Garageband - Part 3 - All Good Binmen Don't Wear Glasses

I recorded this ditty in late July, shortly before embarking on the Big Drive.  I trust my pal Grant will appreciate.  ;-)

Airports - Part 3 - Back to the Future

SylVie left for Sri Lanka today, via Terminal 1 at CDG. Terminal 1 looked very futuristic when it was buil t in the seventies -- it has been featured in countless movies -- but it has aged poorly, and the never-ending renovation works do nothing to enhance Paris' image in the eyes of the American, Asian and African travellers who are forced to favour the locale. The usual rules of engagement regarding home turf also apply at CDG : Air France wouldn't be caught dead in Terminal 1, so I am usually spared its idiosyncracies.

Still, as Ms B was swept up the plexiglass cylinder to the gates (known at T1 as satellites), a first step towards an orphanage in a Buddhist temple, I did have a sense of Back to the Future.

Big Drive Backfill - the End

As we progressed across the MidWest, we shot increasing amounts of video and stills. This had the unexpected side-benefit of earning me my first "content rejected" notice from Daily Motion.

Uploading our 20-minute production to Blogger Video was unsuccessful, so I finally resorted to hosting the video myself, here.

The masterpiece includes:

• shots of our arrival at night into California at Needles, "20 miles from nowhere, 2 feet from hell" -- nighttime temperature in the cool 40s...Celsius
  
• crossing the Mojave desert
• the original Bagdad Café (where the film was shot)
• the Barstow Starbucks
• the Barstow Bottle Tree Branch
• the diner where a scene from Kill Bill was set (when Uma emerges from her coffin)
• another Starbucks
• the Denny's diner in Pasadena where the waitress had only mastered half of the MacDonald's creed: time to lean, time to clean
• our last bits of true 66, going ka-chunk over the concrete slabs
• our painfully slow last 200 metres of Route 66, tortured to the strains of Hotel California, as we had chosen a sunny Labour Day weekend to reach the Pacific
• the three Valley Girls, one of whom snapped our pic next to the "End of 66" plaque.

This was actually back-filled on October 18th, 2007 at 21:38 CET

Big Drive Backfill - the Start

The Café Society - Part 16 - The Ladies Who Lunch (Not)

My pal and favourite adolescente Emma was inspired to drop by the office with her best buddy Mathilde, San Diego and Paris-based international chef and legal expert Kay Rae, along with daughter Isabelle and niece Leanna (not to mention canine friend Kyla.) As a result, I was able to rekindle an old tradition of secretly toasting my birthday in feminine company.

Ah, the joys of Paris Wonks.

The Great Leap Forward - Lin in London

I hope Ms Q will forgive me for posting this pic from her first foray into London, which took her to Gerrard Street, AKA Chinatown.

Garageband - Part 2 - Cowboy Honky Tonk

The Stones stole Honky Tonk Women from Ry Cooder, so I’m stealing it back, mangling it as I imagine the Cowboy Junkies might have covered it.



The pictures are supposed to keep one awake.

The Big Drive - Part 2 - When Rubber Meets the Road

Much silliness has been written about the need for, or conversely, the uselessness of storefronts in the Web 2.0 age. While Michael Dell has finally had to admit to the need for a physical retail presence, I must confess that the vast majority of my internet purchases over the past ten years have been contemplated and executed without the benefit of the “mortar” part of the “clicks and mortar” equation.
However, there are some transactions that simply cannot be conducted without a brick building. One example is tyre purchases, indeed, many tyre merchants in this country, such as Speedy or Midas, refuse to post any indication of tyre prices on their commercial websites. One of these, Feu Vert, satisfies itself with announcing that by dialling their premium rate phone number, one will be assured of the best prices – Not! I dutifully rang FV’s magic number, and was quoted prices for Michelin and Pirelli that would make my Alfa dealer blush – car dealers not being particularly well known for their deep discounting.

