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May 28, 2004
Oxford Americans
Last Sunday I finally had some time to explore Oxford a bit more....after walking around town and stopping in a few shops and cafes, I made my way to Modern Art Oxford, currently the site of Mike Nelson's piece Triple Bluff Canyon. Wow. I was bummed about missing the Loom3 exhibition going on in NC right now, but seeing this multi-room installation helped make up for it. Walking through the various parts of Triple Bluff Canyon was sort of like viewing a Robert Smithson land-art piece through the lens of multiple movie cameras or maybe the prism of a choose-your-own-adventure mystery. I eagerly opted for repeated and increasingly revealing viewings before returning to the Rewley House to do some much-needed laundry.
Oxford is quite the 'learn-ed' town, of course, and there actually seem to be pub quizzes on most every night of the week. Sunday night is trivia night at The Gardener's Arms, a small North Oxford pub supposedly frequented by a young Bill Clinton during his 1968-1970 stint as a Rhodes Scholar. Clinton's Oxford address (46 Leckford Road) is right around the corner from the pub, so it was probably his regular bar. The Bueno Love Ballers UK made a valiant pub trivia effort but came in 4th, just short of the prize money. More rewarding than victory, however, was getting to joke around and talk British and American politics with the team of gregarious young Brits sitting next to us. After the trivia was over, one of them politely inquired if we would be voting for John Kerry in the fall. Several resounding answers of 'Yes' and perhaps one small step towards repairing international relations.
On Tuesday night, BLB-UK returned to the Turf in hopes of repeating last week's success. This time we managed to win the special Landlord's Question (prize: one gallon of ale, joyously consumed last night) and finish in a very close second place overall (prize: 15 pounds). Several of us were convinced that we would have come in first were it not for some questionable late-round score-calculating and an unfair Britishized trivia answer (the moon landing date supposedly being July 21st instead of July 20th because it was after midnight in the UK). I'm sure Mark D. will be relieved to know that when it comes to trivia, I'm capable of crying foul on both sides of the Atlantic and not just in Hell.
Wednesday night we skipped another shot at the lame pub quiz at Jude the Obscure and went to drink at The Bear instead. First opened in 1242, this cozy little pub is the oldest in Oxford and it has thousands of cut-off ties (male neckwear) adorning its walls and ceilings. Quite a sight, and a fun place to have some ale. Which reminds me, my other favorite pub-where-we-didn't-play-trivia would have to be Freud (Frevd), a cavernous church that has been converted into a cafe/bar! Surprisingly, there are no beers on tap at Freud but they do make all sorts of tasty variations of the Long Island Iced Tea.
Lest anyone think otherwise, Oxford hasn't been a constant pub crawl or anything. This week we got to tour several more of the historic Oxford colleges and yesterday we finally got to visit Oxford University Press. Going to OUP (yeah you know me!) was really great, we got to see little tiny metal blocks of (the original) movable type, an early printing press, and some of the many slips of paper used by James Murray and his family to trace the meanings and usage of words while compiling the first edition of the massive Oxford English Dictionary over a period of decades. An impressive finale to our Oxford sightseeing. Today is the last day of the seminar, so I'm about to go out and do a little more Oxford shopping/wandering before we take off for London tomorrow. This will probably be the last of my overseas blog entries, so cheers to any of you who enjoyed my sporadic travelogue!
Posted by Tim at 09:52 AM | Comments (1)
May 25, 2004
London Balling
Finally got to spend some significant time in London. Last Thursday morning everyone in our seminar rode a bus to the big city to tour the British Library, which in addition to having a really massive collection is notable for having some very impressive historical artifacts: a copy of the Magna Carta, a Shakespeare First Folio, and the King's Library, King George III's huge collection of books - now stored in a stunning multifloor glass tower in the middle of the building. After the library tour, we were set free in London, so it was off to Rough Trade - a historical site of a whole different sort but equally exciting in my book. Unfortunately, high prices and the crappy exchange rate made Rough Trade and the several cool sneaker shops nearby seem more like museums than places where I would actually buy anything. But perhaps that was for the best given how much money I've already blown here and how little space there seems to be in my luggage! I'd never actually been to London before this trip, so we spent much of the rest of the afternoon walking down by the Thames River and seeing the more impressive tourist-y sites: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, etc. After some refreshing stops for pints of ale and British pub food, we headed off to Camden to see Bonobo play at the Jazz Cafe. A pricey show at 15 pounds, but the six-piece band was great and it was cool to see some live music while we were in London.
