Competition Time (Part 2)

There is still one Drunken Master Sampler up for grabs. The four respondents (plus Dezik) will be getting their CDs very soon. If you want a sampler, all you have to do is post... Tracklist/reviews to follow.

Is there anybody there?

I do not know if anybody is reading us. I do not know, after all, if this can be interesting to someone.When we conceived the idea of doing this it looked to me a very nice excuse for everybody to know the others in a different way.
It is ok for me if you think that this is childish and you have a thousand better ways to lose your time. I can even accept to some extent that you do not feel like collaborating because you are lazy. But maybe you just think you do not have anything interesting to say, and we cannot agree here with you. Just turn around inside yourself and point at whatever amuses you, charms you, disgusts you and let us now, because probably whe have not realized yet about its existence.
We do not ask you too much. Write 10 lines every week, five if ten is too much. Tell us which thoughts invaded you when you where strolling along the vegetables section of your usual supermarket.Make a list of your favourite sweets and describe for us their flavour. Which conversations did you hear in the tube or bus this morning? Or if everybody was silent, what do you think they were thinking about? Post a link to your favourites websites, hang in these virtual walls your favourites paintings and photos. Tell us which music we should be listening to...WHATEVER!!!!!!! Your silence will mean our (yours and mine) defeat.

(If you have any doubt about how to use this site just ask Luke or Sergio)

Autumn is here

Hong Kong rain

Three weeks ago a Western naked woman was discovered walking aimlessly around the outskirts of the airport of Hong Kong. It was raining that morning. She was mute and her face was expressionless. When they found her I was getting ready to go to bed here in London, or maybe I was watching TV. She does not know anything about herself, she simply cannot remember anything at all. Now they say that, appartently, she is Swiss. They could not find her clothes, but they are sure that she has not suffered any kind of violence. I wonder which is her favourite colour, and whether she has some pet that is waiting impatiently to be fed.
She does not move, and stays all the day looking through the window of her hospital room, mumbling what it seems to be a man's name...
I do not know if you noticed those people that came into the English Room the other day. They were two, both of them wearing a grey suit. They did not stay too long. Some questions about the woman and then they dissapeared through the back door. I am afraid I was not very helpful. The only thing I could tell them is what I say to everybody, that I cannot remember anything before that rainy day when me too I was found in the airport...

If you are in South London, why not head down to

THE SUNDAY FISH FRY: A NEW ORLEANS MUSIC ALL DAYER


In aid of the victims of Hurricane Katrina

To be held at:

A Bar Too Far, 40 Mitcham Rd, London SW17 (Tooting Broadway Tube)
Sunday 25th September 2005 from 2-10.30pm.

Suggested donation 3 - 5 pounds

All money raised to go to New Orleans redevelopment charities.


Expect sounds from
Irma Thomas, Eddie Bo, Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey,
The Meters, Robert Parker, Dr John
and many lesser-known greats!

New Orleans CD Raffle, wooden dancefloor, special guest surprise DJs and food available! Not to be missed, come and show your support for a wonderful city!

Advertising

Two wonderful Internet resources you may wish to download (if you use broadband) are:

Mozilla - those of you at UK univeristies in the 90s may remember Netscape - this is the new, sexy version. Far more stable and safer than Internet Explorer, and with tabbed browsing (try it - you will like it).

Skype - free user to user phone calls via the Internet. Speak to your loved ones for nothing.

There are more questions

than answers. Nothing about the multiple tranliterations and translations of Belarus, though.

Competition time

Drunken Master Hifi sampler CDs for the first 5 people to post replies to this message. (I hope 5 people read this post). No entries from Berlin, please...

The price of skateboarding

I never cease to be amazed by the prices old skateboards sell for these days. A 1982 original Tony Hawk holds the eBay record of $6000, but I stumbled across the price of $250 for a tatty 1989 Jason Jessee (like I had back in the day). This was a decidely average ramp deck, mass produced and far from special. Now if I just had a time machine to go back and stock up...

Make your own

George W. Bush speech

If Dante had visited IKEA...

Having spent Saturday afternoon trawling through IKEA for more furniture, dodging entire families desperate for 50p ice cube makers (when I was a kid, you mother took you to the supermarket to smack you, but now she can do that and buy a shoe rack), I have happened upon this site. Enjoy.

