So a new controversy is raging, or at least getting into gear, regarding Michael Moore’s latest doco “Sicko” . How terribly convenient it is for Big Mike and his distributors that George and the lads have decided to look into the legality of his recent trip across the drink to Cuba. If I’d been in charge of marketing for Big Mike’s latest flick I don’t think I could have planned it better.

Sarcasm aside I suppose it’s time to hoist my trucker cap up the For-Big-Mike flagpole or the Against-Big-Mike one. Truth is I wish there was a third flagpole: the Kind-of-OK-with-Big-Mike Flagpole.

All his targets are good ones and I agree with many, if not all of his conclusions, but it’s his methods which concern me. Indeed I think his methods, and what he omits as well as includes, frequently offers abundant ammunition to his detractors and those whose heads he wishes to put on a stake. I remember watching The Big One and feeling a strange sense of sympathy for all the multi-national companies he was gunning for as he tried to ambush them. Continuously, it seemed, he appeared unannounced outside some factory gate and demanded that Joe The Security Bloke organise an interview with the Top Man right now! And, after a few moments of a phone call to the Top Man’s secretary, during which it was possible that Joe The Security Bloke’s job was on the line, Joe The Security Bloke was obliged to tell Big Mike and his crew to take a hike – remarkably Top Man didn’t have a floating slot in his schedule for intinerant doco makers and actually had work to do thank-you very much.

Cut to Big-Mike in front of the factory gates saying, “There you have it – big business doesn’t care!” Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you ask me. He didn’t truly get to argue with big business, he just banged petulantly and without announcement on it’s door and then acted shocked that the CEO’s wouldn’t take tea with him.

(Big exception was Phil The Nike Bloke who invited Mike up to his lair, listened to his questions, made a lot of sense and was even generous enough to hand Big Mike a check which, if I recall correctly, kind of took the wind out of Big Mike’s sails).

They tell me Big Mike is not a nice man and he’s certainly no oil painting either but he does raise issues we need to discuss carefully and at great length and for this he must be honoured and celebrated. I just wish that, for all his bluster, he was a little more careful about not handing his opponents lots of rope to wrap around that rather large neck of of his.

Sicko opens, if Mike gets his way, on June 29th.

“One quarter of the (Iraq) war budget would have fixed Social Security for the next seventy-five years.” Charles M. Young – The $2 Trillion War – Rolling Stone, Dec 28th 2006

At such a time, the biggest mass shooting in American history, I have, once again, to ask this simple question: How many innocent people need to die before we all take a look at the gun laws in this country and see sense?

Ian Wallace died today. As well as being a wonderful chap he was a world class musician and I got to know him last year when he played on 8 songs that are now deeply embedded in the DNA of Callback. His credentials are remarkable – he played with everyone from Dylan to CSN, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, King Crimson…and, incredibly, me.

The first time I visited him at his house I stopped on the staircase and gawped at a photograph taken from backstage looking over the shoulders of a large band to a massive outdoor arena packed to the gills with fans. “What’s this?” I asked. “That’s me at the back playing with Dylan in the stadium in Nuremburg where Hitler used to hold his rallies. But what’s really cool is that it’s packed with 80,000 German kids who all have their backs turned to where Adolf used to stand and rant, and they’ve all paid to watch this Jewish guy sing and play his guitar!”

Yes. That’s pretty damn cool.

In a funny kind of way life is like a gig. All too soon it’s over and after a brief wave at the fans you’re whisked off-stage to an awaiting bus before you’re driven off into the night. I don’t know where Ian’s next gig is but I am quite sure that, as he steps up to his kit, there will be another huge audience, with their backs turned to the devil, eagerly waiting for Ian to count the band in.

You can find that photograph, and plenty of others, on Ian’s website at: www.ianrwallace.com

I’m mid-way through my ride along PCH this morning when who should overtake me but David Zabriskie. Wow! How cool is that? I was still basking in the glory of riding the same piece of tarmac as the current US time-trial champion when, on a slight hill, another rider flashed past me.

Now, it’s one thing to be overtaken by a rider half your age who’s worn the coveted Yellow Jersey at the Tour de France and won stages in all three grand tours, but it’s another to be overtaken by a guy who’s obviously a few years older than me…and only has one leg!

Pride comes before a….OUCH!

After 21 years in Hollywood I have become a might jaded by what goes on here but this morning brought a surprise: ice on the sidewalks.

The radio woke me up with the news that Moscow’s Red Square is amazingly snow-free and so warm today that even ice-making machines can’t keep the water cold enough for ice-skating to take place. Then I stepped outside my garage to go for my early-morning ride and there was thick ice on the sidewalk – occasionally it dips to freezing up in the Hills but down here in the flats? Never.

