Black Von Treasure Hunt
25 Sep 07 @ 10:15 AM
category » adventure
Big hand for Felix and Michelle Salmon, who are organisers par excellence of fun actitivies. This past Sunday they arranged a Pirate Treasure Hunt around Wall Street, Battery Park and the South Street Seaport. The planning - which they said took two months - was meticulous. There were maps, and clues on envelopes, with more clues if you really needed them *inside* the envelopes. There were about 40 of us - 6 or 7 teams of 7. Our lot were on bikes and rollerblades. We pitied the team on foot. One of our lot was in fact on foot, but Oliver was a stud and cycled her around on his handlebars all day.
I learned a lot about downtown Manhattan on this trip. I've never been to Battery Park, and never knew Castle Clinton was an Opera House when it was built. I'd never heard of the oldest drinking establishment in the city - the Bridge Cafe - and I didn't know that Alexander Hamilton was buried in the Trinity Church graveyard. Nor that the Deutsche Bank building is on the site of the home of the Pirate John Pitt.
Anyway, there were points for arriving at the pub (St. Dympna's, on St. Mark's) first, with the least number of opened envelopes, and more points for the Pirate flag and the map we made, and the song we created. Our song was spectacular, and got 17 out of 10 points, but that might have been to make up for the fact that I failed to read the instructions properly and spent ages drawing a detailed map of the area but forgetting to mark on the map where we had been. And we didn't pay attention to the carefully written notes on the back of the Pirate pix that were at each location, and hence couldn't answer any of the quiz back in the pub...still, the Stunning Cunts song was memorable, with a chorus that got them all singing along:
We are a bunch of Stunning Cunts,
Stunning Cunts are we,
We're hotter, and wetter and slicker than you
Because we love the sea. (aside: - men)
You get the idea.
But it was the hunt for the Grand Prize that really made me laugh. Felix told us that there was an individual in Tompkins Square Park in possession of a treasure chest, and the first person to bring the chest to him by the fountain in the park would win the grand prize.
You have likely never seen about 20 grown up New Yorkers dash out of a pub, sprint down the street, and then run madly about in Tompkins Square Park in search of a treasure chest. It's a highly amusing sight. But after about 10 minutes I got bored, since everywhere I turned there was another pirate, but no chest. Still, seeing a bunch of crazy people harrassing the locals in the park, asking them if they had a chest - that was amusing. I thought Felix had been too clever by half and in saying an "individual" rather than a person, he meant it was sitting in the hands of a statue or something. So I wandered around looking for statues (there aren't any, except one on top of the fountain).
Much to everyone's frustration in the end, it turned out that there was no chest on display. An elderly black lady (the mother of a neighbour, I believe) had the chest wrapped up in a shopping bag. And the winner of the prize had literally gone round the park asking everyone with a bag if they had a treasure chest.
And the prize? A (to be) custom made 24 carat gold pirate tooth (cap, to fit over your own tooth). Ha.
Lots of fun was had by all. I am noodling on themes for a rematch later in the year.
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Mighty Hamptons Triathlon
17 Sep 07 @ 09:44 PM
category » sports
So, we did it. Alex arrived on Thursday evening and on Friday afternoon we drove up to the Barn. Alex got her ocean swim in before it got dark, although it wasn't as warm as I'd expected and it was a bit windy. We had an early night, what with her jetlag and all and lots to do on Saturday.
Problem was, it rained like a motherf***r on Friday night. Hard, driving and fast - and the sound of rain on the canvas of a yurt is really quite loud. I didn't sleep much...
We were a bit miserable on Saturday as it looked like it was going to rain all day. But luckily it cleared up by mid-afternoon. We did all our errands, and went to register and get Alex her suit and bike. Well, that proved complicated. Alex is so tiny they had to keep giving her a smaller wetsuit to try. Then they gave her one so small so got claustrophobia in the changing room. Difficult stuff.
