Makes you go blind
28 September 2004. Inspired by .
Far, oh so far, be it from me to promote any such thing, but, well, the poster for this year's Festival of Erotic Cinema in Barcelona is just pure genius.
Spam, drinking, paper, web, more drinking
28 September 2004. Inspired by .
Due to an over-zealous spambot, much of this morning was spent deleting and reporting to the clearing house. Still, said spambot had filched a few entertaining quotes on alcohol during its snatch-grab which I'm pleased to share. The second is particularly good:
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake--which I also keep handy. W. C. Fields (1880 - 1946)
Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. W. C. Fields (1880 - 1946)
The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass. Martin Mull (1943 - )
My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle. Henny Youngman (1906 - 1998)
Elsewhere, obviously it would be distasteful to find a holy punch-up amusing.
But more disturbing still is the news that local readers of this blog will find, on page 45 of El Periódico, a colour version of this article, featuring two slightly dodgy-looking blokes and a guidebook.
Aforementioned guidebook may even have a shiny new all-singing, all-dancing, buy your-copies-right-now-please website over here. Go, buy, share, enjoy. Autographed copies half-price.
(Locally based readers may also find news of a launch party this Friday somewhat alleviates the pain. Email me for details)
Oh and there was a new doorbell posted yesterday. Forgot to say, but you've probably got the hang of it by now.
The lollipop men that suck
27 September 2004. Inspired by .
Some excellent local blog journalism being done by John here, delving into some alleged dodgy business practices, and the power of the Chupa Chup family in screwing over small companies then intimidating them when they try to reveal all.
I'm not a journo with the right contacts or the right background in media law (especially Spanish media law) to be able to do this one justice in print, but until someone else can, I suggest following John's accounts over on the case-sensitive BarcaBlog.
Ring my bell
23 September 2004. Inspired by .
New doorbell up on Flickr.. and no, don't expect this frequency all the time, I'm just spoiling you while it's fresh :-)
If you want to subscribe to a joint feed of this website and the Flickr flicktion feed, you can do so here
The doorbells of florence project
21 September 2004. Inspired by .
I think I mentioned that games were afoot... well the first has begun.
Nearly a year ago, I was wondering around Florence and found myself unnecessarily fascinated by a single aspect of that Renaissance city of incredible art and breathtaking architecture: the doorbells.
I couldn't get them out of my head. They were everywhere - varied, some shining bronze, others old plastic, names of people I'd never meet, some Italian and permanent, others foreign and on scraps of paper to signify a short visit. So I took my newly purchased shiny camera and starting photographing any (and there were a lot) that caught my eye during an afternoon's stroll around the city. Some of them came out rather well.
I'm now releasing them individually through free photo-sharer Flickr, accompanying each with new short fiction inspired by the bell in question.
The first is up already and can be found here. The username to search for in the future is andrewlos - or you can subscribe to the RSS feed here.
All thoughts etc gratefully received, either here or in Flickr. The genre of Flicktion (copyright Nick Richards) has begun.
It's good to walk
14 September 2004. Inspired by .
The rather crunchy, spaniel-flavoured This Isn't London branches out into London Walks. Surely a Timed Lout guide can't be far behind.
Autumn
14 September 2004. Inspired by .
For two hours last night/this morning, there was a huge storm. It was the type where the entire city breathes out at once after each blinding flicker, and the window frames throb with the bass of the thunder.
Un, dos, tres, cu...
One kilometre away, we all counted silently together. And closing.
Soon you couldn't count – the flashes were so regular that they overlapped, too fast for the thunder to catch up, the flickering so strong that it felt a surge away from lighting up the sky for good.
A few hours earlier, this morning/last night, when the air was heavy but the streets were wet only from their daily hosing, I walked quickly through Plaça Reial.
I walked this way:
Which was daft because the bar I was meeting friends in was in the other corner, and so I should have gone this way:
But instead I walked around like this:
* - points at which I was offered "coke, hashish"
Less than five minutes later, the bar was humming with talk. "Did you hear?" breathed every corner simultaneously. "A tree just fell in the Plaça and hit a tourist. They took her to hospital. Crushed her cheap steel chair. It's still sitting there, twisted in half like nobody's business."
It was true. Less than a minute after I'd passed it, one of the square's distinctive 20m high palm trees (x) had yawned, stretched and come crashing to the ground. 
On top of someone.
We left the bar half an hour later and the tree was still lying there, without a hint of embarrassment, waiting for the police to take it away in a van. Around its forlorn root there was some police tape, discarded party streamers after the event. The split between prone log and fixed base was at head height, with teenage blonde spikes pointing to the stars. People came over to run their fingers through it, feeling the tingle of tomorrow's news. "If she dies," they were thinking (though she didn't), "we were there."
Over by the 18m-long Exhibit A, tiny green fragments were scattered everywhere. Broken bottles? A glass table? But it squelched not crunched – palm fruit smashed on impact.
Police tape was wrapped around the area, nothing on the crime scene above 20cm off the floor except one shiny object in the centre: a cheap steel baby deer, one shoulder touching the ground, trying desperately to stand up.
Consider myself learnt
13 September 2004. Inspired by .
Things learnt yesterday:
- Despite all its words sounding vitriolic, Basque is a language without swear-words
- Catalan has no way of saying "I love you"
- The word 'marooned' originally meant "leaving you on an island with the maroons (aka black errant sailors)"
- Buccaneers are so named from the French word boucain - those who cure meat in a particular way
- Javier Bardem is an even better actor than I thought and his new film is really rather good in that issue-raising way (and would also have made a cracking stage play)
- My liver is somewhat slower than it once was at regeneration
Buy buy baby, buy buy
10 September 2004. Inspired by .
The shiny new (flash - sorry. I argued all I could, standards freaks) website's still having the final cracks plastered over and a bit of MDF put into its supporting walls... but if you just can't wait to have a guidebook of your very own, a PayPal button has quietly appeared at the bottom of the old page here.
Go forth and purchase, and remember: you, your friends, your family, your lovers, your pets and your companions at the bus-stop all deserve copies of their own.
Tunnel visions
08 September 2004. Inspired by .
So back to Barca again, where the book is selling like hot cakes wrapped in Google shares. It'll be available to buy online soon, my prettys. Oh yes, soon.
Meantime, lots of cool things going on and starting up, but in lieu of me revealing any of them to you as yet, here's something else in The Grauniad that makes me want to head straight to Paris and start lifting manhole covers.
Do not. Try to find us.