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Effluvia Tommy Chong turned 62 yesterday. The pot helps his arthritis, I'm sure. Exceptionally funny misheard song lyrics. Two things from Salon today:
Nifty spoken-word sound files. Bygone
Days 75 YEARS AGO Sheriff Will S. Knight and deputies yesterday seized 1,000 gallons of wine at a suburban road house, near Memphis. Sheriff Will is a dork. Siobhan has Siobhan's gone home, and she's not happy about it. While Siobhan's gone this summer her slot will be filled by Boss Kenny. Boss Kenny is a hilarious new feature starring Kenny Rogers as a clueless IT supervisor who tries to impart his wisdom to the younger generation - with wacky results! Catch Boss Kenny this summer in every update of wonderland 2.
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05/25/2000 London, Part 3 We were having a meeting at work today. Dave (a coworker and lead singer of this band) and I were sitting in our cubicles, paying attention. We share a cubicle wall, and I saw Dave take a wire organizer off the wall and pull it into his cube. A few seconds later he peered around the wall, the organizer now on his head. "I can smell your cunt," he hissed. Needless to say, I lost it. Continuing the travelogue... Sunday the 12th Awakening early and much refreshed, we sat down for our hotel's traditional English breakfast: tea and toast, orange juice, eggs, bacon and cooked beans. It's comforting, in a sickly way. Off to Covent Garden, then. We shopped in the market there (England, it seems, has rednecks, too) and wandered the neighborhood. There was a group of kids - pre-teens, mostly - lined up outside a vaguely hip-looking building. I sidled up to one of them. "What's the line-up for?" I asked. "A show," she said, eyes wide with fear and revulsion. No doubt she thought I was about to club her over the head and shoot everyone in line. After all, that's what Americans do. We had lunch at the White Lion, a very pubby pub. I had the ploughman's lunch (bread and cheese, some sausage and relish) and a pint of Guinness but I did not feel significantly more English. Yeah, we ate at the White Lion. Feel free to sing your favorite hit by the nearly-forgotten hair metal band of the same name. I did. And their cover of Radar Love was really good, I thought. We were at the Doc Marten's store in Covent Garden later that day. One emergency exit was marked with a sign that said THIS DOOR IS ALARMED I wondered what had happened to frighten the door. Anyway, we took the Underground ("Mind the gap.") to Tower Hill and had another lovely walking tour - this one of the Tower of London. All sorts of history over there, man. It was pretty cool, really, to think about all the people who had been there (and died there) before. Especially Queen Elizabeth I, who must have been a pretty cool chick. In fact, I was assaulted by history. In the room where King Henry VI was supposedly killed I took a bad step off a dias and banged my knees on the hardwood floors. I believe the ghost of the murdered king pushed me.
Back on the tube for a lovely evening wandering around, drinking pints and eating pizza in Notting Hill. We camped out in a local pub for much of the afternoon, drinking beer (good, good beer) and watching soccer (or "football," as the English call it) and swapping embarassing high school stories. We ate dinner and then, pleasantly buzzed, Kent and James and I acted foolish while Sonya made some phone calls. Did you know hookers in London advertise on little postcard-sized pieces of paper that they stick in phone booths? It's true! Kent and James went off to explore further, while Sonya and I went to meet Sonya's friend Steve in Camden Town. Camden, for those of you who haven't been there, is a young, hip neighborhood with more than its fair share of freaks. Sonya and I felt perfectly at home there, though a tad underdressed in our casual tourists duds. Steve had advised us to catch a black cab - one of the hulking, street-dominating brutes that fill London's streets - but one was impossible to catch in Camden on a Sunday night. All Steve had given us was the address of his local pub - and no walking directions. Finally, we took a minicab - which is a formal name for some guy with a little car who will drive you somewhere for far too much money. It was ten pounds for a five-minute ride, which is, like sixteen bucks or so. The advantage of vacationing in a foreign country, however, is that the money is, to my American eyes, anyway, play-money. "Twenty pounds? Ho ho! I'll easily pay that! Have a tip, my good man! I love you English people!" Steve was pleased to see us at his pub, which was filled with a bunch of London scenesters. He paid us the ultimate compliment, saying we were not "your average Americans." By this, I think he meant he was glad we weren't wearing Hawaiian shorts, sandals with black socks and six cameras around each of our necks. We were having a lovely time, drinking beer and cider (Strongbow cider, which hasn't made it to Memphis yet and tastes like heaven) and smoking Steve's cigarettes when the bartender announced "last call" and the place cleared out. At ten-thirty. London's liquor laws are even stranger than those in Memphis. Apparently, the usual plan for Steve and his buddies was to go to the pub, drink 'til closing, then go to someone's house and drink some more. We declined this invitation, though, and Steve gave us easy directions on how to walk back to the tube station. On the subject of liquor laws, the big news on the news today (Sky News, England's answer to CNN) was that a foreign aid worker was confined in a hospital with lassa fver) is that next summer pubs in England may be able to stay open all hours. A big deal, in a city full of bars and drinkers. A Few General Observations
Monday I just saw an excellent graphic on Sky News: there was US flag in the background, with a pistol covered with contrasting US flag-like patterns in the foreground. It made the subject of the story undeniably clear: American Guns. On Monday, after a breakfast of eggs, beans and bacon (again - and when I say bacon I mean a slab of fatty ham, not the neat slices of American bacon. God knows what you get when you order ham here) I got dressed in one of my young people shirts and some silver vinyl pants, which were quite stylish, very warm and apparently unique in London, because everyone in Westminster stared at them. In fact, we were waiting for Kent and James in front of the American Express office - they were buying tickets on the Eurostar to Paris - when a Japanese tourist stopped and stared at the pants, then walked up to me. "Are they plastic?" he asked, pointing at my pants. "Yup," I said, and he reached out and touched my knee. "They're silver, very nice, very cool," he admired, "is what's in them silver, too?" he asked, grinning. "Ah, no," Sonya answered for me. After a swing through an internet joint for e-mail and latte we went back to Camden. We all shopped - records and t-shirts, pants and skirts (more vinyl, coincidentally, for Kent and Sonya, respectively). Sonya and I felt more at home since we'd dressed for it. We made a quick trip through Soho to stop at HMV and Virgin for music shopping - I found the A-Teens CD I wanted, but Helen Love is still impossible to find. I'll keep looking. We dropped off some crap at the hotel, then went back out for a tasty English dinner of fish and chips. The plan after that was to take the Underground to Trafalgar Square. A symphony of wrong trains, cancelled services and confusingly-named stations delayed us and deposited us in King's Cross, a haven of drug addicts and the homeless. It was worth it, though, to see Trafalgar at night. |
