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Mo’ London, Mo’ London, Mo’ London

Evening, all. Sorry for being AWOL yesterday, but I had a bit of a full night. And I’ve decided not to be quite so uber-anal about posting every day. I’ll still do my best to pump out seven posts (or more) a week, but not necessarily one with each date stamped on it. I decided that I’ve got enough ridiculous and arbitrary rules in my life, without complicating my life myself. You understand, of course.

Also, I decided to give the ‘Punchline Fever‘ feature a rest, at least for a while. After twenty weeks of punchline fun, I was starting (starting?) to run out of clever ideas. And it seemed that interest was waning a bit, so let’s put that particular bit of amusement on the shelf for a while, and see whether or not we miss it. It’ll still be there, if we ever want it again.

For now, though, I’m gonna try and wrap up the story of the London trip the wife and I took last week. I’ve been having a good time playing travelogue author and all, but there are other things I’d like to write about, ya know. Like baseball, and Boston drivers, and Buddhist monks. Important shit like that.

So, let’s finish up the holiday recap. I believe we were up to Thursday in our week-long odyssey. Now, by this time, we were pretty much running out of interesting things to do. Or we’d drunk enough to permanently loopy-ize our brains. Something like that, apparently, because I can’t imagine any other way I’d allow my wife to talk me into accompanying her for… shopping.

Now, I like to think that in many regards, I’m not your ‘typical guy’. I remember my wife’s birthday, and I know when our anniversary date is. I even know how many years we’ve been together. I help around the house (a little). I don’t even mind admitting that, under the right set of circumstances — like a Red Sox loss to the Yankees, or a stripper putting on her clothes — I might even cry.

(Yeah, okay, fine — maybe I am a pretty typical guy. That stripper line gave me away, eh? Bitches.)

Anyway, the point is, I’m not always as predictable as some men might be. But when it comes to shopping? I’m a dog. I’m Homer Simpson. I’m Al Bundy. Just your typical, whiny, eye-rolling, ‘why are we here, and when can we leave?’ man. I can’t help it. It’s a genetic thing. You can’t fight genes, people.

On the good side, I was able to negotiate a breakfast before the shopping spree. I needed my strength for all that stomping around and wheedling, you know. We stopped a couple of blocks from the hotel at a place called Garfunkels, in South Kensington. The food was okay, I suppose, but I couldn’t help thinking we were sitting in some evil sort of ‘Denny’s International’ chain. A bit creepy.

The less said about the shopping itself, the better. My wife stopped in a few shops — sorry, that’s shoppes — along the way to the big prize — Harrod’s of London. I was as impressed with Harrod’s as a non-shopper could be in a six-story mini-mall, I suppose. Their legendary pet department left a bit to be desired — I saw mainly rabbits and fish, and little else — but maybe we just caught them on a bad day. Maybe they only trot out the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) on the weekends. But hell — I’d have settled for a hippo, or a nice kangaroo. Apparently, that’s too much to ask.

After Harrod’s, we popped ’round to Cafe Rouge across the street for a snack. That shopping shit takes it out of you. After recharging with some caffeine and camembert (because the bestest kind of cheese is runny cheese, after all), we made our way to the subway, and on to the Tate Modern.

The ‘new Tate’ is an impressive affair — it’s built in the shell of an old power station of some kind, so it’s absolutely huge, and there are some positively enormous spaces where the old generators used to be. Me, I’d have filled them with gumballs and let people guess the number for a prize. These guys, though — they threw modern art and paintings and sculptures and avant garde shit all over. I still like my idea better, but the museumy stuff works, too. It’s all good.

The best thing in the Tate Modern might be the first piece we saw — a thirty-foot-or-higher ‘mother spider’ sculpture on the main floor. Creepy, impressive, unsettling, and touching all at once — a bit like watching ‘The Crying Game‘ without knowing ‘the secret’ first, I’m guessing. Only in a sculpture. It’s kind of hard to explain.

After Tatin’ it for a few hours, we had what my wife and I agreed was the best meal of the week — an ‘authentic Anatolian’ dinner at ‘Tas Pide‘. Now, right up front, I have to admit that I didn’t know what ‘authentic Anatolian’ meant, exactly. I figured maybe the chef’s name was Anatoly, or something. What the hell do I know? I eventually pieced together that it was a region in modern-day Turkey. Or maybe it was a guy from Turkey. Or my pide had turkey on it — I don’t really remember. Something like that.

We tried to get out of the restaurant in time to take the ‘Jack the Ripper tour’, but didn’t finish up in time. So, we went back to the hotel area to find a pub. Or in this case, two pubs. The first just wasn’t us at all — besides being stodgy, crowded and smoky, it also had a sign on the door proclaiming, ‘Smart Attire Only‘. Riiiight. My wife was probably okay in that regard, but I was wearing shorts, loafers, and a T-shirt that read, ‘The Queen Does It Beefeater-Style‘. Hardly ‘smart attire’, as far as I can tell.

