scratchings of dan

Huckleberry Fin 24.10.2011

2012-01-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

Al Gersch spoke to someone that knew someone that did the Hoerikwaggo Hike and they said: "no f**king walk in the park!"

and then i bought hiking boots.

The car alarm, it's red flashing light, the flicking red light on my laptop battery, my george forman's red light, the blazing red light on the remote control, and the buzzing red light beneath my mouse. my heart's telling me ive received a BB message, but my brain's telling me my burgers are ready.

it was the blinding red light which the Bear Hunter, growl, Marty, man machine with a heart the size of Secretariats and a taste for bbq'd meat, Big Al and his clima cools and dar-win with his hi tecs that didnt last, needed to escape.

to have sea salt caking around your nostrils, to have the scent of fyn bos swirling through your nasel passage,tickling your brain, to have the weight of canned tuna upon your shoulders and a water bladder bouncing against your back, to have the charcoaled, oranged lichened rocky outcrops, canary yellow and ice white starry eyed proteas paving your path is to experience the outdoors. our experience would take us from the southern tip of the Cape towards thee mountain. 75 kays, lets light that match.
This is the Hoerikwaggo Trail.

Day One and like an Angry Bird we were catapulted to Cape Point. our facial hair liberated and sprouting towards the sunshine, the load on our shoulders untwirling. here we took photo ops and pee'd over the edge, we laboured,then we walked. the going was tough, but we soldiered on.

we hugged the coast, one foot in the Indian, one foot in the atlantic. we got sunburnt and blistered. the hike was long the day was short. we thought we were halfway when we saw ay canon, alas the wrong one. we ran outa time.
Our tents were pitched at Slangkop, beneath the beam of the light house. we chugged beer and Crosby Stills and Noshed biltong. it was surreal.

Day Two. Noordhoek beach, 7kays of it. the ocean, the chrystaline blue sky , the white blinding sand. the brightened light creasing our eyes.
as we strolled, sticks in sand, we popped blue bottles, eyeballed mauled stranded seals, did a fashion shoot at the ship wreck. took a wrong turn. and then we hit the wall, the rock face that is chapmans. we had no where to go, but up. we were sniffing around for clues,looking lost we ate naartjies. we began the ascent up the steep chapmans peak, leaping upwards over rocks, our ankles as wobbly as warmed up twizzlers but for our sturdy boots.

we heave ho'd- there were no dwarfs amongst us nor a princess at the top just a weathered german in sandles with half a bott of energade. the wind whistled and blew and huffed and puffed,it became a little nervy, testing our vertigo. we never left anyone behind, just my stick.

up atop, as the clouds moved in rapidly, swirling as a cigar blower plays with the smoke, it looked ominous but we sat and we ate. tuna, peas, cheese, please. the day was not over.

we dropped down into the saddle, we rode it hard and then before we knew it we're on the ascent up noordhoek peak, we sweated as swedes in a sauna but for Al and his clima cool. silvermine was our resting spot. dry toilets and a hot shower.

Day 3, the fog hankered around us, it was icey and without google maps we were lost. from ours and the mountains vantage point, we had hout bay as a reflection in our irises. the custard yellow proteas and a pallete of greens enveloped us. we walked straight into a tv tower that had landed from nowhere. we thought we were goners. we were so off the path we were beating a new track. not even the parks board knew where we were. as the sun broke through, we bumped our heads on olives, we saw the light glistening off of the grapes in constantia. finally as our knees were about to crumble like soggy marie biscuits, orange kloof tented camp docked into the harbour. we made it with daylight minutes to spare.

