Brighton Pier and the rocky beach
olives at Borough MarketLet's see. Last week happened, and for the most part, it was fairly uneventful. Well, that's not really true, I guess. This is why I should be writing on this more often, because everything sort of starts running together.
Class happened, work happened. MSN was especially cool on Thursday when I was working for Entertainment. My main assignment was to come up with interesting band names to find out the back stories behind their origin. My list of twenty or so, including bands like Talking Heads, Mates of State and Arcade Fire got slowly dwindled down by my music editor, James. But I was forewarned that he would have to check it out before I took off on any research. Not only did he want to add in some British bands that I'd never heard of (fair enough), but he humorously (wow, I just spelled humorously, 'humourously.' I think I've officially been consumed by England) and rather bitterly told me that as far as the MSN music audience goes, "if you're into music and you're looking at the MSN music section, you're not very cool." So he replaced the earlier mentioned "too-cool bands," apparently, with bands like Destiny's Child (really?!), The Killers and Jay-Z (not a band, but he actually ended up having a pretty cool back story- the intersection of the J and Z subway lines in his childhood Brooklyn neighborhood). During our brainstorming session, it dawned on me how few female groups/solo artists there are out right now who are fairly mainstream. The only one James and I could come up with was Lady Gaga, who, as catchy as her songs are, is not exactly the kind of music I would like being represented by female musicians. James made some underhanded comment as we were agreeing upon the fact that the list needed more women that "that should very well be the overarching theme of my own life." James is a funny lad. He's quite an awkward interviewer, though. Which brings me to my next set of ramblings. I didn't get very far in my band names research/writing, because I was handed the glorious gift by a friend of mine, Carla, who is interning for the video side of MSN, of getting to crash two interviews. In other words, I got to leave the office on two separate occasions, get picked up and driven, or rather, swerved madly down the narrow streets of London, to essentially sit in on interviews done by the editors. Well, I monitored the big camera that sat stationary the entire time it was filming, just to make sure it didn't do anything out of hand, like shut off. The first interview was with two members from the heavy metal band, Mastodon, done by MSN's movie editor, Ed, who was a huge fan. Ed is this skinny guy who you can just tell was a gawky adolescent, but he's really nice in sort of a nervous way. Not exactly the sort of guy you'd picture to like a band like Mastodon. The two Mastodon fellows, one a drummer and the other lead guitarist (both of whom sing as well) stroll into the room of this studio we were sitting in close to forty minutes late. Heavily tattooed and pierced and lethargic, they sit beside each other on the couch and Ed starts firing away a series of overly nerdy questions about the meanings of their songs. It lasted about twenty minutes and the three of them ended up singing a guitar riff together towards the end, which was the greatest thing ever, followed shortly by Ed meekly asking if he could get their autograph. I got to shake their hands and they asked Carla and I what we had going on the rest of the day, but it was as they were walking out the door, so I don't think they really cared how we chose to answer. Carla managed to get out that we were heading to another interview with Vince Neil from Motley Crue. They perked up at that and told us to pass on that Mastodon says hello. So, yes, the second interview I got to witness was with Vince from Motley Crue, and this interview was done by James. It was at a swanky hotel that had huge lime green tinted windows and life-sized wooden chess pieces arranged artistically in the foyer, and I think they were intended to be used as chairs. We were taken to a room in the back of the hotel and I got reminded of that scene in Almost Famous where Patrick Fugit is being led dizzily through a hotel passing by all these half-open doors with intriguing characters behind them. The room we were taken to had a wall lined completely with windows so it was very bright and all white. There was a clear table and chairs in the center and one lone booth off to the side, and for some reason, James decided it would be a good idea to set up the camera facing the booth (the darkest part of the room). Carla and I sort of shrugged and did as told. We set up really fast and Vince pranced in soon after, looking like the most stereotypical washed up rockstar possible: long scraggly hair, sunglasses, a ripped shirt missing sleeves, faded jeans with holes in the knees and a massive diamond studded watch. James's interview with Vince lasted all of about five minutes before he awkwardly wrapped it up. Vince didn't have a great sense of humor, and he didn't ever answer a question directly, so it was kind of a mess of an interview, but I mean, he was from Motley Crue. And I shook his hand. Twice. So, it was a really awesome day for me.