So, we found a second place, and it turned out to be perfect. Two spots at the bar, ready and waiting. No crowds, and little smoke. Ooh, and the bartender poured a peace symbol into each pint of Guinness. Now that’s classy. Also, he told us that he was from another country, and offered us a free pint if we could guess from where. He ended up giving us three hints — the city he was born in is the country’s capital, the name of the city starts with ‘P’, and the name of the country also starts with ‘P’.

(Needless to say, we never figured it out. We’re American-educated, after all — we don’t get any sort of useful geography here. If it didn’t happen within a few hundred miles of the Mississippi River, apparently we’re not supposed to give a damn. Damned Americans, anyway.

Oh, and if you can’t guess the country either, I’ll tell you at the end of the post. But if you want a final hint — like we did — he gave us one more to help out. The country is not too far north of Australia. Now don’t gloat if you get it — wait until the whole class catches up, dammit.)

So, that was it for Thursday. Let’s rip through the rest of the week, and put this whole damned thing to bed.

On Friday, we checked out the British Museum. This was chock full of treasures from antiquity, including the Rosetta stone, friezes from the Parthenon, and hordes upon hordes of ancient, cranky Asian tourists. Check it out.

On the way there, we grabbed breakfast at Dom Vito by the Holborn tube stop, and took a whirlwind tour through the Sir John Sloane museum, which deserves a mention. This last place is basically a big-ass cluttered house where good Sir John lived quite a few years ago. When he died, he bequeathed the whole kingdom of valuable clutter to… I dunno, the city, or the government or something, with the stipulations that the place could be turned into a public museum, just so long as nothing was changed. The result is a bit like seeing what your senile old packrat aunt’s place might look like if she had a shitpile of money and a taste for rare antiquities. Interesting, in a really oddball sort of way.

After the British Museum (remember it, way up there somewhere?), we stopped by the ‘Pitcher and Piano‘ by the Tower of London. They turned me off at first by playing lots of old American music over the speaker system, but they redeemed themselves by pouring shamrocks on the pints of Guinness — as every self-respecting, Guinness-loving tapman or tapwoman should, of course. And the first pint was a frigging work of art — I’ve never seen such a perfect sham-foam-rock. It was almost too pretty to drink. Almost.

To top the evening off, we made it back to the Tower for the ‘Jack the Ripper tour’, which was extremely interesting. We’d heard that it would be eeeeerie, and spoooooky… even scaaaaary, but it wasn’t really any of that. Interesting, yes, but not frightening, exactly. Maybe we didn’t get the spooky guide. Or maybe I watch too much Law & Order, and I’ve been desensitized to that crap. I dunno. Go on the tour; see what you think. Maybe I’m just a monster. It’s possible.

On the way back to the hotel, we decided to stop into a restaurant that we’d noticed every night on the way back — the ‘Ristorante e Pizzeria Vecchiomondo‘.

(I know, I know — another Italian restaurant. There’s one on every damned corner in London. I would never have guessed.)

Anyway, my Italian’s not so good, but apparently ‘Vecchiomondo’ translates to ‘pissy, pissy, pissy’ — the waitress didn’t like us at all. And she didn’t go to any lengths to hide it; damn those over-expressive Italian servers! We grabbed some dessert and got the hell out before she cursed us out, or broke a chianti bottle over our heads, or lit us on fire or something. Seriously, she didn’t like us. At all.

All right, so that just leaves Saturday — we went back to Dino’s for breakfast, to see whether Gene Hackman was hanging out there. He wasn’t. Damned unpredictable celebrities. Or celebrity look-alikes. Whichever.

We spent the rest of our trip wandering around Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, killing time until the flight home. Still, we got some good work done — afternoon tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace, the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, and the newly opened Princess Diana memorial, over in Hyde Park. This last one was very odd — it’s a big oval trough, with various bumps and humps and curves along the path, with water running halfway around in each direction and pooling at one end. As a bird bath, it’s pretty damned cool — as a monument, it seems an odd choice, at least to me. I think its official name is the ‘Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Slip ‘n’ Slide‘. Or it should be.

Okay, that’s all — for real, this time. We’ve had a lot of fun here, and now the story is complete. Let’s remember this time fondly, and never speak of London again, shall we? Oh yes, let’s.

No, wait. One more thing — that bartender, remember? He was from Papau New Guinea. And here, just a week later, I can’t remember the capital. Just another product of the American public school system. Bah.

Okay, now we’re done. London over, and London out. Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about baseball or something. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Hump Day in Her-Royal-Highness-Ville

Hey, there, folks. All aboard now — hop onto the double-decker lorry; it’s time for another whirlwind account of a tourist’s odyssey in London. And don’t be alarmed if we’re driving on the left — this is England, don’t you know. Quite.

