Good Morning, Good Morning.

I've got nothing to say but it's O.K.....


Last weekend I was the Production Supervisor at the Bon Jovi show in Central Park. It was a big show but really, these days, the only real challenge in doing a show like that is staying awake for a series of 20 hour days. Unless it's a band I'm working for directly a gig is a gig is a gig, there's just more shit to deal with than usual. By the time the band got onstage I was well into the load out and trying to go home - which is as it should be.





This week I went to Red Rocks near Denver for a venue visit. I'd never been there before and it was breathtaking. I'm doing a show there (not on stage, but as a production monkey) in a few weeks so it was good to get the lay of the land. There's something about Denver that I really like - maybe it's because the west seems to start there and there are some big f***-off mountains down the road. And people in Colorado are so frigging healthy; hiking and running up mountains and shit. Freaks. But wholesome ones. One could imagine settling down with a nice girl from Colorado and opening an organic milk farm or a tent store, after running up a mountain for breakfast. If I wasn't such a deadhearted git I might do just that. But sadly, I feel like such a tumor in places like that; like everyone's so nice, and they just can't appreciate just how much I'm not...




Traveling was a schlepp - flights were booked silly and at Denver airport there were endless Orange Alerts set against the calmest airport environment I've ever been in. A public address system endlessly and pointlessly told bovine-blooded people to be terrified of a non-specified threat.It was like there was an agenda to scare people and to wind them up for no reason. But who would do something like that?



Nothing to do it's up to you

Parklife


Spent today measuring Central Park. Looks like I'll be working there soon, installing and removing a big gig. I've done it before, working production on the Dave Matthews (hacks out phlegm) back in 2003. I did pretty well on that one and managed to avoid hearing the band much at all.

I'm very lucky this year as since I've got back from China (where I dodged all kinds of bullets with my early return) I've only had to commute to jobs along the west side of Manhattan. As the festival season rolls around I think fondly of each one, knowing that every day I'm waking up in my own bed, not in a pool of sweat in a large metal coffin to spend the first hour of the day scoring passes, meal tickets and towels so I can shower in a cubicle made dank and rancid by the effluvia of countless dozens of roadies before me. No, I don't miss that.

I do miss hanging out with all the people I know through touring though. That's an eye-opener. After traveling months on a bus it's sometimes hard to adapt to civilian life, and now, even months after finishing my last tour in September, I still have to remind myself not to say somethings out loud or roll my eyes too obviously. The people I've toured with know what I mean.

At least I've been keeping busy instead. In fact, this afternoon, after I'd filled my map with measurements I spent the day slaughtering a French bloke and his Vietnamese wife in a very vivid style. The details of which you'll have to wait for until it's finished, or published.

But boy, do I have fun when I'm left to my own devices. Tomorrow I hope to slaughter some delivery boys and girls and visit a museum in Nanjing. A man needs a hobby.

Oh. Bollocks.


I guess this was kind of inevitable, and as my very clever friend Sarah said, there have been no studies so far as cell-phones, in their current ubiquity, have only been in common use for 10 years or so so it's a little early for studies....but this is the latest in radiation surveys on phone models from CNET. And radiation leads to brain cancer, etc, etc....


We're all doomed. Maybe those bluetooth headsets aren't so wanky after all?

Over the Water


I'm trying to enjoy the city this summer now that I'm here. It is the best city in the world and I'm all the more appreciative of it after 5 months in China (which I've been missing this week....hmmm).

Although I promised myself I wasn't leaving Manhattan for months this time, I went across to Brooklyn at the weekend to see the Telectroscope (techincally this is acceptable because I could walk home, if I needed to). This is billed as a tunnel to London that goes under the Atlantic and, using mirrors, allows New Yorkers to stare at people on the South Bank near Tower Bridge, and vice-versa.








Silly as it sounds I'm glad people are still making art like this - even though it's akin to a giant webcam mounted on Fulton Landing. To be honest, once one had looked at the people in London looking back at you looking at them, it was kind of done, but still, sometimes one gag is enough. Ask Wyclef...



And it's hard to beat the view here - unless you're from Sydney or Rio.... here's an old faithful, just because...

Postal Boots

Holts in Camden is the best place to buy Doc Martens. I've been going there for over ten years and bought several hundred dollars' worth of shoes last time, just by accident. I went in for some laces and came out with these amazing George Cox, Red Suede Loafers....