After my ride, as I grumbled to myself about climate change, I loaded up my bathroom with bog paper after yesterday’s late-night shopping trip. As I unpacked the ecologically sound bathroom tissue I found this quote on the side of the packet from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy: In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.

…and to think the white men who invaded America and viciously destroyed these people and their lands had the nerve to call them savages.

When you do whatever it is that I do people like to give you stuff and sometimes the stuff people give you is their latest piece of work and this can lead to all sorts of problems.

Once an acquaintance gave me his new film to watch – a film that he’d written, directed, shot and starred in. It was absolutely, embarrassingly awful. I lied and told him it was “not bad.” When he sent me his second film I lied again and told him that I had so many reels and screeners to watch that I wouldn’t have time to watch his movie. He was righteously pissed off and concluded that I’d gone all Hollywood and had no time for the little people any more. Was this better than him knowing the truth that I thought his work sucked and I didn’t want to waste another 90 minutes of my life on him or his dreadfully feeble, self congratulatory film-making attempts?

On Friday I shot an Alka Seltzer spot and we hired a guy called Gilbert to be in the commercial. It was only the second time we’d worked together so you can imagine my horror when, at the end of the shoot, Gilbert approached me with a DVD entitled Frank & Cindy and said: “I’d like you to have this. It’s a documentary about my Mom and Dad. He’s a drunk and she’s a…” (can’t remember what he said about her now, probably because I’d already started tuning it out.)

Cut to Sunday morning and I’m transferring .omf files into my pro tools so I can work on my own movie. It’s tedious and dull work and involves watching many green lines inching slowly across the screen as various files go from A to B. As I was so completely, utterly bored I decided to pop in Gilbert’s movie thinking, “Another piece of crap I feel obligated to watch.”

(If you’re thinking “curmudgeon!” right now, that’s OK.)

But Gilbert’s ‘piece-of-crap’ was mezmerizing. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Within five minutes the file transferring had taken second place to watching Gilbert’s movie. The story is in many ways heartbreaking and may be summarzied as: Hollywood blonde marries loser musician who descends into alcholism while she struggles to pay the bills, keep herself on the straight and narrow, and keep custody of her son. But what emerges is that Gilbert seems to love his crazy, charismatic parents with a fierceness and compassion that I can’t easily describe, accepting their many failings, and has the confidence to simply ask them to discuss with him episodes in their lives which are so painful that nearly any other family on the planet would do anything to change the subject.

It’s really quite an extraordinary piece of work. Thank-you Gilbert for the gift of your DVD and I’m more than glad I took the time to spend 73 minutes out of my life to watch the film you’d made of your life.

You can read more about Gilbert and his Mom & Dad at www.bionicfilms.com and I understand Frank & Cindy will be featured on This American Life on NPR quite soon.

“The pain of endeavour is better than the pain of regret.” – Alastair Humphreys – round the world cyclist.

If I were to say The Hunter was probably the first Free song I ever heard you could say I was technically lying on two counts: 1) it wasn’t a Free song at all as it was written by Booker T and his MG’s and 2) when I learned to play it in my first band, Ten Ton Tears, I was taught the riff by our guitar player who idolized a band that was still struggling to make a name for itself.

When All Right Now was released the next summer I was disappointed – the solo didn’t have enough twiddly bits in it: Kossoff’s guitar work wasn’t like my heroes – Jimmy Page and Rory Gallagher – it was heartfelt and soulful . At that time my rule for guitar solos was quite simple: the more notes per bar it contained the better it was; space, feeling, texture, technique were words that meant nothing to me then.

And then I saw the band play live. Thanks to a long-forgotten support act named Junkyard Angel who over-stayed their welcome and an unrealistic curfew I only saw about 20 minutes of Free’s show that cold night but I was mesmerized: Paul Rodgers’ voice was full of power and suggested he’d had lots of gratuitous sex with lots of eager women which I found fascinating; Paul Kossoff, who I was amazed to find was the son of a famous religious broadcaster, leaned back against his Marshall stack and played so loud that the speakers made his hair move. Neither Simon Kirke or Andy Fraser made much of an impression that night but maybe that was because of the young woman standing beside me who was obviously about to wet herself such was her focus on Mr. Rodgers’ nether neighborhood.

In those 20 short minutes I discovered what soul was. When I subsequently bought their Live album, a recording with all kinds of problems including a guitar that doesn’t work during their most famous song, I studied its every nuance and was struck by the holes and spaces in the music they played. Their simple grooves were so elegant and tight that you could hear the beats echoing around the packed halls in which the record had been taped. What I discovered later was that they were a rock band who played with soul and achieved the ultimate accolade when Wilson Pickett covered not one but two of their songs.