So, let’s travel back (wavy flashback lines… wavy flashback lines…) to last Wednesday. The wife and I got up, hopped a subway, and headed for St. Paul’s Cathedral. Not to ‘confess’ or anything, you understand — a couple of saints, we are, of course — but just to look around. A couple of heathen Americans come to smear their grubby paws all over the house of the holy. Just what the Brits needed, eh?

Before hitting the church, we stopped off for a spot of breakfast. Got to have those hands nice and greasy when we’re rubbing them on the pews, right? Would be proper heathens without greasy hands. Naturally.

So, after our kippers (just kidding) and bangers (not kidding) and fried eggs (all the eggs in England seem to be fried), we set off for the holy land. St. Paul’s Cathedral, designed way the hell back when by Christopher Wren. And currently in the process of being restored, with scaffolds and sheets and tools all over, inside and out.

Still, most of the space in the big-assed dome inside was clear. You know, the big round thing with the pointy thing on top that every capitol building in the country seems to have copied from. That dome.

(Is that wrong, calling it a ‘big-assed dome’? Is it possible I’m going even straighter to hell now?)

I won’t go through the entire ‘Saint Pizizzle’ experience with you, but I was struck by a couple of things in particular. First, the walls and floors and just about every other surface of the place are filled with statues and plaques and monuments of all kinds… but most of them seemed to commemorate wartime herors — admirals, brigadier generals, and the like. Maybe this juxtaposition of church and war is pretty common around the ‘big’ churches of the world — or even the little ones, for that matter — but it struck me as a bit odd. Maybe I just don’t understand either well enough to get the connection. I’m not all that bright sometimes.

Secondly, we discovered — well, okay, we didn’t ‘discover‘, technically; we were told — that Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s, is buried, right there in the basement crypt. Just one more reason to be happy that I have no discernible architecture skills — I honestly don’t think I’d want to have my remains interred in anything that I’d built. His rotting bones are still safe and snug, hundreds of years later. Any house I built would’ve crashed down onto my casket before my body was cold. Clever boy, that Christopher.

Finally, I feel I should mention the ‘Whispering Gallery’. This is an area — a catwalk sort of thing, really — running around the edge of the upper dome at St. Paul’s. It’s so named because — reportedly, now — it’s possible to sit on one side of hte rotunda up there, and hear a person whispering, waaaaay on the other side, many dozens of yards away. Something about the acoustics. Or it’s a miracle, or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.

In any event, I can’t really confirm or deny this legend, despite having climbed the five hundred-plus stairs to get to said gallery. What I can say, though, without a shadow of a doubt, is that if you sit in the Whispering Gallery a quarter of the way around from a pack of snotty London schoolchildren, then you’ll hear little else of any sort the entire time you’re up there. That’s a fact.

So, our time at St. Paul’s complete, we made our way on to the recombobulated Globe Theatre, just on the other side of the Thames. We’d picked up tickets the day before for an afternoon showing of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, so that was our next stop. Now, before you get all hot and swampy over the ghost of ‘da Bard’ hanging around or anything like that, you should know that this wasn’t the original Globe, from back in the day of dirty tights, sweaty unwashed crowds, and bubonic plagues.

(Well, okay, there were apparently a few sweaty unwashed patrons. It was actually a bit of relief when the rain started to fall in Act II. And particularly relieving when it fell on the guy a row back and just to my left. Dude had just leapt out of a rubbish heap, as near as I could tell.)

So, the play itself. Now, I don’t know much about Shakespeare. I don’t think I even know enough to know what I like. I’m told what I like, and that’s the way I like it. At least, that’s what I’m told.

Maybe I should start over. Hang on.

So, the play itself. It was actually really good. I’ve seen a couple of Shakespearean send-ups in my time, and this was one of the most… um, well… one of the more… well. Hmmm. This was one of them, that’s for sure. Of all the Shakespearean plays I’ve seen, this was most certainly one of them. Probably.

In all honesty, though, it was quite well done. There were a few blokes with period instruments playing before and after, and the actors were very natural and conversational, and it was really very entertaining. I even laughed during some of the funny bits — and not just because everyone else was, either! No, I really got the jokes, generally. Quite an achievement by the cast. Bra-vo.

All right. What’s next, then? Ah, then we set off for a mid-afternoon snack.

(I don’t know about you, but centuries-old dramatic performances always leave me a bit peckish.

No, dammit. I said peckish. It means hungry. They say it in England sometimes. Look it up, ya big pervert. Geez.)

We ended up in the theater district — scratch that, the ‘theatre districte‘ — and ran into a big little place called ‘Quod‘. That’s Latin for… well, I don’t know, ‘food’ or something, I expect. Or ‘pricey’. ‘Hoity-toity’, maybe? Something.

Anyway, we had a quick bite, took our bearings, and decided to set off for the National Gallery, not far away. Why? Because it was open till nine, and it wasn’t dinner time yet. All the other museums closed up shop early on Wednesdays, and we still had time to kill and trinkets to buy for folks back home, so what the hell, right? You can never see enough Renaissance-era ‘Madonna with Child‘ paintings. (Again, so I’m told.)