Just a reminder for all those who are interested that Channel 4 are going to repeat last year's Sex Traffic, one of the most amazing and eye-opening pieces of television drama I have ever seen. It's about trafficking women from poor countries into brothels in Western Europe, but there is so much more to it than you expect... It's one of those rare shows where TV gets as close to cinematic art as it possibly can. Watch it. Mon 19 Sep & Tue 20 Sep, around 11 pm.

some thoughts on recent popular culture

Having been extremely busy in my G&C-free time working on a translation for Discovery Channels, it's only now that I can make a contribution and share with all fellow bloggers some of the things that have been inspiring me recently. And since music is a medium that has the power to touch my soul in the most profound ways (many a time I have found myself moved to tears by a beautiful piece of soul or electro), here are (some of) my recent favourites:
1. Supernature - album by Goldrapp. This is such brilliant stuff, electronic music with a beating heart... great tunes, retro yet innovative production, and it's full of really bizzarre kind of elegant, sterile sleaze... My favourite track is no 3 (Lovely 2 C U).
2. Late Registration by Kanye West. A patchy effort, not as good as his first one, but still an excellent album. Kanye talks about important things, plays with musical styles, experiments with production (some songs sound like Massive Attackesque trip hop) and imbues the whole thing with a lot of passion. Tracks that stand out for me are Roses, Hey Mama (I actually called my mum after listening to this) and the glorious first single Diamonds from Sierra Leone.
3. Random Order - album by Juliet. She's an American girl who makes top shelf dance and chill out music. I loved the first single, Avalon, bought the album and wasn't disappointed... Her voice has a wistful, melancholic quality that befits the slightly cold, minimalist beats of her songs.
Finally, a few thoughts on singles... I loved Dare by Gorillas, I think it beats anything that Damon Albarn has ever done, with or without Blur...It's so catchy, infectious...One evening me and my flatmates listened to it 12 times in a row over a bottle of Merlot... I also loved Mariah Carey's latest offering We Belong Together, it's such a well-crafted pop song. I'm glad for Mariah, she hit rock bottom a few years ago but seems to have come back stronger. Proof that even when times are very very bad there is always hope for a reversal of our fortunes. And with this uplifting message I salute all fellow bloggers, until next time...

Sebastiao Salgado

Weird thoughts about Karin

Who am I? Why am I "me" and not "you"? I am no one. I do not have a personality. I am always changing, like a river, like the sea. I am a crossroads where different forces meet: the relation between the winner force and the rest is what people commonly understand under my name. I am a way of organising, and putting into relation, the music that I listen to, the food that I eat, the Politics, the Economics that I suffer, the weather, my (or anybody else) memories, sex, religion, history, urban design, my body,telecommunications, the cartoons that I saw as a child, my family, the people that surround me...Every little change makes something new of me, because the relation between the forces is changed...
Yesterday was Karin's last day in the bookshop, she is going to Paris, and I did not think whether that was going to affect me. We went to that pub in Poland street that is now managed by Indian people and had some drinks. We laughed for a while and said farewell at the end. Once at home, before going to bed, I had to visit the toilet and I discovered whitout surprise that I could not recognize myself in the mirror. She has probably taken with her some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that I am, without any of us realising about that. I have filled the gaps that have remained with the little moments that she gave me in the bookshop. Even forgetting her is not forgetting her completely, cause now she is a part of me.

Radio Gaga - Shameless self promotion

I will be setting up an online radio station towards the end of the month, playing the best in ska, soul, jazz, funk, rocksteady, latin, boogaloo, reggae, and all the other crap I listen to. (No Stones Roses, though, I'm afraid). More news will come as I get my internet connection at home, but the Drunken Master Hifi will be online soon... In the meantime, here is a picture of our inspiration:

Siu Tien Yuen as Sam Seed in the 1978 Jackie Chan classic "Drunken Master".

Vista from the #63

Somebody asked me very gently to publish the following writing in our blog, and that I am doing:



"Dear Dornaggio, I was there the other day, inside the bus #63, I mean, and I saw you on your bike, with your blue helmet on. You were smiling, I must say, and I felt jealous for a moment, because you seemed to posses a truth that none of us, people in the bus, could even guess. For a moment I was scared for you... There was an instant when the bus made a strange movement and I thought something was going to happen to you... but you had to turn right and disappeared from my sight. I felt relieved. You looked so fragile... I do not know if anybody else noticed you, but that is what I do, that is what I am good at: noticing things. I do not like the tube, I would not be able to ride a bike... I like to sit down by the window, in the top floor of one of the old style buses, and look quietly how things happen, how things change, slightly, slowly, from one day to another. Through the window of one of those red colossus with wheels, where I feel warm and secure, I looked at you the other day. Who knows if next time you will be as joyful as then, who knows if there will be a next time at all... I just know that that day I was a lilttle happier thanks to you."

