PICS ARE HERE Clicky clicky Mike is blogging to: The Death of Bob Monkhouse

PICS ARE ON THE WAY That was New York. Now we are in New Orleans. We did Washington DC inbetween. More pics to follow... Mike is blogging to: Ted Danson

Dropped off the map for a while there... About to leave for a 24 hour train ride so that at least will give me time to type up the last few weeks. Hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a blast. Lots of pics to post already but again I think I'll do that once we arrive in New Orleans. The highlights so far have been: Romantic strolls through Central Park Meeting DC Mike for the first time Hanging out with Todd again Almost getting killed in Baltimore Meeting Mike's whole family on Christmas Eve Going to see a punk show last night with Tood and Mike and getting shitfaced I'll fill in the details later. Happy Holidays

At the diner the waitress screams "NO MEAT!" whenever she passes us and then laughs until she cries. I love New York. At the museum the guard checks my backpack and points to the badge that says "Fuck you! You fucking fuck!" and asks me if it is directed at him. I reply that all depends on whether he is a fucking fuck or not. He smiles and waves me on in. At the airport I had to take off my boots going through the metal detector because of the steel toe caps. Other passengers backed off in case my feet exploded. A fight broke out on the flight. We hit turbulence heavy enough for people around me to vomit. I just clung onto the laptop, trying to keep it level as I watched Night of the Living Dead at 35,000 feet. Yesterday we saw Return of the King and the audience cheered when the fat hobbit kicked ass. Tonight we plan to see Captain Picard and Agent Cooper duke it out in Pinter's The Caretaker Our room is exactly like the one in Barton Fink Our new mobile number is 9173252299 We still have to get an American ISP before we can hook the laptop up on a more regular basis so until then the posting will be sporadic at best. So how are you guys?

FLIGHT MINUS SEVEN I haven't been to Manhattan in about three years. The last time I was there it reminded me more of Sesame Street than Mean Streets but I mean that in a good way. Everyone was very friendly. I wonder if 9-11 has bled any of that away. I guess we'll find out. Mike is blogging to: Pretty Girls Make Graves

YOU BETTER THINK ABOUT IT, BABY Q: What's better than getting out of the UK for 3 months? A: Getting out of London for 3 months with Jess We walk the streets at night We go where eagles dare... Mike is blogging to: The Misfits and LOUD

ANY MORE REQUESTS? I had a few emails bemoaning the small font and lack of permalinks on the last design so there ya go. Mike is blogging to: The KLF

HOW MANY PUPPIES? Before all the "We got him" crap makes you rush off and enlist here's a quick reminder of other cool things you get to do in the army: Killing puppies It's against the rules for U.S. soldiers in Iraq to have pets, but the skinny black puppy that wandered up to the Florida National Guard soldiers at a base in northern Iraq wouldn't go away. So the soldiers from Alpha Co. of the 2nd Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment adopted the mutt and named her Apache after their radio call sign. But Army regulations finally caught up with Alpha Co. and Apache. Family members said Wednesday that the soldiers were eventually forced to obey orders and have the dog killed. "My husband was devastated," said Maggie Ford of Melbourne, whose husband, Sgt. 1st Class Bill Ford, had hoped to bring the dog back to Florida. "We all cried when we found out." Many wild and stray dogs, often unfriendly and even dangerous, roam the Iraq countryside. But soldiers said Apache was always friendly. At first, the men tried to ignore the eager pup, who kept sidling up to them begging for food while they kept guard at a checkpoint leading into Camp Anaconda, a huge American base outside Balad, about an hour north of Baghdad. But finally the soldiers gave in and took the dog back to their camp. While affectionate with the 130 or so soldiers in the company, Apache could spot a stranger instantly and would bark and growl menacingly. She seemed to especially dislike officers, and in September nipped at a captain from another company who got too close. But Apache would happily greet the soldiers when they returned from patrols, then roll over to have her belly rubbed and chew playfully on their arms. Still, the soldiers were warned repeatedly that they were flouting the rules and that they had to get rid of the dog. Maggie Ford said her husband was researching how to bring Apache back when the soldiers come home in February, but commanders last month gave the soldiers a deadline. She said her husband couldn't bear to have the dog killed, so the soldiers drove Apache about 10 miles outside the base in the hope someone would take care of her. Within three days, Apache had found her way back to camp, Maggie Ford said. Finally, around Thanksgiving, the soldiers took their pet to a veterinarian, who destroyed her, she said. Family members still don't have all the details. The soldiers from Alpha Co., who mostly train at the Leesburg armory, and those from Bravo Co., who train at the Sanford armory, have little access to telephones or e-mail at Camp Anaconda, and their families have infrequent contact with them. But several said the soldiers were upset they had to have the dog destroyed. "Their morale dropped," said Linda Wood of Sumterville, whose son Spc. Seth Wood is in Alpha Co. "There were some guys who were very, very attached to that dog." Kim Alfonso of Tampa, whose husband, Sgt. 1st Class Mark Alfonso, is the leader of the platoon that adopted Apache, said she spoke to her husband after the dog was destroyed, but he was too upset to discuss what had happened. She said her husband has tried to keep his men from dwelling on the dog's fate. The soldiers conduct frequent raids and patrols looking for guerrillas and can't afford to be distracted. And while Apache's death was upsetting to many of the men and their families, Kim Alfonso said, it's a small tragedy in a place where hundreds of Americans, and still unknown numbers of Iraqis, have died since the war began. Iraq, after all, is a place where life is hard enough for people, let alone animals. Kim Alfonso said her husband recently had her mail him some clothes their 3-year-old daughter had outgrown so he could give them to children in the local villages, who often wear little more than rags. "You have to keep things in perspective," Kim Alfonso said. "It's not like one of our guys was shot. We're talking about a dog. But it is sad." Mike is blogging to: Manson