If you happen to pop ’round the NatGal (I just made that up… catchy, no?) yourself, you can browse amongst the Rembrandts, the Monets, the van Goghs, and the Titians. For my money, though, I’d recommend the small pontillist section, and the ‘Leonardo Cartoon’ — or as I like to call it, the ‘Da Vinci Doodle’.

(Yeah, they didn’t take too kindly to that at the museum. Touchy little fuckers, those curator types.)

After a couple of hours of mostly badgering the museum staff, we headed back to the ‘theatre districte’ (got it right that time!) for some grubbe. And since we were all imaginationed out after a full day’s art appreciation, we ended up back at ‘Quod‘, after a brief stop at ‘Tom Cribb’s Pub‘ for a warm-up pint.

This is probably a good time to mention an odd phenomenon that I noticed while we were in Britain. You know how everybody signs the back of their credit cards, back where it ways you’re supposed to? And you know how nobody ever actually checks your signature, when you sign your credit card receipt? Well, in England, they do check. Always. They don’t even give your card back first, and then watch you sign — they hold on to your card, while you write out your John Hancock, and then eyeball the two side-by-side before handing back your credit card. It’s exactly the way you’d think the process would work, except that (in my experience, at least) it never, ever, ever does. I’m not sure what to make of the whole thing — I just found it odd.

And there you have it — that just about did it for the day. We finished up our meal, stopped on the way to the subway for a nip of port at a local wine bar (hey, it’s a few degrees fancier than we’d normally try to be, but when in Rome, right?), and headed home for the night.

So that’s it. Another day, another big bunch of touristy goodness. Only a couple more to go, and this travelogue from hell will be over and done with. I can last that long, I think. Can you?

Tuesday in the Tower

Okay, kiddies. It’s time to pick up where we left off yesterday, right in the middle of our proper English adventure. Righty-ho, then. Off we go.

We join our story on Tuesday of last week, and an exciting day it was. First up on the docket — the creepy, crawly, eerie and bloody… Tower of London. We hopped on the subway in the morning and headed for the Tower Hill tube stop. Before the gore, though, we needed some breakfast. Nobody wants to hear about twelve hundred years of horrendous torture and human suffering on an empty stomach, right?

On our trip for food, we serendipitously ran into something that I’d secretly hoped to see — Fenchurch Street Station, just a block or so from the Tower Hill station. See, Fenchurch was a character in Douglas Adams’ So Long and Thanks for All the Fish; she was so named because she’d been conceived (so the story goes) while her parents were waiting in the ticket queue at Fenchurch Street Station. I read recently that Douglas Adams said he thought he’d never actually been to the Fenchurch Street Station, and Fenchurch was, of course, fictional, and I never actually went into the station myself — much less had sex in the ticket queue. Still, it was sort of a thrill. And that’s the Douglas Adams reference I mentioned yesterday.

(Yeah, yeah, it’s not a terribly interesting one, I know. I never said it would be a hilarious reference, or even amusing. Look, I’m just a big sentimental douchebag when you get down to it, okay? No need to rub my nose in it.)

Anyway, moving past Fenchurch, we hopped into the ‘Crutched Friar‘ pub down the street for an early lunch. And I have to say, I was a bit disappointed.

Not in the food, per se. True, I think I ordered the wrong lunch — I forget the description, but it was basically a chicken salad ‘sandwich’ on two pieces of bread, each of which was almost too damned tall to fit into my mouth. So there was no hope of slapping them together and making a proper sandwich out of it.

(That’s sort of a pet peeve of mine. Restauranteurs of the world, listen the hell up — two slices of bread do not a sandwich make. It’s a simple concept. Learn it, live it, and update your goddamned menus, for the love of Julia Childs.

If you can’t slap the slices together, then it isn’t a fricking sandwich. Stop calling it that! If it’s too tall — not a sandwich. A bunch of meat on a single slice of bread — not a sandwich. And anything that involves gravy? Open-faced sandwiches?! No. Sorry, there, Poppy. Stop screwing with us.)

Anyway, it wasn’t my food that made me all frowny-faced about the place. The larger issue was that it was fairly well Americanized. Sure, it looked ‘pubby’. And it felt pubby. It even smelled a little pubby, if you snerfed really hard in one of the mustier corners. But it wasn’t a pub. Pubs sell ‘chips’ with their sandwiches (or, in this case, ‘sandwich-like entities’). But this place sold ‘fries‘. Not ‘chips’. ‘Fries‘. I can get fries anywhere here in the US; I didn’t fly over a big-assed body of water and screw up my circadian rhythm by six freaking hours to order ‘fries‘. Not cool.

