholemilk
- 2 spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream
- 1 tbsp golden or brown sugar
- pinch salt

Oh sweet jumpin' jimminy, is it a winner!
And I'm not just showing off because I live in a place where you can buy a fresh coconut, either, you cold-dwelling jealous bastards. Ok?

Alex Brown
Every once in a while, as a fan of photographs, I discover someone with a new view of the world, you know? Someone that makes you laugh, or smile with recognition or takes you out of your own life for a few minutes and imparts in you an unaccustomed thought or emotion. Alex Brown is the latest. We found the above portrait, entitled "Sad Vader" in the book "The Vice Photo Book" today in Barnes and Noble and both TSO and I were instantly smitten by it.

Having checked out the portraits on his website, (many taken at Coney Island, I note with amusement) I'm trying to put my finger on what it is I like about his style. It's not anything technical, nor is it composition. There's just a certain uniformity of expression in the people featured in them that's really the thing that draws me in. I wonder what he says to them the second before the shutter trips?

(Picture used without permission but in the hope that linking to photographer's site might be payment enough?)

Coney Island

I love closed down funfairs and the one at Coney Island is just as I imagined it from all the songs, books, TV shows like the Sopranos (Ton's recurring dream about meeting Big Pussy at Coney Island for example) - perpetually, beautifully run-down.

The Boxer
On the boardwalk at Coney Island yesterday, it was cold enough that I got windburned quite badly and people wrapped up in fur coats still looked pretty frozen. Except there was this one kid, shirtless, shoeless, putting himself through all kinds of training manouevres for the benefit of an assorted audience of oldies sitting on the benches by the Aquarium, sheltering from the wind. Oh he was going at it, pushups with the figertips, the crawling spiderman pushups, balancing on the railings. I was, naturally, rapt. I got close enough to hear what he was saying to another guy who was there training with a skip rope. He was bragging about how soon he'd take the other guy out if they had a match. The other guy was trying to give him training tips etc. Shirtless wasn't having a bar of it - he actually ended up shouting at the guy to leave him alone, to "don't fuckin' touch me, man" etc. Great stuff. I think he's really, really fit but I have my doubts about his ringworthiness and I frankly pity any trainer charged with putting him in a match.

Brooklyn Bridge
Thanks, Elvis.

New York Walk
I've been really beating the pavements of Manhattan this week, and I'm developing a great playlist on the iPod that fits the mood perfectly. Here are some samples:.

Jaques Brel: La Foire
Tinariwen: Izarar Ténéré
Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah: Details Of The War
Omara Portuondo: Te Dije Quedate
The O'Kaysions: I'm A Girl Watcher
Colin James: Tin Pan Alley
Stone Roses: Ten Storey Love Song
Gene Pitney: Town Without Pity
London Symphony Orchestra: Canon In D Major (Pachelbel)
The Cramps: Goo Goo Muck
Wynonie Harris: Lovin' Machine
Toots & The Maytals: 54-46 (Was My Number)
Rory Gallacher: As The Crow Flies
Van Morrison: Glad Tidings
Michael Halasz, Michelle Breedt & Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia: Voi Che Sapete (From The Marriage Of Figaro, Mozart)
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble: Mercury (as of today)
Nightmares on Wax: Flip Ya Lid
Roy Orbison: Domino
Echo and the Bunnymen: My Kingdom
Incognito: Everybody Loves The Sunshine
The Coasters: Down In Mexico
Charles Aznavour: Plus Bleu Que Tes Yeux
Willie Hutch: Give Me Some of That Good Old Love
Felt: Seahorses On Broadway
Patrick Wilson: The Great Escape
Donald Byrd: Fallin' Like Dominoes
Róisín Murphy: Checkin Up On Me
The Hidden Cameras: Heiji

Anyone got any suggestions for additions? I'm fine tuning every day, finding that certain songs really lend themselves well to the landscape. (Incidentaly, I Took this picture from the Brooklyn Bridge the other day when the sky was cooperating)

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
Last night, at the 42nd Street subway station, I heard this huge sound booming off the tiled walls, horns, drums, this mad, jubilant energy. I was drawn to a place where loads of people were gathered. In the middle of it all were a group of young guys, obviously practiced, tight, effortless. Turns out what I was seeing was "Hypnotic Brass Ensemble" from Chicago and they've been around, by the looks of their gig history.

Man, if I remember one thing from this trip to New York, it'll be this band, the way the normally don't give-a-shit rush hour crowds were stopped in their tracks, walking from the other side of the station to hear where this huge sound was coming from. Check out their story here. I mean, people were nodding their heads, silently saying "yes" to an invisible question, obviously moved by what they were witnessing. The sound is immensely thick with influences: you can hear traditional, classical brass, you can't miss the R&B horn stabs, bringin up some funk in the back, there's blues, there's folk, jazz, hope, inspiration, POW! what a mix. Above all, it's beautiful to see music played just because it's in the people playing it, not to be cool, not to get paid (though they sell their discs, naturally), thy were just IN IT, you know? I can't say enough.

Great quote from the voice over in the Youtube clip: "We make ourselves very hard to catch up with, so when you see us, it's a treat". Indeed, made my week. An appearance on Jools Holland would blow the European world wide open for these guys, and they deserve it more than most.

Built NY

Things continue apace here in the Big Apple. I met up with an old friend from the Kanazawa days, A.L. who is now back here in his hometown, creating amazing things by way of his company Built, NY. I can't stress enough how well made and damn well-thought-out their products are. Each fills a need that mostly, heretofore has, unbelievably, gone unmet. Even the items they produce that do already exist, like laptop sleeves and computer bags, - they've just really stepped back and thought the task through before coming up with their unique twist on it. Crumpler? Crumpler? They can kiss my royal pink Scottish ass from now on! I'm a huge fan of neoprene anyway, I just love that indestructible, businesslike, bouncy, stretchy feel in my hands, so to see such awesome things made from it, I'm like a kid in a candy store. I remember ages ago when cassette Walkmen were still the go, I had a thing called a Tunebelt: a fanny pack, basically, with a pocket that fit a walkman perfectly - all made of lovely, stretchy neoprene. I cried the day the fucker rotted through and snapped.

Anyway, I urge all you tasteful and discerning NewSoup readers to seek out Built (they're available from Amazon, for a start) and fill your wheelbarrow with lovely Neoprene goodies. That new corkscrew of theirs, too, is so simple it's brilliant. Ooh we've got a shopping list in our heads already...

If nothing else, go to the site to play the Electrica game: old skool arcade action.

Elliot's Bay
We spent New Year on a two day camping trip to the north of the north island in New Zealand. TSO's close friends have been visiting this place for over a decade from what I can make out, loving and being loved by its trance-inducing beauty. The weather was not even any great shakes, windy and pretty cool at times, but even so, it was idyllic. It not being a registered and official campground, fires are okay and firewood is everywhere in the area. Thus we spent much of the time sat around roaring fires. Our tents were pitched under a grove of the gorgeous Pohutukawa trees. I'm loathe to give away too many details concerning its whereabouts but lets just say its immediately south of Bay Of Islands.
The picture is of me at the top of the lookout hill that stands sentinel over the bay, we'd gone up so's someone could get a signal on their cellphone (another added bonus - if you want that kind of convenience, you need to work for it). I've not long arrived, and am struggling to contain a massive, internal grin as I dispose with my watch, and the notion of time in general, for a few days. There's another trip planned in February and I am already dreaming about it.

In A New Year State Of Mind

Man, the curveballs life throws you. This is the view from my window this morning, the streets of Manhattan, after another grueling airline trip during which I came to realize that air travel in the US, in this day and age, is an enterprise best avoided, really. The whole system is so jittery and up its own arse, post 9-11 (which, let's keep in mind, happened ages ago now) that the customer's needs are completely and utterly buried under a minefield of impoliteness, inefficiency and uniformly accusatory tones. I had three hours between my fights through LAX to NY and only made it by the skin of my teeth. I was shouted at, spent two hours in needless queues, demeaned, made to feel as foreign as a blue comic at a nun's convention and generally felt debased by the whole affair. I consider myself a pretty seasoned traveler, did everything spot on and as it was meant to be done and that's what I get. I was surrounded by holidaymakers, confused, worried, lost who were getting no help at all from airline staff or anyone else. You'd think two buildings had been hit by planes again yesterday. I'd advise anyone I respect to avoid travel by air in America for a while. Even passing through it is a chore.

But here I am, in the city, the brand, for two weeks. TSO is here finishing the last few weeks of filming for the movie we were working on in Berlin, here. I'm back to being camp follower, happily. We're staying at Sixty Thompson in Soho which is pretty nice though the walls are thin as washi - I just heard my neighbour's morning movements in far more detail than I'd have chosen for myself. Looking forward to getting out and getting into it today, though.

Goddamnit

I just picked my nose after chopping chili then compounded my misery by shortly thereafter rubbing my left knuckle against my eyelid. AaaarrgghhhhBASTARDDDDDDDD!

Expressions I Move We Ban Immediately. A Series. I Love You To Bits Where it came from I have no idea but here in Britain, in particular it seems, this idiomatic expression has taken an unshakable grip that I'd like to see broken immediately. What it is, is a way of saying "I love you" for people that are not able to just say I love you. "To Bits" is jewelery, window dressing for real emotion - a spoonful of honey to aid emotional digestion in people who are afraid of being open. I despise it, I hate the sound of it. Even if taken literally, if you love someone, why would you want to use such violent and destructive words of language to express it? My advice to all of those looking to cure their British emotional constipation is: if you love someone, just say you love them.

Great Ads 2 Where have I been? This advert just lifted me up so fantastically and the copycat amateur attempts on Youtube had me going "gwan yourself, you mad bastards". The song, incidentally, "The Snake" by Al Wilson is an epochial Northern Soul moment that I've long championed, as former readers of Gaijinworld may recall. I congratulate the creative team on this ad wholeheartedly. I now want to belong to the legion of Lambrini drinkers. In other words, I want to be a fifteen year old British girl, pissed up in a bus shelter about to become pregnant to the local samurai-sword gang leader who'll abandon me cruelly within the half-year.

Jungle Drums Man, I've been away five months and I've missed one of the best adverts out. I'm a huge fan of good commercials and this one is everything I look for in an ad: suspense, passion and a big-ole payoff line at the end. It also, curiously, has me in the mood of a taste of Cadbury's Dairy Milk..

Goodbye To Berlin
Well, Berlin is behind me. It’s almost half a year we’ve spent there which is hard to believe. Not least because I’m now back at Ivy Cottage and keep going to grab things I know are there, because I bought them last week – 5 ½ months ago! A weird time warp, like nothing has happened in the preceding half year. My smell is probably still on my pillow, the laundry I left behind the door, still there. It’s like being inside Goldilocks and still seeing through the bears’ eyes.

Berlin was an amazing experience though What a place to spend time in – I urge anyone with predetermined ideas about Germany and the German people to hang out in Berlin for a spell. I’ve even lived in Germany before – in Munich, at the end of the ‘80s and I thought I knew what the country was about. The year I left, however, Berlin was put back together and these two frames of mind – the western, old German attitude, the moneyed and the snobbish, was forced to coexist with its communist-affected neighbour. It was an oil and water mix and I can only imagine the teething troubles they’ve had in the ensuing years but the resulting creole is fascinating. The people I met were mostly in the film business, so they were sort of creative types who generally tend to a tolerant view of the world but the people we lived among, in Wilmersdorf, were the right side of the dial – old money, snobbish Germans so we saw both sides. It’s hard to describe but Berlin seems first and foremost, a FAIR city, in the old fashioned sense o the world. I feel like democracy is in action there, that everyone has some say in their town’s destiny.

