As many already know, we have been adopted by a nonhuman companion of feline origin, one Zosi (surname unknown) of "tuxedo" appearance. It is my sincere hope that this blog will not degenerate into the ravings of a lunatic cat lady¹, but now let me post some pictures and accompanying text which may predict otherwise:

Zosi is very friendly although it's hard to get her to look straight at a camera, and when she does, it may be with a slightly surly expression:


Her favorite spot in the whole house is sleeping in the lap of Serge, our large stuffed monkey (who doesn't seem to mind the company at all):


And she especially likes high places, like the tops of doors (photo not available due to uncooperative behavior) or, as pictured here, balancing precariously over a stairway:


¹ Although it is my understanding that one must be female, and live with more than simply a single cat, in order to be a "cat lady", I also understand that the admission of a cat to a household formerly occupied by zero (0) cats can be a gateway to living in squalor surrounded by tens if not hundreds of cats, and wearing only a bathrobe or housecoat at all hours of the day.

In my previous post, how could I have forgotten Rufus Wainwright?! It was an honest mistake, honest! I'm not trying to keep my enjoyment of Rufus a secret. After all, his show (15 April) was one of the best I've seen in a long time. It's no trouble at all finding a huge bag of words to review Rufus with: he seems to be quite the music-section darling at the moment. So here's a good collection from which to write your own review:

louche -- Broadway -- heartfelt -- (Weimar) cabaret -- flamboyant -- operatic -- grandiose -- tragic hero -- opulence -- eccentric -- lush

Additionally, it seems that every review (or at least feature article) must make reference to his battle with crystal meth addiction, and also the song his father (Loudon Wainwright III) wrote about him when he was young (1975's "Rufus is a Tit Man", which is, you know, funny, cause Rufus is, like, gay and stuff).

This month has been an exceptional one when it comes to live music, even though I may not have attended as many gigs as I have in past years. I can't think of any other month in which I've seen so many good shows, and there are still 3 more to come before the month is done (with a fourth on the first of May). Rather than review them all myself, I'll list them (I am a lister, after all) and provide a bag of words plagiarized from other reviews of each (or made up by me). Pick a few words, shake, and write your own review (or preview if it hasn't happened yet!).

5 April - Joe Pernice (w/ James Walbourne): subtle -- poet -- fleeting -- mystical -- sedate -- low-fi -- melancholic -- classic -- jangly -- Americana. I think I need to add "beard" too as it was a bit of a surprise to see.

6 April - Dog Roses at What's Cooking: Americana -- rollicking -- harmony -- dark suits -- acoustic -- indie -- des hymnes à tous les amoureux solitaires

11 April - Danny Barnes (supporting, and playing with, Tim O'Brien) - bluegrass -- banjo -- instrumental improvisation -- barking mad -- gritty -- jazz -- Bad Livers -- fun -- twang -- Americana

18 April - Arlenes - country -- twang -- London -- California -- honky-tonk -- Americana -- honesty -- heartbreak -- exquisite

24 April - The Messengers of God - country -- dark -- soothing (?) -- harmony -- poetic -- holy -- unholy -- rollicking (No sign of "Americana", though I'm sure it's just because of the dearth of reviews so far. These guys were a real surprise & I hope to see them again soon)

Today, 27 April - Drive By Truckers - three guitars -- southern -- rock show -- whiskey -- truck stop -- gothic -- aural assault -- common man -- bitterness and despair -- Americana -- magnificent (I'm looking forward to this one perhaps more than any of the others, but I'd better bring my ear plugs)

29 April - Major Matt Mason USA - indie -- guitar -- low-fi -- songwriter -- NYC -- ramshackle -- genius -- DIY -- visionary

30 April - Broken Family Band: bag-o-words review already appears in my previous post about them.

The lifts (elevators) in our department have long been the site of a small-scale graffiti battle. It's not gang-related nor does it include tagging, bombing or any of the other elements usually highlighted in anti-graffiti publicity. For the longest time the graffiti consisted of swastikas and the initials "BNP" (an acronym possibly ambiguous to some, but definitely notorious in the UK ¹), scratched into the painted surfaces. Subsequent anti-Nazi graffiti efforts converted the swastikas into squares, scratched out the BNPs and added reference to the ANL (Anti-Nazi League, rather than my initial false impression). Which were in turn scratched out, new swastikas and BNPs added, and so forth. But then a new player entered the game: BUILDING MAINTENANCE. Suddenly all the pro- vs. anti- Nazi images were gone, replaced by some large blobs of grey paint. Unfortunately this paint was not applied uniformly, so it simply provides a blank canvas for new graffiti. Which appeared yesterday, in a slightly different theme but just as tasteful.