This was also the first place that I noticed playing old American ’80s music as their ambient music. I later found other restaurants doing it — many in that area of the city, come to think of it — but this was the first, and I was a bit miffed, for much the same reason as the ‘fries’ brouhaha. I don’t know what I wanted instead — Celtic folk songs? Sex Pistols B-sides? Unreleased Beatles tunes? All I know is that I never imagined — or wanted — to be sitting in a pub a stone’s throw from the Tower of London eating French fries and listening to Like a Virgin by Ma-freakin’-donna. Where’s the magic in that?

All right, enough of that. Let’s move on to the Tower itself. That was pretty damned cool. I don’t want to give too much away or anything, but I can tell you a few things to entice you to go see for yourself:

• Near the Tower Hill tube station is a remnant of a Roman wall, built (partially, at least) over 1500 years ago. Even surrounded by old, older, and really old stuff all around, that’s pretty impressive. And it’s a big freaking stone wall, too. How the hell do you get a wall to stand for more than a millennium? I built a bird house once. It collapsed in the first stiff wind that came along. These guys were good.
• The Tower is actually several towers — it’s a castle within a castle, with all sorts of walls and turrets and god knows what added on over the centuries. It’s a hodgepodge of royal chambers, arms chambers, and torture chambers. A tear-’em-down-and-build-’em-back jigsaw puzzle of architecture. Sort of like that bird house I built, actually.
• I like torture and mayhem just as much as the next wide-eyed tourist, but my favorite story of a Tower ‘resident’ is this — Sir Walter Raleigh was detained within the Tower walls not once, not twice, but three times. For much of his time there, he stayed in fairly comfortable quarters — his family stayed with him for a while, and he wrote his History of the World while imprisoned. My favorite bit, though, is that he was apparently released from his second sentence because he promised the crown that he could bring back Spanish loot from the New World. He failed, returned to England, got thrown back in the joint, and was beheaded. Tough luck, old bean.

All in all, we spent several hours going through the Tower — pretty impressive for a place that (to the best of my knowledge) doesn’t serve beer, eh? Then we toddled off, over the Tower Bridge towards our next adventure.

(Oh, and while I’m at it — the Tower Bridge is pretty interesting, too. Again, there’s all sorts of historical and anecdotal stuff you should probably know — but what the hell am I, a damned encyclopedia? I’ll only tell you this one thing:

The Tower Bridge is what most people think of when they hear ‘London Bridge’ — you know, with the big tower thingies, and the powder blue trim, and all of that. Very distinctive, very British.

But there’s also an actual London Bridge, too — a comparatively dull and drab affair further west up the Thames. It’s relatively new, replacing the original bridge just thirty years or so ago. The old London Bridge went up for sale, and was bought — and reconstructed over a lake in Arizona. The rumor — sorry, ‘rumour‘ — is that the buyer had the other bridge in mind when he plunked down his bucks. Leave it to an American, eh?)

Okay, so over the bridge we went. And, of course, went looking for a pub. And found the Elusive Camel, not too far from the riverfront. Nice little place, and a proper pub, thank you very much. Guinness on tap, no jangly American pop blaring out, and — get this — cricket on the tellies over the bar. Oh, yeah. Now I’m in Britain, baby.

I have to say, though — while watching the West Indies bat against England on the pitch, I realized that I have no clue, whatsoever, how the hell cricket is played. It looked like baseball, sort of. The commentary had some words that get used in baseball telecasts — like ‘batters’, ‘teams’, and ‘ball’. I thought it would be just like baseball, only with less crotch scratching and urinalysis tests. But I watched the thing for twenty minutes, and I still don’t exactly know what I was looking at. I caught on to a few details, but the specific rules are still a mystery to me. A flat bat? Running before pitching the ball? A wicket?! Wha? Man, I have missed a lot. Don’t tell me rugby’s not just football without helmets now. I’m gonna need to sit down.

From the Camel, we headed over to the Globe Theatre — yeah, you know, the Globe. That Bill Shakespeare guy did his work at the Globe a while back; maybe you’ve heard of him. There, we picked up a pair of tickets for a show the next afternoon. (You’ll have to stay tune in tomorrow to hear about that little number.)

Then, we wandered in the general direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to get closer to a subway station to help us get home. Along the way, we looked for… that’s right, more booze. (We’re nothing if not consistent, folks.)

We found an interesting little spot — a shared courtyard serving the ‘Black Friars Saloon and Bar’ on one side and ‘El Vino Garden’ on the other. Just to mix it up a bit, we opted for the wine bar, grabbed a couple of glasses of shiraz, and sat in the courtyard to figure out our next step.

As it turns out, we were pretty tuckered after a full day’s worth of adventure. So, we hopped the tube back towards the hotel, and slipped into a guidebook-recommended Indian restaurant, the Khyber Pass on Bute Street in Kensington. It wasn’t bad — a nice way to end a Tuesday in London. We forgot to ask for extra spice — and ended up with pretty much none at all. (Apparently it was obvious we were American. Bitches!)