The people are tolerant and even-handed with each other. I love a town in which buskers can walk on to a full subway car and perform at the pitch of their lungs and people are polite and respectful of the fact that the dude is just trying to make a crust. Plenty of places they’d get run out on a rail at the next stop. They even happily fork over a euro or two or his trouble. I’ve always felt that you can get a fair understanding of a country from its attitude towards beggars and street performers – how many you see around, how disinclined the cops are to hassle them etc. We came to know the strolling musicians in our area, Olivaer Platz and the top end of Kudamm by sight and by their styles. You’d be sitting at dinner and along they’d come, one at a time, respecting each others’ patch, open their accordion case, give a brief introduction then launch into an endless array of medleys of classics, played with varying degrees of aplomb and dexterity but a universal passion. One old gypsy chap in our neighourhood had the most passionate tremolo in his accordion playing that could move you to tears, no matter which tune he was playing. And people paid not just a few coins, but they paid attention and sometimes applauded. Then they’d trundle off with their instrument on a little luggage trolley.

One small thing. Other things I noticed was that, among even the young people I worked with who had come from parents from the Eastern half of the city – they were so disinclined to waste food! I noticed it immediately, they’d half a bun and carefully set the other half aside and either take it home or eat it later. They couldn’t bear to throw the last of their dinner out, they’d cover it and again, use it later. Then I began to ask them and they were so adamant that it was ridiculous to waste food. They’re like my parents’ generation here, who suffered hardship and shortage before and after the war. I noticed it in the older generation in Japan too. I respect thatand it opened my eyes to how wasteful we have become.

Overall though, a positive experience living in Berlin.

Amis Off The Leash? I've never been a Martin Amis fanatic though I have read and enjoyed a few of his books. Having not followed his career closely, it seems I've been missing out, at least in the mental extra-curricular nonsense-spouting sphere. Yes, it turns out he's a curmudgeonly bigot, if Chris Morris' hilarious piece in the Guardian last week is to be believed. Check it out here.

The Devil of Dare

You come to a point in your life when you really don't care what people think about you, you just care what you think about yourself.
Evel Knievel



I’d be remiss if I let go unmarked, the passing today of a childhood hero today. Mr Evel Knievel, the original motorcycle daredevil (after, arguably, Steve McQueen’s scene in “The Great Escape”). Maybe we were easier pleased in the old days but to us, on Greystone Avenue, Kelloholm, this man’s exploits impressed us to an unholy degree. When we built apparatuses in the primary school grounds with the steel plates from the doorways with one of us lying under it to make a ramp, there was only on man on all of our minds and he was dressed in a red, white and blue leather jumpsuit. When I think of childhood heroes, Knievel is second only to Muhammad Ali. Even now, watching the documentaries, the footage of his great attempts like the Snake River Canyon rocket bike calamity, I’m absolutely rapt. His wordy, vaudevillian press interviews from those years bring me near tears at times. He was never short of an inspirational bon mot or two.

Thinking of him now reminds me primarily of how things have changed in the intervening years, how feats like his are seldom attempted and hardly ever televised nowadays. Our idea of entertainment has definitely changed but maybe more than that, our idea of inspiration has changed. The world as it stands today, could use a few more like Evel, I reckon. The world is divided, as it watches a man traveling at top speed towards a ramp that will send him careening over a yawning gorge, into those who go “what a f@ckin' idiot” and those who say “shit!” but whom also quietly think “Jesus! Heaps of things are possible”.

I’m sure I speak for all of us in the latter category when I wish this inspirational, fearless man, whatever his motivations may have been, a 500cc 2-stroke-powered, ground-shaking, center-of-the-ramp, God- speed leap into a peaceful afterlife.

Me and My iPal
I’ve been a poor friend to my little old 2rd Generation 10gig iPod lately. It was my closest sidekick for many years, went to beach and mountain alike together, she played with me at a few DJ gigs, provided a soundtrack to my travels in Japan in the car and train… We were tight. Recently though, TSO got the new iPod touch and her 4gen black 30gig ipod has sort of taken over in the car, at work etc. But the last few days, as this job winds down, I’ve had the Bose Sound Dock in the office, cranked all day. Yesterday I saw my old pal sitting on the shelf and felt guilty so I brought her in.

Man alive! Does she hold some sweet secrets! This morning she has taken me from the 5,6,7,8’s to Neil Young, through The Soul Swingers, to Pachelbel’s Canon by Canadian Brass and finally, now to The Undertones and Guillemots without alarming of upsetting the balance of the room. She’s a better DJ than I’ll ever be – I’d never have the balls to make those kind of shifts and think I’d get away with it. There are songs on this iPod that I’ve no idea where they came from how they got on there which is a great part about the mp3 music revolution – the “physical” (CDs, tapes etc) has been taken out of the equation. You get songs from friends, from downloads,, from tons of sources, but it’s all kept in this little pocket archive that you never touch till it gets chocka and you need to have a throwout.

This iPod though, has always had a great mind for shuffle. I’ve written in the past, on Gaijinworld (my now defunct longstanding Japan blog) about the mixes she has thrown out – brought me to tears on trains whizzing through the rice fields, inspired me to kick over dustbins in the back streets of Hokuriku etc. There have been times I’d swear that this little lump of plastic and chrome is connected to my mood, to my very subconscious. The least used button on this grime-encrusted pocket wonder, is the skip forward button. I consider it an affront to her to snub her choices and for that she reminds me how good songs I’d previously thought played-out, really are.

As things move up and down, it’s the little constants that keep me grounded. I’ll never give this iPod away. We’re still tight.

Monumental The Holocaust memorial. I'd had some trouble locating it in the months I've been here in Berlin, and it turned out to be very central and I'd even driven past it many times. Took a look at it the other week. It's considerable. I'm not much for Holocaust memorials any more though. I've been to the Jewish museum here too, to see the amazing building and you know I come away from these things wondering if they aren't so much remembering the dead, as keeping resentment alive. It makes me uncomfortable.

Walking away from the Jewish museum with the message "never again" ringing in my ears as it's raison d' etre, and I walked past a kindergarten with a yard full of blonde kids, Turkish kids, black kids, oriental kids all running around together, their parents at the gates chatting, waiting for them. and I just thought, you know, it's not gonna happen again, is it, realistically? So, then, to what end all these endless museums and memorials with their 24 hour security guards on patrol and their metal detectors and pat-downs at the door? It has to be said, I think it's keeping hate alive more than respecting the dead who are hatred's consequence. Is it just me?

Treptowering Monuments
Yesterday, TSO and I, on the advice of good friends, went to check out the Soviet monument in Berlin's Treptow area. We'd been apprised of its scale and stark nature so we had some prep but still, it was a stunning sight. The centerpiece is a series of 5 stone-topped sarcophagi containing the remains of 5000 soldiers lost in the battle for Berlin. At one end is a cubist incomplete arc of marble with the soviet hammer and sickle device, each fronted by a kneeling soldier, hand on machine gun, tired from battle. From the vantage point behind them one is confronted with the view of the graves, lined on both sides by rows of rectangular blocks of sandstone adorned with soviet propaganda reliefs which are a feast in themselves, more on them to follow. At the far end is a large mound topped with the most impressive bit of soviet-era sculpture I've seen.
It's a twelve meter high statue of a soviet soldier, helmetless, with a frightened child clinging to his left shoulder. In his right hand is a gigantic, slightly over-scale medieval broadsword which rests on a limb of the crushed swastika under his feet. His face is stoic, resolved, right. The sheer audacity of it puts you on the back foot, this is propaganda and you know it, but fuck it, it's convincing as hell - you want to believe that anyone who'd put this much effort in, go to this much trouble, just HAS to be right, you know?
The fact that the whole thing was built by the soviets, who occupied that half of the city, has a sort of eeriness about it all. The info boards at the entrance, showing the start of construction in the late '40s, old soviet-made trucks and bedraggled labourers swarming over the muddy scene. The gigantic hands of the main sculpture, disembodied, lying on the groun awaiting crane-assisted assembly, with a man standing beside them. Visiting Soviet dignitaries in the '50s and '60s even Putin in the '90s coming to pay respects to their troops who served and died in this far outpost of their ultimately doomed empire.
The third sculpture is a Russian mother-figure - "Mother Russia" - honouring, in true communist tradition, the sacrifice of those on the home front as well as that of the troops on the battle front. A great experience without leaving the city.

The Downside of Sexiness Now see here - here's the downside of all that lasciviousness I was speaking about yesterday - a museum exhibit comprising only items directly connected to the end of a relationship. I bet the Berlin section of this, in the future, contains more than a few dozen pairs of really diaphanous ladies pants and the odd nipple clamp or stainless arse-balls...

The Hyena Men

When TSO was researching Blood Diamond, I remember her showing me a picture of an African man with a Hyena on a battleship-weight chain. It was a strikingly primitive and thuggish scene, in washed-out tones that really stuck with me. A colleague, this morning, was telling me about these photos by a guy called Pieter Hugo. I then looked up his images at a gallery that sells prints of his work, Michael Stephenson. The picture was part of an original series of which there is a subsequent second here. There's a really good story about the series under the pictures way down on the second series page - read it first then look at the images. Awesome stuff.

Harrumph! Quick, what's your stereotypical view of an average German? You're probably really wrong unless you've been here for any length of time. I was and I'd even lived here for a bit in the late '80s. Gone is the hard working, unquestioning, wurst-chomping, sober-faced, short-back-and-sides German of yore. In his place is a new, sexy young thing who enjoys his bun as much as his sausage. For a kick off: my my, what do you think of this? A 50% discount, if you don't mind?!! Oh, it's onlt the thin end of the wedge too. They're becoming quite a lascivious lot here, if the sex shop on every corner even in residential areas is anything to go on. My local smut convenience shop is a branch of a nationwide chain called LSD (Love Sex Dreams). And you know what else? I've never seen so many males shopping with their wives for a nonstop parade of unstintingly brief and diaphanous underwear. The women themselves, unless I'm mistaking concentration for disinterest, don't seem as into it as the men who appear to attack the task with relish and gusto. The things they hold up as possibilities would water an eye. Oh, and in my neighborhood there's also a shop selling exclusively sexual jewelry. Noow I'm an open minded individual myself but even so, my eyes fairly water at the thought of what some of the stock in their window might be intended for. There are jewels and stainless steel apparatuses designed for places that I never thought anyone would need a bauble or window dressing to attract business. Who'd have thought it eh? you hate to say it but.....if only there'd been more of this kind of action 50 years ago......

The Rag Trade

One thing about this job is I'm learning to appreciate a nice bit of gear. As part of my position, I have to keep a list of all expensive items purchased by the dept. which involves finding and photographing them. Through this, I'm developing an eye for dear stuff. I can pretty much spot a well cut bit of cloth in the passing now. I believe I'm even developing a little bit of recognition skill with some brands. I'm also (and say this quietly) developing a bit of an ambition to own a Brioni suit and perhaps even a Prada shirt.

