EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

A glorious clear day here on the Bay, not a cloud in the sky. A perfect time for a cable car ride up to Fisherman’s Wharf, to book up for Alcatraz. Cable cars are so very cool. The world’s only mobile National Monument, they are both efficient and beautiful objects. I’m poignently reminded of the Routemaster bus. The perfectly adapted transport for the urban terrain. The brakemen that drive them are courteous, charming and funny. Entertainers in charge of running a cable-driven mechanical wonder up 1-in-4 gradient hills safely. Only one in three applicants for the job will make it. It’s not a job I think I could successfully handle. 

Early call this morning. X picked us up from the front of the hotel in her old Range Rover, and whisked us off on a guided tour. Breakfast first, though, in a chic little place off the Presidio, where I fiddled with X’s iPhone and decided that, regardless of the sensible justifications and conclusions I’d come to before I went away, actually, I do rather want one of those cool devices, thanks.

Then, out to Fort Point for photo ops before driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Marin County, home of the redwood forests. The Bridge is a bold red slash of colour against cloudy skies, almost unreal in it’s massive assertion of human control over the landscape. It certainly doesn’t slip into the background, anyway…

Marin County is green, fresh, and home to the most absurdly twisty roads I’ve ever seen. I don’t get motion sickness easily, but the multiple 90 degree hairpins X flung the Rover through gave me the queeeze. We drove to Muir Woods, a National Park dedicated to the preservation of these majestic arboreal giants. We walked in silence through the forests, the trees reaching hundreds of feet above us. Deer picked their way fearlessly through the undergrowth around us. The woods were peaceful, dripping gently after morning showers. It was ten miles and a milion years from the busy streets of San Francisco.

We returned to those streets for lunch, then headed south-west into Haight-Ashbury, to soak up some of the old hippy vibe. I’m disappointed to report the area was a little less scuzzy than I was led to expect, with some cool thrift shops and quirky designer stores. There’s a strong smell of incense and weed in the air, though, which doesn’t seem at all localised. It’s as if the scents have been soaked up by the very stones.

On the way, I found Isotope Comics, a very cool comics store that Clare could have quite easily left me in for the rest of the day. I had to settle for spending a measly hundred bucks in there, the majority of that on Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s massive tribute to the Tijuana Bible, Lost Girls. One for under the cover reading, I feel… Isotope is part of a triangle of comic shops in the Haight-Ashbury area, all of which are worth your custom. For friendliness and quirk value they beat the crap out of Forbidden Planet, anyway.

Soundbite on Devisadero Street: “…and they were all totally naked! I didn’t know where to look! It was super awkward!” Delivered at some volume by a camp, skinny chap in a suit into a mobile. Sometimes, you know that the other end of the conversation can’t possibly be as interesting as you picture it. This one? This one could have gone anywhere and I wouldn’t have been surprised…

Tomorrow: North Beach, Chinatown and the Wharfs. And if we’re lucky, Alcatraz.

I lasted till half eight, then whoever it was with control over my nervous system jammed a thumb hard on the reset, and that was me cycled out for ten hours.

We rose, blinking, to a cloudy California Tuesday. Breakfast at a cheap diner, then shopping on Union Square and environs. Not a pretty sight, so I won’t elaborate. Suffice it to say we’re all stocked up for the winter now. Bags everywhere in our room.

We’ve found a good place for eats on Powell: Sear’s, which has been there since the 30’s, and gets regular queues outside for breakfasts, which are apparently legendary. I don’t queue for breakfast, so I wouldn’t know, but on the strength of their lunches I could well be tempted. The Pulled Pork Sandwich was possibly the manliest thing I’ve ever eaten. Sloppy barbeque in a bun. Half a dill pickle the only garnish. Deeeelish.

We’re back at the hotel now, chilling amongst our new treasures before venturing out for dinner. X is driving us out to Marin County tomorrow for views back across the Bay. Prepare yourselves for awe-inspiring photos.

1715 DST 0915 PDT

I hate flying. It’s tedious, uncomfortable, undignified and irritating, and that’s even before you get on the damn plane. You arrive at the airport stupidly early, and get in a queue. You queue to get in a queue, and then to get in another queue. Eventually, you get to put your shoes through an X-Ray machine. You hang around, drink coffee you don’t realy want and buy magazines you’re not that interested in reading until you get the call to go and hang around somewhere else. Frequently, this new place is much less attractive than the one you’ve just left, and now you can’t even buy the magazine you were indifferent towards. There may be free copies of the Daily Mail to flick through. If you’re sensible, you resist the temptation to cook off your blood pressure, and look out of a window at the planes instead.

If I could dose myself into a comatose state, and in that condition be strechered to and from the airport, unconscious and oblivious, then I would be a happy man. Dump me in an overhead locker. Revive me when I get to the hotel. Sweet Lethe, save me from the tedium of modern air travel.

