massive attack

"though you may not drive a great big cadillac
with white walls
tv antenna in the back
(but) just remember
brothers, sisters,
you can still stand tall..."

i only learned of and heard 'massive attack' this year. and i love them.

back in february, on a rainy st. valentines monday afternoon, when i was in nyc acquiring my work visa from the oh-so-efficacious british consulate (which 2 days later had a bomb explode in a trash can out in front of it), my mate alan k was kind enough to spend the afternoon with me tooling about the east village, doing an impromptu mini irish pub crawl. as we navigated the downpour and puddle-ridden sidewalks, looking for that oh-so authentic bangers and mash experience, we were simultaneously sucked into a (dry!) hole-in-the-wall cd shop. indeed, we're both suckers for a bargain, a slim disc to fill that wee gap in the musical collection. nothing like a good used cd shop. so i asked the clerk for some sort of mellowish hip-hoppy dance or electronica... you know, something i could put on at a dinner party that wouldn't be too much (of course ella and loius being my favorite dinner music), or that i could spin late night when i need something a bit hipper and deeper....

well, the dude was a dude and turned me on to massive attack. he suggested 'protection' - their signature opus apparently - but informed me, rather apologetically, that he didn't actually have a copy in stock, but that the one disc he did have of theirs, 'blue lines,' was still pretty good. i checked out just a few bars of it on his little listening station (w/kick ass headphones) and bought it.

i basically took his word that is was a good album -- even though he was a total stranger. there is something about certain people that you just trust them. combine that with your gut instinct, and 4 out of 5 times you'll win. i won that time, as i love that album 'blue lines.' and sure enough, just a few weeks later, when i was wandering the streets of brussels on yet another rainy monday afternoon at the end of march, i came upon a cd shop and found 'protection' and bought it immediately.... and i love it.

so intriguing where inspiration in life comes from! where your gut leads you.......

i find as i get older, my mind focuses more and more on asking the question...

who/what do you love?

which naturally leads to: what do you love to do?

daily i am reminded of how lucky i am....
to live under my own roof...
to have my own means of transportation (even tho my bike has a flat right now)...
to live in a magical garden (click photo to enlarge)....




and it seems i meet someone new EVERY GODDAMN DAY!

imagine!

tis better than any epidsode of melrose place, where a new character had to appear every episode, to make it interesting.

so my question for you......

what do you love/to do?

do tell me.........................


i just got back from a halloween party. wore a hot, smelly, rubber mask of a ghastly ugly ghoul. made it hard to drink my vodka & lemon soda. and hard to put on any sort of suave airs.

lastly, a shout out and congrats to the 'other' Sox, and their first World Series since 1917 -- sweet!

freefall

freefall was my worst fear for many years.

i finally overcame it at 6 flags, a mammoth fun park in the middle of new jersey, on their freefall ride. i think it was in '93. we called in sick to work, convinced some friends to come along - yes people: that's a shout out to Jenny Klopp (yep, still in hoboken!) and Will McKenna (now playing acoustic bass in LA: who'da thunk it!). and we had a stellar day of playing hooky. a much needed 'mental health day' on a wednesday!

well, as we wandered about with our hot dogs and ice cream, we found ourselves in line for the FREEFALL ride!! gulp. center. focus. "you can do it!" i sucked it up, and did it. 3 times. fuck yeah.

conquered that one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

so now it's everybody's favorite time of the show... The Damn Wicked Pissa Link of the Day....

www.yeeguy.com/freefall
(goes well with Protection, by Massive Attack)


and today's photo of the day. me. on top of Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the United Kingdom. set near the sea, in the highlands of Scotland, she is often shrouded in rain or fog. at only 4,406 feet, i was quite confident she wouldn't be terribly difficult. after all, i'd done 18 4k-footers in New Hampshire, where the all rocks have been carefully placed by god with their sharp pointy ends facing up. however, several people separately warned me not to underestimate ben nevis. well, she did not disappoint! fog, a bit of rain, snow at the summit...i saw the snow near the ledge - the pamphlet had warned against the ledge there. i got close enough just to get a shot of the snow (last thing i would need is freefall off a cliff in a foreign country).

