more photos from bent and such

(photos: fake snow and the marylebone high street lighting; alan cumming and me!!after BENT, note the sneaky hat...i look terrified; big ben at night)

apologies again for the delay

(photo: i am looking for new posts)
As you may have noticed i have not written in quite some time, but have no fear, it will eventually come again. We here in the UK also have finals and crazy papers, so i will be absolutely busy until dec 5. At that point i will begin catching up on the past month or so (including the fall break trip). I have notes on things, so it should be alright. Look forward to Ireland stories and photo from this weekend. Also, the things to come : michael palin book signing/lecture tomorrow, glasgow and morrissey thursday- sunday, maybe a movie premiere on the 5th, hopefully the tree lighting on the 7th, etc, etc. Until then it is papers and class and more papers. No fun. So you will have to stay tuned for another week or so. Thanks kids. Cheers

Christmas isn't Christmas without Nazis

(photo: ginny weasley( bonnie wright to non harry potter fans) and the very white and wintry emcee.)

Thursday was another busy day, as most of my days seem to be... After class, my friend and i went to the marylebone high street lighting, about a 5 minute walk from our school. We arrived at 4, as the adverts stated, though we soon found out the actual lighting did not occur until 5:30. As the stagehands finished screwing on the last of the decorations for the set and setting up the lights, a brass quintet entertained us with some lovely christmas songs.

The man hosting the event was dressed all in white and had a shaved head. He was pretty cool looking as you can see in the photo. He announced the the entertainment of the evening, most of which consisted of choirs of schoolkids.
Lots of little school kids. Then there was a girl who sang "all i want for christmas is you" solo, a la love actually. She gave it a valiant try but she wasn't quite as good as the young girl in love actually. After her, some guy named david snedden (?) who won the original fame academy (?) played a few songs off his new cd. I think fame academy is some sort of early american idol/ pop idol/ singing competition. He was pretty good, but i dont actually know who he was.... He was quite scottish, though, which is always nice to hear.

Finally the special guest came on stage: bonnie wright who plays ginny weasley in the harry potter movies. She used a wand to guide the children in lighting the street. Their countdown wasnt quite coordinated and it took a little while to catch on to the fact that they were lighting them one chunk at a time, rather than the entire street at once. It looked very nice at t he end, and they finished it off with.......some fireworks! What else would they do? It's England, man. Fireworks are used to celebrate all events, ever. So they shot them off the roof of the stage. The host looked legitimately frightened when they first went off, which amused us. Though i tried not to laugh until he started making fun of himself. That's when you know its ok to laugh at someone. They followed up the fireworks with some fake snow. At first, i thought it was styrofoam, but it happened to be actual fake snow. I guess in case something caught fire they could put it out with a light dusting of manmade snow. Luckily it didn't come to that. Phew.

We went back to get some dinner, though we had planned on going to covent garden as well for their christmas lighting things, but the timing did not work out . That celebrity guest turned out to be baby spice of spice girls fame, emma something i think, so that was not a big loss. So after dinner and getting changed and all that, we decided to just go straight to our play, BENT.

My friend emme has a friend in the cast, so he put side 3 tickets for us at 15 pounds each. The man who handed them to us commented on how good they were: the 5th row right in the center. They were , in fact, superfantastic seats. I was particularly excited for this play because it was starring Alan Cumming (of cabaret fame; also boris "i am invincible" grishenko in goldeneye). He was absolutely unbelievable, and not just because i am a fan. He is talented. Emme's friend actually played Alan's boyfriend and had a rather big role; i had originally assumed he was a minor role, seeing as i don't understand how my friends can be friends with people quite so successful. But yes, he was fantastic as well. The play is not your average, everyday, happy - go -lucky musical; just the opposite actually. It focused on nazis, germany, and homosexuality... some themes that appeared in cabaret as well.

For the entirety of the second act, the actors mainly just move rocks back and forth from one side of the stage to other, as one does in a concentration camp. You'd think this would be dull, but it was riveting . That must get fairly ouchy after a while...which is why mr. cumming stretches for 20 minutes after every show ( as the usher told us) You see, we conducted what we thought was a thorough search of the surrounding area for anything that might look like a stage door. When we failed to find anything, and my friends all refused to ask anyone, i did something very out of character. I finally sucked it up and asked a lady who worked there. She explained the very out of the way location, said they usually come out, and didn't seem to think it was a preposterous idea. Therefore, i felt a little better even though my friends and i were only the ones waiting....creepy...i know. We stood there awkwardly as people came out of the stage door and we didn't say anything. Then we all almost missed alan cumming, but one of my friends recognized him under his hat and politely said "alan?" He stopped for us, and said something along the lines of "oh you'd like autographs?" in his lovely scottish brogue. He was kind enough to sign things and take photos even though he was in a hurry and the car was waiting right there. Not to mention he just carried rocks around for an hour. I don't know how they do it. Nice guy, though. Again, not very interested in hanging around, like tim curry, but i cant really blame them. I wouldn't want to talk to people every night, i know that much.