Actually, this isn’t such a bad idea. Apply it on an industry-wide level, and just think of the money the airlines could save in food and entertainment costs. Just get everyone seated on the plane, pump a mild sedative gas into the cabin, and a nice quiet flight can be had by everyone. No jetlag, no air rage. It’s probably the closest we’d ever come to teleportation, at least in my lifetime. I’d sign up to that kind of initiative in a flash.

I couldn’t sleep on a plane if my life depended on it. How anyone manages to get a nano-second of shuteye in a metal tube barrelling above the cloud line at 550MPH is frankly beyond me. Squeezed into a two-by-three seat gap with no room to stretch your legs, with an excess of ambient noise, who could grab even the haziest of dozes? Let alone the full-on kip that Clare, beside me and bundled in an appropriately red blanket seems to be achieving, lucky sexpot.

Hello. Transatlantic Rob here, midway across the Big Blue on the way to Californi-ay. We’re spending the week in San Francisco, a city that’s been on our must-see list for the best part of a decade now. Home of Alcatraz Prison and the Zodiac Killer. And it’s gonna be great. That poor weak dollar’s getting wedgies from us, I tell yer. Once we get there.

For now, I’m on a Virgin 747-400, seriously regretting that second cappuccino and not spending a bit extra for an upgrade to premium economy, bush-baby wide-eyed, and contemplating my second film of the day.

Just watched 300, which had it’s moments, most of them directly cribbed from Frank Miller’s masterful graphic novel. The whole exercise seemed kind of pointless to me, and the over-faithful translation to screen adds nothing to an already spare narrative. An animated version might have been interesting. As it is, even the digital blood that’s flung around with such abandon doesn’t make enough of an impression to stick around. Seriously, check it out. The gore evaporates before it hits the ground. I know the show’s supposed to be stylised, but come on.

However, Lena Headey and Gerard Butler are both suitably charismatic and eye-candyish, and I’m prepared to go along with Leonidas bellowing in broad Glasgae whenever he gets angry. Thing is, it’s the usual argument for me when it comes to film adaptations of graphic novels. They’re never as good as the books. I’m not looking forward to Zac Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation. That’s one book that should stay in the unfilmable category.

It’s 9:21 in the AM in San Fran, twenty past five in the afternoon according to my body clock. A little over half way there. We have a lift from the airport from a friend of Clare’s and a queen-sized room at a hotel just off Union Square and therefore slap in the heart of the action. At the moment of writing, the only action I can contemplate is a hot shower and a catnap.

God, I hate flying.

1945 PDT

Aaaannd here we are. We cleared immigration at 3, a surprisingly painless experience considering the irritations at the Heathrow end. Security was all smiles and chatty, which is unexpected to say the least. Smoothly out to a warm welcome from our San Fran contact, X, who is hospitality itself. She’s warm, chatty and lovely. She chauffeurs us directly to our hotel, and leaves us with a care package containing wine and snackies. Wheeee.

We’re right in the heart of things, based in a quiet boutique place on Sutter St, a minute’s walk from Union Square. It’s chilled, boho and charming. Not flash, but it has everything we need. Big bed. Hot shower. And they do free wine during happy hour. Rehehehesult. We doze over a cheeky merlot in the hotel bar.

Now, at this point we’ve been up for 20 hours, and are making less sense by the ganglion. Food needed as a matter of urgency. We stumble out to refuel, and end up at Lori’s Diner, one of those intentionally kitsch Ed’s Easy Diner type places, just at the bottom of the road. Faux Americana, sure, but faux Americana in America still kinda works on me. Plus, it’s shabby enough to have a bit of charm, and the waitresses have a good line in that tattooed devil’s cheerleader vibe. For added surrealality, with Halloween just around the corner, the joint is encrusted in spray cobweb and cardboard skeletons. Or maybe I just imagined it. It’s possible. We’re both double-exposing at this point in the day/night/whatevs. Blaaargh. Then we just have enough juice left for a stroll round Union Square, before we give up and head back to the hotel to crash.

2010. Clare’s asleep. I’m just awake enough to type, with NBC burbling away in the background.

Tomorrow is another day. With a lot of shopping in it.

For me, the internets have always been about those moments of genuine surprise. Those moments where a slow day’s aimless browsing is suddenly brought to a screaming halt by a phrase, a picture, an image, and everything is just a little different. This can be a good thing, sometimes a very bad thing. There’s always a physical response. My head comes up. My eyebrows lift. There’s frequently a vocalisation. 

From the NYT, a story on a firm of fortune cookie makers who’ve decided not to sugarcoat our future anymore…

Thursday night brought me to the Cineworld, Shaftesbury Avenue, for the annual Straight8 night through the Raindance Film Festival. I was there to show support for my mate Nick Scott, whose film “The Other Half” was one of the top ten. As regular readers may know, Clive Sick Puppy and I also submitted a short, which got nowhere in the rankings. We’re quietly proud of it though, and I’ve had some very positive comments back about how it turned out.

