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The TWELFTH
NIGHT 'VOICES IN THE NIGHT' Double CD is now available on Cyclops
Records. The album of previously unreleased material, includes 3 of
the earliest Twelfth Night tracks written and performed with 'Electra',
in that brief, but glittering period when she was their
lyricist/vocalist. If you like the words 'PROG' and 'ROCK' in the same
sentence, you'll like this. So, GO get it NOW! [SLEEVE
NOTES]
End 2007
into A NEW YEAR -
Good-Bye Hell....
Hell-o.....2008
Thurs
31 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... Last day of
the month under an angry sky
The weather today is wild: Sun, Rain, Sun, Snow, Sun, Wind, Wind, Rain, Snow, Rain... etc etc etc... and yet the winter sunset was SO beautiful the other night.
[photo courtesy me Jan 08 - I have this thing about the sky... I think it's beautiful.]
Also, I found an interesting editorial in The Independent a couple of days ago. Jacqui Smith suggests that there should be a 'night curfew' on men. They would all have to be INDOORS after dark. If you don't want sex crimes, mass murders, serial betrayals and killings and a variety of other atrocities committed in the dark of the night... yes, locking men indoors sounds your best bet. Still... some men work at night and would have an excuse for leaving the house. Who knows what they would get up to once outside. But, personally, and perhaps unfortunately, I like the company of men - both inside AND out. They're the ones who stomp and shout and take way too many enhancements, go way way over the score in all directions and end up stripped naked, down a dark alley, barking at the moon. In other words... they bring the fun.
Other news from the end of the month: Unattractive pictures of Amy Whinehouse spread across the tabloids. She was caught snortin', she was seen jackin', she was filmed cookin' and smokin' crack! Yet who here amongst ye can cast the first stone????!
OK, let's take a little test: He/she who hasn't smoked, coked, cracked or jacked anything, ever... raise your hands! See! I knew it!! No one in THIS room raised their hands.
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Wed
30 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... Where's an
asteroid when you need one?...
George bush opens 3 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to loggers... in Davos they just finished carving up the rest of the planet's resources, and another megalomaniacal 'IT' girl (Tamara Mellon) is behaving like a 'SHIT' girl and suing her mother of all people. What can you expect from a woman who cut Jimmy Choo out of his own shoe company??!!! Yet somehow, she's held up as a scion and role model of the 'new capitalism' as she strolls around on animal skins in her multi-million pound pad in London. The 'Grab-It' psychosis charges ahead unabated and an asteroid known only as 'TU24', whizzes PAST the Earth at 9 kms per second, leaving these hideous cretins free to stalk our precious globe for another day.
Notes on asteroids from The Independent:
""So should we be worried? Yes:
* It has happened in the past, with devastating consequences for life on Earth
* The probability is higher than most people think, roughly equivalent to the risk of death in an air crash
* It is certain to happen at some point in the future; the only question is when
No:
* In climate change and terrorism, the world faces much more pressing problems than asteroids (chuck in George Bush the Davos-'elite' with their New World Order and all the 'SH-IT' girls out there and yes, an asteroid seems a small threat.)
* There is nothing much we can do about the asteroid threat anyway, so why worry? (Get an Uzi, a box of hand grenades and a ranch in Idaho instead.)
* The chances of the Earth being struck by an asteroid are extremely small" Now that's a shame. [asteroid photo courtesy NASA]
[Postscript: **I went out and scanned the sky last night with my binoculars hoping to see TU24 as it zipped past. I never saw it, but made a little prayer... it might come back around this way soon.]
Fri
25 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
The
King is Dead.... Long Live the King
Apparently, the music industry is now dead. Music will be given away free (has anyone told Beyoncé???) and companies will attach advertising to downloads, much like 'free' newspapers; i.e. Metro, SF Weekly, LA Weekly etc...to pay royalties and other overheads (I'm assuming that's what they'll pay). I guess we'll all be out pumping gas, shining shoes or working in an office somewhere. Much like the White Russian aristocrats becoming doormen in Paris. But when your world is gone...it's gone and you have to adjust. Luckily.... the big music industry was not my world and has not been for many years now. I had my fill of the treatment of 'artists' and can peacefully say, 'Karma... nay?'
