That's How It Happened

Cartwright reviews-it-all:
I would never have gone to Bar Red, except that the Kingly Club was closed for a private party last night. Bar Red is spectacularly blandly decorated, though they did pick the same Phillipe Starck chairs as favoured by Ian Schrager in his rather fantastically transparent bar at the Hudson. The design is otherwise strikingly un-contemporary, similar to the basement of Denim, where they used to film link segments for MTV UK in the late 90s. However there is a mitigating factor, that makes a visit very worthwhile: the cocktail list is astounding. It features a host of slick classics, plus perhaps fifty really unusual or even original drinks. There are some lowlights, in particular the £160 Black Amex champagne cocktail, however there are a stack of highlights. I picked a Newtons, which is a Tanqueray gin martini, with apple and apricot brandies, benedictine, and a splash of maple syrup. The GF picked a Honeydew Cooler, which bettered any melon cocktail I've ever tasted, except perhaps the Watermelon Martinis at Cape Town's Eclipse. I won't be whiling away the long summer nights at Bar Red, but I might just stop by again for a refresher during one of those "late-night-Thursday" shopping sprees.

Dawn of the Dead is the best remake ever. It rips up the rulebook to brilliantly rework the 1979 original. I give it 10/10 for sustained edge of the seat terror, and it must be a shoe-in for best make-up Oscar. The acting and character development barely improves on the Romero version, but that's irrelevent because you're too busy screaming and biting off your finger tips to care. It's a two hour romp of delightful blood spattered chainsaw wielding hilarity.

Zatoichi is totally bitching. Definitely Takeshi's best film since Hana-Bi. The CGI blood letting is truly beautiful. The tap dancing finale is beguiling. The Japanese mysticim is entrancing: "Even with my eyes wide open I can see nothing." Must see movie number two.

Splinter Cell 2 sucks. Yet again I'm left stumbling around in the dark, desperately trying to grapple the shadowy opponents to death, and accidentally shooting my buddies. I hate stealth games.

Overheard:
"I'm good with numbers, I just get jumbled because there's so many of them."

"It's not too much of a worry. There's only about 6 people in Manchester with telephones. They only just got fire you know.", says some joker at slashdot with reference to the Manchester fire that has cut off 130,000 phonelines. Rumour has it that the fire is in one of the fifties nuclear bunkers under Manchester. With thoughts of the dirty bombs that will "inevitably" rain on London, and the affordability of tiny geiger counters, I decided to investigate where my nearest nuclear shelter might be. I figure my skills as a junior obstetrician probably won't be that handy in the face of nuclear fallout, but might be enough to get me into one of the deep shelters. Unfortunately, my nearest shelter, seems to have been turned into a gym. Nice to know I will be able to attend a spinning class during the final hours before my body is entirely ionised.

Lobsters survive deep freezing. Walt Disney should be so lucky!

Dave Gorman has had a number one bestseller based on Googlewhacking. I never tried it before today, and it took me approximately 15 seconds to find: elvers/xylophonist. You can check my result, which now resides in the googlewhack stack. Facile really, I can't imagine what all the fuss is about.
I hope you liked that example of Google in pig latin. Clearly Larry and Sergey should slow down on the meth abuse a bit. There are some other odd varieties of Google.

Earlier in the week Jonky Cat requested that I reveal the URL of my hot or not page. I tried to tamper with it for a while, but I can't manage to post a facsimile of the page without allowing you schmos to vote on it. I could just link to the page itself, but my rating is kinda good, and I'm far too vain to let you all downgrade me. Instead I've used the same photo to make a Jones Soda bottle label. If you don't know Jones by now, well you ought to catch up fast. You can follow the link to either vote my face onto actual retailing Jones Soda bottles, or you can order a case of personalised bottles with my ugly mug on them. I recommend the root beer. It's organic, delicious, and the bottle will be a great heirloom for the grandkids. Just $34.95 plus shipping.

Research Day, used to be a popular feature round these parts. Now I guess I'm either too lazy or too uncurious to bother with it much. However I bet you can't guess whether Batman's "Holy...." catchphrase is more frequent than Homer's "Doh" catchphrase. Batman (1966) only ran for three seasons, whereas Homer has had 15 years of fame. Still surprisingly there are nearly double as many "Holy"s as there are "Doh"s. Did ya get it right? Did ya? Award yourself a free animated Simpsons gif for being such a pop-cultural genius.

If you are within reach of UK TV tomorrow night, you should be watching, I Met Osama Bin Laden. My brother researched for this documentary last year. I was delighted to have just 3 degrees of separation from OBL. The programme is pick of the week in Time Out. I shall be stuck at work again, but some kind person could Tivo it, then send it to me with the fabulously useful yousendit.com.

I have a kind of sick feeling since I saw this auction. As I predicted just three weeks ago, the London Dunk SB got released at Foot Patrol. Unfortunately for me they made it a completely secret release, no emails, no web hype, just 200 pairs arriving in store last Saturday. If you wanted a pair, you either had to wander into the store by chance on Saturday, or queue for 16 hours overnight on Sunday. It was bitterly cold, so everyone who got their pair deserves the $1000+ profit they'll make on eBay. The truth is, the actual shoe is nowhere near as chic as the Paris Dunk SB or the Tokyo Dunk SB, but by association with those trainers, and the perception by sneaker freaks that London is the centre of the known sneaker-verse, a whole lot of people are prepared to pay way way over the retail price. I only feel like I missed out financially, aesthetically the shoe reminds me of how my Adidas Gazelles looked after a particularly muddy year at the Reading Festival. (For american readers, that's a rock festival, not a literary festival, it's pronounced Redding, as in Otis; not Reading as in "for a doctorate".) One NikeTalker recounts that his kid brother christened the London SB as "the Eastenders Nike", on account of the Thames logo on the heel. I hope that damning assessment cools the hype somewhat. My own sneaker shopping has ground to a halt. Only the laser cortez has brightened my shoe closet this week.

