That crazy boy Hoang is up to his old tricks again...

Not enough time to do a full diary entry today so just some quick notes about the last week or so to whet your appetite and to remind myself later...

1. Vietnamese Glastonbury
   
2. Drunken Karaoke
   
3. Thanksgiving at home with the folks
   
4. Drinkin' with LAs coolest
   
5. The great LACMA blag - "Hi my name is Tran, erm Smith" "First name sir?" "Erm...Anthony"
   
6. And Mondays magazine opening bash
   

Watch this space...

Sperm Donor

Another gem I picked up in my diary. 28 September 2002 I stuck an article in there that gave me and Uy a right hoot...

"A fertility clinic in Bristol issued an urgent appeal yesterday for sperm donors. The centre for Reproductive Medicine, which treats 150-200 infertile couples each year, has just one regular donor making deposits in its sperm bank compared with 20 five years ago"

Slit, it's not a coincidence that you met your bird at Bristol methinks...

Slit you are gonna kill me for this...

Alright Slit, you know the way I keep neglecting to tell you anything exciting that happened on holiday? (isn't getting headbutted by a cow enough for you!?!) Well you're gonna hate me for neglecting to mention the story about the guy in the bar window at Lucknow.

I forgot all about this, but as I mentioned earlier I've got my India diary with me, which I'm keeping my personal diary in for this holiday and I was having a little read cos the rest of todays entries were just not funny enough (cos nothin happens round here) and I stumbled across this gem. This is one I shoulda mentioned round at your birds house mate!

So there we were, Me and Sarah in the bar down in the basement of our hotel in Lucknow just chattin away all night about everything under the sun and, halfway through the night she asks me to keep her seat warm while she goes for piss right.

As she leaves she walks past this guy at the door who she notices has been staring at her through the window while we've been talkin and notes that he stares at her all the way into the bogs and she's a little perturbed but thinks nothin more of it because by then we are used to getting stared at anyway. I noticed him out the corner of my eye staring while we were talkin, but when he disappeared from the window I thought nothin of it and get back to my pint.

Sarah comes back from the pisser and says to me "I think you should come with me next time" and naturally I thought it was neither the time nor the place for such immorality and had to question her motives. "Because, you see that freaky guy at the window? I just saw him with his trousers around his ankles having a wank!"

Sheeeeeeeee-yat!!!

I couldn't believe my ears. A lot of the guys in India are sexually frustrated but I hadn't realised quite how frustrated - I mean I went on to write about the internet chat room incident on that same day, which I told you about but how the fuck did I forget this one!?! I just keep you hangin on mate! You know you love it!

The last entry in the diary starts with the words, "I have been in hospital for the last 3 days/2 nights...", which aint a bad way to end a diary if you ask me.

There's another one in here too from Nepal that I forgot to mention - it's the one where I took the shortcut through the jungle at night instead of walking along the road. It's well funny! But as usual you'll just have to wait...

Must…play…records…

It's usually about halfway through any holiday that I start thinkin about what I'm gonna put on deck one when I get home. World travel, as most of you reading this will no doubt know, it the ultimate test of a mans compilation making skillz and only the best man will survive on his compilations alone.

However, when it comes to compilations I am NOT the best man despite having put some crackers together in my life, like the awesome “Compilation Tape 1” which saw me through the whole of Ghana for 3 months but then got fucked in a tropical rainstorm in India, and the pretty good “Miscellaneous wicked songs for long journeys” which is in the MD player now and includes such classics as Jolly Mukherjee and the Madras cinematic Orchestra “Kirwani” (Badmarsh and Shri mix), DHLs “Favourite Girl” (Original not Sunship mix) and The Only Ones “Another Girl, Another Planet”. Great compilations but I still have a bit of work to do on the names…

But even with my skills, my appetite for new forms (Not Roni Sizes album – overrated) soon has me wanting more but also wanting control of those old familiar tunes which leads me to the topic of the day. This trip the urge for new sounds has been sated by listening to Vietnamese radio and has lead to me discovering perhaps the only good thing about Southern California – they love classic rock. All day it’s classic Vietnamese then Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen etc. It’s great. But I still want control. So I’ve compiled a list of the top ten tunes from my collection that will go on decks one and two as and when I get home and will take the time out to justify some of them as far as I can be arsed.

