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Thursday, March 30, 2006

smiling

i was out taking photos the other day. i was in a church yard, when all of a sudden i can hear the yip yapping of a little dog. the dog is off it's leash and is like a rat crossed with a terrier.
it's yipping and yapping is caused by the fact it has seen a big dog (bow wow wow), a great dane like thing.
little dog goes haring after big dog.
little dog owner looks like he his going to shit himself as there is a chance his small pooch will end being a mouthful of fun for the big dog.
big dog owner is too busy chatting on his mobile to care one way or another.

i have to say the quality of these pics is poor, mainly because i was stunned at what i was watching, i had one of the biggest smiles i have had since well the last time i cracked a smile...

what struck me was there was a certain frisson between the two dogs and i could swear that little dog was trying to hit on big dog and (to misquote dawkins) was trying to mount improbable.....

woof woof.

enjoy the pics.










Tuesday, March 28, 2006

shapes

well myspace is certainly fun. one of the things cliff didn't mention in his homages to it were the amount of women on it.
actually this isn't all that surprising that there are lots of birds on there as my extended network is something like 66 million people (all of whom i am now on first name basis with!)
but with that many women on the site you need to be able ot filter them down to a number that is manageable and corresponds to your own desires. thankfully myspace does that as well.
so i have been merrily searching the site to see who is there. (so far spotted two people i know from other places!)
now as you may know (and i have admitted this in the past) i am a lech who finds teh female form beutiful in it's myriad forms. currently i have been going through a bit of a chubby chasing phase (as the great frank zappa once said "the bigger the cushion the better the pushin") so using the filter function i have scanned the site to have a look at the lovely ladeeeeez.

the main thing that has struck me is the number of people who seemiingly have a negative vision of their bodies. the number of willlow like women who claim that they are chubby or fat is amazing.
trust me i know what fat is - as i can grab more than an inch or three... and these women who think that are fat or large are not.
i work with a woman who is gorgeous, true she is of a larger size, but she carries it well. instead of seeing the fact that she is very attractive she completely worries about the few extra pounds that she has (and she does carry it all very well).
i was at an exhibition of some very bad photographs in which there was a picture of a naked woman, who was fairly lithe looking. in the text for the exhibition it was mentioned that she felt she was obese but once she saw the photos she changed her mind. now i have to say someone of her size who had the idea that she was obese makes me think that there is something obviously going wrong with her head.

perhaps old naomi was right about the "false" visions of beauty - we are bombarded with a particular type of what beauty should be like (and mostly we all understand that the models that smile at us from billboards, advertising hoardings, magazines, tv and cinema) are not "normal" and they are not what real people should aspire too.
well at least that should be the case, but more and more as we get sucked into celebrity culture and so now we are bombarded with images of people who we are told are living the lives we want to lead and part of that life is having that "look".
yet i can't help it too often the current vision of celebrity beauty just looks too scrawny to be healthy.
but then i suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder - just wish more people were able to see their own beauty.

Monday, March 27, 2006

door

i seem to take lots of pictures of doors.
they fascinate me - they are portals to other places (well that is stating the obvious!) but the doors i like seem to have no purpose, they go nowhere, or where they used to go to is no longer there.
i saw this door, just off of vyner street, while i was out looking at art.
i loved the colour of it and then loved the fact it was totally redundant.
enjoy.









blog

something seems to have gone wrong with my blog.
i think it is because it thinks i have deserted it for myspace.
pishpaw - is my name cliff!

Thursday, March 23, 2006

myspace

cliff has talked me into - i have set up on myspace as well.
blimey and he is right about the girls as well - they are so sexy over there......
the internet - who needs a life.

farting

i am english so i think the highest form of wit comes with a good loud fart and the social issues it causes. we have probably laughed at fart gags since before london was i mote in the eyes of the romans. the english love of toilet humour is one of the reasons why britons will never never be slaves (ok i admit that last one is maybe stretching the point...)
through countless tv comedy programmes such as benny hill and the young ones. films such as the carry on series toilet humour is one of the key characteristics of britishness.
so imagine my delight when i was watching the pink panther remake movie when there was an exceptional fart gag in it. you know it is going to happen, you know it is not going to be anything super special but by the holy see i couldn't help but laugh! (and why was it in a movie about a french policeman, perhaps as a mark of respect to joseph pujol - le petoman, the man who farted for the rue morgue audience. perhaps proving that the language of the fart is universal and that pat (that’s me) is once again talking out of the hole he should be parping from when he goes on about it being an english/ british thing…)

regardless of this internal debate i think we can all agree that farting (even in mixed company) can be quiet funny, sometimes it can be hilarious.