I don't generally read music blogs. I can't see the point in reading half assed reviews of obscure stateside indie bands whose music I'll never actually hear. However I should like to promote Alice and the Enemies, as a band worth getting to know. They played the legendary Dublin Castle last night. Alice, as ever the queen of re-invention, was dressed as a Shirley Manson meets Lauren Laverne rock-minx. Armed with only a microphone, two guitars, and a drum kit, The Enemies slayed the Castle crowd. I won't tire your cliche-o-meter trying to compare them to other bands (Neds Atomic Dustbin on crack, Half-man Half-biscuit on ketamine etc etc), suffice it to say, they take the female vocal pop-punk sound and make in fresh and invigorating. CD available now from no reputable retailers, but I'll pass on your order if you email me.

The Independent published a piece today on the "50 best trainers". Their naive choices had me practically choking back tears of rage. One particular recommendation stood out:
"The Mostro, long established as a favourite of the style set, also makes it easy for men wishing to meet the lounge shoe challenge."
Reading that filled me with such dismay, I almost vomited blood across WH Smith's. No shoe exemplifies girl chav-dom more than the Mostro. (Well maybe pastel Reebok Classics). No shoe could possibly look worse on a man. Not only is it ugly prole shoe, but it's uncomfortable and has a stupid fastening system that gives Velcro™ a bad name. That anyone could put this shoe in a top 50 defies belief (except in the penetration of PR firms of UK journalism), but then to claim this as an ideal "lounge shoe", beloved of the mythical "style set". The only "lounge" this shoe should be seen in, is the kind your mother ought to have taught you to call a "drawing room".

Movieoke chez moi last night saw genius performances from the assembled cast. I of course was the star, reprising great comic moments from Caddyshack, Austin Powers, Zoolander, even a powerful Samuel L Jackson from Pulp Fiction. I want to give special tribute to Hippo Sarris, who delivered the "My name is Gladiator..." speech with great verve, despite his anxiety about today's (successful) exam results. Congratulations due on both counts. I should also mention an astonishing ensemble piece from Tremors, starring Harry L as all the graboids.
Update: So ahead of the game on movieoke. CNN better wake up pretty early in the morning, to beat me and my "young hipster" friends to a scoop.

There seem to be some new blogonauts floating into view: Jo H0wes (url confidential, but might be an anagram of fakerscorner.blogspot.com), Rob Smithson, and some guy called Noam Chomsky. Whether these html fledglings will soar gracefully from their nests, or plummet to the pavement remains to be seen.

Forestry robots just went sub-aqua! It's like Thunderbird 4 for the logging industry. The New Scientist (who aren't to be trusted since last week's NannieBot hoax) reports that this 3 tonne monster is called Sawfish, and harvests underwater forests at a rate of 12 trees per hour.

There are two scientific rumours that have long been troubling me. Firstly that even a tiny object such a penny dropped from a sky-scraper would embed in the pavement. Secondly that bowling balls shatter into a mist of white powder when subjected to severe impacts. Some rigourous researcher has done the necessary experiment to debunk these myths: by dropping a bowling ball on policemen from a 17th story window. I can now sleep easier in my bed, knowing that
(a) concrete is pretty resilient (just a 3.5" crater)
(b) bowling balls are even tougher
(c) one less NYC crackpot won't be trying to brain me from a great height.
As Fark would have it: jailarity ensued.

The 14 year old schoolboys who grew, and smoked marijuana in polish horticulture class, barely merit a news item as far as I'm concerned. 14 year old boys and illegal drugs, are like fish and water. Which 14 year old boy didn't try and get high at school? However I was more impressed by the five year old caught lacing his classmate's lasagna with weed. That's pretty precocious. Sadly for that kid though, he's been totally eclipsed. No four year old should be allowed out to nursery school with $7,400 of crack cocaine in his knapsack. Even Peabs's parents can't have been that slack with their stash.

Back in the day Hot Or Not seemed fairly titillating. Now the spirit of Hot Or Not has spawned mutant versions. We've seen Monkey Hot Or Not, Goth Or Not and Bin Laden or Not. But these three each subvert the genre in totally disturbing ways:

Rate My Vomit stays true to the graphical interface of Hot Or Not, but manages to be truly nauseating.

How Was She takes the concept and creates something horrible. Jealous ex-boyfriends and one night stands post reviews of past conquests. This site is certain to be sued into oblivion so enjoy it now. (Not 100% SFW)

All Look Same invites you to judge whether random faces are from Japanese, Chinese or Koreans. I think there's some kind of educational anti-racist message here, but don't worry too hard about that. Just accept their physiognomic challenge.