Fresh from our exciting celebrity encounter, we decided to use the nervous energy towards good. Seeing as this was the trafalgar theatre, only steps away from trafalgar square, we thought it was only proper to go try to climb on the lions at nelsons column in the dark at midnight. My friends were not sure how to go about doing it and didnt want to look silly, so i offered to try first. i am all about looking silly, which is good, since i have several unsuccessful attempts. In the end, two of my friends and i got on the same lion sculpture and took fun silly photos. If you plan on doing this at some point in your life, see to it that you wear sneakers, or shoes with any sort of traction. For i did not, and it was exponentially more difficult than it need to be. After conquering the lions, we walked down a bit to take photos of big ben at night. my friends decided to walk home, but i was a bit sleepy and decided that would not be the best idea. So i took the tube back and went to sleep.

BOND, JAMES BOND 007 ..INGWER, LAURA INGWER 021...

(photos: daniel craig photo stolen from drew without permission..hopefully he's ok with that...he was very close, we were about 50 feet away; laura and i in covent garden. i looks a bit crazy.)

Sunday was things. Something may have happened. I don't recall. Same story with Monday.

Tuesday, however, was exciting! Before i came to England in the autumn, i knew that the new james bond movie would premiere whilst i was there. Obviously i decided it was imperitive i attend said premiere. So i did. After class, my friends Kristen and Helen quickly ate dinner with me before we jumped on the tube headed for Leicester Square. We got off and noticed spotlights swirling around from the direction of the theatre. This we took as a cue to speed things up a bit. Unfortunately, despite our superfastwalking, we were not there early enough.
Seems as though you need to get there about 3 or more hours early to get into the area with the barriers next to the red carpet. Had we been there 15 minutes earlier we could have gotten in that area, but its ok. can't worry about things like this now that it's done. We wound up getting spots right next to the fence that closed off the park where the carpet was. This also meant we were next to the entrance where all the ticketholders for the actual premiere came through. So the entire night we got to hear security people shout " PURPLE TO THE LEFT , BLUE IN THE CENTER, RED ON MY RIGHT!" It was fun. They must have been bored. It seemed a dull job. Though we also got to see people trying to weasel their way in and get shot down for being dumb. That was enjoyable.

We could hear lots of people yelling every now and then, and though i did not see everyone on the red carpet, i caught glimpses of the important ones. Daniel Craig looked dapper and appeared to be a nice fellow. He went out of his way to walk down the carpet a bit towards us ( that was not the path) in order to take a photo with some fan. He did the self-photo college thing where he held it out and pointed it in their general direction, checked it on her camera, then took another. I was impressed. My friend then pointed out that he was being videotaped the whole time so maybe that's why he's being nice. That burst my bubble a bit. I maintain he's a nice guy. Dame Judi Dench is a tiny, tiny woman. Eva Green, is that her name? the bond girl? she looked quite nice and classy. Also there, why i dont know, looking very unclassy, was Paris Hilton, everyone's favourite waste of money. Pierce did not come, which made me happy, since i would have been too far away to see him. I assume many other people must have gone (including Elton John, apparently) and we missed them, but we did see the Queen on her way into the theatre.

It was the Royal Premiere, you see. The Royal Family picks one movie each year that at least one member will attend, and though it is usually not the Queen, she opted to come to this one. So that's kind of special. She was also tiny, and wearing white gloves and shaking people's hands. The security guards kept saying things over their headsets like "We'll start the film once HRH is seated." I like that they call her HRH. I commented on that fact that that sounded like a rapper's alias when spoken, then i proceeded to rap in a highpitched english queen voice for my friends. It was better than constantly listening to the color themed directional shouting. We tried to hang around at the end of the red carpet event in order to get one of the big posters that were hanging on the barriers, but we did not succeed.

I do have some terrible , but memorable, photos of the event, but they are on my friend's computer since i borrowed her awesome stalker camera. I shall put them up once i recieve them. Afterwards we came home and all i wanted to do was watch a James Bond movie, but the silly Reid Hall desk does not have any bond movies in their possession. Yet they have Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. What is the world coming to?

Not sure what happened the rest of that evening..but then there's Wednesday, which was quite busy for it was LAURA INGWER'S 21st BIRTHDAY!

After a lot of class, including art history held at the Victoria and Albert museum instead of the usual National Gallery, i ran home from the tube station. I got changed quickly then tried to rush to meet up with laura and some of her friends at the Porterhouse in Covent Garden. I probably should not have gone, but i decided to and i wound up being late and didn't even eat there. It was good to be there though, even though I had to leave shortly after arrival to get to the play for my theatre class. I grabbed a Cornish pasty from this stand near the tube station (laura's recommendation) and tried to eat most of it before i got on the tube so the smell wouldn't affect others negatively. I got to Kilburn , this fairly out of the way area in the outskirts of London, and followed the sign that stated "theatre" to the right. In fact, the theatre is not to the right, despite the lying sign, and i just walked further and further into the residential area. I decided at this point it would be a good idea to look at the address on the ticket since it was getting kind of creepy. It took me way to long to figure this out. I am a fool.

I was running late by this time so i started jogging despite the ankle issue, and went back down the high street that is directly opposite the tube exit. Interesting that the road was in fact, Kilburn High Street. I got to the theatre just in time, sat down, out of breath and a few minutes later the show started. And what a terrible show it was. It was a modern adaptation of Euripides "Orestes," which was poorly, poorly done. Quite comical actually with such poetic lines as "You are not a woman, you are a man, too." What?! i'm sorry , what? how is that romantic or meaningful at all? Then there was Meneleus , who sat in the corner wearing his combat boots and a silly, crazy, angry arched eyebrow expression for the duration of the play.