I used to think that designer branding was the biggest fucking rip-off going and to be honest, I still have a bit of that in me. But there are some truly beautiful things around here that just could not have come from anywhere but the vision of someone with great taste and experience. I also now know enough to know that I'd not thank you for a Versace suit - there's something gaudy about them, almost coarse, that I reckon would be more at home on the back of someone who wants to look like they're wearing a label.

See? It's not time wasting here, I'm picking up skills

Prague Jazz
On the weekend, in Prague, I was struck by the amount of elderly, be-whiskered gentlemen playing trad jazz. I thought the first lot were a bit of an anomaly but then I bumped into two or three gangs of them. They were all, it has to be said, very accomplished musicians and held things together very well. They had great old faces though and, juxtaposed with their modern leisurewear, it made for an arresting sight.

Aural Upgrade
I'm listening to a lot of music at work these days, mainly KCRW online out of Santa Monica, California, which has been a love of mine for many years. It's sent me out on a few errands to pick up new sounds as it always does. The new album from Band Of Horses is due out and the first 'single' has become the anthem of my last month, really. "Is There A Ghost" can be downloaded for free from the band's Myspace page and I'd encourage you to do so. It's a haunted, echo-y ballad, or mantra of a few choice words, sung over a building guitar pop background. The singer's voice has me floored - a Neil-Young-ish falsetto that occasionally trails to a throaty rip at all the right moments. You can watch a session with the band on Morning Becomes Eclectic with the inimitable Nic Harcourt and it's a pretty good session. There's a pretty decent article on the band here as well.

Back in Fall
I've been terrible. Terribly busy. I'm working in Berlin and I'm working long days. Buying groceries is something I have to slip into one narrow time slot per week and even that's being let slide cos there's no time to cook the ingredients I might buy. Blogging, as you can imagine, is a luxury I don't really have. But still, I'm here, passing through and seeing the old place, covered in metaphoric cobwebs and dust.

It's a strange world, the one they make films in. I'm working in it but it feels like I'm floating through it, like nobody can see me, a diaphanous figure creeping about, watching everything with a heady mix of awe and something like disgust but not as strong. I suppose with it being a temporary thing for me, I look at every situation differently - my lack of related ambition gives me a rare perspective. I'm able to cast a pretty honest eye on things.

It's a convoluted picture I'm forming - the sheer enormity of the project that creates an hour and a half of entertainment is staggering. The staggering amount of money involved makes me feel fairly ill occasionall but the real thing is the people involved. I'm a people watcher to trade so I really take in the scene in a crew of this many poeple, the relationships involved, the do's and don'ts around certain ones - it's heaven, really. Sadly, as far as quality goes, I've only met about five people in this whole project that are not possessed of some nature of a hard-nosed, utterly ruthless ambition that makes them helplessly sycophantic around their highers. I've met a couple of real characters too, don't get me wrong, who appear grounded and set enough in themselves that they can exist in this world and remain true to their word and their spirit. But there are so very many levels of hierarchy an such a specific order of peck in this game that people with anything less than a very firmly grounded idea of themselves, a liking for themselves, are drawn into this need for acceptance and to impress one's superiors at any possible cost.

It's strong - I found myself starting to be drawn into it a couple of times through this sudden feeling of inferiority that I'd not felt for a lot of years, this wispy insecurity. I'm finally coming to terms with it I think - my strategy is to not have anything to do with anyone that doesn't appear to be being honest and straight, and it's easy to tell cos there ain't a lot of subtlety around!

The greatest revelation for me has been not in the attitudes of the cast members - in fact the few I've met are among the ones that seem grounded enough to handle this. No, it's been realizing the enormity of the egos of people behind the scenes that has my belief beggared, to be honest. That thin plastic crew tag around some people's necks is a golden ticket, a dastardly cloak that allows the bearer to primp, strut, belittle, condescend and subjugate at will. People don't look at your face here or listen to your voice, they check your tag first, to see how they should treat you which I find really amazing. You'll be walking along or standing in the lunch line and you see people you've not met reading your tag, scanning for signs of superiority!

I'm a bit like a menstruating woman taking a dip in a shark-infested lagoon to be honest - I'm wide open to be exploited, manipulated, sidelined by these career animals, whatever suits their purpose. And I caught myself trying to be harder, to avoid that for a while before I realized that I'm not ashamed of the fact that I'm not cut out to stand up to all this unmerciful ambition, a fact I'm quite proud of. So I carry on, for example, watching my effort passed off as someone else's without feeling any malice. I carry on helping out someone, if I see a chance to, without trying to forecast how they might manipulate my help and make it look like something else. I unstintingly walk around with a smile rather than an "I'm busy and important" look on my kite, and I try very, very hard to stay true to who I am. It's only a couple more months eh?

And anyway, the great thing is that I'm living with TSO, we're living in Berlin, which is a truly great city, and hey, I'm here and I'm alright, you know? How it is, dudes...

Sweet Karma Seeing as it's Sunday and seeing as any time's a good time for watching a prick get slapped, here, have a look at a worm turning.

Berliner Dom
The Berliner Dom is an arresting sight but fuck do I wish they'd put that fountain a dozen yards back?! I need a fisheye to get the whole effect from this distance. Nice tho.

Snowy-ing
My latest passion is checking out Bone Idol. A colleague invited me to vote for her friend's wee white rascal at the Woking production (not the Westie one) and I was smitten instantly - not just by cute, rascally dogs but by the crackerjack comments of voters - top notch entertainment. Vote soon and vote often.

Balls

Cherub

Confused Im Berlin
I've seen these posters all over the city of Berlin today and remain righteously confused as to their meaning.

Scotland Says: 'We'll Set About Ye'
In the aftermath of Scotland's first terrorist attack, there are many questions unanswered but one very important question has been answered loudly and clearly indeed: Is Scotland a rough gaff? See, in the initial melee after the two alleged terrorists tried to drive the Cherokee (smart car for wrecking in a blue blaze) a few heroes emerged. The public, seeing what was happening, unusually it has to be said, rushed not from the scene, but right fuckin' into it! The ensuing police reports have made the details unclear but it seems that an angry mob swamped the poor, flaming terrorists and gave them a fuckin' good leathering. Imagine, you come out of the sad, burning wreck of what was supposed to be your ticket to Allah's side and martyrdom, and a gang of irate 'sweaty-socks' are intent on a throwdown in which you are the villain of the main bout! They were running around with clothes and skin flaking off them, their hair on fire then they are 'set upon' by the Scottish public as the police are struggling to deal with them.

Anyway, an unlikely hero has emerged: John Smeaton - a Glasgow baggage handler who was having a fag round the corner when the alleged act of terrorism took place. He saw a policeman being attacked by one of the perps and said to himself 'naw naw'. He gave comment to the assembled world's press and his image was beamed around the world telling the people what happened in a tight Weedgie accent. In the intervening few days he's become a bit of a national hero - the news even forced to run a story about his rising popularity last night. Now there even seems to be some question about how welcome all this attention is for JS, his family has apparently issued a statement saying he just wishes to be left alone. Some have also implied that the people behind all of this are making him a figure of fun in some way which I can't see. I think people are genuinely proud of what he and others at the airport did and though there is an element of humour in the site etc, it's all with respect for the man. Many are trying to get the organizers of this weekend's T In The Park - one of he UK's biggest music festivals, to let Smeato on stage but so far their pleas are getting a deafie. An online Paypal has been set up by which people may buy the Smeatonator a pint and it has surpassed a thousand pints with ease. The site set up by an admiring if humorous wag is taking more hits than George Foreman in Zaire.

There were others that helped - like the cabbie who's now more than likely on compensation because he tore a tendon kicking one of the alleged terrorists vigorously in the stones. Sadly, his reward was a 30 quid parking fine and his trainers taken by the CSI team! However, Smeaton was the man who told the world and as such, he's the face of the event for many. I'm quite behind the recreation of Smeaton as a hero for the nation as long as he's into it himself like - I think its not so much that he was one of a few that stood up and jumped to the help of the police, just that he's such an everyman, such a quintessentially Scottish wee gadge, to say nothing of being a likable chap, that every Scot who sees him will take to him. I hope he comes out of seclusion and laps it up - a thousand pints?! I suppose there's the risk he might become a target himself, of some ill-intentioned fundamentalist but I reckon he could look after himself! I've changed my wallpaper to the above anyway and encourage all of you to support the Smeats until further notice.

Further Reading:
National Post article.
The Times

Urban Him - The Departure Of Tony Blair
With some smirking, I note that today, Tony Blair's last day in office was sound-tracked in montage, slo-mo form by The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" on both major news channels. I'm not certain what it is they were trying to evoke with it but it sure was fuckin' cheesy. Bet Ashcroft is mortified. The flipside of that, of course is that I bet Loog-Oldham is pumped.

I'm not bothered about his last day in office. I wasn't here for much of his reign though I watched it happen in time-lapse shots of the country, coming home from abroad. I can't lie - people, materially, are probably better off than they were before him. Spiritually and morally, I think we're all much, much worse off but that may just be how the capitalist world is headed in general. I think that Britain is a place with very, very deep social problems that, though they were perhaps not borne of NuLabour's government, have certainly not gotten any better and may even have been exacerbated by it. Britain now, compared to what it was at the tail end of Tory rule looks better. It just isn't. Better that is. I think Tony Blair leaves us with a really damaged country but with a clean dressing on it. We all think we're better off because we have a two year old Ford Focus. We just ignore the fact that we have to wait two years to get a dentist and that there's a really strong danger that, should we need to go into hospital, we're going to contract a life-threatening lergy we never had when we went in. We can overlook some of the highest rates of income tax in the world as long as we've got a seventeen foot trampoline in the garden of our windowless, rough-caste former-council-house box and the kids have a made in China mountain bike.

As well as that, and even more importantly, in the eyes of the world I think we're much, much worse off. I think that we have been governed by liars and lackeys of the United States of America which, though it's a relationship where there's a certain necessity of some ass-kissing, we've just gone overboard. We've positively rimmed the US where in the past we'd have gotten away with a few pecks on the buns.

Tony Blair should be remembered primarily for leading us into a completely unnecessary war that he sold to us on a tissue of lies and half-truths. The rest of his achievements are so far overshadowed by that, that you can't even read the label on them.

At least we've got a Jock in the drivin' seat now. Even if he is a bit of a Caledonian Calvinist caricature. I have chary faith in him.

Things You Can Be sure Of I just watched Weller's live performance in the blanket coverage of this year's Glastonbury festival. He's the bollocks, isn't he? Name me a rock star that's aged as believably as PW? Watching him right now, finishing the set with 'Town Called Malice' was comforting, a reminder that some of the things you like will just always be fucking cool. That good music is good forever.

Scientology On The Ropes Once Again Oh, the Scietologists are having a rough old time of it in the UK of late. First the carry on with Panorama and John Sweeney in which, it has to be said, they came off looking rather worse than a middle-aged man losing his head, and now this. Their Nazi-like methods of combatting dissent are not only ineffectual but really poor for the old public image. I'm almost tempted to look into tickets for this play, for example, on the strength of their violent reaction against it. If they can't see that people are far more interested in someone taking the piss out of them than in them defending themselves, they deserve to lose the millions it takes to comb the media every day for signs of anyone badmouthing them! If they kept schtum, like the masonic lodge, they'd get far more new recruits who'd be curious about what they did. Instead, everyone thinks they're mental, paranoid, chino-and-button-down wearing, stock-broker-cum-bullies who seriously can't take a joke. Sometimes, silence is truly golden.

