Google Voice? Utter Bollocks.

This is what you get for beng a little too tecnologically on board:  a headache and another lesson in inefficiency.  Whilst I know that you can call internationally for like ten cents this also requires upgrading to a phone that could quietly run a factory in its spare time.  So no good if you still have a 'dumbphone'.  Here are the transcripts of voicemails recently received via this service.  Guess who...?

3/29/11 8:19 PM 11 hours ago

Hello Mom Joseph will balloons. Will you again the files. I just wanna bet of. By only. If everything is working fine. Your internet and Yeah. Alright. Thank you very much. Bye bye. 3/29/11 7:47 PM 12 hours ago Hey sleeping safe snorts really sorry I missed you earlier. I was gonna sing to sit down for dinner. The Hagen with from the I think full of massive about. So, anyway. I just dropped the blowing up at the airport in She sing off to arrived yet. Your new york. Yeah, yeah, I was just calling to know what the Donna some action. Because, you know happen. It's way chintzy, so yet, I I'm here. Not. No one homesick please. I think that. Hope all is well. So if you have a good day and I guess the which I think we've got Phoenix. 3/29/11 7:57 AM 24 hours ago Hello Bob, you get the Budget decision. I'll be there on your home state. The up this evening. So, hey babe alright. Bye bye.

I told you to stay away from the sides...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  - Robert Frost 

Today I had to go and run for miles. Sometimes that's all you can do to wear out the voices in your head that  whisper imminent failure.

Then you pull from your gut as you sit your aching ass in front if a blank screen for the n-ie-mth time and do it.  For England Harry and Saint George but more importantly to keep pushing the bus up the hill, because that's what this feels like right now.

Stop for a moment and you'll be crushed. By the city, the people, the sharks.

But where are the vegetables?

I'm too hungover right now to actually consider eating, so instead I am watching Food P$rn courtesy of my new favourite show:  Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

Isadora has waxed lyrical over the biscuit.  Now see how they are made for yourself in an homage to the Yank and the Hopa's home State, North Carolina.

Or you could contemplate the Homewrecker Hotdog. 

If you can eat the Homewrecker in under 12 minutes you win a t-shirt.  My stomach would never let me sell it so short.  This man however, takes pride in his punishment.  But look at his eyes as he speaks to the camera, he looks like he's about to weep even before he's started.  He's also the most comedy dumb I have ever seen; I think I may have found the face to match my calls to AT&T...

God damn it people what's with the animal style eating?  The French in me just says non.

A plea in Favour of Anarchy

The day started well.  A stroll on the beach in Malibu in the company of FMH/Isadora followed by a few smashing cups of tea pre-departure.  Them to Ikea (why do I have a bad feeling about this?) and me to Santa Monica on Doris (the bicycle) for one last administrative push.

In the past three days I have pretty much covered off all the administrative bases:  UCLA registration, SoCal Gas, LA Water and Power, rent, landlord, Mexican with a van.... Done done and done.  So really the small matter of getting a phone contract should surely not be a trial?  Negative.

To each person that I mentioned AT&T to that whistled through their teeth in disgust, you were right, they suck.

After 4 hours spent (on and off in between 'breaks' in Barnes and Noble while they tried to resolve another issue (my guess = identifying their ass from their elbow)) we had still moved no further to them taking a $500 deposit from me on the grounds that I am Jonny Foreigner.  So I just left.

I would have pulled the same gig when LAWP asked me for a $215 deposit, but electricity is kinda essential.  So I just got on the Big Blue Bus up to Westwood, cash in hand, and gave it to them.  No over the phone customer friendly offerings here, just a weird Albino with an afro behind bulletproof glass.  I'd have taken a photo of her but I think that might have led to an unpleasant experience, so you'll have to content yourselves with this instead.

And to draw a conclusion from all these delightful experiences, let's ask Don Draper what he thinks.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... ?

As we move seamlessly from Jane Birkin to Lauren Hutton: the good karma of celebrity sightings

Before I left I was, as you know, having a love-in with France (like all tempestuous affairs, it was short lived and expensive, I just paid my fucking tax bill...).  And on one of my romantic midnight strolls through Saint Germain after a dinner at the Maison des Polytechniciens (speaker:  François Heisbourg, a leading authority on world strategy; most retained quote of the evening from said speaker:  "Well have you come to quote articles from the Economist to me or do you want to listen to what I have to say on the matter?"  And no, it was not in reference to a question posed by The Euro, I had checked out somewhere in between the crisis in Egypt and the situation in Iran and was casting a comedy desert war drama starring various members of my table (N.B. it's always a comedy war drama when the French are involved, it just is...))  I spied Jane Birkin.