so you have to wonder at this particular story (thanks to emma for pointing it out to me). imagine if you will you are a teacher (ok for emma this is not hard, but for the rest of you try to imagine you are a teacher…) and try to imagine that you are teaching the little terrors that you see each day in the streets. i know i know it is cruel and unusual punishment, but someone has to do it. one of the things i always thought that teachers would have to develop fairly quickly would be a thick skin.
not all teachers develop such protection.
sue storer is suing her school for the tune of a million pound because of sex discrimination. what was the form of this discrimination? ms storer had a chair that, well it was a chair that made noises every time she moved.


“"it was very embarrassing to sit on," she said.
storer said she was constantly forced to apologize to children, parents and co-workers about the unladylike sounds emanating from her chair, but the school wouldn't replace the flatulent furniture.
she claims the school's refusal to replace her chair while providing some men with silent seats is indicative of the sexist behavior that undermined her position at work.”

emma and myself laughed at the story, and we both hoped that there was more to the case than the chair. it turns out that there was a little more to it. according to the times online ms storer, who as a deputy head of the school, believed she was being victimized because the head teacher favoured the other two deputy heads (both male) this meant that ms storer received extra work, that the head insisted that she invigilate an art exam rather than attend a final training session in order to become a head teacher, that the head had shown her a list of complaints about her work but did not tell her who had said what. ms storer said this all made her depressed and that she contemplated suicide.
but it all seems to hang on the chair.
back in 2002 new chairs had been delivered but her two male colleagues were given new silent chairs, while she was left with her flatulent chair.
ms storer resigned from her job in 2005.
now one could look at it as being one of those situations where she had decided to grin and bear it in the hope her dedication and stoicism would be rewarded with a new chair.
or if you take this statement at face value “it’s a health and safety issue for an employer to ensure you have a comfortable chair.” which could be translated as “i couldn’t be asked to do anything to resolve this problem for myself and wanted it all done for me….”
now remember there is 3 years of her being in the farting chair, if it was that difficult a situation (and remember she is a deputy head) i am sure there were many ways she could have resolved it – if she wanted to, or if it was that big an issue.

true the other issues she raised could be seen as being very serious.
she shouldn’t be penalized because she is a woman, if she was being held back because of that then the head should be held to task. but remember the incident she quotes is several years in the past.
the unnamed accusers i can see why she might be upset she is being criticized but doesn’t know who is saying what. but if her work is up to scratch then a few miserly words from members of staff shouldn’t matter (though this only holds if the head is not trying to discriminate against her in the first place…..

anyway this is a bit of a long winded way of saying that there are just times when people shouldn’t be allowed to sue for perceived slights, that before such actions can be taken both parties should be made to sit down and try to work things through.
the idea that everything can be solved by handing over a wodge of cash (that will mean there is less in the kitty for the local schools) seems to be the easy way out. really what should happen is that the problem is resolved. if the head has been discriminating then prove it and punish him.

but as the head said, “if it was an issue, i would have expected her to help herself.”

perhaps the answer to this whole shebang lies in one fact:
“dave rossiter, mrs storer’s legal representative, who is also her partner, said: “mrs storer has been mercilessly victimised, harassed and bullied.”
ah a lawyer is at the heart of it all, and no doubt he gets paid regardless of whether ms storer wins or not.

look out for ms storer to be appearing in a daytime tv ad campaign for a “no win no pay” legal company.
easy litigation another of the usa’s worst finding a home over here…….
i am sure the suffragettes are pleased the struggle has now become one of farting chairs….