Monster shark hooked by 16 year old girl. I can never get enough of these giant shark stories in the run up to a surf trip. I'm planning a trip to Puerto Escondido in May. I want to expand my list of visited countries, so I might try and bag Belize and Guatemala, while I'm down Mexico way. For the moment my blog is far better travelled than I am. The map above shows the countries from which my blog has been read. The map below shows my list. I need Canada, China, and Russia before it really fills out. Though I ought not equate depth of experience with surface area.

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Not wishing to sound too Pekaresque, but a small thing really brightened my day today. Usually I work in outsized blue pajamas and white rubber wellies. I wear only XL sizes, in order to retain some semblance of fashionability. The scrubs are perpetually stained by other people's blood, amniotic fluid, and biro ink. They never smell entirely clean, despite the heroic efforts and lost lives that go into sterilizing them. Today however was a red letter day in the world of laundry services. We got a special consignment of brand new XL scrubs. The regular scrubs are folded by robot, but these were lovingly hand pressed. They had a rich blue hue, which made me feel totally senatorial. The slight itchiness from the new starch, far from being irritating, actually served to remind me all morning how extra snazzy I was looking.

The three headed frog scare from way back in Feb '04, turns out to have been nothing but an amphibious gangbang. When quoted in the original article, the nursery school teacher who discovered the frog(s) is surprisingly prescient: "We thought it was three frogs huddled together at first"

First Mini Coopers were Transforming, now VW Beetles too. Next they'll be eating Paris.

I thought I might be hallucinating this morning when I saw this picture of Ms Scarlett Johansson at the Viper Rooms. No sooner has she announced her commitment to staying clothed on screen, than she's appearing with The Pussycat Dolls dressed as the Daily Record put it: "in raunchy fetish gear". To paraphrase Uncle Grambo: "Score another one for (How It Happened) against the corporate behemoth of Fleshbot!".

Sarah "Belle" Champion hits back, in defence of her six figure book deal no doubt. But, twist in the tail, it now seems plausible, that she was either collaborating with Andrew Orlowski, or he was working alone. Confused? Perhaps you are Belle De Jour?

It took 3000lbs of explosives to implode Veteran's Stadium in Illadelph this weekend. Neato chopper-cam videos here show how this destruction was basically the world's biggest noisiest domino rally.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven't been wasting their retirement. No, they're spending their billions making pornographic cartoons about necrophilia, starring a puppy dog called Princess. Log in here with username and password both "triotest" to enjoy the only extant episodes. I often warn that stuff I link to, might not be safe for work, but in this case I think you'd have to be out of your mind to even consider watching this at work. If you are insane, and wish to risk it, I suggest having this picture of a giant cat handy in another window, in order to allay suspicion when your boss walks in.

My ants arrived today. Despite my best efforts I was unable to inveigle Blades Biological into supplying me with a queen, or any leaf cutter ants. However I am the proud owner of 20 (approx) sandy coloured regular ants. They are happily exploring the ant farm I was given for my birthday. The gift incidentally was a reference to A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker. In the book the hero's ant farm is reduced to a single surviving champion ant who outlives his colleagues by months.

It seems Belle de Jour has finally been outed. It wasn't really a question of "if" she was a fake: that was sure in my mind from the moment she plagarised Savage Love for a supposedly first person account of travelling "over the bridge to Plimpton". It wasn't really a question of "when" she would be revealed, given the imminent book launch. But the "how" she was discovered really impressed me. Using nothing more sophisticated than google-skillz and an eye for an odd turn of phrase: "suffice to say", Dan Foster "nailed" his woman.

A sad story from Dallas Zoo: Police had to shoot dead Zabari the gorilla, who escaped and went on a rampage. Gorillas will be gorillas, I say. Gentle Max the gorilla, got shot one year when I was in Jo'burg. In that case though he was shot not by the police, but by a foolish .38 wielding burglar who tried to hide in the gorilla pen. He survived, to claim hero status in Jo'burg, despite his low sperm count.

Non-Mac nerds look away now:
Pagerank calculations now available for apple-heads. (Incidentally since my blog has a Pagerank of 5/10, unless your name is Kottke or Megnut, my weblog could kick your weblog's ass. Heck it could take your weblog, and your weblog's dad.)

The legendary Albino Bowler is in town for one weekend only. This can mean one thing, and one thing only: a nine frame bowling blow out. The dude will abide. Frankly the two of us get bored of pitching ball after ball of insane late hooking strike action, without a little competition. If you fancy testing your skills on the maple runways of Finsbury park on Saturday, do make contact. Jus' be prepared fo' an ass whuppin'.

Instead of spending St Paddy's day drinking Guiness in an Oirish pub, I was lured out to a Scandinavian herring and vodka bar. I drank mostly Baltic Spring Martinis. For once I can't exactly reconstruct the recipe. Essentially though it was a cosmo mixed with a bellini. Really fresh and zingy, dix pointes for taste. (If I had to hazard a guess: champagne, white peach puree, orange peel, vanilla stolichnaya vodka, and maybe a dash of freshly squeezed blood orange juice.)

The internet was awash with good links today; but only one really matters:
Yeti Sports 3

For those with a competitive spirit my top individual score is only 325.49. Good luck yeti fans.

Blogging free association:

When I was a kid I thought Transformers sucked. However when Optimus Prime sold out for christmas 1984, a lot of kids were left disappointed. I imagine that pain is what led directly to the creation of this lifesize mini cooper/bipedal robot transformer (check the unbelievably awesome videos).

Yoel Sano was also one of those disappointed kids. He loved transformers more than life. Now he diverts all the pent up rage from that sad christmas morning into articles about John Kerry's policy as regards North Korea.