After abandoning earlier ideas of a weekend trip to either Brighton or Bristol, Tito and I decided that we should just use our free Saturday to head back to London for another day-trip. Did some record-shopping in Soho (where we made some purchases at the awesome Sounds of the Universe shop run by the Soul Jazz folks), ate a really good Korean lunch at Nara, walked by the impressive but undergoing-renovation St. Paul's Cathedral, had afternoon pints outside by the Thames, and spent a couple of hours inside the impressive Tate Modern. After taking in the main galleries at the Tate, we grabbed a bite at the noodle-shop institution Wagamama, got expensive drinks at the very bizarre bar Yo! Below, and then made our way to Electrowerkz for the evening's must-attend entertainment: 100% Dynamite, a fortnightly DJ night and dance-party hosted by the Soul Jazz Soundsystem. Lots of great reggae, ska, and dancehall records were spun, several Red Stripe tallboys were consumed, and there was much dancing in a crowded warehouse-y room. A very satisfying finale to our London day, with the only downside being that we missed the last tube and spent the next couple of hours in a sleepy blur of waiting and bus-riding, our final Oxford arrival painfully punctuated by that early UK daybreak that has been really catching me off-guard since I'm used to spending my summers in much lower latitudes. To da break of dawn...
Posted by Tim at 11:13 AM | Comments (2)
May 19, 2004
Minglin' in England
I've been in scenic Oxford since Sunday morning...and the comfortable accomodations provided through our program have been a very nice change of pace from the cramped Edinburgh hostel. Oxford is uncharacteristically hot for this time of year, so our room has been a little toasty....but everyone has been really helpful and friendly and the full-on catered meals and many coffee/tea breaks have more than overshadowed any slight discomfort caused by Carolina-style heat. We're staying in a pretty awesome location, right near the Oxford City Centre and within easy walking distance of the downtown shops and pubs and historic colleges. Given that, it almost seems criminal to be spending a significant percentage of the sunny days inside a classroom, taking in Powerpoint presentations from some admittedly very well-credentialed UK librarians. At least on Monday we got to tour the ancient and very impresssive Bodleian Library, one of the world's oldest libraries and the home of the second largest collection in all of Britain. We even got library cards, though I've yet to get a chance to use mine.
Yesterday I really started feeling the need for some lethargy-reducing exercise, so I checked my map and managed to locate the Iffley Road track where Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile almost exactly 50 years ago. Just for fun, I went down there and attempted to retrace Bannister's steps....my unofficial time: 6 minutes, 55 seconds. Not that impressive (much less record-breaking), but maybe not all that bad considering how out of shape I've been getting from the tea biscuits and English ales. By the end of the trip I'm hoping to have my mile down to 6 minutes - my own personal barrier to break.
Perhaps I'm on some strange 'famous footsteps' kick...last Saturday night, we stayed in London with the very generous father of our good friend KP. The flat was in the posh St. John's Wood neighbourhood and just a couple of blocks away from none other than Abbey Road. I doubt I would've sought this intersection out under other London circumstances, but given our proximity to rock & roll history, we eagerly walked down the road and crossed the street for a photo-op. There were only three of us and no one was barefoot....which is probably good since I almost walked in front of a double-decker bus later in the evening!