-----------------------------------
Thurs
24 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... No Country
For Old Men...
Cormac McCarthy? Is that the geezer who wrote the book? I just bought it on Amazon. About the film: You'll have read all the reviews so I have nothing to add except SO MANY METAPHORS; the hunter becomes the hunted, the impassiveness of death, the chase. Riveting and profound. Get yer ass out to see it while this perfect Coen Brothers film is in the cinemas. Please don't wait 'til you can download it from some share-site and pirate it. Don't be a schmuck. Just go out and see it like a real human being.
About other things and other countries: LOVED the wall coming down in Gaza. I laughed when they showed night-time footage of the explosions. Brilliant. You can't keep people down or in. Jimmy Miller wrote a song dedicated to that situation when the Israelis were building their outrageous wall 3-4 years ago, titled, eponymously, 'WALLS'. It's one of my favourites of his. You can listen to it on the MGCK Music myspace: www.myspace.com/Magick101 - actually... I'll go one better. I'll change my song on the Electra My Space to 'Walls', in honour of all those Palestinians who said, 'walls 'round here need comin' down!' Done during the time of the Full Moon no less.
Tuesday
January 22 - Full Moon in Leo

The Full Moon in Leo is called,
depending on where you live, the Wolf Moon, Holiday Moon, Ice
Moon, Cooking Moon, Moon of the Terrible or Quiet Moon.
Now, here's a fascinating fact. If you were to drive to the Moon, at 70mph, it
would take about 135 days. That's, presumably, without stopping. I don't
suppose, though, there are many service stations along the way. Anyway, if you
are planning to drive, set off soon - because each year, the Moon slips 1.5
inches away further from the Earth. The longer you wait the further you will
have to travel.
Heath Ledger died tonight. Perhaps he's gone somewhere better. Or maybe, just gone somewhere else.
Tues
22 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... Space
is the Place...
While driving home last night from my yoga class, James Whale was coming on Talk Sport, pre-show at 10pm, talking about the NASA website and how they've been tracking a meteorite coming along in this direction and how that 'tracking' and information has suddenly simply disappeared from their site. Whether he was jesting or being accurate, he said the projected day of impact was next Monday. Interesting. Now's the week to do all those things you've never done, like 'enjoy' being you. Even if it means just sitting quietly and liking yourself for a minute or two...
If you want to try to hunt down this missing information, I can recommend the NASA website www.nasa.gov which is pretty groovy anyway... photographs of the recent flight of the MESSENGER spacecraft around Venus and Mercury. Lots of footage from Mars. NASA are out there getting on with it, while the rest of us squabble down here on Earth. While looking at their site I had the incredible feeling I'd chosen the wrong career. Astronomy would be a passion that would warm your heart and excite your mind all the days of your life. Incredible images of the otherness just out there. 'Star Factories'. Like this photograph of 'Gas pillars in the Eagle Nebulae: A Star-Forming Region'. Spectacular. From the Hubble web: http://hubblesite.org/
[Photo-Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University]
The spooky thing about the above? I did a sand-mosaic on black canvas when I was 5 years old and, mysterously, called it 'Star Factory' . My mother still has it hanging on the wall in her living room and it looks (to this day), exactly like the photographs of Star Factories in other galaxies - i.e. just like the one above. Maybe all of that information of our origins is hard-wired inside somewhere.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: Yes.. I must see it, TONIGHT!!! (I mean, Tommy Lee Jones... I would allow myself to be dragged naked over wet cobbles for Tommy Lee Jones!) even if the critics are split. But everyone agrees, the first 40 minutes are the most brilliant 40 minutes of any film ever. Good enough for me. And my nephew works for FOX (movie division) out in LA and he said it's their 'must see' of the year. I take his word for it, as, like all good New Yorkers (even if he grew up in Barcelona), he was raised in the great Woody Allen tradition; watching every film ever made - over and over again.
About
Fifi J's trip to London last weekend, where she certainly waxed lyrical about
Canary
Wharf and all else that caught her eye. I must either get new glasses, or
take another trip down souf with a new point of view. I took a walk along
the South Bank with my brother (an architect from San Francisco) a few
years ago and we went meticulously along seeing everything 'new' as he'd never
seen any of it. And I remember thinking it all looked pretty un-remarkable if
very 'new'...
the only portion of the trip that caught my eye was the
'reconstructed' 'Globe Theatre' and the
replica of the 'Golden Hind'
berthed there.