When it was over ( later than scheduled, of course), i rejoined laura and her friends in covent garden at this american bar called belushis. Actually, the same bar that my hostel was adjoined to in edinburgh. After some time there and some talking to bartenders done by Laura, we moved on. I have decided from now on that if i have a good friend who wants to talk to people, i will come for moral support and look especailly awkward standing in close relation to them. So i just made strange faces and it worked. Try it.

We then went to the roadhouse.. another american-esque place i think. Though they had a cover band there so that was fun. I still don't understand why people choose to go to American places, as most of my fellow students do, but oh well. It was a birthday, so i have to comply with the plans. Let's just say that place was ..interesting...with some creepy Europeans... but overall a pretty good time.

Once we decided to be done there, i walked Laura home, hung out in her dorm room for a bit. I then had to walk home alone at 4 am. No worries though, for i had a big, long black trenchcoat, and i walked in very ' just try to come fight me' way. Hence, no trouble. I arrived at reid hall to see two of my friends still awake, so i talked to them for a bit then finally went up to the room. Then showered and went to sleep, very quietly since my roommate and her mom were sleeping. Went to sleep at about 5:30, woke up at 10, class at 11. Super duper.

Lord Mayor's Parade!

(Photos: K-9 troops; fancy carriage in front of St . Paul's; horsies! ; the St. Paul's ceremony thing; slides at the Tate Modern; assorted fireworks things)

Right. Well this happened a long time ago and i cannot remember it quite so well...so yes we'll see how it goes:

Saturday morning ( 11 November 2006) we awoke early to go line up along the street by St. Paul's in order to watch the Lord Mayor's Parade. My friend Antonia agreed to go with me, since for some reason a lot of people don't seem to be so interested in these sorts of cultural, historical things. I am.

This year the Lord Mayors Parade happened to occur on armistice day, so people who wore red poppies in remembrance all week were invited to toss them in the trafalgar square fountains. I feel this would have been quite lovely. Too bad i did not get a chance to walk by it...

The parade itself occurs every year with the purpose of welcoming the new lord mayor, who is, surprisningly elected every year. I believe the qualifications for being lord mayor are : rich, old, important, lots of experience in the guildhall or things like that. Well you have to be rich and old-ish, i know that much. So yes, we got to the very crowded St. Paul's tube station at about 10:20 and found a nice spot along the barrier facing St. Paul's Cathedral, next to two british men and a family with two british kids. After some consideration, i decided to buy a Union Jack flag that was being sold by various venders, only to see a man selling the English flag two minutes later. Argh. Oh well, the union jack is still cool. I waved it and i enjoyed myself. Antonia bought a "snake" or "worm" which was pretty much a spotted piece of fuzzy cloth with eyes a tongue on the end of a bouncy plastic stick. She had fun waving it about like the small children next to us. I was proud, but i also laughed at her.

The parade was set to start at 11:02, after a two minute moment of silence for the veterans. The way they began and ended this ritual was with an air show. That's what it was called at least. It was actually a pretty inspirational moment, for as three military planes flew overhead the crows, silence grew among the streets of london. The engines died down in the distance and no noise could be heard except the leaves of the autmn trees. 2 minutes late, two military choppers flew over, ending the silence. It was pretty awesome overall.

It took about another 15 minutes before the parade reached us, and it was about 2 hours before it was done, i think. The parade was so wonderfully British, it made me very happy. There were fancy costumes and uniforms everywhere. I think there was upwards of 200 horses, as well. Well trained horses. They were not afraid of manholes or of pavement that changes to a different color. Not that our mules aren't wonderful, i am just merely pointing out the greatness of these horses. Many carriages were actually pulled by two horses with one man astride a horse, leading them both, and no driver. It looked difficult but i really have no idea what that sort of thing entails. Marching bands were all over the place and there were bagpipers in kilts, everything you could have wanted in a parade. And since we are in England, it would not be right unless there were crazy costumes and uniforms for everyone from the 12 big company guilds and political leaders and other important people.

My possible favorite moments of the parade:

An elderly ish man walks by in fancy dress and carrying a pole and says in a lovely British accent : " Oh don't worry, we're fine, we've only done ten miles so far..."

The military men carrying large rifles complete with frightening bayonets pass by and one nods and says " good moooorrning" whilst walking with the gun pointed towards us. I found the juxtaposition of that quite amusing.

There were also two schnauzers in the parade. I miss my schnauzer.

Then of course there was the man of the hour, the lord mayor himself, who not only wore funny clothes and a big wig, but got to ride in a snazzy golden carriage pulled by lovely horses. He leaned out and waved to our side and all the Brits were excited. I was excited too. I will be calling myself a Brit soon hopefully.

After the procession had past the point we were standing at, we ran around the corner past the small funfair of ferris wheels, rides, and cotton candy , i n order to watch the quick ceremony that took place in front of St. Paul's. I videotaped this using my friend's great camera and my unusual height. It was here, in this fateful place and time, that i lost my glove. I think that is the saddest thing in the world. Seeing one lonely glove on the street makes me want to cry. My heart goes out to you thinsulate glove, i hope you make a poor one handed person very happy someday.