i got onto the trailhead at 5:20 PM and was up and down and back at the hostel/pub at 10:40 PM.... on july 9 in the north of scotland it only just starts to get dark at 10:15pmish! unbelieveable. there were plenty of other hikers on the trail, all very friendly. and i made it back to the pub just in time to get 'last orders.' i love hiking!! (some of you have seen the summit pic before, but it's worth posting. plus here are a couple of my favorites.)

bull at trossach's woollen mill, outside rob roy, scotland


a beautiful loch on he way to ben nevis, july 2005



triumphant. on the summit of ben nevis. july 9, 2005

a love letter

i had rehearsals tonight, with 2 different bands - first a bit playing the "tam" (a sort of a mini-tamborine but without the jingly bits all around it) with sol samba; then on to playing bongos with my nu-ceilidh/folk band, Diddley Dee. so, by the time i cycled home, my head was swirling with rhythms and transitions and endings and syncopations and a bountiful feeling of joy took over, and i needed to write it down. so here is what came out... rough and ready and straight from the hip. hope you like it!


dear rhythms

my blood
you fill my veins
my heart
you beat constantly

my nourishment
you fill me
empty me
and fill me again

the thread of my life
you tear me, shred me
and bind me back together

i sit in the music
and you consume me
i lay in the grass
and you bathe me in beauty

you writhe inside
pulsing hard and loud
yet you wrap me, cuddle me
so softly, sweetly

how deep will you take me?
you tap me and i shudder
slap me and i wonder
how deep can i go

you are all around me
yet i weave in and through you
and you me
a warm wet tapestry
tickling and
tapping along

my attraction is uncontrollable
i hear you and i follow
i feel you and i weep
for joy

your ecstasy swallows me
consumes me alive
then spits me out

and with a burning love
exploding my heart
my body, my soul

i am utterly whole

it's been a circus

what a week.

hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, oh my.

it's recently been full on mobilization across the oxfam organization, to respond to the variety of humanitarian crises around the world. in the gulf coast, in central america, in pakistan-india. continuing food crises in southern africa, and the sahel region of west africa. all while still maintaining ongoing development project work with 3,250 partner organizations in over 100 countries around the world. it's very inspiring to work for an organization that does so much.

what this all means for me is a lot of content to put up on the website. but at the same time our project to move the site into CMS is ramping up. for instance, last week we finished the "migration matrix" - a spreadsheet of EVERY page, link, and image file on the site where we track which pages we'll keep and migrate over into the new system, and which pages we'll chuck.

this spreadsheet will also be used to help us sort out which pages or assets can be auto-migrated. the more things we can get into the new system automatically, the less we need to do by hand - cutting & pasting text from 900 pages of stories, press releases, policy papers, etc is nobody's idea of a fun time.

i don't mean to bore you with the gory details. suffice it to say that work has been sort of like a 3-ring circus.

and so has oxford become, now that the students are back in full session. (for some reason, the term doesn't start until quite late in the season - oct 9! oxford university faq here) i didn't realize how relatively sleepy oxford had become over the summer, apart of course, from the constant stream of tourists... no giant queues at the grocery store or the pub. no hordes of drunken young'uns bumbling out of the pub without looking such that you nearly bowl 3 of them over with your bike while trying to avoid the other 17 crossing the road. they're sort of like pack animals when it comes to the pub scene. in any case, they're back in their full studying and partying glory. if you count all the students, professors, and support staff, it's nearly 30,000 additional bodies on top of oxford's +140,000. but the truth is, overall i enjoy the infusion of energy and i suppose even tradition that they bring to this hallowed and hoary bastion of higher education. for instance, i noticed that the longtime ritual of stealing street signs - of which i managed to gain fair skill and reknown for in my day - was in full swing last friday night!

