Month: February 2005

Poor Edwyn. In hospital with a brain haemorrhage (that’s fun to spell). Bet he’s never had a headache like that before. I was never a big fan but the fact that he’s made it this far with limited commercial success as a singer but still managed to avoid the day job leaves me with a sneaking admiration (being someone who’s currently avoiding a day job). On a purely selfish level it’s a scary reminder of your own mortality when your generations pop stars start getting sick. Boy George with hip replacements anybody? I read an interview with Duran Duran a while back. Of course, since it was about Duran Duran, I read it on a glamorous jet set flight to St Tropez while sipping a scotch and coke, and the last time I was on that same British Airways flight to St Tropez, so were Simon Le Bon and the fragrant Yasmin. Anyway, in the interview of which I speak, they talked about how no matter how long they’ve been touring they feel a responsibility to go out and look sparkly and glamorous because while they do, the people who were their audience first time round coming to see them still feel sparkly and glamorous by association. First time I read it I thought “cheesy” but thinking about it afterwards it kind of shows a more intimate connection between band and audience than most pop type people manage to articulate. It’s a bit more subtle.

All you people younger than me don’t know what I mean and all you older brothers back at home with your Beatles and your Stones (we never got it off on that revolution stuff. It was such a drag, too many snags) are laughingly thinking, “I told you so”.

Awwww hell. Do you think turning 36 has had a bad effect on me?

Do you know that in America when they talk about a band they always refer to the band as a singular thing rather than a collective noun. So a (young) American would say “Duran Duran is playing in Detroit at the end of March”, while an English person would say, “Duran Duran are playing in Detroit at the end of March”?

Duran Duran are playing in Detroit at the end of March and I’m 36 and I’m going so I can feel sparkly and glamorous. Doop doodup, der doop doop doodup, this is planet Earth…

Amidar

This was one of my favourite arcade games as a littl’un and left me rapt with guilt as it sucked millions of 10p’s from my pocket. Just one more go when I should have been meeting my family on the beach in Cornwall…

Join me

Tailgunner

Next time round, some more pictures of snow, for ’tis snowing once more, and a competition winner…

eBay Kodak x15 F

Please bid on this and you will have good luck forever and your children will all have many good things to say about you.

OK, brief tour around the last week or two.

I had flu.

According to the internet which knows everything, there are three flu viruses, known as flu A, flu B and flu C. It’s all a bit cat-in-the-hat really isn’t it?

Anyway, during this time a landmark moment passed as someone viewed this site for the 3000th time since it was born back last July. I had wanted to do some kind of award thing to commemorate this milestone of minutiae but being in a vaguely hallucinatory and very sweaty mess, it all kind of passed me by. Also I did pretty much nothing in this time worthy of a post (apart from make pancakes last Tuesday which tasted fantashtique). Oh yeah, I also grew some really big dark circles under my eyes. Hopefully they are flu based rather than a product of my impending old age, although apparently I’m three days younger than Jennifer Anniston which gives me three more days to become phenomenonenonenonally rich and cringe-makingly famous by the time I’m 36 so I can say I’m keeping up with her.

Anyway, dark circles, check ’em out.

So in a desperate and somewhat lame attempt to keep your now flagging interest, I’m going to have a little competition right here right now with a real, honest to goodness, 100% bonafide prize which I will send from a proper American post office to the person who gives me the first correct answer by email to the following conundrum…

All of the sets of words below were used by frankly odd people to find my site. I want you people out there simply to guess which one was used the most times. Email me your answer and if you’re the first correct one I receive, the prize is yours as long as your email includes a quick rhyme… If you get the answer wrong but I really like your rhyme, I might give you something too.

1. Lyrics for ice ice baby
2. My dog humped your mum
3. Hindu engagement

You want to know what it’s like here?
It’s cold and snowy.
And who wrote of panic near here?
That was David Bowie.

That’s a rhyme, d’ya see?

The very talented writer and journal keeper, Geoff Snell sent me these pictures from our time in New York way, way, way back in September.

Ah we were younger then and the times we had!

Hope he doesn’t mind me putting them here…

That was up on the boardwalk down by the sea, that was.

And that was in Central Park.

That’s me, flued up to the eyeballs. About an hours worth of energy everyday and the bloody thing won’t go away… grrrrrrr…

What else? I did remember the other day that when I came through Heathrow, I got asked to go through one of the new full body scanners that takes pictures of you through your clothes. You have to stand in various ridiculous poses designed to humiliate you while a man presses a button. It’s a bit like vogueing actually. Anyway, the point of this is that after they take the pictures they show you what they’ve done with their clever machine. What I saw wasn’t pretty. I am officially getting a middle aged spread and I’m not keen. As soon as this flu buggers off, I’m getting fit.

Talking of fit, I’ve still given up smoking. I am sooooo good! Not much else to report here due to disabling virus. I have passed my time learning how to use film editing software. Unfortunately I’ve run out of film so I have to go do some more of that for my new hobby. It’s nice to keep oneself busy through this unemployment… or ones gnome…