The national association for birds that take laxatives to relieve constipation issues held its annual conference in a tree above where I parked my car in downtown Charleston on Friday night.

I had to drive around in it - including going to a funeral on Saturday - before I got a chance to clean it. And the photo doesn’t really do it justice … it looked much worse in person, and it was splattered all down the offside of the car as well … yuk.

You may have seen this already if you’re a facebook friend of mine, as I uploaded it there last week, but I figured there was no harm in putting it up on my blog too.

This was actually shot back in June of last year (2007), when as part of a local art exhibit, a colleague of mine (Dan), recorded me doing this - cycling round fiber-glassed turtles in Charleston.

Back then, he was on a deadline for to get the thing recorded and produced in the space of a day. Dan did a great job, but in the back of mind I always fancied doing a ‘directors cut‘ version, and doing various tweaks to it: Namely: Making it 16:9, adding music, adding maps to plot my progress and a couple of other cool little video tweaks that I’ve learned in the last year.

So it’s with no disrespect to Dans original cut, I just always fancied having a go at it myself.

I was going back through some old blog posts this past week, doing some admin and tidying up when I stumbled across this.

A post about something that I wrote practically four years ago this week, in June 2005. It was a quick, quirky, multi-topic post. Totally unlike what you’re about to read below.

I’d got terribly exciting about the finale of the new season of Doctor Who. ‘New Who’ as it soon became dubbed was back on our TV screens with its non-wobbly sets, CGI graphics, and some beautifully written story lines (thank you Steven Moffat, but more of him below) that led us to the Doctor and Rose battling against the Daleks, and the realisation that the ‘Bad Wolf’ story arc had been slowly woven in over the previous twelve weeks.

The sight of Eccleston on the BB red chair with the phrase ‘Doctor in the House’ still makes me chuckle. I’m guessing there’s fair percentage of people out there that never got, and still don’t get the Coldcut reference.

Now it’s 2008. And I’m back again to waiting a whole week to see how it pans out with the Doctor and Rose batting against the Daleks. And it’s making me realise that I have to confess something : I love this programme. Big time.

How can it be that a 65 minute special that’s going to be on this Saturday evening is the sole focus of my week. How could it be that a programme which I enjoyed as a kid (Tom Baker, in case you’re wondering) is still getting me excited today. Me … and countless others. Spanning a broad range from young children, teenagers, and thirty-five year old expats in America who surely ought to know better. Shouldn’t they?

I’m worried I may be compared to someone decades younger than me. This [left] is the grinning face of Henry, who’s twelve years old and once contributed towards an iPod of mine. Now this surely is what a Who-obessive should be like, right? Someone who has posters on their bedroom wall, someone spends hours on jumpcut making new montages of old and new Doctors together and creating his own DW comic books on the official site. Isn’t that its target audience really? Or am I just a twelve year old in disguise?

Maybe I should know better. But I also know that when Journey’s End finishes screening on Saturday evening, I’ll be left feeling a little empty, and realising more than ever than it’s been an intimate part of my life over the last four years. It’ll also reinforce (as I watch it online, over the internet and not on a live terrestrial signal) that in the same way that I can recall a time, a memory, and a moment from a particular song that was a hit at a time, I can do the same with Doctor Who episodes now too.

I can remember quite quite clearly and and where I was and who I was with (hello Sam), the first time we were treated to a Christmas special. And how all our fears over whether Tennant would be a worthy successor or not, and by god - yes he was.

I can remember how I slowly realised that there were different writers for different episodes and thus some were better than others. Declaring the genius that is Moffat and that the episodes that are the most clever (Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and Silence in the Library) are his. And the double parter written by Paul Cornell of ‘Human Nature/Family of Blood’ is guaranteed to being a tear to my eye every time I watch it.

That’s right. Doctor Who can bring a tear to my eye and I’m admitting it here in public. Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, all go back to the specific episodes and the specific parts that I know will do it to me and watch them through. I’m even slightly addicted to watching old clips, trailers and the ‘Coming Next’s’ from certain episodes, because it makes the hairs on my arm stand up and puts goosepimples down my back with ease, and I really like that.

And yet it’s just a TV programme. Isn’t it. Isn’t it?