After this, he goes on to the Royal Courts of Justice, but we did not watch that for that is much longer and more involved. Instead we continued on with our day and went to the Tate Modern, which is actually an old power plant converted to house all sorts of modern art. I don't know how much news this had made outside the UK, but perhaps you have heard of the big slides at the Tate? Carsten Hoeller installed these huge winding slides not too long ago, there is one that goes from every floor down to the bottom level and it is a huge hit. I haven't actually gone on them because you need to get tickets in advance, though they are free. I am going to try to do it before i leave...that's some fun modern art there. Most of the art there did not impress me, for i am not a big fan of modern art, surprise surprise. We saw some of those silly solid colored canvases and i rolled my eyes and walked on. However, there were two exhibits i really liked. First was a series of seven chalkboard panels upon which a nautical story was depicted using chalk . This was by Tacita Dean and entitled "The Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days." It sounds simple, but it was quite innovative and well done. The other exhibit i stared at for longer than i should have was a series of many flags in plexiglass boxes created with mulitcoloured sand. All were interconnected by small tubes and when you looked at it, some of the sand had run together into other boxes, distorting the flags a bit. When i looked closer to find out how it was done, i discovered, to my slight disgust that the artist ( whose name i cannot find) set a bunch of ants loose and let them walk throughout the flags ,creating the desired effect. Luckily the ants were gone by this point and all that was left was good old insect free fun.

After we tired of the museum (and saw pretty much all of it except for the things that cost money), we went outside to try to figure out our dinner situation. Seeing as we are both cheap we wound up splitting a sandwich at the National Theatre Cafe because it was the last thing we came across and we got desperate. It was food. We then wasted some time in the National Theatre bookstore until it was closer to the time when we wanted to venture back into the windy cold weather in order to get a good spot along the Thames for the fireworks that were in honor of the parade.

Antonia decided she wanted to sit on a bench, but i like to watch them being shot off from the boat so i stood behind some people by the rail of the river. I was still holding my British flag at this time, and as i tried to fit it into my bag, i apparently poked this woman in the bum for a fairly considerable amount of time. It took me a few seconds to realize this and then i quickly recoiled and apologized profusely. I turned to look at my friend who mouther " did you just poke her?!" and i nodded sheepishly. She proceeded to laugh at me for a few minutes until she got it out of her system. It was quite amusing. No one is as awkward as me.

The fireworks were quite good, not as good as Ally Pally, but lovely nonetheless. It was quite awesome to see them shot off from the boat itself, though it seemed less than safe. I thought for a minute the boat had set fire , but no worries, it was just large flames lighting the fireworks. They were lovely.

On the way home we passed the London Eye, quite nice looking all lit up at night, though i have not gone on it, and continued on to Waterloo Station. We got off the tube at Baker Street and walked..next door.. to the Metropolitan Pub. We randomly met up with two of our friends and ate with them, i had a yummy pie. Then its back to the school to do assorted things i can't remember. The end.

The National Army Museum, Sir John Soane, and other things

(photos: the sir john soane musuem, ignore the scaffolding. The little yellow things are actual pieces of columns from the old palace of westminster that he decided to just throw on his home. Cool guy)
Wednesday i did things that probably should have been homework. Thursday ( the 9th of nov) i also should have done homework. I don't remember what i did either day, so we'll say it wasn't exciting..

I did however go to the Natioanl Army Museum on a class trip on Thursday. We were supposed to have very smart British man who knows way too much about the American Revolutionary War tell us the story from the British perspective. But he had taken ill or something equally unfortunate so we wound up with this ex-pat girl who did try to tell us it from the British side, but still defended the Americans very much.

It was very interesting because we - or at least i- was taught a rather one sided view of the war. We are Americans ,we want to be free, blah blah blah, we win, you lose , yay! I am not so good at remembering things i learned in school so i don't remember much about those lessons... But i found out that the French had a huge deal in our winning, in fact according to the lady at the musuem, we did not win the war, the french won it for us. And the Brits didn't seem to care much. From the sound of it, they were getting a bit tired of the whole thing as it was, and once they started losing they just decided to bugger off and go back home. There were some goings on in India and all that. Mmm spices and tea. Yeah. Bit of a different story coming from them ,but we didn't quite get the full effect. It was still very interesting. I wish i remembered more. You all probably know more than me.

Friday, the day i normally do not have classes, i had a day trip for my architecture class beginning at St. Paul's at 10:30 am. We went throught the whole St. Paul's Christopher Wren thing, and it was all quite lovely and informative and all. But i have discussed this a bit already. He allowed everyone some time to go up into the dome, which i and my friend had done already. Instead, we walked to Holburn, had some super fantastic hot chocolate at a cafe nero right across from the concert venue, and then rejoined the class as they met up outside the tube station.

We then had to inflitrate the John Soane Musuem, since apparently they told my teacher we could not come in as a group. So instead we sneakily went in one or two at a time and pretended not to know the others...there were only 8 of us, so it was not that big of a deal. I am pretty sure the curators must have caught on, but they didnt care as long as we didn't congregate.

