april 2004
World tour, media whore
Lots of Morrissey news - it’s all happening at the moment. In the last week, he has played shows in Las Vegas and Anaheim, and is about to play five nights in Los Angeles. I would love to go, but the fact that I have final exams and papers due for the next couple of weeks puts paid to that idea, along with the fact that LA is a hundred or so miles away. No San Diego dates have materialized yet; c’est la vie.
After his brief American stint (including a few nights in New York), he has a busy summer ahead of him in Europe. He’ll be playing at Glastonbury, Reading, Roskilde, and several other music festivals, as well as curating the Meltdown festival in London in June, and making a slew of television appearances. Damn, I almost wish I could fly back to the homeland for all that, but a lot of the events are sold out already.
The first single, Irish Blood, English Heart, is already getting a fair amount of airplay in the US. The video premiered on VH1 the other day, and can be viewed in full on the VH1 website. Quite a weird video, really - the crowd don’t look terribly interested, and stand around awkwardly - but he looks to be in good form.
Best of all, Morrissey finally has a proper official website, and there’s also a (seemingly unadvertised) website for the new album, You Are The, Quarry. The site offers one-minute clips of new songs, which I haven’t listened to yet, but will tonight when I get home.
It’s all a trifle overwhelming, actually, but it’s great to see such a spectacular comeback after seven long years of Morrisseylessness.
21 april 2004 
Some old queen or other
It was the Queen’s birthday today. I’m so glad I don’t know her. I mean, what the hell would you buy her?
21 april 2004
Car trouble
While doing my rounds yesterday, I saw this car on the exit ramp of I-15 at Adams Avenue.
Looks like they were having a little trouble. I didn’t feel bad about taking photos, as the car’s owner was standing safely a few yards away from the car, snapping pictures too, seemingly unperturbed by the situation.
At one point, the fire must have destroyed the car’s brake cables, as it suddenly started rolling backwards. I thought it was going to hit a police car further down the ramp, but instead it swerved at an angle and was brought to a halt by the median. Then the tyres exploded one by one, which was pretty cool.
Some firefighters finally arrived, but by then the car was not much more than a burnt-out shell. I walked on, away from the thick smoke and the stench of burning fuel and rubber.
19 april 2004
Dogging
Speaking of flamers, it is reported today that Kevin “not gay” Spacey had his mobile phone stolen while out “walking his dog” in a London park at four in the morning. As one does. He explained the bump on his head by saying that he tripped over his dog and fell.
Really, it’s all highly reminiscent of the classic “Doctor, I slipped in the shower and fell backwards onto the ketchup bottle that just happened to be in there” types of excuses so legendary in medical circles. Only this time, he wasn’t washing the dog in the shower, but walking it in the park, and I get the feeling that it wasn’t the dog who was looking for a bone.
Allegedly.
19 april 2004
Please the press in Belgium
Long, interesting interview with Morrissey in the Grauniad two days ago, in anticipation of his new album, You Are The Quarry, due out next month.
Somewhat tiringly, Morrissey interviews always have to bring up the following:
- a Smiths reunion (desire for, or possibility of)
- the legendary court case (I think Morrissey would be much happier if he could put this behind him, instead of still harping on about it six years on)
- Morrissey’s sexuality (who cares?)
- the flag incident
- Nancy Sinatra
Par for the course, though, I suppose. This interview does have some good parts on living alone (“You can constantly develop when you’re by yourself. You don’t when you’re with someone else”) and living abroad (“I decided earlier that I would revolve through the 40th door somewhere else other than England. And I did. I just didn’t want to turn 40 sitting in the same old armchair by the same old window”). And he seems very upbeat about the new album (“I’ve made an album that I really love, and it changes my life and pushes me forward”). I’ve heard the finished version of the new single, Irish Blood, English Heart, and his optimism seems justified - it’s a stunner.
Five weeks to go. How will I hold out?
11 may 2004
Link central
It’s been on the side menu for a while now, but I am now formally announcing a new section of this site: goto, a link list. I collect tons of links all the time, and I’ve been wanting a place not just to dump them all, but to organize them by theme, and provided a little description of each. This is the result. I’m slowly adding to it, and I imagine I’ll probably have to subdivide it into separate pages as soon as it starts getting too big and unwieldy.
As always, I’m happy to receive your input and suggestions.
Also, I recently realized that I have now been blogging for over three years. Wow.
11 april 2004
Asleep at the wheel
On the bus, on my way to work this morning, I could see the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror. As sometimes happens, we seemed to hit every red light along the route. After a while, I noticed that the driver would actually fall asleep at each light for a few seconds, his head falling forward the moment the bus came to a halt. Then, after about ten seconds, he would jerk his head up, blinking in bewilderment, as though he had no idea where he was.
So, my driver, with a busload of passengers in his care, was taking a nap every minute or so. That was reassuring, especially when he drove us along the edge of a steep canyon, with a mere one-foot guardrail separating us from tumbling, fiery death.
I really need to stop looking in that rear-view mirror.
7 april 2004
Link dump
Messer (mp3 conversion on the fly) and mp3DirectCut (mp3 editor that does not require full file decompression) - both very cool, and both free [via Kempa, my new favourite blog].
Real Alternative is an open-source alternative to the horrifically bloated and annoying RealPlayer. I’ve almost completely stopped listening to .r(a)m due to RealPlayer’s incessant nagging, horrible install, and ad overload, but this might just bring me back. That’s good, because many sites I enjoy use Real streams, including the very entertaining This American Life, and the estimable Beeb.
MetaMark is yet another URL shortener. Some others are ClipURL, SnipURL (aka SnURL), TinyURL, the CSUA URL Shortcut Generator, and many more, all useful.
BugMeNot lets you bypass cumbersome registration procedures on sites such as the New York Times - great if you just want to read something quickly, and not have to spend ten minutes trying to think of a fake email address that hasn’t already been submitted.
First came the iMac, then the iPod ... now introducing: iArse.
7 april 2004