Day 4 and as we started out of the blocks we were heading in the wrong direction. our compass, a bergie with all his teeth, made sure we were throwing our darts at the right board. Doryn, always in the landscape view of my camera lens held the rear, chaito in the vangaurd seeking snakes. "gsus, snaaake". we shouted "OMG" and jumped over it. it was small but in our heads and in the story we tell, it grows every day.

and then we were lost again.
the hills were gruelling and the gorges devilish. the damn huge mountain dam, chain ladders and lost english folk. we ascended the table. we heard lots of "norf", "free" and "yeahs".thought we hiked to North London.
the final descent, platteklip gorge. we gorged ourselves on dry fruit and old english mustard chicken sarms. and then like a skittled pin rolled down to the base.

and as we dropped back into jozi, the vibration jolted my heart back to pace, and the red flashes erupted. call me

To-do List 29.05.2011

2011-07-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

a guy on the side of the road, his inards expelling energade blue, his body rejecting the unnecessary-this aint a scene outta afghanistan, this is the comrades marathon. when a lady's knees buckle, and her hubby grips her arms dragging her, her salted pained tears bouncing off the heated tarmac, emotion sprawled on the roadside, this aint road kill, this is the comrades marathon. the tightening of his calves, his chaffed thighs, he can't move, he's walking like a cowboy-this aint no john wayne movie, this is the comrades marathon.

way back when, when unions were a form of rugby code, people worked hard for a raise, or they went to a strip joint, the 31st of May was momentous. my psyche had video taped every sense i experienced on that day-the creamy chocolatey scent of milo, the dark dawn and its rising sun, the icey morning and our appliqued blankets,the nobby, wood cased sony tv as thick as a topdeck chocolate, chariots of fire wringing out emotion, and then ofcourse trying to catch a glimpse of my old man amongst 3000 lunatics

the early 80's burned into my spongy grey matter, like a cattle rancher's fiery brand to a bucking bull, the challenge of the 52 mile Comrades Marathon.

after a tortureous 2010 32km Toughone that saw me having to explode in a paperless service station lavatory and having to use a lucky lotto ticket as paper work, i signed up for the ultimate human challenge. F*ck a 10 kay run.

the reality finally came and it was the 2011 edition that id signed up for. one of the greatest days of my existence - i wasn't at a desk, i wasnt pandering to bullsh*t,i wasn't doing time sheets, i wasn't pushing a trolley down aisle 10 in search of sunlight liquid, i was on the road, the open road, and it was all ours. a journey between cities.

the start, Durban Town Hall, a mass of wiley runners, a din of stop watch bleeps, and nostril singeing voltaren emulgel. it's a vaseline greased hum of moving parts, it's chariots of fire and the cocks crow, its pre-run energy goo's, and masses of running shoes. its bonitas paper thin weather breaks, strapped knees, butterflies and bees. it is the beginning of the greatest ultra distance run.

the route, a climb from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, the up run as its called, is a liquorice rope of undulations, heart crushing caverns, hamstring hammering hills, cramp inducing winding curves, roses for Arthur, a wall of fame and a distance which in itself can bring you to tears.

i had banked the mileage with my compadres Marty Gersh and Gary Ay, and it was the time, the time was now, to cash in.

my Nike Lunar Elites, dark deap sea blue, lumo yellow trim, flat as a snackwidge machine, neutral as vanilla milkshake, wide as an oxford road hooker to give my toes give, light, swift as flash gordon and beautifully simple, were the one's and two's id be donning. they had the girls screaming.

these all americans were gonna get me to dusk, or hopefully before then.

cowies hill was a trot, and then after 25 i hit it, the Wall, but this wasn't Pink Floyds. putting foot in front of foot was like walking with lead boots. my legs left me standing wandering. fields hill swoops upwards and onwards. i was pedestrian. my 'feet' felt like two balloons, pained to numbness.

with the crowds screaming my name, i was energised to move forwards. Russian bear hunter, 15 twitter followers, justin beaver-a gazillion.

just then i felt like a pop star.

the run was physically wrenching on my body, my hips as a rickety ship in battering seas, ached every step i moved.

throbbing cramp, unhinged hips and aching arches pulverised my mind. the sinews of my muscles holding tightly onto my bones tearing to keep me together. the saltied sweat caked upon my brow was my body desicating. the crushing tar below- a sledge hammer to my soft tissue. my shedding weight and throbbing heart rate pulsing at a thundering pace. my thoughts flicking like flashes on an 8mm. the titans of my body- my mind and my heart battled relentlessly to keep me on the road, powering on. to walk became a pain and only running alleviated tightened muscles.

only a saltied spud, a sweaty jub jub and half a nana throws my energy levels upwards.

