Category: Uncategorized

“The first time he flew, saw the Vegas skyline gently melt into view…”

So to Vegas, then, which we finally reached only a couple of hours later than planned. If you want to enjoy yourself in Vegas, (well, on the strip at least) then your first task is to embrace it for the glorified shopping mall in the middle of the desert that it is. “Paris”? “New York”? “Venice”? Utterly fake and ridiculous as it may be, it’s all done on such a scale that even an old cynic like myself couldn’t help but be impressed. Once you’ve accepted all that, it can be great fun.

Pretty tiring, though: even in September, any attempts to walk around outside were quickly defeated by a harsh, dry desert heat that sucked our energy away, and when we retreated to the air-conditioned cool of the casinos, we quickly realised that they are carefully designed to keep you there–we naively assumed that it might be possible to walk along the strip through each of the casinos, but, in most cases, only a fairly small portion of the casino borders the strip itself, with the bulk of the gaming floor extending out to the back. So you find yourself getting hopelessly lost and disorientated, only to realise that you are miles away from where you wanted to be in a room with no exit signs. (Presumably the idea is that you respond to this discovery by thinking “well, I can’t find my way out of this room, so I’ll just sit here and put all my money into the slots instead.”)

Another thing that you have to be prepared for in Vegas is, well, the other patrons… Of course, this trip was not the first time that Sal and I have been to the, er, “larger than life”, USA, but our previous trips together had been to cosmopolitan New York, and before that most of the time I’d spent in the US had been in the big cities of the North East. So we were slightly unprepared for one aspect of spending time in Vegas: the sheer number of super-sized visitors.

One morning we had to be up really early in order to get away to the Grand Canyon, so we decided to grab a quick bite at the all-you-can-eat buffet in our hotel. Our early start meant that we joined the line for the buffet within a few minutes of it opening. There, in front of us, were some of the most, ahem, impressive human beings we’ve ever seen, several of whom looked like they might have eaten the person in front of them while they were waiting. Funnily enough, on the one other occasion we visited the breakfast buffet (when we arrived at a sensible time like 9:45, shortly before it closed) the clientèle was noticeably slimmer.

Our trip to the Grand Canyon, by helicopter, was probably the highlight of the whole US trip, although we were punished for our earlier thoughts when the dimensions of our fellow passengers forced us to sit in the middle of the helicopter–for safety reasons everyone travelling had to be weighed, and then that weight had to be distributed evenly around the cabin. In our case, unfortunately, this meant that the much larger couple also in our group were distributed at the sides, in the window seats, whilst Sal and I were asked to sandwich ourselves between them.

Other than that, though, it was an amazing experience. Never having been in a helicopter before I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turns out that the sensation of flying in one feels much more like being in a hot air balloon–you just seem to float upwards and glide smoothly along–as opposed to the bumpiness of a plane. (Having said that, I’m not so sure about the “safety” video that they made us watch before going up, which contained gems like “If a door should open in-flight, do not be alarmed.” Luckily we were not required to put this piece of advice to the test).

In the evening, after our helicopter flight, we did something many tourists in Vegas never do: we left the strip and headed for Downtown. We’d had a tip-off about a locals’ bar there sometimes frequented by the likes of the Killers called The Beauty Bar, and had vowed to head over there and check it out. Our cabbie didn’t have a clue where it was, so we just asked for Downtown, and hoped for the best as we sped along Las Vegas Boulevard past the cluster of wedding chapels, resisting the temptation to ask him to swing into the drive-thru chapel.