More Faces

Kirkconnel Gala Day 2007
Yesterday was the annual gala day in my hometown. I started out taking wide pictures of the scene but I was gradually drawn to the amazing faces around me. So I have this collection of faces I'm going to post here.

Mellyfied
A great anecdote in the paper last weekend about the great, the flambuoyant, the utterly irevenrent George Melly - GB's most instantly recognizable jazz icon. Referring to life on the road with Melly, his former trumpeter John Chilton recounts a few gigglers about George's declining aural skills in the latter part of his performing days. for example, a heckler shouting 'aren't you embarrassed' and Georgie saying matter of factly 'I am plainly here and not in Paris'.

But the prize and the one that had me gigling all night last night was this one: Outside a show in London, George inquired of a middle-aged fan whether or not she was local. 'Yes' she said 'but I spent several years in Uxbridge.' 'You poor soul' empathised Melly. 'My heart goes out to you. To have undergone such terror and tragedy and still to be able to smile is remarkable.'

The woman was startled but managed to say 'it wasn't quite as bad as that.' 'Such bravery,' whispered George, his voice almost choked with emotion.

It eventually turned out he thought the lady had said 'Auschwitz.'

Teeter
You can see how changing the light was from these. The first one was perfect and was what my settings were all right for. The second shows how the light changed right as the demolition started and is the only one I got in which all four towers are in the process of falling. The last one shows when a (possibly radioactive) dust cloud descended directly on the site, rushing towards us.

Showering: The Truth
How To Shower: Men Vs Women - Watch more free videos

Coasting A number of weeks back, we took a hike along the Galloway coast from a lighthouse to the town of Portpatrick, to eat seafood. It was a golden day and the scenery down that way man? It's God's country sure enough - I mean look at this - who thinks of this kind of scene when they think of Scotland?

Stalker Went on a whistle stop western highland tour over the weekend, spending a night near Oban and one in Fort William. This is Castle Stalker, near Appin in Argyle. The name, apparently, comes from the Gaelic, Stalcaire, meaning Hunter or Falconer and there has, as far as is known, been a fortified dwelling on this site since around the 1300's. It's most famous, honestly, for being 'Castle Aaaaaarrgghh' in the Monty Python Holy Grail movie. Lovely spot, shit light.

Khmer Rock

Read this great article in the Observer Magazine last week there about a long forgotten musical style called Khmer Rock - from pre-Pol Pot Cambodia. The artists there were for the first time exposed to western music via the AFN booming over the hills from Vietnam where an early prototype of the War On Terror was going on. They immediately plugged in cheap, nasty guitars, organs and started howling their own primitive version of what they heard. I love it! I love it in the weird way I love Bollywood music - it just sounds so damn, foreign and thus has a great mystique and appeal to me. you can get a taste of some of the original artists here, at Khmer Rocks. However, my main discovery from all this has without doubt, been the exciting sounds of Dengue Fever - a modern-day US outfit doing their own tribute version of Khmer Rock with some other little flavours in there. their version of Ros Sereysothea's "I'm Sixteen" is burning up the iPod here at New Soup.

I am hot for a look at this documentary about the genre, mentioned in the article, and uncovering the deeply moving history behind this music and the desperate tragedy that its joyous, innocent sound preceded.

Pity Party
For those of you not in the UK, though I suspect you’ll have heard anyway, there’s a case just now involving a missing girl, Madeline McCann, in Portugal. Her parents – young parents of no meagre means- have a place in the Algarve where they holiday. The worst imaginable thing happened a few weeks ago when the parents left the kids (3 in total) sleeping and went for a meal at a nearby restaurant. Apparently this is the done thing at this resort and the restaurant is so close that its ‘no more of a consideration than leaving the kids upstairs while you’re downstairs’ according to someone in the know.

The case is terrible, the fact that a little girl has been taken is simply awful but a strange thing has happened in the aftermath. The parents have gotten into bed with the tabloids, you see. The reason for this is not clear though I think they just want to get publicity at any cost, so that this little girl’s face will be known in so many places that for anyone to try and keep her will be suicide. Every day just now, however, there is a new level of public profile for the parents – yesterday they announced a public audience with the Pope this coming Wednesday! A huge tasteless and gaudy inflatable billboard has been placed on the beach at Praya De Luz where she went missing, that features the name ‘News Of The World' in lettering at least twice the size of the headline that says something like ‘Find Missing Madeleine’ or whatever. I read an article about how a flurry of web domains have been registered – mostly by people completely unconnected to the McCann family – some of them even mis-spelling the child’s name. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the family’s grief and anguish and will do anything to get it. A couterie of rich and famous people with an interest in attaching themselves to such noble philanthropic pageantry have set up a gigantic reward fund. Why can’t they see that in doing so they’re actually setting the morning alarm for ever fucked-up, desperate and plain psychotic bastard all over Europe to wake up and concoct a police-time wasting story? It’s a jamboree of well intended yet poorly aimed pity and compassion in all possible forms.

I can almost understand why the parents are doing what they are doing but I think they are being a little naive about how used they are becoming and how their image has been hijacked by TV and papers alike. The fact that they are on TV practically every day seeming admirably calm and collected alone is really kind of creepy. Their extended family have rallied round and are all working tirelessly for the cause – last night on the news one relative was shown travelling to some meeting or other for the cause. In business class. This whole cause has become like a small industry with multiple levels of management and organization which, again, is really, really admirable but it’s also a little absurd to watch. I have to keep reminding myself of the gravity of the matter at hand – that all this hoopla and t-shirts and yellow ribbons round the trees where I live and TV and radio bombardment is actually about a child who has been abducted and missing for around 3 weeks. I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy-dud but I think I’d appreciate it if the press didn’t seem to be enjoying it all quite as much. The nightly reports from the home of the McCanns are dispensed with something approaching glee – nobody even feigns the newsreader’s serious face any more – it’s all so matter of fact. . Didn’t these affairs used to be conducted with a little more decorum and affording the family a little more dignity? I’ll not be the slightest bit surprised if, within the week, we’re getting specials on Jerry McCann and the wife’s breakfast recipes, for Christ’s sake.


I can’t help but think we should be leaving the detective work to the detectives here. Apart from my obvious displeasure about the pornographic nature of reporting on the case, I have grave misgivings about all this publicity (and it is worldwide) making it very dangerous for anyone to harbour a captive child and making the grim, unthinkable alternative almost imperative. I hope that’s just the way my mind thinks.

The Official Find Madeleine Website

Tiny Dancer
Went to the town of Ayr on Friday night to meet some friends and go see Frankie Boyle, a Scots comic. It was an awesome show - I'd forgotten how confrontational live comedy can be, compared with what you see on TV. Frankie basically takes the piss, in a very dry way, out of just about everything but mostly Scotland. Sample line; (on the coming Olympics) "It's nothing new for Glasgow for in many ways the East end of Glasgow already resembles the Olympic Village, with peoples of many nations who don't speak English wandering about in tracksuits".
The concert was part of an annual celebration of Robert Burns' (our local poet of whom we're all very proud) life and times. On the way back yesterday, there was the annual Mauchline Holy Fair - a festival namechecked by the bard himself.

"I'm going to Mauchline Holy Fair, To spend an hour in daffin: Gin ye'll go there, yon runkled pair, We will get famous laughin"

It was a great day out, as it happened - the tight alleys and closes of the village lined with stalls and hordes of people (mainly overweight and very orange-coloured) enjoying themselves. This little girl is in traditional Scottish highland dance regalia, save the shoes, and had obviously been performing at some stage.

A REAL Rumble In The Jungle
A Brawl In The Safari - Watch more free videos Sir David Attenborough must be fuckin' sick, is all I can say. In decades of nature TV viewing, I have never come close to seeing anything like this. I urge all who watch to stick with it, there's a shock every few minutes in this clip.

Going, Going....
Okay, after talking such a big game about the demolition and my photos, I've not had the time to sit down and work on the images because, as stated previously, the light was rubbish and they need some serious Photoshop help. If you can completely overlook a very rough sky selection process in this image, it gives a decent view from where we were standing. They went down left to right at two second intervals.

The Four Towers I turned forty yesterday. It didn't hurt at all. I spent the first few hours of the day watching four huge cooling towers at a de-comissioned nuclear power plant near my home being demolished. That film was taken about 300 yards from the point we were standing at - a spot we had picked out on Saturday afternoon on a scouting run. After the blast and I got my shots (which will follow) a huge cloud of a very worrying dust descended on us. I advised my companions to cover their noses and mouths with scarves and hats etc. I spent the rest of the day convinced I could feel my skin burning and spitting out an imagined weird taste. Anyway, if I'm gonna go, then now is not such a very bad time. I'm employed, I got a roof over my head, I live in a very pretty place, I'm in love and I'm loved, I'm healthy as a horse and I am, in general, very much alive. I've lived a wide and varied life, met and got close to some fantastic, fascinating people, been to heaps of weird and great places, I have a tight circle of people I'm proud to call friends, even though we are frequently on different continents (such is the way with this life of mine). Yes sir, I'm a blessed man when it comes down to it and, whilst I would not welcome death of radiation poisoning with open arms, exactly, I would sit down and take tea with it before it put the boot in. I'd do so with a calm resignation that, no matter what happens, I have lived. Fuck have I lived?! This guy (my apologies - this guy is a lady)has some awesome shots of the demolition from the side angle - which is where the bulk of the crowd was. The light was patchy as shit - fast moving cloud was filtering/exposing the sun at momentary intervals so getting the shot ready was a real chore. Hope mine are as good as this!

Lake District On Saturday, we took a drive to the Lake District, inspiration for Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter and scene of general loveliness. It's only about an hour's drive from home here. How's the scenery? This is Kirkstone Pass between Ullswater (lake in the distance) and the Bowness / Windermere area.

Eagles
Visited Drumlanrig Castle the other week. It's really near my home - or rather where I grew up. It's quite a well appointed house and very well preserved. Visiting these days is a bit like storming the Bastille, since they lost a very expensive painting by Leonardo DiCaprio or somebody a couple years ago. There are cameras everywhere - when you sign the mandatory guest book, you're actually hamming for a portrait in the secret camera, for example.

There are a lot of things to check out there, including a cycling museum - connected since the Kirkpatrick McMillan (the first bike, essentially) was invented here in Dumfriesshire. The highlight for us was the falconry display though - watching these often gigantic birds of prey soar, dive, swoop, and eat little yellow chickens was awesome. Their chief talent appeared to lie in insubordination mind you - they ran the falconer dude a merry dance indeed - seeming to take great delight in taking the piss! Mind you, it only underlined the fact that the falconry game is based on a complex relationship. The guy is not in charge of the bird, it occurred to me, they are merely friends - with all the on and off days the term entails in any friendship. I like that idea.

I actually live next door (I can see them from my back door but could never hope to hail them - that is what 'neighbour' means here) to Galloway Falconry for almost two years now and have never visited them. I'd love to some day - they're lovely people and this falconry game is fascinating.