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

review

you may have been asking yourself where are pat’s reviews of the films he has seen? could it be that i haven’t been going to the cinema? hell no, my name’s is not paul.
in fact i have been a bit of a cinematic busy buzzy bee. have seen several movies of varying quality.
the best of the bunch has to have been “good night and good luck”, george clooney’s sumptuous look at the mccarthy communist trials of the 50s. although dealing with an important part of american history clooney chooses to deal with it on an intimate level by focusing in on edward murrow and his attack on the methods employed by mccarthy. the acting is all top notch. it is a joy to watch.
unsurprisingly i am going to say that “lucky number slevin” is also a good film, but then how can a film with bruce willis and lucy liu in it fail. it is a slick double triple cross movie, it has some strong performances from josh hartnett (never thought i would say that!), sir ben kingsley and morgan freeman. as ever with these sorts of films it has the stylised story telling and dialogue. hartnett plays slevin who looks like he is being set up to act as a hired killer. my interest in the film never waned as it moved from one complication to another for the hartnett character. the one real problem with the film is that you know fairly soon on how it is going to play out, the joy is seeing how it gets to the obvious conclusion. one of the problems though is that in “selling” the dummy to the audience we have “see” things that don’t really happen and are made up, while not a huge failing it is one of those moments when you go “oh that didn’t work”. all in all though a strong film.
spike lee’s “the inside man” is another of those films where a central part of it doesn’t work. it’s a heist hostage style movie, but not in the same quality bracket as “dog day afternoon” and “taking of pelham 123”. it is a fairly straight forward film in terms of the plot – bank robbery is turned into a hostage situation, there is something in the bank that someone wants to keep secret, the robbers are one step ahead of the police, and someone other than the police is trying to get a resolution. the structure of the film includes some flash forwards to the aftermath of the robbery, which gives away the fact that they get away with it, but that is not exactly a surprise.
again this is a film that is easily watchable because of its lead actor, denzil washington. washington, as ever, is so easy on the eye that you don’t notice him acting. and i have to say jodie foster is looking fine in her advancing years. i have never really been a fan of spike lee (even though he is a big basketball fan) and this isn’t a film that is going to convert me to him. the action is not well handled and some of the shots to make it look like it is an action film look forced and unnecessary. where lee makes the film work is in the moments between the characters. even some of the minor characters are given their moment to shine under his direction. there are several problems with the film, especially at the end (and don’t read until you see @@@@@@@@@@ if you don’t want to know the ending….)

the heist is basically a document proving that the owner of the bank got his money from dealing with the nazis, plus his own personal stash of diamonds taken from jews by the nazis. this fact alone seems to be able to absolve the robbers of any guilt in what they are doing (where in fact it make s them not much better than the original thief). there is never an indication of how they came by the information about the document and the diamonds (as we are told there is no record of the safety deposit box they are in and it seems that they have been there since the bank was built…) for all of the posturing of honesty and how bad it is to use nazi diamonds it seems that denzil’s character isn’t above using one that he has been “given” for a wedding ring (its all right he has done his bit by making sure “the man” gets into trouble the diamonds), the just so happens to be arriving at the bank as the same time the master criminal is making his escape (even though it is several days later), he fact that the swat team seem ready to have the technology to create bugs for the pizza cartons but seem incapable of recognising that they are listening to a recording and not actual conversation.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
add those plot points to a film that is perhaps a little too long you have a bit of a missed opportunity. worth a look, but not great.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

goths

i have always liked goth music - it can be moving and silly all at the same time. i have always loved goth girls, i mean what isn't there to like, they wear black, they wear boots, they wear corsets, it doesn't matter if they are fat or thin short or tall there is just something special about a goth girl. jay's favourite place in the whole world (camdem) is filled with them, and they come from all over europe just to be in camden, to wear black and to avoid the sun.
sure there are things to put you off goths - some take the vampire or anne rice thing a tad too far and become as boring as doctor who fans. others are scared to smile in case it cracks the white make-up they plaster on.
but all in all i like goths.
and for a long time it must have been great to be a goth – as you could call on the sex appeal and outrage of people like marilyn manson and cradle of filth, with the matrix films the goth look was made superheroic. even the music was sounding good.

and then like a skinhead’s 18 hole dms to your nuts along comes this report to really take the wind out of the goth sails.
i mean there can be nothing worse for a youth subculture than to be described as “…. middle class to the core.”
perhaps in america where it has been associated with a spate of shootings (well people who wear black coats have been shooting others…) does the goth subculture have that outsider vibe. sadly the “goths for bush” site has turned out to be a bit of a hoax.

the study not only rains on their parade of being rebels but it goes on to tell their parents not to worry about the sudden desire to dress all in black, be pale and swoon around listening to doom laden music because in all likelihood you will grow up to do well in college and end up doing something like being a doctor or lawyer….
yet for all of that there is still room for a little depression for goths
"romance lies very much at the heart of the goth ascetic but it's a romance in which tragedy is only a sigh away."
ah bless……..

Sunday, March 19, 2006

barking

so i pop over to bbc.con, check the news.
this is flagged up as being "other top stories"

Man watches as dog attacks woman
A 34-year-old woman suffered serious leg injuries when she was attacked by a dog being walked by its owner.
Merseyside Police said the man, who was also walking another dog, just watched while the attack took place in Toxteth, Liverpool, on Saturday.