We found it eventually, after asking directions from an old-school bouncer at the entrance to one of the old-school casinos on Freemont Street. The bar itself, which is styled like an old hairdressing salon, turned out to be having some kind of 50s night (or maybe it’s like that every night, who knows…) attended by all the cool kids from Vegas–and a smattering of teddy boys who looked like they remembered it from the first time round–who had all got properly dressed up for the occasion and were doing some impressive swing and jive dancing. We were in no way cool enough to be in there, so we installed ourselves at the bar drinking cans of Corona and watching. We also bought ourselves tickets to come back the following night to watch The Brain Jonestown Massacre (they of DiG! fame). They played out back in the parking lot, decked out with fairy lights, like something that might happen on The OC. We didn’t have an emotional crisis while failing to watch the band, though; we just stood in the crowd, listened and clapped. (And looked around carefully to see if any of The Killers–or anyone else famous–had turned up. They had not–I later found out that they were playing a gig in London that night–but they seemed to have sent along in their place a bunch of people who looked a bit like some famous people, including American versions of Rhys Ifans and Badly Drawn Boy). I hate to say it, but we left at 1 AM with the band still playing in order to get back to our hotel bed in preparation for our early flight to LA the next day. Having missed one flight already this trip, we weren’t about to do miss another one.

“Swore he just saw Elvis, playing poker at Dunes…”

Oh, and there was a bona fide sleb spot while we were in Vegas, too: wandering down to grab breakfast one morning, we noticed a crowd of people standing around watching a cordoned off portion of our hotel’s casino floor, where some unspecified thing was being filmed. To begin with, all we could see were some bored looking extras, but then we overheard someone in the crowd loudly announcing that it was in fact the filming of Ocean’s 13 (and clearly that’s a franchise with unlimited possibilities–Ocean’s 27 anyone?). As the extras closest to us were being arranged, we figured we’d hang around for a bit–shortly afterwards we were rewarded with Al Pacino, who turns out to be a tiny man. Anyway. Keep your eyes peeled for Ocean’s 13 when it comes out. If the rest of the film is up to the quality of the “Al Pacino walks into a restaurant” scene then I’m sure it’ll be a cracker…

What a tiny man
walking through the casino
It’s Al Pacino!

In a bizarre twist, 2 and a bit years on from the first time we saw them there, last night Sal and I once again managed, for free, to see “a band called the Kaiser Chiefs” at Koko playing a bunch of songs we’d never heard before.

This time, it was because they were recording a stack of new material for broadcast on “The Album Chart Show” on channel 4 (footage that is no doubt destined to be reused as each one respectively troubles the singles charts). There was a lot of hanging around (although we did also get to see the excellent Gruff Rhys–he of Super Furries fame–and also Patrick Wolf who I think I would have enjoyed if I hadn’t been back at the bar at the time and consequently unable to hear anything), but it was probably worth it, if only because we were rewarded with a couple of old songs after the cameras had stopped rolling.

Oh and a sleb spot too. Does this count? (It was in the Vietnamese down the road before the recording, rather than the venue…)

Presenter Joe Mace
At the table next to us
Talking crap, to friends

After our brief stop in Carmel, we headed on to spend one night each in Monterey and Santa Cruz, which are both pleasant enough. Bizarrely, Monterey is home to numerous “British” themed pubs of a kind that would be considered authentic only by people who’ve never actually set foot in the UK, while in Santa Cruz we inadvertently found ourselves walking for miles to reach a restaurant over by the marina that, although blessed with cracking views of the sunset, unfortunately wasn’t blessed with either good food or service (at one point, for example, the waiter asked me if I wanted dessert–while Sally was still eating her main course).

Still, it was probably worth it for this…

The next morning was Sunday, and it was an early start for us for the drive back up to the airport in San Francisco. On reflection, if we’d known where it was, it might have been more sensible to have booked an internal flight that left from San Jose. But never mind, we thought, at least we’ve left ourselves plenty of time to make it all the way to SFO before our lunchtime departure to Vegas.

A few miles down the road, with the low fuel light blinking ominously, we decided it would probably be a good idea to stop to fill up both the car and us (the carton of sunny delight and box of cheerios that had passed for breakfast at our motel not quite having cut it), so we pulled into sleepy Los Gatos, and parked up by the village green.