Emo Watching
We took a look at an Emo street meeting, or cry-in or mope-off or whatever they call them on Saturday in Glasgow's George Square. This pair fair flew into each other's arms from across the width of the square, and its a big area. They're both boys. the reason I was able to snap it so well is that they stood like that, in silence, for a good five minutes, swaying in the barely perceptible breeze.They're precious. I'd forgotten all about that level of teen self consciousness - it's phenomenally painful to witness. I mean, every town has its portion little pleather trenchcoat wearing, lank-haired greety-faced Goths pretending not to be goths but I'd never been this close and able to observe them in their natural habitat. they're amazing. The girls all act like they're ten or less no matter their true age, and the boys all seem extremely fey and also, chase each other with water pistols etc, pinching the girls to get a chase and whatnot. Suddenly, there were ripples among them - a pack of Neds with a 24-case of Tennents Lager assembled in their midst. The Emo Kids were restless, started acting a bit tougher than they had previously. A few of the Neds were even Skin-Neds. Ooh I felt like David Attenborough. Suddenly, a passing pack of juvenile Dayglo and Orange-Coated Goodtime Girls appeared, seeming to mock the Emo crowd.
Where they aspire to grow up, club it every night, get footie player boyfriends and smoke tons of tabs - the Emo crowd aspire to sit at home playing Ker Plunk, drinking tea, get librarian or art school boyfriends and wait patiently for sweet release through early death. the two groups are not well matched. We only saw about two of the many Emo kids smoking - they all appeared to be good kids from good families, honest, studious types. The Emo boys seem to attract mates from among their number by acting fey as a maypole and watching their hair a lot. The girls, conversely, appear to attract one of these asexual, kind of poofy boys, by acting too twee for school and kissing each other a lot - courting a sort of deeply, badly sexual image to cover up their painfully underage, true measure of sexuality. I was thinking about which group I'd have been hanging with if I was under 18 and among the scene - it's a hard one. Probably the Neds. With the beer. I was never that into the water pistol game.

Finding A Song
TSO has inundated us with sites about music and the internet but not the usual file downloads and reviews - these are top drawer, neverbeforeseen jobs.

SongTapper.com here, if you tap your spacebar along to a song in your heart or on your lips and if its popular enough - Songtapper can find the tune. Our first attempt was the BJ Thomas classic 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" and it was the first match - crackerjack! It's a bit like a game my brother Brian and I used to play in bed as kids - tapping out a song one each other's back. We've found this site to be hilariously less than reliable. In fact, its chief entertainment value is that it gives the most ridiculous matches for the plainest of songs. I gave up when "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" produced a top match of 'Bulimic' by Used. TSO decided that simplifying was the key and took to nursery rhymes. Yet still, 'Row Row Row Your Boat' came up with a top match of 'Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer'. She was soon trying to get Pharcyde's 'Can't Keep Runnin Away' back from a decidedly dodgy tap. We fancy Rap for not being the strong suit of Songtapper.com. She then discovered that 'Darling Nikki' by Prince returned negative but its lyrics are filthy and we don't blame SongTappper.com. TSO finally posits that she may be "putting too much into it" with her tapping technique.

Midomi - this one is an online Karaoke contest/flirting site. The talents required here are more vocal than digital as you have to use your computer's mic to sing in a tune and see if it comes back a match. The best bit, once again, has nothing to do with the site's stated intention. See, when you sing in your bit, it can go on file so other users can listen to your little bit you've just sung. Users can also set up their home page and put photos, their likes/dislikes etc. alongside their personal renditions of songs. Anyone else who loves that song will, so I imagine, find their way to your rendition and fall utterly in love with you over your vocal prowess and dewy timbre. anyway forget all that and just check out the fuckin clips of other people's singing. Awesome entertainment.

Finally, if you can't find a singer to make you laugh on Midomi, then TSO has the answer for you in Wing, a New Zealand cult heroine, apparently. You must listen to her samples - we were particularly drawn to her AC-DC covers album and The Carpenters one.

Reggie Watts Check this amazing shit out. Good man yourself, Reggie Watts.

Threave Castle
This place is only about 45 minutes' drive from where I live. It's a pretty awesome place - you can read the history of it in the last post.

Grass vs. Man
At Threave Castle on Saturday,they had this fake grass matting to stop the natural grass getting wrecked by all the foot traffic during winter. There was just this one little spot where grass was staging an escape attempt. I could imagine it with little wire snips at night, cutting through the nylon to be free.

Hot Air
God, do I want to see this film? I love a good doco about people who are passionate about something. Especially if it's something totally fucked. I confess I'm crap at air guitar, always have been and hope to always be. Mind you, I'm crap at real guitar too. I'm partial to a batter on the air piano (favourites - Ray Charles and Otis Spann) and am an absolutely spellbinding air drummer if I know the tune well. One of my favourite air drum tunes, by coincidence, is in fact by Air - it's "Dead Bodies" the drum solo tune from the Virgin Suicides score soundtrack. I'm not the least ashamed to say I've played that tune alone at a very high volume level and exhausted myself just rockin the air kit, in fact. What other air instruments do people master, I wonder? thanks to TSO for the link - you're awesome

Bovine Pop Haircut I met a cow yesterday that wanted to be Thom Yorke. She had that rough n' ready, studiedly tousled pop singer haircut that may or may not have been cut with a rusty knife that's been found in an abandoned farm building. I quite liked it. On a cow.
Thom Yorke just looks like a prick.

McDonald's Levels
McDonalds' new labeling system had us in stitches yesterday. Is the new objective to make it so indecipherable as to make the eater give up entirely and chomp with abandon in utter ignorance. For example, my own interpretation of the system diagram on the back of my Big Mac (my first since before Christmas, I'm proud to add) is this:

The Top Line is actually The Bottom Line - calories - they just tell you "this shit will make you fat as fuck, but do you care?" This much I understand.

Line Two: appears to suggest either a Firewire connection speed rating of 39% or that it contains 39% radioactive waste material.

Line three: Take your waist size now, in inches and add 36% - that's the size of trousers you'll need to get used to asking for as of tomorrow.

Line Four: your minimum speed loss, post-mastication. (e.g. if right now your top footspeed is 10mph at a trot, knock off 0.15mph tomorrow)

Line Five: Footballing skill retardation - the average player of the grand old game's accuracy will have decreased by 40% in total after eating this sandwich. (e.g. Just three Big Macs and Roy Keane or would never work again)

A helpful Ronnie McD, on the left there appears fairly full of the joys of saturated fats and is jumping for vicarious joy at your reduction in results in life. Quite what the little monochrome nursey/matron figure in a small circle beside the calorie amount at the top line suggests, I dare not consider for too long, given the graphic nature of the rest of the information given.

LastFM I've joined the LastFM (must read that sometime) revolution and suggest you, or the tune fans amongst you, do likewise. This is the link to the tunes that Last FM thinks I'll like - it's pretty accurate at times. I'm still not that sure what all it does but am working on it. All's I know is there's heaps of music, good music and you can listen (without owning) for free. If any of you get into it, add me as a friend and let's spy on each other's musical pecadilloes. I'm JeepsterFive-O

Old Joy

This film his highly recommended by Newsoup. A calm, subtle whispered suggestion that perhaps things are a little too loud in the world today, a little too busy, and that the things that are really important are not so very far away or out of reach. 8/10

Parkour
Have you heard about Parkour? I came across it only because apparently it features in some recent movie with Jude Law and though I’ve not sought out details, it seems to be cropping up with increasing regularity. It’s like urban gymnastics – not really extreme sports but a real extreme art, in my opinion. There’s this video doing the rounds – (give it 'till about a minute and a half in - it's worth the wait) a promo for a gang called Dvinsk Clan who seem to be a Parkour outfit from the former USSR somewhere. It follows one young guy jumping around an abandoned apartment building to a really god hip hop track that I’m sorry, I can’t trace the name of. Anyway, if you type in “parkour” to Youtube, there are heaps of examples.

I find it fascinating to watch, although ostensibly it may sem rather unspectacular, but just think while you watch it. You have to keep in mind how much bottle it takes for the average person over the age of 15 to jump off a six foot wall or to recover from a stumble off the second bottom step! Also, while watching it, I find myself thinking of all the stuntmen in the world and all those famous movie sequences that would have been filmed with crash mats, nets, harnesses and here are these kids doing it in sneakers, chinos and bare-gut for kicks! Stuntmen and free-climbers everywhere must be shitting themselves. I love it¬ Kids doing a thing just for the laughs that's in it and to dare their mates to do one better - the true spirit of (male) youth.

Lifted Up By Bill

Unexpectedly, on Friday night, I stumbled upon a 1974 live performance at the BBC by Bill Withers. Now let me say I've always loved his songwriting, his albums are among my most prized vinyl and his voice has always melted me. But to watch him, in his prime, performing in a studio setting with a tight combo of musicians - man! It was a treat and a half. I was absolutely transfixed and was reminded with a shovel-in-the-face wallop, of the power of soul. What a performer, what a laid-back, in-it bowl-o-soul and a what a handsome bastard too. His understated delivery, his ability to let the song breathe and leave out all the right things - the TRUTH in his performance was so damn moving and so very refreshing. To say that it was an inspiring performance would be to do it a great disservice - it moved me to tears repeatedly and raised every hair on my body. I hope some of you can get a portion of what I'm talking about from these tastes and if you ever have the chance to see this whole concert - take it.
A clip from that performance
A taste from a slightly later period but equally good
A great interview

What Price One's 15 Minutes? Some people will do anything to get their name in the paper.

Statue Kerfuffle "It should be removed a.s.a.p.and melted down and the sculptor should give back the money got for this obnoxious, disgraceful, disgusting excuse for a statue. The sculptor Iann Brennan(sculptor you must be joking ) does he specialize in sculptuing freaks? because that's what he has made Ted Bates look like" .....Disgruntled Southampton resident
TSO, currently here on a jaunt, points out the present fuff-fuffing going on in Southampton over a recently erected statue in honour of former 'Saints' on and off field legend, Mr. Ted Bates. There has, it appears, been a mixup at the casting foundry and somehow the statue of the great Cornelius from Planet of the Apes' torso has been wrapped in a double breasted suit, conjoined with the head of Dame Barbara Cartland and the whole lot shipped out (past an evidently napping QC dept) to Southampton under the guise of Ted's cast bronze likeness. It could also pass for diminutive jockey from the Emerald Isle, Eddie Ahern or indeed a hundred other jockeys, given its diminished vertical stature and elongated, almost simian arms.
Locals, perhaps understandably, are irate and the statue may already have been removed. We here at New Soup. thrive on this sort of thing, of course and are a little miffed its all over, frankly.

The Funniest Thing I've Seen In Ages

Muddy I love Youtube for the fact that you can just think up a performance you once saw and it'll more than likely be on there somewhere for instant viewing. This is a pristine '60s performance by Muddy and the boys, including James Cotton on Harp and The great Otis Spann on piano. I just love the whole scene - everyone in suits and ties, trying to act like they're respectable and not full of 'the sperit' but occasionally, as in when Cotton stands up and throws himself back in his stool to emphasise a phrase - it's so damn powerful.

