Bank Holidays are for Suckers

I am floundering in a sea of sleeplessness and confusion. After a flight to Chicago followed by a rather lengthy flight to London I feel as if I've been turned inside out. My eyes hurt, my skin is dry and I'm having trouble stringing together words coherently. Such is life. I blame most of this on the fact that I was subjected to watching 27 Dresses on the flight yesterday.















I have never (until yesterday) seen a movie in which any of the main characters could up and burst into flames on screen and it would make little or no difference to the outcome of the film. I'm not really even certain what the movie was about or who it was made for. I'm fairly certain that it nauseates men, and offends, condescends and sets women back about 50 years. The only possibly appropriate audience may have been an airplane full of infants, which may have been United Airlines' plan all along, considering the size of the seats.

All of that bile and unpleasantness aside, it is warm and sunny in London. I woke up early today, had breakfast (I missed the old English breakfast with its beans, mushrooms and HP sauce), and wandered around Hammersmith. It's a bank holiday today, which means that not only is everything closed, but people are encouraged to stay indoors and be as quiet as humanly possible, or so I presume. You can hear a pin drop into a puddle of post-football match vomit outside.

I also broke in a new pair of Harley-recommended shoes. They are shockingly yellow for my taste, but comfortable as hell. They are made for trail running, whatever the hell that is, and feel like very small tanks built for my feet. I think they go well with my ugly new suitcase too.

Last night we went out to Ping Pong for Dim Sum. Ally turned me on to the place a few years ago. It's delicious, a bit trendy, but a right good time otherwise. The last time I was there Mark was telling Ally (and, more importantly Ally's mother) about the time he was tour managing the drunkest man in rock and roll, and said man took a dive off the balcony in the Columbia Hotel and landed half on a sofa and half on the marble floor in the lobby. The punch line to the story, and in a crowded restaurant, no less, was something to the effect of: 'we had to take him to the hospital because he was pissing blood. Oddly enough, that wasn't the first time that I had heard that on this tour.' But I digress...Ping Pong was delicious. After finding our way there by cab (and realizing that, after telling the cab driver where we were going that 'Ping Ping' is a vaguely racist name for a Chinese restaurant run by English people) we realized that Sunday night was all you can eat madness.

This is what Ben referred to as 'a street fight,' in the most delicious sense.

I waddled home, full of meat and pastry, after putting a hurting on whoever thought up the 'all you can eat' idea. In converse to, and to cleanse the palate from 27 Dresses I watched Alien Vs. Predator 2 while drifting off into a drug-induced slumber. I've never made it all the way through it, but that's one hell of a movie. There are maybe a handful of characters, and you get the impression, early on, that in a Jurassic Park-esque turn of events that maybe one or two people survive the hour and a half blood-fest. Just when you recall who a character is: 'oh, that's the pizza delivery guy who has a crush on the girl who...whoops there goes his head,' and 'there's the war hero who has come back to save the town from...no, wait, there's an alien eating his head.' Brilliant. Very little plot, no story line, shallow characters. It's like 27 dresses with aliens, therefore good. All it was lacking was something vaguely supernatural, or zombies even, like 28 Dresses Later.
Take note.