The northlondonhippy

Archive for June, 2008

Well fuck me, look who it is!

I mean me. Where the hell have I been?

I’ve been nowhere, doing noth­ing. Hon­est, offi­cer, I swear.

That’s not strictly true, because I am still the part time lib­er­tyc­i­ty­hippy, so you know where I’ve been hang­ing out sometime.

I’ve also been work­ing a fair bit, but my sched­ule has been all over the place with­out any sort of pat­tern, rhyme or reason.

I’ve been dis­tracted, I’ve been unfo­cused, or as it say in the larger, yel­low font above, I’ve just been “coast­ing through life.” That means any­thing requir­ing the slight­est of effort has been rel­e­gated to another day…and when another day comes, I am gonna be one busy hippy.

I wish I could be telling you oth­er­wise, that I’ve been busy record­ing my album, or writ­ing another book, or pro­vid­ing sex­ual favours to a small gang of vora­ciously demand­ing 16 year old glam­our mod­els. I wish I could tell you lots of things, but I won’t lie to you.

I can’t lie to you. It would be eas­ier if I could.

I get up every­day and seem to be busy, I don’t actu­ally just sit in a dark room all the time, yet I couldn’t tell you what eats my time away. Maybe its some time-eating mon­ster from another dimension.

How cool would that be? To be a time-eating mon­ster from another dimen­sion, trav­el­ling to north Lon­don to eat hippy time. I won­der what time tastes like?

Prob­a­bly time tastes like chicken. Every­thing tastes like chicken.

Never mind time mon­sters, now its just time to meander…

I was very dis­heart­ened and sad to read of the pass­ing of George Car­lin, yet another big influ­ence on me when I was younger. Along with Hunter S and Kurt V, George Car­lin was a hero of my youth.

I used to lis­ten to George Carlin’s albums end­lessly with an absolute obses­sion. His humour, on the sur­face, could be seen as crude, but when you explored what he was actu­ally say­ing, it was gen­uinely pro­found. His com­edy dealt with word-play and idea-play and noth­ing in this life escaped his crit­i­cal gaze.

Just off the top of my head:

Words that go together, yet are contradictory:

Jumbo Shrimp
Mil­i­tary Intelligence

But the words he’s most famous for are the fol­low­ing seven:

shit
piss
fuck
cunt
cock­sucker (not a bad man, but a good woman!)
moth­er­fucker
tits (sounds like a snack. I’ll have the cheese tits)

And later on he added:

fart
turd
twat

And one that still makes me laugh, “You can prick your fin­ger, but you can’t fin­ger your prick.”

Car­lin con­tin­ued to per­form prac­ti­cally right up to his death on Sun­day, his final gig was the pre­vi­ous week­end. While in the busi­ness for nearly 50 years, his jokes never went stale and he never, ever ran out of mate­r­ial. How could he? The human race excels in stu­pid­ity and that could have con­tin­ued to fuel his humour for centuries.

Sorry to see you go, George. You left your mark on this world and we won’t ever for­get you. Some­thing tells me that another gen­er­a­tion will be dis­cov­er­ing you very soon, thanks to your untimely demise.

Speak­ing of death (and inap­pro­pri­ate segues), my Log­itech Har­mony 885 remote bit the big one this week. It thinks its work­ing, when you press the but­tons, but it doesn’t seem to be trans­mit­ting any infrared sig­nals. This is a bum­mer of enor­mous pro­por­tions, as it it is the cen­tral com­mand for my small, yet per­fectly formed media cen­tre. My life is now awash with too many device-specific remote controls.

The upside to this is that the remote is still under war­ranty and I am wait­ing for a call back from Log­itech sup­port which I hope will result in them send­ing me a replace­ment. The first guy I spoke to tried to help me sort it out over the phone, but his reme­dies didn’t do did­dley. I’m missed their return call yes­ter­day, but they should phone me back again later today.

And stay­ing with my elec­tronic theme, I can­celled my Voda­fone con­tract today, in antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing a brand new, shiny, lick­able iPhone 3G on launch day, which is 11th July, just over a fort­night from today. Voda­fone were sur­pris­ingly mel­low about my depar­ture, no hard sell, the phone call was brief and pain­less. Actu­ally, the guy was so nice, I told him I was switch­ing to O2 for the iPhone — usu­ally I don’t tell these peo­ple any­thing, so this is out of char­ac­ter for me. I’m a marketer’s worst nightmare!

Once I get my fancy new iPhone, I’m going to exper­i­ment with blog­ging from it. I’m not sure how it will go, but I like the idea of pro­vid­ing short posts on the fly. We’ll see if the real­ity keeps up with the fantasy!

I did con­sider play­ing around with Twit­ter, but I got frus­trated at the reg­is­tra­tion phase. The char­ac­ter limit of your screen name on Twit­ter is far too short and I couldn’t fit northlon­don­hippy into the tiny lit­tle box. None of that mat­ters any­way, I mean who in their right mind would sign up to fol­low me around on Twit­ter? How many times can you read: “had a piss, now smok­ing a spliff”, over and over every day?