[Neither are the originals]
But, I
remember thinking what a superbly delicate vessel
it was and how tiny! How
did these guys do the things they did on ships so small? Sailing to the
New WORLD?? AND BACK!!!! A few times! And yes, TheTate
Modern
in the Southwark Power Station. I
DID enjoy that building; but not for the art within it's massive-ness, but for it's entry
hall and VERY physical open SPACE. Something incredible about industrial
sites. Anyway... you can marvel at Fifi's positivity about the docklands
and Canary Wharf area of London on her Myspace blog. I think it's www.myspace.com/fifij
(actually... I just checked it... and somehow, I don't think that's her link)
so... go to MY myspace... www.myspace.com/electrasong
and FIFI J is one of my best friends.... The images are good too.
And yes... I DO love the British Museum. Even the new bit in the courtyard. There was a time in London when I spent so much time in the British Museum. Used to HIDE there when I was living with a friend of mine out in Bethnel Green and looking for a place in town (i.e. somewhere between Bloomsbury and Notting Hill) to hang my hat. Rather than go back to Bethnel Green, I would linger in the British Museum until closing writing aerograms to foreign friends and family. Last time I visited was with my agent friend from LA who was spending the New Year in London with her sister and brother-in-law (they'd been there for 10 months waiting for money from a 'black diamond' deal with some Russians gone wrong. I think they're probably still waiting). We spent the day in the museum and lunched there. It was so lovely, and then walked through Bloomsbury Square and, goddammit, but yes, it was snowing. It was pure Dickens. A lovely new day in a New Year.
I haven't taken ANY photographs lately. Not seen anything I really want to remember. What I'm doing instead is every morning, before I do anything else... sitting down in front of my computer and rather than turning it on, taking pen and paper and 'drawing' something I see in front of me. It can be a scene out the window, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes.. a keyboard and a cheese-plant... a half-smoked dooby in the ashtray. It can be anything I actually 'see'. I'm making it my morning therapy. Part of the Moriti Therapy of 'doing' rather than remotely behaving in a repetitive unconscious fashion.
To Recap the above: I DO love London. I love it madly, badly, gladly...but don't think I could live there again. Even though I had a call from an ex-husband this week, another architect, who's just set up a new partnership with a colleague and branched off on their own. He made me jealous talking about the view from his new office window of the Barbican and his walks home to Camden along the canal. But really... it can't possibly beat the view from the Space Station or Hubble...so.. I would have to say at the very end... Space is the Place. SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER! Always an eyeful: The Universe Today
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Tues
15 - Mon 21 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... ARTICLES and
'Real' news...
Weekly
Update from SF (San Francisco) Station: ""Tonight,
after you techheads have recovered from your collective geekasms over Steve
Job's big reveal, head to The Warfield for Macworld
Blast. On Thursday, help blow out the proverbial candles on the cake at
Rickshaw Stop's 4th
Anniversary Party. You can also celebrate The Crucible's 9th Anniversary
at Hot
Couture, dubbed a "fusion of fashion and fire", the show will
include work from Bay Area designers, fire performances and several of Oakland's
most sizzling firefighters. However, if you're looking for new threads but
don't want to spend any dough then check out Sweet!,
the Costco of all clothing swaps at CELLspace. Make the most of the long weekend
by spending a part of your Sunday on the Ambient Audio Adventure.
Discover the secret goodies that Golden Gate Park has to offer as you
contemplate your existence in this world - all for a very low cost! Or honor the
memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the MLK Holiday Rally/Celebration.
Attend a sermon at Glide, take part in the march, ride the "freedom
trains" and/or rally at Bill Graham Civic Center. Let freedom ring!
An interesting
book
review in the New York Times: The Suicide of Reason by Lee Harris,
but I don't know that the West has the right idea either. In the 'culture'
of 'self-interest' every forest is being chopped into chip-board and all
sea-coast turned into sea-front property. There are no 'idle assets'.. and
everything is ultimately consumed.
I'm leaning towards Stalinism... on balance.