speaking of circuses, the fabulous st. giles fair was held at the beginning of september in the center of town. it's been an annual event for a few hundred years now, where "showmen and hucksters have gathered" and for which there were several proposals by the end of the 18th century to close it down "as it had become too rowdy and licentious." my office is just up the road from st. giles street, so i saw them setting up on my way to work, and then met some friends there on both evenings of the fair. i mustered up the courage to go on the "free fall" ride but circumspectly avoided the "waltzer" and the other whip-yourself-around-at-ungodly-speeds-so-your-hair-stands-out-straight rides. i also dropped about 12 quid ($20) trying to win a giant 4-foot stuffed Tigger doll for Ardon (my 2 1/2 yr old nephew). in the end, i walked away with a Snoopy doll that was just under a foot long, and an unnamed palm-sized tiger of no cultural significance, for my 9-month old niece Shayna.

here are some pics of the 2005 st. giles fair (click on a photo to enlarge it):

giant toys at the 2005 st. giles fair, oxford

funny juxtaposition

i had to try a hot dog from this booth. big mistake :(

the "meteorite" ride. i just took the pictures!





hope you're enjoying the fall. i miss the furious colors of new england foliage! xoxo

the movies

i love the damn movies. they make me laugh, they make me cry. they make me think, about life, what i am doing, what i'm not doing, and on and on.

still feeling a bit jetlagged from my trip back to the states last week, and given that fact that it was raining too hard to do much outside, i decided that i'd go town on the movies this weekend.

i don't have a dvd player (come on, i live in a frickin stone cottage, for crying out loud!), so that means my selection is limited. plus i like to patronize the smaller, independent video shops (NO blockbuster for me!), which limits my selection further. so i pretty much always go to the videosyncratic store on cowley road in east oxford. i like the clerks there - they're all about mid-twenties, into wearing black t-shirts with unintelligble sayings or logos from punk-looking bands, and every one of them has the driest sense of humor on earth. must be part of the interview process: if you crack a smile while viewing a monty python flick, you're out.

it costs 3 quid for a single film, whether dvd or vhs. and if you rent 2, you get one free. that's the only deal they offer. i've asked about a frequent rental thing, like a rewards program, you know, to develop customer loyalty... but they just sort of shake their heads at the thick american (me). oh, and you get ONE day for new releases and TWO days for everything else. that's it. man, even blockbuster allowed 5 days for older flicks. and every day you're late is another 3 pounds per film (even blockbuster claimed to have got rid of late fees earlier this year). so i usually just get one film; i mean, 3 films in 48 hours is a serious commitment!

however, given the rain, and my needing to just rest my bones, i opted for the trio: saturday night i watched women on the verge of a nervous breakdown and frida, and this afternoon was the marathon long cinema paradiso.

women was the second pedro almodovar film i'd watched in a month, having seen all about my mother recently. i really like almodovar's eye, his camera angles, the shots he chooses. and his sense of humor; he embeds humor even in the deepest tragedy. on the other hand, i never feel like i really know the characters, who tend to be either flippant, potted, or, um, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. but overall, the plot twists are clever, and he provides a multitudinous array of characters desperately seeking some solace somewhere, and so you are sucked in, rooting for this character and now that one. grade: B+

set in spain and spoken in spanish, almodovar's films are subtitled. it was therefore an interesting juxatoposition to then watch frida, a high-budget hollywood (miramax) film, set in mexico, but spoken in english. indeed, some of the songs were sung in spanish - deepening their emotional effect - but somehow i kept thinking the characters should have been speaking in the native language also. there were some GREAT songs in this film, and some excellent dancing. selma hayek kicks absolute ass in the role of frida; great acting - such attitude! - plus she's gorgeous: a winning combination. it's basically a biography; i find it is hard to cover someone's entire life in a measley 2 hours and do it any justice, but the writing here is solid, with a good support cast (geoffrey rush does a good trotsky). the accident scene where frida gets her spine crushed on the bus was rather tim burton-esque, but it worked. in all, a deeply moving film. it is mind-boggling how some people can overcome such pain and tragedy, or rather how they can work THROUGH the pain, transcend it and use it as a source of passion. while i am not such a huge fan of her art style (i like the bold colors but care not for the graphic anatomical elements), frida's is truly an inspirational story. grade: A

side note 1: antonio banderas plays secondary roles in both of the above films. in neither is he given a decent haircut or wardrobe. (better looks for him are here.)