I was not allowed to take photos of the place, but it was absolutely fantastic. Sir John Soane was a good old famous architect who designed the original Bank of England, among other things. He was also quite into collecting this, which is why his house is entirely covered with all sorts of artsy junk. I loved it. He has plaster casts, little pieces of famous buildings, models, drawings, paintings, even an actual ancient egyptian sarcophogus. I think one of the only ones in London not in the British museum or something like that. It was of King Seti I, i believe, and it was awesome, just chilling out in his basement. He loved the use of mirrors and wierd glass colours to bring in lots of apparently mysterious light. And most rooms were lined up in a way that you could look down a corridor and see to either end of the building. One of my favourite things, is the paintings that he had hanging on large doors that could open, close, swing around over this gap in the floor. It is very hard to describe this without being able to actually see the house in all its glory. And to think his sons wanted to sell all his stuff. Jerks.

But it is here, and if you ever come to London, you should go. I think i may go back. It's free , too. Interesting stuff, cool man.

I forget what the night was...but yes, probably nothing too fun since i woke up early the next day for the Lord Mayor's Parade.

But that is for another day. I am sleepy now, and though i am trying hard to catch up, i feel these are less british and interesting than the earlier ones due to lack of time. my apologies.

Christmastime is here

(Photos, some stolen from laura ingwer since here camera is better: sir ian mckellan, andy serkis, fun outfit man who may possibly be important to london; sir and ian and andy being friendly ( a laura photo); laura and i being christmas-y; the lights, which are apparently the "greenest lights in london" and use much less energy; a laura fireworks photo; another fireworks photo)





Due to the lack of Thanksgiving, the Brits jump right on into Christmas. So on Tuesday, Laura and I attended the Regent Street Christmas Lighting. I think this may be like the equivalent of the tree lighting in New York. It was a pretty big deal: loads of people, free cookies, tv cameras and crew, and special guest celebrities doing the count down.

Apparently the theme to this years lights is the Wallace and Gromit-esque movie "Flushed Away". I am fairly certain it is about rats ,sewers, and the underground....not quite sure how that is christmas related at all....but thats ok, we'll let it slide. Only because the people doing the voices were the people lighting the streets from the balcony of some fancy shop. There is some British soap star i am unfamiliar with, Andy Serkis ( the man who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings), and the one and only Sir Ian McKellan. Don't get too excited, i didn't actually get to meet these people, but i did see them.

We listened to Christmas carols blaring through speakers as the stars talked to the tv cameras, and after a quick coutndown led by Sir Ian, the banners lit up across the street accompanied by loud cheerful cheers from the hundreds (thousands?) of people all along the street.

Then to my surprise, there is a loud bang , i look up and there are fireworks being shot off from the roofs of stores on either side of the street. It was beautiful. These Brits really like their fireworks... my kind of people :) I enjoyed watching Sir Ian leaning over the banister of the balcony watching the fireworks with a clear appreciative amazement. What a fun man.

The lighting was fabulous, but i had to leave right away to go to a play for class, called Township Stories. It was by far the absolute worst, probably most offensive thing i have ever seen. I am usually the person who always finds something good in a play and tells others to stop complaining since they just got to see a free show in london. My class has lots of complainers. But for the first time in my life i wanted to walk out. Nothing about it was even remotely good. I gave it the first act to try to show some sort of worth. But after an hour and 45 minutes of the first act, i decided then that it was terrible. I spent the entirety of the second act first thinking of words that were synonymous with 'hatred' starting from a to z. I then discovered that my vocabulary is not nearly as good as i had originally thought. So i promptly moved on to the same plan with song titles by The Smiths/ Morrissey. I did significantly better at this game.

That pretty much ruined the Christmas spirit, but let's forget about that once and for all. Lights , fireworks, cookies, Sir Ian McKellan, London, .... there we go. Life is back to being happy and fantastic :)

Badly Drawn Boy is not bad at all

(photos: that enormous building on the left is the Victoria House in Holburn. All the ticket said was "Victoria House." I was very confused, and walked around the entire place before finding the small door in the corner that says "Bloomsbury Ballroom". This is where the concert took place, though this is a photo i took two days later whilst on a class trip)

I did the ultimate unacceptable thing for a college student on Monday evening: I went to a concert alone.

I can hear your gasps of horror and your heads hitting the floor as you faint. Right, once you've come to, i will continue.

I don't understand why people see this as a big deal. There was a musician i really wanted to see, so i went. I asked about 15 people back when i ordered the ticket and i got a lot of " oh...um...maybe...yeah...um...how much...maybe" So they never answered me and i bought one ticket, figuring if i found someone who wanted to go later on, they could buy their own and we could go together ( it was general admission). Well a week before the show when i started talking about it a lot, i found about 10 new people who decided they wanted to go, however it was sold out.

This is how i wound up going to see Badly Drawn Boy alone. If you don't know who he is, i understand, many people don't. He is fantastic. He did the entire soundtrack for the Hugh Grant movie "About A Boy", if you had seen that. The guys real name is Damon Gough and he has a beard, long hair and always wears a woolen cap.