A police spokesman said the local woman was walking along Roseberry Street when the incident happened.

The dog was either a Staffordshire or Pitbull terrier and the owner was described as black and around 6ft.

now maybe it is me but in terms of what is going on in the world today - this just isn't a top story. it is probably a minor paragraph in the local press. at best.
true it is a terrible attack (and another page on the bbc site also points out that the bite exposed the bone), and frankly it once again shows how little respect people seem to have for one another in this country. the owner let the dog make the attack and then seemingly wandered off (let us hope he ran away in fear of being caught), judging by the report there was no one else around to intervene, so either the street in question was very quiet or the people there were just as callous as the pooches owner.
further evidence that as a country we are going to the dogs.






i am sorry i couldn't resist it.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

review

been to see a whole heap of movies recently and no doubt i will write about them another day. tonight though i am going to briefly mention james patterson's "london bridges". now i don't claim to be a literary authority, i will leave that to emma and cliff, both of whom read much more impressive books than me. yet even i know when i have been sold a pup. patterson is one of the most successful novelists writing today. he writes thrillers, he does romances and his books have been made into films.

the lead character is alex cross, a black (though only once in the book is this mentioned, though it is referred to often by references to things such as food and music. in cross' world there seems to be no such thing as racism or resentment) fbi agent who used to be a washington cop and a published psychologist. not only is he a brianiac he is also an action hero who gets to drive fast and kick in doors with swat teams. the character is crying out for denzil or wesley to play him in a movie, bizarrely the two films that have been made of alex cross adventures have featured morgan freeman in the lead role.

there have been 10 books in the cross series. i have only read one. i will not be reading another.
cross has to go up against two of his most despicable foes: the weasel (a british serial killer) and the wolf (a russian mafiya kingpin super duper bad guy).
the wolf is trying to hold the world to ransom. he wants billions in cash and political criminals released. if he doesn't get his money then bombs will start going off everywhere. in fact several bombs get detonated in the first half of the book. but the wolf doesn’t have any old bomb he had suitcase dirty nukes. all very topical.
everything is written in short chapters, there is no real reason the chapters are short as in most cases they just seem to be paragraph breaks. but as dan brown has shown: make the chapters short and it makes for a page-turner as you will read "just one more chapter" before you put the book down.
true the book rips along at a fair old pace. cross goes to france, he goes to london, and he goes here he goes there. he gains partners, he loses partners, people in the cia are murdered, places are blown up, double crosses take place, and whooosh it all rushes by.
there is an attempt to make cross a real person. he is conflicted by the loss of his first wife (she died in a previous novel) the fact that he is separated from his second wife and their child, that the woman he is currently in love with lives the other side of the country. throw in some moments of self-doubt that almost verge on self pity and you have a complex character. oh sorry i forgot cross is relentless - he always gets his man, never gives in. there you go i have given the character as much depth as patterson has bothered to do. compared with the other characters in the book alex cross is a finely wrought sketch of human strengths and foibles. the others are lucky to be 2 dimensional!
the plot is built upon set piece on set piece and upon coincidence and the timely solving of clues (given that the wolf character appeared in a previous book you have to wonder why they didn't solve them there as well).
description is kept to a minimum. it is mainly dialogue and exposition. alex cross is written in the first person, when other characters take the stage they are written in the third person. makes no odds they are still written badly.
and that is the great crime of this book is that it is so badly written. the fact that it is a simple read is all that got me to the end (that and the fact i don't like not finishing books). i found myself snigger as i read it. as i have said i am not a reader of fine literature - hell i like doc savage books and loved the executioner series, but this is just total tripe.
avoid at all costs.

if you are looking for good crime and thriller writers check out john connolly, robert crais, carl hiaasen and michael connolly all far superior to james patterson and much more deserving of his success.

the verdict from pat is that james patterson's "london bridges" sucks the big one. you have been warned.

Friday, March 17, 2006

demo

there is a big demo taking place in london tomorrow (18th - coincidently the weekend that v for vendetta opens. its a good film. go and see it. tell them pat sent you).
it's a bit of a mixed demo. it's about the troops out of iraq, it's about defending the muslim community and it's about not attacking iran. who knows by tomorrow they may have also added it is about making sure that pop idol is only allowed back on out screens if george galloway gets to win it.

and talking of the gorgeous one his party, respect, will be there.
now i have to say i am tempted to go along. i am still not convinced the attack and invasion of iraq was a bad thing. what was disastrous was the obvious lack of planning as to what to do once the war had been won. hence the reason the place is going to hell in a handbasket.

so as respect are one of the key players in the whole anti-war debate i thought i would get details from their site. and it's true they have details.