Petrol wasn’t a problem, but Los Gatos seemed to be rather poorly equipped for two hungry travellers looking for a bite to eat. Aware of how much further we still had to go, and wondering if we really did have enough time after all, I suggested we should just get something to take away… Unfortunately, after much searching, we ended up in what appeared to be our best option, a small French café, waiting for an interminable period of time for what turned out to be the most disgusting croque monsieur we have ever had. By the time they eventually finished preparing our food, Sal had already gone back to bring the car round, and so I eventually emerged from the shop and ran down the street to reach her, dodging khaki-clad locals milling around and chatting after church as I went.

“Well that wasn’t really worth the wait, was it?” I said to Sal, after we’d both bolted down the rather unpleasant soggy cheesy mess that we’d ended up with. “We should still make it, though, I think…”

20 minutes later, just after passing right next to the airport at San Jose, we found ourselves unexpectedly slowing down. Oops. Maybe we had time for either a lengthy wait for some shoddy food or a big traffic jam, but both? Well, it was going to be tight. And then, as the minutes ticked ominously away, and as the hour before departure check-in deadline came and went, I realised that not only were we going to be late, but that our rental car had to be returned to somewhere one exit past the airport itself. Oh dear…

As we pulled up to the Dollar rental lot, there were approximately 30 minutes left before our departure time… Perhaps this wasn’t the best moment to find out that the chap checking in the cars couldn’t get his hand-held scanner to work.

“Do we need to be here for this?” we asked, unused to the formalities of car rental returns. “We’re late for our flight.”

We did not.
No doubt used to this kind of behaviour, he pointed us towards the transit train we had to catch.
We ran.

As we reached the platform, there was a train pulling out… “Next train within 5 minutes”, said the sign. Oh. Bugger.

“You’re late” said the friendly lady at the check-in counter.
“Er, yeah… We know. Are we too late?” I asked hopefully, glancing at my watch to discover that our plane would be taking off in about 15 minutes.

Luckily, it turns out that if you’re going to choose somewhere to miss a flight for the first time, then an internal flight in the US is probably the best time to choose to do it. Within 5 minutes she had rebooked us on the next one, leaving us with just 1 1/2 hours to kill. Phew…

We chose to spend much of our 1 1/2 hours having a much needed sit down and calm down.

Right. I don’t usually make resolutions, but there’s a couple of things I have in mind this year (one of which I’m keeping to myself because I’ll probably fail miserably). The other one, though, is to write more. I’m not saying I’ll necessarily manage to complete NaNoWriMo or anything, but at I’m at least resolving not to neglect the blog so much. (Of course, I’ll also plan on continuing to take a photo a day, at least until October, but that’s more than a little passé now that people are copying it all over the place…)

Anyway, that all means that I’ve got a wee bit of unfinished business to attend to.

So where were we? Oh yeah: After a full day devoted to wine in Paso Robles, we moved on again.

A Stately Pleasure Dome

The plan was to drive north along highway 1, towards Monterey. Highway 1 is more commonly known as Big Sur (or, if you’re Sal, as “Nice, but Not As Good as the Great Ocean Road”).

Before we got there, though, we stopped off at Hearst Castle, the former home of Citizen Kane himself, newspaper magnate (or, perhaps, if you’re Wikipedia the “newspaper dude“–see the fourth paragraph of the section on “Expansion”, if someone hasn’t corrected it yet) William Randolph Hearst. Luckily for him, years before he needed it, his family had purchased several miles of prime Californian coastline for the equivalent of about 20p, and, so when he’d made his own fortune, he had a ready made spot on which to build his huge mansion up in the hills and stuff it with all the antique art that he had amassed over the years.

