Boy In The Bubble

I've been in Amsterdam this week. Canals, pushbikes, whores, clogs, legal weed, cheese, thousands of poo-stringed, red-eyed short-breakers in camouflage gear and German parkas stumbling from one tourist trap to the next.

Sounds like hell. I however am protected from all this. I'm even protected from the sun. Being on the lower floor of a football stadium, facing East (I'll have to check that, but I trust Jack Aubrey has served me well), I can see the pleasant weather but it doesnt reach me. There are thousands of tons of concrete between us, and a moat prevents my escape. Only the wind can touch me. It doesnt so much touch me as dust-rape my eyeballs every time I step out of the cosy, pre-fab home. So I'm learning to avoid that.

Staging a concert where projection screens play such a large role in the same week as midsummers eve wasn't the best idea. But well-thought out decision-making is not our forte. The very fact I'm employed makes that obvious.

When I do choose to brave the element (not a spelling mistake) I check my phone for anything from Victoria. Left turn. Walk up the ramp. I adjust my eyes to the perma-darkness caused by the glorified curtain we paid a horrendous amount to cover the transparent roof. Take some snaps for my boss to check our progress. Make some idle chit-chat. Left turn. More pictures of the same thing from a different angle. Left turn. Squint into the distant sunlight.

Into the dark again. A hazy tunnel with water at the end. An assortment of treats to curtail my boredom. Left turn. Check phone. Reward myself with a chewy, sugary treat. Lions are my favourite, though at this moment I've settled for a Mars Bar.

Rinse, and repeat. Eventually, a blanket is drawn over the cage and I fall into an uneasy sleep.

Tomorrow we do it all again.

Show day. Hundreds of strange people arrive and tap on my protective plastic ball. Some spin me. Some kick me. Few greetings, many demands. Flashbulbs startle me. The laughter is not at me, but not for me either.

Then all is quiet. No evidence of the previous days' madness save for hundreds of crushed cans and water bottles, bundles of used tape, scraps of plastic, all colours of the rainbow. I sit back in my ball, nibble on my fun-size treat, wondering where the fun went.

I miss my girl.

Am I thick or all you all lying? (Or both?)

I just watched a movie I'd been excited about. Some would say obsessing over.. My girlfriend bought me Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men after I drooled over someone else's in a pub while he went out for cigarettes. He had the same leather jacket as me, but that's by the by. I read it in a day, on planes, trains and in bed. I really loved it. The ending stang, but there was never any indication that it would end well. Much as you hoped Llewellyn Moss would get away with the cash, you knew, just as he did, that his life had just taken a sharp swerve into a dead-end. So I was drooling to see the movie. My schedule (by which I mean all the drinking) prevented us from seeing it at the cinema but I took the plunge and bought it a couple of days after release. I had talked up the book so my gal was pretty excited too.

Anyway, enough backstory. I didn't like it. I was a bit surprised when it came in at under 2 hours. Victoria fell asleep and only woke up at the car accident, so she didn't have too much to say about it, but I went to bed, not feeling sad for Moss and his wife, as I'd expected, but just a bit pissed off.

Yes, it looked beautiful. There weren't any cheap devices for suggesting the time-period. Josh Brolin was great as the smart-mouthed Moss. I liked the fact that there were no credits in the opening. I liked Woody Harrelson's small role as Wells; in fact all of the performances were expertly measured. I liked lots of things about it. But those things alone didn't make it a great movie. I'm surprised to say it, but Paul Thomas Anderson wuz robbed.

I'm going to come out and ask- who was that film about? It didn't cover Moss or Ed Tom enough for you to give a shit about either. I suppose it was about Chigurh. But what about Chigurh? You pretty much figure out precisely what kind of person he is in the first hour. You could even fool yourself into thinking he didn't kill Moss'wife at the end. It'd be a stretch, but Victoria managed it. I suppose the Cohens got carried away with Chigurh's character, and as a result undercut the others. Most of the dialogue was verbatim, and yet some small but significant scenes were missed out altogether. Instead of Tommy Lee Jones visiting Moss' dad on the porch, allowing us to mourn for Moss, we get that dream business and that's it. Balls, I say.