"Saturday 18th March 2006
National - National demonstration
Troops home from Iraq - Don't attack Iran
assemble midday, Central London"

now i may not know london as well as emma, but i do know central london covers a lot of ground. so either they are expect an awful lot of people to arrive and fill up central london. or everyone who is associated with the demonstration knows the exact location of the centre of london (and no doubt there are a few pyschogeographers out there who can tell you where it is).

but hold on help is at hand.

"Respect will be having two stalls at the demonstration. We want to ensure that we have a vibrant presence on the demonstration and are asking as many members as possible to come and help with the stalls and the distribution of placards and the new national Respect tabloid:

Parliament Square stall: 10am – 1pm
Trafalgar Square Stall: 1.30pm onwards."

so they can't tell you where it will meet other than a general "central london" covers a lot of ground, but they can tell you where to buy their latest tract: "target iran" which is written by george galloway. 3g has been busy.

so hats off to respect. can't be arsed to tell you where to meet for the march, but can tell you where to buy stuff from.
it's almost like capitalism is right!

gotta love 3g and his boys.

glasses

there are many things i find beautiful, some are obvious and some are not so obvious. there are many things i have phobias about, some are obvious and some are not so obvious. eyes fight into both categories.
in the long list of things that are wrong with me my eyes contribute a couple of items. i have a cast in one, or to put it bluntly i am boss-eyed. so i got called clarence (the older readers will get the reference) or cyclops. often i was asked if i saw double - as i grew older the stock answer became "shall i punch you in the mouth to see if i hit the right one?" no one ever took me up on the offer.
then there is the colour blindness. and of course the short sightedness.
i have been wearing glasses most of my life. i have no problems with wearing glasses.
i have a problem with contact lenses (here is one of my phobias) i get a little bit scared when it comes to things being near my eyeball. i get very very squeamish at horror movies when something nasty happens to people's eyeballs (i had a friend who was a big fan of italian horror movies - should couldn't stand spiders, i can't stand eyeballs - mostly it meant we just hid behind our cushions at different times).
so it is always going to be glasses for me.
while in new york i managed to chip the lens of my last pair of glasses, the pair before that i had shattered into several pieces.
it was a sign that i needed to go and get a new pair of glasses.
the opticians was fun. for some bizarre reason when I have an eye test I think I might be getting the answers wrong, so I am always in panic mode. This added to the fact that there is a small chance that they will jab your eye while they are peering at you with the lighty thing always has me on edge.
Tests done, prescription in hand I make my way to specsavers (I felt a little guilty about not spending my glasses money at d&a because the optician was friendly, good and cute).
Now it shouldn’t be hard to buy glasses. It really shouldn’t. but I am confronted with 100s of styles that are all only slightly different from each other. I sort of knew what I wanted, it didn’t take me long to realise that it wasn’t there. After much dithering I found some that I liked.
Well I might have liked them but mr optician was very concerned that my choices were not suitable. Something about my ears being the wrong size or in the wrong place, oh and then the cast in the eye came into play – did it make a difference of 2mm or 4mm – like I knew. They did this, they did that. They all seemed very concerned and very helpful. A test here, a look there. A pause, a thought and a knowing nod.
Nearly an hour after I went into specsavers I had 2 frames chosen – I no longer know what they are. I will (hopefully) pleasantly shocked when I go to collect them Saturday.

Nothing is simple when I am involved.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

google

it does seem that google must soon change it's name to hypocrite.
when asked by the american government to cough up information about web searches they say no.
"Cooperating with the government "is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down", Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month. " (from bbc.com)
but isn't this the same google that is happy to cooperate with the chinese government in restricting what the chinese population can search for via google. in that case they don't mind helping the government clamp down on what people search for. but hey we understand google (or gulag as it was being called for while) you need to crack that chinese market. and you wouldn't want to get tough with those guys, because you know they would just tell you to sod off.
but with the american government it is easier to take the tough stance - becuase it means you can once again pretend to be about freedom of information and standing up against government pressure.
have to wonder is that because you really care - or is it more to do with your stock prices? and a near pr stunt to help us all forget how you agreed to the chinese restrictions.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