THANK FUCK FOR BACKPACKS I think I may be all packed. It's tough to work out what you'll need for a whole 3 months. I wonder what Saddam took with him for 8 months. Am I the only one thinking that beard suited him? So now I'm charging up all the kit and grabbing some DVDs to take too. This time tomorrow I'll be in the air I guess. We arrive in NYC too late to see Bobby Conn which really sucks... Ahh well, I'm guessing we will see more than a gig or two as we move around. Mike is blogging to: Therapy?

SATURDAY ALREADY Fuck. Still so much to do. The flight is only at 6pm on Monday so I guess I can embrace my maleness and leave the packing until that morning. Poor Nicolette is pretty much wiped out. Since she got here we've been giving her a whirlwind tour of the immediate area and main parts of the city and how to get around them. Central London on a Friday evening is always a nightmare but having to remember street signs, bus stops and how to navigate the tube at the same time. And she still seems a little jet lagged. Today is going to be a slower day I think. There are a million and one things in the house alone that work a little differently from in the US for her to get to grips with. Later we will hit the market and grab some food - we've eaten out every day since she arrived so it will be nice to get some fresh food and actually use the kitchen today. This morning I am waiting on the reporter and photographer from the Sunday Telegraph so that should be interesting. Yesterday we got ourselves a new Nokia triband so we can be got a hold of over the next 3 months. We haven't decided which number we'll be taking yet but I'll mention it here before we go. I was experimenting with the laptop and the mobile hookup yesterday too and although slow it's very usable so my only real challenge now is keeping everything charged when we are in the middle of nowhere. I'll be looking at solar cells once we reach San Francisco I think. Highlight of yesterday was talking to Stu for the first time in ages. When I get back we will be hooking up for broadband Wormage. I'm not sure if I mentioned Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's The Walking Dead on here before. I just picked up issue 3 and if you have any love for the Romero movies at all you NEED to read this series... All for now. PS I'm not going to the North before this trip afterall. Thank fuck my selfish and callous nature kicked back in at the last minute. Mike is blogging to: Faith No More

THE FOG So Nicolette arrived safe and sound (if slightly delayed) and is very cool. It's a relief to know that the flat and cat are going to be in safe hands while we are away and we are all just stunned that this has worked out so well for us all. Her flight was one of the lucky ones. Yesterday as the train pulled us into Heathrow the fog came down John Carpenter style. Nicolette's flight was I think the last one to land. Everything else was diverted to Gatwick. Luton and Stanstead were already closed at that point. A lot of pissed off passengers and stressed airport workers were facing off as we sipped coffee and ate over priced snacks waiting for the plane to find its way to the Terminal. I was having flashbacks to Die Hard 2 and Colm Meany ramming his Boeing 747 into the ground for some reason. So we got back to find Carmen camped out on the doorstep waiting for us. Jess had her final Spanish lesson while Nicolette and I talked politics over veggie sausages at the pub next door. Then Nicolette hit the sack and I didn't see her again until around 7am this morning. This means she missed the sprawling Inuit movie that Jess watched last night. I tried by best to follow it but as worthy as it looked my brain shut down early on and it just became a lot of shouting in the snow. Looked pretty though. Not the actors though. Even the women looked like Charles Bronson. I started reading The Raven by Peter Landesman instead. Beautiful book. Can't beat a novel that begins with an old woman being beaten to death during a flood by unearthed coffins as she clings to a cherry tree. Saturday I am having my photo taken by The Sunday Telegraph magazine. Not sure when the interview will appear as they are doing the photo early to accommodate the trip. Speaking of which: five days to go. Mike is blogging to: Tom Waits

