I wouldn’t normally post a video that I made for my work website on my blog, but this one was so much fun, that I couldn’t resist – oh, and I’m actually in it which doesn’t happen often either, so all the more reason to post it.

Charleston City Police have recently introduced T3 Motion vehicles to their patrol – and I caught up with the officer in charge of them.

So busy was I putting up personal stuff last week, you may be forgiven for thinking that I overlooked Thanksgiving which was last Thursday here in the ‘states.

Well – I didn’t.

Instead, I did (of course) make another video …

Last week, when I posted an artistic video creation up on my site, a couple of people genuinely thought that I was about to top myself. One who didn’t because he ‘got’ what it was all about, emailed me – even though I’ve never even met him. A nice man in Australia called Peter sent me a lovely email applauding the way in which I put a very personal view of my life on my blog for everyone to see. Well, today we take that personal approach to yet another new level in terms of ‘putting myself out there’ on my blog.

When my friends in England ask me why I haven’t come home yet, the answer is long and complicated. But the core of the truthful answer involves this theatre in Charleston where the place and all the people involved have become an integral part of my life ever since I started taking improv comedy classes their at the beginning of this year.

But now it’s all set to end. Or is it?

2008 has been a hell of a year, and as I’ve been slowly putting together my regular annual Review of the Year compilation over the past few weeks, I’ve decided that these last twelve months have been the best for music that I can remember in a long long time – and there are a whole bunch of songs which are also now so very integral to my memories.

But now I’ve got to decide what to do. Because I really don’t know. So all I can do is implore, and perhaps even maybe beg you a little to watch the following (because yes, it’s quite long) and let me know what you think. I really want to know what you think – as simple at that. Because I still … don’t know.

Thanks.

Things I knew about Boston, MA before I went there at the weekend:

•The Tea Party thing.
•People tell me that “I’ll really like it, it’s a very English type of city”
•My old BBC Colleague Malcolm works there (in the BBC Bureau)
•An iPod contributor friend of mine Annette lives there
•It’s where Cheers was filmed.

Off we go then …

And so the tour continues. A few months ago when my life was in disarray, one way of giving it some focus was to draw up a list of American cities that I really feel I must visit before I depart from the vastly fascinating shores, it was the turn of the captial city of the thirteenth out of fifty states that I have ever been to that got done this time.

First stop : Improv. Of course! That also heavily tends to define my life now, and Boston’s most famous venue for all things unscripted is the Improv Asylum! So a walk around North End on the first night soon turned up the venue, and I got to compare the north/sound difference of this new world of mine.

Boston is smaller that I’d realised. Actually – that’s a little unfair. Let’s just say it’s more compact than I’d figured. Maybe that’s just because they’ve run out of space in the ‘island’ area, and so they’ve spread out into the suburbs. Suburbs which all have have English names! Cambridge, Chelsea, Winchester, Reading, Braintree and Weymouth are all Boston districts which are more familiar to me as towns in the UK.

It’s not so compact that it doesn’t need a mass transit system though. And I can’t go to a city and not be a little obsessed with its trains, can I? So that MBTA, or just the ‘T’ as its known got done. A fairly standard underground train system .. apart from the wonderful Green Line which was actually more like a trolley/tram system with just two cars per train. Except that platforms were long enough to accomdate 8 cars, so it wasn’t unusual to have one train in at the far end of a platform, whilst another one came chugging along behind it and pull up behind the first one – loved it!

Everyone forewarned me of how cold it was going to be, but it’s not until you actually have to (literally) face it that you’re reminded of just how friggin’ chilly it can be. And actully it wasn’t the temperature, but the wind that kills you – it feels as if it’s swooping into the cheeks on your face and lifting a layer a skin away leaving you red, raw, and exposed. Ouch.

But in a strange way it was a familar cold. When it got cold here in Charleston last week it was uncomfortable (mainly because having had nine months of warm weather, I’d forgotten what it was like to be cold), but because it was a different kind of cold to what I was used to. Being cold in Boston reminded me more of what it was like to be cold in London, than Charleston’s chilly climate. I know that mind sound like a pile of tosh – but I stand by it. I felt more ‘at home’ in the northern cold than the southern one. The air just felt different.