While you pon­der that, I’m going to go for a piss, then smoke a spliff.

See, I told ya it would be lame…

I’m going to be pay­ing more atten­tion to the US pres­i­den­tial race now that we are fairly cer­tain who the two main can­di­dates will be. It’s not that I haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion all along, I just haven’t writ­ten much about it so far.

I’m not actu­ally going to write that much today, but rather I am going to let one of the can­di­dates speak for himself.

This video was put together by Robert Green­wald of “Out­Foxed” fame; that’s the film that ripped the shit out of Fox News. It’s worth see­ing, if you haven’t already. Here’s his lat­est on pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, John McCain.

Seems to me this guy is not qual­i­fied to be the next pres­i­dent, if his con­tra­dic­tory state­ments are any­thing to go on. Of course, the cur­rent incum­bent wasn’t qual­i­fied to be dog catcher, never mind pres­i­dent and he got two terms. Though to put it in per­spec­tive, Bush the lesser now has the LOWEST APPROVAL RATING OF ANY PRESIDENT EVER.

If that many peo­ple really hate Bush now, how can McCain stand a chance? A McCain pres­i­dency would just be four more years of the same and I can’t see any­one vot­ing for that, can you?

Hey ho hippyfans!

I am very pleased to announce that the offi­cial bub­bler con­test draw took place yes­ter­day and I have before me a list of the win­ners of the 16 prizes available.

I did the big draw on Wednes­day, all the email addresses of the entries were on small pieces of paper, placed in a big bowl. From there, I with­drew the six­teen win­ners, in reverse order.

As promised, here’s a list of the win­ners’ initials:

10 x flavoured rolling papers:
==================
16)AM
15)SC
14)AC
13)PS
12)SB
11)NT
10)WU
9) AM
8) JC (this is num­ber 8, damn auto­matic smi­leys!)
7) BD

5x Smi­ley Face Pop Tins:
================
6) SL
5) MW
4) AS
3) JP
2) DS

And the big win­ner of the Mid­night Blue Bush­mas­ter Bub­bler is…
========================================
1) RT from Wiltshire!!!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of you who won prizes and a big thanks to every­one who sent in an email entry!

All of the win­ners will be con­tacted via email before the end of today, ask­ing for your postal addresses and I hope to despatch all of the prizes as soon as pos­si­ble. Any addresses received before Fri­day morn­ing, will see their prizes posted by lunchtime on Fri­day. All prizes will be sent by first class post.

Don’t worry if you didn’t win this time, I’m sure I’ll be hav­ing con­tests again in the future. There may only be 16 con­test win­ners, but in my book, all of you are win­ners! Thanks again!

Last night, Mrs. H and I went to see Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band at Emi­rates Sta­dium, here in north Lon­don. There’s nobody bet­ter live and they don’t call him the Boss for nothing.

I’ve been a Spring­steen fan for decades, around three to be pre­cise. I got into his music back in 1978, when he released his fourth album, “Dark­ness on the Edge of Town”. I was 15 years old.

The first time I saw Bruce live was 1981, on “The River” tour. It was at the Mead­ow­lands Arena in New Jer­sey and he played for some­thing like 4 hours. I was exhausted, just watch­ing, but he kept on going with a level of energy that amazed me. It still does, he did 2 and 1/2 hours on Sat­ur­day night and he’s push­ing 60 now!

The fol­low­ing year, 1982, I met Spring­steen for the first time. I lived on the Jer­sey Shore at the time and saw him in a bar in Asbury Park one Sat­ur­day night.

The bar was called “The Fast Lane” and I’m pretty sure its gone now. It was a small live venue, which usu­ally was home to bands on the local cir­cuit as well as the occa­sional name act. I saw the Stray Cats there, Dave Edmonds, Mar­shall Cren­shaw to name a few from the 80s that might be known to you, or not.

I was there one Sat­ur­day night in the sum­mer of 1982 with a friend of mine. We were get­ting drinks at the bar, when I saw a guy on the other side who looked a lot like Bruce, until I realised it was Bruce.

You have to appre­ci­ate that I was a huge fan, espe­cially at the age of 19, liv­ing in NJ, rid­ing around in my car, play­ing Spring­steen cas­settes all the time, wor­ship­ping his music and being star struck.

I worked up the nerve to go over and just say hello. Bruce was sit­ting on his own, the crowd all cool enough to give him some space, except for me. I went over and shyly said “excuse me, Mr. Spring­steen, but I just wanted to say hello. I’m a mas­sive fan”, blah blah blah!

Yes, I called him Mr. Spring­steen and I blath­ered on about how amaz­ing I thought his music was. He told me to call him Bruce and asked me to sit down. We chat­ted a bit, I asked him about stu­pid things, like his gui­tars, his new album (he was record­ing the tracks that would become “Nebraska” around this time) and he was incred­i­bly cool and down to earth. He just seemed like a nor­mal guy. He actu­ally shared a few minor, per­sonal things with me, that I won’t repeat here. Noth­ing amaz­ing, just the sort of crap peo­ple talk in bars.