Now, I don't usually get excited about celebrity spots, partly because I never see anyone until it's too late.  Case in point:  when entering a club in Madrid a few years ago some chavvy looking doorman in a tux opened the door for me after a skinny woman in a bright dress left as we were arriving.  That chavvy looking doorman was David Beckham and the skinny looking bird?  His not so well-known wife.  I was only alerted to the fact after the event when my friend kicked me on the arse and asked if I had noticed who that was.  At least I had given him a polite but cursory thank you...

So Jane, glorious, accented, wonderful Jane B.  She was my last and only true celeb sighting in all my years living in Paris, and was out walking the most handsome bulldog on rue de Seine.  I don't normally get excited about dogs either, but perhaps it was the exceptionally dry after dinner musings that had whetted my appetite for the moister things in life, if dogs and Jane Birkin can be described as such...

Anyway, today in the Venice farmer's market we came full circle and I spotted my first celebrity  since the move:  Lauren Hutton.  I'm sure you'll agree that such a smooth segway from Jane Birkin to Lauren Hutton has to be some sort of good omen?  Mais oui.  

If not Don Draper, then who?

So I'm sitting in Barnes and Noble after a long urban hike and whilst I am supposed to be working, I am multi-tasking by tuning in on the conversation next to me. You say eavesdropping, I say character study. It's like Melanie Griffith said whilst pushing a dim-sum cart in Working Girl (career high...) "you never know where the big ideas could come from."

In this case there was no big idea, just big breasts on the ridiculously tiny Asian woman (I say mid-fifties, her resume and her plastic surgeon would tell you otherwise) listening intently to the musings of an overweight, badly-dressed 'photographer' on the importance of capturing the essence of one's subject.  I'm guessing that if your fanny (American or British meaning of the word?  Either will do here.) is in focus, that's all the essence he needs...  Of course, she had her agent with her (purpose served, fluffer?) who looked like a wet behind the ears trainee lawyer. Anyway, I believe we have established what I think they were trying to accomplish; but I swear to you, the next character I have to write into a screenplay will be this guy.  Don Draper may have his charms, but Porn Agent aged 20, now there's a character I want to have a beer with.

Too posh to PBS

Welcome to Whole Foods!

For those of you that don't know what a PBS is, let me educate you in a little bit of Americana:

As opposed to right up my alley?  Questionable...  Yes, it's one of the Things America Does Well.  And they don't sell it at Whole Foods.

Whilst I was perusing the beer aisle at 8am (jet lag will do that to a girl) I noticed this, Whole Foods may do certain things well -  Mojito in a Bag anyone?

But, it does not sell what I have come to regard as kitchen staples in America:  Bud Light and PBS.  Just these pretentious lagers, amongst others.

Really, the mung-bean pushers need to get on board, because no one should eat healthy without being able to get dirty later.  If cleanliness is close to godliness...

Just More Car Porn

My love-affair with the rust bucket continues apace...

Feeling a Bit Swedish Today?

There is NOTHING more glamorous than a £1.75 Ikea breakfast to make your Sunday morning fully operational.  

And all for the love of the purchase of blinds that don't smell of the fug of the dubious and somewhat hairy Bulgarian PHD student who has fucked up your London apartment for the last 18 months.  Simmy, I love you for having been there.  Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, a more delectable man you will never meet.  

How could we not fall in friend-love all over again over this:

Or these:

Who said they did it better in America?

Whole Foods:

Pulling the Rip Cord on your Life. Twice...

Today has not been a good day.  In fact on an emotional level I would say it's been catastrophically, unquestionably dreadful.

Having powered through to the edge fueled only by fear and biscuits, I brought my three-day big push to bring Don Draper home to a close at 11.55pm on Thursday night.  I then took my sorry and under-nourished ass out for a subdued last hurrah with Yorkshire's Finest; it being necessary, after all, to consume an inappropriate amount of bacterially-resplendent fromage (not Bleu Cheese, Isadora, no) before leaving for good.  This, of course, had to be accompanied by a delectable Bourgogne and followed by a cleansing ale, because it was after all, St Patrick's Day.  Anyway, this minor foray into sociability came back to bite me firmly in the ass when I realised that having devoted all my time to my writing, my packing had somewhat suffered (let's be honest, so much remained undone).

