12.01.2006

I have dreams of orca whales and owls

Things are finally getting back to normal after all my great globe trotting adventures. I'm not sure that's all good. It's always nice to live a completely different life for awhile and always a little strange to come back to the daily grind.

So now that I'm back to that daily grind, people keep asking me about our trip to London. I won't give you a minute by minute rundown of the whole trip. It would be like watching someone's overly long slide show. I'll give you some highlights, though:

- First of all, I hope all of you who donated money to the Sad and British Motherland trip fund received your postcards. We filled them out at one of my favorite places in London, The Windsor Castle Pub. There we had winter Pimm's filled with lots of yummy oranges and lemons. We also sat across from the only guy under 30 who voted for George Bush twice! He was filling his British date's head with lots of interesting (mis)information about America. We finally had to get out of there before his republicaness rubbed off on us. Anyway, thanks to your money, all three of us drank for free until Thursday. It was awesome.

- On Sunday we went to the Tate Modern and participated in art. They had these big tube slides that you could ride on. We got there early for our (free!) tickets and went on the 3, 4 and 5 story slides. I guess that made us modern artists.

- One of our favorite nights was when we went to Fabric. Fatboy Slim had the place packed and the dancefloor was just a mass of moving people. We couldn't go anywhere, but everyone was laughing and dancing. Really, the best thing about Fatboy Slim was that survived Fatboy Slim.

After Fatboy we went to another room and saw Damon Albarn. His set was a little more poppy but he did use some stuff from the Gorillaz that was pretty cool. Carrie had had her fill of the big beat so we went to a third room to hear some more techno style stuff. We danced for about three hours straight fueled by just the right amount of Red Bull and vodka. On the cab ride home Carrie was desperate for a cheese omelet but they seem to be in short supply in London these days.

- Earlier that night, we went to a Socialist bookstore to hear Billy Bragg talk. He's so cute and earnest and he gave us a lot to think about. Afterwards, Jeff and I got his new book which he signed for us. Double awesome!

- Wednesday we took a train to Bath to see the Roman baths, drink the metallic tasting spring water and actually take a dip, too. We had a cool little outdoor hotsprings pool all to ourselves until the very end when some sketchy guy came in and took like 30 minutes to change. We think he was shooting up. He totally spoiled our macaque moment.

- Our last night was perhaps the strangest. We were going to go on a pub walk in Judi Dench's neighborhood up in Hampstead but a guy jumped in front of a subway train in Camden. So instead we went drinking in Camden. The bar we went to, Monkey Chews, was pretty awesome. Jeff and I had caipirinhas and they whipped up a tasty bloody Mary for Carrie. On the way there, one of these guys went past us. It was a strange night indeed.

After we got back to the hotel, we realized we were very hungry. We called our neighborhood Dominos and before we knew it an amazingly hot pizza was at our door. A cool biker guy delivered it and as I was closing the door, Jeff exclaimed, "He's from the future!" It could have been the caipirinha but it was the funniest thing ever. That was one damn good pizza, too.

That's all I can come up with for now. If you want to see more photos, go here. Oh sure, there's Stonehenge, the London Eye and Avenue Q but I'm getting worn out.

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Have you guys heard of Regina Spektor? I think I'm a little late on this chick but she's really cool. Like Fiona Apple with more bodyfat and Russian sass. I just got her new album and I highly recommend it. I have a feeling one of her songs will be making an appearance on my winter mix CD, whenever I get around to that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regina Spektor is pretty cool. I like the song 'Fidelity'. I've been wanting to get the whole CD, but it hasn't been tops on my list of things that I really need to do.

Of course, Josh has probably known about her for months now. He works at Spin magazine you know. I think it's like a whole magazine of Carol Feinemans or something - something having to do with music and stuff.

And you didn't tell me that you stood next ter Billy Bragg and 'ad a snap taken wi' him then did yer?

Eileen said...

You act like Billy Bragg talks like Hagrid. He doesn't but his accent is sort of awesome.

Anonymous said...

It would be awesome if he did talk like Hagrid...and had a dragon he was raising. Dragons are pretty cool. Or maybe a hippogriff or something.

Just not newts. I wouldn't respect him as much if he did his manifesto signings with a pocketful of newts.

Anonymous said...

I just want to point out that her offical title is Dame Judy Dench. She kicks ass! I bet she would be fun to drink with too. Glad you are back!

Carrie G said...

Pizza from the future! Heeheeheehee!