Scratched into one of the lifts are the two words "POOFS" "FAGGOTS" (no rebuttal has yet been lodged, but it's just a matter of time as graffiti seems to breed graffiti). I wonder what the Nazis think of this development.

¹The British National Party's current election manifesto (launched in "secret" on St. George's Day, PDF version here) calls for guns! guns! guns!, an immediate halt of immigration (double if you're not white), instant deportation of those who violate immigration rules (I guess they'll use Star Trek-style transporters to beam foreigners out into space)... but worst of all, they promise compulsory musical training for all children between the ages of 5 and 14. The nation would be overrun with pasty white kids, AK-47 in one hand, flute in the other, probably playing out-of-tune marches at all hours of the night.

I've made the move to a single-speed bike, but no way would I take the extreme step of riding a fixed-gear bike for my city commute. A friend of mine has gone that route, though, and has been commuting "fixed" for the past three weeks or so (I wish him luck).

I can see why fixed-fanatics consider it the ultimate cycling experience, and why it's so popular among urban messengers (totally responsive and light, fewer moving parts to break down, etc), but as a commuter ride it strikes me mainly as macho posturing. Becoming one with your bike is a good thing in theory, but it's no good if the singular bike-human can't stop in time (I've needed to make a fairly quick stop about once a week). Perhaps I'm simply ignorant (having only passing acquaintance with fixed gears), and I'm definitely not so macho. I don't think I'll try it on city streets any time soon (and I haven't even mentioned SEVERED FINGERS, something mentioned a little too frequently in discussion of fixed-gear bikes [Please forgive me for not including hyperlinks on this last point]).

This week I became a new man, at least in bicycling terms, as I'm the proud owner of a new bike -- at least new-to-me. I've made an important transition in the world of cycling, not just going from old bike to new, but also in going from 21 speeds to just one. Yes, I've joined the single speed revolution and bought one of these, a Cannondale 1FG:


Fortunately mine does not come with the faux-graffiti Cannondale stickers, but otherwise quite similar in appearance to the one pictured. It's set up with a 32/12 gear ratio (spare rear wheel has a 16 cog in case I want to set it up for more difficult off-road situations), and the largest tires I've ever had on a bike (26x2.5) which gives me an effective wheel size of something like 80". Which seems reasonable for tackling the (few) hills I encounter in my city rides, and OK for the flats (more spinning than I'm used to, but perhaps a little exercise is good).

It's a great bike, but I'll have to keep it inside -- it might as well have a giant spotlight and illuminated sign saying "STEAL ME".

I grew up in a fairly conservative church -- conservative enough that (at least for a while) there was a wall display of Jack Chick cartoon tracts. These tracts come in quite an impressive range including all sorts of tough guy themes, some that have very specific religious targets, as well as some timely issues.

Their bread and butter, however, is "This is Your Life", which tells the tale of a successful man struck down in the prime of life, and has been translated into more than 100 different languages. To me it's most interesting to see the different depictions of "success", depending upon the language. The standard image of success features a Corvette, a cardigan/turtleneck combo, a cold drink, a pipe, and a TV showing some sort of hostage drama:


EDIT NOTE: I guess I cross-linked to Chick's images and they don't approve, since now my images are broken. As it would be a little sneaky to download their copyrighted images and post them myself for the purpose of ridicule, I'll just leave my comments here, although they don't make much sense without the accompanying images. Sorry

This image is used (with translated text) for many languages including Albanian, Esperanto, Euskara, Luxembourgian and a host of others (including, strangely, Inuit). However, other cultures get different images of success:


In Waray-Waray (a Phillippine language) success is family and drink;


The Vietnamese guy (like other east Asians, although his face may be slightly altered) may not have a family but he's got a serious car;


In Swahili (and most other African languages) it's all about romance (and the lady gets the drink);


The Arabic (and Farsi) guy gets the English Corvette, costume and the same TV show, but not a pipe (or a razor);


In Bengali (and other languages of India), it's enjoying drinks and canapes with another couple;


But you can't beat Fiji (or Tahiti): chilling out on a deserted island with a lady, a bottle, and a nice Hawaiian shirt.

