Happy New Bleargh

New year, new ways to complain about the same stuff. I am at something of a crossroads- to quit or not to quit? Following the Biggest Show in the World ™, I’m not relishing the prospect of the year ahead. I’m just a lazy bastard, no doubt about it. However there are several other factors to consider, which I will outline, in no particular order.

It’s the 2nd of January as I write this, from Cologne, Koln or Keulen, depending on which language I’m speaking. This is ENGLISH, for the uninitiated. We are one show down, another is soon to follow and then we have no shows until the 25th. I’m on a salary though, so rather than whoring myself out freelance or just taking an ill-deserved holiday, I have to hang around the office, looking at cute kittens or douchebags and their latest photographic conquest. I don’t even have to look busy as such, I just have to be there. On the rare occasion I have to ask my superior in the next room anything, I find it’s usually easier by e-mail.

In the past year I have acquired a lovely, gorgeous, expensive, loving girlfriend. In England. She puts up with the fact that I’m somewhat underdeveloped regarding emotions and feelings and communication and other gay stuff. I’ve hatched a fantasy scenario whereby I continue to work for this company for a while, without having to hang around in the dead-time, this way I can get an apartment on the coast with my lovely lady, without the pants-shitting fear of coming back to England with no job. To my addled brain, it makes perfect sense, but my boss may think otherwise…

I’ve never been sure exactly what my job entails, as the contract is all in Dutch. But I do know it changed significantly 3 months in, and I gained a lot more responsibility, due to my boss’ attention being diverted to the aforementioned Big Show. I have a mental list of stuff I definitely have to do on each show-day, and the rest of my time is taken up dealing with whatever situations arise unforeseen. Most problems can be solved with money. I don’t even have to spend it myself; I have a runner to do the dirty work. As long as the figures balance at the end of the day, I don’t have to worry. Now that I have an Excel file worked out, I don’t even bother checking if I balance at the end; I just hand over the receipts and whatever cash I have- there’s no point looking for anymore because I remain honest and it is what it is.

On a recent trip to the offices to hand in paperwork and get more pocket-money, the human resources lady asked me to sign my contract- for the year I’d just worked, not the year to come. I held off on signing a new one, but I’m pretty sure there was no change in job-title and no pay-rise. It’s not the done thing to ask for such a thing, mostly I think because we’re all aware of how replaceable we are. Let’s face it, I was a glorified bartender before I did this, and the other guys on the payroll (hourly, I might add, the lucky bastards) were previously an ice cream man, a baggage handler at the local airport and a cucumber salesman. Considering we now go to the US four times a year and have Japan and Australia on the horizon, it’s little wonder they choose not to rock the boat.

While the company pays 100-plus Euro’s per night on hotel rooms for a dozen Canadian cameramen and sound-techs, I’m paying 500 euro (currently about 370 quid) a month to live in a cellar with no vacuum cleaner and mould in the roof.

OK, I think you get the point; I’m sick of my job and refuse to see the good points. This is a very long-winded way to say it, though. Maybe I should just do the Family Fortunes Test…
So, you can’t decide whether to quit your job? Let’s see…
Are you making a lot of money? Eh-Ehhh!!
Are the prospects good? Eh-Ehhh!!
Oh dear. So you must be having fun, right? Eh-Ehhh!!

I think I just answered the question that costs me what precious sleep I can get while living in an airless room with bars on the windows below a roundabout. Sorry to have taken up your time.

Just Checking In

What a month. Or rather, a non-month. Flew out of Frankfurt on November 29th, had a pleasant if lonely day in San Francisco. Worked like a Japanese beaver with 6 straight show- days and had a day off in Vegas. i didnt gamble a cent, but visited some of the old casinos, like the MGM Grand, where Elvis made his prolonged comeback. It was awash with Brits there for the Hatton fight, queueing up to buy T-shirts and autographed gloves, then wandering into the street, beer in hand. Shudder. Then another 6 days straight to increasingly shrinking audiences, ending up in Albuquerque playing to 2000 people. We should be thankful, Blue Man Group only managed 1200. For those who dont know (and I certainl didnt) Albuquerque is in New Mexico, and is actually over a mile above sea-level. Denver appears to have grabbed the name 'The Mile High City' and run away with it, much to the chagrin of the locals. Then, Denver is actually a city, rather than a mountain outpost in the middle of nowhere. Ouch.

Our Belgian bus driver didnt have a permit to drive there and so he was arrested at the border checkpoint (apparently there is a border checkpoint) so the Orchestra only made it to the venue 45 minutes before showtime. But the show must go on, and so it did. I didnt have time to catch a nap, unlike everyone else, and we spent another night on the bus before heading to the airport for a flight to Toronto, transferring in Chicago.