Well worth a visit, if you’re in the area, although we felt that the inside of the buildings don’t quite live up to the expectation created by what’s on the outside: our tour guide suggested that most people’s reaction on entering the main house for the first time can be summed up by a three letter word that “starts and ends with ‘w’ and has an ‘o’ in the middle”, but you could more accurately summarise our reaction with a word that starts in ‘c’ and ends in ‘hintz’–Hearst’s style of interior decoration essentially amounted to collecting as many artworks as possible–the older the better it seems–and squeezing them all into a room regardless of whether they fit together in any way. And I’m not sure quite how I’m supposed to feel about Hearst’s plundering of impoverished post-WWI Europe for interior decoration purposes: For example, when the 12th century Italian church choir stalls that he had opted to install as, essentially, a kind of wallpaper proved to be too tall for his living room, he just lopped 12 inches off the bottom… Alone amongst those in our tour group, Sal and I wondered if maybe this wasn’t something we should marvel at…

Still, it’s definitely worth a visit if you find yourself on the central Californian coast, if only for the stunning views, and that famous pool…

Just Don’t Go Back to Big Sur…

So Big Sur, then: it was breezy, but nevertheless we kept the top down all the way. We’d hired a convertible for a reason, and there was no way we were going to be denied our chance to use it. Before we got to Monterey, we made a quick stop in Carmel, a sleepy, wealthy enclave where Clint Eastwood used to be mayor. He still owns a hotel and restaurant there, so, the oldies from Paso Robles having given us directions, we dropped in for a beer, and we sat down to drink it out on the terrace. As the still warm early evening sun started to drop down out over the ocean, I got up to take Sal’s picture–spotting this, one of the locals offered to take one of the both of us, and hearing that we were over from London, he stopped to chat. He wouldn’t bother us for long, though, because he was just waiting for “his buddy”. This, it turned out, was the same buddy who had made the wine that he was drinking, and who was just back in town after 6 months over in Iceland making a film called Flags Of Our Fathers.

“He owes me twenty bucks”, revealed our new friend.

A little while later one of the waitresses popped over to whisper in his ear: “Your buddy’s here”, she said, “but he can’t stay long”, and with that he was off to join Clint at the bar. Sadly, though, by the time I got up to head to the bathroom ten minutes later, the seat at the bar next to our mate was empty, and our fleeting chance for a celeb spot was gone.

We talked to his mate
But we missed the man himself
Nice bar though. Thanks Clint…

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I really hate DRM. If ever there’s a technology designed to drive customers away from legitimate music, film, and tv downloads, and back to bittorrents, then DRM is it.

I had an infuriating experience over Christmas recently trying to watch a movie I’d downloaded off LoveFilm. Luckily, I hadn’t paid money for the film: it was part of a special free Christmas offer, presumably dreamt up by their marketing team who were labouring under the misapprehension that, having tried the film download service for free, their customers would subsequently think that having been treated to such a wonderfully simple user experience, they’d be prepared to pay for that service in the future…

So, I’d downloaded my film before heading home for Christmas (rather slowly, I might add) and was all set to watch it on Christmas Eve. It started fine: I hooked up my laptop to the TV, connected to the Internet to acquire my licence, and after I’d downloaded an obligatory update to Windows Media Player, we were off. Sure, the picture quality was a little grainy (despite my having opted for the largest, highest quality download), but nothing too noticeable.

But then, foolishly, we decided to stop watching and come back to the end of the film later. I should have known that doing something so unusual and ridiculous as this would prove to be a mistake.

When I tried to start it up again, there was no sound, unless I restarted playback from the start of the film. Attempts to fast forward mostly resulted in the film continuing to run at some random inappropriate speed (with no sound). I decided that watching the first hour again wasn’t really an option, and tried to do something about it, but in retrospect it would have been a lot quicker than what happened next.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I’ve only got Windows Media Player 9. I wonder if upgrading to the latest version will solve the problem?” This was my big mistake. I installed WMP 11 only to find that this somehow invalidated all of my acquired licences, and left me no way to acquire them again. (Helpfully, Microsoft have a knowledgebase article about the problem, which I can’t find right now, that basically says “yeah, it’s a bug. Sorry”). So I “rolled back” to version 9, but this just did a fresh install of WMP 9 leaving me with no licences at all, and trying to play the file now would generate an “Unknown Error”. Hmm. Helpful.