MISSED A DAY I have no idea what happened to Monday and now Tuesday is dead also. Tomorrow the first real hint that we are actually going away for 3 months will hit us when we meet Nicolette off the plane. She's in the air now being filled with bad food and jet lag and hoping that London isn't too cold compared to San Francisco. Good job we have a lot of duvets. Still got a lot to do and some people to see and I notice my email is piling up again... Time to break out the emergency black stuff Mike is blogging to: The Dead Kennedys

YAWN Nicolette will be making good use of our old PC once she gets here. She's a writer and the whole point of her spending 3 months away from home is to get some work done while watching our cat expand. So I've spent part of this evening tidying up the machine and moving across all the junk we want to take with us on the new gadgets. What is a dull and slow task on the old machine is a breeze on the Alienware box. Just got my old email to back up and then I can go get some sleep. Tomorrow (which will start in about 4 hours or so) is going to be busy. On top of all the usual crap we need to get a plumber out and find time to go see Turbonegro. Damned if I know what I'm going to do with the Therapy? tickets... Mike is blogging to: nothing

EXCUSES EXCUSES So why did we go see Timeline? I mean it was always going to be stupid. I think maybe it's because we had a crappy couple of days. Both Jess and I were in the mood for something really dumb. We almost watched SWAT as well. We didn't just want a 'leave your brain at the door' kind of movie - we wanted something that would genuinely annoy us. It was very therapeutic. We came out happy because we knew that no matter how low we sank we would never have had anything to do with a movie about time-traveling archaeologists, crap knights and the lipstick lesbian from 'Brookside' with a dodgy French accent. Mission accomplished. I see that it is snowing in Washington DC. Our friend Mike just invited us to go out and spend Christmas eve with his brother's family in Baltimore. I hope it's EXACTLY like Peanuts. This is good because we will get to see Todd even if he doesn't make the party on the 20th. We will be in DC until the 28th because Mike has lined up some shows too. We may be there longer depending on the weather and the trains. Eight days until we leave for NYC. I suspect we should start thinking about packing. Mike is blogging to: Frank Zappa

I'M A DOCTOR, NOT A FLESH PEDDLER It's rare I do dumb online quizes but this was too choice to pass up on:
Which member of Eighty Six are you?
brought to you by Quizilla Mike is blogging to: Japanese noise

AUNTY MADONNA I just found out I got quoted on some anti-Madonna board Sheesh. Also my friend Daisy had to go to the hospital with post-concussion syndrome after taking one too many spills on her board. Get well soon missy. Also also we went to see Timeline this afternoon. I have no idea why. Even the actors didn't want to be there. Mike is blogging to: Jess watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP Today was pretty crappy and stressful. It began at 9am. About ten minutes after we finally went to bed some idiot started breaking the pavement up outside with a neumatic drill. Probably a rugby fan. We tried hiding under the duvet for a while and then gave in and came back upstairs to drift off in front of the TV and take out our anger on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. PS2 makes for great stress relief. Jess is also on a Sims kick at the moment but she's banned me from playing since I bricked up some of her favourite characters and starved them to death. Tonight I have been warned to get myself into bed by 5am. Jess crashed out with a Viking novel round about 2am but that's girls for you. So the plan tonight was to come up with a list of places to submit stuff to over the next few months so I've been reading a lot of online magazines and dipping into a lot of weird and wonderful websites. None of this has taken my mind off the fact that we still have a leaking waterpipe that we need to get fixed first thing tomorrow. Hopefully that will be the last of the crappy maintenance stuff we have to sort out before Nicolette arrives from San Francisco to look after the place for us. Did I mention that the cat just cost us �209 too? I'll be glad when we get on the road because bumming around the world is actually cheaper than staying in London. Mike is blogging to: nothing