ships

there i am in my local cinema settling down to watch "sympathy for lady vengeance", a korean crime movie of some style (by the director of oldboy). the trailers are being shown. up comes basic instinct 2. whoooooo hoooo sharon stone in a movie, but not only sharron stone in a movie, but sharron stone in a movies being sexy. totally double bubble movie experience. it will be essential viewing.
i am there later in the week this time to see tsui hark's "seven swords" a wonderful historical fantasy about martial art swordmasters. the trailer before the film was basic instinct 2. i am jazzed i can't wait to see it.
but as i am watching this trailer for the second time there is a tinge of sadness.
basic instinct 2 is set in london, in fact some of it takes place in and near the swiss re building.
this modern classic building is only a stone's (geddit) throw away from where i live.
sharron stone was withing walking distance of me and i didn't know it. i could have hung around and gawped like the love sick puppy i am.
sharron stone is one of the last of the true screen goddesses. it doesn't matter what she does on the screen you are just drawn to her, she is beautiful, she has a sensual voice and it helps she can act. sure sharron has not always made the best choices when it comes to making films - but when she is hot she is hot!
(i was smitten with her from the moment she appeared on screen in basic instinct, which i saw at the cinema with my pal paul. many years after that i was watching a documentary abut the director paul verhooven and was shocked that that beeped out a fuck but showed the shot of stone's vagina. i mentioned this to paul and also said we must have seen the edited version, he told me no it was there on the screen. somehow when i saw this movie at the cinema i missed seeing sharron stone's pussy smiling at me several feet high).
anyway i missed her.
she was in my manor and i missed her.

london book fair. i was there. gorgeous george galloway was there. i was there being a booth bunny (dull, unpleasent work only enlivened by the passing by of tight skirted high heeled publishing babes (of which there were many....) the gorgeous one was there to promote his book the "fidel castro handbook". george galloway counts fidel among his friends and was granted access to the cuban archives to make the book the best of it's kind. i am sure that 3g is a great author, but it is a book i will pick up when it has been remaindered (no doubt in time for christmas).
of course questions were raised about galloway being there because the organisers of the event and the event location were both recently linked to an arm's trade fair.
many writers complained about this and the linking of the book's industry to the arms industry, though i am not sure how recent the linkage is - i am guessing that a fair few of the bigger publishing houses are connected in someways to unsavoury goings on.
but 3g has no excuse not to know that there were links between reed (the organisers) and excel (the location) and the arms trade show as many of his party followers would have been involved in protests that took place.
but needless to say (and as we all suspected) 3g is more interested in himself than he is in politics.
nexr year he will no doubt be displaying his book on the "sayings of saddam"!

but all i can say is that me and sharron and that me and gorgeous george galloway passed each other like ships in the night.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

arty

so i am back in blighty.
i am happy to be back in london, i love london too much to not want to be here. i have to say that some of london's faults become very obvious when you have been away for a bit. sadly i would lay those faults at the feet of the people who live in london.
but not to dwell on this here are some arty shots of the a dlr station.
(sorry paul i know they are not happy shots - but i have done the happy photo back at christmas, only so much happy from pat in a year....)







nyc: hotel

a couple of external views of the hotel.
it is was not the most extravagant of places (the hotel that i would have been staying in if was was prepared to share was $195 a night, this was $79 and the difference was obvious, but had my own room, own shower and peace and quiet...)

the manager of the place was a fiery latina, who i think could have stormed iraq on her own and won. she was gorgeous. i was in love.

i was on the 4th floor (room 420), though for us it was really the third floor. several nights when i was coming back late the conceirge (an old bloke) would have trouble letting me. still i wasn't in the bother of one bod who had turned up there close to midnight, with no key and they were not letting him near the room he said he had. not sure what the outcome was as i went off to my room to kip. but i didn't like his chances as none of the staff would dare to cross the manger.

i am thinking i will do a splash and dash long weekend in nyc before too long and i would have no qualms about staying in the woogo again. though with a quick check i can see that the prices have gone up, even though there is a 70% discount offer on!

the other alternative that i might try when i do the dash over there is priceline where you can bid a price for a hotel and see if the hotel type and location you have selected go for it. might be fun to see if you can get a decent high starred hotel for small change. the only catch is you can't choose the hotel, if a hotel says yes then you are booked in with them.

be a couple of months before i do it, but i reckon i will be back in nyc before the end of the year.





nyc: fdny

some of new york's finest - not quite in action.






nyc: pic

a few more pics





nyc: pic

some more pics from nyc.