So, the race itself: well, getting up at 4.30am for a race is uncivilised to say the least, and it is probably the reason I will never be a regular triathlete. Perhaps when I am much older I will take it more seriously - old people don't sleep as much. Aside: I've always thought that rather contrary. Old people usually have less to do with their day than younger people, so they should sleep more, and young people should sleep less. Who said "Youth is wasted on the young"? Francis Bacon, I think.
Anyway, grump aside, we got there and got set up. Not with much time to spare, and so, suddenly, we were off. I'll spare you the blow by blow details, god, how dull, but suffice to say the swim seemed much further than it needed to be, the bike was stunningly beautiful, and the run was, well, exhausting, but considering I hadn't thought I'd be able to run at all, I was just glad to be doing it.
And I finished just 3 or 4 minutes slower than my last tri, so - without much training, and with a dodgy toe - I think I acquitted myself adequately. Alex loved it, completely, and so I think we have a new convert. She'll have to come out and do one with me every year, and I'll do one in London with her too. I hear Windsor is lovely...
It is a great way to spend a Sunday, once you are awake.
Stings like a Bee?
13 Sep 07 @ 09:30 AM
category » adventure
I just returned from a trip to the West Coast. My few days in San Francisco were lovely, catching up with old friends and seeing new additions to various friend's families; then a few days in LA where I stayed with friends up in the Hollywood Hills. I went for a run the morning after I arrived and, following a dirt track, turned a corner and found myself quite literally underneath the Hollywood sign, which towered maybe 200 ft above me. A pretty cool location to be hanging out in.
At the other end of town, I spent a couple of days surfing by the pier on Venice Beach. And now I find myself torn. If I were ever to live in LA - which I occasionally think about, mostly half-heartedly - then would I live in the hills, with the views and the breeze and the quiet, or would I live in Venice, so I could go to the beach every day? A dilemma. Since it can take up to an hour and a half to get from one to the other, there is no way of combining the two lifestyles efficiently with one home.
I decided I'd have to live in Venice so I can become a better surfer, but need to have friends or a partner who lives in the hills so I can escape for weekend visits.
So, there I am on Sunday, trying to catch a few waves before driving down to the iMedia conference in San Diego. I'm on a surfboard that's too short for beginner me, but I have a new wetsuit which I am most excited about, and is keeping me happy in the water for ages, and I'm having fun falling off all the time. That is, until I was standing there after a fall in the breaking surf, and felt a sharp stabbing pain in the top knuckle of my big toe. Combined with the breaking wave, this made me trip over, and I wrenched my big toe back. When I lifted my foot out of the water to inspect it, there was a small puncture on my toe and it was bleeding. And the stinging was pretty intense.
So I got out of the water and went in search of a lifeguard. It wasn't really a major issue, but I wanted to be sure it wasn't something to worry about, insofar as I was about to get in a car and drive for 3 hours, so some delayed spasmic reaction would not have been a good thing.
The lifeguard squirted it with saline, saw the blood, and asked me how painful it was on a scale of 1 to 10. I said about a 2 or a 3. He said in that case it could not be a stingray, and anyway, he could not see the spike in my toe. He said that I had probably been stung by a bee.
You're kidding, I said. I was standing in surf. My toe was underwater. Possible, he said: the bees get too close to the water, their wings get waterlogged, they fall in, and can't get out. But they take a while to die and are pretty frantic meantime.
OK, so I can't ever recall having been stung by a bee, so I can't say I know what to compare the feeling to. So I had to believe him.
Well, by Wednesday, my toe was really throbbing and strangely enough, my toenail was the most painful thing of all, Just touching it was inordinately agonising. I could barely walk. That might have had something to do with the fact that for 3 nights I'd been standing around in high heels at a conference (my only other shoes being flip flops), but anyway, it wasn't great.
And since I have a triathlon to run next Sunday in Sag Harbor, it was pretty clear that I may not be up for that now, or at least may not be able to do the run part.
Still, it's a story: I sprained my toe after being stung by a bee underwater while surfing in Venice Beach. You just can't make this stuff up...