So I decided to try the online approach, and came across pneusonline.com, which claims to be Europe’s biggest online tyre vendor and a pioneer in the field (to my untrained eye, their site is a replica of the tirerack.com’s, but who knows who was first.) One of the joys of online shopping is the presence of customer reviews. Unfortunately, the tyres I was considering, Michelin Energy 3A’s and Pirelli P6000s (why do tyres have such hopeless names?), featured very mixed reviews, not to mention discounted prices that remained high.

One brand of tyre did catch my eye, Kumho, of Korea. Excellent reviews, OEM fitting to Mercedes A-Class, and an extraordinarily low price decided me to take the plunge. I had the rubber delivered to the nearest pneusonline partner garage, and then the fun began. For starters, locating the place proved to be an adventure. I finally located the garage, which had less to do with bricks and mortar than corrugated iron. A portable unit in the yard next door represented the ‘facilities’. I couldn’t find the equivalent to my Alfa dealer’s receptionist seemingly specialised in the brewing of espressos.

In the hangar, three mechanics gave a good object lesson as to why delicate jobs should be entrusted to a qualified dealer, as they tugged and hammered at a hapless Toyota’s timing belt assembly. Needless to say, I watched the tyre change with hawkish attention. 1 000 km later, the Kumho Ecsta K11’s (silly tyre names, redux) have yet to explode.

Celia - Part 7 - Raring to go...

Whilst on the topic of sports cars, young Celia's first experience in the driver's seat was a happy one, with the exception of the moment when she was coaxed away. She experimented with all the knobs and buttons, and found the horn to be particularly gratifying.

She's joining the driver's licence race shortly.

The Big Drive - Part 1

As I was doing some very early planning for the Big Drive this August (I typically do most of my holiday travel planning on the flight over) the question of car-guitar compatibility became pressing.

The Big Drive will be much more fun with a convertible, and the most cost-effective ragtop available for hire is a Ford Mustang. At the same time, one of the minor objectives of this trip is to pick up an interesting guitar, maybe in Tucson Arizona. Now a Mustang, aside from having a superfluously big engine (4 litres is as small as they get) does not have a large boot. Ford’s online specifications do not mention trunk size (nor for that matter, do they provide CO2 emission levels) and 2007 Mustang convertibles are few and far between on this side of the Atlantic

The obvious solution was to turn to the good brethren of the Telecaster site with my question. The first truly useful answer came from Tdot, who actually went to a Ford dealership, tape measure in hand. Unfortunately, it was snowing, and so the salespeople wouldn’t let him open the trunk, for fear of dampness. Tdot, did however, brave the elements to make external trunk measurements.

Then, CharlieO, based in the less rigorous Florida climes, went to a Ford showroom, Rickenbacker case in hand, and convinced the salesperson to let him experiment, with this result:


The Web 2.0 is a many splendoured thing.

Garageband - Part 1 - Empowerment

A guitar and a Mac is all that's needed

Granted, there's patent abuse of the bongos, the flanger and the auto-wah, but it was my first attempt.

Too bad MySpace is a Murdoch company.

The Café Society - Part 15 - Innocent When You Dream

The Square of the Innocents was a communal grave for paupers up to the early 19th century, when cellars in surrounding houses began to collapse under the accumulated weight of corpses.

In the early 1990s my colleague and pal Malcolm G attempted to slum it by moving into a duplex above the Innocents' Fountain, with three female compatriots. He quickly retreated to the cossetted 16th District, not before throwing a smashing housewarming which I attended with Fab and her slinky black leather dress. We felt like the babysitters.

The duplex was recently on national news, as its two floors in a 16th century building were gutted by fire. Coincidentally, one of my best mates from the 1990s, David T, resurfaced with a telephone call from Tokyo.

The Café Society - Part 14 - The Writing's on...

Chloé, the Café Etienne's erstwhile historian, art student, focus group recruiter and, once-a-day, scribe, penning the lunch specials for the last time this Friday. Custom will doubtlessly fall.

Airports - Part 2 - Ben Gurion

Security at Ben Gurion doesn't appreciate picture taking and nor do Hassidim, hence the blur. Or perhaps it was the fact that the picture was snapped at 5 AM.