John Kerry is pretty damn unfunny. When asked to supply his favourite joke by a fraudulent 10 year old, he replied with this veritable gigglethon. Of all the 100 senators polled, only a couple of Democrats were even passably amusing.

If you want get a laugh out of a Republican, I suggest the Dubya Bot. Armed with all G-Dub's best quotes it provides much better automated conversation than its colleague Hampy The Hamster Expert.

Maybe you don't enjoy talking with bots. But you have to beware, because now NannyBots are stalking kid's chatrooms trying to lure paedophiles. There is something deeply unethical about this. Not that I object to catching would-be child molesters with these robo-agents provocateurs, but because it's imbecilic to clog chatrooms with bots. Far more children will be lured into inane conversations with bots than actual paedophiles.

As recently as 10 years ago the internet was still a big geek-fest. Back in the early 90's HTML was only accessible to dweebs, and every second website seemed to be a Klingon dictionary, or a coffee machine webcam. Now the internet is so profoundly, pervasively useful for communication and research that I sometimes forget it can still be pointless and dorky. With this in mind I'm devoting today to really useless links:

Hats of Meat: milinery meets butchery. I'm especially enjoying the pastrami yarmulke. (Incidentally I discovered Korean steak tartare this week. It is unbelievably good, seasoned with just sesame and pear strips; could be the new beef tataki.)

San Diego Panda-Cam gives you round the clock panda viewing possibilities. Hua-mei one of the female pandas has been shipped to china for panda porno lessons, but there are 4 other pandas to enjoy.

Cut-out and glue models of the AT-AT. This meme has been raging on boingboing of late. These particular Japanese models are just incredible though. Maharishi have Bill McMullen's shelltoe AT-ADs in stock, and they're cool too.

Need some virtual loving? ImaginaryGirlfriends.com will provide, for a small fee:
"When your time is up you can break up with her for whatever reason you decide, and she'll write you a final letter begging you to take her back."

Now go take a really amazing personality quiz.

Deluged by a tide of admin, form filling, and filial duties, I've had no time for internutting, much less blogging. Here though are three important facts direct from my consciousness to yours:

1. There are 61 islands in the Orkneys. This is more than you might expect.

2. Inhaling helium is as fun now as it was when you were a kid and actually had a squeaky voice anyway.

3. The Lego Social Theorists are a bunch of brainiac nerds who deserve to get their asses kicked.

Was your childhood pretty standard really? Did your mother place you in a burlap bag and beat you with reeds? Then you are in need of a huge underground missile facility from which to plot world domination. I highly suggest you try it.

21 Grams, sucks. You probably aren't in dire need of another ill-informed movie review for this much feted Oscar winner. But if I can save just one person from enduring this tedious twaddle, it will make my day worthwhile. I felt that I lost my 21 grams sitting through 2 and a half hours of portentous nonsense. Stay away at all costs.

The Channel 4 swearing ad is the best ad that has ever been on television. Its not safe for work, because it's all swearwords. All along I knew swearing was big and clever, and this ad proves me right.

Way way back at the dawn of time I mentioned how awesome the St Thomas' Hospital robot is. It cost £280k, but pays its own way in space saving efficiency. It controls the distribution and storage of 20,000 packets of pills in the dispensary. It arranges them in a way that appears random to a human observer, but which is actually maximally efficient for space and speed. The cool guy who commissioned the robot opened up the "cage" so i could take some photos and a movie (clumsily linked to here). The movie is tiny, but demonstrates the delicacy with which the robot picks a pack, and then the frankly scary speed with which it delivers it to the dispensing conveyor belt.

Frankly this blogging is getting a little tiresome. Original content is just so much like hard work. To celebrate just how over blogging you are right now why not buy a howithappened.com trucker hat, complete with discreet snarky message: "blogging is the new trucker hats". Just $11.99 plus shipping. Buy too many and I'll put the price up.

By the time you read this entries for the 2004 Sushi Competition will have closed. My sushi entry is called The Atom Sushi. It's designed to be delicious, and to demonstrate the principles of subatomic physics.
First you construct mini rice balls from regular sushi rice, and sushi rice boiled with squid ink to make it black, as in risotto nero. Then you lightly pan fry these black and white rice balls to fix them as crunchy little spheres. You marinate a little toro (fatty tuna belly) in jalapeno oil and yuzu (japanese citrus) juice, then finely slice this to make a core for the atom. Using a tablespoon make a hemispherical quenelle of tuna in the centre of your plate. The black and white rice balls represent neutrons and protons, and are stuck around the tuna core. The smaller the rice balls you make the more complex a nucleus you can construct. Lithium shown above needs only 7 rice balls, but I would go for something more challenging like strontium. Arrange the protons and neutrons into a larger hemisphere around the tuna, so it is completely obscured. Now take tobiko (flying fish roe) and spread it thinly over the whole surface of your nucleus. This represents the quarks. If you are feeling piggy, you could jam a few ikura (salmon roe) into the gaps to represent mesons and bozons too.
Now for the challenging part. Take mayonnaise, and add the spare yuzu and jalapeno from the marinaded tuna. Mix these three in a squeezy bottle with enough soy sauce to give a single cream consistency. Now very carefully dress the plate by dripping the spicy mayonnaise into ellipses around your nucleus. For realism you have to match the number of ellipses to the number of electron orbits. For lithium this is a bit lame with just two, but five or more looks great. When you are done it should look like one of those 50s nuclear safety posters. Now take another jalapeno and slice it into little round disks. These will be your electrons. Place them appropriately along their mayonnaise orbits.
You are finished! Now submit your design in an international sushi competition and sit back and enjoy as the plaudits and free flights to Tokyo roll in. Oh doh! Too late, but at least you learned about subatomic physics and made a great snack.

