Monthly Archives: December 2003

Road Queue Hell

I have driven down from the north of England today. The traffic was chaos for much of the journey – it really is quite alarming that one of the backbones of transportation in the UK – the M6 motorway – was running no faster than 40mph for much of the journey today. The one relief in the journey was our use of the new M6 Toll motorway – which bypasses much of Birmingham – and certainly saved me some time today. I am not sure what I think of paying for road use when I already pay my road tax, but today I was more than happy to part with the money to speed my journey.

On this day…

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Central London at Christmas

Piccadilly Cicrus at Christmas 2003 I am starting to feel like it is Christmas. I took this picture in Piccadilly Circus earlier to try and capture the spirit of Christmas Eve in central London – but it didn’t really work. I do love the fact that everything gets covered up in preparation for the crowds at New Year. Happy Christmas!

I spent the afternoon in a quiet pub off Old Street – which is an area I’d not been to for a while. The pub was playing old vinyl albums (James Brown, Don Mclean, Shirley Bassey) which made an interesting atmosphere (when accompanied by the real fire) and also made a change from the Christmas tunes I’ve been hearing all week. Best of all, it still felt like Christmas.

On this day…

2004: Shrek and Johnny English

Here Comes Christmas

Is the run up to Christmas always a mad panic for everybody? It usually is for me but – right now – things seem a little calmer than they usually do. I suspect something will happen out of the blue tomorrow.

I’ve been looking around this site a little bit today and it has stunned me how much I have really written – considering I think of this as something I do when I get a moment (maybe I just had a lot of moments). Interestingly, January has the highest number of posts this year – maybe I should try a beat that in 2004.

Whenever I spend a few moments looking around the site I tend to find some things that I had forgotten writing. Then I look at what other people are reading.

I see that the top three searches that brought people to this site so far (excluding the Man of the Moment project) are:

  • Paris photographs
  • Steve Strange
  • radio era

I am not really sure if that’s interesting or not!

Justin TimberlakeOf course, Man of the Moment, drives most people to this site and this month Justin Timberlake is the top search term bringing people to my little site.

On this day…

2004: Music To Go
2002: Rip Away

Armistead Maupin

When I was younger, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series helped me understand a bigger world where gay people live and have fun but are, deep down, just like their straight counterparts. Accomplished British author, Patrick Gale, wrote a mini-biography of Maupin’s life to date. It’s an interesting story of where the Tales series came from and I just submitted my review to Amazon.

Aumistead Maupin by Patrick GaleThis is not a typically biography. Patrick Gale and Armistead Maupin are friends and this book grew from many long conversations they had about Armistead’s life. It’s an affectionate portrait of a man who not only said it’s OK to be gay but it’s wrong not to be up front about the fact.

The book is like a gentle stroll through a life taking gentle turns into different decades and looking at the subject’s Southern American childhood, life in the navy, settling in San Fransisco and starting to write the newspaper serial that would eventually make Armistead famous, Tales of the City. The inspirations for the characters come from the people around Maupin; the situations come from Maupin’s life. Universal subjects of love, sex and friendship are covered as well as celebrity, homophobia and the Hollywood closet.

If you’re a Armistead Maupin fan then you should read this book. If you’ve never read any of this novels then this will provide the background to many of them and you’ll want to read his work. Don’t expect detailed dissection of an author’s life but you will be drawn into the private conversation Gale has with his friend.

A warm biography of an author/activist which puts his work into context.

On this day…

2004: Links for 2004-12-21

Hi We’re Your Weather Girls

I have been recovering from my trip to the USA by spending a great deal of today asleep and generally caching up on the mail, the Christmas cards, the washing and all the other things you need to do when you’ve been away for a week. It’s almost Saturday night and I am going supermarket shopping (you see, dear reader, I have a very exciting life).

While I managed to listen to the radio and some CDs I did, eventually, resort to music television so that there were some pictures to provide an alternative visual while I drank my tea (real tea, not a USA-style tea, is one of the greater comforters in my life).

The Hits is showing some so-called classics this afternoon. The video for It’s Raining Men (The Weather Girls) looked so dated that it made me wonder what those brought-up entirely on the sophistication of the modern day music video would make of these dated images.