The bloke sold me some Royal Mail doc's this time, which I wasn't sure of as, well, who wants postie feet? It's like having plod shoes or something....anyway, they are the first pair of docs I've have that haven't flayed my heels while I wore them the first time. I was so comfortable I could talk to the dullest TM in the world on the phone about his LD's travel plans without thinking about violent murder yesterday, which is a first. And any shoes that can simmer the endless, blackhearted rage rock my world.



I saw Duran Duran on Saturday in Central Park. I never thought I'd use the word "vintage" or "classic" to describe them but their singles were still really really good (I used to have a girlfriend who loved them when I was 18 but I was into the Jam and too cool for DD, even though I liked all the singles. The shame of it, it was a very Catholic, guilty pleasure). Simon Le Bon is sort of creepy though. He's pushing 50 and still talking like he's sexy and 25, which sounds a bit like a pervy uncle flirting with bridesmaids at a wedding. "Okay, this is for the ladies, who know what it's like to be wet..." His dancing is ridiculous too, which was an unexpected bonus and cheered me up. Back in the 80's one could be excused for some of those moves, they were "weird", "arty", "androidy" or something of the time. Now they just look daft, especially as done by a podgy 50 year old. John Taylor is still one of the coolest English pop stars, really. I suspect that Simon Le Bon is a little pissed off that John Taylor can upstage him so easily, mainly because when he did the band intros he gave everyone props but when he got to John Taylor he started the crowd in a chant of "play the fucking bass, John" which sounded a touch charmless....or is that just me?

First Porn Star.


This is the Burges. It looks kind of bland here but when I was growing up this place was treacherous at the weekends after 10:30PM because it's where all the chip shops, kebab shops, bus stops and taxi ranks were. This meant that late at night all of the drunken hordes who'd been filling themselves with rum and coke, strong lager, and cider and black came here to get chips or find taxis. There were always fights; every night, and always some girl caterwauling in white high heels clutching her chips. It was good training. I think people from small cities in England develop a 6th sense about violence out of necessity, and often the ability to become invisible. These are spiteful places because the towns and cities are so small there's a good chance that if you get into a ruck with someone you'll see them again the next week. And there's fuck all to do in places like this except dance and drink and screw, like the song says. Only in Coventry blokes never danced much and to chat up girls they favoured beating up all the other blokes in the room as a mating ritual. Aah, the good old days. God knows what it's like now...probably the same with hoodies and more kitchen knives.





Lady Godiva who mysteriously rode through the city naked to reduce taxes on the people. I'm not sure if I was an evil landowner that my wife riding a horse through town with her kit off would encourage me to lower taxes, but whatever. Maybe I missed that class in evil squire school...? Anyway, as it's part of the city's history every hour, on the hour, a naked plastic woman on a horse pops out of the clock tower in the City Centre to give us all a pervy thrill. Oh, and the bloke covering his eyes above is the original peeping Tom, who supposedly went blind after copping an eyeful of the naked posh bird on a horse riding down the street. Whether this was because of divine retribution or excessive self-abuse, historical records are unclear.

Coventry Canal

I ran along the Coventry Canal towpath. It's been redeveloped and it leads through the industrial corridor of the city and it's quite pretty in places. I stopped my run this morning when I got here:





This is the factory where I first worked when I left school. It's mostly closed now but it used to be a big chemical factory and we'd unload tons and tons of chemicals and spare yarn for reprocessing. It was hard and dirty work and a great impetus to get out of Coventry and not end up like the old men who were working there with rotted lungs and who would argue about their brooms. No disrespect to factory workers - I come from a long line of coal miners - but it made it clear to me that I didn't want to get stuck doing that forever. There's a fence up there now, but back when I worked there you could, if you had a boat, sidle up and walk directly into the factory. Considering the amount of volatile chemicals in there (I still have burns on my arms from some of them) I always thought it would make a vulnerable target. But I guess back then the IRA preferred pubs and post offices, both of which were bombed in Coventry.




This is the junction of two canals (Coventry and Bedworth Canal and the Oxford Canal). Back during the industrial revolution these were the freeways of the time, which is a quaint idea now. They were built with 7 inches difference in water lever, hence the lock that connects them. Even back then no one could agree on formats, not even for water.