Forget the Ashes

This summer's most intriguing contest has been the German elections. After a seemingly unassailable lead for Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schroeder seems to have rallied somewhat in recent weeks - the BBC has shown excerpts from his recent visit to Potsdam, and he seems to be pursueing re-election like a man possessed. Unlike the UK General Election, there are deep ideological differences between the two major parties, and the wounds of reunification do not yet seem to have healed. The east-west split seems more apparent than ever. Any thoughts from Berlin would be more than welcome...

Vista from two wheels

Having been invited to join this blog, and having read the deep and meaningful bloggets I've been (w)racking my brains as to what I can write about. Inspiration came when I bravely zoomed round the Elephant & Castle roundabout on my new mode of transport. Funny how after just one week you get totally in the cycling frame of mind, ie bloody buses, f***ing taxi drivers, stupid pedestrians acting as if I'm not there and therefore asking to be run over etc etc, you get the picture, when not so long ago I would have been one of those stupid pedestrians, or one of the bored passengers on the no.63 getting annoyed with the cyclist in the bus lane. Up there balancing on two wheels gives you a totally different perspective of this city, full of cliches to say it but you really do feel free, nothing like cycling over a crisp and crunchy autumn leaf or two. That's it really, feel a bit transformed by this bike business, let's see how long it lasts when the true winter sets in...

Acrophobia

A break...

I will be without the Internet at home for nearly a month whilst BT sort their lives out - our current connection was supposed to cut out at 9pm this evening, so I don't hold out much hope... This means I will only blog during breaks at work;) Although it has only been a couple of days, this kind of thing soon become habitual, if not addictive. So please post (those of you that haven't), and please visit both of the following blogs: Broke in Berlin and Englishman in New York, both engaging, informed and ochen interesno. Please comment on this and other blogs - this is the very essence of blogging - the Bakhtinian engagement between individuals.

Polaroids

I have been collecting Polaroids this week.
The first ones correspond to a shady way back home after work. In one of them a boy that is on charge of the street cleaning of my area appears. He is idle, leaning against a fence, playing inattentively with his ipod. He is thoughtful, dreamy. It looks as something is hurting him inside.
A little bit further I took one of another of my "habitual" ones. A lazy cat that always sleeps close to the post box. Every time our looks meet I have the feeling that he (or she) is much more intelligent than me.
Some others correspond to one of the days of the week that I have been sent to the bank. It was a really hot day. I want to remember now that the sun blinded my eyes, at least for some moments. When I said bye to the cashier she smiled at me and I almost was happy for the rest of the day. I was arriving at the bookshop and I noticed that a man was rescueing from a pile of junk a strip of passport photos abandoned by its original owner. I blamed myself for not having seen them first.
In my last Polaroid appears Felix, my landlord's son. His father is sleeping in the sofa and he shakes his little hand and whispers "bye bye". I am late to work again.

Our past is always with us

I am desperately trying to escape from loneliness but, as Grim would point out, words are so imprecise, we are so unique and our thoughts and feelings so unshareable, that this seems a failed attempt from the beggining. This gets even tougher when, as for me, English is not your mother tongue. So many times I have felt that words do not seem to really fit into what I want to say, that they are so loose..., or too tight... and I have felt so uncomfortable, clumsy, silly..., that many many times I have found me rushing disgusted towards myself just to get locked in a place where I can pretend that, at least, I do understand me.
As Ortega y Gasset said once, "me", I am myself and my circumstances: You can only understand me correctly if you know what has happened to me, which events have shaped my mind, my soul, my words, that try to be their expression... But giving a biographical explanation for every single sentence that we pronounce would be an exhausting and even unfinishable task. Today I have discovered a short cut for you to reach my heart.
Here you have condensed in 30 seconds what is left in it after almost one year of my life working for Pret a Manger: www.wopfilms.com (NON-FAT short). Enjoy yourself, and see you soon.

