minor9th.com - a weblog about life and music by Simon Pearson

La marché française

posted in Food, London

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On the last weekend of July every year, there is a French market in Ealing. Today I bought some pain a l’oignon, as last year, because it’s right nice.

So I put my GCSE French to good practice by asking for the bread in (crap) French, asking how much it was in French, and thanking them for the bread. In French. And every single one of their responses was in ze finest English.

Fair enough, thought I - perhaps they’re just trying out their English on me. Until, that is, housemate Jess visited the same stall separately to buy pastries and conversed cheerily French with the ladies! I guess I just don’t look or sound like a linguist. This does not bode well for a planned 10-day stint en France next month…

That’s all. It’s been a hectic month, and more interesting, word-worthy things have happened, but I have a bee dans ma bonnet about this one…

Belated thoughts on my second trip to Glastonbury

posted in Art, Music, Travel

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What’s brown and sticky? A stick. Oh, and also British music festivals in the summer. Aah Glastonbury and the British weather. You can’t beat it.

So some aspects of this year’s festival were no better than my last experience: planning and successfully executing toilet trips was a thankless task; the food ranged from the sublime to the revolting (never again shall I have a yorkshire pudding at a festival - it’ll be made of discarded flip-flop); the crowd was fairly homogenous despite the “multi-cultural” vibe; good music was plentiful yet people still insisted on playing Zombie Nation at 4am on ghetto blasters; and the mud - which oddly was at its worst and welly-stealingly gloopy when the rain stopped which made me secretly glad of extra rain.

But there was so much good stuff - art for art’s sake, impromptu jam sessions, random acts of generosity, a sense of suspended reality, random encounters with long-lost friends.

And then there’s the music - the sweet music! We tried to avoid the main stages a bit so as not to miss the dodgem diner, the space bar, the rabbit hole and all manner of weird and wonderful tiny things. We saw and heard, in rough order, and with fairly meaningless marks out of 10: Rod Thomas (7), Lana (4), Modest Mouse (4), !!!, Bloc Party (6), Rufus Wainwright (9), Arcade Fire (9), Bjork (8), Andi Neate, Guillemots (4), CSS (7), New Pornographers (8), Calvin Harris (6), The Maccabees, Patrick Wolf (10), Rodrigo y Gabriela (4), David Saw (6), Andy Parsons (9), Bill Bailey (8), Dame Shirley Bassey (10), Manic Street Preachers (6), The Go! Team (9), Radio Luxembourg (9), Gruff Rhys (9).

Two other things I should mention: firstly the guy in the next tent who snored ferociously in a slightly tuneful way (other tenty neighbours referred to him as Dinasour Man), and secondly Giles’ storming impression of the Bassey in a pink blanket when we were in the never-ending queue to leave the site in sideways sheets of rain. Priceless.

A small question about the law

posted in Travel

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When I were a lad, before TFT monitors and widespread broadband, I was a till boy for a well known and avoided high-street retailer. It was a happy time. I wore a stylish red badge and winsome pastel green tie to work. The smokers’ staffroom was nicotine yellow. Occasionally I cleaned shelves. I wrote a diatribe on cash desk etiquette. Happy days.

One thing I learned (aside from how to block out the sound of Billy Big Mouth Bass) was that if you accidentally advertise a product at a lower price than is the case, you must honour the lower price. This keeps customers happy.

So I’m in a situation: I reserved a hotel room and received written confirmation of the price (from the hotel receptionist). Four days later I received a further letter from the head receptionist (as though to underline the gravity of the matter) stating that the room will be 25% more expensive for the duration of my stay, and that they’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Are they allowed to do this? My sad sinking feeling is yes, but you’d've thought their company policy would be a bit cleverer than that…

Grumpy bruised rib

posted in Life

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So I went go-karting. I crashed. It was fun. Then my foot swelled up for a couple of days and got better. Then a rib on my left side started hurting and has been painful since - I can’t lie flat or lie on that side without some considerable pain. Ibuprofen provides some respite but I’m not a fan of painkillers. Exercise is pretty much out of the question, frustratingly. Help!