side note 2: here is a pic of an artist whose style i do like. his work was all over this mexican restaurant christy & i ate at and where they served killer margeritas, which was across the narrow cobblestone street from the szabo marzipan museum, in Szentendre, Hungary (about 40 min north of budapest). i didn't write down the artist's name, sorry!

painting of two fish kissing, 13aug2005

in my efforts to catch up films from the 80s, next up was the italian cinema paradiso, an emotionally lush film about films... and love/unrequited love... and about moving away from one's home town and coming back to find... that everything/nothing has changed. very soon into this film the sun had come out, and so i began itching to go for a bike ride. only then it dawned on me that this film was 3 HOURS LONG! there is some setting on the remote for my little 13" Sony combo tv-vcr that for the life of me i cannot figure out how to fix: i pressed something one night and now whenever i watch a video, in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen it displays how much time has elapsed and also a bright little yellow bar indicates how much of the video is left to play. i've hit every button in every combination on that remote, but cannot get that elapsed time and indicator bar to diappear. (no, i don't have the manual either.) anyway, i loved paradiso, despite its length, though did feel it could have been shorter or chugged along a bit faster at times. nevertheless, it was very moving, with some great dialogue. the cute, curious, impish young Salvatore/Toto is irresistable, and his mentor Alfredo equally charming. a touching scene with the older salvatore and his mom; family can be great for their thoughtfulness and unconditional love. i laughed, i cried. grade: A-

before this last film ended, as i was mentally preparing for a late afternoon cycle down the two path along the Thames, a friend called and invited me, sure enough... to the movies! oliver twist. well, just to keep up with some new releases, i went along. surely i read the book as a kid, but this rendition is fresh enough, nailing with precision the feel that Dickens portrays of the streets of london and their swirling tug of war between good and evil. with some fabulous acting by (and makeup on) ben kingsley... i didn't even recognize him until his second or third scene! i didn't remember a dog having a central role in the original story, but there is in the movie, and that scores instant points in my book. and sure enough, it's the dog that saves the day! i looked through all the breeds on the akc site, but can't quite figure out what breed that dog is. he looks most like a bull terrier, but that site says they're between 28-38 lbs, while the pooch in the movie is more like 58-68 lbs. anyone know what breed it is?? (i think it is also the same breed of the dog in Bombon el Perro, an Argentinian film out earlier this year, which is unfortunately not listed in the IMDB site! now what's up with that?!)

note about the movie houses in england: they serve 2 kinds of popcorn: salted and sugared. i tried the sugared once. yuck. it's like bob dylan's voice, you'd need to acquire a taste for it. (which oddly enough i have.)

speaking of animals, here's a majestic kitty spotted on my way to the cinema...

majestic kitty, 9 oct 2005 (click to enlarge)

the season stops here

i had to watch.

i couldn't help myself.

even from 3,267 miles away (which is, as i just found out, using this handy distance converter, 5,258 kilometers)... i tuned in on my laptop to the "Gameday" feature on the redsox site and watched, slowly, pitch by painful pitch, the eternal-underdog-even-though-they're-the-defending-world-champion boston red sox go down in the last game of their season, losing 3 straight games to the chicago white sox.

well, i am a little numb, but tonight we put the 2005 season to bed.