And so, another vacation day came and went, and we walked back to the hotel for some snoozies. Hard to believe we packed all this shit in, and the trip wasn’t even halfway over, eh, folks? You gotta believe — the wife and I don’t go on vacation to lounge around, you know. This is serious shit. Tune in tomorrow for more. Until then — cheers, and good night!

Just Another Day in the UK

Hey there, lords and ladies. We’ll get back to the ‘seven days of loony London’ in just a second. First, though, a program note:

Apparently, the computer where I keep my standup clips horked itself to death overnight. I tried CPR on it this morning (not to mention… um, ‘mouth-to-floppy’, as it were), but to no immediate avail.

(Plus, I got a nasty scrape for my troubles. I really do have to remember — no tongue during resuscitation attempts. I should write myself a note or something.)

Anyway, I’m hoping to eventually fix the thing, or get a new hard drive, or a new computer or something — but until then, I’m afraid that the video archives are AWOL.

(Yeah, I know — there are simply hordes of heartbroken fans out there, right? I’ll start the suicide watches now, shall I, hmm?)

Luckily (for me, anyway), the rest of this fine feathered Internet venture is hosted by a good friend and former colleague of mine at Solid Solutions. (Go give him a look if you need a host; he won’t bite. Much.)

So, the damage is relatively minimal, but still quite the nuisance. I apologize for any inconvenience my crappy old computer has caused. Poopstain.

Now, on to sunnier shores. Let’s talk London. Specifically, let’s pick up last week’s adventure, already in progress on a hazy Monday morning. On Sunday night, despite my protests and cajoling, my wife set a wake-up alarm for 7:30am. Seven-thirty on a vacation Monday morning. She does this because she’s crazy. I don’t know how she got that way. I hardly ever drop her on her head any more. Crazy.

Luckily, though, she’s also a heavy sleeper. Apparently, she snoozed the alarm a couple of times (which I never heard, if that tells you anything about my sleeping habits; I could sleep through a root canal if I had to), and then fell back to sleep. So, we got up around ten, instead of the ass-crack of European dawn. Score one for Charlie. Boo-fuckin’-yah, baby.

Of course, that probably wasn’t the best day to go all sluggy, because Monday was the day we’d chosen to watch the ‘changing of the guard’ at Buckingham Palace. Which happens only once a day. At eleven thirty. A shower, shave, and nine subway stops away. Bah.

So, long story short, we made it to the Palace. I think I used toothpaste on my hair, pulled my boxers on backwards, and you don’t even wanna know where I tried to put one of my contact lenses… but we made it, and with fifteen minutes to spare. Already, the throngs were queueing outside the palace, ready for the spectacle. We got a spot stacked four tourists away from the gates, and waited. And waited, and waited. Then we waited. And when that was over? Waiting. More waiting. And then some waiting. You get the idea.

Finally, the thing got under way. Some people marched up, and then marched back and forth for a while, and then some more people marched up, and some of them paired up with the first people, and they marched around together. And then a band marched up, and played some music — probably a march, I’m guessing — and then they finally all marched off in different directions, leaving just two behind in the guard stations. And when they got bored of standing there like a couple of glued-straight statues? They marched. Who would’ve guessed, eh?

Of course, despite the monotony of a lot of it, it was actually pretty intriguing at times. It certainly seems like a lot of pomp and hoopla just to relieve a couple of ceremonial guards at a place that’s also policed by a couple of dozen bobbies, half of them on horseback, plus some rather nasty-looking riot police with even nastier-looking submachine guns. So, I suppose I’m a little mixed on the whole extravaganza. In a sentence or two: ‘Worth doing once. Bring a book.’

All right. Moving on.

After the ‘Parade of the Q-Tip Hats’, we grabbed some Guinness. I suppose lunch was in there, too — I don’t really remember, exactly. I was concentrating on the pints, frankly. Ooh, no, wait — there was one thing. I had a something-unrecognizable-or-other with chips, and took the opportunity to try my first taste of ‘brown sauce’.

See, some people like to eat ketchup (or catsup, if you’re that sort of person) with their chips / fries. Other people — strange, creepy, wiggy people — they eat theirs with mayonnaise.

(You’d think that would be caused by some recessive gene or other, and we’d have weeded out those wierdos by now, but no. The dance continues.)

And then, there’s the Brits. They accessorize their chippers with something called ‘brown sauce’. Now, normally, I’m not the first guy to jump in line to eat something that’s only described by a color. (Or even, as in this case, a ‘colour‘.) I shy away from ‘green goop’, ‘yellow sno-cones’, and ‘that gray crap oozing out of the vegetable crisper’. But ‘brown sauce’ — somehow, it seemed worth a shot. And hey — the first ingredient was vinegar — that shit kills germs, right? How bad could it be?