Enough of the History of the Midlands - I'll be getting into WWII Military Insignia or model aircraft next. (For the record, the Germans had the best uniforms, hands down...)


There was still a lot of institutionalized drinking in England. Many of the people I saw along the canal were just drinking to kill time. It was sad to see - all of these people would have had a purpose 50 years ago, even if it was a shitty job making car parts. What's going to happen when all the disenfranchised people get bored of being broke and hopeless? When their children grow up seeing everything but getting nothing? Here's a man taking four cans of lager in a bag for a walk. It was about 10:30AM...





I noticed in England there were plenty of Cross of St. George flags flown over pubs and houses and gardens. I gather that there's been a debate there of late about the nature or English nationalism and if it's possible to be proud of England without becoming a racist fuckwit. It's a shame pride in one's history and culture has been hijacked ever since I can remember by the BNP and their ilk and while I might feel proud of some parts of English culture I feel stymied by what the fascists do with that kind of spirit. And make no mistake, they're on the rise again with the BNP getting elected to local councils and a soft-peddled message of "Immigrants are taking over...". The sad thing is I can't see anyone really taking to the streets in opposition like they did against Oswald Mosley and his cronies back in 1936 on Cable St. Not nowadays. The country's been fleeced first by Thatcher (who should be tried as a traitor) and then it seems by Blair too of late - the disenfranchised will want to blame someone and there's no working class any more. Might as well pick on the Poles, the Somalians, the Muslims....thirty years ago it was that Pakistanis and the Indians, fifty years ago the Jamaicans, before that the Irish and the Jews.... in hindsight, maybe I jumped the gun wanting to celebrate being English. Monty Python, The Beatles and The Office don't really make up for all that, do they?




And this flag was flying over a pub in a traditionally Indian / Pakistani part of the City. My dear old mum reckoned it was because of St. Georges day. Me? I think there's not too many people who have a GIANT cross of St. George flag under the stairs for one day of the year - not unless they're trying to make a fucking big point to all the people in the neighbourhood.

And as you'll agree, you can see how some people would want to protect their racial purity, and natural superiority....I mean, look at us, on the march. I'm filling up...



But what do i know? I'm still against selling-off British Telecom and I find it hard to say Tory without adding the word Scum.

Coventry.

It's a strange treat coming here; like visiting a nostalgic theme park.

I was particularly taken today by a display of drinks in a discount store. The flavours, which are a little hard to see, are Iron Bru and Dandelion and Burdock (which I can't describe but if I said it was nearly a liquorice flavour soda it would be close) are popular kids drinks, except these are "fortified" with Vodka (note also Orange flavour and finally, "Blue" flavour, like someone couldn't even be bothered to come up with a name, "Fuck it, it looks like paraffin, let's just call it blue...."). Such low-quality it seemed to me that I took a photo for the blog.

I've taken photo's wearing big mickey-mouse ears on the North Korean Border and in Tian'anmen Square without a problem but I got told I wasn't allowed to take photos in "Home Discount" in Coventry. I can't think why, I mean, what's wrong with selling very cheap alcopops? Wouldn't you be proud of it? I guess industrial espionage is a big problem when you're pimping crap like this. When I was younger we'd joke about super strong lager like Tenants Super but these days even those Wino's drinks seem to have acquired some dignity. Still, with no more jobs in the country you have to have something for the young people to do, eh?




The "Home Discount" emporium. Stricter security than the centre of China during the Tibet Protests...

Just in Case There Was Any Doubt.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c


Not too much to argue with here, is there?

Picture This...


Nearly everyone on facebook will have seen this photo soon, I'm sure, and the accompanying text sent with it goes something like:

"interesting pic showing Chinese Military donning Tibetan Monk's robes before going on to riot and cause trouble disguised as monks.....circulate this pic please"

I don't know what the Chinese army were doing carrying a bunch of Tibetan Monk's Robes as the photo doesn't really prove anything, but it's hard to think of another credible explanation. Doubtless the Chinese Government will say something like "Chinese
Soldiers prepare to go undercover to infiltrate separatist groups" or "Why is the Western media interfering in China's domestic policy?" (and thus changing the subject, again).

But....hmmmm....