The evening was great fun, with the general high quality of material I’ve come to expect from Straight8 fully on display. Intersetingly, the film that seemed most mentioned was a charming bit of whimsy called “Little Cumulus,” about a cloud that is stranded on earth, and only finds it’s way back into the sky with the aid of a hot air balloon. Not bad, considering for the most part it was footage of a guy wandering around dressed in a job lot of cotton wool…

Masses of technical problems on the night though, which surprised me no end. The first couple of films had to be shown twice, due to either being monochrome or mute, which is frankly not on. I know the quality of projection is evaporating in this country at a high rate (at a recent screening of 3.10 To Yuma I had to inform the projectionist he’d left a 1.85 mask in the gate of the projector – reeeeally long, thin pictures!) but it can’t be that hard to hit play on a tape deck, surely.

Here’s Nick’s making of The Other Half, explaining how he achieved the most technically difficult effect ever achieved under the Straight8 rules…

although The Sick Puppies went through their own personal hell in making “The Gourmand”…

I was lucky enough to be able to sneak into an early screening of the Sigur Ros tour film Heima.
It’s a stunning piece of work and, speaking as a fan, pretty much flawless. It covers the band as they toured their home country, Iceland, last year, playing venues as varied as an abandoned fish factory and a protest camp over a massive new hydroelectric dam. The music is wonderful, the images breathtaking. Widescreen sound and pictures all the way.
If I was to put my critics hat on (the grey fedora with the plaid ribbon and the inky crow quill stuck in it) I would say that it’s charm depends largely on whether you find Icelandic pixie types and their aethereal music annoying. If you do, then this is effectively an ad for the Icelandic Tourist Board, and you’re not gonna like the whimsy on offer.
I thought it was a joy from beginning to end, and the DVD is going straight on my Christmas list. I’m already raving to everyone I can about it, and I recommend that if you can get into a screening, go for it. It’s a whole different animal on the big screen.

Guys, seriously… takk.

…and no psychedelics involved. Result.

Fuck Off To The Epicure Restaurant, Then

As I once heard a barman at the Coach & Horses yell at a punter.

So people keep asking, and I’m not typing it out every single
bloody time, so maybe this’ll hold you:

You take a whole head of garlic, also known as a whole bulb
of garlic.

You draw off a big length of tinfoil, twice as much as you think
you’d need to make a large pocket or bag to contain the bulb.
And you fold it in half. And then you fold it in half again to make
your double-walled tinfoil sack, wrapping the edges together to
seal it. Leaving the top open, of course.

Saw the top off your bulb, to just expose the tops of the cloves
inside. Chuck it in the bag.

Throw a glass of white wine or sparkling wine (I often use
champagne) on top. NOTE: do not cook with any alcohol
that you wouldn’t be happy to drink on its own. NOTE: some
of you would drink paintstripper out of a dead soldier’s arse.
Imagine what an actual human would consider drinkable
and act accordingly.

You may also throw in herbs to taste — I often throw a
twig of rosemary in there.

(This, by the way, is why you want to be growing
herbs on a windowsill.)

Wrap up the top of the bag tightly, because now it’s full
of booze and you don’t want it to leak out.

Throw it in a hot oven for 90 minutes — less if you want
it less creamy and with more of its garlic bite.

What’s a hot oven? No less than 190 degrees C, 375
degrees F, gas mark 5.

This goes well with lamb: you can throw lamb in the
oven at the same temperature by the following sum:
30 mins per pound/450g + an extra 30 mins at the end.
So if you’ve got two pounds of lamb in there, that’s
90 minutes. Instead of burying it under a sauce, try
pulling the cooked meat apart with forks until it’s
shredded, and then shower it with pomegranate seeds.

Serve with an inexpensive Merlot from Chile, which have
been terrific for the last three years or so, and then
leave me alone.

— W

via warrenellis.com, obvs.

(and extra nice with homegrown or young garlic, but I may be twatting the recipe up too much. Regardless, YUM.)

The weather has turned. Autumn is warming the colours in the trees, and when the alarm goes off in the mornings, I wake to a dark room.
This sucks, clearly. Even with the patented combat roll method that has me in the shower and wet within a minute of the clock going off, it’s still poo, and does nasty things to my sleep patterns. I notice that I have more problems getting and staying asleep at this time of the year than any other. After daylight savings kicks in I’m fine. I’m kind of used to fumbling my way to the bathroom in pitch blackness by then. But up until that point… zombie.

The Wired wiki has some interesting pointers on sleep-hacking. Mostly common-sense, but that’s never stopped me before.
Maybe I should just try the 28 Hour Day. It’ll come in handy come November, when I’m back into the cruel discipline of Novel-Writing Month…