My advice for the day: Watch the NO COMMENT clips on 'EURONEWS'. No subtext. No ticker tape. No commentators. Just clips of life on Earth in other places. Fascinating and sombre.
------------------------------
'Message in a Bottle' FROM SHOOTING PEOPLE IN NEW YORK:
SP
Film Pick of the week - "1000 JOURNALS" - From:
Jesse Epstein | Member Name: Jesse
Last summer I was in San Francisco, in a coffee shop called Farley's, and
saw that there were some journals up on a shelf for anyone to read through. They
were pretty amazing -- raw and honest. Maybe these journals were part of the
project documented in "1000 JOURNALS".
Check out the trailer at: http://shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=45348
1000 Journals is a film by Andrea Kreuzhage about people whose lives are
touched by 1000 traveling journals. These blank journals were released into the
world in the summer of 2000, by 'Someguy', a San Francisco based artist.
Some people found a journal, or got it from a friend or stranger. Some signed up
on the web and received it in the mail. Some wrote in them, others doodled,
pasted in photographs, or added artworks. Some kept them. Some
passed them on. There are no rules and no one really monitors these
journals and their movements. And yet, they are connecting tens of
thousands of people worldwide, provoking and inspiring them.
In September 2003, one of the 1000, number 526, was returned to 'Someguy'
filled. What happened to the other 999? This film tells their
stories. 1000 Journals shares the experience of their worldwide journeys,
and chronicles the self-governed collaboration of thousands of random people who
have added to this global "message in a bottle"
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Sun
13 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... Websites of
interest...
The World Clock (world statistics)
TWILIGHT of the PSYCHOPATHS (just what it says)
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Sun
13 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... Vanity vs
Sanity...
I was invited to Barcelona again - 24th Jan to 3rd Feb - for the opening of an exhibition of portraits by an artist friend (Lluis Plana) who painted me during summer 2006. This will be his first portrait exhibition as he usually paints landscapes, so, really... it's very flattering to be included, but here's the rub: I was just in Barcelona/Catalunya for 3 weeks in November. And again, in the month immediately before that ( i.e. October... might as well not have left!!!). I can't just 'go' every month. I can't keep expending energy on Vanity junkets. Little trips to keep me feeling good about my 'self'. OK, November's trip was a 'SANITY' junket, but I've decided.. this year 2008... no more Vanity things and that goes for EVERY thing, not just trips. The resolution 'Do Something That Matters' quintessentially contains the suggestion, "Don't do things that don't." So, I'm afraid, although I would like to see my 'self' on a wall in a gallery with people standing around looking upon my painted countenance, I just can't make it.
But anyway... here's the painting in question. Half Human / Half Landscape. (I never said I thought it was 'pretty'! but I AM flattered.)
But now to the crunch.... it looks like I might be making a 'Vanity AND Sanity' trip in March to the SXSW Festival. It's kind of a 'do or die' time, this new year 2008. So many things got left on the back-burner in 2007, kind of blackening at the bottom of the pot as I dawdled about. I really was not paying attention. Took my eye off the road... Drove god knows where and now, it's time to re-focus... maybe... we'll see.
Art is hard. It calls to you in the most subtle ways; promising you'll find something you're REALLY interested in .... 'way over here'... off the beaten path.
With that in mind... this morning, I was listening to some tape cassettes of songs I wrote when I first met JM about 7 and a half years ago. Long before I set up my own company and decided that ALL of my efforts would have to make hard returns in hard currency. That very commercially minded (if not fully acted-upon) decision, meant an end to free creativity. It just squashed that 'beautiful' thang. That beautiful 'subtle' thang.
Well I found that 'BEEEYOOOTIFUL thang' this morning in a box at the bottom of a cupboard. Dozens of tape cassettes of demos written on the hoof, on my bicycle, in a moment, on a wing, with a prayer.
Listening to songs I'd forgotten writing gave me such a LIFT, such a KICK of sheer pleasure. More STOCKHAUSEN than Stockhausen. I was SO free... and somehow...over the last 4 years, in the process of trying to 'please' some other amorphous else (i.e. the 'bizness' or the would-be 'fan' or consumer), I tried to gain 'the beaten path' and thus, lost my free serendipitous creativity. Funny old game.