Spiegel's Back!
08 Jul 07 @ 09:18 AM
category » culture
The Spiegel guys are back in New York with a new Absinthe show and another new show La Vie. Opening night was last night.
Crazy beautiful, of course, definitely not to be missed! And the Green Fairy Garden on the pier is just a great venue to hang out in.
The Fixer
19 Jun 07 @ 11:34 AM
category » travel
So, I spelled it wrong. It's Denni, not Denny. Mea culpa, and apologies, Denni!
Here's his truck in action. I think this was taken at midnight.
Iceland...
16 Jun 07 @ 02:30 PM
category » travel
I took a short weekend trip to Iceland last weekend. While it is a country with few people and no trees, the scenery is rather spectacular - black volcanic sand, green moss and purple heather, with glaciers
looming on the horizon.
We tooled around on the south coast, went off-roading and snowmobiling on a glacier, and I of course took a spell in the Blue Lagoon.
Here's an old USN plane crashed in the middle of nowhere on a beach...
and here's Denny, best described as a "fixer", who makes sure people get the gear they need up somewhere in the back of beyond on shoots, with his full service kitchen which sits on top of an old Russian army truck, which can go *anywhere*...and his simply enormous amphibious tank which was used in the Tomb Raider movie...
At a spot where the North American and European tectonic plates meet, there is a sandy channel between the walls of the two plates, which are drifting apart at something like 6cm a year or something (don't quote me on that!). So it was highly amusing to see, drawn out
on the sand below "The Bridge Between Two Continents", a big heart with the words "Jesus Still (Loves) You". Gotta love those creationists making their position clear wherever and whenever they can!
Iceland is famous for trolls too...
And here's the Blue Lagoon, which is really very blue indeed...
When the Road Bends...
14 Jun 07 @ 04:53 PM
category » film
Anyway, you just couldn't pay for a more delightful review than this.
"Gypsy Caravan": From Michigan to Rajasthan on a thousand-year road of joy and suffering
Music documentaries are harder to describe than other films, and harder to convince people to see. I think the best thing I can say on behalf of Jasmine Dellal's thoroughly wonderful "Gypsy Caravan" is that I was thrilled and transported by it. It's a two-hour movie, and I'm only sorry it isn't two or three times as long. Let me read your thoughts: You're not much interested in Gypsy music, and the historical and cultural stuff might be pretty dry. That's what I thought too: Wrong and wrong.
What begins as a concert-tour doc about a varied group of Roma musicians (aka Gypsies, a term rejected by some Roma and embraced by others) as they travel the United States keeps getting broader, richer and deeper until it becomes a cinematic and musical experience that's absolute magic. "Gypsy Caravan" -- Dellal's full title, wisely abandoned for marketing purposes, is "When the Road Bends ... Tales of a Gypsy Caravan" -- veers from an illegal fishing trip in downtown Ann Arbor, Mich., to a backwoods village in eastern Romania to Rajasthan in northern India to the flamenco heartland of southern Spain.
Somehow all the disparate people, places and musical styles of this film -- the Roma are a worldwide diaspora, with numerous languages, religions and cultures -- come to seem coherent. You will learn a hell of a lot about Roma history from "Gypsy Caravan," but believe me it never feels like education. You'll be too busy marveling at the "knees dance," as performed by an astonishing male dancer (in drag) along with the Indian combo Maharaja, or weeping and howling at the over-the-top theatrics of Esma, a house-size Macedonian chanteuse who was a major star in the former Yugoslavia. (Her black-and-white music videos from late '60s Yugoslav TV are approximately the coolest things I've ever seen. Ever.)
Then there's Antonio el Pipa and his irascible aunt Juana, who led an electrifying flamenco ensemble from Jérez de la Frontera in Spain. And Taraf de Haïdouks, a manic string band from a tiny Romanian village (who have somehow become friendly with Johnny Depp). And Fanfare Ciocarlia, another Romanian group whose brass-band style borrows from the martial music of the Ottoman Empire. Dellal follows this random, cheerful, not-always-reliable assemblage around America and back to their home countries, illustrating the thousand-year Roma odyssey out of India and across Eurasia with nary a lecture or a chart.
