We watched 'Together' and 'Sur Mes Levres' on Saturday. A Swedish film and a French film. 'Together' was such a warm movie despite being set in Malmo in the winter. It made us laugh and cry and want to play football in the snow while listening to Abba. 'Sur Mes Levres' was a repeat viewing for us as it is so brilliant. It's the kind of thriller Hollywood would love to make but never will. Not a drop of dialogue is spilled or wasted. Expect to see the Hollywood remake in a couple of years with Julia Roberts trying desperately to be Emanuel Devos.

On Sunday we rose early, prepared a picnic, picked up our friend Martin at the station and then drove to Skegness in Lincolnshire. We had waited two months since the official opening of Jubilee Odyssey to ride it. All the early glitches have now been ironed out and it was running like clockwork (or 'like shit off a shovel' as my Dad would say).
We took a ride on the Millenium coaster first as we hadn't ridden that either. Nice, smooth and fast but not very exciting. Martin was very brave as he doesn't really like coasters or heights but still took the plunge. He was dizzy and a bit discombobulated after we got off the Millenium coaster so we waited a while before getting on Jubilee.
When we did though it was fantatstic. Very steep first drop of 170ft into the worlds largest vertical loop. Extreme G forces coming out of the loop and then into an enormous cobra roll. I won't bore you with any more technical stuff other than to say that it is a masterpiece of engineering. And bloody good fun.
We took a walk on the beach after leaving the coasters, then strolled round town, had dinner and left the seaside at dusk.


Darren and Martin with one of Millenium Coasters loops in the background


We parked the car, got out and this is what we saw - Jubilee Odyssey.


Me and Martin (I'm the one with his eyes shut). Darren did well and managed to capture both trains in the picture. 'Jubilee' leaving the station and 'Millenium' at the top of the first drop.

Why Six Feet Under?
Well, in 1665 the 'Black Death' (bubonic plague) killed 65,000 Londoners and so the Lord Mayor of olde Londinium created new 'rules' for disposing of the dead. Shallow burials were now 'out' and 'in' came these new fangled graves that were to be at least six feet deep. Since then this depth has been the standard.
Also round about this time fleas and body lice were rampant and so most people shaved their body hair. The upper classes were not happy with their new bald pubic look and so the merkin was invented, a triangle of 'real' fur that they stuck 'down there' to hide their embarrassment. As if a stick on fanny wig isn't embarrassing enough. 100 years later the word was adopted by soldiers to describe the mop that they used to clean out their canons.

Darren has found a great way to keep that 'special place' squeaky clean. Every bathroom should have some.

We went to see Insomnia last night. Very good. Nice scenery. I won't bore you with my thoughts or a mini-review. Two very sexy supporting actors. See above.

It turned into a Friday night retail frenzy. A simple visit to HMV on Oxford street resulted in a serious dent to my bank balance. Shoulda known, never learn, what a sucker. I always fall under the spell in these 'multi-entertainment' shops, I'm obviously drawn to the bright lights and pure oxygen that they pump into the shop to keep everyone alert and excited. Part of the problem was arriving before Darren had finished work. He would have kept my manic shopping in check. But I had an hour to kill so I picked up a shopping basket and started browsing. Before you can say "three cd's for 20 quid" that basket was full.
Upstairs in the DVD department, away from the insanity of the CD sale, I took them all out and hid them behind a box set of 'Only Fools and Horses'. I kept the two cd's that I actually wanted in the basket (neither of them in the sale). Very proud of myself. So, if you find the first six Clash albums while looking for volume 8 of Only Fools and Horses in HMV on Oxford Street then do me a favour and get 'em for me (pay you back, honest).
The next problem was the DVD selection. Too much to choose from. Which is his fault as he's sort of responsible for what's on those racks. Anyway, I fled up and down the aisles shovelling movies into my basket. I was putting stuff in there that I'd seen before, stuff I'd missed at the movies, stuff I'd heard was good, stuff with stickers on proclaiming '5* in Empire magazine' and stuff which I already owned on VHS. I was a dream shopper, a shining example of how the sales techniques have been honed to perfection in order to trap folk like me on payday. I was stunned. Like a rabbit in the headlights.
In the relative calm of the games department I came to my senses and stared in horror at my bulging basket. Again I emptied everything out except what I actually wanted and hid the offending movies behind a display for the PlayStation 2 games console. Which is where I got into really big trouble.
The item I actually went to the shop to buy was a game called 'Medal of Honour' for my PC. I found it, read the box and put it in the basket. And thats when it all went a bit pear shaped. They switched on the 'homing beacon' and it began to draw me near. Nearer and nearer until I was standing in front of the PlayStation 2 games console listening to a voice in my head saying "you know you want one, just put it in the basket, what harm can it do?, it's payday, thats what you go to work for innit?" So I put it in the basket. I took out Medal of Honour and replaced it with the PlayStation 2 version. The damage was done. There was no other department to escape to where I could gather my thoughts and re-group my troops. They had me cornered. So I surrendered and handed over my basket to the smiling man behind the counter. "It's a fair cop guv" I muttered as I shot my wad (of money) into his hand.
So, we walked out of HMV with a big bag full of:

A SonyPlaystation 2 games console,
'Medal of Honour',
An 8mb memory card,
'Harry He's Here to Help' on DVD,
'Together' on DVD,
'Biggie and Tupac' on DVD,
'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' by Coldplay on CD,
'Bring it Back' by McAlmont and Butler on CD.

I've been like a dog with two cocks all weekend. The PS2 machine is excellent and 'Medal of Honour' is stunning. The machine is in the bedroom as it's also a DVD player so we were able to watch this on Friday night before lights out!

You better get ready for that punk rock beat.
Now then now then guys and gals, I'll give you two points for the name of the song and five points for the name of the band.

Booze fuelled evening at the Retro Bar last night. Celebrating 25 years of punk and 40 years of Jamaican independence. Blazing tunes played by Princess Dawn and Mark Satanic. Great to hear Typical Girls by the Slits and Police and Thieves by Junior Murvin again. We sat next to a raucous crowd of '30 something' gay boys who loved every minute and managed to remember a few crazy dance steps from 1976. Remember? The moves that made you look like a 'scoper' but cool at the same time? Lets do it again.

Thats not funny so piss off.
In the office today we were discussing the up and coming anniversary of the tragic events in NYC last year. We guessed that most places of work would go for a minutes silence and moments of contemplation on the day. One wag here (no friend of mine) suggested we all wear a firemans helmet and play Jenga. When the tower topples shout "damn you towel headed bastards!" and play dead. Then get a colleague dressed as Bruce Springsteen to revive you by rubbing your face with an American flag. Then punch the nearest Asian. Then insist everyone have a minutes silence to contemplate how good you are, and how rubbish everyone else is.
Needless to say we tut-tutted at him and sent him back to his department with his tail between his legs. Though his words seem quite amusing now that I've written them down (in a Brass Eye sort of way), I still can't bring myself to actually 'take the piss' after nearly a year. It only took a month or so for me to start laughing at Diana jokes.

Star F***er.
Friend of a friend of a friend was somehow at a dinner with Sean Connery and his cronies at Gleneagles last weekend. Everyone was getting nicely pickled and chatting about cinematic anecdotes - then someone asks: "what we really want to know, Sean, is who was the best shag you ever had?" He grins, and says: "too many journalists and gobshites here, boys." Fair enough. Everyone gets far more pissed, and just before the revels end, said friend of a friend of a friend gets tapped on shoulder. It is a very pissed Connery, who simply says: "Petula Clark. 1963. Up the arse." And walks away to his waiting car.

"When you're alone/ And life is making you lonely
You can always go/ Brown Town!"

My friend Rob has just created a list of vinyl singles he bought that had a big influence on him. It's obvious from his list that we started getting into music at roughly the same time. I wanted to do a small list too. Here it is:

Dance with the Devil - Cozy Powell
White Riot - The Clash
Private Life - Grace Jones
Cars - Gary Numan
Public Image - PiL
Nag Nag Nag - Cabaret Voltaire
Life in Tokyo/Quiet Life - Japan
Pistol in my Pocket - Alana Pellay
Upside Down - Jesus and Mary Chain
Wrote for Luck - Happy Mondays (loved that Vince Clarke mix)

I've noticed a lack of female voices on my list compared to Rob's. What could this mean? Also, as a child of the seventies who longed for the 'space age 21st century' to arrive, there is a predominance of 'electronic' artists on my list. Drum machines and synths fascinated me. A boy at my high school got a synthesizer for christmas. When me and some mates went round to see it he showed us how to program a drum track. While the drum track was blaring he took out his cock and bashed the keyboard with it. What a racket! Yet so cool! And this was 20 years before Fischerspooner! He's married with kids now and is a travelling salesman. But for a few months in 1979 he was Ashingtons greatest performance artist.

