Year: 2007

I can’t say that that’s looking too promising:

Just as well I got some wellies last week…

So Cuba, then: I suppose I should write about it before time and Glastonbury conspire to wrench it from my memory…

As we emerged from a José Martí­ airport where power cuts had been intermittently plunging the baggage hall into darkness while we waited for our rucksack to arrive, we found a torrential tropical storm. As we hovered uncertainly under the shelter by the automatic doors, a boxy yellow and black Lada panataxi pulled up at the kerb, and the driver gestured at us to scurry across and jump in. It was the first of many taxis we would take over the next 10 days; the first of many slightly awkward attempts at communication in my long forgotten GCSE Spanish. As we pulled away, I turned instinctively to pull on a seat beat that wasn’t there. This was not to be the last time I would make that mistake.

Half way to Havana the rain stopped suddenly, giving way to the kind of glorious sunshine, deep blue skies, and sweltering heat that were to be a fixture of the rest of the trip.

As I looked out at the fields and the farm buildings with pro-Fidel propaganda scrawled on the walls, and the crazy cars and drivers also out on the roads, swerving to avoid the potholes and pools of rain water, I decided that I liked the place already.

Our hotel was on the edge of old Havana, so after quickly checking in, dumping our bags in the room and taking the lift up to the top floor restaurant for a quick peek at the city out there, we started to explore the streets. Beneath crumbling buildings, the streets were filled with locals sitting around passing the time of day, baseball-mad kids playing improvised games with whatever equipment they had to hand, and the local jineteros trying to hustle us with their offers of cheap cigars and “salsa festivals”. [It actually wasn’t until our last day in Havana that I would find out why so many locals were trying to offload their cigars–these, so we learnt from the guide at the Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagás, were the unsaleable ones; the three cigars a day that every employee was permitted to take home from the reject pile for their own personal consumption. I’d imagine that a fair few of those rejects end up being sold to unwitting tourists for significantly more than they’re actually worth…]

But thankfully most of those who would seek to hassle us on the street were happy enough with a simple ¡No, Gracias! And you struggle to begrudge the Cubans their attempts to part you from your precious hard currency, such is the paucity of the average Cuban’s salary, and the smiling charm with which they go about it. For example, the barmaid at Ambos Mundos (the erstwhile residence of Hemingway) who accidentally “forgot” to return the other 10 CUC of my change for our mojitos, apologised so sweetly and produced the note before I’d even got half way through my quizzical “Quanto questan las m….” that you’d almost think that the mistake was genuine. And that taxi driver from the airport might have, with an innocent shrug, flicked off his meter the instant he cut the engine, wiping the price away, but even though I knew exactly how much it had got up to, I still gave him what I hoped was a decent tip anyway. And the pizzas that arrived for our first meal in Havana might not have resembled the ones we ordered, while the prices were all rounded up from the ones on the menu, but we ate them, and paid the bill, and enjoyed it anyway.

Well, ¿Es Cuba, no?

After an evening drinking cans of Cristal beer out by the water while the sun went down, and an early night, our first full day in Havana began with us fending off yet another tout.

Did we want to go to the Salsa Festival, he asked? Did we know the Buena Vista Social Club? I ended up having to tell him that no, I didn’t like salsa music just so that we could escape, but this was really a problem of my own making, because in my attempts to converse in Spanish I’d inadvertently told him that we’d arrived “hier”. It was only several hours later, after we’d visited the fascinating Museo de la Revolución, that the slow realisation dawned as to why this had made him so confused, even repeating it back to me a couple of times with a very puzzled voice. That, of course, would be the French word for “yesterday”, and what I should have said was ayer. Well thanks brain: it’s not as if I need you to expose my poor grasp of Spanish to make me look like a bumbling, idiot tourist: I have my exposed pale British legs for that.

So I’m getting ready for Glasto, and the other day I booked Sal’s train ticket online, and then yesterday went over to the station to collect it from one of those machines. But the machine wasn’t having any of that, and I had to go to the ticket office instead.

“Oh yes, I can print that for you”, said the man at the desk. And he did. But as I was walking away, tickets in hand, I noticed something rather odd. Yes, there was the return ticket to Castle Cary that I was supposed to have, but what’s this? “Value Advance Single, Birmingham New Street to Glasgow Central?” I don’t remember booking that. I’m sure I would have remembered…

Back to the window:

“Sorry, there’s been some kind of mistake. This isn’t my ticket”
“It’s on your booking”
“No it’s not: this is my booking”, I said, waving the printed confirmation at him. “London to Castle Cary. Where does it say Birmingham to Glasgow?”
“But you must have booked it: it’s on your booking”, he said, pointing out that my booking reference was also on the rogue ticket.
“No I didn’t. I mean, I don’t care, I haven’t been charged for it: I’ll just throw it away.”
“Oh you can’t do that. You have been charged for it.”
“No I haven’t: I’ve already seen the charge on my credit card statement.”
“My receipt says you’ve been charged £17 for that.”
“But I didn’t book it!”
“You must have”, he insisted.