Of course it is. Just like the spin off’s are ‘just’ TV shows too. Did you get caught up in them too? I know I did. And I can remember having some of the best sex of my life after a particularly lesbian themed horny episode of Torchwood had just screened. Shame that was never repeated. The sex that is, not the episode.

So I watch old episodes a lot. They’re all on my iPod too. I spend far too much time on www.doctorwhoforum.com checking out speculations of spoilers and theories. I Google for other Doctor Who blogs (like this one) to see what people are writing. I have a toy TARDIS on my desk at home. I have a Doctor Who calendar on my desk at work. I have a poster of Tennant & Piper up in the studio at work. I have a mini-dalek key ring that spins and flashes whenever my cell phone is about to ring.

I bought both soundtracks (on download, not CD). The Doomsday music still puts a chill down my spine when I hear it. And I bet that no one else out there has ever imagined that the ‘Madame de Pompadour’ music would be a good tear-fest for your own funeral soundtrack. What do you mean you’ve never discussed what music you’d have at your funeral? It’s the best High Fidelity Top 5 game ever.

DW introduced me to some new favourite songs as well. Every week when Confidential is on TV, they use a lot of modern music. I discovered Feeder’s “Tender” this way and love this song to this day. Hello to whoever you are in the BBC Wales production crew who decided to use that piece of music - that made so sad, and so happy, all at the same time. Genius.

It’s been hard to convey my love of this programme to Americans. Only one person (and he was a complete uber-geek by anyone’s definition) had ever heard of it, everyone else I’ve had to slowly introduce it to. I introduced it to Leigh of course, and to this day she still emails me asking if I’ve downloaded the latest episode yet so that she can watch it (Clearly she has a crush on Rose and is awaiting her return). A girl called Anne at work, saw my DW poster on my wall one day, asked me what it was and ever since I’ve been feeding her DivX copies burnt onto CD/DVD for her.

Someone at my improv group the other day turned to me and said “So how was it?”. “How was what?”. “The latest Doctor Who!”. “Oh, did I tell you about that then?”. “Tell us about it? Geoff you went on and on about it, we knew it must be important to you”. “Oh.” So apparently I tend to talk about it as well.

My mum watches it. We have conversations about it via email every week. It’s a programme that entertains all generations. And I love that.

So I love this programme. With a passion. There, I said it. To a point where an outsider might think it strange for someone of my age to be quite so hooked on it, but yet I don’t care … because I really suspect that I’m not alone, even though I might be the only one brave enough to spill it all out onto their blog.

So Saturday is coming. A ‘Fan-Wank-Fest‘ of epic proportions apparently, as it bows out for another season, and we all start looking for something to fill the void left on a Saturday evening, and start counting down the days to the Christmas special.

It is - after all - only a TV programme. Right?

For a man who obsesses over his music and iTunes collection, I can be extremely tardy sometimes in catching on to the latest song of the moment.

Heading up my ‘My 2008′ playlist (songs I’ve discovered and will associate with this year) so far are the Raconteurs “Steady as she goes” (a hit in May 2006), Cake’s “Love you madly” (A song on the ‘Comfort Eagle’ album from 2001) and … going back even further than that, Grandaddy’s “AM 180″ (A single from 1998) which is the stand-out tune from the soundtrack of 28 Days Later - you know the one, it starts with the sound effect of a cross between the pac-man video game and an ice cream van.

So I was well on the ball this year, when I decided that the Hard-Fi single “I shall overcome” was rather good and I should check out what album it came from. So - just six months after it had been released (like I say, quite fast for me) I went online to a *cough* site that lets you ‘acquire’ (rather than legally download) some of the tracks off of the album.

That was back in March. Then something strange happened.

After a few weeks of having them on my iPod and playing them and enjoying them, I realised that I was really starting to enjoy them (because I was playing them obsessively and repeatedly) and perhaps in fact I ought to download the whole album because it might be rather good - and not just the few that I’d previewed and downloaded in a hurry. So I get home and get online, and have a bit of a moment and decide that actually the right thing to do is to download the WHOLE album legally off of ye olde iChoons.