Hence, the stage was set for my boss' crowning glory, officially The Biggest Show on Earth(tm).
A year of work, 80 sea containers, 700 tons of steel, 20,000 balloons, 1000 moving lights, 2 ice rinks, 2 fountains, 6 specially-imported Lipizzaner stallions pulling a golden coach, 3 Guinness World Records and no sleep.

But does anyone care?

Post Mortem

It's been a while... Perhaps this post was spurred on by recent submissions from Davey and Monsterwork. Perhaps Im avoiding work. There must be some to do somewhere...

I was in England last week. I arrived two days after my dad's birthday and left on my sister's birthday. She was out of town anyway, but I left her a couple of presents from my recent trip to Japan.

Im babbling, but I did do some things worthy of posting while there. Er...

I went to the Baltic. There was an exhibit by a South African guy. It was mostly statues of Jesus and Astroboy with wax cocks stuck on.

I went to Blackpool. Yes, Blackpool. In November. The weather of course was terrible and we were the youngest people in the Phoenix Nights hotel, but we had a great time. We checked in just too late to join in the bingo. My lovely girlfriend and I went to see the 'triumphant return' of The Verve. I swear, when I made my first post about the Verve, I had no idea they were reforming. You don't care anyway? Meh. Ive learned not to expect too much from Ashcroft and pals. The first time I saw them was fantastic, marred only by the National Express headache and the fact that we were seated on the balcony and standing was most definitely not tolerated. The next time, at a festival, was pretty painful. They were clearly burned out and probably hated one another. Again.

Ashcroft's solo efforts have never failed to disappoint. I've seen him 3 times, on the principle that I knew it'd be shite, but Id kick myself for not going. On his last tour he'd incorporated his collaborations with UNKLE. There were a lot of pot-bellied builders and weekend millionaires with terrible haircuts, stripey tops and scarves to hide their jowls. But when The Verve reunited as a four-piece, I had to witness it. And at the historic Empress Ballroom, no less. Listing the bands who've played their would be pointless- suffice to say if I like them or youve heard of them, they've played there.

They didnt reinvent the wheel, but they at least gave me what I hoped for, rather than what I expected. Ashcroft loped out in a home-made T-shirt and cardigan. Flanked by his bassist and lead guitarist, it was like peeling pack ten years. Ashcroft had very little banter with the crowd, but at his solo efforts it's been more to justify a song or album which was slated by the critics. Which would be most of them. But his voice spoke for itself. And they even surprised me by playing Man Called Sun. Very few people seemed to have heard it before, making me all the more smug.

If they manage an album I doubt I'll like it too much- I didnt like Urban Hymns too much either. But they did their legacy, and their fans, proud.

What else? I saw my wee 4 month-old niece for the first time since she was about a week old. That was nice. I finally watched Eternal Sunshine... I thought it was great. I also watched 300. I was initially disappointed but have enjoyed it much more on return trips. i may even buy the graphic novel, or read the poem by Homer or Virgil or Doherty. Ahaha. I saw my old flatmate Nibbles and bumped into my exgirlfriend, whom I mistook for her far more likeable twin sister. I bought the new Babyshambles album and the new Super Furry Animals album. Davey and co will not believe which one I like. A lot. I managed to do my job as well at home as I'm doing here in Maastricht. Which isnt saying much, except I had a sound excuse for dodging paperwork. I re-watched band of Brothers. And I puked in my girlfriend's toilet and got bitten by her dog in the park. Sooner him than the rottweiler he was tussling with.

Call of the Scrote

So, Im back in Maastricht after our little tour of the North-American North-West. We started in tax-haven Portland and finished in nose-bleed inducing Salt Lake City, via Canada. What did I do there, you ask? Well, the same things I always do- stress, drink heavily and eat a lorra lorra beef. I also spent an obscene amount of money on a camera, so at least I have something resembling a photo-document of this trip. I had hoped to do a little photo-journal of each city but I was far too busy, so for now you'll just have to settle for this...

http://s212.photobucket.com/albums/cc195/danclick/?action=view&current=rockies075copy.jpg

Tuning in Tokyo

Further proof, if needed, that I'm a lucky get. I'm the jail-bait on the left.

I got back from what can only be described as a mini-tour in Tokyo last night. It was 3 shows in the same theatre, so no sleeping on tourbuses or 17 hour days. Basically it was for the benefit of the TV crew which now follows us constantly, and so we could call this a World Tour. Next year we add Australia to the list, which is proving a bitter carrot, as I'd planned to leave by then. But, you know, Australia...

The first night there we got dinner in the 40th-floor tower restaurant, after which I took the metro to Shibuya station. I was fairly underwhelmed by the whole thing, to be honest. Similarly, I've been desperate to get out of Times Square and London's West End when I've visited those places.

