tripping over

Some of you may remember that earlier this year I embarked on a trip across Asia that included:

Some unwanted attention from the armed Chinese police force
Narrowly avoiding getting kicked in the brain by a horse
The most beautiful places in the world
Nearly breaking down in the desert
Breaking a vintage motorcycle
Indirectly killing a sheep
A dangerously cold lake
Avoiding tornadoes
Pooing into a hole
Eating a snake
A large beard
Eagles

I wrote every day I was away and finally I have managed to commit my entire journal to the digital world, just for you. Amongst you all; you will have varying levels of interest in my adventure, but you now have a choice whether to read about it or not. You can do so by clicking on this bad boy:



Due to the nature of web logs it’s all back to front with the last entry first, if your level of interest is high you’ll have to forward to the older posts first.
If you have a medium level of interest you can just dip in randomly and read it in any order.
If you have a low level, you might as well have not read that.

touch-a-touch-a-touch-a-touch me

we live in the future

jump

i done a picture for the million masterpiece arts project. you should too, it is fun and stuff, innit.

funny girl

my top ten funniest people:

10. Stephen Fry
9. Peter Kay
8. Harpo Marx
7. Sarah Silverman
6. Nick Frost
5. Lee Evans
4. Spike Milligan
3. Chris Morris
2. Bill Bailey
1. Peter Sellers

'kay, bye

liar liar

there's a bit of turmoil in west london. firstly, today i heard that the base of the once great standard in superior broadcasting (BBC television centre) is teetering on the edge of selling out and the miracle doughnut that is television centre may well be sold. SOLD! to someone. who knows who, probably for about £300 million.

due to the unique way the BBC is funded, er...
we're going to sell it.

shocking.

but i was left stunned today by a far more ridiculous slither of news from the world of world class telly. it's all come from the incredible inflation that recently occurred in the press over the supposed phone in 'scandals' uncovered by the infallible newspaper journalists of our liberated country. i thought at the time, as i do even more now, that the whole thing was blown all out of proportion. suddenly it became unbearable to the british public that TV might bend the truth slightly, on occasion, in order to better present a program.

most unthinkable (according to the broadsheets) was the idea that a when a few phone-in competitions had had technical problems the show producers decided to grab a member of the production team to stand in as a competition winner (thus retaining the beats and rhythms of the show) and donated the prize to charity. i guess the journalists - speaking for we general public - think what should have happened was a presenter come onto screen and said, "sorry, something's gone wrong so we're going to forget about the phone-in and improvise for the 3-and-a-half minutes that was originally dedicated to trying to get some quality viewing out of a muffled conversation with a sniveling semi-retarded ten year old... um, so connie.... how are your teeth today?"

IT'S ENTERTAINMENT.

who gives a post-dubbed-squirrel-fuck if they have to bend the truth every now and again? by all means refund the bankrupting 75p everyone spent on their phone call because their opinion mattered so much they 'simply had to pick up the phone' but don't - for god's sake - let it ruin the future of quality broadcasting. as it may well do.

yes, really.

why?

how about this:

today i heard that programmes like Top Gear are facing a shake up where they won't be able to 'lie' as much. yes; i used the word lie because that's what the idiots at the helm if this idiotic process have deemed a necessary word for it. for some reason top gear (and many other shows too, i use this only as an example); top gear, an ENTERTAINMENT show has been attacked because it takes it too far making us think that 3 completely different cars can arrive after a 4000 mile race within 5 minutes of each other.

for a start: what absolute moron would ever think that this is exactly what happened? what mind-numbed oblivious fool would ever consider the idea that week after week the antics of the three presenters racing and rallying and building and breaking, and always ending in a photo finish, could ever be the complete unabridged unadulterated truth? ever noticed the fact that it's E.D.I.T.E.D.?

dumb-asses.

secondly: why the hell would we want to see the actual practical result of each activity? i'd put money on the fact that it'd be utterly boring TV. if skilled directors and editors want to chop and change some dull footage of old cars driving about a bit so that i can spend an hour escaping into a fantasy world full of intrigue and wit, bloody let them. that's why i watch entertainment shows. to be entertained. the clue is in the name of the genre.

today i heard that CBBC presenters now have to say "here's one we made earlier," because they're not allowed to imply that it was solely them and not a researcher that stuck the sparkly star on the box. i mean seriously, that's not just putting the cart before the horse but sending it careering down the hill and into the river before even waking the horse up. as if a four year old child could give a spun shit about who actually made that particular prop when they have the joy of pritt stick and glitter ahead of them.

i hope the people who are encouraging this "honesty" gain some perspective soon. if not, i worry that we might be heading towards the news being presented from a big grey room, the floor covered in cables, by two people in t-shirts and no makeup reading from some slightly creased bits of A4 paper.

that is if we can see them without any lights on.
.
.

collateral

on a recent trip to the local cinema i was strangely and disconcertingly entertained by the tactics of the kino security team. i only caught one small snippet of speech as two very large muscled black guys walked a comparatively tiny little man out:

very well spoken,

"i'm chucking you out this time, but if i catch you doing that again i'm gonna take you out the fire escape and beat the shit out of you."

yowser.