McCarthy set us up for the explosive final showdown which never came, and I'd be near the front of the queue to lambast the Brothers Coen if they'd changed the ending and actually given us all what we wanted, but this is like having your external hard-drive stolen, buying another one and then having that one stolen too. First time around it's heartbreaking, the second it's just fucking annoying. I'll say it again- balls.

So yeah; please, someone explain to me why you love this film so much. Because right now I'm of the opinion that the Academy thought 'hmm, criminally overlooked in the past, now on a downward slide following Zeta-Jones-Douglas dreck and bad remake of an Ealing Comedy with a fucking Wayans brother... better spunk all over this one before they make Dan Brown's Deception Point.'

But as for the rest of you, what's your excuse?

Cometh the Hour...

So much has been written about D-Day, and it was such a huge operation, that it would be a fool's errand to attempt a historical post today. So I'll settle for an appreciative nod of recognition, thanks and awe. And some of my trademark griping.

It's got my hackles up somewhat that yet again, there is a criminally small amount of news coverage for this event. In fact, I'd even settle for some decent documentaries on the History Channel or The Longest Day on BBC1.

But no, we get... Fuck all, squared. I've watched several news channels today, flicked through all the major and Freeview channels and there's nothing. I've noticed the media now refer to WWII as a war against 'The Nazis' as opposed to a war fought against Germany and their allies. I can even allow that, in a way. We're nationalist and bigoted enough, thanks.

This post has no direction, really. It just hacks me off that there will have been veterans and their families, as well as vehicle restorers and, ugh, uniformed re-enactors standing on those bitter beaches at 6am this morning to pay their respects, and the media do nothing to even highlight the fact to the great unwashed.

Next year will be 65 years, of course. I was on Sword beach in 1989 for the 45th and again for the 50th when the Queen was in attendance, and there were, obviously, a fair share of reporters on hand. Next year no doubt it will be the role of William and/or Harry to highlight it instead, which no doubt they will, with grace and respect.

Meh, enough moaning, I'm off to dig out The World at War.

A Message for Washington Dulles' Baggage Handlers...

So, I'm back from our tour of the States. I'd like to say it was fun, but it was just tiring really. Our only day off was on a parkway named Trumbull. Fortunately I stayed in bed with a hangover until 5pm then ate enough sushi to kill a rikishi. So yep, the drink problem continues.

I should add I managed to throw up in yet another airport and spent almost 2 hours prostrate in the departure lounge. So, a 9-hour flight and a 3-hour bus journey later, I was understandably pissed to discover that my external hard-drive had been misappropriated from my luggage.

All my photos from previous tours- Vegas, the Rockies, Denver Colorado, Chicago, Boston, the whole of Germany, France, Holland, Japan. Not to mention every photo taken of my girlfriend and our time together, my niece's christening, Christmas. To bring an end to the list, if you can remember any of the photos I've posted on this blog, it's now the only record of their existence. Deleted at the touch of a button and sold for a bonghit. Mother. Fucker.

Yes, I should have been more careful. But you can only carry so much as hand luggage, and my priority at check-in was not throwing up all over the floor. Again.

It could have been far worse, of course. I have been known to carry the tour cash in my suitcase. One idiot did carry personal cash in his case this time. Needless to say, it's gone. As we are a group of almost 100, it's probably not a surprise to say we get robbed everytime we travel.

But should it be this way? Is it not enough to be robbed by the airline at the ticket-purchase stage? Do we also have to be physically robbed by their employees?


So yeah; fuck you, Washington Dulles, and fuck you Lufthansa. Thanks for charging me for eighteen hours of my life and stealing countless memories from me into the 'bargain'. And that's not me; The Man in Black said that. I'm just passing on a message. And the message, in case you missed it, was

FUCK YOU