polly shortts- i thought the lumo, ball juggling shorts had gone outta fashion but their name sake was pretty much still there, i was between a rock and a hard place- the epic final hurdle, an uphill grind and then the glowing light of the final stretch. grass never felt so good, except while high watching part 2 of Lord of the rings-where was that old timer on the white horse galloping to?.

the red finish line banner was my elation, the conquistadore in me had arrived.

the analogue, pixellated, yellow 10:48 was the most incredible figures after liz hurley's that id ever seen. a sight for my strained eyes. never before have i cradled so dearly a bronze medal. i never wore it to Pick n Pay the next day like some other guy, but i spit-polished it to a shine.

this was a run of many runs, of many emotions. what pride i had to nail this to the tree. as i chugged back an energade blue i said never again. but having given birth to such an experience, the trauma was forgotten. i'll be back.

i aint no patriot but when i'm dipping an ouma, or competing in the comrades marathon, i'm pretty sure i know i'm a south african.

from the roar of the russian bear hunter

1970's Corduroy 04.01.2011

2011-05-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

No shop has the unappealing appeal that attracts so violently as the Abercrombie and Fitch store.

Drifting through the slinky slick mall, the heavy, rancid arsenal of the A&F cologne managed to breach my snot-filled snout, and possess my grey matter. With a jolt, it had me snared by both nostrils, dragging me into the dark, cavernous store to be greeted by the foxy stereotypical blonde in a red plaid shirt and black cling-wrap jeans.

Having had my ego blunted by the preppy ice-cold assistants,

I emerged, exorcised, shimming like a preteen lady gaga fan with two new sweaters and a shirt.

Blowing all this cash on a red plaid button shirt, a free rock gig at the Lincoln centre was music to my ears.

The Lincoln Centre, hosting the Big Apple Circus’ candy-coloured hexagonal volume, sits beautifully on Amsterdam Avenue, inviting a crowd to mingle. On this night, unlike all other nights, the debauchery of the ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ was about to soil the red carpets and turn the big top into a heaving rock orgy.

The main liners, with intoxicating substances submarining through their veins were the greasy long haired guys in clown suits in the front row. But it was the headliners that the crowd were amped to witness.

On the bill this fine night the So So Glos, Pharmacy and Voxhaul Broadcast would precede the hard hitting Japanther.

Strapping myself into this roller coaster ride, a euphoria-injection was administered allowing pure rock bliss to wash over me.

the So So Glos hailing from the vibrant streets of Brooklyn, New York decked in black skinny jeans, 12-eye doc martins, pencil thin ties and suit jackets were the caffeine kick that got the crowd bouncing off the walls of this rock n roll asylum. As if the lead singer’s spunk tasted sweet as honey, the crowd lapped this band up, clambering on stage and huddling around the four-some. The audience moshed as rain dancers in the Australian Outback, surfed the sea of hands and throbbed to their melodic beat. The band with their Killers-esque ear-easy tunes played the crowd like a fifth instrument. This is definitely a band that left my innards barely riveted to the bone structure of my body.

The mc, a screaming queen with bandied cowboy legs, a horses mane for a hair piece, and enwrapped in a pink slinky 80's cocktail dress, looked like a sweet and sour Chinese spring roll, encouraged the crowd to screech for Pharmacy.

Dressed in corduroys, knitted Christmas sweaters, polo necks, turned up jeans and loafers, Pharmacy strummed their Fenders, stroked their ivories and whistled a melody. Reflecting the Swedish poppers, Peter Bjorn and John, this quirky trio offered pleasant folksy rock not suited to a sex scene in a Hollywood movie but rather to the closing scene of a surfer movie.

For fans of the screaming 60's, this band would sit dandily next to the Beatles or the Beach Boys.

Letting intermission slide without tucking into a vegetarian hot dog would have been sacrilege. Being so hungry, I scoffed it without chewing and as it burrowed its way through my food canal, I could hear it drop into the cavernous bowl of my stomach with a thud. To moisturise my parched, cracked lips I guzzled down a half litre of black-tar tasting dark ale made in the back garden of a Brooklyn-ite. Having satiated my hunger and thirst, it was left to rock to fill the musical gaps.