When the sweep of an arm into the box technique can no longer be employed because key immigration documents may or may not be somewhere in 'that pile of crap' there is only one thing for it.  Go, and then come back.  It's like one of those fucked up rows you have with your beloved (who at the time is being affectionately referred to as cunt) and after you slam the door to make your sweeping exit you realise that you have left your handbag on the table in the kitchen, and that you have no choice but to go back and get it. Trust me, I know.

So here I am, saying goodbye to my Paris apartment for a second time, having already left it yesterday, to go to a meeting in London as scheduled, because once was just not hard enough.  And at some point, just to really rub salt into an already gaping would, my iPod spat out Tom Waits.  If there was one song I did not need to hear it was this:

 

  When one door closes?  

Only time will tell...

The Redistribution of Self

I'm sitting in a pub in East London, two steps from my old place.  I'm surrounded by some of the most amazing people that I am lucky to know, who are, by far and away, the greatest friends.  I'm wondering why in hell's name I am leaving London for the second time.  Was moving from London to Paris not difficult enough?

Someone I know recently told me that after all their shenanigans abroad, they wouldn't hesitate to stay put, forever.  I didn't quite understand why, until now.

Packing turns over old skeletons.

 The question is, where to bury them...

Rubber Gloves and Eyebrow Tweezers

Really, could you think of a better segway from a Tranny Taco Fight...?

Anyway, just in case you were in danger of believing my life to be glamorous, let me share this with you:

Any ideas? 

Well, let me put you out of your misery, and tell you this:  it's the interior of a dishwasher filter that has inadvertently copulated with a washing up sponge.  It's what you get for having small fingers that can poke into holes.  (Self-censorship, always a plus...)  And, I see you are all on the edge of your seats, pray tell why is it so?  Well, as if I didn't have enough to do before crash-landing out of here (let's be honest, it ain't going to be smooth) it seems that when you are moving house (let alone continent, career, life...) everything that can break or be broken will indeed do just that, hence the dishwasher filter requiring key-hole surgery this afternoon.

To add insult to injury, I have no phone, TV, or internet - merci Bouygues Telecom, and every stage of the process to get them fixed is more painful and time consuming than the last.  My personal favourite was when somebody in customer services finally broke down and told me that she simply didn't have time to talk to me anymore; those of you that know me, permission to smirk, and those of you that have not had the pleasure...

Ok, so coming back to the task in hand, how does one liberate a washing-up sponge from the jaws of a dishwasher filter?  Well, first you have to keep poking the sponge as you try to pincer it in-between two very small fingers only to find that this technique actually rams the sponge further into the tube.  Then, as a side order, you accidentally rip the fingers off the rubber gloves that are allegedly protecting your nails (why bother?), and finally you strike on this:

Yes, ladies, those are eyebrow tweezers. 

Anyway, following that experience, I am now trying to rewrite the Mad Men episode that's due er, tomorrow.  And as a result of drafting scenes of domestic violence involving Betty Draper, it's  dawned on me that I am getting very creative in the use of household implements as weapons.  Question is, do you think it's only women that see the kitchen as an armory?  (See Mr and Mrs Smith for the common stereotype, Brad bien sur, keeps his guns in the shed...)

Either way, somewhere out there in my imagination there is a technician from Bouygues Telecom hung with a pair of nylons then drawn and quartered with a stiletto heel (everyday household objects chez the Euro).  It's what Braveheart would have looked like if directed by Anna Wintour...

Open Post: Hosted By A Tranny Taco Fight

Another gem from the gods at Dlisted.  Quote:  "Lesson learned. Don't ever tell a San Diego drag queen you've got a better body than she does, because wigs will fly, dick-tucking panties will rip and everyone will hit the floor together (you know they choreographed that move). This is what backstage at a Destiny's Child reunion would look like."

And this one took place in San Diego, CA. Now those 3000 miles and a barrage of red necks between me and maple syrup loving bitch slappers is looking like a fine fine thing...

A Sonoric Soupcon of a Night That Was

Hopa:  it's the Air Guitar 101 you need.  Sure, I promise to sway to the music...

 

See more of the same at Le Caveau des oubliettes

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Eat like nobody's watching...

"Eat like nobody's watching; drive like you've never been hurt.  Pray like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth."

A Cynic