[So: If being 'OFF' the beaten path means you make beautiful satisfying music, but make no money, does that mean I'm going to try to stay 'ON' the beaten path'? And if I'm gonna stay ON the beaten path, does that mean I have to write songs about my fanny or having a hangover? That seems to be the 'meat' of ' popular music' these days. A dis-quiet with the state of consuming... expressed in not knowing if one is getting what one wants'.]
"All I want's a cabin in Montana for next time...."
{photo of paradise nicked from Yahoo.com}
------------------------------------------
one other question: Why does Beyonce Knowles look so 'pale' these days? She's a BEAUTIFUL Afro American woman of 'colour' and I just saw a headshot of her looking like Barbara Streisand... an even paler version.
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Tues
8 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... The world is
a TERRIFYING place...
Yesterday I was looking for something on the net and came across this photograph and article. It stopped me in my tracks and I've not been able to think about much else since seeing it.
By
Banafsheh
Zand-Bonazzi
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday,
January 27, 2005

Elio Bonazzi and Alireza Saghafi were co-writers of this special feature. (This picture, smuggled out of Iran, was taken in 1992 in the town of Arak)
Apparently, in the Iran of old (and possibly the new) it wasn't against the law to stone someone, usually a woman... But, it was against the law to use the wrong sized stone. Reading the article... well... the world is a terrifying place, then and now.
On top of that, yesterday, I met a man who owns a 'fish farm' here in Scotland. He breeds trout for table and lake... his description of every living breathing creature that might take one of his fish as 'vermin', everything from otters to kingfishers, to osprey and how they 'deter' them down on the farm. I asked what 'deter' meant. He said, 'we have country ways'. I thought there were laws against 'country ways'. Apparently, these people write their own rule book as they own the land. So, the same with the photograph above taken 15 years ago... I have doubts that much has changed anywhere.
I don't know what the answer is, but yesterday was a very disturbing day.
[Regarding the profession and hobby of 'music'. I really haven't thought about it all lately. It's like the music has been sucked out of my life and replaced with events people, things and INFORMATION that seems far more immediately pressing in real terms. I've had my 'consciousness' raised lately. If everyone continues to sit on their fat arses and consume things... this little orb we're floating around on is FRICKIN' DOOMED!]
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Sun
6 Jan
2008 -
MGCK Music
... Geekonomics...
I've been trying to figure out what happened in the last 10 days: Was Benazir Bhutto topped by Musharaf or the CIA (NIA, BIA, PIA, CU2, FUalso)... Does Al Qaeda actually exist, or is he just a bad stand-up in some Chicago comedy club? With Oil at $100 a barrel (making a WHOLE SHITLOAD of people ULTRA RICH), when are we going to stop using it? Asking for it? Buying things that are shipped with it? When are we going to STOP MAKING THE BAD GUYS RICHER and more powerful?? A dear friend of mine just came back *(unharmed) from 'Ken-ya'.. [not 'KEEEEnya' as my other toff pal calls it]. She was out there filming a documentary for Al Jazeera (no more stand up jokes) about a CANDIDATE in that very election. She said when they were counting the vote (it took 3 days) and then the vote and rigging were announced and there was a moment of silence, followed by wailing and then the shit just exploded all over the fan... anyway... She described it as a moment at the end of hope. And I'm wondering what's going on, everywhere all around. I'm going to vote for Barak Obama if he beats that hideously manipulative Hillary to the polls. There's something about that young man...a freshness and a 'hope' that needs to be cultivated, believed in, supported and carried through to the winning post.
... A lot of questions and the issue of economics has been playing on my mind. Probably because I've been spending a lot of time with an 'old' imperialist. You know.. the people on this island who sit at the top of the pile... even in their crumbling stately homes that your taxes are paying for. I've been wondering what system might actually 'work'. What system is best. Enlightened Capitalism? As America seems to have experienced at different times in it's brief history... or Soviet Communism? I'm attracted to both, if only because they believe in, invest in and tap in to the potential of people. You can come out of a trailer park or a tiny village in the Urals and rise to 'be somebody' baby, in either system. A Putin or a Clinton. An astronaut or a cosmonaut. An entrepreneur or an oligarch. Yet neither system (the latter (AND the former) now defunct and replaced by super-corrupt-Capitalism run-rampant) is workable in the long-term. So there must be a middle ground. There must be something 'else'.