They were also terribly young to be playing music with such force and passion and when they first broke up, with four or five albums under their belt, some of them were still only 21 years old.

They weren’t however perfect. Their lyrics were consistently dreadful. The opening lines of their signature song : “There she stood on the street, smiling from her head to her feet…” is by no means their worst moment, but it encapsulates the essential ingredients of what Free’s music has always represented for me: longing, yearning and sex.

I got my copy of Free “Live at the BBC” yesterday and within seconds I was trasported backwards to that sweaty 20 minute gig only now it’s all tinged with time and knowledge and sadness. Paul Rodgers’ has gone showbiz and sings with Queen, Kossoff’s life descended into heroin hell and he famously died somewhere over the Atlantic in his airplane seat, Fraser is HIV positive and Simon Kirke’s drumming on that Isle Of Wight footage I have of Mr. Big is the most heavenly six minutes of skin-pounding I have ever seen on film.

They were brash, they were young, they were full of ‘the blues’, they were the guys having the sex I wasn’t, they were loud and they were playing music for a living. Wrapped up in a record they were everything I ever wanted to be and I will never tire of hearing them play those same songs over and over.

You’ve all heard All Right Now on the radio a thousand times. If you want to hear rock with a big wedge of soul check out Mr. Big. If you want to hear 4 young men ripping a theatre apart check-out The Hunter. And if you want to experience that longing and that yearning I was talking about listen to Be My Friend. The studio versions are good enough but hunt down FREE LIVE! and I hope you will be transported like I was that night in the 70’s.

Years ago I shot a movie which had an opening scene set in some hot, sweaty South American jungle location. The white guy, an errant archeologist, is running from some dusky Mayan natives who are pissed off because he’s stolen a precious jewel from them.

Which is is why I found myself on December 24th (almost shortest day of the year) in a dusty field in the Valley with the white guy archeologist actor guy and six even whiter and rather plump stunt guys playing the Mayan natives. It’s difficult to say what we needed more of – the dark-brown skin-lotion to make the stunt guys look vaguely dusky or the green spray-paint to make the few sorry trees and bushes in the field look even slightly verdant. Needless to say all we had was a small pot of the former and two cans of the latter.

When we’d broken the ice off the puddles I was ready to make it all look like a jungle and shoot the thrilling opening chase scene. Needless to say I failed. I went home and cried – it was the most miserable Christmas I ever had.

Last night I went to see Apocolypto. No green paint required – Mel Gibson actually was in a rain-forest, a real one, lucky bleeder. And his ‘Mayan’ actors weren’t balding, chubby white folk either – they actually looked the part: savage, noble, frightening. As I watched Mel’s minions running hither and thither I realised that having the right location, lots of time and credible-looking talent isn’t enough. You also need to know what you’re doing – and Mel certainly knows what he’s doing: Apocolypto is as exciting as 2 hours in a dark room gets.

So, if I’d had all Mel’s toys, would my chase scene have been better? A bit maybe, but not much. I was still learning back then and one of the big lessons I came away with that day is that a six foot 200 pound Irish guy with red hair and sneakers doesn’t look like a Mayan native no matter how much brown goop you put on him.

After a break of a number of decades I’m taking French lessons again.

It’s hard to figure out what is more depressing for me – how much I have to learn or how much I’ve forgotten. I’m hoping to shoot a documentary in France next year and so I thought, “now’s the time.” Not much use grabbing at the phrase book as the plane lowers its wheels over Charles de Gaulle is it?

Like most Brits and Yanks my grasp of any language, even my own, is atrocious and I’m full of admiration for the large number of polyglots who roam our streets. Heck even my gardener is bi-lingual. I’ve now been in LA for over 21 years and I can’t speak a word of Spanish. Pathetic.

So, I’m grabbing at my boot-straps and jumping in. Over the weekend I wrote a song in French. I anticipate delivering my first novel in the world’s sexiest language sometime before Christmas…or shortly thereafter.

Adieu.

Either a) Matt Taibbi is an out and out liar and should be locked up for life for spreading malicious gossip about those who rule over us or b) Washington is as corrupt as any third-world, third-rate autocracy and we’re all screwed.

In case you don’t know Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone, Washington is his beat, and his most recent article is entitled THE WORST CONGRESS EVER (RS1012 11/2/06). MT writes in a delightfully sarcastic, biting way and doesn’t pull his punches: “This is a Congress where there is little or no open debate and virtually no votes are left to chance…what you see on C-Span is just empty theater, the world’s most expensive trained-dolphin act.”

Ouch!