So best. This George Bush $200 bill has actually been passed in at least two separate crimes. Best of all you can pick them up on eBay for just $1. Iously ilarious.

DJ Waxy Fresh has submitted a link: Found Magazine. It's a collection of discovered notes, photos, and other abandoned stuff. It makes for fascinating reading. Want to submit a hot link? rufus@howithappened.com

"It's a very frustrated feelingyou get when the only people with good photos of your work are the police department."
Banksy quoted from the book Existencilism which Devukha generously gave me for my birthday.

"There are NO Banksy t-shirts or other fashion items available to buy."
Banksy quoted from his own website

"BANKSY IS A FUCKING SELLOUT"
Graffiti sprayed on the warehouse where Banksy held his "first" retrospective.

I've come to accept that everyone, no matter how underground, no matter how hardcore, will eventually whore themselves to the mainstream economy. I can overlook Henry Rollins in Bad Boys II, I can snicker at Bono singing "Where the streets have no name" at the Superbowl as a 9/11 tribute, but fuck a rat, what in god's name possessed Banksy to collaborate with Puma. Govacant briefly posted pics of the Banksy x Puma collab. They are a pair of dreadful suede old school Puma's in muddy green with gold stitching. The sort of shoes that were fashionable with King's Road teens in the mid-90s. Banksy's many works around Shoreditch have made me smile on a daily basis, and maybe occasionally even think a little. I appreciate that it may be hard to make a living as an entirely anonymous anti-corporate anarchist graffiti artist, but really he should know better than to add his name to these pathetic Pumas. They'll only be on sale in Miami, so they won't be polluting the streets of Hoxton, but in this case it's truly the thought that counts.

I seem to have met an awful lot of my biggest heroes. Some remain elusively beyond reach, like Kim Jong Il, Kurt Cobain, and Wittgenstein, but I have crossed paths with a fair few of my idols. Sometimes these fleeting meetings have deepened my admiration, but often I've been utterly underwhelmed. So, in no particular order , I present my three best and worst celebrity hero encounters.

Three heroes who were disappointing in the flesh.
1 Quentin Tarantino
2 J Mascis
3 George Clooney

My script doctor friend Tom MacRae is a former Bafta winner. On the basis of this he somehow bagged tickets for the premiere of Kill Bill Volume 1 in Leicester Square last year. We got to walk up the yellow "red" carpet past the paparazzi, and somehow blagged our way into the VIP bar. We got to hobnob with lots of B-listers, including Eubank and Jonathan Woss who was wearing a stupid yellow jump suit. As the crowds filed through to take their seats we hung back. Quentin came blitzing past with Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in tow. He's famous as a film geek made good, but I was unprepared for his extreme nerdiness. He was massively obese, incredibly ugly, and so badly dressed. Up on stage he introduced the cast and gave a dorky speech hyping the movie. I loved Kill Bill 1, but was shocked how unglamourous QT is. It's impossible to look good standing next to Uma, but Quentin isn't really trying.

J Mascis is one of the forgotten gods of grunge. His band Dinosaur Jr consisted of just him and a lot of different guitars. Where You Been is my favourite rock album ever. I was totally obsessed with the record from about 91 until 94. Dinosaur Jr played at the 93 Reading Festival, and apart from Pavement and the Lemonheads they were one of the main acts I wanted to see. J Mascis had agreed to a session in the signing tent, and I got totally psyched about having a chance to meet him. Damon Albarn was signing just ahead of J's slot, so I had to queue for four hours in the blazing sun with thousands of screaming teeny girl Blur fans. J had a reputation as a formidable slacker, and I was somewhat anxious that he might not be a good conversationalist. I figured despite my stint as a bass player in Friendly Fire™, J might feel he had little in common with a 15 year old public schoolboy. Lo and behold when I finally fought my way into the tent proferring a T-shirt for him to sign, he barely smiled, let alone talked. He just scrawled a big J on my t-shirt before I was hustled out again. No rock 'n' roll banter, no words of advice for an aspiring musician, just a stupid J in fat felt tip pen. I realised then that idolatry is not a two way street.

Clooney ranks way out in front of all the disasterous celeb rendez-vous I've had. I attended Sophie Dahl's Valentine's Ball at Claridge's last year. Clooney was in town promoting Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. There were a bucket load of celebs at the ball: before sighting Clooney I'd been dancing with Phillip Treacy and Isabella Blow. But basically I was gob-smacked to see Clooney in person. He's easily in my top 5 favourite actors, on the basis of ER, O Brother, and Ocean's 11. I was itching to talk to him; I had something trite in mind like, "Your performance in ER inspired me to be a doctor." I was much too drunk on champagne cocktails to get it together. Anyway after about five minutes gawping at George with my cute friend Martina, one of the Rothschild heirs saunters over and plucks up the courage to talk to George. This Rothschild kid has a thick beard and a really stupid trucker hat, so I mistook him for a schmo, not a billionaire. Retrospectively it's obvious that only a billionaire should have the presumption to muscle past Clooney's minders to bother him with inane chatter. Anyway the punk-ass Rothschild makes it seem like Clooney welcomes interruption from star struck fans (he's deep in smoochy conversation with husky voiced ex-girlfriend Mariella Frostrup as this point). After about a couple of bottles of champagne and much encouragement for the afore-mentioned cute friend, I finally try to approach George. He's surrounded by huge bodyguards sitting on the arms of his sofa, so I have to almost kneel at his feet. He absolutely studiously ignores me, refusing to catch my eye for even a second. After about 30 seconds I start to freak out, realising that if he really won't acknowledge me there's no dignified way to back out. After about one minute my knees are starting to ache, and all my friends have also realised my awful predicament, and are laughing much too loudly for comfort. Finally after maybe two minutes, which seems like a hour, George still hasn't even glanced my way, I admit defeat and crawl away humiliated to drown my sorrows.

