February 2003 Archives
(I know a 12 hour day is not particularly impressive. But you should try it while having to listen to continuous U2 music. Your head will explode.)
THE PWP (HET)
CHARACTER: I'm straight!
CHARACTER OF OPPOSITE GENDER: What a coincidence! So am I!
(They have sex.)
(What's a PWP? It means: "Plot? What plot?")
I was finally able to partake in a CD swap, the last time I signed up for one my burner died and although I received stuff, I never was able to send something to my leaves.
Subjectivisten.org is a Dutch music weblog I don't read often enough. They set up an (Anti-) Valentine's CD swap. I received this compilation from monk, an eclectic mix I rather enjoyed and almost like something I could have done myself, or something one or two of my friends could have compiled - unlike previous received mixes which were mostly either too familiar, too guitar-based, too American or too middle of the road.
- Love & Peace - Quincy Jones Orchestra
- The man I love - Art Pepper
- This One's from the Heart - Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle
- Look of Love - Isaac Hayes
- By your side -Sade
- Telephone Love - Das Pop
- Hit me baby one more time - Travis
- Femme Fatal - Ours
- You're the reason our kids are ugly - Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
- Tapeworm of Love - Brute Force
- Rumenigge - Meindert Talma
- Love Me - Residents
- It's all over now, baby blue - Bob Dylan
- Dat soort volk - Paul de Leeuw
- Feels Like Rain - John Hiatt
- Kindhearted woman blues - Robert Johnson
My own concoction, which I sent to a 'Maurice', predictably went like this (and was either adored or hated, I'm sure):
- intro: Theme from the Persuaders
- Walk Like a Panther - The All Seeing I
- This Town in the Rain - Anthony Stewart Head
- Everything I do, I do it for you - Fatima Mansions
- Shag Tobacco - Gavin Friday
- Give Me Time - Billy McKenzie
- Simon - Suede
- If I Could Fly - Boy George
- Snow - Craig Armstrong & David McAlmont
- Sol Sunset - Dave-id
- Elle Adore Le Noir - T.C. Matic
- For Annie - Gavin Friday
Between all the songs I recorded bits and pieces (Marianne Faithful, Jeff Buckley, Iggy Pop, etc reading) of the Hal Willner Edgar Alan Poe tribute CD, Closed on Account of Rabies. Here's a real audio file (13mb) of the whole thing.
Maria McKee's new album "High Dive" can now be ordered from Amazon.com. And you can listen to mp3 snippets on her site.
Currently listening to Dutch saxophonist Hans Dulfer's new effort, 'Scissors' - a freebie I picked up at work. Jazzy, funky... I think this is or perhaps used to be called 'fusion'. Dulfer's probably the only Dutch artist to have an official Japanese website... it looks a lot better than his official Dutch site. Yes, he's Candy Dulfer's dad. (One or two people might wonder.)
I have to cut the time I spend on cooking, but I don't want to eat badly. I've been on an Indian food kick for the past few weeks and this product, Mild Curry Paste by Pataks rocks the modern world thrice over. Fry onions, brown meat (chicken, lamb... sometimes just spinach and tomatoes, etc), add a couple of spoons of curry paste, add yoghurt, or double cream if you're feeling thin. Ready in less than 15 minutes. Eat with something starchy, flat bread, naan, roti, rice. I used cous cous today. Wham-bam in the microwave. I've also used Patak's Balti sauce, but prefer this one. Oh, don't forget adding some fresh coriander.
Elsewhere, Matt's a big man.
Milagros del mar. A dish of 5 grilled pieces of fish and a creamy pepper sauce. You know, cooks who think covering their lovely (even if some are still RARE) with a half inch layer of thick sauce is a good idea should be hanged, drawn and quartered. My guess is they don't really appreciate fish themselves... or perhaps don't like food much, in general. Popocatepetl in Utrecht, a place I hadn't been in many many years does just that. Off with their heads.
Cathal Coughlan should have a weblog. Go read and watch his new video.
No comment...
Talking about {fray} "What have you done for love?" I can't bloody think of anything. Not anything that wouldn't make me laugh.
{fray} has a cool new look.
