Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker is always worth a read on Mondays in the Guardian. If you haven't heard of him, clicketh there, or here, or if you're pushed for time, just have a chuckle at today's description of British PM Gordon Brown;

Ghastly and nightmarish though Miliband may be, he's got nothing on gloomy Gordon Brown, who increasingly resembles a humourless, imposing old butler slowly creaking the mansion door open in a Frankenstein movie. Prime Minister Igor, the shuffling fun-free zone. No wonder the nation's fallen out of love with him. Imagine playing a carefree game of frisbee with Brown at a summer barbeque. You can't. That's why the poor bastard's doomed.

Drinking strong alcohol in city centres

Yesterday I stopped by the Sake Paradise event by accident after bumping into a friend who was on his way there. I'm not much of a Sake drinker and wasn't really enthused by the idea of lots of people drinking it in Alice Gardens but went along anyway.

One of my least favourite Japanese stereotypes is the salaryman, drunk or sober, I'm not fussy. Now, I say stereotypes because I ofcourse know many very nice salarymen but we all generalise, however enlightened we feel ourselves and when I'm in the mood to generalise, I like to generalise about annoying salarymen. For the sake of this post, let's focus on the drunk variety. Loud, obnoxious, thinking it's hilarious to chat to a Gaijin. I'm sure a lot of us have been there. The thing is, after being here a while, this starts to grate and more importantly, I forget about drunkeness back home. Last night however brought it back to me for a moment.

Now, I know there are beer festivals and the like in the UK but like this? Completely open to all, from 4 in the afternoon, Sake being downed amongst shoppers and school kids on their way home. Where were the sirens? Where was the blood? What's all this good natured drunkeness? Not tipsy or tiddly, but properly, commitedly, studiously drunk. I had wondered why my mate enjoyed this event so much but it quickly became clear. It was just really nice, and no one was fighting. As another friend commented last night; 'Beer gardens? Nomihoudai? At home? You must be joking.' (He's from NZ)

So it was nice. Nice to realise again, one of the finer aspects of living here. No doubt the next time a salaryman staggers over to me in an Izakaya I'll have forgotten, but I'll try at least, to remember.

3K@Bar Edge Sat 24th 10pm - ?am FREE

Sick of sitting on the door whilst people enjoy themselves and in an attempt to ride the wave of the moderate success we've been enjoying at Lotus recently, 3K have decided to book Edge for the night and throw it's doors open (not literally, the neighbours would complain) for free.

We'll be joined once again by the shy and retiring boys ;) from Sleepyeye. It shouldn't be a night for the wall huggers and head nodders.

Seriously though ladies and gents, we're hoping that this could be a bit special and more importantly, a lot of fun. Cos that is, after all, why we do it.

You can check out some of the kinds of tunes we play over at the 3K website or if that's just a couple of clicks too much, here's a DIRECT LINK to the last one.

よろしくね！

WC goes Pro

I haven't taken to hanging around on street corners under lamps yet, no. Today I heard that one of my tracks was commisioned to be used in an online game. 'Audition' it's called apparently although I am not 100% sure on that.

It's not much (it really isn't) but it's the first time I have really received anything like cash money for any of my music, so, I might have a beer tonight.

It's all thanks to Beatpick where you can stream either of my 2 E.P.s or indeed BUY them from my own little page there - HERE -

ah pareee

I've just watched the wonderful (going all language student on you there) movie (when did I stop saying film?) Amelie. It's been sitting in my drawer for over a year and I was in fact downloading Spiderman 3 when I remembered I had it, right here, to watch, right now, on DVD. Sake. Although I'm sure I will enjoy Spiderman too but, I am a man of many, er, what's the word?

Whatever. Really, really, lovely stuff. Loved it. Although it did make me feel very depressed at one point. Apart from it's cinematic qualities it was all so, well, French. What an accent. WHAT. AN. ACCENT! To think, I was also downloading 'This is England' and could have been listening to English skin heads (better music though probably).

And Paris. It really does do exactly what it says on the tin, and that's, be Paris. Yeah, hordes of tourists and miserable (Les Miserable?? Sorry.) shop assistants, but it's so beautiful. You might avoid the dog shit if you weren't looking around you all the while. And you'll shrug off that 4th slippy step of the day with a gallic shrug and a booooffff so what the heck?

Beautiful beautiful city. It gets a WCBlog 'Thumbs Up!'.

Who needs Michelin stars?