Then, to add further insult, my new install of WMP 9 helpfully informed me that an update was available, and would I like to install it? When I clicked “Yes”, it started installing WMP 11 again. Thanks Microsoft.

After exhausting all possibilities with my laptop, I discovered that we could watch the rest of the film by copying it onto my mum’s computer via an external drive and re-acquiring the licences from there. I was even able to skip to the bit we’d stopped at.

And so, the entire process of getting the film restarted after pausing it took about 2 hours. I’m not sure it was worth it to be honest, and I don’t think anyone else was remotely bothered about seeing the rest of the film by that point, but I couldn’t let the technology beat me.

Thanks Lovefilm, but I think I’ll stick to DVDs from now on. At least my DVD player doesn’t have to connect to the internet to acquire a licence before it will let me play a disc, I’m allowed to pause films whenever I want, and the disc doesn’t “expire” in 24 hours either, (although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time…)

Via Rhodri, Charles Arthur and mytornadohell.livejournal.com, comes this article by Caroline Phillips from last Tuesday’s Evening Standard.

You’ll want to read it in full for the full effect.
You may wish to read it several times.
You may wonder if it is simply a parody.
It is not.

Of course there’s nothing in the slightest bit amusing about losing your home. But this? Well… read it for yourself and see what you think.

These are some of my favourite bits…

My home has always been my sanctuary, a place of exquisite beauty and calm. I read or sit undisturbed on our leather sofa in our family room with its off-white walls, stainless steel and sage-green stone surfaces, and gaze through its wall of sliding glass doors onto our fragrant cream and lavender garden with its climbing roses, ancient apple and pear trees, camellias and jasmine.

The Apocalypse was not all bad. There was something comforting about watching the Salvation Army dispensing tea and sandwiches. Uplifting seeing people in crisis helping one another. And meeting kindly new souls in the street. As for the house, it’s just bricks and mortar. We’re not in a tent in Pakistan or even Brent council’s temporary accomodation. […]

So presumably in future I should expect not just the cheeky girls to be wandering past our house, but Lembit Opik too?

I’ll start composing my haiku now.

So we finally went down to the Screen on Baker Street to see Casino Royale on Saturday night. Yeah, I know, about three weeks after everyone else, but there you go.

And it’s really good, of course, but that’s more than could be said for our fellow viewers. Just like Rob and Al before us (although admittedly they were distracted from rather more highbrow pursuits) our enjoyment was diminished by being in close proximity to the general public.

As soon as the trailers started up, it became clear that the middle-aged couple next to us had confused a full cinema and the 80-odd strangers seated around them for their own living room and DVD player. Easy enough to do, I suppose. They talked loudly throughout the trailers, filling the cinema with their inane chatter (and to give you an idea of the kind of insightful commentary they were providing, here’s a small sample: at the end of the Orange-sponsored “please turn off your phones” ad, which finishes with just the first half of their slogan, “the future’s bright…”, the moron next to us felt that what the entire cinema really needed was for him to loudly complete the line “ha, ha! the future’s orange…”)

But you sort of expect some low-level chatter during the ads, I suppose. “They’ll stop when the film comes on, won’t they?” I said to Sal.

They did not.

And so, I spent the first 10 or so minutes of the film itself–through the whole of the base jumping sequence and beyond–listening to them present evidence of a complete lack of internal monologue with their idiotic verbal outbursts (at one point early on in the film some cards are turned over in a poker game: “ah! two aces!” shouted the lady, apparently in some kind of service to the partially sighted). As time passed, I tried to compose the wittiest and most efficient put down I could, each time vowing that the next time they spoke I would use it, but by the time I’d settled on “Excuse me, I came to watch the film, not listen to you. Could you please be quiet”, and turned to deploy it, Sal had reached breaking point too, and she beat me to it with her own variation.

They were largely quiet from that point on.

You don’t mess with Sal.