To make a long story short, i did not get there very early, but due to people going straight for the bar, i managed to get up in the "front row." Doors were supposed to open at 7, but due to "sound problems" they did not open til 8. It was actually quite interesting because when i came back around 7:30, i could hear him warming up through the walls of the building. I knew it was supposed to be a small venue, but i was still surprised when i walked in the tiny room. There were only 400 people at the sold out concert; and there were no barriers, i actually was leaning on the stage. I felt a little bad since i am tall, but we tall people are persecuted enough. Plane seats? Theatre seats? What's that all about? So i decided it was ok for me to stay in the front. That and the fact that there were two other people well over six feet in the front made me feel a bit better. I am glad i did stay, for although i probably secondhand-smoked the pack of cigarettes that he breezed through while playing...still not sure how he did that... that takes talent. He did almost burn his keyboard once, and a stagehand had to come move the cigarette sitting on it to the ashtray it had fallen out of.

I am pretty upset with myself because i came so close to getting his harmonica holder (the bob dylan- esque wiry thing that you put around your neck in order to play the harmonica while you play the guitar and sing). He took it off after one song and just held it out in the middle of me and these two other people. I had no idea what he was doing. Surely he was not giving it away? Those things must be fairly expensive, especially when you leave the harmonica in it. But due to my confusion, i did not make a go at it, and so this 40 year old lady got it. He did sing to me and kiss my hand later on, but still, i wanted the harmonica holder. Those things are just awesome. Not that i wasn't excited.

Anyway, fantastic fantastic concert. One i would have missed out on if i followed any sort of social norms. Good thing i am stacey molski and have little concept of what is the acceptable thing for 20 year olds to do. I have friends, i know that, why do i need to prove that to other people by making someone join me everywhere? I think more people should do this. This is my preaching for the week. Go be merry, and be alone. Sometimes. Just do what you want to do. And no, parents, i did not die. My mother thought i was going to die, going alone, but you see, i am very tall. I wear a big long black coat. People tend not to bother me.

Now go listen to Badly Drawn Boy.

The ZOO!!!!!

photos: komodo dragon; reptile house from harry potter and the philosopher's stone; the python that came out of its cage during harry potter; to prove harry potter was filmed here; a pretty cool sloth bear habitat; penguin feeding; awesome otters;meerkats that sprinted right over to us when we came; african hunting dog that i want to take home with me; giraffe wants out








Boy do i love zoos. Laura and i left for the zoo at about 10:30, and simply walked across the park i live in until we came to the zoo located in said park. I love living in a park next to a zoo. Well, it still took about 15-20 minutes to walk there. Big park.

We hand over our e-tickets and recieve a pin with a baby gorilla on it, thanking us for our optional donation. They are building a large gorilla exhibit that will open in 2007. With any luck i will be back here visiting laura when it opens. We actually wound up seeing everything in the entire zoo....skipping the "Bug House" of course. Really now. Bug House? Why is that interesting? Not interesting.

However, we did enter the mouth of some huge inflatable caterpillar in order to walk around with the butterflies. One landed on me and decided it didn't want to leave. We were friends. I was nervous about hurting it, and i did all the things they tell you to do to get them off, so i had the keeper who worked there take it off for me. It took some effort.

I loved the monkeys. That's all i have to say about that. Nothing could be cooler than being a monkey.

We also saw this animal demonstration where they had hawks and parrots fly right over our heads. Laura seemed slightly less than pleased. I loved it. We saw the penguin feeding, and found out that their rockhopper penguin is actually from a different zoo and was sent here because he was causing fights. What a hooligan. He was also a bit of a bully when it came to the fish, but the keeper was good and made sure every penguin got fed.

Overall the zoo was very well maintained, as it should be since i believe it is the head of the main conservation efforts in Europe. Something impressive like that. They have lovely habitats, and the animals seem to have lots of space to roam around. The zoo has a program entitled "Keeper for a Day" where you can pay 250 pounds and work there for a day. All over the zoo were signs asking "Do you want to be keeper for a day?" I angrily answered YES to all of them in a very bitter fashion . Maybe if they made a slightly less exorbinant amount of money for people who may have decided they want to work in a zoo as a career but need some help figuring this out, i would do it. Can you sense the animosity?

I will not go through all the animals we saw since it is not that interesting and we would be here for days. However, i did remember to go into the reptile house in order to see the enclosure where Harry Potter made the glass disappear. It was pretty awesome actually. The python in it wanted to get out i believe since he was almost entirely vertical on his faux tree trunk. I took some photos for you Potter fans.

All in all it was a super fantastic day and i was very happy. I was more excited about going to the zoo than i was for most things in London. I am strange. I also filled out the little contest entry that i believe was for children in order to win an adoption of an african animal of choice. I want to adopt an African hunting dog, but apparently there is something odd about that since the person i handed it to definitely laughed at me.

Hey. Kids are poor. I am poor. Kids like animals. I like animals. I am a kid.

Bonfire Night!

(photos: assorted fireworks...i took many videos and i am not sure i can upload those here; the inside of alexandra palace; the indiana jones ride i really wanted to go on; laura and i with our makeshift hot dogs; me with my free strawberry yogurt; the jazz band)

Saturday: Still not Guy Fawkes Day, but it is the main day for fireworks celebrations. I suppose you can't light them all the same day so they have to split them up. After a slight bit of research, i found out some information on the fireworks at Alexandra Palace, or Ally Pally as it is known to the Brits; we decided to go there. There was however no mention of a bonfire, and we did not get to see one there. Oh well, next time.