The Palsy of Bell the fact that its a condition named after a Scottish doctor brings me no comfort whatsoever. I am visited by a pox that goes by the name of Bell's Palsy About a week ago, I had a small throbbing pain behind my left ear for about a day. Then I started to notice that my left eye wasn't blinking right. Then, when I flared my nostrils (something I'm quite gifted at, incidentally) I noted a deficiency on my left opening over my right. Trying to open my mouth wide, I found it would only open wide on the right and the left took on a sort of gimpy, weak, un-meant smile. Soon, my eye on the left wouldn't close fully so I went to the doctor. He confirmed that I have Bell's Palsy and put me on a monster dose of steroids. My eye, I found, becomes extremely irritated when staring at a computer or TV screen for longer than about twenty minutes at a time. My work was rendered difficult because of this and I ended up losing hours last week. When you sleep, what with the eye not closing properly, the eyeball becomes quite dry and stingy. It's a strange feeling, not being fully in control of your face. Last night, when talking to people, I was acutely aware that I may have been sort of spraying out of one corner of my mouth, cos your lip is like that way after the dentist, you know? Sort of duck-ish and flaying about, though only on the one side. I'm horrified that the poster boy for the condition, the epitome of how this condition might leave you looking, is Jean Chretien. I've a lot of respect for the man's career and personal politics, not to mention the punch he laid on that protester that time, but I do not want to look like Popeye Chretien. The fact that it occasionally leaves one with a rakish, lop-sided grin like George Clooney or Sylvester Stallone, however, fills me with hope. Mind, I don't think I'm going to have the loppy eye socket and that, as the symptoms apparently peak after about 48 hours, which is long past. So, apart from a non-responding half-grille and heartburn from all the 'roids, I'm in the pink.

Bowl I attended a works bowling night. My score has become a fallacy, my once shaky level of consistency now in tatters. I didn't break two hundred in two games! But I had fun. I wish I lived near a set of lanes - I find something very satisfying and fulfilling in the simple act of knocking down wooden pins with a big heavy ball.

Weekly Photography Spot Thanks to Elvis at Photosushi, here is the week's photographer of choice. His name is Joel Sartore and I agree with Elvis - his work is awesome. Elvis tells me this documentary about him is pretty engrossing stuff. Nice work.

Hot Pot Alert Under the above headline today, the Scottish Daily Record runs a two page article in extremely parochial and naive tones, exposing the fact that pot growers are using hot bulbs to grow the devil weed - causing an unacceptably great risk of housefires!! The thing was funny enough to read but the last paragraph took the cake:

Crimestoppers Scotland said: "We will do all we can to assist the police to root out these factories as cultivation is an increasing problem and must be nipped in the bud" I honestly don't think for one second there was any hint of humorous intent.

Jokes They gave groups that are usually the butt of jokes (there was this Scotsman Englishman and Irishman etc..) a chance to tell some jokes of their own in the paper last weekend; The Irishman: A woman stopped me in the street the other day and said "can you spare a cople of minutes for cancer research" and I goes "well alright but we won't get much done". The Scotsman: Two Scots in London enjoying an Indian meal when a car crashes through the window and mows them both over. Thankfully neither was killed though one has a dodgy Tikka and the other is in a Korma!! The Priest: Budweiser company approaches the Vatican about a lucrative sponsorship deal which the Vatican is interested but sceptical about due to the weight of the product placement clause; The lord's prayer is to change from 'give us this day our daily bread....' to '...give us this day our daily Bud..' - How much? says the Pope - We're prepared to go to $50m, says the Bud man. - These are sacred texts, ancient, they simply cannot be changed. - We can stretch to $70m, says the Bud man cooly. - There'll be riots in the streets, it's blasphemy, quoth the pontiff - Okay then, we'll give you $1bn, and that's as high as it can go, if it's not enough we'll have to make do with the Superbowl, says Bud -I need to discuss this matter with my secretary of state, says the pope, taking a cardinal to one side "Remind me, Luigi,' he says 'when does the Hovis contract run out again?'

Booker T & The MGs This band playing this song is responsible for my ever having taken up bass guitar. I'm a lover of soul music anyway, naturally, but the first time I saw this clip of an incendiary performance by Booker and the lads, I was absolutely smitten by the very idea of being in a rhythmn section. I had no way of knowing at the time that I was watching one of the best ever - certainly the finest beat drummer. The devillish pace they rattle off the song at, the sheer enjoyment they're getting out of it, Booker T's glee at fooling with the metallic effects on his Hammond, Duck Dunn's concentration leading to sheer abandon, hammering the ones and latern-jaw Cropper's meat-cleaver strikes on the Telecaster - man o Christ - it only just now put the same hairs (a litle older but no less willing) on my neck on edge and had me filled to overflowing. But that's not the best part - my man Al Jackson in the back there - what he's doing might look simple but nobody had meter like that guy had meter. Have you ever seen a man more absolutely in CHARGE of a kit? He looks so terribly at home, just so fuckin.......capable! This is what music is all about - it's soul on a plate and there isn't even a word sung. Look at the Crowd - I think if I remember right, they're German or Dutch - they're not jumping around - they're stunned into their fucking seats by the weight of what they're seeing, in my opinion. It's heavy, there's a lot of soul in that room - the kind of soul you don't listen to, you just feel it, it just happens to you, all over you. Sorry. Rambling. Memphis Soul, readers, I hope you appreciate it even a tenth as much as I do.

Back In The Mix Allow me to brag a little here; I used to be a known mix maker. People I knew thought of my mix tapes as 'of a quality' to say the least. I lovingly poured care and passion onto every millimeter of a C90 cassette. Even with the advent of CD, I was an early starter among those I knew in the jump to making mix CDs and nice covers for them. I used to get regular orders for the end of year Gaijinworld (my former blog) mix But I lost my mojo, friends. I let my gift slip through my fingers for one reason or another and thought it was gone for good. Recently, however, although I've not been making huge strides, there have been short spells of a few songs on the odd mix that have suggested my magic might be coming back. I just made a Valentine's mix for The Special One and am listening back to it at full volume on my ipod - it has some hot spells, people, and it's the strongest sign yet that things may be on the up and up. Some choice cuts from it:

• Aretha Franklin - Daydreamin' (From my top album of all time)
• Guillemots- Trains To Brazil (new band, promising, their best track yet IMHO)
• Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good (The most agreeable of the new talent in the last year with a sweet pairing of the old sound and new lyrical topics)
• The Fratellis- Whistle For The Choir (young Scots band, gone within the year no doubt but this is one good song)
• Eddie Holman - I Surrender (Northern Soul Classic)
• The Organ - Stephen Smith (classic Moz-ode by now sadly defunct Vancouver girl pop group)
• Nightmares On Wax - Flip Ya Lid - Top dub-lick remanufactured by one of the top 'chop' crews out there from their 'In a Space Outta Sound' album
• Cut Chemist - The Garden - nice little lick with something approaching Bebel Gilberto's voice chanting 'em portugues' over the top - lovely.
• The Coup Feat. Silk E. - Baby Let's Have A Baby - New soul classic pleader - gorgeous soul voice invites partner to impregnate her 'before Bush Do Somethin' Crazy' - awesome modern message-soul too, when it comes to that.

Just a few noteworthy moments from an altogether significant little mixie, though I say it meself. It also features Magnetic Fields, Mohammed Rafi and some other little curveballs. Stand by, my meagre mix talent may be on its way back.

Chinese State Circus News An early candidate for dog-on-bicycle-ship?

World Press Photo Winners Thanks to Elvis for the link to this gallery of World Press pictures and photo stories. I was particularly moved by this collection from a psychiatric ward in Burundi.

A Fit Of The Giggles The set up: a man is being interviewed on dutch television after having had his testicles torn off in an accident. The interviewer starts off really sympathetic but has trouble with his bedside matter once the guy opens his mouth. Watch it here

Workin For A Wave Sometimes, dedication manifests itself in seemingly desperate acts. Take this, for example. Who knew surfing even existed in Denmark. In the middle of a city.

Poor Wee Lamb
The funniest thing I've read in ages is the following quote about Thom Yorke out of Radiohead but first let me set it up. The band have released The Bends (their last album with tunes on it, basically) and are touring the world. They are hugely successful, the album and the one before it are selling by the barrowload and Yorke, increasingly vocal in his complaints about fame and fortune not being what it was cracked up to be, is at HMV in Toronto doing a signing session. An eyewitness has it thus;

"Thom was led to the autograph table. He wouldn't look or speak to the fans. He just sat there softly sobbing while signing his name."

It's the words "led" and "softly" that make the mental image for me.

Rejects On Parade A rather ignominious outing for a group of rejected contestants on the Nederlands version of Pop Idol here. The wee fella with the skinny heed looks like he doesn't even know he was rejected - he's cutting a large rug there and giving it his all. That knee-drop must have RUINED his keks, though.

September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959 - Rest In Peace The king of the rhythm guitar solo and one of about three primary reasons for my love of music. I'd already heard his songs on family records, the wireless etc. Then I watched 'The Buddy Holly Story" on TV at a tender age, saw him take the two neighbour kids in and show them "Peggy Sue Got Married" on guitar in his living room - explaining that all you need is three chords. That was it for me. Guitar lessons as soon as I was making money. Remember at a party years later, in my honour, watching some really old mates on stage, and another good friend got up, strapped on a guitar (he didn't know the other guys) and play "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (and I know it's a Chuck Berry tune but it was in Buddy's up-tempo version, with the rhumba-time break in the middle)- let me tell you, I've never seen a more percfect encapsulation of the musician's sense of sheer glee (there truly is no other word for it) when a song is really coming together, than at that moment. How a life can impact others - that measure of immortality, being responsible for that amount of memories - that's a life lived in service, truly. Some lives, I honestly think, are destined to burn bright and go out early - no mere human can't keep up that level of giving for a whole lifetime.

Racism Alive and Well in J-Pan This magazine is making big waves just now. Poor, hapless, backward Japan. Can't buy a fuckin break, can she? I'm posting this, but I'm not surprised even remotely by this. I'm long past the point where Japan could surprise me in its attitude towards foreign nations either abroad or at home.

I Predict A Tartan Riot I'm cheered this morning by the news that Burberry, in rude financial health and doing better than ever at home and abroad, are in the throes of a labour dispute. They had planned, unbelievably, to move their production center to China like everyone else these days. Now for them it's not as much of a stretch as for many companies - half the 'Blur-berry'- The Chav's Favourite product in the world is already made there anyway, Burberry themselves just don't make any cash off it.

They probably thought it would just happen, the small Welsh town where they currently produce would roll over and die, a few hundred Chinese people would get ten quid a month, and that would be that. But the Welsh know a thing or two about indignation! They know how to run a good fuckin strike, they do, boyo! Thus, Burberry has been forced to withdraw as a sponsor for the BAFTA awards ceremony, after the strikers announced they'd be outside, letting people know that their smart overcoats weren't as British as they'd like to think. They've already got their protesting down to a science too.

I think perhaps the only reason they might not get away with this is that they're selling something that takes Britain and Britishness as more than 50% of its brand. To produce that in an exploitative labour situation in a country with a human rights record that makes Saddam Hussein look like Mahatma Ghandi is just not on, is it? I'm cheered to note that a parade of celebrities including Tom Jones, Rhys Ifans and Emma Thompson have got behind the strikers and that the royals might even play their part!