My roommate, Sarah, had a friend of hers stay with us in our flat for close to a week. Abbe (said friend) was just stopping through London in the midst of her solo travels across Europe. She was really quiet the first few days and mostly kept to herself, sleeping a lot. One night we were all sitting around together in the main room and she suddenly got up and announced that she was going to dance. We all kind of didn't say anything but I was like hmm? Did you say dance? And she laughed and told us that it was this thing she started upon traveling; that for the past twenty-two days she had filmed herself dancing to a song and then put it up on YouTube, sort of as a documentary of the places she'd been. At this point I'm totally sucked in and have to see some of the videos. She shows us, and I'm blown away. It was like one of those things that only happens in movies. You just don't meet people like this in real life. She was an amazing dancer and she had no hesitation upon showing us either. It was like she decided to crack herself open entirely and reveal this hidden talent to all of us, and we're all basically strangers to her at this point. She went back into one of the bedrooms and closed the door and did her twenty-third dance. The next night she rose from the couch and said that she had to go dance, and we knew the drill. But this time she went outside and placed her laptop on the sidewalk. I could hear Spanish-sounding music playing faintly through the wall dividing us. I went up to the window to watch as she danced on the stairs in front of our flat. People walking by literally slowed down to watch as she improvised to this instrumental music and she didn't stop until the end of the song. I think Abbe may be the most fearless person I have ever met. After that she started going out with us and talking a lot more. And just the other day she disappeared without any warning. I think she might be in Germany, I forget where she said her next destination was. I don't know if I'll ever see her again.
Thursday night I went and did a very touristy thing with my roommates and Carla from MSN and a couple friends of hers. We all went on a Jack the Ripper tour, which was led by an older man who had written two books on 'ol Jack, so he knew a whole lot about the subject. It took place in the part of town where the four alleged murders took place, which was cool and eery. Our guide was a good storyteller and made sure that the large group of us heard every word he was saying by repeating himself every time a car passed by or a church bell rang. The 2.5 hour tour ended at a pub formerly known as the Jack the Ripper Pub.
Friday I went to Borough Market with Gwen, which is this gigantic food market full of different stands of freshly risen bread and huge blocks of cheese and olives and meat and fruit and vegetables. We took advantage of the free samples, going back for cinnamon dusted white chocolate covered hazelnuts three times, and bought some miscellaneous items to serve as a lunch. This trip to the market was after our British Life & Culture class where we had a guest lecturer who specialized in fashion and showed us slides of the changes in clothing and style over time.
The weather started getting nice again, so Reyn, Gwen and I decided to take a day trip to Brighton on Saturday. Brighton is a seaside town an hour outside of London. We took the train, buying round trip tickets that morning. It was a great day. We walked out of the station and immediately heard seagulls, which was a sound that I never realized how much I liked. We bought coffee from the first cafe we came across, and it was real coffee, which was great since London only does the whole steamed espresso thing and walked through the bustling town on the hilly streets towards the dropoff ahead of us that we sensed was the ocean. The town itself reminded me a lot of San Francisco with all the hills and small shops and busy traffic/crowds of people. The beach was covered with rocks instead of sand which were kind of hard on the feet. The water was freezing. But it was a sunny 70-degree day and we enjoyed hanging out on the beach. We walked along Brighton Pier, which was essentially a carnival with token-paid rides and food vendors selling all your typical carnival food: doughnuts, ice cream and jellied eels, yumyum.
After the train ride back, we met up with Ricky and hung out on the back patio of our flat as it lightly rained. Gwen and I drank some ales that we bought as we were leaving Brighton, which we were given a mixture of a hard time and advice for purchasing by one of the locals. Gwen got one called Fersty Ferret, which we couldn't stop laughing at. At one point one of the flats above us noticed that we were hanging out outside and started talking to us out the window, which was soon followed by the next highest flat's tenants leaning out the window and so on. A bunch of girls made their way down and talked to us out on the patio and we almost decided to join them on their mission for the night, some kind of a 30s-esque club, but I was set on trying out a club that I had read about online called Dogstar. Ricky, Reyn, Gwen and I eventually made our way out and had a very confusing combined tube/bus ride there. Dogstar we learned was the oldest pub in south London, and it definitely appeared that way on the outside when we finally found it on a very empty Coldharbour Road. I read online that there would be live music, but this was not the case. It was yet another bad DJ playing loud, bad rap mixed with techno, but it was a really cool building with three levels that we had a lot of fun exploring. And the music was eventually fun to dance to. The second level had a room sparsely filled with people where an old black and white movie was playing on the wall and clotheslines were suspended from the ceiling with drawings hanging from them. Gwen and I drew our own pictures to add to the collection with markers and paper that were laid out on a table in the center of the room. Overall, the four of us came to the conclusion that we enjoyed ourselves at Dogstar but not enough to return. We managed to stay until it closed at four in the morning and made the long journey back home to Earl's Court. This made it the second Saturday in a row that I was awake long enough to see the sun rise.
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