Anyway, back to Oxford....last night I went to my favourite Oxford pub for the third night in a row. The Turf Tavern is a pleasant and popular bar tucked away from the main street and hidden down a winding alley. It's got plenty of outdoor picnic-table seating and plenty of relatively cheap beers. Yes, it's almost the He's Not Here of Oxford, but cooler and more, uh, erudite than that sounds. Tuesday nights are pub trivia nights at the Turf, so of course I had to assemble a team of Americans and give the competition a shot. We flubbed some of the more British-centric questions, but the Vino Love Ballers (sic...Brits don't understand the word 'bueno'!!) scored big time on anatomy, music lyrics, and movie actors and somehow managed to win 3rd place out of 15 or 16 teams. Our prize? 10 pounds! Hmm, maybe this entrance-fee-plus-cash-prize idea will eventually catch on in the States...
Posted by Tim at 10:22 AM | Comments (3)
May 14, 2004
Tuba City, Scotland
For the second night in a row, I'm having trouble getting to sleep, so it must be time to try an overseas blog entry. Partly for the sheer novelty of doing so but mostly so that I can multicast an e-postcard to any of you friends who might be reading this.
Got to Edinburgh late Tuesday afternoon after a few frustrating problems with flight delays and missed connections in London. After checking into our crazy Edinburgh hostel (situated on top of a bar!), we met up with the one and only Mike McR., Chapel Hill's favorite expatriated Cat's Cradle/WXYC alumnus. Mike served us up a stellar dinner of Stella Artois and avacodo-laden pasta. Not what I predicted a Scottish meal to be like but outstanding nonetheless! The next day we took the round-the-city bus tour and went to the awesomely positioned Edinburgh Castle. That was followed by more exploration down the Royal Mile trek away from the castle....and along that stretch I particularly enjoyed the tour of the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre, where I got schooled in some much-needed Scotch knowledge and got to sample some Ballentine's blend and a Glenkinchie 10yo malt. Towards the end of the afternoon, we headed back through the Princes St. Gardens and I got to represent my elders by sitting in front of the scenic Ross Fountain. There were also tons of Ross Clan tartanalia to be purchased in the many Edinburgh souvenir shops....apparently, my clan rolls deep here!
On Thursday we had a brilliant time driving around Scotland with Mike, who picked us up in Edinburgh and took us through Glasgow and farther west, over towards the west coast of Scotland with its lochs and mountains and craggy coastlines. Stopped for a late lunch and a pleasant walk in Oban, an attractive sea town that just happens to have a half-finished Rome Coliseum-like structure ('McCaig's Folly') built above it on an overlooking hill. Strange but very cool. More driving and jetlag-induced napping...and then towards the end of the afternoon we went on a brief unstructured mountain hike in the surprisingly hilly Glencoe area. This was pretty awesome, I didn't realize that this part of the Scotland terrain was going to be so mountainous. After all this scenic driving, it was back to Glasgow so that we could meet up with Mike's mate Stewart for a fun night of chatting, pakora-eating, and drinking in the nearby pub. After a few pints, Mike graciously drove us back to our Edinburgh digs with John Peel's nightly show playing the whole way. From the brief listen it seemed that Peel is somewhat into the USAIsAMonster/BlackDice/Fort Thunder thing at the moment. Cool.
Glasgow seemed very cool in the short time that we spent there so we returned today for a more lengthy visit. The day's itinerary included the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art (partly closed and kinda disappointing), a great lunch at a hip restaurant/coffeeshop called Where The Monkey Sleeps, a visit to the Tenement Museum, more round-the-city bus touring, etc. Finally in the evening we started looking for the record shops that Mike had listed for us and after some navigational struggles, we eventually made it to Monorail, a very cool establishment that was half indie record shop and half organic food coop/restaurant. After a tasty dinner there, we set off to Nice 'N' Sleazy - the scuzzy rocker bar that both Mike and my NC buddy Patrick had recommended we visit. As we walked in, the DJ had just begun to play Mudhoney's 'Touch Me I'm Sick' - a really great omen and total music to my ears after a lot of the more mediocre Brit-pop that I'd been hearing at the hostel over the last few days. Had some quick drinks at Nice 'N' Sleazy before catching the late bus back to Edinburgh.