Well, so there you go: the computer says so, so I must have accidentally booked a single ticket from Birmingham to Glasgow, with a seat reservation. And then forgotten about it, removed any reference to it from the confirmation email and the online order status. And not been charged for it. I can see how that would have happened. If the man in the station has a computer that tells him that that’s what happened, then who am I to argue?

Perhaps it’s some kind of poorly promoted “Buy One Get One Free” offer? (Buy one train ticket to Glasto, get one free single to Glasgow?)

In the meantime, would anyone like a ticket to Glasgow? You’ll have to travel on the 09:03 on July the 18th, and you can’t come back again, but it’s free. Tempted?

We continued our recent tour of the West End’s finest cinemas this evening, by heading out to yet another free film screening. This time, it was Ocean’s 13 at the Cineworld in Haymarket. I was actually rather looking forward to this one. Not, of course, because I wanted to see how they’d managed to stretch a thin premise onto a third film, but rather because we saw it being filmed when we were in Vegas last year. So I was eager to see how that scene where Al Pacino walks into a bar at the Bellagio ended up on the big screen.

Al Pacino! Now there’s a celeb spot: sadly the best one I could manage today was Marcus Brigstocke, who walked past me looking a bit lost while I was waiting for Sal at Piccadilly Circus. (Oops, sorry, I’ll come up with a haiku later…)

I wasn’t quite prepared, however, to be accosted on the way in by security who demanded to search our bags. Cue a rather nervous moment while we worried that they might confiscate our ice creams. But no, they were actually looking for film pirates. As we did have any of them hidden in our bags, we were allowed in.

A little while later, ensconced in our seats and with our magnums in hand, one of the security chaps–a slightly intimidating, beefy, old school east end gangster type–addressed the audience to warn us against attempting to record the film.

“These”, he said, brandishing what looked like a pair of binoculars, “are night vision. I’ll be watching you, so make sure your mobile phones are off. I don’t want to be hauling any of you out of the screening because you’re texting your mates.”

“We’re here as security on behalf of the film company. They don’t want this film being leaked before it’s released”, he added, by way of explanation, before heading to the back of the room to stand around looking a bit menacing.

Blimey. At the free Time Out screenings a nice American lady gets up and tells you to enjoy the film. It’s not quite the same, is it?

And I don’t know why the film industry always harps on about people videoing films in cinemas: surely most of the ones that leak onto the internet are really screeners sourced from people inside the industry. And why would I want to video the film when I can find a torrent to download just by typing “Ocean’s Thirteen torrent” into Google (look: I just did and I found one in less than 2 minutes). Oh, I’m sorry, did I say all that out loud? Of course: all leaked movies have been taped in cinemas by terrorists. And home taping is killing music.

Oh, and it was nice to see that Cineworld and Warners have their priorities right: the sound cut out on at least 6 different occasions during the film. At one point we missed at least 5 minutes of dialogue. Mr Anti-Piracy, who had only a short while earlier been ostentatiously scanning the crowd with his night vision, stood impassively, doing nothing until the sound came back.

I almost felt like going up to the manager on the way out and complaining that the poor sound quality had really messed up that pirate recording that I was trying to make. But as I hadn’t paid any money that I could demand him return, it all seemed a bit pointless.

Oh, the film? Well, I’ve cleverly circumvented their hardcore security measures by escaping from the cinema with the contents of the film in my head: if you’ve seen either of the first two, then you know what to expect. Clooney and his mates have a bit of a laugh, and the good not-really-bad guys all triumph in the end. There’s a weird bit at the beginning where Eddie Izzard pops up, acts a bit badly, and promptly disappears, not returning for the rest of the film (almost as if his later scenes all ended up on a cutting room floor somewhere). There’s some moderately funny lines towards the end, and some awful gags at the start. It’s all, you know, a bit predictable, but perfectly passable. The sort of film that would make a perfect inflight movie. (I’ll have the chicken, please, and red wine, thanks).

And it made me want to go back to Vegas. A lot.

[The “Pacino walks into a bar” bit did indeed make it into the film, about an hour in, where he goes to the Gaming Expo event to buy Bernie Mac’s funny domino game. I almost jumped up and down shouting “I saw that! In real life!” but I was a bit scared that Mr Security might mark me down as an undesirable and throw me out. So I settled for quietly tapping Sal on the shoulder and smiling.]

