Talk about weird stories ...

Test-tube Sharks!

There's a great band name in there somewhere.

There is a bathroom - I'm sorry, toilet as they say here - in Victoria Station that I frequent. Although frequent isn't really the right word, because I don't go out of my way to use it, but whenever I'm passing through I like to duck in. You have to pay 20p to get in, but that's what makes it so charming. And of course because of that (or perhaps in spite of it) the facilities are always clean.

There are no trash cans - I'm sorry, bins - in Victoria Station. This perplexed me for a very long time. There are plenty of stores and restaurants in which to buy various foodstuffs, which inevitably come wrapped in some sort of packaging. There is nowhere to put this packaging when you are finished eating whichever inevitably bland foodstuff you have pretended to enjoy. And yet, you never see British people walking around with handfuls of trash - sorry, rubbish. I finally figured out it was because wherever they chose to eat, when they were done, they just left the wrappers and bags and cups right there on the table, and eventually some guy comes around and cleans them off.

I'm sorry for not having a more exciting story to tell after 2 weeks in England. I did go to Spain; it was hot. Not Paris Hilton hot; Sahara Hilton hot. I saw lots of things and took lots of great pictures and they sure do love Cervantes there.

It's Wednesday night, and you know what that means - free comedy at the club down the street. Even the free stuff here is twice as expensive as in the U.S. Fortunately, 2 x 0 = 0.

Yesterday began at 5:30 A.M. with my alarm ringing. An hour later, we were rushing for the train station to catch the 7:02 to Liverpool. It took about 3 hours and it was not a very comfortable train (although it was a Virgin train - that company is everywhere over here). A little bit of walking about in Liverpool followed. Everyone sounded like Ringo; I had to try very hard not to laugh when asking for help.

Back to the train station to catch a train to Audley End in Essex where the Van Morrison concert was being held. We arrived at 6:30 desperately needing dinner. Of course, Audley End is in the middle of the English countryside and therefore no restaurants (or any other businesses) are close by. We thought they might be selling food inside - we were wrong. They were giving away tea and ice cream samples, though. So we had a couple of those.

The show was great - completely sold out. The stage was set up in front of the mansion and people were just everywhere. I took a bunch of pictures which you will get to see later. At the end of the show, they launched fireworks for about 20 minutes and it was spectacular. I'm running out of superlatives now, so suffice it to say it was a good time.

Afterwards, everyone had a taxi except us. We called 3 or 4 places and none were available. No one was being very helpful about this, so we decided to walk the 2 miles back to the train station. Through the English countryside. In the dark. For a while there was no sidewalk and we were just trudging along the edge of the forest. (This is probably the kind of thing that American students in England are not supposed to do, but we figured we could take a bear or some thugs if we needed to.) We made it back in time to catch the last train into London, and sleep mercifully came at about 2 A.M.

Hi everyone. Just a quick word to let you know I am ok. Still working on the phone issue but once it's settled I will be able to call internationally very cheap. I will try to call as many of you as possible.

Just a very quick update from sunny England - the flight was fine, no delays, just very uncomfortable. The college where we are staying is nice. Everything is very small here. I can barely fit in the shower. The people are great and we had a bus tour of the city today which was very informative.

I am still phoneless but I am hoping to solve that soon. T-Mobile informed me politely about 2 minutes before I left for the airport that I may not be able to unlock the brand new phone I just bought, because unlock requests can only be made once every 90 days - never mind that I couldn't use the first one since my phone coincidentally died the day it was sent. I haven't received any word from them, so I'm going to the local phonery to try and get it sorted out. At the very least I'll get a card I can use in the payphone here to call around and check in.

London is great. It's the greatest thing ever and I knew I wouldn't want to leave.

Update: I have a new phone. They totally jacked me, but whatever. I'm going to London, fools!

Up top is the session from last week. It sounds super-sweet, and I'm not just saying that because I was involved.

First of all, don't try to call me. My phone is currently inoperable.

I called T-Mobile last night to try to work out phone service for my trip to London. The guy who helped me (Jason - I've spent enough time in CS to know to keep track of who you talk to) was very nice and told me he could enable international roaming just like it said on their website, how it was free and I only paid if I used it. He then went on to tell me how expensive it was, which I was prepared for. Then he said a better option would be to have the phone unlocked so I could use a European SIM card and get cheaper service. I told him that was fine, and I wanted to do both things. Ok, no problem. The unlock code should arrive in an e-mail within a week.

I get that e-mail today, July 05 at 4:11 P.M. The next time I go to check my phone, it's all messed up and none of the buttons respond. Before this, I had used my phone several times that day to send text messages and make calls. Everything worked fine.

Now - nothing. The only thing that works is the power button. The keys will beep and randomly do things like take me to the phone book or speed dial Chris or put a pound sign up and beep incessantly. I called CS on Caleb's phone and they went through the whole song and dance of, "Oh it's not us, we don't know what's wrong with your phone, we'll have to mail you a replacement." By which they mean charge me full price for a new phone.

This is stupid. I am 100% convinced it is sabotage. I am going to the T-Mobile store tomorrow to try and sort things out. By which I mean they can undo whatever they did, or they can give me a free new phone.

Well, there it is. My latest attempt at pop-musickry. It's just a demo. (What that means is I know there's lots of things wrong with it, and I will either fix or ignore those things when I record it "for real". On the other hand, if you don't hear anything wrong, then it's my new single. You can buy it retroactively for $3.)

Open the floodgates of criticism and let loose the dogs of ... criticism?

We played a session tonight. It was with some of our good friends here and we recorded "Beast of Burden". It was the coolest, sickest session ever. Ever!

I'll post the track as soon as it's done, which will be Tuesday night.

Oh, snap!

Bright Eyes at Glastonbury

I knew Conor was a jerk. I knew it! Abusing the wonderful British population at their own festival.

Brian Wilson, written by ... Adam Horovitz?

Surely not THAT Adam Horovitz? King Ad-Rock himself? Nice review, though.

The rest of the reviews from Glastonbury