Three heroes who were incredible in the flesh.
1 Douglas Adams
2 Evan Dando
3 The Beastie Boys

Like every other celeb that dies young Douglas Adams has been canonised by his fans. In 1994 my parents decided to sell their house, and Douglas was one of the first prospective buyers to look around. Back then I was enough of a fan that I had read all his books, and could quote chunks of Hitchhiker's by heart. That enthusiasm has since waned. However when on a summer evening Mr Adams came through our front door I was majorly impressed. He was massively tall, easily 6' 4", and eerily graceful. He was polite, charming, even witty. He signed all my books, and seemed to me to be much more like a real author than my dad. He never made an offer for the house, but moved in a few doors away.

At the height of grunge Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden were the hip bands to be into. The Lemonheads were a sort of guilty pleasure. Fluffy and airy with funny lyrics and catchy melodies. Evan Dando was a total heart-throb. I aped his long-haired laid-back style, in the hope that it would lend me the same facility with the ladies. After Kurt died it was strongly rumoured that Evan had been sleeping with Courtney, and promptly the Lemonheads broke up. Evan disappeared to Martha's Vineyard to concentrate on his drug addictions. Holidaying on the Vineyard in 1995 I saw him walking on the beach. He looked awesome, every inch a sex symbol. It's not the done thing on the Vineyard to hassle celebs, so I didn't. Subsequently two really hot friends of mine met him in New York. He ended up snogging both of them in succession in the back of a taxi. That's what I consider proper abuse of celebrity status. I remain a fan.

An ex-girlfriend hooked me up with access all areas passes to the Beastie Boys 1995 European tour. I'll admit to being a relative latecomer to Beastie Mania, but by 95 I was a huge huge fan. Ill Communication was the dopest record I'd ever heard. At Brixton Academy I got introduced to all three Beasties, and Adam Horowitz's then wife Ione Skye. They were totally cool. Relaxed, charming and chatty. As ever they played an amazing set, and they remain my absolute heroes.

That's my compendium of highs and lows complete. Although sometimes I've felt hard done by, I don't really believe that celebs owe anything, even a signature, to their fans. I have little to conclude from these encounters, just that being a fan can be unrewarding, and that being a role-model is probably more tiresome than it looks.

I just watched The Game for like the nth time. It doesn't really bear rewatching, too dependent on the final sting in the tail. Anyway I never noticed before, but Spike Jonze has a tiny cameo. He plays the guy who operates the airbag that catches Michael Douglas as he jumps off the skyscraper. In the original script he doesn't even have a speaking part. I couldn't really imagine why Spike would take such a role. He's legendarily shy, massively wealthy, and until recently happily married, so what would motivate him to get off his ass for such a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit part? This profile from the New York Metro, has a clue:
"Deep in the back of his head," says Field, "Spike wants to be a stuntman."
What better way to live out your macho stuntman fantasy, (apart from jumping from speeding cars) than to play a stunt co-ordinator in a hit movie? Notably Spike also wrote a great article about filming a video for DJ Hurricane, in which he and Ad-Rock jump from the roofs of various Hollywood hotels, into the pools. I suspect that article featured in Grand Royal 3. So there you have it, Spike Jonze: pathologically shy, and yet obsessed with pretending to be a stuntman.

While I'm busy worrying about the Coppola/Jonze clan: horrifying news from Spain. I was under the impression that the final whispered words of Lost In Translation were: "Write about this, tell the truth." I though this was a reasonably pithy resonant conclusion. Apparently though the Spanish redub has Bill Murray very audibly say: "You're the best thing that has happened in my life. Never forget that smile." Just awful. The script hasn't yet been made public, so it's pure speculation as to whether this twee line is a Spanish confabulation, or genuine Coppola. Distressingly, in this interview Bill Murray implies that the line is not in the script at all.

The High Line is a disused elevated railway that runs down the West Side in Manhattan. It used to carry meat from the docks to the meat packing district. Joel Sternberg wrote a beautiful book documenting the changing seasons on the High Line. Jason Kottke recently visited the line, and took some great photos, and gives some basic instructions for getting up there. On my last trip to NYC I was determined to get up there too. Lacking serious instructions I arrived in the middle of Fleet Week, and couldn't escape the crowds of sailors long enough to sneak up.

I may have managed to bag a few days snowboarding at Easter. The snow has apparently been great in the Alps. Every year I build an igloo. Usually it's an amateurish affair. However this guide adds a couple of pro techniques that may transform my snow shack into an ice palace. Spiralling the blocks up, rather than laying even rows seems a guaranteed route to stability. Also placing the igloo on very deep snow, while potentially destabilizing, might give you much greater capacity, with less backbreaking sawing. I shall report back in mid-april if the snow lasts.