'Sunday' by Edward Hopper.


Down to Docklands for the noon screening of 'Talk To Her', the new Almodovar movie. We loved it. Very moving. Awesome story about girls in comas, bullfighting and sex with the unconscious. Theres a movie-within-a-movie in the middle which featured a guy who shrank to just a couple of inches in size and climbed inside his girlfriends vagina and never came out. Thoroughly recommended (the movie, not climbing into vaginas).
Following the movie we took a walk along the Thames river path to Wapping. Average cost of an apartment in Docklands is now £300,000. And there's still no fucking shops round there! Plenty of poncy restaurants but no supermarkets, newsagents (ok, we saw two), video rental shops, off licences, chinese take-aways etc. Nice views though, up and down the river.
We were heading for a new museum called the Wapping Project. The building is an old hydraulic power station that has been turned into a gallery and a restaurant. Unlike the Tate Modern, which was also an old industrial site, this one has been largely untouched. The machinery has been removed but the filthy walls and rusty beams and grimy dusty floor all remain to remind us of the original intention of the building. And it looks excellent. The current show is a collection of Magnum photographers pictures of NYC on September 11. The photos are blown up to a size of about 10 ft by 15ft and in the darkened, dirty boiler room they looked stunning. In a room where they used to store tonnes of coal was showing a video loop of one of the Magnum guys digital video films. He was the one who got that video tape of the 2nd plane hitting the tower and was inside tower 2 for 20 minutes filming people evacuating before getting out 5 minutes before tower 1 went down. Needless to say it was the 2nd moving movie of the day. On the roof of the building is a huge photograph of the two towers on fire taken from the street looking up, directly inbetween them both. It's in black and white and is totally symetrical. It's spooky to see the 'real' skyline backdrop from the roof including Canary Wharf and our own glass and steel creations.

Well, a Friday morning chat on the Naked Blog tag board has really put the cat among the pigeons. Me and Alan were lightly scolding Darkinformer for his shyness and just trying to persuade him to 'get out more' as it were. I ended one droll comment by saying "it's great being gay". Oh dear. I upset my favourite blogger. Full story here. And continuing here.

Darren and I have just finished watching 'Before Night Falls' (check out the gorgeous website for the movie). Fucking fantastic. The story of Reinaldo Arenas, a cuban writer persecuted in the 60's and 70's for being gay and a successful author. Directed by the painter Julian Schnabel, it's absolutely magnificent to look at. Javier Bardem (remember him from 'Golden Balls'?) was stunning and deserved his oscar nomination last year. I can't recommend it enough readers.

The star and his director kiss (neither bats for my team, allegedly).

Apologies to anyone who has been trying get through but has lost patience with the very slow loading time. Hopefully rectified now thanks to Alan, Peter and Darren. Fingers crossed.

Old age is a con.

On this day in 1940 Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin.

"Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man." — Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

And it's 'Happy Birthday' to Joe Strummer from The Clash. He's 50 today and I daresay never expected to get this far when he was 25 and the 'face' of the best rock band the world had ever seen.

"Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
Carbon monoxide making sure it's effective
People ringing up making offers for my life
But I just wanna stay in the garage all night" - The Clash (Garageland. 1976)