London 2012: it’s all crazy paving and death

posted in Design, Keeping Fit, London

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I’m no artist, and design is not my thing (this site is testament to that), but in the craze over the 2012 olympics logo (which looks like our old patio on speed), people might overlook the fact that the London 2012 landing page is even worse. It’s a complete horror featuring an eye-bleeding swatch of web-safe-but-not-really-safe colours alongside fonts you wouldn’t expect anywhere other than on a printed suicide note.

Conversely, apart from a quiet mention of the new logo in the news section the main London 2012 site fails to have any serious, strong branding anywhere in sight.

Slightly related:

• Guardian (2004): Olympic games may not benefit London
• Guardian (2007): Olympics are costly, but regeneration is priceless
• Diamond Geezer: “Don’t worry, we’ve checked that the final logo passes all known quality thresholds”
• B3ta: It’s amazing what you can do with no proper image creation software

Ephemera from the North

posted in Life, Travel

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Having spent a couple of days visiting Sheffield and Wrexham, I have returned with:

• A beef and mustard sandwich
• A Sega Mega Drive in original box with one controller and Sonic The Hedgehog
• A 61-key Yamaha keyboard
• A midi hifi system from the shallow depths of 1999 with two(!) tape decks, minidisc *and* three CD changer
• A new set of Fall Out Boy lyrics: #this ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race part-time ostrich
• A new-found appreciation for running in hilly areas
• A mental map of Glossop Tesco
• Some pictures of me wrestling a cat:

All of the above are up for grabs. Drop me a line if you’re interested!

Update: sandwich has gone. Yum.

Eurovision freakshow contest

posted in Music

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You might as well watch the Eurovision song contest with the sound off these days, according to EuroGuru Tim Moore. Winning, apparently, has everything to do with the visual theatrics of each country’s 180 seconds of glory. He should know - he’s written a whole book about it.

Perhaps he’s right: the winner and the runner-up of the Helsinki muso-circus both glued me to the television. Firstly the bottom-slapping antics of Su Pollard and Gary Glitter’s secret lovechild (left), and secondly the is-he, isn’t-she Jack Osborne impersonator from Serbia whose whiny key-change-tastic sopfest romped home to first place. They were mesmerising, and even when you put visuals aside they scored about a million points on our home-made scoresheet. But then, so did Scooch (they even featured a band member with an interchangeable head), and they scored just 19 points. Despite having all the right ingredients to avoid nul points, the poor souls will be flying their flag at half mast for the rest of the week. So perhaps success at Eurovision is always going to be completely random, political and downright bizarre.

And what next for Scooch et al? Will they trade in their remaining traces of dignity like 1992 Irish winner Linda Martin, whose lingering fascination with all things EBU led her to present the results of the televote this year? After their brief stint on European airwaves, will they be sticking to more domestic routes in future? Are there any airlines that fly directly between student unions?

Revisiting the ghosts

posted in Life

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In December I set myself a set of goals for the year ahead. Just over four months in, things are looking OK:

• Get fitter, enter and run a half marathon
  

  I’ve entered the Great North Run on September 30th, and I’ll be running for Sue Ryder care. So far my training schedule hasn’t set the world on fire, but now the weather’s less dubious I’m beginning to ramp up my efforts, helped in no small part by runningahead, a great website which logs running stats on your behalf and graphs them. Neat.

• Take a photography course, and if money permits, buy a digital SLR
  Money’s been tighter than I thought, but I have joined the photography club at work (aaw) and so far been learning all about F-stops and whatnots.
• See more live music (already lined up for January-June 2007: Imogen Heap, Scott Matthews, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Regina Spektor, The Shins, Muse, Metric and Ray Lamontagne)
  Add to this: Cinematic Orchestra, and a trip to Glastonbury, and I’d say things are shaping up pretty well…
• Write a song
  I’m currently keyboard-phobic. I have a beautiful one set up in my room and every time I go near it I worry about how awful I’ll be through lack of practice. It’s a viscious circle.
• Visit Brugges (before June)
  Erm…
• Move minor9th.com to wordpress and write about music more (by April)
  Done!

Not the fortunate ones

posted in London, Music

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Straight men of the world: do you listen to Cyndi Lauper at full volume on the tube? Do you just want to have fun? You big Girl?