There’s no doubting which side of the political fence MT and RS sit but, until I see GWB’s henchmen serving MT with a writ, I’m hearing him say things which frighten the life out of me…

“Despite an international uproar about Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During Clinton’s administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the presiden’t alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list.”

and…

“While Congress did nothing about Iraq, Katrina, wiretapping (or) Mark Foley’s boy-madness…it has been all about political favors, all about budget ‘earmarks’ set aside for expensive and often useless projects in their own districts. In 2000, Congress passed 6,073 earmarks; by 2005, that number had risen to 15,877. They got better at it every year. It’s the one thing they’re good at.”

he concludes…

“Congress has embarked on a never-ending party, a wild daisy-chain of golf junkets, skybox tickets and casino trips.”

There’s more, plenty more, but you’ll have to just read the article for yourself. My point is this: tomorrow is polling day. It’s entirely possible that however you vote the new Congress might not act differently. But it’s just possible that we might be able to send a message and get our Congress back.

Go and vote!

In the meantime I’ll be watching to see if MT gets sued. My guess is he’s telling the truth and no-one will dare to make a comment. How frightening is that?

The lease on my gas-guzzling, man-hood defining, earth-destroying, frankly excessive status symbol has another 14 months to run but I’m already looking out for a suitable replacement.

Replacement vehicle requirements are: Must be fun, sexy and (I hate to admit it) vaguely manly. Must be fuel efficient. Should carry a bike if possible.

Prius – perfect. Except it’s not vaguely sexy or fun and is the automotive equivalent of a Best of Supertramp album.

Smart car. Fun, affordable, efficient and, like a Britney-in-concert ticket, not available till 2008.

That Honda thing? Girl car.

Conclusion: I don’t think there’s a perfect solution to my 4-wheel conundrum out there on the market (yet). And why not? Am I the only guy on the planet who wants to put his ecological money where his mouth is and wants a bit of styling to go with it? Come on people.

I don’t get it. Madonna wants to adopt a kid and the world goes nuts?

Full disclosure – I don’t have kids, never wanted one, and know nothing about being a parent other than it looks enormously stressful, tiring and expensive. Every parent I know says you’ll never know until you have one. I understand it’s very rewarding but all I know is that there are certain chains I wish to break and therefore I’ve opted out.

My point is the poor kid in question has been living in an orphanage in Malawi for his entire life and, until Madge walked through the door, his destiny wasn’t looking so bright that he needed shades for anything but the harsh African sunlight. Now it appears that two people want to spend the rest of their lives saying that they’re his parents and give him their unconditional love – how cool is that?

OK so the down-side is that they’re white, live in a big house in the English countryside and when the kid gets older he’ll have to watch Swept Away and tell his Mom what a great actress she is and tell his Dad what a great movie Snatch was. Frankly that’s a price I think we’d all pay to have someone tuck us in at night and tell us they love us.

I’m hearing people complain that the kid will not grow up knowing what his true culture is. Oh please! Madonna’s on record as saying she’ll let him visit his roots and it’s not like she can’t afford the airfare.

For me the big problem is that I’m sure there are other kids in that orphange in Malawi whose future doesn’t look so good. Poor bastards. What does their future look like? I understand that it appears Madge & Guy are buying their way into this but heck give ’em a break: they’re about to enter into decades of hard work and they don’t have to do this. More power to them I say. I wish I had their heart and their guts.

I don’t think this is about money.

Famously Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a dead soldier, who camped out on GWB’s doorstep last summer and demanded to meet him: she failed brilliantly. Inadvertently, by turning his back on her, Bush fueled the first embers of an anti-war-in-Iraq campaign.

Sheehan’s book, Not One More Mother’s Child, is a collection of blogs, e-mails, speeches and rants. It is frankly repetitive and someone needs to tell her that the use of more than one exclamation mark at the end of a sentence is the kind of thing teenagers do in chat rooms.

On the plus side Sheehan is articluate and driven and, in the book at least, not particularly fond of her celebrity unless it can put her in a place where she can confront this foolish Texan who has done so much damage to our world. As I read her book I ached , not only for Sheehan and her loss, but also for a once noble country which has lost its way and supports aggression and cronyism in the name of peace and democracy.

Sheehan begs that “every citizen of the world do one small thing for peace each day.” God knows we must support her in that. The unsolved issue is that different people translate that idyllic quest in very different ways. For myself I can only say that our continued silence about this government, its hypocrisy and the way it chooses to do business is an extremely dangerous road to continue down.

An e-mail arrived while I was out riding this morning. The e-mail was a suicide note from someone who I’ve known for many years but who I haven’t seen recently. It was a note full of sadness and pain and some details that I didn’t need to know. I was gone about 26 minutes but by the time I opened the e-mail it was already too late to do anything.

