God Save The Queen
Friday, May 19th, 2006I pulled up to Westminster Abbey right as the police escorts were bringing out Prince Charles and the Queen of England.
Archive for May, 2006
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Madness and Reason
Thursday, May 18th, 2006Michael Foucalt (1926-84) wrote ‘Madness and Civilization’, a history of attitudes to the insane. He postulated that up until the 17th century, the mentally disturbed were kept out in the open and much more accepted as part of society. The move to lock them away in asylums began after the elevation of reason.
Handbags & Gladrags
Monday, May 15th, 2006Ever seen a blind man cross the road,
Trying to make the other side.
Ever seen a young girl growing old,
Trying to make herself a bride.
And what becomes of you my love,
When they have finally stripped you of,
The handbags and the gladrags,
That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy.
Once I was a young man,
And all I thought I had to do was smile.
So listen all you young girls,
Who have bought everything that’s in style.
‘Cos once you think you’re in you’re out,
For you don’t mean a thing without,
The handbags and the gladrags,
That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy.
Sing a song of six-pence for your sake,
And take a bottle full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds in a cake,
And bake ‘em all in a pie.
They told me you missed school today,
So I suggest you just throw away,
The handbags and the gladrags,
That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy.
And what becomes of you my love,
When they have finally stripped you of,
The handbags and the gladrags,
That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy.
England [merry old]
Monday, May 15th, 2006
Theres a 17 year old kid here Max, who is some kind of super prodigy at guitar, just shredding nasty riffs all day long, so I’m trying to learn what I can. Hes one of those people that confound us mere mortals, who have only been playing a short time but sound like Jimmy Hendrix.
Check out the Porche Cayman S. This car is sick.
Brussels
Wednesday, May 10th, 2006The city itself was pretty cool. Didnt really seem very busy there at all. Lost of old arhitecture, alot of character overall. The Belgian beer is pretty good, and also the Belgian waffles. Then theres the Belgian chocolate. I guess Belguim is well known for alot of things..
The weather was perfect, got to check out a place called the Instrument Museum. 4 stories of instruments from all over the world and all time periods. When you go in they give you headsets, and you just walk up to the display and the music of the instrument starts playing through your headphones.
A pretty nice art museum, they had the original Dali painting, the one with the skinny guy holding up a cross to those huge elephants with really skinny legs…Ok Dali seems to really like elephants.. its called ‘The Temptation of St. Anthony‘ thank u google.
Theres also a comic strip museum that is pretty cool. Alot of old originals from the 30s onward. Plus the city itself has a comic strip walk, where whole sides of buildings are done up comic style all around the perimiter of the town.
What else.. pretty nice parcs where people are wasting their time playing soccer and am using my time efficiently lying in the grass.
Also, watched a movie of music of this guy Jaques Brel done to ballet. “Ne me quitte pas” is one of his most popular songs if u want to check him out.
There also seems to be some sort of network of bums/drunks/drug addicts who the local people dont seem to mind really. They all look the same and they’re all drinking beers 24/7. At times they are obviously off in some land of drug induced stupor and attempt to ramble some of their crazy talk to you. Being a fan of crazy talk and of bums/drunks/drug addicts who appeat to be in a drug induced stupor I made my best effort to extract a bit of meaning from their garbled French. Unfortunatly I don’t quite understand garbled French, or really well spoken French for that matter, and my companion in Brussels seemed not to understand the fact that upon conversation with these poor souls I could straight-away sort them out, or at least provide them a bit of their own medicine. So, I had to abandon my philanthropic endevours and continue on.
Anyway, there are also these guys about my age who actually kneel in the middle of the street with an overly dramatic pouty look in their face with thier hands cups. Filthy beggars, they are. Perfectly capable of work, yet kneeling in the sidewalk acting sad at like 2:30 on a Tuesday when the shop next door is hiring. One of them came up to me and gave me a bit of paper that said something about his kids being sick, so give him money. Bloody liar, he was. The other side was in another language and it was brought to my attention that the other side was a completly different story from the english version, no doubt some sinister plot to extort money from unsuspecting tourists. Not very well thought out either. Not even a joke, song, or dance, or some form of entertainment or amusement, just some crap story badly written on a scrap of waste paper.
Anyway, not to focus on the negative as these filthy beggars were but a small finger smear on the cold frothy beer mug of Brussels.
Brussels
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
I was walking down the street and saw what looked like some kind of rock club, but maybe for hardcore or metal or something, so I ventured inside and said hi to the first people I saw, who happened to be leaving.
The guy was ‘Mat-chew’ who was an MC from some smaller city in Belguim. He was pretty cool, young, about 21, and with some other chick that looked pretty nice. They took us to an underground hip hop / jazz / funk place that turned out to be really sweet.
It was in the basement portion of an apartement building but totally hooked up. A full bar, tables, chairs, red candles, a seperate room with a piano, speakers, sound equiptment, drum set, and a huge stand up bass.
It was an open jam session and anyone could get up and play or sing or do whatever they did. Mat-chew was going to spit some lines, and we got into a conversation on the way over about the fundamentalz of rap. of course i was on point with the old school 36 Chambers and what not, “nahm-sayin”. And his girl was more punk, so I just talked to her about Taking Back Sunday, who she had just seen for the first time the week before.
Anyway, the club was really sweet, met some cool people and found out that people have mad respect for Philly. So big up 2 philly and the Roots for representing globally.
J