Belated thoughts on my first trip to California

posted in Life, Travel

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Some notes on my trip to California:

Stranger than Sherrybaby
So I was watching Stranger Than Fiction on the trip to LAX, and getting quite engrossed in the lightweight story about Harold Crick (played by the affable Will Ferrell) and his love interest Ana Pascal (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) when all of a sudden, Ana - a Harvard dropout who has opened a cake shop - turns out also to be a single mother with a bit of a drug problem. Deep! Mysteriously, she has also become the film’s main protagonist. Will Ferrell and his comic relief are nowhere to be seen. I start to feel a bit uncomfortable. Ana’s situation gets worse when she is forced to go into rehab. 20 minutes pass before I realise that the generously-sized german man next to me leaned on the remote, flipping me from Stranger Than Fiction to Sherrybaby without me noticing. Note to British Airways - don’t put two Maggie Gyllenhaal movies on adjacent channels please (I know that wide-enough seats is rather too much to ask)

Weatlh gradients
So in London you can be walking down one street where the houses are worth millions, turn the corner and end up in some of the roughest areas of the city. The same is definitely true in California - San Diego and LA are both cities where haves and have-nots live on completely different planes. However, nowhere has the difference between wealth and poverty been so raw as in this picture of myself sitting next to the brilliant Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of amazon.com:

Simon and Jeff at ETech 07, originally uploaded by plasticbag.

Braaaaaains
… is what I spent a large proportion of last week saying whilst playing Werewolf. I blame the Sonic Body Pong pioneer, Tikva Morowati (who incidentally has the most infectious laugh known to man)

“That’s out of hand”
Apparently this means “that’s rather silly and slightly unbelievable”

“ridiculous”
… this means “very good indeed, old chap”

EekTech
Normally I consider myself to be reasonably technically au-fait, but this conference blew me away. From the lovely Marc Escobosa who showed me how to use my MacBook like less of a n00b, to Scott Berkun the project management guru, to Danah Boyd whose insight into social networks is incredible - all these people and more made me realise just how much good stuff is out there and how much I need to catch up.

Surfliner
In terms of scenery, this train journey is pretty awesome, travelling through some pretty bleak parts of LA before hugging the coast with largely uninterrupted views of the Pacific. Beautiful stuff. I stopped off on the way back from San Diego to LA at the imaginatively named Oceanside - which is right next to the ocean. The locals sneered at me (pasty and carrying a laptop and a scraggy backpack) and I couldn’t shake my booty with the beach bums and bumettes (is that a word?) but fun was had nonetheless.

My first-ever glimpse of the Pacific ocean, originally uploaded by minor9th.

Hi, my name’s Stereo Mic
Drinking several Surfers on Acid in Rick’s bar on Main St in Santa Monica messed with my head rather a lot. I lay the blame squarely on Kerry, who also surreptitiously got me into watching Top Design, playing Wario on the Wii and cycling along the beach. None of which was half bad at all. Yay Kerry.

Getty outta town
The Getty Center is a billion-dollar beauty, impossibly located a million miles away from sidewalks on a hill overlooking Bel Air (I walked through a very American Dream neighbourhood to get to it). The tour guides are called docents, which means they are more knowledgeable but also more cynical, which was fun.

Santa Monica pier is a busy place at night
Unlike its portrayal by 24 - in Season 5 there’s a bit of a chase on the deserted pier in the 9-10pm hour. I can report that it’s a misleading episode! Loads of people around. All on the ferris wheel, too.

Pacific wheel on Santa Monica pier, originally uploaded by minor9th.

Hollywood history museum
… was slightly disappointing. Sorry guys - but despite being located in the old Max Factor building, and having a hell of a lot of Cool Stuff From Films (including ruby slippers and Brokeback Mountain shirts) I was a bit weirded out. The little old lady at the front desk was way too excitable, too.

I want that one
I’ll forever be baffled by the people who, at baggage reclaim, wander up to the most conspicuous bag on the carousel (you know, the red one with the pink polka dots and pictures of sausages stuck on it), paw the sides, grasp the handle, check the label tag, and then decide it’s not theirs after all. I refrained from collecting photographic evidence as I thought some burly anti-terror policemen would come and bop me on the nose.

So I totally fell in love with the Californian lifestyle. If I could
do something about my ineptitude with motor vehicles and the extreme whiteness of my skin which makes it reflect all sunlight, perhaps I’d have a chance of living there. In the meantime I’ll hang on to fond memories and bask in London’s freakishly beautiful springtime.