So I did … I bought the whole damn thing for £7.99, even though I already had some of the tracks downloaded from elsewhere. I even went to all the bother of setting the play counts on the newly downloaded tracks so that they matched the versions of the old ones before I deleted then. I then set about playing the Hard-Fi album a lot.

Move forward a month later, it’s now April - almost June actually just a couple of weeks back and I realise that the whole damn album is pretty amazing. Totally. It doesn’t have any duff tracks on it. Usually when you get an album of (say) 10 tracks, you buy it because you liked the one single that you heard on the radio. So out of those 10 tracks there’s the single that you like, 2 other songs that are really good, 5 that are just good, and 2 duff ones. And it’s always those 2 duff ones that I then delete and don’t bother to have on my iPod.

But I couldn’t do it with Hard-Fi. Everyone one of the 11 tracks on Once upon a time in the west had me tapping, singing, and nodding along when out driving in my car, and I decided that I just loved this album.

Loved this album so much in fact that … I decided to buy it on CD.

Yes - you read that right. From illegally bitorrenting some of the tracks in the first place, to legally downloading all of them off of iTunes, I then decided that what I really wanted was a copy of CD to keep forever, because - well - there’s something still a teeny bit odd about buying something and JUST having it as an AAC or MP3 file isn’t there. Isn’t there?

Or was it that I just enjoyed the album so much that I felt that Hard-Fi really deserved my money in their pockets. That there product was so good than they’d guilted me into getting a legal copy of it … twice.

So, this is a true story to show how in the download generation, and when record companies are worried about DRM free music floating round the ‘net, I think it goes to show that if something is good enough - people are willing to pay for it.

I’ve told this story to a few people over the past two weeks (I’ve been meaning to blog it for a while), and have only found one other person who has ever done a similar thing - i.e. go out and purchase the CD of something they already had on download - are we alone? Or has anyone else ever done this?

A week ago, I took an ultra-quick trip back home to England - literally three days in and out. Why? Was the main question that people asked me when they heard I was there for such a short time - and here is the answer : To do something completely crazy.

I popped all the way over the pond just so that I could take part in a mini-tube challenge, namely the Zone 1 challenge for 2008.

This has been running for the last five years now, there’s a page about it on my site here - and what started out as a joke by my ‘tube buddy’ Neil on an email to me back in March that said “Wouldn’t it be funny if you just turned up …” somehow transpired into me doing exactly that. So I bought a ticket, told almost no one that I was coming, and just turned up on the day of the event to surprise everyone by participating with Neil in the event.

And then obviously it became something that I could make a kick-ass video about - which I’ve done.

This may just yet be the best thing I’ve produced to date. It’s ten minutes long which is a little lengthy, but it’s a lot of fun to watch …

Location: Epsom High St. Starbucks. 11am.

The busker is re-positioning his bag on the ground, containing mainly copper coins, but a few silver ones too.

I can’t remember the first time that I felt such an allure to street musicians (the last time I used the world ‘busker’ in Charleston, I got a blank look as they didn’t know what that work meant), but I can remember several distinct times in my life where I’ve sat and stopped and taken notice, because it seems that I am unable to pass by one on the street without stopping and listening to them.

On holiday in Venice back in 2001,I got into fight with my girlfriend because she wanted to walk on and look around the city, and I just wanted to sit and watch the busker ply his trade for a while. We’d been walking the narrow streets and bridges all morning, and to me there was nothing more romantically charming than sit down for half an hour, get some free entertainment against a stunning backdrop of history and relax. But she didn’t see the charm of the busker.

I remember a random Saturday shopping experience in Kingston (south west London) back in the late 90’s, where walking through the market that afternoon, I stumbled upon two university kids, who did a complete acoustic set of Crowded House songs which had me transfixed and late for meeting my friend as I stood and tried to pretend that I could sing along with more of the words that I really knew.

There is nothing special about this guy. His guitar looks beat up and manky . He could do with washing his hair, and it looks like he’s probably worn the hooded sweater top that he’s got on day in day out for the last few months.