Another blog I found introduced me to an article from 'WIRED' magazine. A simple study conducted by 'games' creators suggests something about human nature. We like things that involve a struggle. Read on:
""What if everything in life were free? You'd think we'd be happier. But game designers know better: We'd be bored.
Economics is loosely defined as choice under scarcity. After all, in the real world, there's only so much to go around. You can't always get what you want, and unfulfilled desires give rise to markets. But in a game world, there's no inherent reason for scarcity. Game designers have given us plenty of utopias where we can have all the mithril we want, to buy whatever we want whenever we want it.
Problem is, those worlds turn out to be dull. For example, the developers of Active Worlds made everything in the game free. Players built enormous houses - in which there was nothing to do. The game never quite caught on. That's why today's newer massive synthetic worlds make life hard..........It's why we have to scheme, fight, and occasionally beg for food, shelter, transportation, and great big flaming swords. Games show us that scarcity can be fun.."" By Edward Castronova
{Perhaps humans just like hacking at each other with big swords. It's an end in itself.} So.. to end this day's thought-blog, here's an article from ALJAZEERA.COM
|
WE ARE ALL PRISONERS NOW - 05/01/2008 10:31:00 PM GMT |
|||
Former cabinet members of the British,
Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army
have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts |
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Wed
2 Jan 2008 -
MGCK Music
... from
Hogmanay to Dogmanay...
CROSS
THAT BRIDGE... when you come to it:
Well... three things happened in the last 2 days leading up to the big Edinburgh 5 minute firework show. Our visitors from Barcelona, a guy and two girls, did part of the torchlight thingmy up to the burning long-boat, then they got all excited about seeing something at the Assembly Rooms called, 'The Jimi Shandrix Experience' - playing tunes from their album "Electric Landlady"
JM explained it might be this accordion guy doing an off-the-wall piss-take of Jimmy Shand doing Jimi Hendrix. Even forewarned, they trooped up to 'the Rooms' on George Street to find a very typical 'Gay Gordons' style Ceilidh in progress... no Electric Landladies or ''Voodoo Children' in sight .. so that was minor disappointment number one. The girls tried to resurrect their night by finding a club to shelter in 'til dawn, only to tell me later, 'everything closes here so early'. Yes. I know. This is Edinburgh... Not IBIZA!!
So, the next day... well... they were again excited. NEW YEAR'S EVE! The BIG ONE and JM got them tickets for the Concert in the Gardens, even though they had no idea who KASABIAN or IDLEWILD were; still, it was OK.. but what REALLY excited them was the prospect of seeing THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS!! Yet, on closer inspection of the 'Hogmanay Events' guide... I heard Xandra squealing with dismay, 'it's NOT the REd Hot Chili Peppers... It's the RED HOT CHILI PIPERS!!!!!!'
Disappointment number two was afoot.
So.. anyway... the great night arrived and everybody was a bit stoned and laid out flat on any available surface in the living room.. having little naps before the MAIN EVENT. Of course, it was raining outside and I decided for my New Year's Eve, if I couldn't see the crystal ball drop in Manhattan, I'd go for a little drive to see a friend over in Fife. The goofy pills, champagne, a good book and a snooze could come later ... or while I was seeing him.
I had a notion to stop at South Queensferry, guessing the bridges would look evocative on this misty night, and took photos of the railway bridge looking fetchingly 'hellacious' in the eerie red winter fog.
So that was the beginning of my night 'oot', which was quite pleasant, all things considered. Saw my auld lang pal in Ladybank... Imagine Ladybank on New Year's Eve. Believe me YOU CAN'T! Then made the drive through incredibly white-with-fog country roads back to the M9 and south to Edinburgh and crossed that river when I came to it.
It was already 'New Year's Day' for UK residents, but I'm still on Eastern Standard Time in my heart. For me, it ain't New Year's Day 'til the fat lady sings in Times Square, so 5am would be the witching hour. I still had time to kill.