Bruce got up to go to the bar and asked me if I wanted a drink. He brought me back a Heineken beer. How cool is that?

Even sad­der, I kept the bot­tle. I think I still have it, some­where. I ended up hang­ing out with Spring­steen for a cou­ple of hours that night.

After that, I ran into him at least once, every week­end through the entire sum­mer. I didn’t hang out with him again, but when­ever he saw he, he always made a point of say­ing hello, as if he remem­bered me. I doubt he ever knew my name, but he knew my face.

The cool thing about see­ing him every week­end was that he usu­ally jumped up on stage with what­ever band was play­ing and led them through their final set. I saw him with loads of local bands, mainly in three dif­fer­ent venues; the afore­men­tioned Fast Lane, The Stone Pony — also in Asbury Park, and Big Man’s West, in Red Bank — which was owned by the Big Man, Clarence Clemons — Springsteen’s sax player.

Bruce would mainly do clas­sic rock songs, like Twist’n’Shout, but occa­sion­ally he would do some of his mate­r­ial and in one case, played a song of his pub­licly for the first time. The song was “Light of Day”, which was the name of a film and the title track from the sound­track album — star­ring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett, about a fam­ily with a rock band.

The thing about Bruce is see­ing him in a sta­dium or a bar with 100 peo­ple, is he gives the same level of per­for­mance. You can see how much he gen­uinely loves what he does and why when he is not tour­ing or record­ing, he’s still out jam­ming in the same bars I saw him in, which are really the same places he started out in back in the late 60s and very early 70s.

And see­ing him live last night, just a few tube stops from my north Lon­don lair brought back mem­o­ries of a much dif­fer­ent time in my life. I was a much dif­fer­ent per­son back then. I knew very lit­tle about life or the world. I pre­tend I know more now.

It was just dumb luck that I lived in the same area as my favourite rock star, who at the time was the biggest thing in the world. Some­times, I still have trou­ble believ­ing it myself.

It’s funny how cer­tain songs evoke times and places in your life and they can stir long dor­mant emo­tions. Some­times I feel so dis­con­nected from my past, and then some­thing pops up from my sub­con­scious and reminds me of where I come from. I haven’t writ­ten much here about my NJ con­nec­tions and past because of that dis­con­nect, whether inten­tion­ally or not. Maybe I should more often.

Any­way, back to Sat­ur­day night’s gig. Bruce still has it and remains one of the best show­men you will ever see. He can work a crowd and have them din­ing from the palm of his hands. He’s still fit and agile too, criss cross­ing the giant stage and exe­cut­ing one of his patented knee slides across the stage at the end of one number.

The E Street were also as tight as ever, though it made me sad when Bruce spoke of his recently departed key­boardist, Danny Fed­erici, who passed around a month ago. He ded­i­cated “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park) to him.

The sta­dium was packed and I think it was nearly sold out, though I heard rumours of stand­ing tick­ets still being avail­able on the day.

My biggest issue with the entire thing was the fact that I couldn’t have a cig­a­rette for sev­eral hours. Towards the end of the gig, I could feel myself going into a homi­ci­dal rage and I know it was because I needed some nico­tine. Emi­rates Sta­dium, home of Arse­nal, is an open-air venue, so I don’t really under­stand why they don’t allow smok­ing. It’s really stu­pid and puts me off ever going there again.

The smok­ing ban puts me off doing lots of things. I barely go to bars, pubs or restau­rants any more because of it, the same for many of my smok­ing mates. And when I do go out for a meal, instead of dessert and cof­fee, I quickly ask for the bill, so I can head out­side and light up. It must be bad for busi­ness, as I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Here’s the setlist from the show I saw:

May 31, 2008
Lon­don, Eng­land
Emi­rates Stadium

Out In The Street
No Sur­ren­der
Dark­ness On The Edge Of Town
Gypsy Biker
Radio Nowhere
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Growin’ Up
Down­bound Train
I’m On Fire
Because The Night
She’s The One
Livin’ In The Future
Mary’s Place
The Promised Land
Back­streets
The Ris­ing
Last To Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

Jun­gle­land
Born To Run
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

(cour­tesy BruceSpringteen.Net)

By the way, if you want to keep up with my musi­cal likes and dis­likes, find me on Last FM — my login is the n_londonhippy and I scrob­ble all my tracks!

Greet­ings my loyal and faith­ful read­ers of the northlondonhippy.com!

I’m writ­ing to for­mally con­firm that the clos­ing date for entries to my bub­bler con­test has now passed and I am no longer accept­ing any. You’ve had nearly two months to email me, if you couldn’t get it together in that time, well, maybe you don’t really need my bubbler.

I will be sift­ing through the entries and draw­ing the win­ners this week, expect to be noti­fied by email if you are the lucky one, before the week is out and be pre­pared to send me your postal address.

I’ll also be post­ing the ini­tials of all SIXTEEN win­ners on my site.

A big “thank you” to every­one who entered! You’re all win­ners already!