Israeli airport security is probably the tightest in the world -- it's certainly the one that spends the most time asking intrusive questions -- so it's interesting to note that Ben Gurion does not apply the rules regarding liquids and ziplock bags. Equally interesting, in a different sense, is how much personal information there appeared to be to read in the computers at security and passport control.

Hotel Rooms - Part 11 - The Sheraton Moriah.

The Sheraton Moriah is one of the countless soulless vertical dormitories dotting Tel Aviv's beachfront. It's not the newest of the beach hotels, but neither is it the most expensive.

All rooms are "sea-view," which means that one's view of the parking garage or highrise next door is slightly compromised by the Med. The Wifi is unreliable, and the lifts (including the Sabbath elevator) are frequently graced by Russian maidens free of most conventional virtues.

All in all, a typical Tel Aviv hotel.

Roma - Ne'er a Drop to Drink

Or so might ruefully reflect the Olympique Lyonnais having been expedited out of the Champion's League 2-0 by AS Roma. Lyon are as consistently unfortunate in C1 competition as they are successful in the French league, w five titles in five seasons.

Rome gave us La Dolce Vita, Paparazzo and the scene at the Trevis Fountain, which no doubt prefigured Ursula Andress' Venus-like emergence from the water in Dr. No.. The Trevis Fountain marked the last time that Fellini shot outside the sets at Cine Citta, as he struggled to keep the crowds out of the picture during the midnight shoot. Italian clubs also play behind closed doors sometimes.

The Café Society - Part 13 - Sentimental Lorient

The largest building in Lorient that is older than fifty years is the old German submarine base. With a concrete roof that was several metres thick, the building was impervious to even the largest Allied bombs. The Allied response was to inflict on Lorient a scorched earth strategy, razing almost the entire city to the ground.
Lorient is now a pretty university town, with a modest telecoms industry specialised in mobile TV. Across from the harbour is the village of Locmicquelic, where former sailor turned artist Zeramo presides over his quirky empire, the Cargo Sentimental. Added bonus: the food is actually quite good.

Waste Not Want Not

Whilst on the topic of appetising food...

Robin and Maxime have a very original (at least for teenagers) and effective eco-system to manage restaurant food.

Egg Beaters

Watched Tampopo this evening for the first time in twenty years, courtesy of BitTorrent.

It remains the most sensual film about food, or perhaps the most gastronomical film about sensuality.

It remains a mystery that no egg marketing board has licenced this scene.

The Café Society - Part 12 - French Blogosphere

Whilst trying to get a handle on the increasingly slippery topic of world blog statistics, one came across an article in the IHT that summarised most of what one suspected was the state of the French Blogosphere:

• The French are the Western World's most enthusiastic bloggers (one estimates that close to 10% of the French population has an active blog);
• French blogs are not about collaborative discussion, but rather about expressing the blogger's views (somewhat like the French approach to internal company meetings or, more generally, teamwork);
  
• French blogs are typically narcissistic in nature; and
• You can't run for elected office in France if you don't have a blog.

Given the nature of this blog, one can only conclude that it's based in France (even though one is not running for elected office, unless sporadic attendance at Council meetings counts as such.)

One would be interested in similar analyses of Japanese (5% of the population) South Korean (25%!) or Chinese (2%) blogs. Methinks they are diametrically opposed in more than one respect.

The Café Society - Part 11 - Savage Camping

Several hundred tents line the Canal St Martin in the rapidly gentrifying 10th district. Most of these are occupied by the homeless, a few by local Bobos - Bourgeois Bohèmes - demonstrating their support, who get to go home in the morning for coffee, croissants and a shower.

Some of the homeless hold down jobs, but can't afford rent. Meanwhile, a new study released today regarding growing French obesity shows that whilst 5% of graduates are overweight, 15% of those without a degree have a weight problem.

What a wonderful world, nous vivons une époque formidable.

The Café Society - Part 10 - Sunday Afternoons in Barça

Even after a Saturday night and Sunday morning's worth of clubbing, people in Barcelona are still feeling sociable. This bar is located behind Parallel, near the now-closed and soon-to-be re-opened Molinos theatre. The mature gentlemen in the backgound is one of the Molinos' retired singers, who now belts out torchsongs on Sunday afternoons, whilst his audience knocks back beer and tapas.