I love Beijing and the people and the country - one can't blame a population for its crappy Government, right? But I can't help but think of two places all the indignant Westerners should be focusing their energies instead of bitching and chest-beating about China on the Guardian Messageboard; places closer to home with human rights issues - it's smug, racist condescension focusing largely on China's Human Rights problems--of which there are many--without trying to clean up one's own back yard; like fixing/civilizing those savage little yellow people takes precedence over, say, an illegal prison near Cuba, or the treatment of immigrants in prisons in the UK....and I love the USA too, btw. It is a fucking great idea, truth be told, better than all that classist bullshit I grew up with. But nowhere gets it completely right and while China should not be excused there's just something so sanctimonious about the concerns with China's human rights issues now. Lots of haughty, colonialist hand-wringing that smells just off. I don't think China's faults should be ignored, but it's like people are soooo upset about it yet at home, with issues with their own Governments.... I mean, to be honest, considering what's happened since 2001 it's risible that the citizens of both the UK and US can get upset at what happened in Tibet when they're funding the situation in Iraq. And symptomatic of a western point of view of Asia. I'm not defending the appalling Chinese Human Rights record, or saying it shouldn't be brought out for discussion, but it's the superior tone it's discussed in I object to. And if you've seen white people in Asia this might make even more sense; we're like a rash....


To be honest, after spending nearly five months in China I just can't see China changing to adopt Western standards. Why would they? Their culture is over 5000 years old, and they revolutionized their system only 60 years ago (Before the PRC was formed in 1949 China was, mostly, run as a feudal society with the poor being eternally very poor and the rich being very rich, hence the revolution after the disillusionment with the Emporer and his over-privileged, ineffectual ilk). They're already getting all the trade they want because of our demands for cheap products. Assuming that at some point in the future the Chinese government is going to say, "Shit, this system seems to be getting us lots of money and influence, but you know, isn't it time we were just a bit nicer?" is naive, bourgeois bollocks. China's only real issue will be when its own middle class start wanting the same freedoms of travel and investment as we have in the West. That's what 's going to change China, not some sabre rattling from Western Governments who dare not upset China too much in case it impedes the import of $2 towels and tee-shirts at Wal-Mart (Or Asda, in the UK) and thus alienates their own voters.

China's name in Chinese is Zhongguo which means "Middle Kingdom". They don't care so much about the rest of the world as most of their experiences of the rest of the world in recent history have been negative - be it the Japanese invading Manchuria, or the Portuguese and British forcing trade concessions on China (the Opium War, which funded the British Empire, was the UK going to war with China for the right to sell heroin to the Chinese people....), or the French, Germans and Americans all coming to get a cut. So of course, yes, they'll improve Human Rights for the Olympics...sure. You want fries with that?

That's what I think. But wtf do I know? My last last job was holding a flashlight for Holly Hunter at a sales conference...

Anyway, soldiers playing fancy dress, anyone?

Pig People


Back in New York now for 2 weeks. The time has flown because I've been working pretty much non-stop since I got home. I've just finished ten days running a corporate hostility lounge for the Tribeca Film Festival and this week I'm working on the Rainforest Charity Concert at Carnegie Hall.

The corporate hostility lounge was a freebie place to hang out, see short movie screenings and to get a drink during the film festival to credit card holders. What I'd forgotten, as it's been a while since I worked at a special event, is what pigs people are. After a couple of days where some people had figured out there were tasty snacks passed around at 7PM every night and a free bar, people were coming for the food and then abusing the wait-staff because the free food was too slow in arriving, or it wasn't the menu they'd expected, or the free bar didn't have the right brand of whiskey / vodka. The free popcorn and dips table was like a refugee camp with people filling their pockets with popcorn and walnuts and power bars like they were starving. Honestly, this after reading some more Freud about man's destructive, violent nature and I'm just about done with people. It's depressing watching fat, greedy fuckers grab handfuls of nibbles to line their pockets - this wasn't an impoverished student film fest. but a middle class, high end credit card do....no one was going hungry yet people behaved as if a) there wasn't enough free popcorn for everyone & B) like they had a right to abuse the staff because of some dubious, heightened status because they were in a fucking ballroom no completely open to Joe Schmo.

On the plus side, I met some good people who were working the event and who were equally shocked so I guess not everyone should be tarred with the greedy fucking pig brush.

New York is the best city in the world. I'd nearly forgotten, Beijing is a foxy minx and LA a daydream but coming home and I realise I love it here. After 11 years one would hope so.

