stories

The thought occurs that, in four posts, I’ve yet to really tell a story about where I live; this pattern looks to continue a little longer, as I’m not about to tell one now. This is about London, which, to be fair, is where I was born – but London is massive so that’s not really saying much either.

ANYWAY. I have a friend called Stu, who happens to know a rather excellent and well-renowned British illustrator called Jon Burgerman, who happened to have submitted something for The Vader Project, an exhibition of customised Darth Vader helmets on display at the Star Wars 30th Anniversay Celebration last weekend, and, as it happened, couldn’t attend (check out my three-hit happen-derivative combo! BISH BASH BOSH). So he gave Stu his free tickets. So Stu and his friend Whisk and I went to London, to gawp at Star Wars stuff.

Perhaps you would like to see some photographs?

The rest of the show was essentially a massive toy fair/autograph opportunity; we did not take advantage of the latter, as you had to queue for ages, and then pay for the autographs. It would’ve been nice to meet Anthony Daniels and/or had the opportunity to smack George Lucas with a rolled-up newspaper, naughty wee pup so he is, but not for money. OK, I probably would pay money to smack George Lucas with a rolled-up newspaper, but I was on a tight budget and driving from Nottingham to London costs a lot in petrol.

Also, cosplayers! I normally regard these people with a degree of suspicion – one not entirely allayed by the numerous Fat Leias kicking about the exhibition centre – but seeing entire squads of Imperial Stormtroopers marching around in formation, occassionally popping outside for a smoke, was magic. Hordes of young children in Jedi costumes, chasing each other around with plastic lightsabers, shouting and battling Just Like In That Bit In The Film. Twi’lek slave girls queuing up for noodles next to Mandalorians and maybe a couple of Sith Lords. No Elvis Trooper, sadly, but I guess he doesn’t travel outside the US much.

STAR WARS

This isn’t really a complain-o-blog place, I know, but it’s come to my attention that I’m going to be missing a lot of good music this summer.  I was too slow off the mark to get myself a Glastonbury ticket (meaning I logged on to the website at 00:02 rather than making my first attempt twenty minutes before they actually went on sale – seriously, acquiring Glasto tickets is an adventure in its own right) and too skint to get a Leeds pass before they sell out, which amounts to the two big rock festivals down the tubes. I might be able to swing an O2 ticket but it’s hardly premier-league stuff; the atmosphere’s worse even than the notoriously commercial hellishness of Leeds, and I ain’t of any temper to spend £40 per day to see four good bands total.

This is a game I started playing about four years ago to help decide whether Leeds was worth going to anymore. Lineups have got increasingly awful (well, more likely my tastes have got better, but never mind) and ticket prices have skyrocketed, so since 2003 I’ve habitually divided the number of worthwhile acts on the lineup by the cost of a ticket, plus food, beer, camping, beer and sundries. I count five bands I’d go out of my way to see this year (LCD Soundsystem, CSS, Gogol Bordello – who I’ve seen before – Eagles of Death Metal and Biffy Clyro), and three-days passes are £145, plus booking fee, plus beer money etc. It does not add up to an inviting prospect.

But then I remember how much fun I’ve had at past festivals, and how there’s always something fun to look at or do when there aren’t any good bands on, and I chide myself for being so…well, so old, really, to divide something like that down into how much bang I’m getting for my buck. It’s not as if I give a shit about Glastonbury’s lineup, which, as is tradition, isn’t even announced for another few days yet, as will likely have a comparable amount of audio dogshit to Leeds’ dismal main stage. I had a real good conclusion in mind when I started this post, I swear, but all I got now is “I miss going to festivals, and am going to miss all the good ones this year. Again.”

I’m going to take a moment to talk about a friend of mine, who we’ll call Johnny (because his parents did)

Johnny’s at university now, so neither I nor my York-bound buddies see much of him, but even before he went off he was the kind of guy who’d drop off everyone’s social radar for months at a time, only to re-emerge for a week or so with some terrifying new device to show off. You see, Johnny likes building machines, and Johnny likes to see what kind of trouble he can cause with household or otherwise easily obtained materials, so Johnny builds a lot of weapons. In his shed. Just for laughs.

His personal armoury, to the best of my recollection, includes: three air cannons, one of which is capable of driving a carrot through a wooden fence at a distance of several feet; a flamethrower that he built for a mutual friend; a jet engine (“it doesn’t get a lot of thrust but it is quite pretty,” he says) and, terrifyingly, a microwave cannon. I saw him down the pub on Saturday after finishing my shift (he was back in York for the Easter holidays; I think he’s probably gone back now) and he told me that he’s banned from one of the labs at university after a professor caught him amidst some potentially terrifying experiments with lasers (I’d had an amount to drink, but he was saying something about using electromagenetic fields to somehow intensify commercially-available laser pointers? I forget). He said something about modifying a nailgun at one point, I think, to increase its range and accuracy.