The Map of Springfield is a labour of love so wonderful it has actually been included in the Harvard Map Collection.

5th-dimension have interviewed Futura with regards to his recently released FLOM Dunk. The name stands simultaneously for Futura Laboratories, for love or money, and 4LOM, everyone's second favourite SW bounty hunter. Anway only 3 pairs were actually given away, the other 21 were saved for friends of the artist.
Although that opportunity for sneaker scalping has passed, the London Dunk SB looks like it might actually materialise at Foot Patrol and other select stores in London in May. It is getting incredible hype at Nike Talk. I don't expect it will ever fetch the same prices as the Paris Dunk (currently $1500), but there's certain to be £300 profit in each pair you can acquire. The catch is that Foot Patrol will definitely only sell one pair per person, and only in the correct size. The most profitable sizes are UK 7, 8, 9, 10 (ickle Japanese feet mostly). What is therefore required is a team of buyers, each with different sized feet. My brother isn't gainfully employed, and he's a size 9, but I'm still looking for lazy dossers in size 7, 8 and 10, prepared to kip outside Foot Patrol on a balmy summer night.

I've been recently criticised for failing to group my postings by theme. Apparently my random hops from topic to topic are annoying. To rectify this here are links that all relate to penguins:

Delicious history of the penguin baseball meme with links to hacked versions of the Jan '04 classic.

An open letter to penguins. Also check the open letter to umlaut, and to tattoo shop customers.

Pokey the Penguin is an impossibly awful web cartoon series, that appears to have been drawn by a humourless seven year old with an Amstrad.

This chemistry exam by a very very naughty teen contains many funny deliberate stupid answers, including misidentifying an organic compound as a penguin. This is the kind of stunt I was never cool enough to try.

I hope that's enough penguins. Long may eclecticism rule.

You may remember that recently Cam'ron auctioned his pink range rover on eBay. Now it seems Vincent Gallo is at it too. He's selling all the camera equipment used on the already infamous (and as yet unreleased) Brown Bunny. At first you might not guess it's actually him making the sale since he refers to himself in the third person; "Gallo". However that's just his literary style. His feedback page is a treasure trove of celeb tidbits. He's been busy buying cameras, hi-fi stuff, guitars, and a bmx, and he's sold stuff too including a toolbox. He doesn't tolerate deadbeat bidders, and as you'd expect for someone with a famously sharp tongue, he has only harsh words for sellers who package his precious lots inadequately.
The item description is just pure unadultarated Gallo genius:

"Gallo wanted his 2 Aatons to be the quietest in the world so after purchase, he fedexed them back to France and had the factory make them as quiet as they could possibly ever be."

"(Gallo's) Angenieux zoom ... was purchased from the Stanley Kubrick estate. It is the famous super long throw lens that Kubrick had made for Barry Lyndon. No other like it exists."

"All in all, Gallo put more effort into this production package than the whiny Wes Anderson, the sputtering Spike Jonze, the un-darling Darren Aronofsky have put into their whole lives."

This is the kind of stuff that makes Gallo a genuine living legend. On the margins of film making acclaim himself, he is none-the-less prepared to publicly deride three of the hottest young directors out there. All hail Gallo, god of self-publicists and celebrity bitch-asses. Truly he deserves his fanatical Japanese cult following. If you're feelin "Gallo" like I am, why not bid for his rare Bohack album, which as he says himself "DJ Spoony...never DJs without..."

I've embarked on a new set of books, some birthday gifts, some found when my parents reorganised their shelves:
Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan is a funny budget travel guide, that I'm hoping will inspire me to save some pennies to visit Tokyo in May
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon was a great film, and although I rarely reread anything, it's a really excellent book, so I thought it might be worth a second perusal.
The Year at Great Dixter is one of Christopher Lloyd's many excellent gardening books. He writes is the Saturday Guardian, and is about ninety and full of genuine, hard fought insights. His garden at Great Dixter is my favourite anywhere, so I'm always trying to absorb more pearls of wisdom.
Paris Trout has until now escaped my attention.
Comrade Rockstar is a biography of a man called Dean Reed who crossed the iron curtain to become an improbable Soviet Elvis.
Reef Fish Identification, exactly what it sounds like, and I'm only scanning it to improve my Scrabble vocabulary.
Thorne Beekeeping Equipment Catalogue, is something of a specialist read. I never knew there were so many astonishing apiarist gadgets.
The Promise of Happiness by Justin Cartwright. I'm obviously duty bound to praise it, but truly it is an exceptionally fine novel. It's not published until late August, but in the mean time I'm lapping up my proof copy.

boingboing is probably the world's most popular blog, with an astonishing 25k visitors a day. It's always full of good links, including this fabulous FBI collection of concealed weapons. (2Mb PDF) I was just astounded by the magnetically invisible knives, the spring loaded spikes and the eXistenZesque japanese leaf knife. Disappointingly there are none of the fabled german ceramic guns. However even without invisible guns, it's clear that any fool, bent on a hijacking, could waltz onto a jumbojet packed to the gills with deadly weapons.

The joy of links:
Amish Donkey, work safe, and yet entertaining too.

Glamorama have Paris Hilton as their patron saint. I choose Kim Jong Il for my canon, here represented in squeezy fruit juice boxes.