As Juana says late in the film, the world owes a debt to the Gypsies, who have been persecuted for centuries (Hitler tried to exterminate them with just as much ardor as he did the Jews) without ever starting a war or even having a nation of their own. Instead of seeking retribution, the worldwide Roma caravan has enriched the musical tradition of almost every country. You can't really talk about the spirit or essence of this music without lapsing into cliché: Are these musicians tied together by something reckless, something fatalistic, a willingness to embrace laughter and tears in the same moment? Whatever it is, it's a gift to all of us, whether we deserve it or not.
Natural Art in Holland
14 Jun 07 @ 10:56 AM
category » art
I wish I spoke Dutch so I could understand more about this, but I can see from the picture alone that this art project in Holland is quirky and cool....
My friend Ono, who is involved in the project, says it is "70 glass shells stranded on the beach, each with stories on modern society written by 70 (dutch) writers and artists specially for this project. You can sit next to a shell and listen to a story of a shell reflecting on the mainland..."
Giles and Kerynne's Wedding...
22 May 07 @ 11:17 AM
category » joys
...London, May 19th 2007, was really lovely. So many old faces I don't see enough of any more...
Niran looks happy, doesn't he?
Giles and Kerynne's Wedding - Pix
The Datevine launches...
24 Mar 07 @ 06:42 PM
category » tech
So, finally, I've launched The Datevine. This has been a work in progress for a while, but the concept is simple: there are plenty of good sites out there that will tell you where the best Thai in your neighbourhood is, or Google will tell you that the best sailing school near NYC is X. And plenty of magazines will tell you 100 cool things to do outside in the summer, or blogs will tell you about some cool new spot that has opened up in your nabe.
But the problem is that you throw away magazines, and you don't search the archives of blogs or Citysearch or Yelp unless you know what you are searching for. If you know you want Thai, or to go sailing, it's easy, but what do you do if you want inspiration, want some ideas to try something new, that you haven't thought of already?
That's where The Datevine will help. You can search by category (e.g. sporting, shopping, politics, etc) and by price range, and it will give you a bunch of results of cool things to do in a given city - as recommended by ordinary people like you, with interests like you. The stuff that's best rated by users will rise to the top, and the community will contribute the best things they love about their city, so you don't have to rely on paid editorial in TimeOut and Citysearch and outfits like that.
Try it. See if you like what you find. And if you do, give back to the community by putting in some tips for things you love as well.
Whiteout in Tahoe...
27 Feb 07 @ 10:16 AM
category » sports
This beats ice and slush on the east coast. The storm went on for 2 days. It got me stranded up in Tahoe when all my mates wanted to stay there through the storm and I had to get back to SF for meetings and to fly home. Luckily I ran into a friend from NY who gave me a ride back to SF. We set off at 2pm on Sunday; by 4.30pm we had gone 2 miles from Squaw towards Truckee. So we turned back, had dinner at Plumpjack, and then set off again at 10pm. This time we got through. At the gas station in Auburn at midnight, we met a guy who had been sitting in his truck since 11am that morning.
The snow is fabulous but the consequences are hell.
Griffith Observatory, LA
23 Feb 07 @ 10:33 AM
category » travel
Hiked up to the observatory last weekend with Alex and Nic. LA is really growing on me...
Trapped in Opera Madness
27 Jan 07 @ 04:31 PM
category » humour
A friend showed me this late one night when I was sufficiently amused to sit through the entire thing. I still can't quite figure out whether R. Kelly is doing this as a parody, or if he is taking it deadly seriously. I suspect the latter, but I so wish that it was tongue in cheek. It's mesmerising, anyway, if you have an hour to kill watching 12 episodes of a Rap Opera. The parody on South Park is hilarious too.