PS I almost forgot to mention that the Sunday Telegraph magazine are doing a piece on the Skin tattoo project of which I am a word. I spoke to the editor yesterday. Now we have to see if I can fit the interview in before we leave for New York. Doesn't the sun EVER rise in this godforsaken country? Mike is blogging to: More Maiden

UPDATES It's too late to go to bed now. Unfortunately my is brain running on empty. Hence a little tinkering. I'm updating the links page which is no longer a blog in itself. I also need to add some good people to the blog roll. Some of which have already linked to me - it's always nice when you stumble onto a site and find your own tag there. The blogs I'll be adding are: Plan B: Freon - I like this stuff a lot. Take note of the Lost in Translation tip. I also see Freon is on TRIBE. Maybe I should go back there. I'll wear the t shirt tomorrow and see if it inspires me. Blue District - Jeffrey has Phillip K Dick at the top of his author's list which is always a good sign. I'm reading Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said at the moment. It was sent to me by the good folks over at The Guardian along with The First Men in the Moon. Toe People Power - Great title. M's blog is full of the really personal stuff that most people would keep buried deep: I think he might be trying to do me again, because he likes coming into my room to watch movies and touching me and it's gross... Synchopath - just too much good stuff here to list. Just go and check it out. ...18 Years Ago - this is just too fucking cool. The Dead Milkmen are an old fave of mine. This blog is the annotated diary of Dave Clean from 1985. And for those of you that think I'm pathetic for staying out of bed when I have such a hot girlfriend can I just add that she is still awake too. My insomnia is contagious. Mike is blogging to: Iron Maiden - Killers

WONDERFUL WORLD OF MORONS The tv at this hour is usually pitiful. Tonight however I found a fun distraction in Channel Four's 'Red Bull Three Degrees' - a progressive BMX street competition. Tucked away in the early hours - this is the kind of thing that I'd happily replace football and cricket with. Speaking of regular sport, it turns out we recently won some rugby thing. I only found out yesterday who Jonny Wilkinson was after googling the fucker when his name kept coming up in conversation. In fact I actually googled 'Johnny Williamson' first by accident and found a 59 year old American death row inmate instead. At least he seems to have done something more interesting with his life than kick a ball over some Australian heads. The thing I like about sport is that it is stupid and if you take it seriously you are an idiot. Email and tell me why you disagree - it's been awhile since I shot any barrel fish. Mike is blogging to: The Rye Coalition

SNAPGALLERY When we are away we will be taking a lot of photographs. I've decided to use snapGallery to help archive them as we move from place to place. I just put up a practice gallery if you want to check it out. Mike is blogging to: Spanish lessons

BLOG OF DEATH This could be my favourite 2am reading material from now on. Fascinating insight into people who aren't here anymore: "Stephen A. Benton, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who invented rainbow holograms, died on Nov. 9 from brain cancer. He was 61..." Mike is blogging to: Iggy Pop

Interweb roundup time Great article on Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. A story that seems to prove that 9/11 widows are HOTT. But not as hot as Imperial Scout Walkers: Add the BFI's Screenonline resource to your favourites - especially if you are eligible for full access. It's full of cool stuff: "The Wombles were brought to life by stop-motion animation and the vocal talents of narrator Bernard Cribbins. Cribbins provided voices for all of the original characters, many with Cockney accents. There was wise old Uncle Bulgaria, head of the burrow and always on the look out for a discarded copy of The Times, the lazy and rather greedy Orinoco in hat and scarf, French chef Madame Cholet and the strong but slow Tomsk..." And an interesting piece of news on the recent American firefight in which they kicked so much ass: "THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies. The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child..." (MORE) Mike is blogging to: yet more Alkaline Trio

CSI: Perth For my friend Johnny in Australia it's six am and the world looks like this: I'm going so fucking fast I'm numb...seriously, there's bits of me I can't feel at the moment...hnyuk duggidy doggidy. Yeah. Mike Sizemore. Come Live With Me. Bring The Pirate Girl. We will make their puny cities haemorrhage. I love my friends. Mike is blogging to: Alkaline Trio