$199 Kill Bill DVD, featuring 1/10 scale Hattori Hanzo sword and Murder Bride Bearbrick.

i-am-asian.com is McDonald's effort to capture the asian youth market. I'm not lovin' it.

World Subway Maps drawn to scale.

Movie Alphabet Game: totally tough

Milkfed x Sophia Coppola x Geoff McFetridge x all in japanese = one happy overstimulated Cartwright.

The Roy Lichtenstein retrospective currently at the Hayward is basically dope. There are too many of the dull later works, and too few of the best 60's stuff ("Why, Brad darling, this painting is a masterpiece! My, soon you'll have all of New York clamoring for your work!"). However it's still stunning to see so many of his most famous pieces gathered together. The Hayward shop is selling a bunch of great posters, but best of all they have a kit for making DIY Lichtensteins. If that seems like too much work, you can pay online for a Lichtenstein cartoon portrait of yourself. Alternatively if you're obsessive and have a ton of spare bricks you could make a Lichtenstein from Lego.

In totally unrelated news: oral sex can lead to serious injury, death, or a mistaken case of TB.

More Kim Jong-il news courtesy of our man in Pyongyang, Yoel Sano. Only a madman would call his most effective weapon the Taepodong 2. It sounds as if it has deadly penetrating abilities into US ass air space.

On bored afternoons as children we would wrap Sellotape around hundreds of match heads. Then using mini crossbows, made from rubber bands and the empty matchboxes, we would fire these tiny projectiles, billowing pungent black smoke, at each other's eyes. I now realise this was the dark ages of match warfare. We should have been battling with Matchstick Rockets. Much more dangerous, and more educational as to the principles of rocketry.

More microwave experiments: new $20 bills explode if microwaved. The culprit is the embedded RFID chips, similar to those you'd find in a pack of Mach 3 Turbos that you tried to boost from Boots.

Please enjoy my new Google powered search box in the sidebar. Now you can search for your own name and see how often I mentioned you in the last 19 weeks of this joyous little blogtopia.

The Oscar Night buzz has washed over me. For once Scarlett was only moderately hott, Paris did something only vaguely embarrassing, and every award went to the predicted favourites.
My weekend of Hollywood glamour kicked off with Along Came Polly which is almost uniformly execrable, excepting one incredible cameo. Hank Azaria plays a French nudist SCUBA instructor who cuckolds Ben Stiller on the first day of his honeymoon. Since Zoolander and Royal Tenebaums are both in my All-Time Movie Top Ten, I keep checking out all Ben Stiller flicks. 'Polly is just awful though, even the usually robust Phillip Seymour Hoffman puts in a flat performance.
We were treated to a rash of useless trailers to boot, including the pointless (12A) certificate Kill Bill II teaser. The cinema version of the ad for the 30th anniversary of the VW Golf is magical though. It's a triumph of time lapse, motion control and jump cuts. The three VW engineers age thirty years in thirty seconds as they alter the Golf to it's new style.
My own home cinema experience has been kaput since the first week of this blog. Excessive partying had destroyed the front speakers and the amp. Armed with a soldering iron and the Maplin catalogue I finally got my schizzle togizzle and fitted new speaker cones. It was totally easy, even for a soldering klutz like me. I matched up the new speakers with a new amp and massive subwoofer. The whole flat was thus vibrating as I enjoyed I Capture The Castle with the GF. It is officially my DVD pick 'o' the week. 100% a chick flick, but no less enjoyable for it. Somewhat lacking in explosions and gunfire with which to assess my booty shaking bass driver though.
And finally kudos to the Guardian for their Aramaic for movie goers feature. Only a few thousand people are still fluent in Aramaic. Luckily my father's friend Geza Vermes is one of them. He reports that he loathed The Passion of Christ but was delighted the Aramaic was actually authentic.

"The worst mistake I can think of is to serve too much booze. I've been to several parties that started out fun, but turned into drunken disasters because the host and hostess were too generous with the
alcohol."
In this case I have to disagree with Google Answers.

I always always enjoy my own parties, but this 27th birthday was truly my best ever. As ever the alcohol flowed somewhat too freely in my case. I was fall-down staggering drunk from about 10pm onwards: high on life, but also high on Moet and Moscow Mules. Luckily the bar staff poured such strong cocktails that I was far from alone in my inebriation.
In the spirit of Oscar night, I want to thank all my lovely guests; firstly for making a huge effort with costumes, and secondly for not getting too angry when I tumbled into them and spilled their drinks. The DJs all "dropped the bomb" as Westwood would put it, and one even found some groupie lovin'. My own turn on the wheels of steel was confined to the 8 till 9 slot, luckily avoiding the embarrassment of last year's record throwing, deck smashing DJ catastrophe. The record with the biggest response was clearly 50 Pence-In the Pub, though some peeps thought it was me emceeing.
There was no formal costume contest, but Phil Penn and Tartley made a splash leading a sett of badgers. Tom Mac was a fantastic bee, and Patrick Dickinson won best "lateral thinker" dressed in cricket whites. My own penguin outfit somehow fell by the wayside. (If anyone found a complete morning suit...)
The whole night degenerated into a pole dancing, stage diving, shot downing blur. I have to admit to total memory loss from the moment I signed my bar bill. Hopefully someone took some photos which will appear here in due course. I don't think 27 ever felt so good.