We waited a bit for the free bus ride to Ally Pally, along with a huge number of people, since we did not know how to walk there. By the time the third bus came, we happened to be in the spot where the side doors opened, so Laura, her friend Caitlin, and I crammed ourselves into this sardine tin. I legitimately thought the bus was going to break at one point, but we made it out alive. We then followed the one person in front with good faith that they knew where they were going. Alongside us was a very angry Cockney woman who complained a lot and fought with her equally angry cockney friend. So we quickened the pace, despite the gimpy ankle. As we began down the path, we heard a lady yelling "FREE STRAWBERRY YOGHURT!" What? i say. What? This lady holds up a bag of what looks live 6 enormous strawberries, so of course i take a bag. They are actually little plastic containers of yoghurt that you squeeze into your mouth. Portable and delicious! I had 5 that night.

So after downing some yoghurt whilst walking along to the loud radio station playing "Feeling Hot Hot Hot," we made our way up the hill to the castle. There were many many people. Apparently this is the "biggest fireworks display in London".... and so it seemed. We managed to get a spot on the hill outside the palace, though you could really see at any spot on the lawn. During the build up to the Ally Pally fireworks, we could see all of the other fireworks going on all around the city, which was lovely. They played some strange song choices along with some fantastic tunes. I loved the fireworks display that coincided with the song Fix You by Coldplay, it meshed very well, and it was mesmerizing.

My favourite part of the evening was at one particularly nice part of the fireworks and this woman behind us just yelled out " OH THAT'S NICE!" This reminded me much of this sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which made me laugh even harder.

After the fireworks, we went into Ally Pally, which was this huge palace that looked like something out of a movie set. They apparently have an ice skating rink in there for the winter but i did not see it. We did however, see the big room with the funfair, including the indiana jones ride, which not only had a rather disproportionate portrait of harrison ford, but felt the need to have a more than lifesize portrait of a nazi that resembled Mao.

We walked through the funfair and into the big hall with the jazz band and the food. After some deliberation i would decide to part with 2.50 (pounds that is) to buy a myself a hot dog, seeing as i had not had a hot dog in two months. So Laura and i then took part in what is possibly the worst system of food vending i have ever encountered.

There were two lines: one for paying, one for getting food. You paid first, recieved no receipt, then moved onto the next line and simply stated what you had ordered. It was very much based on the honour system. Therefore many people got food for free. Those rapscallions. As i was about two people away from the delicious hot dogs, i notice the boss lady scurrying over telling her minions that they have run out of hot dog rolls. What? No rolls!? What is one to do? Well the only solution is apparently to lie blatantly and say there are no more hot dogs; despite the tray full of about 20 hot dogs. The problem we have here, is not one of hot dogs, but of hot dog rolls. You have hot dogs to spare. Apparently the British are not the most innovative when it comes to problems like this. They just about freaked out. When i walked up and was told that they have no hot dogs, would i like a hamburger? i said "no thanks, can i just have a hot dog with a hamburger roll?" He looked shocked and appalled, and just stared at me blankly for a while.

I tried to reassure him that it would be alright, and that i would simply but the long hot dog in half, cut the hamburger roll in half, and use it like a hot dog bun. I thought the man was going to cry. He slowly asked " Are you sure about this?..." as if I just told him i was going to make the suicidal run across no man's land in order to steal the enemy flag. I said " yes dont worry, it will be alright." He then made sure he looked at everyone very skeptically as if to say ' i have nothing to do with this. i am doing this against my will. please don't judge me.' Laura did the same appalling hot dog/hamburger bun combination. As we walked away, the security guard near the table yelled out in a mocking manner: ENJOY YOUR HOT DOGS!

And we did. Has no one ever encountered this problem before? I thought it was fairly common... apparently i could not have been more wrong. I may be deported soon because of this incident. We hung out for a while reminscing about the old times back at Nutswamp and Thompson, and then we made our way back to the bus and tubes.

During the evening i found out that i like the band Scissor Sisters (though it took me a week to find out the name of the band). I also wound up adapting the song "You Spin Me Round" to apply to Guy Fawkes. It was semi- ridiculous and we almost filmed us singing it. I should have. You would have enjoyed it.

Leeds Castle trip

(photos: the lake by the castle; laura and i by the portcullis of the barbican; the awesome carved beams on the ceiling of one room; i don't know if you can tell, but there are golfers out there. you can golf at leeds castle; one of the rooms used by the "Conference delegates"; a fantastic library; me in front of the castle; the entire castle is surrounded by water; swans in front of the castle; me plowing; the garden ; pretty flower; birds will bite! notice the bird flying away swiftly. it had just tried to murder laura when she walked over; turf maze; vineyard)















So yes. Finally, Laura and I ventured out to Leeds Castle, as recommended by Sarah Rice and the book i read about labyrinths and hedge mazes, entitled something very original such as "Labyrinths and Hedge Mazes." I suggest you read it. We took the National Express bus in, and it took Laura about 15 minutes to get her ticket, despite the man's profuse apologies. I think she broke his machine or something odd, there were lots of problems. Eventually, we both had our tickets and we got on the bus in time. Apparently there was no need to worry about having a seat on the bus, since about 3 other people took the 2 hour journey with us. That's pretty bad for the environment...nice and wasteful..but let's not worry about that.

