Being a blogger, I sit on the periphery of the media village. Whilst I still toil away, churning out a few hundred words here, a stupid video there, I’m still one of the normal proles because I lack three key ingredients of being a proper media personality: credibility, popularity, and respect. This doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t fall into the lazy journalistic trap of filling up the end of the last couple of weeks of the year with a look back at what happened. So, er, here’s look back at my 2007.
Yes, this is the most self-indulgent video ever made. And yes, I did spend time making a musical montage consisting of clips of me. That’s how egocentric I am.
I went to a gig last night. No, wait, don’t scroll down! Its not one of those blog entries – there’s actually a story attached to this! I went to see veteran punk band The Damned with my dad (with whom I’d been to see the Sex Pistols a few weeks ago). I reasoned that I like punk, and I like my dad… what could possibly go wrong?
So the first of two support bands finish their (terrible) set and I ask my dad who the next band are. Casually as anything, he tells me that they’re a bunch of strippers.
“What the fuck, dad?”
Needless to say, it was going to be literally the most awful and awkward thing in the world. So I spent the duration of the “act” browsing the internet on my snazzy new phone, trying to forget that I was with my dad, technically watching what is apparently described as a “burlesque” act.
It wasn’t entirely seedy – well, sort of, anyway. It was compared by a piano-playing woman with an irritating voice, which she used to emit sub-Norton innuendo interspersed with dreadful songs. She also had a glove puppet of a sheep.
It was terrible on so many levels.
It reminded me a lot of when you get TV personalities who are inexplicably famous for being fun characters, despite not actually being comedians. Like Ant & Dec or Vernon Kaye – have all of the enthusiasm and bravado required for their job, but negligible actual talent.
Terrible.
Luckily, the actual band, The Damned, were pretty good, and inadvertently hilarious. Despite being arguably the originators of punk, they did the most un-punk thing and got a member of the audience ejected for throwing his drink at the stage. Excellently, thanks to the magic of technology, I got most of this incident on film – check out the video below. Things kick off about 30 seconds in when you see some liquid enter the screen from the left. The keyboardist, Monty Oxymoron, goes mental. The security had to restrain him, as you’ll see on the video. He then spends the remainder of the song drying his keyboards:
You may complain about the sound quality, but Paris really does have an awful mono background white-noise going on all the time. It also has very little narrative structure, although I believe the Mayor is trying to tackle that with some reforms.
I can’t believe how much we did yesterday. We must have seen almost everything in Paris, apart from perhaps the inevitable suburban riots and unionised Frenchmen doing some actual work.
Our first visit of the day was to the Arc Du Triumph, which is surprisingly massive. Its in the middle of a gigantic roundabout that has approximately fifty lanes of traffic and no road markings. I think Parisian roundabouts work on a system where by you filter on to the roundabout whenever, and it’s a free-for-all as you fight for survival. Luckily, we didn’t have to cross the road to get there – there was an poorly lit underpass full of tourists.
Next up, we walked down the Champs Elysee, which was full of some very expensive looking shops – not the useful kinds of shops though, as they all looked like women’s clothes shops. We stopped for some food near to a man who was standing about whistling tunes in the style of pigeons. He was trying to hawk some sort of bird whistle, so played a number of recognisable tunes in (pun-alert!) pigeon English. JD, ever the obvious tourist with his ‘Paris’ t-shirt, shorts and sandals, was taken in by this and bought one. I haven’t seen him use it yet, although they’ll be a YouTube video when he does.
We continued down the CdE, meandering through one of the various jardins that are invariably actually the roof of an underground car park, passing the seating that had been set up for the Tour de France. I think we went past the Elysee Palace, but I’ve really no idea – there were some fancy gates, so they must have been in front of something important.
At the bottom of the Champs Elysee is the Place de la Concorde, which is where two hundred years ago they guillotined the Royal Family, and set in motion the chain of events that would lead to not only the American revolution and republican democracy around the world, but a boom in sales for guillotine salesmen.
From the PdlC, you get the most incredible view. The French National Assembly on one side, the Louvre on another, the Arc De Triumph and the Grand Arch de Defence and the Eiffel Tower. This was also surrounded by what was probably the most dangerous roundabout in the world. In the middle, rather than have a guillotine set up, just in case the French Royal Family try and organise another rebellion, there’s a big Egyptian Obelisk, which is incredible to look at. It’s surprisingly big and covered in hieroglyphics. I would give it 9/10.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon on a monday, the queue was incredibly short. We couldn’t have queued for any longer than two minutes. First of all we did the most obvious thing and went to try and see the Mona Lisa, just like every other tourist ever. It had its own sign posts.