Stopping to sit and watch and hear a busker play is a nice interruption from what you were doing. So you’d headed out to go shopping, or go to the bank, or meet your friend for a coffee, and in the same way that a radio station can randomly place a great song that you weren’t expecting and haven’t heard for a while, a busker knocking out a good tune is an even better bonus because you probably chose to put the car radio or your iPod on, and yet here you were just walking down the road and stumbled into a busker.

He’s playing a song that I recognise, but I can’t place. The trouble with acoustic guitar is that it’s not really my thing because I’d usually buy and listen to some processed, electronic and keyboard-based, which is why I’m continually surprised at myself at the allure of a guitar-playing busker.

I sip my Starbucks coffee. Excellent. It tastes the same here as it does there which is somehow comforting and distressing all at the same time, because it just confirms that I can’t pass a Starbucks anywhere in the world now without being drawn in.

But I sit and people watch for a while and realise that I’m playing a new variation of the ‘people game’ that I play. Quite often, I’ll see someone in America who reminds me of someone in England. And I’ll say to myself “Oh, I’ve just the met the American version of … [name of person back in England], and usually email or text that person saying “I’ve just met your US double!”, which is always fun.

Now I’ve realised I’m doing the game in reverse. The last couple of days I’ve been quietly people watching, and have caught myself a couple of times thinking “Oh, that person looks just like [name of person back in the 'states] - and I’ve found their English double!”, and then email that person telling them. Believe me, there are a lot of transatlantic doubles about.

He starts playing one his own songs (he announces it as being so), and quite passionately, closes his eyes and starts singing as he goes. A little cheesy, but quite endearing. I always have respect for people who set up shop in public like that and put themselves out there ready to be ignored, rained upon, or to find that after two hours they’ve only got 78p in their collection tin.

So: In, out. Here, there. Where is home? A three day trip to ‘here’ is too short and I really should be giving myself longer. But I’ve already got the urge to go ‘there’ again, if nothing else because it would be nice to go and sleep in the surroundings of what has for the moment become familiar to me. But here is familiar too. Nothing too much changes. I feel like I’ve checked in and kept tabs on things again, and it’s nice. Good. Quite pleasant, in fact. And it’s helping me form a plan. I can feel it slowly forming in the back of my head, and I like it, like the fact that it will take a while to come to fruition, and then i’ll be able to put myself out there too with my own version of a beat up guitar and perform away.

I get up to go, and put my hand in my pocket … to pass up some money to him which he deserves. But then I realised that I just paid for my coffee on my credit card, because I have no English money on me - just a wallet full of bucks.

An immigration official wearing a turban. Another airport official doing something .. airporty, who it was obvious to me that English was not his natural born language. Hello home.

“Who let the chavs out?” I txt’d to my mate Janet (Who then gave away my ’secret’ trip in her facebook status update for all to see). The West Ham fan (bald, tattoos, I looked twice to make sure it wasn’t my brother in-law) yakked away on his mobile phone, oblivious to the ‘Do not use your mobile phone in this area’ sign about 10 metres behind him. Hello cultural England.

Timberland shirts, a FILA cap, Reebok trainers - a Virgin flight had pulled in at the gate next to my US Airways one, and I hoped that they were package holiday makers back from somewhere cheap in Europe. Hello Gatwick Airport.

I’m sat in the Apple Store on Regent Street right now, but before whipping out my non-Jobs laptop to type this, I sat and people watched for a few minutes, taking in my surroundings. Moments before that, I’d sat and people watched perched on a wall on the junction of Oxford Circus, again - just soaking up my surroundings. Terry with the megaphone appears to have been replaced by a bo-peep style crazy lady, complete with frilly dress and a hooked staff to shepherd her lambs home later. Even though I’m sitting just a few feet away, I can’t actually make out entirely what she’s saying. Something about God though I think.

Prior to that, I’d done it again at Victoria, down in the tube on the northbound platform. I let 6 or 7 trains go by, consuming in the atmosphere, the smell, the buzz and the vibe of London, wishing I could somehow tap it, edit it, and serve up a portion of it here on the webpage to share with y’all. I’ve missed you London, and it’s nice to be back.

Here, people look British. In the same way that as over there, they look American. I’ve decided that you could pick a group of random people from each side of the pond, mix them up in a room, and I’d be able to tell at a glance who was who, no problem.