Road to Perdition Road to Perdition is a lightweight gangster movie with heavyweight pretentions. It stars the current lightweight acting champion Tom Hanks who grows a moustache and a flabby chin in an attempt to raise his game a notch. Despite this Road to Perdition is still very much a Tom Hanks movie in all the ways that Millers Crossing was not a Gabriel Byrne movie. Hanks fans were wowed by the fact that the character of Michael Sullivan was not squeaky clean. He was a killer goddamnit and that meant that Mr Hanks was moving away from the comfortable rolls of the past. Not true. Sullivan kills a few people in the movie but only after his wife and son are dead giving him motivation. True, he kills some nameless guys before that but only after his hand is forced by Daniel Craig's Connor Rooney. Sullivan is actually a very moral killer - in one telling scene, sadly deleted from the finished move, he lights a candle for one of the men inadvertently killed during the course of his meandering revenge. Director Mendes tries to compensate with both heavy detail and better actors supporting Hanks but that underlines just how badly the movie suffers from having him in the spotlight. Paul Newman's turn is measured and confident by contrast but too often the direction is heavy handed and the metaphors are too forced, too simple. For example, early on in the movie Sullivan sits beside Rooney senior and acts as his RIGHT HAND during a musical interlude. RIGHT HAND get it? The movie is full of such composition - when the family sits down to eat, Michael jnr sits close to mom leaving his younger sibling to snuggle up to dad. Later in the movie the father and son deal with the distance between them in one of the few conversations they actually have. Too little time is given to the flimsy bond between the two central characters, an awkward voice over frames the movie letting the audience know that the father and son spent a whole six weeks on the road but it soon becomes obvious that this is 'relationships by numbers'. Sullivan never knew his father but had Rooney senior to look up to. Rooney treats Sullivan as a son much to the chagrin of his real son Connor who does his best to destroy that relationship. Women are marginal to all this. Newman's wife is already dead at the films opening, while Jennifer Jason Leigh, a brilliant actress, is utterly wasted in a thankless roll acting as nothing but the lever to kick Tom Hanks into Droopy faced action. Aside from the dippy whore that Jude law finds time to bed between taking snapshots of dead people Weegee style the only other female character is a waitress who makes small talk with the Sullivans as they stop off from simplistic bankrobbing and comedic driving lessons. This one sequence had the opportunity to really add something to the movie as the waitress bore more than a passing resemblance to the murdered wife and mother (not surprising as she was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh's half sister, Mina Badie) but the scene is short, goes nowhere and is ultimately cut down further and relegated to a DVD extra. A quick note on the bank robberies - why doesn't 'Chicago' fill the next bank in line with gun toting maniacs instead of simply withdrawing their cash and hoping that Jude Law's unconvincing hitman will eventually catch up with the thorn in their collective sides? Erm. Just as in Saving Private Ryan Hanks dies one of those noble tidy deaths that actors of his calibre love doing. Teenage fans across the world bit their lips as he apologised to Michael jnr for being so retarded in the last five minutes of the film. Meanwhile anyone who has seen The Godfather trilogy, Millers Crossing or even Carlito's Way was left wondering what all the fuss was about. Fans of American Beauty however should just write this off as the difficult second film it is and hope for something better from Mendes third time out. Mike is blogging to: Flat Black

Also - Is it possible to listen to Alkaline Trio and not sing along?

LONG LIVE MOONCAKE Jess and I just realised that we have doublebooked ourselves for Dec 8th. We have tickets to see Therapy? and Turbonegro on the SAME NIGHT at different venues. Bollocks. Normally I'd give up the Therapy? tickets because I've seen them a bunch of times but the gig is at the Barfly which is a TINY little pub and they will destroy it. Then again Turbonegro put on a storming show last time... Fuckburgers. I also have to take one last trip to the north to see my mentally unbalanced mother which is something I am NOT looking forward to. Fuckburgers with extra cheese. The cat has developed a limp so he is having xrays at the vet tomorrow morning. This post is turning into a country and western song. Better find some cheerful stuff quickly... Remember Oolong - the Japanese balancing rabbit who died? I know. It was rough on us all. I smiled last week when I saw that a new rabbit has stepped into Oolong's large shoes: She's still in training but isn't it great to know that she's out there doing what needs to be done... Also worth a look: Metal ASCII Videos - especially Breaking the Law. Mike is blogging to: Toenut

MERRY People ask me what I do at 4am every night. Well tonight I am having a conversation about the cat's weight. I'm living the dream. Mike is blogging to: nothing

AVAST! We finally succumbed to temptation and saw this: Not bad. Not wonderful either. But good fun. By far more shocking than any of the amputations or amateur carpentry was the shocking example of a Russell Crowe cameltoe towards the end of the movie. That will haunt me. Tonight I had a long conversation that I wish I hadn't gotten into. It looks like I may have to make a quick dash northwards before the big trip afterall. Home = Mental illness, rugby league and pies. God help me. Mike is blogging to: nothing