When I was a lad we always had a two week holiday with our caravan. It was a small caravan that we pulled behind our car. My Mum, Dad, Gran and me would tour the seaside resorts of England, Scotland and Wales every summer. My favourite resort was always Blackpool, 2nd choice would be Great Yarmouth and my other fave was Skegness. Family lore has it that I went missing during a holiday to Skegness when I was 7 years old. We’d been to the local fun park that morning where there was a great little steel roller coaster (like this one but not this one). I was fascinated by roller coasters even then so after a couple of rides on it with my Dad my rapture just multiplied. An hour or two at the fun park had not been enough for me and I was incensed at having to leave in order to ‘go round the market’ shopping. I sulked all the way there and then secretly slipped away and made my way back to the sea front and the fun park. I found a bench to sit on opposite the roller coaster and stayed there for over 3 hours just watching it go round and round. Really, I was that easily pleased. All hell broke loose when my family found me and my legs stung for days after my Dad had finished with them. How I wasn’t whisked away by a murderous pervert is a miracle (though it probably helped being an ugly urchin from a pit village). Anyway, from then on I was never hurried out of a fun park again (though I did go missing once again that same year and was found by a policeman in the tram depot at Blackpool, another good hiding from my Dad ensued).
I haven’t been to Skegness since I was about 12 years old and next month me and Darren are going back to ride this (and look, there are some caravans too).
The 'Skegness' link above contains a photo of the beach and in the background is the offending roller coaster from this story. can't wait to see it again.
N.B. (for our foreign readers) a 'good hiding' is getting the shit kicked out of you by your Dad. Not really, but you know what I mean.

This should be a lot of fun for the '30 something' punks among us. I'll be there!

Weekend
Quality time with him. Lots of these. None of these. This was great. This wasn't. Lunch in the garden with him and him and him. We ate this. This finished. Jarvis as Rolf on 'Stars in their Eyes' was strange yet quite droll. Spent time here. Made more of these. This kept us cool all weekend long.

Comet Gain
Last night at lucios house we sat in the garden waiting for a comet to whizz past. Lucio has a broken arm and leg from a motorcycle accident last week. He's been wandering around for a week now in a pair of 501's with one leg cut off at the upper thigh. He intends to sue the driver for the jeans as well as missed work at the BBC, his Bandit 600 and a crash helmet with a crack in it.
We sat in his garden in the dark drinking wine and Pepsi Max discussing spiders, telescopes, geese, pigeons, professional gardeners and self suckers.
The comet did not appear in the skies above Walthamstow. Never mind.

But I'm not a full figured, glamorous, black lady-doll. By a long chalk. And apologies to everyone who hates these little quiz/test things that crop up every few weeks. I actually don't mind them but I do understand how some folk have tired of their 'usefulness'. By forwarding these tests on to my colleagues at work (mostly dim and ugly mouth-breathers) I have found myself with a 'fun guy' reputation simply because they adore these tests and even call each other by whatever name they were given in the last quiz. Each to their own I suppose. This is Traceera, sorry, Dave signing out after a long week at work.

If I was a fabulous, full figured, black glamour doll I would be called:
Traceera Cleopatra Washington

Whats your name girlfriend?

Happy Birthday Ben Affleck

That's just how we like you. On your front, ass in the air, leather pants, a big smile and two thumbs up.

Also happy birthday to Matt Johnson from 'The The'. Soul Mining was my favourite album of the 80's.

This is not Matt Johnson from 'The The'. He is called Matt Johnson though, and much more attractive than the singer from 'The The'.

He was a funny bugger in his day.

"I have always been of the opinion that a large group of queer men was unattractive. It is more then unattractive, it's macabre, sinister, irritating and somehow tragic".

Today he would be called a miserable old bastard.

Unlike Brighton at the weekend, it didn't rain once in Paris. Not a drop. Twas positively balmy. Most of paris had headed for the hills and their gites leaving us and a million other art lovers to our own devices. The hotel was fantastic. Ridiculously over the top and very very comfortable. We had the Brigitte Bardot suite (which was next door to the Yves Saint laurent and across the corridor from the Gaultier). Lots of red velvet and dark marble and breakfast in bed served by very smart North African chaps. From our balcony we looked down on the seediness of Pigalle and across to the splendour of Sacre Coeur.
We toddled around Montmarte and ate at Chartier on Friday evening. Saturday was the William Klein exhibition at the Musuem of European Photography followed by the new Woody Allen movie 'Hollywood Ending'. We liked the movie. Delicious dinner at a cosy bistro (oh! the lobster ravioli), bottle of wine and bed.
Sunday was Darrens birthday and was spent at the Pompidou Centre. All day. We did emerge for a long lunch at a local bistro before heading back in to see the 'Dear Painter' exhibition. We loved Kurt Kaupers paintings of Cary Grant naked.
Arrived at Waterloo at 10pm and took a black cab home. Thats all folks.