Getting lost trying to find a diner, walking around large parts of parks and the city geocaching, being disappointed that the tea party museum was closed and being renovated, skating on the frozen pond in the common (and learning that there are two types of ice-skate: Figure skating and Hockey style – never the latter people, never! Ok?), drinking too many Gingerbread Latte’s from the coffee-chain-the-does-not-need-promoting, spotting woodpeckers, squirrels and other assorted wildlife in the parl, going to the Museum of Science for the afternoon, and generally hanging out in the company of good people. Good times.

I doubt I’ll squeeze in any more trips before the end of the year as Christmas is now coming, as a big billboard boomed out for a local radio station as I was in the taxi on the way to the airport. “Boston’s Favorite Christmas Songs! 105.7 WROR!“ it proudly proclaimed. Really … Christmas? C’mon … haven’t we got to get Thanksgiving (this Thursday) out of the way first?

I found myself not humming any Christmas songs, but a certain Boston tune in my head as I drag my bag through the doors to the airport wondering which song I’ll be humming to myself next time. Some cool blues standard, or perhaps some Elvis.

Because there’s only New Orleans and Vegas left to do.

At the Theatre where I take improv comedy classes, they also have the occasional sketch-comedy show night, where – if you’ve come up with something which you think will be funny (!) you get to perform.

So here’s me … on stage, last night with Andy & Eleanor introducing a new product that’s now available to help all British people adapt to the USA: Brit-B-Gone!

Apparantly … there’s some kind of Election taking place here today.

And no, I can’t vote. Because I’m not naturalized, a citizen, whatever you want to call it – instead, I just live here.

So here’s the 2008 Presidential Election site for legal Aliens for anyone else (and I met two Canadian’s last night who like me – can’t vote) who just … live here.

One of my first ever memories of being here in the USA – in my first week – back in May of 2006 was listening to us lose 2-1 to West Ham on the last day of the season, and slip out of that coveted fourth-place champions league spot into fifth, and to have those dastardley Woolwich Wanderers take our place instead.

Of course I say listen, but I wasn’t listening to it at all. I was on the BBC sports webpages on my laptop, pressing F5 every few seconds watching the updates of the scores come in. (Whilst individual games auto-refresh every 2 minutes, the live text page for all games doesn’t. Why, BBC … Why?)

So my world changed. No more Sky Sports News to have on in the background on a Saturday afternoon. No Five Live Extra on my DAB, no Sunday Times the morning after over a bacon sarny for breakfast. No tabloid style reporting on the train into work on a Monday morning with the Sun’s Goals! supplement, reading all about it again in a rather more coarse fashion. No banter with my football obsessed colleagues Ciaran & Tim about the games at the weekend. And of course – most missed – no more Match of the Day.

But that was the end of the football season, and the start of three months of a football-less world, so I didn’t have to think about … until come August and the start of the new season, I suddenly found that I had to adapt to my new chosen home country, and establish a new routine of getting my football fix.

God bless the internet. Even when the BBC 5 Live site is sneaky enough to detect that your IP address is not a UK based one, and “Sorry, but this content is not available in your country” is displayed on your screen all-too-frequently, there are ways around it.

BBC London for example, aren’t so stringent on the checking of your worldy location, and you could often listen in to streamed commentary games. TalkSport also does not seem to care where in the world you are, and they became a good staple diet for general football chitchat. I started to trawl YouTube for personally uploaded and BBC-TV ripped video clips. I discovered SopCast – a website that lets you stream live TV of all major soccer games, but with varying degrees of success – so I often just found that BitTorrent and UKnova came to my rescue for getting my weekly dose of MOTD.

The time difference also adds an interesting slant. Being five hours behind, it’s great on a Saturday because you can get up at the weekend, and have a leisurely not-get-dressed-that-fast and take-your-time-eating-breakfast kind of morning, whilst idling away on the internet ‘watching’ the football which kicks off here at 10am, instead of 3pm.

But then I would often forget about midweek European games. 7.45pm kick off GMT meant 2.45pm here – a time when I was always at work, busy, and I would be shocked with myself when later I remembered there’s been a game on a Thursday afternoon, and I’d completely forgotten to check the scores. Shit.

But I’m still removed. I’m still ‘here’. And being ‘there’ means that ultimate football bloke moment of supping a pint of proper bitter beer with your mates and celebrating your teams latest win donwn the pub (or, in Spur’s case .. lament your latest lost) and have a nice sense of camaraderie, was gone.

