Yuka

Who put the Chic in Chicago? Who put the Ram in the Ramalamadingdong?

Well I went there anyway. (Chicago that is, not the fictitious land of Ramalamadingdong). People I was with had tickets to see The Pixies there so I tagged along. Apparently The Pixies sucked so that was good. I on the other hand when faced with an evening of staring at a TV in a hotel room (and not a witty and erudite one like the one I had in New York) decided to do something I NEVER do and go and sit in a bar on my own and see what happened.

I went to this bar…

Now looking at it you might wonder what exactly about it out of the the several dozen bars I could have chosen attracted me to this godforsaken looking place? (And deep breath. That was a hell of a sentence. Well done for getting through it.) Well the sad but true reason is that when I walked past it the first time, there was a bartender and one customer in it and that customer had black clothes and a Velvet Underground circa 1969 type haircut. The idea of going into a trendy looking bar full of jolly young people listening to modern music (it’s all bang bang bang and you can easily tell the boys from the girls, not my sort of thing at all) filled me with dread so after a brisk walk in the wind and rain to the hotel to get me ID, into the Hot Dog Bar I went. First there was a stilted conversation about American Football, they tried, I failed. Then we moved on to what we did for a living, again my answer tends to annoy people more than anything. Finally we got on to a safe subject, music. The bartender was a drummer in a band he’d started and liked much the same dodgy music that I did, Allelujah! 3 hours passed in the blink of 6 beers and 5 shots of Makers Mark bourbon. Remember what happens when I drink bourbon?

Yeah well it happened again. It was a great night though. Patrick the ace bartender, poured many beers and gave many free shots and tried to charge me a paltry amount at the end of the night (like about £4.50 seriously). We chatted and laughed, agreed about most things musical, set the world to rights politically, and exchanged email addresses in order to hear each others musical efforts.

Now some might laugh at my going into a bar attached to a hot dog shop and spending all night drinking with the bartender in an empty bar but those people would be mistaken and evil. They can laugh at this instead…

Well you need shades with a hangover the size I had…

While in Chicago, I also bought one of these…

Dunno why but they are another thing that I am inordinately obsessed with from my childhood along with Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs and Charles Atlas body building courses for 9 stone weaklings like myself who get sand kicked in their faces by tough guys. Perhaps all those old imported Marvel and DC Comics I got given as a kid warped my mind in some way?

There’s a very good St Etienne song called Zipcode which deals with my childhood in a bizarre parallel way. I did have the wrist radio, and if you replace apes with pigs then pretty much the whole song happened to me. So there.

Hmmm what else now I’m in a posting kind of mood? Well there’s other pictures like these…

Food with a Greek what? (first spotted by N)

Are you sure that’s safe?

Huh?

And finally in other news… What would you say is going on here? Please use the comments bit to post your picture caption if you can be bothered…

So after another night of crap sleep, this time involving a dream of living in a world covered under a layer of the liquid that Ed Harris uses to breathe in The Abyss, I wake to find that the heating has been up full all night. Doh! Well that explains the difficulty I was having breathing under water then… Neill, you were having your engagement party under the goop too but the money we bought you got all wet and it was difficult to dance.

Oh what a night (der dup der dup dup) as Frankie Valli might once have said… fortunately the people at the SciFi channel have saved the day by putting the best damn trilogy ever on all morning. Wassat you say? “What’s The Godfather doing on the SciFi channel?”. Don’t be daft! It’s Planet Of The Apes innit. Not that new stupid version, the old Roddy McDowell/Kim Hunter versions. Pure class. Currently on Escape From The Planet Of The Apes which is a little lighter than the first 2 with much advanced-chimps-dressing-in-70’s-clothes hilarity, before the more tragic end followed by the more hopeful epilogue. “mama… mama…”. Ooh it’s so twisty and turny and Ricardo Montalban is in it…

It’s got a bit colder here in Ann Arbor since last posting, very much hats and gloves weather, so I’m glad I bought a hat and gloves in the last post. Well this is just gold dust isn’t it. Glad you started reading? Bet you are!

Me go back to monkeys… they understand me…

…and geese…

First up, if you haven’t already, send me your email address using this link HERE. All my email addresses disappeared in a computer cock up.

Well hey, where have I been? Can you tell me? In Ann Arbor basically is the answer.

Went for a huge walk the other day in Bird Hills which is a huge woodland park. The walk wasn’t supposed to be quite so long but there was an element of getting lost thrown in and some directions were needed from a grumpy cyclist who was loading his bike into his car. Apparently the concept of giving us a lift was a bit beyond him so we carried on our forced march for a good 3 hours before getting back to the car. It was all fun though and much laughing was done.

Here’s a nice thing about a dog food brand… This stuff is important!

Election fever is over and the news has gone back to it’s normal self. The thing you notice here (or I do anyway) is that news is only shown if it has a direct link to the US. Foreign news there is very little of (Fallujah and Israel/Palestine only) so I am even more addicted to the BBC news website than ever just to remind me that there is a “rest of the world” out there. That said, I did just read on the CNN news ticker that Leo Sayer is moving to the colony of Australia. Very odd. I wonder what he’s being transported for? Why the hell is that news?