All 12 episodes can be found on YouTube. WhoKnew HowSoon YouTube would take over our lives?
Trapped in the Closet, Part I
South Park - Trapped in the Closet
A star ascendant
27 Jan 07 @ 04:24 PM
category » humour
This kid is a phenomenal imitator. I just can't get over how much he reminds me of Bush whilst looking like a teenage Matt Dillon.
Russian to a Party
16 Jan 07 @ 04:38 PM
category » new york
Annie S did an amazing job last week of rounding a whole bunch of troops to head out to Brighton Beach for some dinner and dancin' for Russian New Year. Laying on a coach or two for us pathetic city-dwellers was the inspired touch. Some of us tried to blend in with the locals on the other side of the restaurant, and mix the crowds, but the Russian chap I was forced to dance with when Joost took his wife off for a twirl was none too happy when he asked me three times "He your boyfriend?" and I kept saying, no, no, he is just a friend. The fact that his wife was clearly having a ball dancing with a cute boy half her age was too much for him. And so he told me "New wife, only 3 month in city, she mine." and promptly deserted me to go and retrieve his property from Joost's fond embrace.
2006 Reading List
03 Jan 07 @ 10:36 AM
category » books
I've read quite a mixture of fiction and non-fiction this year. I'm finding that my trend is slowly edging towards more non-fiction than not but I have to say I've just finished two novels which might count amongst my favourite of the last decade: The Shadow of the Wind, and Any Human Heart. Oh, and some trash too!
The Lost Horizon - James Hilton
A Devil's Chaplain - Richard Dawkins
The Age of Wire and String - Ben Marcus
Search - John Battelle
What is Life - Erwin Schrodinger
The Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Moneyball - Michael Lewis
Tabloid Love - Bridget Harrison
Letters to a young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
Winkler - Giles Coren
The Rescue Artist - Edward Dolnick
The Proposal - Owen Slot
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Luis Razan
They Fuck You Up - Oliver James
Who's Who in Hell - Robert Chalmers
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
Salt - Mark Kurlansky
Always Mull
29 Dec 06 @ 10:10 AM
category » travel
Mull is beautiful, even when it is drizzling. I always forget that there is no cell phone reception in our part of the island, and we have no internet so it really is getting away from it all. Though if you are willing to climb Craig Ben the mobile kicks in about half an hour up the hill.
We tried to make it to the top this year (two hours up, one and a half down) but the mist closed in and we found ourselves in total whiteout about 1/2 way up. Since coming down is so slippery and treacherous anyway and there are plenty of small cliffs it is very easy to miss, trying to do that in a whiteout is sheer madness. With just ten minutes of whiteout or so we still came down too far right and had to scrabble a bit. Always the way on Craig Ben.
But god I love it there. So many old memories - I learned to swim in Loch Uisg (at the bottom of the garden) when my grandpa took off my water wings and told me to swim to him - and then proceeded to keep swimming away from me into the middle of the loch as I, realising I was further out than in, tried to reach him in panic. He just laughed, but it worked. He taught me to fish there too. But because I wasn't prepared to gut the fish, I wasn't allowed to eat my first catch and had to watch in grim lipped resentment as everyone else at dinner ate delicious trout that was MINE! Damn, I was stubborn, but I had principles. And ahhh, the days when a bunch of us - Nicky and Sarah and Toby and Alex and Sally and me - would be lying on the roofrack of the Land Rover, holding on for dear life as we screamed at Richard to "drive faster, drive faster!" on the winding roads along Kinlochspelve. And we actually asked him to go faster over the humpbacked bridge...I can almost feel the bruises now. The fabulous fun of folly. And Richard stealing oysters from the loch bed for New Year's Eve...I realised this trip, as I saw Sarah and Sal and Toby, all sprogged up now, that I have some of my oldest and best memories with these people, whom I hardly ever see any more.
Now I live abroad it is brought more sharply into focus. This place is my family home. And god how I love it, even in the rain.
