montaditos

Back in England, I'd only been home for around 30 minutes when the doorbell rang with a visitor. Not even time to swap clothes from travel.


By this evening I was more or less de-jet lagged and was out for friendly sangria and tapas at nearby La Tasca. Bring on the patatas bravas and the brocheta di pollo!

Next week, Sweden, but not until Tuesday.

childrens' shoes

Saturday, in London, there will be a protest about the current war in the Middle East by leaving childrens' shoes outside Tony Blair's place. I note that Blair is staying around instead of vacationing in order to be involved in ceasefire negotiations.

This war started asymmetrically, after the capture of two soldiers leading to a breathtakingly fast and disproportionate response. The underlying long term pressures on the small nation of Israel surrounded by Arab states become part of a rationale for escalated actions of the Israeli warplanes.

I don’t want to take sides; I have visited (and worked in) both areas and have friends in both areas. This makes it all seem close. But I do want to comment that we now seem to have relatively indiscriminate missiling and bombing of civilian populations in both territories.

The rest of the world is aghast but only responding quite slowly whilst the attrition clicks onward; Rice has made visits and the Bush machine is making “Hezbollah equals Iran” type noises in the background.

I am concerned that we are actually watching the ‘Iran proxy’ war as a precursor to a switch to another conflict. If America’s Defense Intelligence Agency really have an Office of Special Plans and a covert “lets do Iran/Syria” blueprint, then this is the sequencing for when it would be played as part of a long term regime change in Iran and a border defence for Israel.

It’s a reasonable assumption that information has leaked between the various players in each of the main countries involved. The Middle East works a lot on connections and the trade of information would probably be fair game. It’s also a reasonable bet that dissident support is receiving offshore funding in some of the targeted territories.

And for Iran, lets look. Condoleeza is on recent record saying "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

Bush's ambassador to the United Nations is saying the U.N. “must be made aware that if it (Iran) continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences." Both pre conflict type statements.

So Blair’s vacation change could be significant; stop it; delay it or let the next escalated war play occur. We will know soon enough.

massive release of beautiful energy

Beyond the obvious shopping streets of 5th Avenue and the sights of Empire State and Liberty Island, there's so much to see and do in New York. An example is wandering around the galleries of SoHo and East Village and I thought it would be fun to create a simple example here.

I've picked the small Deitch gallery in Grand Street because it shows up well on the internet and has some good audio visual experience about it. It also changes its entire look with each show as the pictures of the gallery shopfront above illustrate.

So go Manhatten metro and take a few minutes for a wander through the shimmering archives or join a visit to an opening at the gallery, captured here on video.

Tag: new york, nyc, metro

evening at paradise

This evening we headed out to the Sound and stopped at Stamford Landings in a small restaurant called Paradise. We were from Boston, Cleveland, Washington, Philadelphia and me from London and we spent a pleasant evening swapping stories and enjoying the unusually hot weather.

things to do and people to see

Of course, my main reason for being in New York is work related and the whole place is still a great backdrop to whatever I'm doing and the scale, whilst vast, is somehow still manageable.

I suppose I've been here enough times to know my way around and have a good mental picture of how things link and the different styles and looks in different areas. Like London there are some great anchor points around the place too, and it is quite good fun to have a few 'regular' places to visit, as well as plenty of new ones!

Tag: new york, nyc, metro

empire state

I know its a cliche to say "I love New York", but I do. Its got a London buzz about it and every few metres there is something interesting to look at or experience. Here's a street scene I passed where a guy was selling castings of famous scenes of construction workers building the Empire State. Lewis Hine took the original iconic pictures and what better than to render them into 3D and then add them to the top of a pickup truck?

Tag: new york, nyc, metro

bronx is up and the battery's down

View from hotel room, which is closer to Battery than Bronx. The picture shows both outside and inside in the same shot; I've captured some room light reflection, so the picture has an inside outside sort of quality.

Like me after about 10 hours of travelling.

Tag: new york, nyc, metro

New York mega snackies

LHR to JFK; iPod; Watch V; read book; long line at immigration; right index finder; left index finger; smile; pickup bag; airtrain to Hertz; Beige Toyota rental car; bottle of coke from vending machine; Van Wyke Expressway; find hotel; checkin; note large amount of snackies above the minibar; call Victor; meet in bar.

Tag: new york, nyc, metro

fringe trailer

So here's the trailer for the Warhol production by bubbleandsqueek at the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe! They are ramping up the promotion for this now and have the web site, a myspace, a photogallery, a blog, the bongo club link and the promos at the John Lewis department store in Edinburgh.

Click here to see the video

I think the fame may be more than 15 minutes.

problematique black hole revelation

I need to find a few minutes today to transfer Muse's new album to my iPod, for plane listening tomorrow when I pop over to New York for a few days. A decent travel soundtrack makes all the difference. Muse make big music and have quite a few classical sounding elements in their work. Three years since "Absolution", they seem to have been touring the USA and parts of Europe in the interval. The new CD's packaging is somewhat old school vinyl looking, and rather reminds me of a Floyd cover.

And here's that shiny guitar in full...

fringe countdown

I'll be visiting the Edinburgh Fringe later in August and am being asked by various people to mention events taking place. The main dates are between 6 August and 28 August and the full info is available here. Some shows run for the full duration and others for just a few days; as usual, there will be a blend of well known people and new people starting out.

Today I'm mentioning "Storm" - we need good satire and analysis of our esteemed leaders Bush and Blair. I think Steve Hughes will provide this. Its on my list of shows to see. At the centrally located Pleasance.

Christina asked me to mention the bubbleandsqueek Warhol production which I think she will be describing in any case. When they get the video trailer loaded I'll post a link.

tax

Enlivened by the great skip clearing activities, this weekend will also see me complete my tax forms. In the UK, we have until September before the forms need to be ready - thats if we want the taxman to do the calculations.

The main challenge is finding all the little pieces of paper that have the numbers to be transferred to the return. I think I have found everything now so I don't have any more excuses.