Dutch readers: wanna win a Familie Knots DVD? Check out: omroep.nl / films en series
There was a slim brunette on the Metro yesterday evening who looked endlessly stylish on first glance. A bit of shapely leg, covered in a rather fancy type of fishnets, stuck out from underneath a nicely cut camel coloured coat.
Perfect nails, shiny with translucent polish.
A second look revealed her baby-ish northern european features.
A better look revealed she was a blonde who'd dyed her hair, rather straggly at the ends, a shade of chestnut.
She picked a mobile from her bag and rang her friend, waiting for her at Central Station. 'I'll see you there in 5,' she said, cheerfully. 'No, don't wait there, you don't want to be cold, do you? Stay inside.'
Then she rang a girlfriend. 'No, I'm meeting him in 5,' she said, sounding tired. 'Wish me luck, I really, really don't feel like seeing him.'
[ ... ]
'No, just coffee. He wanted to go out for the evening and I couldn't keep saying no.'
[ ... ]
'All I want to do is set a date for picking up the rest of my stuff, you know.
[ ... ]
'Yes... especially since he's still seeing that OTHER woman.'
For some reason, I felt sorry for the bloke.
There was a bloke on the Metro this morning who looked like Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan with slightly thinning hair. Very cool.
Not so cool, though, was the fact that he knew it.
You could see it on his face. Pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes, thinking, 'I look like James Bond, me.'
So uncool when you're on the 7.33 Metro into your office job, mistah.
You are looking at prolific.org on pair.com. Blame any wonkiness on me.
(I've copied this entry to the main column - I feel a series coming on)
There was a bloke on the Metro this morning who looked like Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan with slightly thinning hair. Very cool. Not so cool, though, was the fact that he knew it. You could see it on his face. Pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes, thinking, 'I look like James Bond, me.' So uncool when you're on the 7.33 Metro into your office job, mistah.
Certainly in the top 10 online annoyances are the arseholes who subscribe to mailinglists and a few days later send you a message that goes 'can u stop sending me this crap'. My standard reply is always 'Really, there's no need to be rude. Try being civil, you might get done what you want.' etc etc. Their standard reply is always 'sorry, I'm having a bad day.' Having a bad day, people, is no reason to be rude to the lovely people, strangers to you, who are at the other end of your bloody free mail account. Also, the 'someone else must have subscribe me' line really doesn't work. Now, excuse me, I must go bang my head against a wall, repeatedly.
ON THIS DAY. This is brill.
Our new U2log.com editor, Cindy, is doing some great work for us, including this report: In the Name of Love: Two Decades of U2, about the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's U2 exhibit. Neat mix of weblog/news type reporting - in letter form, no less. Very pleased with this.
New item added to my job description. "Must read TV guide." (We have almost as many TV guides as we have networks in this country. I chose this one.) Anyway - see, jobs can be fun! (I know you people know that, it's just a revelation to me.)
Eläkeläiset - Humppa. Blogged for later investigation, Humppa music from Finland - polka punk? (via MF)
"What do you want from me, Jonathan-slash-The First?" Bwah! (sorry... Buffy goodness makes my day)
Thanks to swanz for the New Order CD - Technique. (I won it in one of his quizzes) A trip to my PO Box also brought the delights of the Beth Gibbons, de U2 DVD and the Fast Show DVD. Endless pleasures. [ ... ] I think downloading is now finally starting to affect my CD buying. That and not having a whole lot of money, I wager. I'm only ordering from Amazon these days when I get my referral vouchers in.
Hello world... working from my crummy old ibook (that hasn't even been paid off yet - please remind me never ever to lease comps again). I think my pc exploded overnight. I heard the *fatal error* sound while I was in bed. In the morning, the comp was sitting there looking all fresh and rebooted. It dials in, connects, but makes no actually contact with the world outside. This, as always, is extremely bad timing. (update: Looks like the XP firewall had gone wonky. Online now, but unprotected.)
::: THE IMPOSTER ::: CSS: "fun with css", experiments with menus, etc. Nifty.
welcome to dadaphonic™. Website for a small recordlabel owned by The Cranes. Site by the The Cuban Council. The Cranes? They still exist? Sheesh. Mp3 downloads available. Like the music, while the voice makes me want to slap someone, the singer if possible.