Tomorrow we're off to England....not sure if I'll feel like traveloguing the London and Oxford stints of my trip. I'll probably have way better internet access, so it's a definite possibility. In the meantime, anyone who feels like unicasting a message back in my direction can drop me a line at tim AT tubafrenzy DOT org. Cheers!
Posted by Tim at 08:45 PM | Comments (2)
May 09, 2004
The Music Comic
OK, enough with the politics for now. I start getting madder the more I think about everything that's going on....and that's not nearly as fun as laughing my ass off, which is pretty much what I've been doing ever since this past Tuesday, when I picked up New Hope For the Ape-Eared, the new Scharpling & Wurster 2-CD set on Stereolaffs. Tom Scharpling is a DJ for the very fine WFMU station in northern New Jersey and Jon Wurster is a comic genius who also happens to be the talented drummer for Chapel Hill's very own Superchunk. Many years ago, these two guys started doing fake telephone interviews/scenarios over the WFMU airwaves during Scharpling's show....not trendy Jerky Boys/Tube Bar/Crank Yankers-type prank calls but rather lengthy and fully developed phone call skits that might almost sound real if they weren't such outlandishly hilarious examples of radio satire. Like many of the other Scharpling & Wurster skits that I've heard, the most hysterical parts of ...Ape-Eared are the ones in which Wurster plays ludicrous music industry characters, like the deluded lead singer of a generic modern rock band named Mother 13 or an overconfident songwriter who is convinced that his absurdly bad tune "Rock and Roll Dreams'll Come Through" will lead his nonexistent band The Gas Station Dogs to superstardom. I think my favorite skit on the new double disc might be the one involving a super-lame audiophile who has an "audio gu-ru" named Heinrich. Everything about it is just perfect...the delivery, the voices, the details, the surprising plot of the skit....it even yields the "ape-eared" reference used in the disc title. Throughout all these skits, Scharpling consistently plays the logical straight man and Wurster's characters just get to bounce off of him with their ludicrous ideas and stories. All of it is genius as far as I'm concerned, and I bet most any music aficionado would probably double over laughing to any of these skits or the older skits "Rock Rot & Rule" and "The Music Scholar".
Jon Wurster actually did a brief stand-up comedy performance at the Cat's Cradle about a week ago and I really enjoyed it. You could tell that he was probably a lot more comfortable doing his thing over the radio instead of in front of a live audience, but he still told a bunch of really funny jokes about things like a sorority girl trying to "drop science" at a Jurassic 5 show, the fashion sense of South by Southwest attendees, a "YYZ" drum clinic as performed on a single highhat cymbal, etc. I really think Wurster could successfully carve out his own niche of music-related comedy, because he knows music well enough to riff off of and extend the really funny and absurd truths that exist in the world of musicians, music critics, music fans, record labels, radio stations, etc. Personally, I enjoy Scharpling & Wurster's radio skits so much more than most of the generic and supposedly universal "what's-the-deal-with-cereal-boxes"-type comedy....and that's recently had me thinking about how much the underlying context and subject behind a joke can effect whether or not someone likes it. I'm still really big on Dave Chapelle these days and I finally plunked down the cash for the Season 1 DVD. But with a couple of exceptions, I think that most of my absolute favorite Chapelle skits are not the race-related ones (which are definitely funny) but rather the hysterical send-ups of R. Kelly, Rick James, Prince, and Lil' Jon. I don't know, maybe I just think about music too much and any jokes that play along those lines are that much more likely to tickle my funnybone.
After Jon Wurster finished his standup routine at the Cradle, he was followed by former Wilkesboro, NC native Zach Galifianakis, who's made appearances on all sorts of late-night TV shows and even Fox's Tru Calling. Galifianakis did a somewhat deadpan Steven Wright-esque thing where he plucked a lot of brutally funny one-liners out of his dogeared joke notebook. Really funny shit...I need to catch this guy on TV next time, though I guess he would be more tame and controlled in that sort of environment. Though maybe just as hilarious? Carolina comics represent!