Much crowing in the Sindie today about their “new look”. Not that you can really tell. I picked up the paper outside the tube on the way back from the pub last night–there’s still something that gives me a childish thrill about being able to buy tomorrow’s paper today if you’ve been out in central London on a Saturday night–and I was disappointed to see that it looks very much like their old look (although it did confuse the old fella manning the paper stall, who studied the front cover intently for at least five minutes looking for the price until I pointed out the giant “£1” written in a big red circle…)

The only really noticeable change is that, in what clearly appears to be an attempt to connect with teh interwebs, a key word in each story is printed in some almost illegible grey colour and underlined. I thought this was a printing error when I first saw it, until the appearance of similar terms throughout the paper confirmed that this is indeed an attempt to introduce some kind of hyperlink: I’m sure this seemed like a great idea in the design meeting, but perhaps someone should have pointed out that you can’t actually follow a hyperlink off a printed page. And perhaps a better strategy of connecting with teh interwebs would be to sort out your piss poor website.

They’ve also gone in in a big way for the whole “have your say” approach that seems to be ubiquitous in the British media these days. I hereby predict that the hyperlinks will last for two months at the most, and I look forward to the whole thing being roundly slagged off in this week’s Private Eye.

Oh, and their new look unfortunately hasn’t seen an end to their laughable Wi-Fi health scaremongering: page six informs me that Julia Stephenson (“The Independent’s Green Goddess columnist”) has disconnected her Wi-Fi, “on the advice of her naturopath”. Elsewhere, concerned readers have apparently been removing their Wi-Fi connections in droves: “There is not enough information available on the subject. I don’t want to take any risks. You just don’t know what all this technology in the home is doing to us.”.

I’m sorry, but given that there’s no actual evidence that there’s any health danger in using a Wi-Fi connection, I find myself firmly in the Ben Goldacre camp on this one, and I might have to consider switching to The Grauniad. Actually, I’ve half a mind to write a satirical health scare article of my own about the risk of getting cancer from copies of “The Independent on Sunday”. Of course, there’s no actual scientific evidence that newsprint is carcinogenic and can be absorbed into the body by handling copies of “The Independent on Sunday”, but until those scientist boffins can prove that “The Independent on Sunday” doesn’t cause cancer, I demand that these newspapers be pulled off the shelves of newsagents across the country, where they are within the reach of–gasp!–children. You just don’t know what all these “newspapers” in the home are doing to us. Won’t somebody, somewhere, think of the children?

*

UPDATE, 08-Jun-2007: I missed yesterday’s indie, but apparently Stephenson’s been at it again.

She actually uses the word “boffins”, before finishing with the following glorious rhetorical flourish:

“At one time scientists assured us the earth was flat and that mercury, asbestos, the atomic bomb and cigarettes were harmless. Today many assure us that GM crops, mobile phones and pesticides are safe. Yet history must surely advise caution before we rush headlong to embrace all that technology has to offer.”

Um. No. I don’t think so…

“At one time scientists told us… the atom bomb [was] harmless”? Come off it. This is a parody, right?

I have succumbed. Just a few short weeks ago I was slagging off Rob and Jim for doing the Facebook thing, but as of two days ago I have my own profile.

Partly, this is because of a very clever move on Facebook’s part: you can’t look at anything on the site unless you have your own profile. I can decide that I can’t be bothered with micebass just by looking at the ugly world of anti-design hell that it is (and I can’t see the appeal of using it to pretend to be friends with famous people, and don’t have a band to promote), but I can’t draw any conclusions about Facebook unless I join.

Now that I have, I see that it’s a bit like myspace, but without all the ugly background colours and the unsigned bands. And while there’s definitely something addictive about trying to find and add as many of your friends as possible, I’m fairly sure that the novelty of that must wear off after a while.

So what exactly is the point of Facebook?

If you wanted a blog, why not just get a proper one? If you want to upload your photos, why not just do it on Flickr (or one of the many alternative photo sharing sites out there)?

And why do they keep trying to get me to give them my email password? They claim that they will use this to log into my email account and download my address book, so that they can tell me if anyone I’ve ever emailed is also on Facebook, and maybe that is all that they will do with it. But that’s not the point. There’s no way in the world I’m going to give up my email password to anyone other than my email provider.

Are people really that lax about security that they will give up this sort of information to anyone who asks?

Perhaps they’d like my bank details as well so that they can login and check my balance and link me up with people on similar incomes… They already have my date of birth, and there’s space in your profile to complete your address. Maybe I should add my mother’s maiden name too?

Anyway. I’m signed up: why not add me as your “friend” (if I don’t add you first…)

Just a thought, but do Virgin Atlantic really think that Loose Change (complete with shot of the burning twin towers in the seat back magazine) represents appropriate content for their “in-flight entertainment”?