So I had to establish a new routine. One that works when you’re 4,000 miles away from the action, following everything online. And by doing so it made me realise that in a very odd way, I could start to remember specific games more than I did back home when coverage was so widespread, you made less of an effort to follow along and were therefore less focused.

Actually, that’s not entirely true because a few years ago when I went to eight weddings in one year, I always found myself sitting down at the reception sending text messages to friends not at the wedding asking for score updates – because most of the wedding’s were on Saturday afternoons. It got to the point where on my wedding list page, I update it with the Tottenham score that took place that day.

A few weeks back here on this blog, I did a post about my favourite TV show. How much I love that programme, the emotion it stirs and how much it means to me. But when I go back and read that post, it often falls a little flat on my eyes because I still don’t think it conveys the point I was trying to get across. So I’ll try and do it now, but with the footy instead.

If I go back and watch a certain episode of Doctor Who now, it will remind me of a certain time and a certain place and certain people here in the America. I will recall the highs and lows that I had that week, if I was happy or not with my life here, If I’d had a fight that day – or the best sex ever – and it will be linked to that show. When I got back now (as I often do) and watch old episodes on my computer, it takes me right back to that Tuesday in 2006, or that rainy Sunday afternoon in 2007 and bring back the memory of the time that was going on. My passion for that programme got linked to passion and emotion in my real life.

And I can see now that that’s what’s also happening now with my beloved Tottenham.

For instance, I will never ever be able to forget the weekend that we won the Carling Cup 2-1 against Chelsea earlier this year – tainted by the fact that just three days prior my wife told me that she was ending it. That’s a fairly unforgettable week, as weeks tend to go.

Spurs winning a match can make or break your entire day. A long arduous four hour drive back from some tedious hick down deep in the north of South Carolina earlier this year was made totally bearable by the constant text updates I got telling us of our 5-1 romp over Ar*enal on the way to the Carling Cup Final. It’s a memory irrevocably linked, as I can remember where I was and who I was with that day.

It doesn’t always make you happy though. On my 35th Birthday last year, I was wandering around the town of Wilmington in North Carolina, utterly homesick (the last time, interestingly enough that I was) and desperate to be back in England to celebrate my birthday – and the fact that I was checking someone’s iPhone watching us hammer Derby 4-0 at home did little to raise my mood. Strange.

So I’ve developed my own little world here – my own way of following my team. Completely removed to the set of mates I had back in England that I could talk about it with, or go to White Hart Lane, or just banter about football generally with people that I worked with at the BBC. It’s all internet and online based now. Just me, my computer, oh … and a certain podcast.

In a bar last week here, the dude serving picked up on the fact that I was English, from London, and asked what team I ‘pulled for’. [Note to Americans: This is a terrible phrase to use when talking about British Football. You support a team, not pull for one, ok?] but I did not talk to him. I ended the conversation as soon as I could. I was not going to have the conversation with someone (as he told me) who was a Liverpool fan.

Because two week ago we were bottom of the league, winless, completely devoid of confidence and I’d resgined myself to the fact that we were most likely going to be relegated this season, down one division which last happened to us back in the 1970′s. And it was depressing.

And when that happens – I only want to talk about football with people that know how I feel – fellow Spurs fans, and I don’t know any here. (Actually I used to work with one, but we both quit the place where we both worked and haven’t been in touch since).

Some people have commented to me in the past that they find it strange that I don’t talk about my passion for my team on my website or my blog – and it’s true – I don’t. And the reason is, is that I like to share that passion with other proper football fans, and – if possibe – fellow Spurs people.

And by listening to this podcast, I now have a strange defining memory. I drive a lot every day up and down the same stretch of road, and more often than not I listen to the Spurs podcast several times a week on that journey. A podcast which did not exist three years ago when I was back in the UK. And so one day … when I am home in England (and presuming it is still running), I will be listening to it there, and all it will do is remind me of the comforting feeling that it gave me, as I went about on my travel here. I can almost imagine that I’m there sitting with them in a pub, and they’re there saying exactly what’s on my mind week after week, and it gives you just that little bit of hope that even if you’re team are completely shit, then you’ve got some people that you can share with just how shit it is. And I like that.