The shrink I used to see, a man who didn’t mince his words, once told me his views on suicide and I could see the fury and anger in his heart as he talked. Certainly we are all effected when someone we know passes and even more so when it was preventable. For myself I had no knowledge of the events which led to this morning’s tragic denouement but it still raises the question: what if?

The universal truth is that this act is a cry for help and, when it’s too late, we all say if only we’d known perhaps we could have helped. But if you hurt that much can you deal with the loss of pride that comes with: “I’m suicidal”?

On this sad day all I can share with you is this. If you feel suicidal – don’t do it. I have felt sad and terribly depressed in my life. There were times, years in fact, when I felt unbearably alone, that no-one understood and that it would be fabulous to end all the pain. But I stuck it out and I’ve found contentment and joy in my life that I never anticipated – and it didn’t take drugs or a loss of pride. What it did take was a lot of hard work and the work never ends – but it’s been, and continues to be, all worthwhile.

So now I say a prayer for a dear man who had a big heart and ask myself again: “What if?”

Let’s play word association for a moment. Imagine the images that these wonderful names bring to mind: Sequoia, Yukon, Sedona, Tacoma, Sienna, Silverado, Denali, Tundra, Sorento, Tahoe, Durango. Aren’t these emotive words wonderful? They make you think of majestic trees, national parks, mountains, fragile eco-systems or relaxing holiday destinations in out-of-the-way places.

Sadly they are none of the above. They are all the names of large trucks, SUVs and people-carriers that sit on our freeways gurgling gas. It was once pointed out to me that new housing developments are always named after the very things that were destroyed to create them: Happy Valley, Vista Del Mar, Pleasant Meadows etc. Well now we have the automotive equivalent.

As if this weren’t enough the adventurous alpha-male in all of us is seduced by all the activities we’ll never partake in on our daily commute: Trailblazer, Forester, Expedition, Range Rover, Freelander, Explorer, Pathfinder, Discovery; and the place we’ll never reach: Frontier. And in a last ditch effort to really make that trip to the mall seem extraordinary we belive that we might be a Pilot or a Navigator on an Odyssey and consequently Escape and find Liberty.

Enough already. My 10 year-old original-style Cherokee (indiginous tribe virtually anihilated by rampaging white folk) is dwarfed every-time I pull up beside an Escalade – a vehicle which is usually tricked out with spinning shiny rims, a gold plated roo-bar (odd: kangaroos are not usually found in LA) and rattling with its powerful bass-tweaked sound-system that would definitely intimidate an angry rhino were it to come across one at the junction of Sunset and La Cienega. But at least the Escalade does not hide its shame under a soft mantle of faux tree-hugging. My Webster’s dictionary describes ‘escalade’ as the act of scaling the walls of a fortified place with ladders.

Hum. Take a look at that monstrous, guzzling heap of steel and plastic and shiny crap that will look just dreadful in about five years: do you really think an Escalade would even make a dent in a fort? No chance.

Very likely my next car is going to be something that at least says what it is: Mini. Can you make sure that comes in a bright red with a hybrid engine please? And, seeing as I’ll be leaning on the horn a lot and racing at the lights and generally being impatient in it, feel free to call my model the Dick.

So today another man is dead in Iraq. This time a man died who we’ve learned to hate and, without doubt, this man has been most hateful towards my country and what I have chosen to believe in.

It would appear that this man who died today was the man who beheaded US businessman Nicholas Berg. CNN interviewed Berg’s father to get his reaction. Berg Snr. was appalled that others would think he was happy, and that his son had been avenged. He concluded: “Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don’t get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?”

Once upon a time, while working at Stiff, it was my job to do PR for the release of the new album by Desmond Dekker. The label, it seemed, couldn’t find any new artists to sign so we were issuing albums by acts who’d slipped off the rock n’ roll map in the hope of rekindling their careers.

Des was a quiet man of average build who would arrive in the office wearing a beret to hide his receding hairline. This ordinary man, who’d just ridden up from South London on the bus, was a musical groundbreaker: the first artist to ever have a Number one record on the pop charts with a reggae song – the unforgettable ‘Israelites.’ I was never ever sure if I got the words right but I remember my version of his song which started off: “Get up every morning same thing for breakfast…”

In a word Des was a legend and he’d re-recorded ‘Israelites’ and a bunch of other songs for his first release on Stiff. Cheekily Robbo decided to call the album Black & Dekker!

I rang up the music papers and told them we were releasing Des’s new album. I was trawling for a journalist who would want to interview Des and let the world know his new record was available in the shops. I didn’t expect it to be easy but I never thought it would be that hard. No one was interested – not a soul. I stared at the wall searching for inspiration and decided I would interview Des myself. Heck I might learn something and at the very least it would give the man the impression that we were on the case.