Everytime I blog now it seems I tap into a reservoir of bile. Hmmmm. Maybe I'm done? Maybe my cold black heart is all writ out?

See? Every cloud....

"Dong Bei Ren"


....which means North-East person, in Chinese. The NE people have a fierce reputation in China (and that's fierce as in feral, not fierce as in Chelsea). Anyway, in the Northeast I visited two cities: Dalian and Dandong.

Dalian from the hill. It's a HUGE port, miles of containers - I've never seen anything like it except in Hong Kong. It's also famous for being beautiful and maybe it is by Chinese standards although I didn't get that so much - they're big into football, see the giant ball in the middle of the funfair. Every taxi driver wanted to talk about football, it was like being in Highbury. There are some nice beaches there which looked pretty clean even though the water was freezing. (I'm English so I paddled).






Russian Street in Dalian. The Chinese were grateful to the Russians for helping win the war agains the Japanese (I think) and granted the Russians the right to run trauns from Siberia to the port at Dandong and I guess this themed street developed in response. It's a curiosity but like themed streets everywhere in the world just sells tat.




From my hotel room in Dandong I could look across the river at North Korea. The hotel kindly provided telescopes in these rooms so you could spy on North Koreans doing something Axis-of-Evily, like playing Hacky-Sack or fishing in the river at low tiede. The nefarious bastids, evil hacky-sack, too, I'd wager.






This is the most Eastern part of the Great Wall. The river is the border with North Korea, beyond are North Korean fields where they are no doubt growing evil rice. It looked like a very understated border - I kind of expect with the Evil Chinese (are the Chinese still evil? I can't remember...) and the Evil North Koreans that there'd would be all kinds of blofeld shit along here and machines for making poisonous clouds that can rain acid on white babies and rockets aimed at the West but I didn't see anything. Then again, they're kind of friendly and it's bit like the US / Canadian border at Windsor, them being evil together and that. Having lots of guards would only get in the way of their evil plotting against us, right?




See? as if to prove my pint - this is the border check when you come into China. Looks like a cafe if you ask me. Probably come over for a cup of tea and a chat about killing the imperialist, capitalist scum down in Taiwan....while trying to buy D&G fake bags, of course.



The bridge on the right is the remains of the one the US "accidentally" strafed during the Korean war. North Korean left it this way. Later the Chinese rebuilt the bridge on the left. At night they're both lit up, but the one on the left is lit only half-way because the North Koreans can't be arsed making it look pretty at night. Of course, I think that's because evil plotting's easier to do on an unlit bridge, isn't it? And I suspect the Chinese made their side all schmancy just to show off....




Look! North Korean fisherman doing some evil-fishing!




Behind me, the Great Wall and on the right, North Korea. On me, big, fat eyebrows I borrowed from Neko Case.

Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again.


Sort of.

I am enjoying my last few days in Beijing and because of some unforseen good juju from the Chinese web guardians and because my other blog had reached capacity I'm back here.

A lot of nothing has gone on since I last blogged - I've been hanging out, writing, traveling a little and pondering life's big questions such as "mortgage, how to pay?"

But in a rare show of brevity I'm going to let some pictures speak for themselves, mostly.

Below are some photos of my trip to Pingyao, one of China's old banking capitals in Shanxi Province about 500 miles or so Southwest of Beijing. It's an 11 hour train journey, which is pretty comfortable in a soft sleeper unless your compartment is full of NOISY OLD PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SPEAK OR DO ANYTING QUIETLY EVER AT ALL EVER FOR ANY FUCKING REASON. Which was a shame for them as when my stop came at 4:32am I obviously couldn't get out of bed in anything other than a BIG SHOUTY WAY.

A man needs his hobbies, eh?

But, enough. Pingyao:

Things weren't so tough in the Ming Dynasty. Sure, the buildings were small but they did have plasma-screen billboard advertising.




An unfortunate name for a restaurant?




A modern manhole cover.




Can't help the Chinglish....Pingyao Beef is delicious (and sometimes it's donkey 'beef', but whatever, yum yum, piggy's bum). But noddle?




My hotel was along here....







Hova, big with the Mings, it seems...

Long time no type.....

For some reason the govt have allowed me to access my site this evening so I'm using the opportunity to tell you that I am and have been blogging here recently, as this site I can get onto regularly and reliably.


See you there?


http://howdoyousay.normblogs.com/