The strikers may lose this fight, globalisation is a stanch foe. But, by the Christ, they'll go down swinging and that, in this day and age, is becoming a rarity. I applaud their efforts and stand thoroughly behind them. Not that there was ever much likelihood I'd ever wear half the hideous shit Burberry produces anyway, you understand,though I did have a tie once - gifted - that I was only half sorry to lose in a drunken farrago. There's a point being made here though, and I'm in agreement with it.

Bonnie Heilan Beastie I was trying to get a good headshot of some traditional scottish cows last sunday. I managed to get pretty close to them but they looked so damn sad, as they often do. Sad, wet, muddy, miserable. They just look like they would rather be somewhere else - like Scotland is not their natural environment. Where exactly would suit a beast like this is a question only God could answer.

Wormtrooper
TSO and I were walking through the woods and there was one of these tiny worms hanging by a diaphanous silk thread. I've seen them before, they appear to be hanging suspended the air, so fine and invisible is the thread they hang by. The first time I saw one was in Japan, on Utatsuyama hill in Kanazawa, in fall. I stood there for ages, totally unable to see the thread, feeling hopelessly uncomprehending, my notion of gravity unable to compute what my eyes were seeing. This time, I had a camera.

A Wee Fight

Plop Boiling mud at Orakei Korako thermal area near Taupo, NZ.

Razzies The Oscar nomination release may be imminent, but the Razzies are already out. Nice to see Sharon Stone making a comeback. Nick Cage getting some long overdue attention. Don't forget to vote for your (least) favourites.

Big Bother Anyone who saw Big Brother 7 - at the start when it still contained the hilariously camp-as-knickers, Scottish, self-proclaimed "paki-poof" - Shahbaz will appreciate this. After such ignominious appearances (sent to Coventry by the whole house, nationally humilliated and finally booted out inside a week) the only avenue open, really, is the nightclub appearance. A small stage of trestle-tables is shoved in a corner somewhere and, when the crowd is adjudged warmed up (off its tits on vodka and energy drinks) the 'celebrity' is wheeled out. Sadly here, Shahbaz's crowd seemed a little too warmed over and it attacked! Were he in control of his faculties, he'd have spun himself into Wonder Woman and busted a cap up in there. Dearie me, those who persist past their allocated fifteen minutes run terrible risks indeed.

Lines I'm desperately waiting for some decent daylight to capture this field across the street from my home. Tired of wating today, I decided to cheat and this is the rather less than stunning result. The straightness of the tire tracks combined with the gentle rolls of the hillside are really sweet.

Painting with Pyrotechinics There's this fantastic ad on TV for the new Sony Bravia television that features fantastic fireworks that are actually cans of paint, exploding all over and above a drab houseing estate. Something about it really makes me look forward to it coming on. Maybe I'm getting soft or something - you can decide for yourself when you take a look here.

Flash Mob Horseplay, Chinese Stylee Check this out, man. If there's anyone in the Dumfries area interested in a similar enterprise and unafraid of having an ASBO levied on them, contact me. Choice laughs. Actually I had only watched it with no sound before - I now see that it's Japanese, not Chinese, and from the '80s or so, judging by the clobber on the guys

Nice Light
We're reckoned to be on the verge of the winter's worst storm right now which is something - there have been some dinger winds this year. anyway, the light was awesome at times today - went out on my lunch break and caught the cathedral on the campus my workplace is on. The whole estate used to be a huge mental asylum - one of the biggest in the world at one time, apparently. Gorgeous buildings though - quality victorian sandstone, man.

Just(Sling)Shoot Me These have got to be New Zealanders. What is it with some people always looking for new ways to nearly die? We went to Gravity Canyon at Mokai - just to watch and have lunch, and witnessed them testing the new Bridge Swing. The kids testing it were keen for us to watch a bag of sand being launched in the harness. We asked how they pick the first person to go in it and, giggling, they said they'd all been on it already. Barking. They probably get steaming at half eleven and strap each other on there in the buff and all sorts. The flying fox there, no, the very thought of the flying fox there makes me want to curl up into a wee ball and lie on the lowest ground I can find, in utter darkness.

Taupo Tip
I went on a walk one morning, still a little jet-lagged, leaving TSO in bed. I walked along the shore in Taupo - a lake town in the North Island. There was this little wall in the middle of nowhere with this on it. It's a cryptic one.

To The Conqueror Go The Spoils I've been watching some great documentaries this week on Channel 4 about the true state of things in Afghanistan. Fighting The Taliban on Monday was by Sean Langan - a documentary journalist - who spent time with a front line unit of British soldiers that, whilst he was with it, was pinned down for several days under really quite substantial and organised opposition. Their mission was, really, to observe and assist a unit of Afghani soldiers but really, the Brits were fighting the battle with the Afghanis holding their jackets, when it came down to it. It was eye-opening to say the least. As I've always suspected - the opposition is not the towel-headed, frothing religious lunatic our government would like us to believe he is. The most frightening thing about them is that they seem to have 'right' on their side. It's hard to find fault with their logic - if it was my country and my religion being invaded and trampled all over, I'd be among them in a heartbeat. Tonight 'Meeting The Taliban' by the same man, has interview footage of young Talibani fighters, some with explosives strapped to their person. I can;t wait. I'm utterly fascinated to see the mess we've created for ourselves turned belly-up for inspection. Our chickens are truly coming home to roost. You can check out a really great photo and audio report in the Guardian here. However, if you havce any kind of savvy and don't mind breaking rules a little - see what you can do about finding these two documentaries in torrent land somewhere.

Quoted, Noted

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the american people. the situation in Iraq is unacceptable to me."

Thus saith George W. Bush today of his decision to send another 20,000 troops into the stramash. As opposed to the people of Iraq, then, one supposes, loving every minute of it. I know it's hard for the residents of Georgia or Maryland or New Mexico - all that carrying on and insurgency eight thousand miles away but don't worry - your leader is taking care of it for you. What a fucking idiot.

Some Gothic Archies While on the topic of sites of which we wholly approve, I LOVE this photo on ODD's Big Book Of Piccys site, to which you will find a link on your right.

Whaling It I note with a smile that Photosushi has kicked off '07 with a bang and a lovely underwater shot - check it out.

Corrugated Dreams
Another thing that struck me about central north island New Zealand was the wholly staggering amount of uses they've found for corrugated iron. The former building material of choice for the down-at-heel has become the material of choice for folk art. The picture is the very first shot taken with my new Nikon D40, on the hop, hurriedly, from the car window. The main highway from Auckland to Wellington is littered with countless life sized animal sculptures, buildings made to look like animals, (this big dog is actually a nissen hut serving as a store or something)giant men and flowers - all of crinkle-cut tin. The town of Tirau, in fact, is somewhat of a self-styled Lourdes to the rumpled sheeting world with a local company offering professional pieces. You can see the big dog in my photo on their site in fact. Whilst visiting some friends of TSO in fact, I noticed some 125% scale chickens pecking about his patio in very realistic poses - all of recycled corrugated iron. I love a good ole-fashioned roadside attraction, man - as you are probably gathering here...

While We're On The Topic....
I never got to taste a Cookie Time Cookie in New Zealand, though I'm reliably informed they are nothing if not......gigantic. However, driving down the main national highway at Mangaweka, we came upon a genuine DC10 (I reckon) inside of which there is a Cookie Time shop where one might eat a cookie. Apparently the Cookie Time factory in Christchurch, at one time, held the record for baking the world's largest cookie at 25 yards in diameter. From what I hear about the dryness of them, you'd have needed one 'hoor' of a glass of milk to go after that puppy.
Anyway, in the window of the gas station beside the biscuit plane was this notice from some local chap advertising his talents. Ladies, form a queue. You can't help but wonder where his 'experience" lies though. It conjured up sexual images in my mind but then again, sexual images, for me, are not all that hard to conjure.

The Little Lamington When I visited Australia last year, I noticed after being in a few different bakeries, a small, red cake covered in coconut. I didn’t fancy it much, you understand, it was just its name that tickled me. A Lamington. I’m a bit of a lover of the everyday item with a majestic and distinguished-sounding name anyway, you see, so this little red devil grabbed my attention. I managed to avoid going after a Lamington before leaving Queensland but as soon as I landed in New Zealand, it became apparent that perhaps Abel Tasman may have had a little something red and coconutty in the hold all those years ago. Lamingtons were all over the place in New Zealand as well. I had a conversation with a Kiwi in the first few days who outlined what makes a good Lamington, including “maximum red dye penetration of 3 to 4 mil” and that they were, unappealingly, made of “day old sponge”.

Well, I did manage to get my laughing gear on a Lamington – the one pictured above. It was an anticlimactic experience, I won’t lie. Still, I was honoured to shake hands with such a haughtily-named morsel at last. I did some reading up and it turns out there is some disharmony between New Zealand and Australia over the origins of the Lammie, as there is over most things, it seems.

I would have to say that my finest discovery in the bakeries of New Zealand – which were uniformly old-skool and utterly fantastic, was named not grandly but nonetheless quirkily: The Sally Lunn. This was a lovely, sticky bun topped with icing (pink in the North Island – white in the south, curiously) containing a lashing of buttercream in the middle. However, some research revealed that the Sally L is an often-bastardised bun that comes in as many different formats as you could fancy. The south island includes a scattering of raisins also and is often called a “Boston Bun” by all accounts.


She gives good bakery, New Zealand. I won't even get into the matter of The Afghan.

Hughcumber
This is a shot I took of TSO's nephew, Hugh. The shores of Lake Wanaka two days before Christmas. He's a bit of a ham in front of the camera so you have to be fly to snap him when he's not mugging. However I think I captured him pretty well - and I'm proud of the shot.
Note: Like all shots in the body of the blog, it's clickable - you can see a bigger version by clicking over it.

Injustice "They can take our taxes but they cannot take our hearts, they cannot take our tongues and they cannot take our freedom"...BNP leader Nick Griffin I note with utter disgust this evening that this guy got the sentence I fully expexcted he would. If you're brown and bigoted, you're a terror suspect. If, on the other hand, you're a fat, pink, redneck bigot wearing a suit and ridiculous tie, court day is a champagne occasion. I'm disgusted and ashamed to belong to a country that discriminates so gleefully and with so little compunction. I'm not for anyone stirring up any kind of racial hatred, no matter what words they speak, but i'd like to think that if I ever did it, i'd get the same result in the eyes of the law as anyone else, regardless of colour.

Avalanche
Christmas Eve 2006 - a hike up the Matukituki river to the Robroy Glacier. Just short of the top of the valley, a rumble like mighty thunder. A fumbling and grabbbing for camera and two clicks. A huge slice just fell off the front of the glacier crown and thundered down into the valley.