The Mona Lisa has glass in front of it, and it is mounted on what I assume is some sort of security device. There were hundreds of tourists all standing around trying to push their way to the front to see it – although its not like they hadn’t seen it before. It was quite surreal, as no one could give a damn about the other paintings, yet get the one from the Da Vinci code on the wall and everyone is dying to see it.
It was pretty good though – someone said to me that seeing it is exciting because you’re seeing something so famous, not because of the actual artistic ability, which were distinctly average. I’m sure Da Vinci’s use of light in paintings was revolutionary at the time, but these days we have photos that do much the same thing.
The other wing of Louvre, over the other side of the courtyard was practically empty (slight exaggeration). The best thing it had to boast was a load of old Persian carpets and Islamic pots. One thing it did have were some old timey Mesopotamian statues – they were incredible.
The Louvre was pretty good – much better than the Tate Modern, in that the paintings actually looked like the things that they’re supposed to be.
We left the Lourve via the secret underground shopping centre – which had a Virgin Megastores underneath the lovely jardin above. Which was a bit bizarre if you were expecting the grave of Mary Magdalene instead.
At the bottom of the hill there appears to be some con-artists in permanent residence. Apparently the scam is that they go up to tourists and tie a piece of string around their fingers… and sell them the string. And probably try to pick-pocket them at the same time.
The inside of the church was pretty predictable: it was basically a bunch of Catholics being wrong, but they were happy so we left them to it. The view from the top of the hill gives you an ace view of the Paris skyline.
Next, as it was getting dark, we went to the Eiffel Tower and incredibly, seemed to get lucky with the lines again. We only had to queue for about half an hour, which is pretty good when you consider that everyone you talk to about the Eiffel Tower who has usually been there tends to recoil in horror when you tell them you just want to look at it, because there’s so many tourists that the tower isn’t even reflecting or emitting enough photons to be seen properly without flickering.
We went to the second floor on the basis that it wouldn’t be as expensive or busy as the top. Perhaps the most startling revelation is that it turns out that I appear to suffer from vertigo when being really, really high up. I’m assuming its because you’re not behind a sheet of glass and theoretically you could fall. I mean, if there were an earthquake that throws you over the high barriers.
The view was incredible you could see everything. The most surprising thing though was the cost of a Coke there. I was expecting a “grande” Coke to be 330ml and cost about half a million pounds, yet it turns out that the Eiffel Tower’s definition of large is approximately the same size as a cinema Coke. Not bad value, really.
After getting down from the Eiffel Tower it was just after midnight, and we had to act fast to catch the Metro – which finished running at half 12. After faffing about for about 15 minutes trying to find the metro station, we got on a train to find people playing music on the train. It seemed very French. It wasn’t until they went around afterwards begging for money that it because obvious what their hidden motive was. Here’s a video:
We arrived at the Latin Quarter to find the most incredible thing: a dance battle. Just in the street like – there were a group of people with a stereo and two men trying to out-do each other at dancing whilst a sizeable crowd watched. It was a bit embarrassing as one bloke was shit hot doing flips and spinning and wearing a jaunty hat, whilst the other was just a bit rubbish.
We made our way to a Jazz Club that JD and Fundar wanted to go to. There was some sort of “swing” band on and they played the sort of twenty minute long songs you’d expect at a jazz club. The barman also had the ability to throw glass bottles around a catch them.
We stayed there until around half-two, when we caught the night-bus home. At 3am. In the centre of Paris. It was a bit scary.
I’m so, so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve just lost you the next thirty minutes of your time, as you’re going to be watching the embedded video below. It is the most staggering, yet unintentionally hilarious thing I have ever seen. I know its not my style to embed other people’s work, but this really is incredible. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was I tripping out on some drugs.
It’s an anti-drugs cartoon, financed by the McDonalds Corporation, introduced by the first President Bush and his wife, starring Garfield, Winnie the Pooh, Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Muppet Babies, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Huey, Duey and Louis from Ducktales, Alf, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Slimer from Ghostbusters, the Smurfs and the Berlin Wall. Seriously. Just watch this:
If you’re a student you’ll love this. It really is unbelievable to hear the different characters talk about crack and marijuana. Its utterly bonkers. Endure the McDonalds promotions at the start- they’re on the first unbelievable bit. Watch it. And please make it become viral.