He’s a laugh and a half and generally polite and friendly but holy shit I am glad we are not enemies.

In an effort to do new and productive things with my free time, I’ve decided to pursue some hobbies. Grad school doesn’t allow for a lot of leisure hours, but summer rapidly approaches and anything has to be better than what I do now. (“What I do now” is obsess over unrequited love. I’m good times!)

So, here’s what’s on the docket:

1) Playing my guitar. I took guitar lessons for a while when I lived in New York. I could play something that kind of sounded like a sloppy version of Positively Fourth Street by Bob Dylan. I haven’t actually picked up my guitar in over a year, but am hoping it will all come rushing back to me. I would also like to learn how to read tabs. They confound me.

2) Running. I’m lazy. No joke, I’m really lazy. I’m also out of shape. I get winded carrying in my groceries from the car. I’ve never been an athlete. When I was in 7th grade, I played on a basketball team and only scored one basket and one foul shot all season. At the end of the year, I got Most Improved Player. That is sad. To rectify this sorry state of affairs, I have decided to train for a marathon. I bought two books on the subject and am going to develop an awesome training plan. I tell you this now, so that I can’t back out of it later. I need external motivation. I may also need some massages.

3) ?????? There’s room for something here, but I don’t know what it is. I am taking all feedback and suggestions. Sure, many of you don’t know me, but that may lead some exciting new adventure on my part. In exchange, I will send you plenty of suggestions for things you can do with your life. And, go!

I’m sure the blogs of America are now full to bursting with people talking about St. Patrick’s Day. I was going to write something about how I don’t really celebrate it, that I don’t quite see how one can “celebrate” St. Patrick’s Day who isn’t Catholic, but instead I’ll explain.

I have Irish blood, sure. Most of my friends do, too, and only really lay claim to it in early March or under special circumstances like drinking contests or when Notre Dame is playing.

Fact: My grandmother changed the spelling of her daughter Bridget’s name to avoid having it be “too Irish” (fear of being associated with the IRA.)
Fact: My mother converted from Catholicism when she married my father.
Fact: I don’t actually know a thing about St. Patrick. (Now I do.)

Therefore, I don’t really feel like I can claim any kind of loyalty or right to celebrate today. Ah well, it’ll save me a hangover.

Instead, why don’t I celebrate what I am actually proud of about my family’s history:

My mother’s mother took dancing lessons from Gene Kelly. My grandfather owned a double-wide in the sticks until the day he died. It was full of weird little trinkets; on one wall hung at least a dozen different-sized calipers. A WWII pilot, last year his gruffness actuallly gave me the opportunity to say “Chinaman isn’t the preferred nomenclature, Grandpa.”

My father’s parents passed away when I was a kid, but I remember Granny being sweet and smelling like powder. She made mashed potatoes with lard, which made them taste much better, and always had little bowls of gumdrops that I would suck all the sugar off of and then try to put back. Mase (I actually thought this was his first name for most of my childhood, only later did I realize it was a shortening of our last name) had my dad and I over for lunch every Tuesday, and he would boil four hot dogs and cut them into bite-size pieces. I would douse them in ketchup and watch cartoons while he and my dad visited in the kitchen.

If anything, I think St. Patrick’s Day should be about celebrating your heritage, where you come from. I’m a Mick, a Limey, and a Kraut. (I hear I also have some Scot in me, but I didn’t know a racial slur for them.) But that isn’t where I come from – that’s just trivia. I come from the people who raised me; they come from the people who raised them. So today, when most everyone I know is getting hammered just because they can, I’ll drink to them: Mary, Melvin, John, and Audrey.

(Thanks, Gabe, for the title)

It’s 75 degrees in Washington today (that’s about 24 degrees for you metric-system types), and in my walk around the block for lunch I noticed that the attractive people have returned for spring.

I can only assume that they follow the homeless population south for the winter.

Q: Which is sadder?
A: The fact that I stayed home on a Saturday night and watched a nature documentary (the wonderful BBC documentary Planet Earth) OR
A: That the documentary made me burst into uncontrollable tears because the Amur Leopard is extremely endangered, and there are only about 40 left in the wild.

Caption: Baby leopards make me cry.