They have one thing in common, though: they all get chopped down by Death, having only time to utter something akin to the English "Whaaa?"
:

It seems that Google has launched a new map service; since I am a map obsessive I thought I'd play around with it. One of its features is route planning, and with London's tangled streets and multiple possibilities to get anywhere, London routing is a good test.

Therefore I am extremely delighted to discover that Google has discovered a quicker route from work to home (5.1 miles) than I ever imagined: clocking in at an estimated 9 (nine) minutes. Quite an improvement over some other sites which give the same route, only slower (18, 13 and 15 minutes respectively [I should also point out that the directions given by the AA site are much clearer & comprehensive than any of the others]). I guess driving in the Google lanes is much faster.

That route is probably the quickest by motorbike or car (although I'd be extremely surprised to get there in less than 20 minutes any reasonable hour of the day or night), although probably the most dangerous possibility where cycling is concerned. A future post will document my obsessive search for the "optimal" cycle route, in which I attempt to minimize both traffic and travel time. Which will prevail?

Yesterday we spent a good chunk of the day working on an erection: a 6x8' shed in a friend's back garden. Despite some initial concerns about the level of precision and the likelihood that the afternoon would culminate only in misery, construction was a success. It went from something like this to something rather like this.

I am among the most inept when it comes to DIY efforts, although this time I only caused a few problems: treading on an infant's toy (hey, it was underfoot!) and kicking a pint glass across the garden (see "treading on an infant's toy"). After this experience I decided to compile a list of important things to remember, should I ever find myself in charge of constructing an outbuilding.

1. Make sure the ground is level.
2. Make sure the ground is solid.
3. Use your equipment safely.
4. Keep the baby off the roof!
5. Don't forget the phone number of your favorite personal injury law firm. (Inclusion of this link does not imply endorsement of said personal injury law firm, nor does it offer any critique of said personal injury law firm, but only to recognize its existence as a personal injury law firm and, as such, apparently relevant to the domain of personal injury).
6. A good shed is above the ground, not below it.
7. If your shed looks like this you're probably on drugs. Why not have a nice sit down for a while?
8. Don't put a screw in your nose. It's never as funny as you think it will be.
9. Show up late and maybe someone else will have finished it already.

Rather than tread well-traveled ground with a listing of high-rated pubs, I thought I'd wander off in the other direction and give a sort of reckoning of the other end of the scale across north London. I'm sorry to say these may not be close enough to each other for a "pub crawl of misery" to be practical, although intrepid readers are welcome to try.

The measure of misery is taken from user ratings at Beer in the Evening, as are the comments (below). Reviews are excerpted from fancyapint. In order to qualify as "miserable" a pub must have an average rating of 2.0 or below (on a 0-10 scale) with a minumum of five raters. Areas covered are London postcodes beginning with "N" (hence, N and NW).

The pub crawl starts with some fairly innocuous pubs (at least according to visitor comments) and degenerates rapidly.

Miserable North London pub crawl

Pub name	Location	Rating	Comments [sic]	(Partial) Review
The George	Belsize Park	1.7	Dull, very dull.	Sorry, but there's really no reason to drink here....The George has the ambience, but not the prices, of a student union.
Belsize	Belsize Park	2.0	Turned a decent pub into something ghastly.	[FP disagrees]: Agreeable and vaguely old-fashioned boozer that does gastropub food without being unnecessarily pretentious.
The Lansdowne	Primrose Hill	1.6	I got so annoyed by this place that I started pissing up and down the walls of the toilet. This is something I should be ashamed of, but I don't.	Expensive, conceited and soulless. There are better in the area. In fact, they're all better.
Belushi's	Camden	0.6	this pub can gurantee a fight every friday/saturday night because of the youngsters drinking smirnoff ice and thinking they are better than others, best avoided	[not listed]
Blackstock	Finsbury Park	1.0	This is one nasty pub. Smells of cleaning fluid. Fortunately there are 2 doors so when you walk in you can continue straight ahead and walk out the otherside.	An often intimidating place packed with locals and drunks - give it a swerve.
White Lion Of Mortimer	Finsbury Park	1.8	On a busy night, drunken arguments frequently break out. If the participants are not too drunk to walk, these often spill outside providing street entertainment for the passerby's. Durning the day, reminisent of a funeral home where the corpses are still alive.	[not listed]
The Fox	Palmer's Green	1.0	full of kids who think they are gangsters. Horrible beer and a generally rough crowd.	A fixture on Green Lanes when all around was still fields, this one's been Breezer'd up to pull in a youngish clientele.
Green Man	Muswell Hill	1.6	My first 5 minutes inside there and there was a fight between 2 kids, someone was being sick in the toilet and the staff ignored me...	The place seems to fulfill a purpose as a pre-club hangout for the local nitespot behind the pub.