2003 is turning out to be a year of learning. 's Better than a year of mourning.
Cuban Council -- Superb Digital Solutions. Hmm, pwetty. By the people that brought you K10k.
The Modern Word, lovely lovingly crafted literary site. Has a John Banville page that I need to read. Link shamelessly nicked from druppels.be. Note to self: read everything Banville has ever written.
CROON hasn't had a decent submission since June 10, 2002. I don't promote it much and keep meaning to close the site down entirely, if it weren't for the lovely stories in it. I had a look at it yesterday night and found out I must have left it sitting halfway through it's move to Movable Type because a lot of links weren't working and some of the mailto tags had become visible. I fixed all that last night, and tuned the templates and css a bit, giving it a more logical underlying structure (h1 at the top, etc etc). I also gave it a different logo and changed the background a little. I also set up prolific.org at pair.com, it's all up and running barebones. All I have to do is move over the templates/css and then move the domain. And I did all that because? Hell, I don't know.
The Independent profiles Peter O'Toole "in his year at Rada were Richard Harris, Alan Bates and Albert Finney."
Stairway to Middle Earth. How can I be on line for 10 years and never have seen this.
Next tech task on the list: move last couple of domains residing on Dreamhost to Pair. Then downgrade to cheapest plan, or eliminate all together. Save money and headaches all in one go! Now if pair would just up disk allowance again, like they do every few years...
Just wrote a little update to the INXS piece. Scroll down.
... I misread that quote, I thought it said "I want to be so deep...". Which would be more interesting.
"I don't want to be so deep that people have to drown to relate to me." -- Bono, 1987
MT users might want to have a look into: SmartyPants.
"My only complaint is that they don't want me to link to their banners directly." (scroll down to end of page). Is bandwidth theft such a difficult concept to understand? Maybe if they start paying for their own hosting they will (they're on a university domain).
You KNOW you're in trouble when you travel into work singing U2's - previously detested and ignored - "Gone".
Tonight's "open" class was a fun way to end the acting course. I won't be going straight into the follow up, for time reasons, but I'll try to enroll next Winter season. I might be doing some work as an extra in April, in a play our teacher is staging. It's been a long time since I saw a course through till its end. Good experience.
Oh my god, I'm playing in front of actual people tonight and I haven't learnt me lines.
The animated Rupert Giles, from the animated BtVS series that never happened. (No network wanted it.)
Bloody hell. One and a half hours of proof. We get it, already!
Did I wake ya? "No... I'm working." It's 11pm where you are, what do you mean you're working..." Moany voice: Well, I'm working on the book, you know... "Well... tough." Heh. Just what I needed.
Me: "The HAIR! It looked... . What did you do, iron it?' He: "No! Just greased it a bit." Me: "You looked like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen." He: "Who?" Me: "That bloke off the British telly." He: "THAT wanker?! I do NOT look like him!" Me: " Well, ya did." [ ... blah blah blah so and so ... ] He: "... Lawre.. grmbl... And I do NOT look like that guy!" [ ... blah blah blah thingamebob blah blah christmaspressie.. blah blah didn't send it.. ] He:"... sigh... I dunno, maybe I'll cut it."
Mission accomplished.
flap flap
We just got one of these at work, a Power Mac G4 Dual. Shiny happy people.
About a year and a half ago, I took photographs at a show in Dublin. I was told not to take photographs, but I did so anyway (none too sneakily, but without much freedom of movement) and they didn't try to stop me. So far so good. Now they are asking me if I have any pictures of the show for their new brochure.
Saw a girl on the metro, reminded me of Meg. When I got off at my stop, I heard her speak. She was English.
Vote for the SXSW People's Choice Web Awards. If we don't win the regular award... this one would be great too.
Most of my friends understand the type of book I'm writing. They understand because they're likeminded people, or because they've been indoctrinated by years of my acquaintance. But people who don't play gigs or don't go to gigs, or people who go to concerts once every blue moon, don't get it. When I have to tell people what I'm up to, the #1 question asked is: "All the concerts? But aren't they all the same?" No. They're not. And I try to explain to them that every gig's different because the audience is different, the venue's different and what the band ate for dinner may have been different... but they still don't get it and that last part just confuses them more. Here's a quote from U2's show director Willie Williams, from his 1998 tour diary: "It's sometimes hard to compare one show with another, because so much changes from night to night." So there you have it, people, trust him, he's a professional.