162 games. that's a lot of games.

just 2 in the post-season. that's boondoggle.

or maybe it's just crap.

or maybe i am just BITTER!!!!

or maybe i've gotten a little used to boston area teams winning these last couple years, and i need to take a chill.

ok. since we're onto numbers tonight, let's look at it another way.

the red sox had the best average in all major league baseball (that's funny: the "best average"), hitting .281 for the season.

they had the best on base percentage, at .357 (whatever that means).

they had the most walks, at 653, and the most RBIs (863), the most runs (910), the most hits (1579), and the most double-baggers (339).

in fact, if you add ALL their stats TOGETHER, they had like 20,886.419 of EVERYTHING COMBINED..... pitching included (though to be brutally honest, i sorta wish we could have excluded their pitching from their season this year). yeah, in fact, in retrospect, they kicked some serious butt!!

those Soxies are still winners in my book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.....ok, now it's that time of the show where we unveil the...

CRAZY SITE OF THE DAY

!!Advance warning: this site is not for children!!

Big Carp pictures from around the world

i think my favorite is Marco from Croatia, and i quote: "Catch and release,it's a great feeling for you and for the fish too"

i am not sure how it is that so many of the photos seem to be nowhere near a body of water.

in fact, looking all those men standing in the backwaters of the world holding all those big fish makes me a bit queasy.

oh well, happy fishing. (my dinner was grilled chicken tonight, w/mac & cheese & broccoli. yum.)

bosom

ok, now that i have your attention...

i am NOT drunk. in fact, i've had but 1 drink in the last 4 days: a delicious, cold, fizzy Sam Adams (a "pint of lager") at the airport bar at Logan, while watching the Sox get their asses whooped by the 'other' Sox.

i would probably have watched more but i had to catch my flight back to heathrow, which was just as well, as the score then was 9-2... not in favor of the RED Sox. just before take off they announced the score for all to hear the embarrassing results: 14-2. argh.

today is their off day, travel day; the Soxes will play at fabled fenway tomorrow eve. in that oxford is 5 hours ahead of boston, it'll be tough for me to find someone that has cable AND that is willing for me to jump around their living room screaming at the poor Red Sox pitching, and possibly spilling beer inadvertently on their couch at the same time.

pic from my last bday. do i look like i would spill beer on someone's couch?






when i was loading my 86 bags onto the bus from the airport back to oxford, some young dude, a nice college kid, innocently asked me who won the game. still stinging from the defeat, i replied, "the sox lost," adding in the terrible score for emphasis. he said, "which sox?" i hardly understood the question -- there is only ONE SOX TEAM, dude.

so now, like all members of Red Sox Nation, i am saying to myself: hell, they've dug themselves out of holes in the past!

i was home for 6 days last week, and in typical fashion, crammed the time full of seeing friends and family. not hours off the plane when my friend Ted called with a ticket to the game at fenway. surely one of the high points of the week was my best mate Dave getting hitched to the lovely Shira, with all the obligatory pre- and post-get-togethers, mostly at friends' houses, where we played music for hours, digging on songs we used to jam many years ago... such JOY!! Jerry, Julie, Steve, and Eric wacking out some sweet 'bone solos! at Mike Getman's we jammed acoustically, and his 8 year old son brought out own his guitar and strummed along. kid was great: very relaxed and good rhythm.

in all, i was blown away by how amazing it was to spend time just chatting with my folks, and hanging out with my old friends. (thanks, Pam, for driving out to Waltham to hang out in the lobby of the Westin Hotel!)

the old gang, singing a slightly bumpy rendition of our elementary school song "Juniper Hill We Love You"




and i got to have rosh hashanah dinner with my family. what a treat, to have mom's soft and tasty matzo balls (i like 'em hard, everyone else likes 'em soft -- what can i do?), sumptuous chopped liver, perfectly roasted cornish hens, and yummy brisket... and did i say, mom's matzo balls!!! yes, truly a treat! manna from heaven!


nothing like a home cooked meal, especially for the holidays



while the new england fall colors were not quite out in full force, they were starting to turn. and with the weather warm and dry, feeling like indian summer, driving through the lush countryside was nirvana.

typical new england farmhouse







so basically i spent a glorious week in the heart of red sox nation, in the kind embrace of mother nature, and deeply ensconced in the warm, wonderful bosom of family and friends.

happy new year!