So there you have it. Start in Belsize Park where the pubs are badly rated because visitors feel they deserve better in that area, wander on down to the lowest rated pub in Camden, then a couple stops in the vicinity of Finsbury Park before making your way to the Fox, then the Green Man (before clubbing the night away in aforementioned "local nitespot", apparently Muswell Hill's own Enigma).

At lunch today I was passed by a convertible blaring music at top volume. Not an unusual event in itself, especially given the (momentary) glimpse of springlike weather, but the song seemed spectacularly inappropriate for cranking up loud and driving around town:
My Heart Will Go On, by Celine Dion (I refuse to link either of them).

But then, I started thinking maybe there are worse songs to crank up loud (I could make a John Cage joke here but, erm, whoops, I guess I sort of did), but I couldn't think of any that were definitely bad enough (after all, at a certain point one crosses the border into the land of "so-bad-it's-good"). Any suggestions?

As I mentioned in a previous post I have been suffering a long-term tip-of-the-tongue state. And just like that, the name suddenly came to me while I was working on something entirely unrelated (PDF).

Without further ado, I can reveal that the artist's name is GEORGE FORMBY. It took me nearly three weeks to to come up with the name. I thought his names had two syllables each (wrong, right), that his first name is old-fashioned (right), his last name is very English (right), and his first name does end in the "long e" sound (right). Typical of TOT experiences, I experienced a lot of frustration as the TOT continued, and its resolution came out of nowhere, rather than a concerted effort to retrieve his name (including thinking of "old-fashioned English names" in the hope that it would jump out).

Although I don't have time to write more about Mr. Formby, more information can be found in a BBC obituary, a biography or of course the official page of the Formby Society.

Following the removal of Routemaster buses from London's bus route #19 (see previous post) I thought it might be nice to see a map of the London routes still covered by Routemaster buses. So here it is:


(Please click on thumbnail for a very large version).

Routemasters on the "blue routes" (14 and 22) are scheduled to be phased out on 22 July 2005.

As I walked home from the bus stop last night, I was approached by a man in Hassidic attire for a brief, confusing conversation.

He: Excuse me, but are you Jewish?
Dunce: I'm sorry, I'm afraid not.
He: OK, thank you, have a good weekend.

And with that he walked on, leaving me puzzled. What could he have wanted? What would he have said if I had answered "yes"?

Maybe he wanted to ask for directions? I'm quite used to strangers asking me for directions, no matter where I go. But it seems that asking directions surely shouldn't depend on the faith of the direction-giver, unless maybe he was looking for a synagogue or some other place known only to Jews. Somehow I doubt it -- I don't think I look like someone who knows his way around the local synagogues.

On the other hand, an unexpected conversation from a total stranger often leads to a plea for money, or some sort of distress scam. But surely a well-dressed Hassidic gentleman would not be begging for money or attempting some sort of fraud. And in the unlikely event that he was, surely he would be willing to target a non-Jew.

Maybe some sort of "reform to Orthodox" evangelism of some kind? I've been approached by street evangelists of various sorts through the years, but I've never had the feeling that this is a common Hassidic practice.

I considered various other possibilities, less and less plausible, before finally resorting to Google (without much hope of success -- I mean, how likely is it that googling "Are you Jewish" will turn up anything besides things like "Which Annie Hall character are you?" and a load of lunatic hogwash).

Imagine my surprise when I found this from the Jewish Virtual Library. Quoting from the linked source (wikipedia link added by me): One Jewish group, the Lubavitcher Hasidim, have made a particular effort to promote the mitzvah of Tefillin among Jewish males. They often set up vans, known as Mitzvah Mobiles, in neighborhoods frequented by Jews, and ask men who pass by: "Are you Jewish?" If the answer is yes, they continue: "Did you put on Tefillin today?" If the person says, "No," they invite him inside the van. First they put on the box that goes on his arm (for right-handed people, the Tefillin go on the left arm; left-handed people wear them on the right arm) and wrap the strap around the arm seven times. Then the other box is put on his head. They lead him in the recitation of the blessing over the Tefillin, and in certain other major prayers, such as the Sh'ma.