Des appeared in my office, removed his beret, and settled down in front of the tape recorder. My first impression was it was as if I was interviewing an old Mississippi blues man: he was famous, he’d written hit songs, he’d changed the face of modern music and he didn’t have a bean. We went back to his first days in Jamaica and Des explained how he’d worked as a welder during the day and as a musician in his spare time and had recorded his first four songs for a local producer who’d given him pennies for the rights to his songs.

During one summer, the English cricket team came to play the West Indies. Des and another young welder would clock in to work in the morning then slip out of the welder’s yard and run to the cricket ground where the match was taking place. Having no money they climbed onto the roof of the cricket ground and watched the game from there.

By this time Des was an established artist in Jamaica, though of course still as poor and as innocent of the concept of royalties as that poor Mississippi blues-man, and Des’s young friend played him some songs and asked if Des could introduce him to the producer who had made Des a star. Impressed by the young man’s talent Des took him along to the studio and the producer recorded the young man’s songs. When Des asked for some kind of credit for discovering this new talent he was quickly shown the door. Des never received a penny for his kindness.

The young man was Bob Marley.

Des’s life was a collection of many such wonderful tales and, pretending I was writing an article for a paper, I transcribed his interview ready for the albums release. I sent out the article with Desmond’s new album and heard nothing. No journalists rang up wanting to talk with Des and hear for themselves the details of his wonderful stories about ‘It Mek’, ‘Israelites’ and what it was like coming to England as a Jamaican pop star. I was crushed.

But then the newspapers hit the stands. All four music papers printed articles headlined: Man who discovered Bob Marley releases new album. My article was printed word for word in regional papers up and down the country – usually with the local journalists name listed as the writer – I didn’t care: I’d had a pleasant afternoon in my office with a living legend and done my job.

Des died suddenly from a heart attack last week. He was 64. In the New York Times obituary it says that Bob Marley discovered Des not the other way around. Already the truth is being distorted but I’m sure Des would smile wryly and this quiet man would be proud that his life is being celebrated in the world’s largest newspapers.

I’ve lived in the USA for 20 years now and people always ask me if I miss England. I do – and it’s mostly the humour & wit that I find wanting in my new home.

Example. Norman Balon, reputedly London’s rudest pub landlord, has just retired from running the Coach & Horses in Soho. When asking a customer to leave his hostelry he added: “You’re so ugly you’re upsetting the customers.”

Now, where can you find that kind of bile in La-La land?

There’s a report flashing out across the tabloids about The Britster driving around in her white Mini Cooper (nice wheels) wearing curlers and using the baby-seat pointing the wrong way. There’s a picture too…WHICH LOOKS LIKE IT WAS TAKEN FROM A HELICOPTER!

And even if the pic was not taken from a chopper but from a nearby hilltop by some desperate, stalker of a paparazzo with a long lens it just raises the question: ISN’T THERE SOMETHING BETTER FOR THEM TO DO?

I remember Cher telling me a story about how she woke up one Sunday morning to find there was no milk in the fridge. So, because she’s decent kind of human, instead of screaming for a gofer she got in her car and drove to the 7-11 to buy herself a quart of her favourite lactose product. And, like most people do early on a Sunday morning when going to the market, she went in trainers and some old and comfortable clothes without bothering with make-up or an Oscar-ready hair-do.

As she was about to emerge from the market, milk in hand, she spotted, lying in wait like a SWAT team armed with Nikons and Canons, not one but a number of shutterbugs. Perhaps it’s not appropriate to share with the world what her solution was but again it raises the question: ISN’T THERE SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT FOR THESE GUYS TO DO?

Here’s my If-Dick-were-King-for-a-day solution. If you wield a camera professionally and insist on taking intrusive pictures of famous people doing regular things without their permission (and by the way – well done ladies for for driving yourselves and running your own errands – I know a lot of people don’t) then you have to spend an equal amount of time in Darfur, Iraq, Antartica or somewhere very unglamorous doing something equally intrusive but also useful for the common good.

What makes all of this more annoying is that every member of the paparazzi I have ever met has been British. I thought we had better manners than that.
Update: According to CNN.com (May 25th) 60% of Moms think Britney is getting an unfair rap from the Media. It wasn’t just me then.

“I seem to spend my whole life wrestling resentfully with automated switchboards, waiting resentfully at home all day for deliveries that don’t arrive, resentfully joining immense queues in the post office, and generally wondering, resentfully, “Isn’t this transaction of mutual benefit to both sides? So why am I not being met half way here? Why do these people never put themselves in my shoes? Why do I always have to put myself in theirs? Why am I the one doing this?””