I do keep looking at people, because I feel like they’re looking at me. Or perhaps I’m trying to see if I can catch someone that I know. Charleston? 90,000 population downtown - no problem, odds are that most days I’ll run into someone that I know. ‘Downtown’ Greater London with several million? Yeah .. less so.

I’m tired. 5 hours of airplane sleep (even if it was first class - more on that on a retrospective post) hasn’t done well to adjust to time difference, and I’m confused as to how I am, to where I am. Even moreso, there is this deep unsettling feeling that I don’t know where I’m supposed to be either. Here, or there?

UK or USA where there are good and bad in almost equal portions. It now feels like I’ve split my life in two, and that when I say ‘home’, I don’t know if I mean here or there or anymore. It’s both. And neither. All at the same time. And that is deeply unsettling.

There’s a new theme park in town! Although actually when I say ‘in town’, I mean ‘a two hour drive north from Charleston up to Myrtle Beach’.

Myrtle Beach is a kitschy town of South Carolina (Brits: Think Margate with a load of Chavs, and you’re kinda there), but something quite exciting and new that it’s got going for it is the new Hard Rock Park theme park which opened recently. (With apologies for the flash heavy, window re-sizing website if you go there)

Note, that it’s not an out-and-out amusement park, but a theme park (there’s a difference?). Whatever. The main thing for you to know is that there is one huge kick-ass ride : The Led Zeppelin, set to the music of ‘Whole Lotta Love’.

It’s 140 feet tall, takes you round at 65mpm and inverts you six times during the 60 second trip. The front of the trains have been designed to resemble the shape of a zeppelin airship.

Now I got to go there for work last week. That’s right - I got paid to go to a theme park for a day with my colleague David. If you want to see the full report we did, you can check it out here, but if you just want to see the crazy roller-coaster action - as I took my video camera on the ride three times in a row - then play it below … [Profanity Alert: You may hear me swearing a little ... heh.]

How us Brits learn about all-things-America before coming here is of course from the movies.

The most memorable movie moments from films I saw before moving here are as follows:

In Castaway (A fairly good film), Tom Hanks is at a crossroads right at the end, in a middle-of-nowhere scene, sand and dust all around, and I’m told that this was probably filmed somewhere in New Mexico or Nevada. This really wants to make me head out into the desert myself and find myself at a dusty crossroads, trying to decide which way to go.

In Scent of a Woman (An outstandingly good film), Chris O’Donnell returns Al Pacino to his home after their weekend away, and it’s a classic white-picket fence suburban scene in a leafy autumnal (sorry, fall) setting. I’m reliably informed that this is most likely somewhere up in New Hampshire. This really makes me want to visit New Hampshire in the fall.

In Tin Cup (A pretty bad film), starring Kevin Costner (who, incidentally, was in Charleston quite recently filming The New Daughter) the opening scene is of someone in their car driving down a road, where they pass signs on the side of the road, business advertising golf, golf practice and more golf things.

Ok, so it’s not golf that’s advertised but since moving here to John’s Island last month I now get to drive down this stretch of road everyday - Maybank Highway - and every time I drive it, I think of Tin Cup because of all of the signs down the side of the road.

I don’t even know their proper name. They must have a name - the company that make them - they must be known as something or have a brand name, but until I find that out, I’m going to call them the ‘Tin Cup Sings’ just because of that opening sequence of the movie. And it would seem that there are a lot of them all over the south, and Americans are surprised when I tell them that we don’t have them at all in England.

So here, in a three minute drive that is part of my route to work everyday are this weeks signs.

I think this is a church. I’m so busy staring at the sign as I drive past that I always forget to look. The most amusing part is that I’ve seen them write ‘Monday’ as ‘Mndy’, so it’s not just ‘Sunday’ that they abbreviate.
 

I have no idea what a Belgard Paver is. Anyone?
 

Here it would seem that they ran out of letter completely, and just wrote the words into their sign - A little permanent perhaps, but they’ve done a good job at emulating the font. I wonder what the font name is for this - tincup.ttf perhaps?
 

Nice reversed ‘N’ pine shavers! That’ll attract the attention of the street-wise kids, innit? Desperate for their fix of, er … horse beddings, for sure. Hmm.
 