Thank goodness that I told him the truth (that I am not Jewish). I don't think I would have been comfortable with a stranger inviting me into his van -- especially if I'd just lied about being a member of his religion.....

On the first of April, we decided to experience the last day of operation of classic Routemaster buses on one of our local routes. These buses are being phased out across the city in an effort to modernize, and now it's the 19 route's turn.

Around 6pm we arrived at Finsbury Park tube station and joined a small group of bus enthusiasts waiting for a suitable bus. The first was a modern-style double-decker bus, although we saw our ride waiting in the wings:

We boarded on 6:08 and rushed to the upper deck where we chose the "love seat", a double seat at the very back of the bus, next to the curved staircase. By 6:19pm we had reached the Angel and the bus was full enough that passengers were turned away. More passengers were turned away at 6:30 when we reached Mount Pleasant (formerly Coldbath Fields). Some begged the conductor to let them on but to no avail; the bus was so full that unpleasant grinding noises issues from the suspension at every dip, bump and turn.

Only a few minutes later (6:33 to be exact) we came to a halt in a traffic jam in Holborn; where it was announced that we expected to wait for 15-20 minutes due to an RTA at Hyde Park for which an air ambulance was required. RTA? RTA? RTA? Me either. In any event, the bus quickly emptied out, except for the most enthusiastic of enthusiasts.

As promised, it was 7:00pm by the time traffic finally broke and we were able to move smoothly down Charing Cross to Shaftesbury Avenue where we were joined by two more Route 19 Routemasters. We passed through Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park without incident as the bus gradually refilled to capacity.

At 7:32pm the bus made its final stop on the run, just across Battersea Bridge, and I was the last one to alight from it before it cruised round the corner to the bus garage where a small group of enthusiasts were taking pictures.

Although our ride was nowhere near the last Routemaster on the 19 route, and we spotted few of the special buses running that route in honor, we were happy to have been part of the last day. Some excellent pictures of the final day of the 19 Routemasters can be found here (day) and here (night).

Readers who are acquainted with me are probably aware that I have been involved in research on "tip of the tongue" states (research article in PDF format). So it's especially interesting to me that I have been experiencing a fairly long-running "TOT" which has eluded me despite daily attention. Rather than look up this word from the numerous details I have (it's just a simple Google away at this point), I thought I would attempt to resolve it using only my own memory (so please don't reveal his name in the "comments").

The word in question is the name of a (deceased) British entertainer, best known for the song "When I'm Cleaning Windows" (and numerous revised versions) and his use of the "banjulele" or "banjolin" which looks like a small banjo and is played by frantic strumming (ordinarily I would include a link here but I'm afraid searching for a URL might inadvertently reveal the answer). In fact this artist seems to be the UK's best-known banjo player (at least to many people). His name was frequently called out by some of the surly, drunken locals at the Golden Lion (previous site of Come Down and Meet the Folks), most often when a musician was playing a downbeat, moody, dark or generally unhappy song.

I can pinpoint the start of this TOT: the evening of Wednesday 23 March, in a discussion with Opal Hush. We were talking about the upcoming UK tour of Curtis Eller ("New York City's angriest yodelling banjo player"). On a previous visit, Mr Eller expressed some confusion about this artist ("why do people keep asking me if I know any of his songs"), and we were wondering whether his repertoire might include a song by this artist this time around (It makes sense; Mr Eller's lyrical content, musical style and general manner would fit well with the time-frame of this artist, ie, pre-WWII).

As of today's date (nearly two weeks later) I have still not come up with this artist's name despite having its absence come to mind at least daily since that time. Perhaps uncharacteristically for TOT experiences, I have almost no intuition about the form of his name: not the first letter, not the kind of name, nothing. I have a vague feeling that his first and last names both have two syllables, that his first name is old-fashioned and his last name is very English, but none of those are much of a stretch.

I will update this entry again as the TOT develops (or ideally is resolved). If you make any comments before I've posted a resolution, please do not reveal this artist's name, nor give any clues about how his name sounds (no letter clues, no sounds like clues). Biographical or historical information is welcome, however.