I've booked time off for March so I can finish the book. And I've booked time off for April. I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I'm looking forward to my birthday.
New issue of 28mm.org. Check out Korean War Memorial.
Babe, I'm On Fire! (15 minute Nick Cave promo, direct link to broadband stream)
Ordered this: Stummute (Mute Bank)
Femme Fatales... an exhibition in Groningen (up north) I really want to see.
William Gibson mentions Barcelona's La Fura dels Baus, the performance group. "Total theatre". I've seen them twice (Noun (90), and Tier Mon (88), but it's a long time ago, I've missed everything they've done since and I would really like to see them again. Both times were absolutely mindblowing. Locked in a big hall, surrounded by mad punk actors, fire everywhere, water everywhere, flour bombs going off, people juggling chainsaws. Pumping, heaving, techno spanish music. Real fear. Real adrenaline. I held on to my friend and enjoyed every minute.Art fuck to the extreme. Here's a piece in the Guardian on them. And some fantastic pictures elsewhere. (Oh my god, it looks like they'll be in London from April 20 to May 17! "The show, to which under-18s are not allowed entry in Spain, is described as "orgiastic", and will test theatre licensing laws in Britain to the limit." The Independent.)
Tough, tough weekend. I'm losing momentum. Where's my guardian angel? I need his wings to fly.
{ Michael Hutchence, click to enlarge }
It's not the greatest picture. I wasn't the biggest fan. But I've been listening to U2's PopMart tour. Hutchence passed away while U2 were touring America, and his death influenced the shows quite a bit.
Hutchence and Bono were neighbours (in France) and friends.
Just listening to the concerts and writing down the words, Bono's mourning and feelings of guilt, made me remember this shot I took when INXS played the MCV in Utrecht. I think it was 1986 or 7, but I can't find an exact date for the show.
I had previously seen INXS in '86, before they 'broke' America. They played a free festival in The Hague. Hutchence was mesmerizing. Made you feel he was singing for you alone. As I said, I wasn't a huge fan, but his star quality was undeniable.
Oddly, what I remember most about the gig in Utrecht was INXS's guitarist, who I thought was a fine thing. And their saxophonist, who wore cool specs.
I wish I had a recording of the show.
Update (8/2/2003):
Turns out I do have a full recording of the show and the date of the concert was February 16, 1988. It was just after Need you tonight had gone to #1 in the States and one or two months before they broke Europe. They were back in Holland on June 30th, playing the much larger Ahoy arena.
All week I'm just an inch away from the news. It's in my face all day, there are two TV screens near my desk fixed on the Teletext 101 page and when I look out the window I can see the offices where the Teletext and NOS News reporters do their job. Safe to say we don't miss much when it comes to newsworthy events. At the weekend, if I'm not on call, my TV's only on to watch some U2 show or documentary and my eyes are fixed on the computer screen - tapping away, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter. I no longer check MeFi religiously, so I only found out about space shuttle Columbia half a day after it happened. Embarrassingly I sent out some banal questions about fashion items to some mailing lists earlier in the day. Feels odd now, catching up on the story. Good thread at MeFi, covering it.
Oh bah, Chris got mugged.
When I go down into the street to do my shopping, the world is white once more. Just across the road there's something going on. A little taxi van sticks out diagonally from the parked cars on the road. There's a police truck, several ambulances, several police cars and the place is teeming with cops. It looks like murder. I walk by and ask a local woman watching from her door what's going on. "That man was killed by taxi." I find this shocking even if I didn't know 'that man'. A person who lived in my street died while walking his dog, outside his own house, in the pretty snow. The taxi, no doubt, was speeding. The man, no doubt, was looking how sweet his dog looked in the snow. "That's terrible," I cry. The woman shrugs. Another bystander says: "Where's the dog?"
'Hey, look!', the hair stylist said, handing me a short piece of strangely curly hair. 'A grey hair!', she said enthusiastically. Just what a girl needs of a Friday morning. I fingered the odd little object not really recognising it as a piece of me.