After 4 days in San Fran, it was time to move on. It was about a 10 minute walk from our hotel down to the car rental office, where we were due to collect our convertible. All downhill, though, and not via The Tenderloin, so I figured that we’d be fine to walk down there with our bags.

It was only as I rounded the corner to the Dollar car rental office, struggling under the weight of the backpack (honestly–who needs that many pairs of shoes?) that I realised that we were, of course, there to pick up a car, and that it’s just possible that we could have left the bags at the hotel and swung by later to pick them up.

Once a pedestrian…

Our directions to get out of San Francisco and down to the winery where we were spending the night were ridiculously easy–first right, take the ramp onto highway 101, and drive for 200 miles–so after the ease of escaping from San Fran, we opted to mix things up a bit by stopping off in Silicon Valley on the way. Well, as I said to Sal by way of justification, it is where the computers come from, after all. And so we decided to pull off in Palo Alto, allegedly home to Stanford with its garden of Rodin sculptures, and a pretty town centre.

Not that we’d know it–my pathetic efforts at navigating resulted in us missing the exit and spending 20 minutes driving along quiet suburban streets only to end up in the next town, Los Altos. It has no Rodins, and no world-class university, but it’s another sleepy, quaint Silicon Valley town and I’m sure they’re all the same really.

We parked up in what passed for the town centre, our tiny car dwarfed by the SUVs around it. As we wandered in search of somewhere for lunch, a young girl with a clipboard stopped us to ask if we could “spare a minute to stop global warming”. I’m afraid to say that we said no. Sorry everyone.

Back on the road, we made just one more attempt to stop, this time in Salinas, birthplace of Steinbeck, and home, allegedly, to a new multi-million dollar museum dedicated to him. Again, we wouldn’t know, because after driving round for 20 minutes all we found were some suburbs, a lot of spinach, and a strip mall where we bought cokes and crisps in a tiny shop where the assistant was utterly baffled and confused and stared back at us blankly when we asked the question “are there any toilets round here?”

We decided not to stop again.

Now, most wine country tourists in Northern California follow the well-worn path up from San Fran to Napa or Sonoma, but, never ones to follow the crowd, we opted to spend the wine tasting portion of our trip in tiny Paso Robles, staying in a lovely winery/hotel with impossibly friendly staff (even by American standards) and complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres served in the afternoons.

Heading outside to sip our free wine on the terrace, we realised that we may just possibly be bringing down the average age somewhat. Luckily the oldies were friendly enough–“Let’s go talk to those kids!” said one as they moved over to sit near us, ask us if we were on our honeymoon (!) and give us some good advice on which wineries to visit.

Later, not keen to drink and drive, we booked a cab into town for dinner. Correction: we booked the cab into town for dinner. (And it was just as well we realised just how small a place it was before he dropped us off–it turned out he finished at 9pm).

“Are you the ones who came by cab?” asked the waitress as she showed us to our table. Ah. Small towns. Don’t you love em?

Any plans I may have had to catch up with some blogging in this slightly quieter of weeks have been dashed somewhat by the fact that my ageing laptop nearly died last night. I’m not a happy bunny… it was sitting on the table happily downloading some files when suddenly there was a funny noise.

“What’s happened to your computer?” asked Sal, spotting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death…

Now it’s all like “hard disk error” this and “unable to mount boot volume” that, and flat-out refuses to start up at all. The recovery stuff on the Windows install disc is no help either. The best the disk checking utility can come up with is “this disc appears to have unrecoverable errors”. Well thanks for that…

Luckily, I actually backed-up my most important files last weekend, (for the first time in about six months, I should add) so assuming it is just the hard drive that needs replacing, then the worst case will be that I’ve lost the few blurry photos from the Gomez gig that I didn’t upload to Flickr, the snippit of video I took of Whippin’ Picadilly, and some other photos from Friday night.

(Oh and not to mention the hours it will take to reinstall everything…)

Memo to Self: Make More Regular Backups.