This is my city

The Crimson Room

As I am Playstation and Gamecube-less this evening (packed ready to move Saturday), I have returned to the infuriatingly challengin web games The Crimson Room and The Viridian Room. Lateral thinking and a knowledge of Oriental religious practices are a must, but you'll probably just end up searching the net for the solutions...

Another link - define your fears, dears

www.phobialist.com - mine is Hellenologophobia

Barbara Bush on New Orleans

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," Mrs Bush told the Public Broadcasting Service. "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Chastushki

Not quite Haikus, but take a look:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kypexin/931781.html

Narcissism

In my incessant search for myself on the Interweb, and in attempt to see whether this blog was listed anywhere, I stumbled upon this rather wonderful site:

www.lukeski.com

More web doppelgangers, please...

George Michael

The 'Faith' CD of religious music from around the world I bought today, and that 3 other contributors are also enjoying (I hope), has raised a question within my household. Can a non-member of a religion engage with, understand or enjoy the music (or other artistic creation) of that religion?

Although I was christened CoE, I have never felt any great affiliation to it, and I have no great religious feelings. I can appreciate religion on an aesthetic level (although this may be due to reading far too much Leontiev), and I have a real interest in the belief systems behind religions, their histories, etc. I can also appreciate that people do have strong religious convictions, and although I may not share, or may be opposed, to their views, the faith a great many people display does astound me.

But is religion necessarily different from any other aspect of a culture I am not part of - I've never been to South Central LA, yet I can listen to hiphop. I've studied Russian, and I think I can engage with most aspects of Russian culture, yet there will always be gaps in my knowledge a native Russian would never experience. At the same time there are so many parts of British culture, or even more specifically the culture of people of my age with similar backgrounds, that I am removed from. The seeming growth of 'world' culture and the internet, despite its negative connotations, such as the omnipresence of Coca Cola and Fox TV, surely also libertes the individual and allows them to engage with just about anything they can imagine (and many things they may never have imagined).

Enough teenage angst-style ramblings from me, anyway (thank God there weren't blogs when I was 14!). Someone else post something. I'm off to have beer.

Here is a nice man busking outside the main department store in Petrozavodsk

Please let me second Serginho's sentiments. We want your comments. We want your posts. We want your links. If you want to be a contributor, just ask us. We'll take just about anything. Welcome to (y)our blog...

Sometimes it is difficult to realise that you are alive.It is easy to come to the bookshop everyday, then take the tube, watch TV, have some dinner and go to sleep. It is easy to be a machine. We try our best. We always try to make something special out of our day, but you have to be very strong: routine ends up swallowing you, making of you something flat and grey.You start writing a diary, I suppose, to make yourself believe that there are things that are out of the neverending day-by-day here-we-are-again, to point out the really small special things that happen at a certain moment, at a certain place (maybe inside yourself), and are not meant to be repeated ever. Those things leave a special taste in your mouth. They are sometimes so subtle that it is difficult for them to be noticed, and even more to be expressed. But you want to keep them whatever it takes: they are too valuable to let them get lost, to let them be forgotten.A diary is therefore, first of all, a warehouse of memories. But a diary turns unavoidably into a way of sharpening your look. You do not simply conform to get memories in a passive way. You start looking for them everywhere: in the supermarket, on a quiet street, inside a club, between the stones of the beach on Brighton... and, sometimes, you even start to invent some because you do not have enough with the ones you have at hand, or just because you do not really feel like feeling things in the way they exactly happened, but in the way they should have happened, or in the way they could happen one day, if things were not the way they are and I was not myself but another person.We are constantly borrowing memories from the others, most of the time through music, cinema, books... How many of these are really valuable? Is it that I cannot do it better, that you cannot do it better? You are here, by my side, but, as it happens with myself, I hardly know you. Do I not have more to learn from you than from the latest platinum selling pop star who will disappear tomorrow from our lives? Maybe you can teach me to look your way, to look in a different way, or maybe you could just amuse me.A diary is supposed to be a lonely vice, but there are many levels of intimacy, and many kinds of diaries. "Diary" is, after all, only a word: call it whatever you like. You do not need to be sincere to me as long as you think you are being sincere to yourself. You do not have to be serious or lyrical. Be funny or ordinary or even obscene if you please. Be however you want to be. Invent yourself for the others from within. I am dying to hear from you...