Your guess is as good as mine as to what the correct phone number to call here is. Who knows? Actually, that’s not really the point.

The point of this post is the lasting memory that I will take away with me when I leave one day.

As when I think of a similar road in England, I envisage country pubs, hedgerow, sheep in fields, the occasional ‘mini’ sized pillar box and a red phone booth, and a brown ‘tourist’ sign pointing the way to the nearest local attraction.

The equivalent here is of a rustic looking wooden building in need of repair - set far back from the road and always with its own parking lot, and a TinCup sign on the grass verge with a mix of black and red letters. And as easy as it is to say that ’states has no character, I find it quite endearing …

Since the turn of the year, I’ve been taking comedy improv classes at Theatre 99 here in Charleston. The classes are in three stages, and back at the beginning of March we had our ‘Level 1′ recital.

Last night - eight weeks more of tutoring later, the Level 2 recital was upon us. So I was back on stage with my classmates reacting to whatever the crazy audience shouted at us. Here are the ‘Geoff Highlights’ …

It shouldn’t really go unnoticed that over the weekend on May 2nd, I passed the magic two year mark here in the US of A.

It feels like a lot longer.

Having a bad day? Yes, but there’s always someone that’s worse off than you.

Missed your train? Annoying, but pity the poor guy that missed his flight connection and is delayed by a whole day rather than an hour or two.

Lost your wallet? Yes, but your neighbour was burgled and had all of their most treasured possessions swiped.

Lost your job? Could be worse … you could be discriminated in some way or totally uneducated in the first place to get work.

Wife left you? Better to have loved, than to … ok, I won’t do that one, but you get the picture.

I had this ‘lecture’ from a friend of mine this morning, and I couldn’t help think what complete bollocks it was. Because ultimately that conversation can only lead to one thing … “Yes, but it could be worse … you could be dead”. Right? As that’s the extreme that it eventually ends up as. There is always someone, somewhere worse off than you having a hard time.

Which is why it’s all relative. The hard time that you’re having in the environment that you’re used to living I think is enough to justify why you’re pissed about sometime. And today I was pissed about something, and so I strutted round all day in the most miserable mood possible and didn’t smile all day. I was almost reveling in it.

Right up until about seven o’clock in the evening that is, when I got a text from someone informing me that a work colleague was in hospital, did I know that, and would I like to go and visit them to cheer them up?

Yes I would! As I know what it’s like to be visited when you’re in your sickbed. Even a few minutes from a friend totally brightens up your day.

On the downside though, I was in a wobbly enough mood as it was, and entering the psychedelic world of corridors with fluorescent lights, that clean smell that uniquely identifies a hospital in the western world, and having a whole bundle of nice people who are specifically there to make others better which I think is the most wonderful thing in the world was always going to tip me over the edge.

Ah - but I wanted my edge tipped, didn’t I? Yes I think I did. I know myself far to well by now to recognise that. Plus of course, it brought back the age-old dilemma of there being no such thing as an unselfish good deed.

Yes I knew it would cheer her up to go and see her, but was the ulterior motive really that I wanted to feel good about myself by doing a nice thing, and perhaps acknowledge that whilst my day may be shitty - I wasn’t the one lying in a hospital bed in a ridiculous gown, unable to eat or talk with a throat all bandaged up having recently had my thyroid cut out of it. Oh and the mild possibility of it being cancerous too, but not knowing for a while as it would take a few days to get the results back.

So I go do the visiting thing. Make all the right noises, ask questions that aren’t too personal, and even squeeze in a terrible pun when someone talks about anesthetics, and i say “Oh I never liked their single T99 anyway”. (Think about it).

Visiting hours end all too soon, and (no embarrassment in confessing this) with a tear in my eye, I trace my way back along the rabbit warren of corridors and signs to the exit, past the low hum of the vending machines, a ‘Goodnight’ from a porter pushing a trolley, failing on the urge not to tap a ‘this way’ sign hanging suspended from a low ceiling and eventually out into the fresh air to try and remember where the hell I’d parked my car and plotting already in my mind the perfect post-hospital drive-home-playlist on my iPod.

Take care Grace, and get well soon.