Like Eating a Topic on Acid

I’m tired. In fact I’m beyond tired. I’m so tired I can’t think of a word elaborate enough to describe the exhaustion I feel. Although exhaustion is pretty good. I flew into Amsterdam on June 19th. Started work the next day, my alarm set for 5.45. Yes, apparently there’s a 5.45 in the morning now. 20 days, 2 cities and hundreds of thousands of euros later, I’m still working.

One more week and I get 2 days off, cooped up in a shitty hotel in a provincial town.

Where last week I felt like a hamster in a cage, this week I feel like an inmate of Guantanamo Bay. Kept behind fences, randomly soaked or scorched, sonically bombarded by various sources at all hours of the day and night. If you get pissed off at your phone, try carrying two. Then add a 15-channel walkie-talkie and 100 or so people who want you for something which is either late or missing, all competing with a sound-system branded illegal in several countries.

Back when I was a bartender, I once worked 18 days in a row. I believe it was some sort of house record. By the last day I was a bit insane. I went out whenever the opportunity arose but I couldn’t get drunk. I’d passed the stage where everything was too much, passed the stage where everything was funny. I’d reached Dennis Nielsen.

For some reason, I don’t feel like that this time. Instead I feel I’ve been transported back in time to my first summer at highschool. It’s 1992, I’m almost 14, and I’m wanged off my tits on acid. I’m walking alongside someone, but we couldn’t possibly speak to each other, or to anyone else. I’m concentrating intensely on chewing and swallowing the first bite of a Topic. I’ve no idea why I bought it, I suppose I needed some familiarity, and back then I ate quite a few Topics.

Any sense of time is stolen from you on acid. You experience deja vu. You can convince yourself that time has stopped. You can lose 3 hours shamanically repeating your address just to keep a grip on who you are/were. All in the same night.

But this Topic is taking me fucking ages. That mix of nougat, hazelnut, caramel and class A narcotic is creating a party in my mouth, and no-one knows what time it starts or who anyone is. I dare not spit it out, and yet I can’t swallow it. I feel like the Boy David- there is no roof in my mouth, and the pointy, half-chewed nuts are jabbing directly into my brain. I could swallow my tongue before I finish this chocolate bar. I hear a car way off in the distance and sprint across the street to avoid it. I jump the chain-rope around the war memorial but my fellow fuckhead has chosen to step on his section and the chain snaps taught, catching my ankle.

Everything slows down, moreso, as my hands flail, clutching for the strips of light racing past my face, away from the inevitable; the sun-baked lawn. The Topic drifts from my hand, spinning off on it’s own axis. I’m suspended mid-air. The grass rises to meet me and suddenly I’m back on earth. I feel no pain, other than the caramel in my cavities and the nuts embedded in my brain tissue. Close by I hear laughter, and it’s coming from me.

Part of the awkwardness that came with frying my teenaged brain with LSD returned to me this week. I have difficulty maintaining eye-contact. I sat in company for hours yesterday without saying a word. Nothing I could offer has any meaning, any point, or any consequence. It’s just there, like a Topic in the grass.

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

Welcome to New York. You remembered your wallet, right?

Despite my dartboard memory, I have a high capacity for certain things. Favourite lines or passages of dialogue for example. I also never forget being stung. So my Skinflint Spidey-sense was tingling as I stepped off the tourbus into the Long Island sunshine. Walking into the venue, I remembered last year, when a friendly man conned me into installing not one but two telephone lines into the office, then charged us $550 for the privilege.

''Well, won't get fooled again" said I, and spiralled off into a 9-minute drum solo. Next thing I know there's a guy in my office.

"Hey buddy. I'm puttin 'ya phone line in, lemme show ya where.."

"Oh, that's ok, we never use the phone." I attempt humour; "We're from Europe- we don't have any friends here." This worked two days ago. No dice.

"Well, Im gonna put one in. Ya know, just in case." Right, in case my watch stops and I need to call the Speaking Clock? In case I just gotta call my BFF Jill?

"Seriously, man, I don't need a line. I don't want one."

"Well, you never know."

He left and I went to find something beautiful to destroy. If he can't get in, he can't install it. When I came back, the sneaky fuck had got in with a master key and installed a 'phone. A white one.

Welcome to Union Country. Where if you don't ask, you get it anyway, and they charge you for it. He'd switched the line on, so now we had to pay the prick. All day. Nice switch-flicking there, no-mark.

I had been warned that if the Teamsters didn't get breakfast, they could make the load-in and load-out very difficult, insisting only they could handle anything, but of course sticking strictly to their break schedule, so that basically 33% of the 'workforce' is always on donut-time. They have a minimum load-in time of 8 hours; it takes 4, maximum. They have a minimum load-out of 6 hours; it takes 2 if the local hands are really slow. Which, of course, they will be.

That's 14 hours' pay for a maximum 6-hours' work, and 2 free meals. From the outside looking in, the US Union is a lot like the British dole, only a little less honest. Rather than pretend to look for work, they pretend to do work. You can't blame them- they get paid more this way.

"You wanna standin' contest? I think I got time..."

This beautiful hunk of clay is a forklift driver. We pay him for 17 hours. He can face many directions, oh, yes. Not just South-West with his nose towards catering, sniffing the air like a starving polar bear.

So, my wondrously expensive phone installed, I wander over to the Teamster office. That's the semi-circle of chairs around a TV you see in every Union building. I ask the surly cigar-chugging scholar and gentleman how many staff he had working that day, so I can issue them with carte blanche to our catering hall.
"Well, you asked for none, I gave you my minimum." He had to slip that in. I die a little inside. "So that'd be eight."

God bless the Union.

Freedom exists. Now get back to work.

Douchey personal plate aside, this seems to be the state motto for New Hampshire.
Considering virtually every number plate in the USA is made in prison, is this subconscious suggestion aimed at reducing overcrowding, or just plain cruel?

And why hasn't someone keyed this choadwank's car yet?