So writes Lynne Truss in her new volume Talk To The Hand. The writer of the essential Eats, Shoots & Leaves exclaims: “This book is, obviously, a big, systematic moan about modern life.” before going on a fascinating 200 page rant about why she is annoyed by these scourges of modern society before inevitably concluding “It is time to be plain at last. Rudeness is bad. Manners are good.”

I found it so soothing to read an entire chapter by someone else who is as frustrated as I am when sitting in a quiet restaurant only to have to listen to the person five tables away verbally abusing their better half or discussing personal medical issues or arranging a series of trysts with a number of eager lovers. Don’t they understand this is not appropriate?

I shared her fear of confronting that person who drops the remains of their McDonald’s meal on my front lawn lest I receive that universal disclaimer to “F. off!” before being threatened with some kind of injury. Her conclusion, with which I can only concur, is that “F. off!” has become the universal substitute for “I’m sorry” and is the default, knee-jerk reaction to anything which resembles criticism.

My own personal anecdote in supreme rudeness started when I was once nearly killed on my bike by an enormous SUV which lurched out in front of me in busy traffic before coming to a sudden stop. When I banged on the window of the truck to complain I watched as a small woman struggled to juggle the gears, the electric window, her child, a king-size, hot, foaming latte and her cell phone. “What’s your problem?” she whined when the window finally descended. When I explained that she had very nearly killed me she replied: “Can’t you see I’m on the f***ing telephone?”

Of course the very people who need to will never read this book and that’s just frustrating in itself.

A few weeks back Ms. K gave me 1,000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE (Patricia Schultz, Workman publishing). The title has everything in it doesn’t it? Hope, wonder, death. It also raises the big Q – how will I get to do all that?

On a quick perusal I was delighted to find out that I’ve only got 796 places left to go. Then I started reading it. It’s 974 pages long – there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before I finish the book let alone visit those other 796 places. But on page 16 of the intro I found two very useful comments…

More important than packing a bag full of money pack a bag full of patience and curiosity; allow yourself – encourage yourself – to be sidetracked and to get lost. There’s no such thing as a bad trip, just good travel stories to tell back home. Always travel with a smile and remember you’re the one with the strange customs visiting someone else’s country.

and…

As Mark Twain once said: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did.

Amen to that.

P.S. (a few days later) I’m now reading a travel book by Rick Steve. Here’s his thoughts: Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking. Travel is addictive. It can make you a happier American as well as a citizen of the world. Our earth is home to six million equally important people.

There’s two sentences there that have just sucked the air out of my self-obsessed lungs: Our earth is home to six million equally important people. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking.

If I can master all that by tea-time this will have been a good day.

I walked out of the coffee shop in a good mood even though it was raining. There was a bounce to my feet as the rain dripped from my umbrella and I looked forward to the weekend…and then I saw the guy pulling away from the parking space next to mine was rolling up his window. As I approached my car I could see why. There were ugly, large, foaming gobs of spit all over the side of my car still sliding down the door. I’d never seen so much spit. And what was that? Was it a little puff of steam coming from the particluarly thick hunk of loogie on the door handle?

At the request of my dearly beloved I’d just returned from dropping off a large box of clothing at a downtown charity shop. Was this my payment? No good deed goes unpunished I suppose. I am left here quivering with indignation, wishing the anger would subside, and left with this forever to be unanswered question: Dear Mr. White-Jetta-Driver, was that really necessary?

I’ve raced back to Blighty to shoot a video for Il Divo and Toni Braxton which will become the anthem for this years World Cup. As I stepped of the plane a few days ago I heard a Heathrow worker singing Gene Pitney’s “24 Hours From Tulsa” and found myself singing it for the rest of the day.

Then I heard he’d died in the Cardiff Hilton. They said he’d taken a nap fully clothed and never woke up.

And now it’s a cold Sunday evening and guess where I’m staying? Yup – in the Cardiff Hilton room 423. I wonder if the bed I just took a nap on is the same one where Gene took his final zzz last week? Where does one go to find out information like that?

The year is 1980 and Jona Lewie suddenly and unexpectedly had a hit which meant an appearance, at very short notice, on the Beeb’s famous Top Of The Pops. What Jona didn’t have was a band. Step forward Bob Andrews on keyboards and your humble correspondent on bass guitar. The drummer was Bob’s friend John Hewitt but who those hot babes are I have no idea. Prepare to have your socks knocked off…(Now if I can only find a link to “Stop The Cavalry” or the Snowmen’s “Hokey Cokey”)…

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ4-IY8Iqy0

Today’s news is full of pictures of irate Muslims getting extremely uptight about a bunch of cartoons.