Our bus driver was pretty snazzy. He wore a nice sweater and some fancy sunglasses. Not your average bus driver. He did have some trouble with the intercom when he announced each or our two destinations. The bus dropped us off right at the castle, and as we walked up to get our tickets we passed a slew of peacocks, including a lovely white one, just ambling about. As we waited to get our tickets, saw a little kid walk up to the old man taking tickets at the gate who promptly looked down and yelled " 'Ello, young person!!" It was so British and fantastic; i was amused. The little kid looked a little confused and walked back to its parents shortly thereafter. When we handed him our tickets he explained a few things about the castle and such, and was generally informative and nice.

We began our way down the winding path that led through "the duckery," which, as you may have surmised, was a lake area that housed many many ducks, swans, geese, and other waterfowl. Mainly ducks though, seeing as it is a duckery. We continued along the tree-lined walkway until we saw the lovely castle to our right. We walked up through the barbican area and noticed that they were setting up a funfair across the lake for the guy fawkes day fesitivities that were to occur the following night. After talking about how fun a fun fair would be, we went into the actual castle, and led ourselves around all the rooms.

The castle is particularly picturesque becuase it still has its moat, so it is surrounded by water; every window you look out has a water view. i would happily live there. Many of the rooms were quite nice, expecially the library which contained a great number of old british books, and a very fun sofa. The rooms had such elaborate woodwork and decoration, that i cannot possibly imagine how an artist could sit there and carve this same pattern over and over all throughout the room. Good for them. I have patience for this sort of thing, but i think that would probably test it...

There were 24 bedrooms , 23 of which were still used by "conference delegates." Who these delegates were, and what they conferred about, i do not know. All i know is that i want to be one now. Whenever we read information about a room it stated things like : this is where the conference delegates confer, this is where the delegates have tea, this is where the delgates relax and read old books, this is where the delegates play croquet, this is where the delegates make papier mache geese, this is where the delegates speak to one another only in rhyme, this is where the delegates do everything fun and interesting that you can't do in a castle because you are not a conference delegate.

I was slightly jealous.

I was a bit surprised when i looked out of one of the rooms for delegates and saw golfers swinging clubs about on the castle grounds. Apparently you can play golf here. So that's pretty fantastic.

After leaving the castle, we walked through the gardens where they had earlier harvested assorted gourds to decorate random areas of the castle and grounds. We passed by the dog collar museum, saying we would come back if there was time... laura did not seem very excited about this; i thought it was a fantastic idea.

We saw the aviary where random birds are housed, including some sort of loud parrot who wanted to eat Laura. He was hiding in the back corner the whole time while we read the sign outside his cage that stated "warning bids bite! " or something scary to that effect. We chuckled at its intensity. I moved onto the next cage , and the moment Laura stepped up to the cage of the previous bird, a loud flapping resonated and all of the sudden the bird dive bombed. It swooped in squawking loudly and slammed itself into the fence where it perched for a moment airing its anger. The moment i stopped laughing and came over to take a photo of it, it flew away in a huff. There was also another bird who had a sign near him that stated how he thought he was human and did not like other birds. The two birds situated near him apparently knew this, so they just squawked irritatingly at him and us for about 15 minutes. The human bird kept looking at them annoyedly : "really, now. stop that noise. i am trying to read".... he seemed to say.

After the aviary we moved onto the path that took us to the hedge maze. Huzzah! hedge maze! We saw the turf maze, which was a labyrinth. I tried to explain a turf maze to Laura but she did not seem to understand the point, or enjoy it. Which is understandable. It is not reall a maze, you see, for there is only one path to take and it is visible from the start. Labyrinths are more to do with introspection and reflection, rather than finding your way physically. Luckily, we followed that with the real hedge maze, after taking a quick look at the falcons and owls they housed. On our way into the hedge maze we saw two semi-elderly British men who looked at us, and said " You'll be in there for hours. positively hours." So we laughed and moved on. Apparently it takes most people 20 minutres. Apparently we are not most people.

Unfortunately we did not keep track of our time, but i was so excited to be in a hedge maze that i did not really want to find the center. Therefore, when Laura would point out that we had been down a path before, i would say " i know!' and run ahead anyway. Small children finished it before we did. The lady at the center offered us help, but we refused, for we were troopers. We do not give up. I saw our British friends looking at the maze from the hill above the maze and asked if they were cheating. They responded in a very amusing sing-songy voice with " Nooo. We've already finished".."We're clever" "We're boys." It was very funny. Shortly thereafter we managed to find the center of the maze. We stood triumphantly at the top of the hill in the center as the sun set and the crickets chirped. Just kidding. We weren't that terrible. The grotto at the center was so fantastic. It reminded me of the movie The Labyrinth, which you should all watch if you haven't already. After walking through the watery caverns of the grotto, we emerged outside the maze and made our way back to the entrance.

After a stop at the shop, we met with our snazzy bus driver and started the drive home. I promptly fell asleep, as i do on most public transport. I ate dinner when i got back, and Laura went to her friends play. We ended the day by going to pub where two of her friends joined us.

Moral of the story: whenever i get a house, i am creating a hedge maze.