So where are we? Oh, that’s right. This week. When this happened …

on Saturday evening just gone, something crappy happened to me that made me go home in a sulk. But when I got back I found I had an email from a friend telling me that we’d just got a new manager. And the next day with new found confidence and optimism from the new appointment, we won a game. Amazing! I even got my Spurs shirt out of my cupboard and considered wearing it with some sort of pride again. And then … we played Arsenal last night – a game we’re still expected to lose, to our big North London rivals, and sure enough .. with ten minutes to go we’re losing 4-2.

I have go to the toilet (my bladder was internally shouting at me to do so), and so I break away from watching the updates on screen and go and relieve myself. When I come back to my computer four minutes later, my finger hovers over the F5 button, and I actually think to myself “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we’d scored two goals and got a draw right at the death”, but of course – such miracles never happen, and that would be preposterous.

And then I pressed F5, and I saw this:

And I literally jumped for joy, screamed like a loony out of my chair and started dancing around my room (helped by the fact that I had the new Killers song “Human” on LOUD repeat whilst all this was going on) and the world became a beautiful, beautiful place all over again, and I knew then just one simple point in an eight goal thriller against the Ar*e would be a defenitive moment on this season, and a memory of this week, right now, what I was doing and where I’m planning to go from here. And I really really like that.

And people say it’s just a game. Honestly, you have no idea.

It’s very hard to describe how moments like this make me feel.

Proper Spurs post to follow. when I’ve climbed down from the ceiling. It’s long overdue.

I promise that I’m going to listen to that message that you left me. Soon.

Well, soonish.

(That’s 2 missed calls, 1 New Message, and 61 unplayed voicemails)

What to do with the new Keane album (regular people)

Think “Ooh, I quite liked their last album / recent single, I’ll buy their new one”. Purchase it on CD, or perhaps just download on iTunes [Other download services are available] and play the album a few times. Like it or dislike it – you absorb it into your musical collection. And you can move along.

What to do with the new Keane album (if you’re Geoff)

I scour the internet weeks ahead of time for pre-released/illegal copies. “Safe” in the knowledge that I know I like them so much that even if I’ve got an illegal copy of it in advance, I’m still going to download it legally and/or buy in on CD when it’s officially released. I’d done that before with the last Hard-Fi album – in fact then I illegally downloaded it, then legally downloaded AND THEN ALSO bought it on CD, because … well, I’m just like that.

YouTube is good for this kind of thing. I play the tracks through in real time, and edit them down and import them into my iTunes ahead of the official release date. I even record a track off of the radio (Sirus) at one point and edit that down too. That takes me back 20 years to when I used to tape the Top 40 charts on a Sunday evening. Some things never change.

I preorder the album on Amazon. There are no music/CD shops that would stock it in Charleston, so the safest way to guarantee getting the CD is to order it online. Keane aren’t that big in the ‘states yet anyway – many people have never heard of them.

I debate over if I should download it from UK iTunes (as the US release date is a couple of days later) as well as the CD that I know you’re getting in the mail shortly.

When the album turns up, Iimport the album into iTunes – but like this:

One – I set the AAC import bitrate to 256 kbps rather than the standard 128 kbsp. This means that it takes up twice as much space on my iPod than it does as normal – and if I did that with all my music it would halve the capacity. So I only do it for specially elected songs and albums. Keane are special.

Two – I manually import the eleven track CD into iTunes track by track in reverse order. Why? Because I like to sort my iTunes by ‘date added’, meaning it puts the most recently added song at the top of my screen and plays down. If I were to drag the album over, or just say “yes please, import” when prompted and let iTunes do its default thing, Track 11 would be the first to play, and Track 1 the last when running down in date order – meaning I’d be listening to the album backwards, and I don’t want that.

I remember buying the Pet Shop Boys album ‘Actually‘ on vinyl back in 1987. In the good old days, bands would release two singles as promotional songs for their new album release. When the album did come out, those singles would be strategically positioned on the album as songs that you know are quite good because you’ve already bought the single’.

So “What have I done to deserve this” (the second single) was Track 2, and “It’s a Sin” was Track 7. How’s that strategically placed? Well people, because this is the good old days of vinyl. where you had to turn the record over after tune number five – the end of side A … ! Meaning that the second song in on each side was one you were already familiar with and comfortable listening to. So you’d probably think “Well I’ll start with the first track, and even if I don’t like it, I know there’s one coming right up which i’ll enjoy”, and then THAT would get you ‘into’ listening to the whole album.