Got
in...
watched an absolutely GRRREAT
film my sister had given me for Christmas -
'Perdita
Durango' - by Mexican Director Alex de La
Iglesia,
set along the border (All Along The
Watchtower, at last!)
starring Rosie Perez,
and Javier Bardem (recently in the Coen Brothers
great new film 'No Country For Old Men'}. Javier
Bardem starred in another great Spanish film "Mar A Dentro"- 'THE SEA
INSIDE'. It won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2005. If it comes 'round again on SKY
Indie... see it.
Anyway... 'PERDITA DURANGO': fantastic, off it's head, realistic, surrealistic, containing Medicine Men, Naguals, DEA officers and black-hearted bleaksters of all descriptions. So authentically unique and reminiscent of where we'd been last year... the NOGALES line. Or for some people, the 'No Go-es' line. Where pretty much anything goes and DOES!
The Goofy pills were kicking in... the champagne was bubbling... it was coming up for 5am and suddenly, there it WAS... my home town!!! Lit like a NASA rocket headed for open space.
One-million people in Times Square and along 42nd Street. Blokes on their knees proposing to their girlfriends.. Everybody dressed to the nines, ignoring the fact it's brass-ball freezingly Baltic. I actually wept... but that's just me. A Native New Yorker exiled in a strange land.
One of OUR revellers was already abed - having had enough fun. And just after 5 the two girls strolled in. They told me all about their night.. in the mud.. up in The Gardens. Their jeans and jackets were slicked brown, as they slipped and slid and FELL DOON the slopes to get to the concert location and then back out again later. They said the Princes Street scene on approach before midnight had been very weird. A lot of pushing and shoving and a sea of bottles, upside down pouring their contents into idiot gobs. Their observation, 'They drink like it's the last day of their lives, not the last day of the year!'
After the concert, which they said was over just like 'that' - only maybe an hour in length - they split for a party at a friend's house down Easter Road and had been there since toking and smoking and comparing notes with other Europeans.. They said it was all pretty weird, but they were glad they'd experienced it. Miller showed up at 7am after first-footing about 17 Leith 'dos'.
We all went to sleep and woke around 1pm on DAY ONE of 2008. Ready to head out for another adventure... Of course, conducted in the rain, like everything else around these parts.
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NEW YEAR'S EVE is HOGMANAY, but NEW YEAR's DAY is DOGMANAY!!!
I put on my camouflage wellies and my waterproof hoody and out we went to Holyrood Park, below The Crags, shrouded in mist, like something from KONG's island.
to watch the huskies pulling for glory. It was so wacky and wet and crazy and only DOG LOVERS could do this and, happily, I am one.. so it was fun. Clips from the Doggie Do are ready for perusal below.
Apart from EVERYTHING else... that's really been it. A new year's eve has come and gone and a New Year is with us. We've crossed that bridge into a new opportunity. It feels MUCH better than the last.
My NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS????:
I made a wish on New Year's Day...
{there's no place like home}
[all photos © Electra Dec 2007 - Jan 08, except 'Home Sweet Home' Nov 2003 James Miller or me.. can't remember which]
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And as with every new month... I'll be retiring an 'old' month.. Probably May-June 2005 - California Dreaming.....
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If you're looking for LAST MONTH's stuff - Go to: DECEMBER 07 -
Still smokin'!!!!
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BE THERE...... or BE SOMEWHERE ELSE!
If you don't know how.. take
lessons
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UNOFFISHAL SITE ARCHIVES: Current Mar 08 Feb 08 Jan 08 2007: Dec 07 Nov 07 Oct 07 Sept 07 Aug 07 July-June-May 07 Apr 07 Mar 07 Feb 07 Jan 07 2006: Dec 06 Nov 06 Oct 06 Sept 06 Summer 2006 May 06 Apr 06 Mar 06 Feb 06 Jan 06 2005: Dec 05 Nov 05 Oct 05 Sept 05 Aug 05 July 05 End May-Jun 05
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SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER! Always an eyeful: The Universe Today
Sites worth a visit and support are: http://www.adbusters.org and Be an 'Antipreneur' - anti-corporate - self-motivated activist: http://adbusters.org/metas/politico/antipreneur/
as always www.clearchannelsucks.net
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Copyright © 2007
Electra
All rights reserved.
Revised: 18 Jul 2010 16:13:43 +0100
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