More evidence that Spain is not an ageist society, at least not on Sunday afternoons.

The Barbarian Invasions - Part 1 - Moto Mightier than Tauromachy

Barcelona was invaded by 3GSM last week, the world's largest collection of suits and ties who, for a few blessed days, can delude themselves that they are not technerds and are in fact Masters of the Universe. The illusion is hard to maintain, however, when one attends a party where the male/female ratio is ten-to-one. (Note: the function is not, à priori, dedicated to the gay lifestyle.)

It was with heavy heart that one observed that Barcelona had not contented itself with banning bullfighting - it had emasculated its Plaza de Toros with advertising. Hemingway would have shuddered.

The Café Society - Part 9 - Vieux Port

The old harbour in Marseilles is favoured by the local 'aristocracy,' swimming in water one wouldn't use for the WC, let alone fish from. In January the water is almost tolerably warm, no doubt due to a combination of global warming and exhaust fumes from the yachts.

The Car Park Story

One of the worst jokes ever uttered, but rendered in inimitable style by my colleague Sara.

Waiting for the Birdie

In the age of digital convergence, it is refreshing when savvy technoids don't realise that a digital camera is shooting video...

The Café Society - Part 8 - Le Cirque du Grand Céleste

We had Emma's birthday outing this evening, at le Cirque du Grand Céleste, a modern circus which is more about theatre and music than trained animals.

This was the sixth time I saw the Grand Céleste, who have evolved from their humble 50 seat top to something holding about 200.

Unfortunately, art-theft is not permitted during the show, so most of our pictures were taken in the second Big Top, where the artists mingle with the spectators over a post-show drink.

The Highway 1 US Special Telecaster

The Highway 1 Telecaster is Fender's entry-level American-made Telecaster. The first guitar I bought as an adult, in 2003, was a three-tone sunburst HWY1 Telecaster, so naturally it was the first guitar to be replaced after the break-in last summer. I wanted to make a clean break with the lost Telecaster (one gets sentimental about these pieces of wood) so I ordered this one in honey blonde from Thomann. It looks pretty much like a classic Telecaster (the classic electric guitar,) with the glaring exception of the rosewood fretboard: three-saddle bridge, "spaghetti" logo on the headstock, single-coil Alnico pick-ups. However, there are some subtle differences that make it much more playable than a vintage Tele: 22 frets rather than 21, faster neck, medium-jumbo frets...

When I ordered it Fender had just announced an "upgrade" to the HWY1 series, which meant they were actually downgrading the specs, in order to stop cannibalisation of sales of higher-end American Teles. I made sure that Thomann sent me an "original" HWY1 Tele. They did just that, and the only non-original features are the "Greasebucket" circuit (an improvement in tone control) and the pewter-coloured "Sixtieth Anniversary" inlay at the top of the back of the headstock.

By the time Fender produced this particular Telecaster, they must have mastered the process: by all accounts, it has one of the most playable necks ever encountered on a Fender. So much for upgrades.

Hotel Rooms - Part 10 - The English Promenade

The SAS Radisson in Nice, where we will be holding our company meeting sometime this winter. The hotel is located along the Promenade des Anglais, though I doubt we'll have much time for promenading, particularly as, in the evening, the concourse should more appropriately be dubbed the Promenade des Roumaines.

Happy 2007! (but I've got to clean up 2006)

So, 2007 is here and the last entry in this blog was nearly four months ago. (Note, with my resolution to update the past, the preceding statement may soon appear inaccurate.)

We ended 2006 in good taste, savouring multiple dishes by the fireplace, including:

• Piper Heidseck champagne
  
• Endive with Tartare cheese
• Turnip soup
• Shrimp Ceviche
  
• Foie gras with toasted gingerbread
• Lime Sherbet
• 1997 Château Pavie St Emilion
  
• Veal roasted in Muscadet with sweet potatoes and chestnuts
• Cheese
• Mousse au Chococat

We also began 2007 with a bang, Jean-Luc and I treating the neighbourhood to an impromptu hour-long jam around 3:30 AM.