Yeah, I quite likegoing to zoos. Katy and I decided to “up the ante” today (whatever that means) and take a trip to a Safari Park, where we’d actually get dangerously close the animals.
One thing I worried about before going, aside from potentially being eaten by lions, was the car insurance implications. I mean, do the park pay for any damage the monkeys make? Or do I have to swap insurance details with the monkey, then ring my insurer and try and explain to them how a primate smashed in the bonnet?
Unlike most worries, this was not baseless: a monkey did actually jump on to the car, and wouldn’t go away. So I ended up driving along with a monkey on the roof to try and knock it off.
After the drive though bit, where we came up-close with a rhino, a bear, a lion – all of the scary animals basically, you can park your car and look around a more traditional Zoo-like area. Unlike zoos though, the animals don’t tend to be behind fences, and you can get right up close to them. Here are some photos to prove this point, in case you, er, don’t believe me:
Lots of Wallabies at feeding time.
A lemur? Something like that.
Me, scared of a peacock.
Hello, new Facebook profile picture.
The best bit though was undoubtedly an aviary, where you can just walk in and be surrounded by birds. Whilst this doesn’t sound too spectacular, you could buy nectar in little cups, so that when you walk into the main area, half a million birds swarm around you and land on you, fighting over the food. Here’s a short video (and I do mean short- it’s only 26 seconds, unlike the eight minute epics I’ve been producing lately):
In retrospect, instead of saying “Hello” to the bird at the end, I should have said “So, do you come here often?” to maximise the gag. I guess this is why proper film makers write scripts.
Yesterday, Katy and I went down to London to watch the big Prime Ministerial changeover. Here’s what happened in video form. Words and pictures to follow shortly:
Long term readers, assuming you exist, are probably vaguely familiar with some of the stupid videos that I’ve made. I think its fair to say that my three “best” videos thus far have been maybe the time I went to the Space Centre with Katy, my trip to London in April, and a trip to Twycross Zoo. Yesterday, being someone who has horrendously original ideas, and doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “flogging a dead horse“, I, er, went to London Zoo… with Katy. And did a video:
As you can probably tell from the video, the zoo portion of the day went swimmingly (think back to the aquarium bits and this is puntastic). We saw lots of animals, as, er, you might expect: zebras, monkeys, pigs with moustaches, lions, lizards, llamas (with excellent faces), a ferret, which bit the trainer’s arm, and an excellent guinea pig. (Photos? Here.)
Travel logistics seemed to be a bit of a recurring issue all day though. First off, as I explain at length in the video, actually finding the zoo was a lot of hassle – its not as well sign posted you might expect, and Regent’s Park is a few magnitudes larger than a “normal” park too. Here’s a map of the route we took. (I think this is easily the most web 2.0 blog entry ever).
On leaving the zoo, it turned out that it was actually really close to what a countryside person like myself would describe as Camden town centre. So after eating we got the tube back to the train station to go home, only to discover that because it was now “peak time”, our tickets weren’t valid. Bugger. So we had about two and a half hours to kill, so we did the most obvious thing and went to Westminster (via the circle line clockwise, tedious travel fans).
I love Westminster. From the second we left the tube, I was reeling off near-guidebook calibre trivia (slight exaggeration) constantly. “Bloody hell, it’s the Cenotaph!”, “Look! Banqueting House! That’s the last remaining part of the Palace of Whitehall! Oh My God! Ofgem!“. I think my boundless enthusiasm for all things London began to irritate Katy at this point. Probably because aside from enthusiasm for seeing the road where the Channel 4 Headquarters is, we both knew that I was sort of cheating, having studied up on the area only a few months ago.
We ended up sitting outside Parliament just in time for the six o’clock news – where we saw Sky News’ John Craig do a piece to camera live, and another broadcaster (I guess ITN) do the same thing. It was especially interesting to see that by ten past six, with the live done and dusted, they packed up and went home. Presumably they were all home in time for the regional news.
When we got back to St Pancras station to try and get home, the train had been delayed for yet another hour, and worse still, the trains that were scheduled for later on seemed to drop certain stations to presumably get back on track faster – meaning that it was nothing but hassle trying to get on the correct train. I’d call Midland Mainline the Stasi again to try and kick up a fuss, but I think that’d be too much of a compliment – presumably the Stasi were well organised, efficient and knew how to handle a crisis – completely unlike Midland Mainline.
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