My, how times have changed: ten years ago I clearly remember (also on a Virgin flight as it happens) watching the Eurovision episode of Father Ted, from which four key words had been quietly edited out of the bit where Dougal says “Er, they all died, Ted, in a plane crash”. Then, a few years ago, I watched Donnie Darko on a trip to somewhere or other: in this case, it would have been pretty impossible for them to remove evidence of planes not always staying in the air, but they did provide a handy note in the magazine: “this film contains scenes involving a plane crash that some viewers may find disturbing”.

No doubt on my next trip they’ll be showing the Final Destination trilogy, with audio channels showcasing the best of Buddy Holly, Glenn Miller, and John Denver…

Anyway, I watched the 9/11 conspiracy thing on the way back from Cuba this morning. It was, quite clearly, nonsense, but more of that later…

And more of Cuba, too, which was fantastic. And I have 1.5 GB of photographic evidence to sift through and upload to prove it too. It might take a while.

So glad to see that Sal’s bank has signed up for some kind of efficient anti-fraud system. And they’ve clearly tested it so well: booking flights online last night, we were redirected to a third-party site to sign up to the “Verified By Visa” program, and then, somehow, we ended up here:

It’s the sort of thing that gives you faith that your money’s in good hands…

So, the Camden Crawl then. I snuck out of work early and found myself in Camden just after five. I waited for Sal just up the Kentish Town Road, close to the wristband exchange (my suggested meeting place of just outside the tube having been vetoed on the account of there being “too many weirdos there…”; of course the Camden of twenty meters away is refreshing crazy-free). As I waited, a steady stream of young indie kids, fresh off the production line with their tight skinny jeans and porkpie hats, wandered past in groups, each excitedly checking the lineups that they’d just collected. Hanging around in Camden makes me feel old.

When Sal finally turned up, and we too had collected our wristbands, free CD, lineups, and complimentary bag of promotional tat, we popped into the nearby noodle bar to grab something to eat. As we munched through our noodles I sorted through the bag of flyers we’d been handed to determine whether any of it was worth keeping. Amongst the promotional items within was a small NME badge, on which the paper’s logo is set against a union jack background. My, how things have changed.

Noodles consumed, and a couple of tigers later, we headed round the corner to the Electric Ballroom to catch the first act of the evening, selected purely on the basis of being the only thing on so far (As we passed the tube I noticed that teh kids were already queueing at the Underworld, presumably to see Foals, even though they wouldn’t be on for another hour; maybe they knew something we didn’t.)

Anyway, instead we saw “indie singer-songwriter” Kate Nash. Slightly entertaining, even though she’d clearly been signed by a record label desperate for an indie Lilly Allen. The first set of the night out of the way, and with a firm “no queues” policy established, we set off up Chalk Farm Road for some random crawl action. Sal wanted to go somewhere we’d never been before, so we opted for The Cuban Bar in the market, where a bloke with a Yorkshire accent mixed us Mojitos beneath posters of Che and Cuban flags. The band, when they eventually played on the small stage in the corner, were ultimately forgettable, but did boast a lead singer who looked uncannily like Stephen Mangan (he of Green Wing fame).

Where to next? We’d already made the decision to head towards Koko for the end of the evening, so we decided to head back along the high street (after a brief diversion via Lock 17, which instantly failed our “no queues” policy with a line that snaked around the courtyard in anticipation of who knows what). I’d decided that I would see anything, regardless of the band’s name or type of music. I only realised that this strategy may have been a mistake when we found ourselves in The Oh! Bar: it was only after we’d bought drinks that I noticed the Kerrang logo on the walls. Oh! Dear. Well, how bad could “Flood of Red” be?

We stopped just long enough to down the remains of our pints and for me to take a couple of photos, and scampered, the first song barely half over…

After a brief detour via The Purple Turtle (where I rather enjoyed the unusually-titled Untitled Musical Project), we headed for a busy Koko, where we watched first Tom McRae, and then The Charlatans from a prime vantage point just above the DJ booth (which is now covered over, thus, preventing any Mani-asking-Sal-for-a-light style shenanigans like last year).

And that was that. Just time for a Woody’s kebab, and then home. Same time next year?

Just a quick one to apologise to anyone who might have popped in this morning for the usual fix of sarcasm and cynicism and found themselves not at www.pastemagazine.org, but instead at www.pderoode.com. Or indeed at any one of these sites (or indeed several others):

– www.martinshakeshaft.com

– www.cliftoncoffee.co.uk
– www.d-log.info

Our hosting company, Freedom2RunAReallyShittyService, in their infinite wisdom, appear to have decided to randomly serve up one of the other sites on the same server instead of this one.

Perhaps they were trying to tell me something.
Or perhaps they’re just utterly incompetent.
You decide.