Happy New Year
Well, then, back from Aotearoa hale and hearty. What a place, man, what a place. I've met many a man over the years, fresh back from New Zealand and singing its praises as their personal Shangri-La. Now I see I was harsh in adjudging them starry-eyed, less than well travelled innocents. New Zealand is an absolutely amazing place - the landscape, the attitude, the people - all beautiful and all utterly enchanting. Along with The Special One - I took a three week roadie covering most of the country save the southernmost south island and the top third of the north. The cities of Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown were all encompassed as well as the beautiful resort town of Wanaka for five days at Christmas and three days at Auntsfield Winery near Blenheim.
At Auntsfield, we enjoyed three days as guests of the peerlessly hospitable owners, Ben and Dierdra with their two rangy lads Oliver and Austin-Suede. I had a shot at driving their new 1928 Model A Ford truck around the vineyard then the family took us out in the Marlborough Sounds to fish and eat fresh scallops right out of the water. It was idyllic. We hiked up to the Rob Roy Glacier near Wanaka on Christmas Eve and watched an avalanche before being harassed by a big green parroty Kea. We played Christmas day games of cricket and croquet at TSO's family 'Batch' with her brother, nephews and friends. We spent the night in Taupo at a gorgeous lakeside apartment with a hot tub that had a view of the mountains, drinking champagne with a strawberry the size of an apple stuck in it. We drank lots and lots of NZ bubblystuff. We watched the new year's fireworks being shot off the top of the Auckand Skytower. We rode the Shotover Jet near Queenstown too - which is where the shot above was taken. We decided to adopt looks for the pictures - mine 'Blue Steel' and TSO's 'African Jungle Queen', which we then kept up even for the action shots of the boat spinning 360's. That's some trip - doing about 80mph in a 500hp jet boat through a tight canyon with a mad bastard at the helm who cackles with obvious glee as he takes your bonce within a millimetre of the canyon walls. It was great fun.

Yes, New Zealand is lovely. Ooh - I also picked up a few rudiments on the Ukelele whilst driving, enough chords to get me and TSO singing a few songs. Not quite here yet (thanks for the link, Ben) but enough to put a smile on two faces.

I also took tons of pictures, some of which are quite nice. They will follow over the next while, sporadically.

Gettin' In The Rocky Mood Gettin in the mood for the new Rocky picture coming up, here's a chap obviously had his life changed, like many of us, by the great one.

Darth Mauled What's your Star Wars name? I'm afraid that, from now on, I'm going to have to ask that you refer to me in expressedly reverential tones, please, as Derha Lodum, Hanbeetle of Propolis. One person I know's last name came out Flu Plus and his car bit was Punto. I've not come out too bad - I feel lordly in mine. Apart from that fact that the last 'medicine' I took was only a natural remedy, really. If this doesn't get some fucking comments, I'm, giving up on the whole shower of you indolent swines, by the way.

Ass Cracker Those offended by the sight of stupid American teenagers getting hurt trying to impress their friends, look away now. The rest of you - isn't the bang at the end just the 'coup de Gracie?' At the end, everyone goes quiet thinking - damn, that was a stupid thing to do yet the rocketman still manages to gamely raise a victory salute, despite the obvious discomfort he'll be experiencing. Top viewing.

Expressions I've had a right good belly laugh a few times lately, which feels fantastic as always but a lot of them have been at the same thing. The other week, in the lunchroom, we were talking about someone and a workmate came away with a typically Scottish expression that may nor may not be commonplace, but I've never heard it before. The person being discussed was the unfortunate posessor of a protruding set of teeth and, without missing a blink, the workmate said;

"who's that? oh aye him - he could eat an apple through a letterbox".

Bonnie Clydes

How Lomo Can Yugo
I'm popssibly, within the next 48 hours, going to attain a lifelong goal of owning a Lomo. I'm bidding on an LCA on Ebay and it closes on Monday. I have seldom bid with more anticipation or sweatiness of palm. The art of Lomography is, at long last, within my vicelike grasp. I used to love visiting this site when I lived in Japan and checking out the great things that can be done in photography when you surrender control of everything but composition.

Better yet, on Saturday next -- a week today, that is to say -- I'm taking off for points hitherto unvisited. I'm going to join The Special One on her home turf of New Zealand for Christmas and New Year. What a place to start my career as a Lomographer! At the furthest point from home, like, EVER. Unless i visit the Antarctic at some stage, I doubt I'll ever get further from home, actually. Keen. I'm about as excited as I consider it possible for me to get.

Video Round-Up What the hell, let's make it embarrassing video week. Start with some political laughs at the expense of the US proletariat here. Then take a look at the latest revolution in Mallsports here.

Not Just A White Thing, Then The Special One showed me this clip on Youtube when she was here at the summer and I've found myself going back from time to time, just to take another wee look and to make sure I didn't just dream it. I still can't make out if Miracle Jackson is the one having the laugh on us or not, to be honest.

Sentenced To Death On A Monday Had to write up an upcoming DVD release by the Finnish 'Suomi-Metal' leviathan 'Sentenced' today. You know, you hate to perpetuate a caricature but these chaps appear to court comparison with the suicidal alcoholic Finn stereotype. The titles alone are so earnest as to be comedic - you can read for yourself below. It reads something like how I imagine a post-apocalypse weather report. Lots of rain and frost on the menu the day after armageddon, apparently, with scattered despair and intermittent suicides. They do have an honest influence or two, however - Jimi Hendrix is even apparently tipped the nod in 'Excuse Me While I Kill Myself' - a song whose lyrics are the charge sheet and manifesto for the persecution of Goths the world o'er. 01. Intro 02. Where Waters Fall Frozen 03. May Today Become The Day 04. Neverlasting 05. Bleed 06. The Rain Comes Falling Down 07. Everfrost 08. Sun Won't Shine 09. Dead Moon Rising 10. Despair-Ridden Hearts 11. The Suicider / Excuse Me While I Kill Myself [medley] 12. The War Ain't Over [ft. Taneli Jarva] 13. Nepenthe [ft. Taneli Jarva] 14. Northern Lights [ft. Taneli Jarva] 15. The Way I Wanna Go [ft. Taneli Jarva] 16. Dance On The Graves [ft. Taneli Jarva] 17. Noose 18. Aika Multaa Muistot (Everything Is Nothing) 19. Farewell 20. No One There 21. Drown Together 22. Cross My Heart And Hope To Die 23. Brief Is The Light 24. Vengeance Is Mine 25. End Of The Road

Man In The Dark Hey - you just move your mouse around and the dude totally, like, follows it around, man. Curiously relaxing - a bit like an interactive fishtank. A mantank. How about that - a bunch of fish sitting around in a Chinese restaurant or their fishy living rooms, watching colourful, exotic men swimming about in huge tanks built into the wall? Like it. Mantanks for fish. Got it?

Man On Fire Right now in the UK it's 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' time. A gaggle of seasoned nobodies and former somebodies are thrown together in a created camp in the 'Australian Outback' for a few weeks and humilliated in as many ways as possible and in ways designed to make people at home gip as much as possible. It's car-crash TV at its medium best and generally its a lot of shite but the other night, when they were fixing to break in a new arrival to the camp, some former Eastenders also-ran called Dean Gaffney - they created a moment in comedy TV that will surely endure. I've never seen a man more in discomfort nor forced to endure such ignominy in my life Part one Part two Part three

Kramer Vs. Flamer Oh my Christ, I've never seen anything so deeply uncomfortable in my life as this. And to then try and get away with it like this, makes it even less funny than it was.

Questions Lately I'm obsessed with asking people questions via Email. It starteds with the "Starters" section in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine where they ask a fairly standardised set of questions to famous people. Their questions are awesomely well aimed. It's become like a new hobby, type of thing. Here is a little quick compilation of my favourites. See what you think. You can't really think about it too much - better to pop 'em out rapid fire. What is your idea of perfect happiness? What is your greatest fear? What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? What is your most treasured possession? Where would you like to live? What is your most unappealing habit? What is your favourite word? Is it better to give or to receive? What is your guiltiest pleasure? Have you ever said 'I Love you" and not meant it? Who would play you in a movie of your life? Which words or phrases do you most overuse? When did you last cry and why? What song would you like played at your funeral? How would you like to be remembered? What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Race Hatred Possibly Not That Bad It'll be interesting to see if this ends up the same way this has today. I'm sorry to report that there are many people in the UK in this day and age that might think the two are not the same thing. I'm intrigued by the notion of where free speech hits the bottom of acceptable. I think it has something to do with the often barely discernable difference between giving voice to your own opinion and trying to influence that of someone else. All the same, I'd hate to be the person that decides where that point is, man.

Gender Motors It seems to me that there's a pattern appearing with the re-release of classic cars – they instantly become a bitch car, not to put too fine a point on it. This morning I saw a man who obviously thought himself no small drink, behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper and I just felt so terribly sad for him. Same thing with seeing a man in a new Beetle – I automatically assume he’s taken his wife’s car out on an errand. Why this should be so, I’ve no idea, for the original version of both cars were perfectly acceptable man-motors. But it’s true, isn’t it – both new models have instantly become lady-cars. Even the Plymouth PT45 or UB40 or whatever it’s called – a classic hotrod shape and yet I’ve hardly ever seen one driven by a person with an actual rod. How does that happen? It seems that the re-release is the instant automotive emasculation process. I’d be curious what it could do with something like a good, manly ‘pony car’ – a classic 60’s Mustang shape or a Barracuda re-released – guaranteed it would instantly become a firm fave of girls whose dads buy their cars.

Morecambe Yesterday I took my mother to see her own mother in the northern English town of Morecambe. It's a formerly popular seaside resort - once advertised to Victorians as 'the Naples of t' North' but now a sad, finished place. The rows of immacilately kept bed and breakfast houses of yore are now DHSS flophouses or stand with broken glass, net curtains flapping in the breeze. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, having my grandparents there so it was interesting yesterday to show my brother's boy, Sean, around the place and tell him what it was like before. The amusement arcades are still there - the only survivor of the old days. That, it appears, is only because, as economic decay sets in, the need to gamble is exacerbated - the places were full of locals smoking thin rollups, hunched over penny falls machines or 4 quid jackpot puggies. In an attempt to give those who come seeking former glory something to look at, the town has built a statue of Eric Morecambe. He's dancing his little dance, wearing plus fours, carrying binoculars, sporting a maniacal grin and frightening eyes. My nephew, quite naturally, had never heard of him so I had to describe the whole Morecambe and Wise Show to him. His eyes glazed over at the bit about the short, fat hairy legs and Andre Previn.

Haunted By The Ghost Of Baccy Have you ever noticed that when you quit smoking, it’s still smoking in you for a while afterwards? I have found, on the few occasions I’ve had the gumption to knock the fags on the head, that occasionally you get that whiff, deep in the cavities of your sinuses, in the mysterious grotto behind your beak, of eau de ashtray. I find that especially after a really hot bath, for example, the smell you have deep in your face after a night on the heavy piss where you’ve smoked like a fiend, never giving the thought of cancer houseroom, comes flooding back into your sinuses as if that pissup was yesterday afternoon. I have not had a fag in a month today, just got out of a bath after a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact, and that whiff came rushing at me, trying to claw me back to the other side. If there was a fag in the house, I reckon it might have had me. There isn’t and my resolve remains intact.

Stop It. Now. It's gotten out of hand. Every single day in life, I see signs. They're everywhere. cheap, nasty, hastily put together by people with absolutely no artistic credibility at all. Sometimes they're on pieces of cardboard, the backs of egg boxes, cartons that previously contained white goods or VCRs. More often, though, they are published upon pieces of plain cloth, large pieces of plain cloth - very often thin, wore-out bedsheets or pillowcases. 'Happy Birthday' they say. 'Happy 20th Craig' or Bobby or Shelly or Brittney. The numberical fig