(And in all honesty, it was actually pretty damned good. I even licked the crusty, browner stuff off the rim of the bottle. It was beautiful. Really.)

All right, enough of that. Back to the touristy bullshit. After lunch, we walked around Westminster Abbey. It’s a church. Big. Old. Beautiful. There are hundreds and hundreds of dead people buried under the floors. Why people think this is okay is beyond me, frankly. It’s a little creepy. You don’t see me plopping corpses in my basement and erecting plaques. It’s just not done. Really, clean it up, people.

After the abbey, we strolled across to Big Ben (big clock; can’t go in — ’nuff said), and across the Thames to the Dali Museum. Now, just in case there’s anyone out there who’s unfamiliar with Salvador Dali… um, well, he’s a damned freak. He’s mental. Loopy. And he paints, and sculpts, and does lord knows what else in that studio of his. His stuff is just frightening, dammit. He’s probably my favorite artist ever. I’m not sure what that says, but I’m pretty sure it should involve Zoloft somewhere. Cool museum.

That same place, if you pay a few extra pounds, will let you into the downstairs, where they’ve got a few Picasso pieces lying around. Another damned crazy artist. It’s like a whole fricking fiesta of fool-headed fingerpainters. Or something. I couldn’t think of any other artistic term that started with an ‘F’ other than ‘fingerpainting’. I’m not really very good at this. Damn.

Moving on. Again.

Next up was the London Eye — that’s the big ugly ferris wheel-looking thing that sits on the edge of the Thames and annoys all the locals. The tourists love it, but it’s a big grody monstrosity right in the middle of London, and I think it really cheeses the locals off. It makes sense, frankly. How’d you like to have one of those big Easter Island statues — only uglier — sitting in the middle of your house, with a constant stream of goobers traipsing through your living room to gawk at the thing? And maybe it’d stick up through your roof, too, so people could see it from the street, and throng around your lawn, snapping pictures and oohing and aahing all the damned time. Wouldn’t like that, would ya? See? See?

Of course, being a tourist myself, it was pretty cool. You could see the whole city from up there — it’s the best view in London, really. But what the hell do I know? I’m an ugly damned American. I got no taste.

Okay, so let’s wrap this puppy up now. We were pretty pooped after all that excitement, so we decided to have a bit of dinner and call it a night. The meal was good enough, at this place called Loco Mensa near the Eye, but that’s not important right now. We ate, we drank, blah blah. Fine. But, walking away from the restaurant, we passed another place — one of those little hole-in-the-wall takeaway Chinese food places. And it was called… ‘Noodle Box‘. That’s Noodle Box. Noodle Box, folks. Noodle Box.

Not that we ate there, or wanted to, or anything like that. It’s just that ‘noodle box’ immediately became my new favorite euphemism for the naughty southern bits of the female anatomy. Noodle box. Hee. I’m giggling right now, just thinking about it. Noodle box. Noodlebox. Ah, yes. Good times, mates. Good times.

All right, I’m done here. I’ve got nothing left. And there’s nothing more to tell about last Monday, either. We went back to the room, got into our jammie clothes, and I drifted off to sleep, dreaming contentedly about noodle boxes. And noodle boxes, if you catch my kippers, there, skippy. Heh. ‘Noodle boxes’. Yeah, baby.

Okay, that’s it for tonight. I’m spent. You wanna read more of this Brit babble, you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to see what happened on Tuesday. I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a camel involved. Sort of. And a Douglas Adams reference. And two different kinds of friars. You don’t want to miss that, folks. See you tomorrow!

Livin’ Large in London

Well, hey there, kiddies. My jet lag’s a little better, though I did get up about three hours earlier than I wanted to this morning. Damned London time zone has still got its hooks in me. Soon, I’ll be back to my customary late-morning snoozing. Soon now. Very soon.

In the meantime, though, I thought I’d get on with the business of tell you about my little jaunt over the pond to England. And — as you regulars might expect — I’ve got lots to say about it. So I’m gonna try something here and see how it goes — I’ll whip up a posticle for each day that the wife and I spent in Ye Olde Country, from a bleary-eyed early Sunday arrival to a mid-Saturday afternoon departure.

(Hey, I told you I’d blather about it more than you’d ever be able to stand. I’m nothing if not honest. And wordy. Honest wordy Charlie, that’s me. Woot.)

Before we get this kippers-and-chips show on the road, though, I’d like to send a couple of shout-outs to all the nice folks who’ve written in recently, either in my absence or to welcome me back. In particular, master props to Brenda, Pisser, Shelli, and HR Lady, for playing along and digging through the archives for a larf. And muchos thankos to Monkey, Skip, Steph, and TJ, for the kind welcomes home. And finally, mega squishy yo-yo-yos to mah peeps Special K and Natalie, who were even sweet enough to mention me fondly in their blogs while I was away. I guess absence really does make the heart pitter-patter, eh?