Posted by Tim at 02:53 AM | Comments (4)
May 07, 2004
Fire Rumsfeld
Now that Donald Rumsfeld has admitted to Congress that there will be even uglier disclosures about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (including videos, ugh), it seems like a good time to resurrect a very different image - one that I hadn't thought about in years but that seems remarkably prescient these days. Sometime in November 2000, I got this fake Time Magazine cover in a mass email, one of those rapidly spreading emails that gets forwarded several times over. At the time it was just a pretty funny way of blowing off some post-election steam and coming to grips with the idea that George Bush was actually going to be President. Today it seems like a frighteningly accurate summation of the awful position in which Bush has put America with his disastrous foreign policy. I wish I could credit the Nostradamus who came up with this fake magazine cover but I have no idea who it was.
Anyway, I'm certainly not saying anything new here...just letting off some pre-election steam and thinking about how much can change in three and a half years. Heads need to roll and Donald Rumsfeld's should be the first on the chopping block. Even NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman thinks so.
If you haven't already, sign the petition to fire Rumsfeld!!!
Posted by Tim at 11:53 PM | Comments (3)
May 05, 2004
Keeler vs. Kerry
On last night's episode of the Fox melodrama 24, they finally showed the campaign HQ of fictional presidential candidate Senator John Keeler, whose posters look eerily similar to the logo used by the real-life Senator John K. who is running for president. Check out the Keeler poster:
And here's the John Kerry logo, also with a blue background, white star, and set of red wavy lines in the middle:
On the show, Keeler is an unlikable dirtball politician who is running against a very honest and likable incumbent President who has had to make some very tough decisions while dealing with terrorism during his first term. Lazy writers and graphic designers taking a page from the Law and Order truth-makes-good-fiction playbook? Or a subtle Kerry dig/spin from Fox? Probably just the former but it's fun to think about conspiracy theories. On the show, Keeler is presumably a Republican, since President Palmer is supposedly a Democrat, though I don't think political parties have been mentioned since the first season.
On a related note, I just found out that John Kerry's web site is offering two free Kerry bumper stickers to anyone who signs up on the campaign email list for the first time. I'm not that impressed with Kerry's post-primary campaign so far but I would've slapped a Kerry sticker on my car weeks ago if I had just known how to get one. Sign up and get your stickers here:
http://www.johnkerry.com/signup/bumpera.php
Posted by Tim at 10:28 AM | Comments (2)
May 03, 2004
La La La La Means I Love You
Back in January, Kelefa Sanneh wrote an interesting article in the NYTimes about the recent trend of "bad singing" in popular hip-hop and R&B. "Bad singing" as in all of the charmingly off-key and often very likable sing-songiness from "untrained" singers like 50 Cent, Lumidee, Kanye West, Pharrell, etc. "Bad" is almost too strong a word - I actually prefer "imperfect" or "amateurish". My man Todd pointed out that Kelis is a great "bad singer" who wasn't mentioned in the article. And now that I've spent many hours listening to Ghostface's Pretty Toney (currently the #6 album in America!), I can't help but think about how criminal it is that Ghostface was left out of this article. He's been doing some crazy-ass karaoke on top of his own songs for years - long before 50 sang one of his own hooks or anyone had even heard of Kanye West. It would be interesting to try and go back through the Wu catalog and find the beginning and rise of Ghostface's inspired warbling. Anyway, there's a lot on Pretty Toney to love, but right now it's "Biscuits" that I can't get out of my head. Man, that absurd sing-song chorus...it's not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.
Update: I missed this last week, but Kelefa Sanneh actually reviewed a Ghostface show in the NYTimes last Thursday, so credit due. Some amusing anecdotes about Ghostface, Rakim getting arrested, and DJ Kayslay getting booed!
Posted by Tim at 07:12 PM | Comments (7)