Love said so wisely
28 Oct 06 @ 05:18 PM
category » poetry
This is a poem my sister Anne wrote out in Sunny's wedding book, which she had been given at her own wedding.
Author unknown, but quite simply beautiful.
I know only this, in all simplicity, I am a book
Thou hast chosen from the vast library of women.
Open me, I lie open. The wind may lose my place,
But not another reader. I, like all volumes, have secrets
To be read between the lines, but the words are there as well.
Unread, I am not worth the binding,
Unfinished, I am not worth beginning.
Read, I surrender what rewards I may.
Understood, I am life’s companion.
Rewritten, I may yet be improved upon.
Lent to an illiterate, I go to waste.
I cannot bring myself to life. Only who reads me well
Will know what is written there, and knowing what is written,
Will know also that which destiny has failed to write.
But be not hard. Judge me not always by perfection’s rote.
Think, instead, and humbly, how wonderful it is
The pages are not blank. One final word:
Read not with impatience, for though life, they say, is short,
At moments, it seems long, and time will turn my pages
Soon enough……..
Room with a View
28 Oct 06 @ 05:15 PM
category » new york
This is the view of the sunrise, lying in my bed in my new apartment. I like my white box in the sky - such a change from everywhere else I have lived and certainly a move up from The Cave.
Wedding, Israeli-style
28 Oct 06 @ 05:13 PM
category » travel
My niece Sunny's wedding in Israel was quite fabulous. The Henna party
- a Yemenite tradition marking the departure of the bride from the
family home, was a riot of color, wild dancing and laughters. The
wedding itself, an all day and all night affair held in the gorgeous
garden of the groom's father, was spectacular, and hilarious. The
swimming pool had been half covered over to make a dance floor. But by
10pm the vibes were so good that someone jumped into the swimming pool
- and within seconds there were thirty odd fully clothed people -
including the bride and groom and both of their fathers - in the
swimming pool! We then continued to dance ourselves dry until the wee
hours.
And if you are lucky enough to be called Sunny - which is a fitting name for her if ever there was one, this is a girl that is never without a smile on her face - then of course your anthem is going to be "Sunny" by Boney M.
All in all, a glorious week, made even more special by getting to spend time with 5 Darbyshire sisters and assortd nieces and nephews. A revelation and a delight. And quite simply one of the most joyful, colorful and damn fun weddings I have ever been to.
Sunny and Itai's wedding - pix
Vamos a la Playa...
04 Sep 06 @ 06:43 PM
category » culture
And after Italy, a few days in London and Scotland, a whistle stop day back in the NY office, and then off to Black Rock desert for a weekend at Burning Man, which I have tried to get to for several years but in which endeavour I have always been thwarted...
This year, I was determined to make it, to see this amazing ritual of fire, earth, air and (not much) water. It's pretty damn fabulous there, but if you don't like the dust, stay away. There is just no getting away from it: the Playa finds its way into every nook cranny and crevice of everything you are and own.
It really just has to be seen to be properly understood.
San Remo and Triora
04 Sep 06 @ 06:35 PM
category » travel
From Budapest to Italy, for a few days with my sister in San Remo, where the highlight was hiking up in the mountains near Triora. Quite stunning.
NYC Parking Garages
22 Aug 06 @ 04:42 AM
category » new york
Useful tool if you spend any time in a car in NYC:
Budapest mark 2
21 Aug 06 @ 06:31 PM
category » travel
It's August, and for the Gawker crew, that means back to Budapest. This time, there were more than a dozen Gawkerites over there. And the city just gets cooler each day.
However, the cab drivers don't seem to know where Partizan is. This bar is on a pretty deserted bit of land on a promontory a few miles out of the center of Budapest, on a dark country road. Left by the cabbie in the middle of the road in the dead of night, saying "yes, yes, here", I had to call Nick for directions. "If you can see the goats, you're in the right place", he said. Indeed, there were goats all around us.
The Sziget music festival was, as ever, fabulous. Pity I didn't take any pix there. The few I took are here.
Spiegeltastic!