(Yeah, yeah, I know — ‘mega squishy yo-yo-yos’? I don’t know what the hell I was talking about, either. I was running low on verbiage. I got desperate. I’m squishy… I mean, sorry. I’m sorry. Not squishy. Right.)

Okay, so on with the traveleguery, eh? For me, last week started by getting on a plane in Boston at 6:30pm local time on Saturday, and stepping off of said air buggy at Heathrow Airport in London, at just about 8am on Sunday morning. And while I can sleep on planes — and in cars, and on trains, and very probably riding a rickshaw, for that matter — I didn’t get much shuteye on this flight. I napped a couple of times in the last hour or so, but that’s it. So the first day in London was a bit of a fuzzy sleepy haze.

(As opposed to the other days, after I’d gotten some sleep behind me. Those days were spent in a fuzzy drunken haze. Similar, but better. Way.)

But enough of that. Let’s move on to what actually got accomplished on Sunday. Since we’d gotten into town — sorry, that’s towne — so early, we had no chance of checking into our hotel (that’s the Park International in South Kensington, if you’re scoring at home… or even if you’re by yourself). So, we left our bags at the desk and took an aimless stroll around the neighborhood. Actually, we’d hoped for a rather more aimful stroll, but we had no idea where we were, or what was where, or how to get whereever we wanted to go.

What we really wanted at that point was food. And eventually, after twenty minutes or so of walking around like a pair of American boobs — hey, dammit, I said ‘like’… ‘like‘! — we found Dino’s Italian cafe. We sat down for a bit to eat. And we had breakfast with Gene Hackman.

Okay, okay, fine. It’s overwhelmingly likely that we didn’t have breakfast with Gene Hackman. I’ve since found out, with a bunch of digging, that he lives in Santa Fe, isn’t currently working on a movie, and appeared on Larry King Live just a couple of days later. So there’s no plausible, readily available reason why Gene Hackman would be hanging out at Dino’s Italian, where Cromwell Place meets the Harrington Road in London on a midsummer Sunday morning.

But dammit, halfway through our meal, this oldish guy walked into the place, and I would swear it was Lex Luthor himself. He spoke quietly to a waitress — too quietly for me to hear his voice, of course — and took what appeared to be his usual chair, near the counter and facing away from the door. And from us. Of course. Bitches.

So, naturally, I spent the rest of my bangers and eggs straining to hear the guy’s voice, to see whether it would be a proper British clip, or a Cockney drawl, or that distinctive, gravelly American bark I expected it to be. And I’ll be damned if the old guy never said a word for the next twenty minutes until we left. So I don’t know, not really. But I’m telling you, just like I told my wife — it was him. It was him! It had to be! And the reason I’m so sure is, it didn’t look like him, exactly. This guy looked a little older, and messier, and more… regular than I’ve ever seen Gene Hackman. Just like you might expect an actor to look in real life. Hey, I hear Teri Hatcher looks like Andy Rooney off camera. Really. It could happen.

So. Anyway. We had breakfast. (See how much trouble I could have caused us all, by just saying that? Ain’t I a stinker?)

After that, it was a pretty regular touristy type of day. We walked to a museum, called the ‘Victoria and Albert’. I was a little disappointed, frankly. Honestly — a girl’s name, a guy’s name… I figured it was a porn museum of some kind. How could it not be? But instead, there were just a bunch of paintings and sculptures and stuff. Sure, some of them were of naked people — but they weren’t hot, really. It was all very tasteful and dull. Very disappointing. Big place, though — lots of stuff there. You’d probably like it, if you’re into that sort of thing. Just don’t go expecting porn. That’s all I’m saying.

So, that took us up until about four in the afternoon. We moseyed back to the hotel (actually, are you allowed to ‘mosey’ in other countries? Is moseying a US-only type of activity?), checked in, and enjoyed a nifty four-hour nap in our eight foot by ten foot ‘luxury’ ‘suite’. It came complete with a tiny TV (six channels, fifteen-year-old model, broken remote), wall-mounted hair dryer (initially broken, but happily replaced by management), and temperature control (in Celsius, which was frankly impossible to decipher before the nap). But it was clean, the bed was comfy, the toilet flushed, and the showers were hot and wet. I’d still describe it more as a ‘tidied-up box’ than a ‘luxury suite’, but it was just peachy for us. We didn’t expect Buckingham, you know. We’re not picky.

And that’s about all there was to Sunday. We got up from our snoozicles, grabbed dinner at a joint called ‘Bistro Benito’ (what’s with all the Italian food in England, by the way — what’s the connection?), while Greece was shocking Portugal on their home terra in the final Euro 2004 match. And then we went back to bed. Take that, jet lag! You our bitch now.

So, there you go. Day one in our European odyssey. Tune in again tomorrow for another bunch of words about the next 24 hours we spent on the island. Until then, cheerio, lords and ladies — jet lag’s gotten itself up off the mat, and I think we all know what paybacks are. Dammit!