On Perfect Symettry, Track 1 is “Spiralling” – the first single, that was available for download only and got a lot of radio play. Lots of people are hoping that this new edgier sound is a reflection of the whole album. Track 2 “The Lovers are losing” is the next (now!) new single. So it’s easy to listen to the first two tracks before I go track-skipping.

Track skipping? Oh yes – I skip through looking for the ‘Bedshaped’ on this album. Bedshaped as all good Keane fans know, recognise this as the finest song they’ve ever produced (well except for the fact that “Everybody’s Changing” is the finest song IMHO that they’ve ever produced), and when ‘Iron Sea‘ came out, everyone was all like “Ooh, but is there a Bedshaped?” – and there wasn’t. Because instead there was A Bad Dream and Nothing in my way which pissed all over Bedshaped as the finest songs they’d ever written (even marginally better than Everbody’s Changing, I have to confess) and so they became my new ‘must play’ Keane songs.

Then I discover Track 6, “You don’t see me” quite quickly is the stand-out slow number on the album. “That nice song that is typically Keane” I think to myself, and that gets a lot of plays (by which I mean, I play it 13 times in a row). But then I go back to Spiralling, and then Track 2 (the new single – Lovers are losing), Track 5 (the title track, so worth a listen) and Track 6, and I’m sorted. Except that I still can’t get into Track, 4 and a skip that one over most times.

I set my facebook status accordingly (Three times over the next couple of days is my status Keane-influenced)

I can prove this to be true – look over in the right hand column at my LastFM stats right now and you’ll see Keane riding high with many plays.

I flip onto the Wikipedia page about it, just to see what’s been written. In the process I discover this rather amusingly negative review about the album from NME.

Then I start playing along with them on my keyboard to work out what key each song is in (work in progress still, I never claim to be a musical genius).

I do worry though that it only took them just over two years to bring out this new album. Is thre shite-all (as the NME review suggested) after the first track? It doesn’t seem very developed. Part of me wishes that they had worked on it for another 12 months and brought it out later. Nothing else on the album is like “Spiralling” and it would be easy to say I could be disappointed. I can’t see anything as being as anthemic as “Nothing in my way”, and I’m still having trouble with Track 4 – I can’t get into it at all. In the end it actually gets deleted from my iTunes. That’s right deleted. Like a friend-deleter on facebook, I ruthlessly go back and chop songs from my iTunes if I really don’t like them. Albums with 12 tracks? Pah … I know when I’ve imported them, I’ve skipped the 3 songs that I know I don’t like. Ruthless, me.

Or maybe that thing will happen when the next single is chosen and it will highlight a single that previously seemed bland. This has just happened with Coldplay. “Lost!” has been chosen as the next single from their album, and what previously seemed like a bland filller track on the album, now seems like an interesting song because I’ve heard it on the radio seperately a few times by itself, and not side by side with other Coldplay songs.

But then I remember that I hated ‘Iron Sea’ when it first came out. I got it the same week that I got The Feelings album “Twelve stops and home.” and thought that that was much better. And now? Are you kidding? Somewhere around the six-months-later mark, I realised that the Keane album was a slow-burning grower, far superior, and I never want to hear that damn Feeling album again.

So I eventually got past track 6 last night … when I gave tracks 7 to 10 a play. I’d actually skipped ahead to Track 11 the other day, betting that with a name such as “Love is the end”, it would be a slow piano choon that builds up nicely to a fitting end – and it does, perfectly. But that means the in-between songs were getting missed. Until last night when I eased myself into them by starting with Track 10, playing into 11, and then back to 9, and then back to 8, and so on.

And so I’m almost at the point where I can go out and play the whole album (save for that tricky track 4) from start to finish without skipping. And I’ve made a mental post-it-sticky-note to come back in 6 months time and read this blog post and see if I’m still raving about the album as much as I am now.

Now I’m off to manually update my iTunes play count. Because where I’ve been playing the album on CD in my car, means that a play count isn’t being incremented on my iTunes. So I manually make a note in my head of what tracks I played in my car that day, and play that song in iTunes at home, and click quickly to the end, letting the song finish straight away and adding ’1′ to the playcount. Repeated more than once of course if I played it more than once in my car.

And people tell me that I have an obesessive personality. I can’t see it myself.

My trip to Washington D.C. meant that I also got to a make a video about it for the new website that I work for.

And I liked it so much I thought I’d put on here as a perfect compliment to my write-up of D.C. in my previous post.