Interestingly, it occurred to me to that it’s the video that looks a lot older than the music sounds. Allowing for the fact that It’s Raining Men is part of the soundtrack to my youth, I still think it’s the video technology that has made the noticeable leaps in the last 20 years.

And it’s 20 years next March since It’s Raining Men was a hit for The Weather Girls. Originally charting in the UK in August 1983 it eventually made number 2 in March 1984. It’s one of those songs that I would have sworn topped the charts but, apparently, not. I would imagine that a combination of Nena’s ‘99 Red Balloons‘, Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello‘ and Duran Duran’s ‘The Reflex‘ kept it from the number 1 slot.

On this day…

2003: Customer Service
2002: Is Bigger Really Better?
2002: End of a radio era

Customer Service

I have spent most of the last week in the United States – in Raleigh, North Carolina to be exact. It brings home to me the many differences between two cultures that, in other ways, are very similar: from the price of fuel to the availability of public transport; from the car culture to the size of the food portions.

All of these have been discussed many times by many people. It is, however, the American approach to customer service that is the constant surprise to me. The whole “Hi, how ya doin’ today?” in all its smiling insincerity is always the biggest shock upon landing almost anywhere in North America. It really is a delight.

I don’t think it’s my British cynicism that allows me to acknowledge that it’s not really meant – it’s taught and it’s expected. So what? It’s so much nicer than the grumbled, stumbled approach in many shops in the UK. Any kind of service from the rental car place to the hotel, from Starbucks to the bar was from somebody smiling with a confident and welcome approach to their job. For my tastes it is, sometimes, a little too much but I can’t help and wish that a little more of this faux-friendliness made its way into shops in London.

And while on the subject of customer service, I would be surprised if there are many around these parts that have not experienced the appalling service of parcel delivery providers this Christmas. My own gripe was is with the inability of the Royal Mail to be able to cope with the increase in parcels. My local postman (who is a very friendly guy, by the way) delivers a card when the parcel doesn’t fit the letter box. The sorting office needs some time to process that. Currently, that seems to be 48 hours. They only open for collections from 8am to 1pm (how useful is that to anybody who has a job to commute to in London?). For several weeks the Saturday morning queue has been so long as to be down round the block. Friday morning’s queue was equally long and at 12.45 nobody else was allowed to join the queue – which lead to several arguments along the lines of “I was here before One and this is the last day to get my parcel”. The response, from the lady with the road cones to stop more people joining the queue, was typical of the can-do helpful attitude around here,

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

On this day…

2003: Hi We’re Your Weather Girls
2002: Is Bigger Really Better?
2002: End of a radio era

I Favour Legalisation Of Homosexual Marriage

Reading Jase Wells today I notice he has a pointer to the American Family Association’s gay marriage poll. Interestingly, the polls shows those in favour of homosexual marriage ahead of those against (albeit by a slight margin). I’m going to be interested to read the final results and – should they stay in support of gay unions – how the AFA interprets them. Use your vote wisely!

On this day…

2003: Three Hundred Million

Three Hundred Million

According to New Media Zero, UK online ad spend in 2003 could be as high as £350m which is very promising news indeed for those of us involved in the industry. The article doesn’t break down the money and I would be interested to know where it is being spent – I just hope it’s not on more pop-ups!

On this day…

2003: I Favour Legalisation Of Homosexual Marriage

S.W.A.T.

colin farrell in swatAccording to the internet movie database, the basic premise of the movie S.W.A.T. that I saw on the plane is, “An imprisoned drug kingpin offers a huge cash reward to anyone that can break him out of police custody and only the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics team can prevent it”. It’s about all you need to know really.

If you read this site a great deal you will know that I have a strange love of action movies. I think they are – by and large – a huge waste of time and yet I constantly enjoy them and will watch the same one again and again. This would be no exception. The plot could be passed off as a true story – more or less – but (and correct me if you’re in LA) helicopters be shot out of the sky and races through the subway tunnels can not be an every day/week/year occurrence.

Still, Colin Farrell is Jim Street the cop on the boundaries who makes good and Samuel L. Jackson is always enjoyable in everything he does. Even LL Cool J was good and it’s always good to see Josh Charles on the screen.

Go an enjoy this movie and then see Colin in the Man of the Moment section.

On this day…

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