So I am intrigued by the synchronicity of a quote I discovered this week in White Gold another Giles Milton book about the white slave trade in Africa in the 18th century: “(writer Simon) Ockley was fascinated by Islamic culture and horrified at the general level of English ignorance and prejudice on the subject. He…argued that a deeper understanding of Islam was ‘more necessary than the being acquainted with the history of any people whatsoever.’ (In Ockley’s) monumental History of the Saracens…he took a sideswipe at all who ‘contented themselves in despising eastern nations and looking upon them as brutes and barbarians.’

“Ockley’s book included the Sentences of Ali, a collection of maxims by the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law, which Ockley believed to be both instructive and wise…’There is enough, even in this little handful, to vindicate…the poor injured Arabians from the imputation of that gross ignorance fastened upon them by modern novices.”

Ockley wrote these words in 1718.

And now 288 years later we’re still in the crapper. Granted Milton’s book describes at great length and in appalling detail the horrific torture the white slaves were put to while incarcerated in Morocco but the thought remains: What have we learnt in these intervening 3 centuries with all our instant messaging, cell-phones, CNN updates and our global village? Certainly not understanding or tolerance of our neighbours.

I was given “Nathaniel’s Nutmeg” by Giles Milton as a gift in 1999 but only started reading it last week. The tale seems frighteningly prescient reading it now – far more so than if I’d read the book when I’d received it.

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is a historical novel documenting in great detail the excessive lengths the English and Dutch went to during the first half of the 17th century to obtain that most valuable of commodities: nutmeg. At the height of their endeavors the two countries were at war with each other spending millions of pounds and guilders to send troops, merchants, engineers and settlers half-way round the world so that the precious spice could be brought back and sold in spice-hungry Europe. Thousands of men died in the conflict and there were frequent scandals involving imprisonment, torture, hideous untimely deaths, cronyism, mystery illnesses and the fleecing of vast quantities of wealth by a well connected elite at the expense of the common man.

Sound familiar? Look at the daily news from Iraq and the Middle East and by substituting oil for nutmeg all that’s missing is another powerful country for us to be at war with.

The Dutch and the English, both enormously rich and powerful countries at the time, squabbled for decades and eventually it all came down to a small island called Run which is about the length of your average Jumbo Jet runway. After a blockade which lasted four years the Dutch kicked the Anglos off the miniscule plot and had the entire East Indies to themselves. Rubbing their hands together with glee and anticipated security they continued to ship the as-valuable-as-gold nutmeg back to Europe where the owners of the Dutch East India Company grew wealthier and fatter.

In a separate incident a couple of oceans and continents away the English had booted the Dutch from a small settlement called New Amsterdam without a single shot being fired and had built themsleves a shiny new fort. The Dutch were furious.

Finally the squabbling super-powers agreed to talk and when they totted up the score the Cloggies and the Limeys both realised they’d spent fortunes and whined that the other side owed them gazillions in lost trade and stolen foreign real estate but the deal-breaker was ownership of the two small islands: the Limeys wanted Run back and the Cloggies wanted New Amsterdam back.

An agreement was reached. The Dutch got to keep Run and their precious nutmeg trade and the English got to keep New Amsterdam, which they promptly christened New York, and then went off in search of other opportunities to exploit innocent folk and make fortunes in what would become India.

And now 350 years later here’s the update. The English and the Dutch are fast friends and both rather small players on the world stage; Run is an “unknown and unspoiled atoll” in a region whose ‘capital’ has “a couple of stores, a fish market, two streets, two cars…and the former Dutch governor’s residence which today lies empty and abandoned,”; New York is worth considerably more which is of little use to the English as they no longer own it; and, most importantly, nutmeg is no longer a commodity on which huge fortunes and empires are built. The good news is that Holland is full of Indonesian restuarants and England full of Indian ones.

Last year while visiting Houston I noticed to my amusement that the place is filled with Vietnamese restaurants. They say those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Am I being too naive, too pessimistic, too simplistic to suggest that within a century or two oil will be a valueless commodity, that America will no longer be a superpower, and that every street in America will have its own Iraqi Restaurant?

At the end of the tale it is quoted that, “Under King Charles benevolent rule the directors (of the East India Company) were granted…extensive rights: to acquire territory, declare war, command troops, and excercise civil and criminal jurisdiction.” For King Charles read Bush for the East India Company read…well, you know the usual suspects.

I read someone’s christmas blog today which said: “Jesus Christ died 2005 years ago – Get over it!”

I thought this was hysterically funny, laughed out loud and thus felt the need to share it with you. Though…er…if he was born on Christmas Day 2005 years ago and he died at 33 doesn’t that mean he died 1972 years ago? And what incredibly bad luck being born on Christmas Day too. No extra presents.

Anyway what ever creed, color, orientation you may be HAPPY NEW YEAR. And Peace.