15 Aug 06 @ 06:48 PM
category » art
The Spiegeltent has arrived in NYC! What’s a Speigeltent, you
may ask? Well, it’s a huge cabaret touring tent with teak walls and a billowing
canvas roof, and mirrored glass everywhere. They come from Belgium and there are
I think only 13 original tents left in the world. They are used for
cabaret/music/theatre shows in Europe, but have never been stateside – until
now.
There are all sorts of
shows on, and they’ll have a fabulous outdoor beer garden too. The main
attraction is the Absinthe show by La Clique. It’s a weird, wonderful eclectic
mix – Cirque du Soleil meets a freak show, meets a strip
palace - and more. It’s had rave reviews in London, in fact, rave reviews wherever it has played. And now it is getting rave reviews in NYC.
So I went to the press night with a bunch of friends, since a mate of mine is involved with it. And it was brilliant, hilarious and surprising. This one is a winner...
Long live Barnonia!
15 Aug 06 @ 06:21 PM
category » travel
Back by excessive wheedling and begging, Barnonia 2006 - long awaited since the last Barnonia in 2001 - was held on a gorgeous weekend in August in East Hampton, courtesy of the Ryan Brothers.
It was, as ever, Barnfabulous. Huge thanks to Oliver, Max and Sara Kate for organising a party the likes of which the Hamptons don't usually see.
Everyone has to participate. Shayne, Bruce and Daniel sweated profusely in digging the fire pit. Candace and I delicately arranged wood on top - and hey presto, we had our own Andy Goldsworthy to be proud of!
Sings like a....?
13 Jun 06 @ 05:57 PM
category » curios
Now *this* is impressive.
DevilDucky - David Attenborough: The Lyrebird.
The real Sex in the City
09 Jun 06 @ 08:04 PM
category » books
Bridget Harrison, ertswhile Brit reporter and Dating Columnist for the NYPost, friend, and sister of Smooth Harry, has just published her first book, Tabloid Love. The New York launch party was covered by Gawker, but sadly I was on a plane to France at the time and missed the shenanigans. The London launch party, shared with Giles Coren for his book Winkler (gotta love this man (a) for suggesting that there should be a "fat tax", to huge outcry in the UK and (b) for winning the Bad Sex Writing Award and creating a meme for the phrase "like Zorro"), was highly amusing. At one point I was chatting with a young journalist there about not recognising people you (supposedly) know. Any tale of mine paled by comparison to his, though, with his admission that at a party a week previously he'd been talking to a woman for about twenty minutes before she said to him, "You don't remember me, do you?". At which point, that dreadful thought goes through a man's mind, apparently, that perhaps he'd slept with her but didn't remember. Oh yes, oh yes, but much worse in this case - she was the girl he had lost his virginity to ten years previously! Ouch.
But I digress. B's book...I couldn't put it down, and read it in one long night. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but oh so poignant and true a tale of love and betrayal in the big city. I cringed, I groaned, I recognised not only all the places and people, but the oh so bloody accurate account of the notoriously fickle and dreadful NY dating scene.
Candace Bushnell's cover quote was spot on: "A real-life Bridget Jones's Diary meets Sex and the City."
You go, B! I'm waiting to hear that the movie rights have been snapped up. I'm thinking Kate Winslet or Keira Knightley for the Bridget role.
Castles in the Ether
06 Jun 06 @ 07:16 PM
category » tech
David tells me that his mum put her list of fantasy castles up on Wists last Thursday. It crashed the server. Highest traffic of any Wists page ever. And then today the list itself was reviewed in the London Guardian.
Valerie Galbraith, unsuspecting internet star. You go!
Just when you thought you'd never find that vodka filled crystal Kalashnikov...
03 Jun 06 @ 09:24 AM
category » curios
Just when you thought you'd never find that vodka filled crystal Kalashnikov...
From a friend currently holed up in Moscow. I guess this is the equivalent of the rollerblading-cowgirl-dispensed Tequila shots.