return to oz

some people have a strange, extreme and uncontrollable reaction to famous people (and not-so-famous people but those who still somehow end up being classed as 'celebrities'). just because a person is in the public eye, for some people this makes them frightening, perfect or god-like. i'm sure you've seen clips of girls losing balance and crying in a curled up state of hysteria just from coming into view of the beatles.

i witnessed something similar today, when i scored amazing seats (dead centre, front row) for this evening's performance of wicked. due to bad planning on my part, i needed tickets to a show at the last minute and learned that the victoria apollo theatre releases the front row to anyone who queues up in the morning. so there i was with the die-hard fans standing in the cold; hoping to leave with the best tickets.
the pro: which i did.

the con: we ended up sandwiched between one guy who was seeing the show for the 50th time. yes, fifty. that's about £2000 he's spent in his life on seeing the same show over and over again. holy hell. and he was there on his own so he kept talking to me, asking how i was enjoying it, every time said with a desperate hopeful fear in his eyes that i might have found any fault in the show.

on the other side were what i have called "the teenaged wicked cheerleader squad." noisy as a football crowd. after every song cheering and whooping and giggling like they were in a primary school playground and a boy had just waved at them, crying 'that was aMAZing' like daddy had just bought them a ferrari because their horse was ill. pretty terrifying reaction to anything, let alone a song that they've heard a thousand times.

as for the show itself, it was good. a nice bit of escapism, visually and technically stunning with the best costumes i can ever remember seeing. not a bad story and a fun idea creating a prequel to a classic, although i have to say i don't think it worked trying to recreate the wicked witch of the west as misunderstood, rather than the traditional bad guy. that aspect didn't sit very well with me, though the actress playing her was effortlessly fantastic.

i don't remember any of the songs, apart from the fact that one of them was called 'defying gravity.' the only reason i know that is because the cheerleaders wouldn't shut-up about it.

it was enjoyable, just not one i'd see again. definitely can't see myself spending £2000 on future tickets. jeez. avenue q on the other hand....

the last crusade

there was a point where i thought my ears would bleed i was laughing so hard.



monty python's spamalot. apart from starring a woman who has the most amazing singing voice i have ever heard, by an absolute mile... this show is the most i have laughed in a 3 hour period. ever.

brilliant, go and see it.
say.
no.
more.

fame

what a joy and privilege it should feel to get tickets to a sold out show, sitting in a private box, to see a man widely regarded and record breaking in the world of entertainment and comedy writing. many think of ricky gervais as a genius, the funniest man in britain, nay e'en the world. he's rocked the charts with his podcasts, he's won countless awards both sides of the atlantic and his stand up show "fame" is the fastest selling comedy show of all time.

so sitting there in a box with the troubadour and shoelace, we expected the roof to be blown off of the royal albert hall. it was a packed house, full of adoring fans. but to be honest, the show failed to strike the bell at the top of the applause-o-meter. it was good, don't get me wrong. very good in places. a gag about princess anne offering him cornwall was my particular favourite, closely followed by a pantomime questioning the validity of the phrase 'going commando.'

he did endear himself to me a great deal, though. i've previously written that i wasn't convinced by his approach and attitude to all things serious, ie: charity work. but he spoke at length and was very honest about the work he's done and became a much nicer person in my perception. just a shame he couldn't fill the 14,000 seat auditorium with the energy that someone like lee evans has managed in the past.

he was good, he just wasn't 7 baftas and the albert hall good.

what the world needs now is love (sweet love)

al salaam alaikum, readers! literally the day after i wrote about misconceptions of religion i ended up being involved in a press conference to announce the launch of the 'islam is peace' campaign which seeks to provide an open, transparent and honest source of information about who muslims actually are. none of this bigoted propaganda that the more extremist fraction like to broadcast, but a voice for the average everyday follower of the islamic teachings. not freaks or idiots or dangerous, but people who condemn the actions of those few.

about freckin' time, i say. a high profile campaign to help desist the mistrust of 2 million british citizens is long overdue. well done chaps.

my favourite sentiment of the press conference was spoken by dr. hany el banna OBE (president of islamic relief worldwide)... he said "this is not about defending islam or christianity or judaism or any other religion, religion is above us, god is above us." one of the major misconceptions of religion is that religious people are filled with contempt for anyone who follows a different set of teachings. it's thought that there is a hatred between them, even more than between believers and atheists. i guess that's understandable from the israel situation. but the whole world is not israel.
(israel is actually that tiny red dot in the middle of the map.)

doctor el banna's sentiment grounded the thought that this isn't the majority case. actually there is a huge respect between faiths, a constant dialog between faith leaders and even social integration in faith groups. shock horror. perhaps it's not about competing for god's attention, but understanding that people have been brought up in different cultures and learned to respect god in different ways. personally i think no religion is 100% right or wrong, what matters is that we understand there is something more powerful than us and accept that it might have an effect on how we live our lives.

what matters even more than that is being excellent to each other.

maybe i'm wrong and actually david icke has it sussed.

anyway, i applaud the work of the islam is peace organisers. and if you don't think you know everything about islam, you couldn't do much wrong by clicking on the logo and having a bit of a read.

i'm writing a lot about religion lately aren't i?
next week: HINDUISM! party on dudes.