So I just took a couple of perfunctory snaps and headed back to get an early-ish night, hoping to get a fresh start in the morning and hook up with a couple of the Canadian crew, who are far better company in new cities.
This is the view I had as I took a leisurely breakfast next morning while waiting to meet up with JF and Phil. We took the metro along the Ginza line to the tourist markets and to look at a big shrine district. It was great, but anything you could buy there, you'd have no trouble picking up in Chinatown, Newcastle. Apart from the sword shop we visited. Shuriken star anyone? You could buy a samurai sword for eight pounds. Eight! or of course, you could spend five grand, your choice.

The highlight was a conveyor sushi-bar we went to for lunch. I've tried the Yo! Sushi thing and it was OK, but effing expensive. At this place, the cheapest plates were 150 yen, which works out as about 60 pence. If I'd never tried it before, I tried it there- tuna head, squid-feet, roe-eggs. We stopped on the way back to wander through the Imperial Gardens.

The Emperor was not at home to visitors.That evening we had an outstanding teppanyaki meal in the garden restaurant and rounded off the night in the cocktail lounge with warm sake. Cue the freakiest nightmares I can remember since those anxiety dreams I used to have at Christmas where my whole world disappeared and I was floating through space on a carpet with only Helen Daniels for company. These dreams were episodic (I woke up a few times with a hot, bubbling stomach) and varied from pratfall comedy to out and out horror. One minute I'm explaining to a hotel guest how we managed to bounce a beer keg onto the bonnet of his Mercedes, the next I'm at a table with three transvestites singing at me. I was afraid to even get up to go to the bathroom for an hour, and didn't go back to sleep after 3.30...

For all the moaning, and my dodging work, when I think that a year ago I was unemployed and hiding out in the countryside at my parents' house, trying to quit drugs and massively reduce my drinking, I can't complain about my current lot. People have said to me before that they always knew I'd end up doing something special, and I'd feel kind of guilty that I was deceiving them. I've always been happy on the path of least resistance. But is this it? Is this that something special? And if it is, why am I trying to sabotage it?

The language barrier is definitely a major factor- in Arnhem, I relied heavily on our catering runner to arrange the things we needed for Production. That guy should basically be doing my job. I had to hide him from my boss. The other thing is the cultural gap, and my murky past/present. For years I've hidden parts of my character from my family, friends, colleagues and girlfriends. Granted, Davey knows me pretty well, as do a few others, but meeting new people, I always have to hide certain aspects of myself. Then again, who doesn't? I've grown too comfortable being on my own, I fear. I find myself avoiding large groups of my colleagues because I just don't feel comfortable with them.

I don't want to wallow. I've posted before about this numbness I feel- was it always here, is it getting worse? I don't know, maybe I've just been reading too much Murakami lately, but I feel my senses and my personality have dulled in the past few years. My music tastes have stagnated, I have no idea about movies in the pipeline. I'm not sure what the last gig I went to was, but it wasn't this year, with the exception of a free festival in Newcastle back in May. Even in Tokyo, I got the feeling that I should be more impressed/excited than I was. I just take things in my stride, then it's over and I post the photographs.

So, another long, meandering post comes to a close. Nice photos though, eh?

It was 63 years ago today...

Today sees the anniversary of the launch of Operation Market Garden, made famous by Dickie Attenborough and a huge list of celebrities in what Davey coined "A Bridge Too Far... An Hour Too Long". Dodgy accents (Gene Hackman, I'm looking in your direction) aside, it's a faithful account of the single biggest military blunder of World War II. Had the mission gone as planned, it would have opened up the route into Germany and the war would have been over by Christmas, but the Allies were blighted by a shortage of gliders and drop-planes, fog, flooded roads, misplaced supply drops and poor communications (the wrong crystals were packed for the radios, rendering them useless).

I was in Arnhem for a show this week so that added to my regular history obsession. If anyone's offended by the photo.. well... tough. It's the only one I could find with the genuine bridge in it that was a decent size, and the cover art for the film has MGM Classic stamped over it so deal with it.

As you were...

Uneducated Guess

Aah, the publicity machine. Sometimes you get caught up, sometimes it just rolls right on by. There are certain people and events that slip completely under my radar. I have no time to prepare myself or decide that I hate the person and/or thing before they're right up in my face, screaming for my attention.
So I've decided to post a regular feature on this, my little-viewed blog. I may or may not post this feature every Wednesday. I haven't decided yet. But I'm going to call it, yep, you guessed it, 'Uneducated Guess'.
This week; Sarah Silverman.

Here she is, looking quite sexy and attempting to shove a tin of soup into her sweat pants.
On the strength of the information I've so far gathered (she has a TV show and has done a lot of expensive photoshoots), I'm going to take an uneducated guess and say that she's

• East-coast
• Jewish
• Uber-cool (see above)
• Stand-up comic
• A lesbian

So, please, fill me in. That is to say, give me information.