THINGS TO BLOG IN DENVER WHEN YOU ARE DEAD TIRED As usual I'm cutting things fine. We are well into our last night in Denver (which has been a cool place to drop in on) and just got back from a gig and an untimely breakfast at a very fun 40's diner. Seems like a good time to get that update posted. I have had email asking me for DETAILS so here we go. For now though I'll just serve up the first week in New York. The fun we had in DC and Baltimore deserves a post all of it's own. But for now here we are in WEEK ONE: I've been making notes on and off as we move around using a combination of the laptop (a godsend) and good old fashioned pen and paper at times when pulling out a bag full of gadgetry would not have been the smart option. At some point I'll sit down and try and bring all these threads together. Some of it is simple travelogue, part snippets of overheard conversation or descriptions of sights and people that would seem odd back in London. I've also been jotting down story ideas and working over other bits and pieces that I started back in Blighty. Only today I started putting together a scrap book of sorts. Thank fuck for 24 hour drug stores and ELMER'S Washable School Glue Sticks. The best part of the trip is the time that we have given ourselves to just drop away from our regular lives and see what happens off the page. Airports are a necessary evil. Being so close to Christmas, Heathrow was oozing idiots and by the time we had checked in the backpacks it was time to go sit down and make ourselves comfortable for the flight. I hate dull plane trips so it was fun to take off the headphones and watch people kick off at one another a few rows down from me. Two families sitting adjacent decided that they didn't like one another and that the best course of action was to scream abuse and threaten to throw punches and children until the crew arrived and read them the riot act. But the plane was full and we still had many miles to go so the uneasy truce was broken about once every hour until we landed at JFK. Watching the map unfold on the back of the headrest in front of you is the equivalent of watching water boil or paint dry. The little plane graphic crawls along like the download meter on a porn stream at 28kps. Watching Terminator 3 didn't speed things along much. I used to think Arnie moving into politics was a bad thing but if it keeps him from making movies then I am behind the Governator 100%. The inflight food matched the movies. Preferring to wait until NYC I settled back and loaded up Night of the Living Dead. There is something more than surreal about watching a black and white horror movie at 35,000 feet above the ocean. The atmosphere was improved half way through when we hit turbulence hard enough for people to start reaching for sick bags. Jess slept through it while I just grinned and watched a dead girl stick her father with a trowel. More queuing of course once we had landed but its always easier to bear when you are finally somewhere you want to be. I've been waiting to get back to New York for three years. Waiting for a cab we watched a whole family block a tow truck until it released the Griswald like station wagon back into the DO NOT PARK area - the tearstained cries of "Its Christmas you motherfucker!" finally melted the hearts of everyone standing in the cold and we all cheered to see the first sign of Christmas spirit with the wave of a middle finger as the tow truck clambered away like a metallic Grinch. And onto the hotel. Riding in the back of a yellow cab is still a thrill for me. I am always tempted to crack Scorsese jokes with the driver but I never do. Probably a good thing. We stay at The Amsterdam or The New Amsterdam - I forget. Drab and basic but right on Times Square. Popular with tourists and bored businessmen alike - at night we could hear the porn movies playing in the room next door. Chugga chugga bass lines mercifully covering the rubba rubba of masturbation. Everything inside this building was brown. The wallpaper didn't hang from the walls Barton Fink style but it should have done. We didn't spend too much time there. Five days is not a lot of time in a city like New York. Tourists may be content with seeing the sights but to Jess and I everything is a sight. Dog gyms for example. We stood outside for a little while watching overweight New Yorkers drag dogs from their cars and deposit them at the gym while they themselves paid another wad of cash to get their own exercise at the regular gym a few doors down. The idea of actually walking the dogs in Central Park for a few hours a day doesn't seem to have ever occurred... We watched as a teenager employed at the gym chased the dogs around and stopped them from fucking. He didn't seem to mind them shitting where ever they liked. It made me wonder if inside the 'human' gym things weren't unfolding in much the same way. Seeing no 'Tourist gyms' we walked. Walking is a big thing on this trip. Partly because not many Americans do it and partly because it is the only way to get to see the things that we want to see. Not that Jess and I are 'walkers'. I never understood the need to ramble over fells and dales in the middle of nowhere simply to reach a point on an OS map and then turn around and head back. Walking until you feel in danger of being killed is an altogether more interesting experience. But that was Baltimore and still a week away. The first day we walked the length of Central Park. Beautiful place. We missed the snow but it still lay in the park helping us to shake off London and any worries we had about being away from home for 3 months. It's hard to worry when you are being chased by squirrels and singing Frank Sinatra songs in off tone English accents. We lost sight of New York a few times. With an enthusiastic audience we saw The Return of The King which in turn bored and delighted me. I am hoping they actually trim the bloody thing before the DVD release. All that crap with the ghey Hobbits - fucking awful. On Broadway we saw Pinter's The Caretaker: Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan acting their guts out with Jess and I right on the front row makes for a damn fine evening. Every time I go to the theatre I am reminded that I don't go enough. Must rectify that when we get back home. And we got madly excited about Tokyo (still then 11 weeks away) by seeing Lost in Translation Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray together were just wonderful. Funny and romantic in a way that 'comedies' and 'romantic movies' aren't. Is this out back in the UK yet? The alienation brought on by strange cities and hotel life struck a chord early on. I think that the DVD is out here in February. Hope Criterion get around to giving it the treatment. Aside from these distractions we spent a lot of time in the East Village, strolling around the neighbourhood finding diners and delis that fitted our strange veggie requirements. We were pulled into art supplies stores and I got to rifle through the pigeon holes of indie bookstores to see what the staff were reading, Jess bought Noam Chomsky CDs and we made semi serious plans to swap homes with a New Yorker for a few months next year. We walked from Times Square down to where the WTC used to be. Foundations and a lot of building work set around the famous cross and enclosed by fences and gawping tourists. We weren't much different. Odd to look up into that empty space and try to visualise exactly where it was we were stood back in 2000. The surrounding area hasn't changed a great deal but vendors are everywhere selling cheap models and badly drawn renditions of the towers. We walked away feeling that the place was as important as the hole in Curt Cobain's head or the crumpled car that squeezed Diana paste all over itself. Just as we had found the best places to hang our hats it was time to head for Penn Station and catch the first of our lengthy train rides. This one included a rendevous with Todd and a first face to face meeting with DC Mike. But more about that later... Mike is blogging to: Samhain