I had a very bad nights sleep last night for some reason so feel most out of sorts today. You know those nights when you wake up very anxious for no apparent reason? And whatever you think about, your mind puts the worse possible spin on it? Had to get up and watch TV in the end to make it all go away. Doh! Watched the film Secretary which was good until the end when it all went a bit whack. In other TV news, there’s a good show I saw one episode of called Desperate Housewives, and another that I’m addicted to called Family Bonds on HBO. It’s ace and Alun and Ann-Marie, you’ll love it when it comes on if it’s not already playing in Britainland.

It’s very cold here now and I have invested in a nice black wooly hat and a pair of black leather gloves so I look just like a burglar. Once when I was drumming for a band I was coming back from a rehearsal dressed much the same way on a snowy night when I was stopped by 2 representatives of the local constabulary who were investigating some local house thievery. They asked me what I’d been up to and I told them I had been drumming. They asked me to open my bag and when confronted by the contents (some drumsticks and a towel) one of them said “Oh yeah? So what’s all this stuff for then son?” as though he had just collared an old lag in an episode of the Sweeney. Still tickles me.

Tried a couple of times to find a restaurant in Ann Arbor which serves a good vegetarian option with very little success. Supposed to be a bit of a hippy town so you’d expect better. Ended up going to Seva which actually is a vegetarian restaurant, which may make you wonder why I didn’t just go there in the first place… cos I’m pig headed, that’s why. Talking of which, did they have to make this stuff so anatomically accurate? And as for “Eats like chicken”, well, what language would that be then?

My email program got screwed (I blame the Republicans).

That means I’ve lost everyone’s email address which some of you may think is a good thing.

If you ever want to hear from me again, send me an email by clicking HERE so I can get your address back…

If you know anyone else who checks this please pass the message on to them.

Ta muchly.

John

x

Well it looks like the Americans have managed to do it again… Ohio is looking like it’s going the way of the pear, Bush seems to have increased his share of the popular vote by 4 million so he actually has a majority this time. America is a conservative country. The majority of the people in America think that bombing brown people in other countries will make them safer. It’s not a huge majority, in fact it’s very slim, which is ironic given the amount of corn syrup sloshing around, but it’s a majority. Unfortunately the brown people with bombs raining around them don’t get a say. Apparently this election is likely to have been won for Bush on “values”. That means that along with their natural fear of swarthy people in Eastern countries throwing rocks of mass destruction, people have voted on the issues of gay marriage and stem cell research.

I jus’ don’ geddit.

Oh for god sakes, why do I put myself through this crap? Didn’t I learn my lesson from Labour losing to Major? Wasn’t the overwhelming anticlimax of Blair getting in enough for me? At the moment they are calling it 193 to Bush, 188 to Kerry. I’ll watch it and still hope to god that the looney gang of industrialist, neo-con, born again hawks get run out of town. If not, I suggest we build a large wall around Europe and hide until they go away… might work… Also might help if everyone in the UK learns French and then pretends not to speak English at all next time anyone from the US tries to get in touch. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Non, Je suis desolee mais je ne parle l’Anglais pas. Au revoir Monsieur Americaine et vas te faire encule. You know that the Republicans in the US hate the French because they are a Republic too? That really annoys them.

Alvie can’t cope with the pressure and is asleep in the corner with his paws over his head… Look how worried he was on his walk today…

And he was like “Happy Halloween” and I was like, TOEDALLY psyched! So I was like “Duuuuude, that’s soooo not cool!”, and he was like “Whateverrrrr!” so I was like “It’s toedally Samhain maaan”, and he was like “Woah girl, what are you? some kinda witch-bitch?” and I was like “You godda respect my beliefs cos if you don’t respect my beliefs then you don’t respect me, and if you don’t respect me then screw you buddy.” and then he was like “I’m sorry babe, happy Shadowfest.” and I was like “awwwww baby I love you”…

Ahem… sorry… You believe that the whole town was out of pumpkins yesterday when I went to get one? I’m gonna carve a tomato in protest.

“Our world has sprouted a weird concept of security and a warped sense of morality. Weapons are sheltered like treasures and children are exposed to incineration” – Bertrand Russel.

Up early on a fall back day listening to Power, Corruption and Lies by New Order.

Out of cigarettes and toying with the idea of not buying more.

Wearing a bizarre sarong thing for laziness.

Dreamt last night that I was onstage with a band and didn’t recognise the intro to one of our songs, so didn’t know the words, so faked illness to cover it up and sent the cleaning lady on to recite other lyrics to keep the audience entertained.

And that was Sunday morning.

just some pictures of random things…

You go to a diner and eat a load of food and drink lots of coffee and orange juice…

This guy is sitting at the next booth…

You finish your breakfast…

Pay the man…

and cross the “may be icy” bridge home again…

That’s a Thursday morning for you…