1. Top of the stack will be Flip and Fill – “Shooting Star”
   This may come as a bit of surprise that a trance tune is first up but you should know that genre is merely a creation of marketing men to help shift units and to bunch tunes together. A good tune is a good tune no matter what genre it is and this had me dancing around my bedroom singing at the top of my voice like a girl. I think it’s probably still on deck one actually burning a hole in my needle.
   
2. Unknown Artist - ”Trinidad”I’m gonna have to go out and buy this if I have any money left at all. This was the sound of my summer. It’s on “Western Union - Soca Then and Now” and if I hear it I will probably get on my knees and bark like a dog. This tune is the definition of life.
   
3. Wyclef – “Apocalypse” The opera singer and Wyclefs unfeasibly high level of skillz blend to create probably the most potent hip-hop release ever, reaching across every sphere of life to permeate your unsuspecting mind. Even my mind doesn’t suspect it and I’ve heard it several thousand times. As Slit will tell you. Probably one of the best albums ever as well, and to be honest, once I get that in the CD playa it’s unlikely it will come out for a while so the rest of the list becomes pretty much irrelevant.
   
4. N-Trance – “Set you free (Original Mix on 12”) Oh ok I take that back. With this cued up waiting to go who am I to stop this one rollin! An old favourite and probably the best house tune of all time. Get the hell out the way when this comes on unless you like being dead. Nuff said
   
5. The Hitchers – “Wizard Prang” My favourite band this Irish bands piece about the horrors of the blitz is absolutely majestic, a acerbic critique of the stupidity of war and the impact it has on human life.
   
6. Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak – Track 1 I think the fact I remembered the name of the album should be enough to excuse the fact that I can’t remember the track title, but it reminds me of those great times last year singing in Indian and saying the word “Engineer” over and over again dosto if you know what I mean.
   
7. Dire Straits – “Romeo and Juliet” I’ve realised what a great poet Mark Knopfler is. The Loaded dice line is brilliant.
   
8. Asian Dub Foundation – “Culture move”
   
9. Percy Sledge “Sudden Stop”
   
10. Snoop Doggy Dogg (As he was then known) – “Gangstaz and hustlaz” dunno if that’s what it’s actually called but what I wanna be when I grow up is a mothafuckin hustla. You better axe somebody!
    

Any other suggestions? Mail me on the usual if there’s anything I really should hear and to dispute my choice, cos only YOU can force me to listen to something else when I get home.

Also can you send me a list of the greatest books you have ever read please. I want to read stuff. Cheers.

Third time lucky

Doh! I'm not on the road today as previously reported, but hold your horses bitches - The best things come to those who wait for Me.

Tiny change of plan cos of stuff going on here (again), which has meant that I only got round to buying the tickets last night, and it was only then that I remembered that my lack of planning and organisational ability has dumped me in the financial shit so many times that I should have known that last night was probably a bad time to be buyin for an exit today.

So here I am in Orange County again, probably sounding like a dreamer who dreams of a better life elsewhere but never gets round to it. It's quite humiliating really. But on the plus side I get to stay here and go to the legendary Thanksgiving party that my aunt, Di 7 holds every year round her house in Orange County AND I got the bargain of the century on the Amtrak website. I clicked through the tiny rail sale link in the bottom lefthand corner and saved a cool $100 by putting my trip to Seattle back by a week, so I got my ticket for $41.20 via Portland where I'm spending a day. That's cheaper than an IKEA table and chair set. And they say I'm becoming domestic.

By the way Cez and anyone else who cares, I've now got pics of my ass on the web at last at http://photos.yahoo.com/andytgeezer. Sorry they're not very pornographic but they're better than nothin I'm sure you'll agree. Or actually you probably wouldn't. It's your life.