And then the world as I knew it changed. From LA, Voxhaul Broadcast burst onto the sunken stage. The crowd huddled in a semi-circle around the band, and the photographers sat perched like snipers awaiting the defining shot. David Dennis, the lead singer, tall, slight, asymmetrical hair, bedecked in leg-clinging jeans and converse sneaks, blurted out hard hitting lyrics with a voice that could have toppled Babylon and lung capacity that could have inflated the Hindenburg. A confident command of the stage allowed the limelight to beam directly on to him pushing his band members in to the recesses of back stage darkness.

Although catchy poppy beats, it was his voice that left the angels upstairs playing air guitar solos.

Once Voxhaul had un-screwed their high hat, rolled away their bass drum and unplugged their Marshal amps, the Circus turned into a zoo.

Japanther, a metal rock band launched onto the stage. Their lead singer, with his Krusty the clown cotton-ball of an afro and top-hat, looking Slash-like, incited the crowd to rock violence. The groupies, heaving from the constraints of the seating area, burst onto stage like a splattered melon engulfing the band members. The mosh-pit was carnage. Fist fights broke out and it was the Rodney King show all over again. A voice, a godly voice over the PA, urged the crowd to recede.

After barely 3 tracks of finger callusing metal rock, the show nose-dived like a lead zeppelin. The effects lights were doused, the audience dispersed and the dial on the rock station had moved to a snowy silence.

i walked out of there, stuck my hands in my pockets to avoid frost bite, swiped my metro card and jumped on the '1' train home. What a night. New York’s gnarly back had reared itself once more, invigorating, energising me, sending my creative juices in to a cocktail best served on crushed ice.

‘the Russian Bear Hunter’

Sickest Night of my Life 28.12.2010

2011-05-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

Manhatten,

a doughie batter, poured gushingly on a heated waffle maker, the gridded imprint, thats Manhatten

a regular organised rectilinear base on which creative energetic chaos bursts as a ruptured bladder.

the city is a candy store of excitement, of play ground fun, of yoga mats and lycra tights, of running shoes and yellow cabs. its a megalopolis of shining lights at the ends of concrete caverns. its a culinary delight of hoola hooped sized pretzels, greasy pie and coffee cups

in the midst of the overload sits an island of respite, of blissful harmony.

Carnegie hall, a heavy set brick clad monolith on the outside, a volume as light as an aero chocolate on the inside. an island of sombre sobriety.the pinnacle of the classics.

How do i get to Carnegie Hall?. i rolled into the irish pub, chugged back 3 pints of happy hour beer, then in the slush of post snow blitz missiled my way down 8th avenue, trippled jumped the muddy puddles, danced the traffic light, moonwalked the zebra crossing cut back 3 blocks and skidded onto 57th and 7th. if only i stuck with the piano lessons and practiced, things mighta mighta been easier.

the New York String Orchestra had just begun. the gentle sounds of harps and violins settled my racing heart, gentled my thinking brain, untied my knotted muscles, set my spine to dangle as a string of pearls and disengaged my rocket-being.

New York city is for the eyes, but a concert at Carnegie is a gift for the ears.

the Russian Bear Hunter, a little late but never too

I prefer instant coffee 20.12.2010

2011-05-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

a man's tongue on a bus shelter pole would be difficult to remove because of the icey cold conditions here in New York city. the cold, as it frosts itself through the cavernous avenues, cuts you in half like an icey blade through steak, is painful.

it made only sense for me to be google-red-drawing-pinned to the yellow orange pink glow of a corner shop dunkin donuts somewhere around 3rd avenue.

my jibblies so cold they were like frozen grapes and it would be only a cafwee, medium size, a jelly donut and a glazed donut that woulda alleviated any post traummatic stress. on paying for the goodies i yanked out of my bankie bag, a 50 dollar note, crisp as morning dew. as im about to hand it over, the pakistani behind the counter sees the biggness of the note and pokes his finger at the sign above the donut tray which reads 'we do not accept cash amounts larger than a $20 dollar note.' i say 'gsus, what do you want me to do?' i fondle around in my levis 501's to look for a smaller note and nothing emerges. he tells me, 'use ATM', and im like, im not drawing cash for a $3.57 dunkin donut order. agitated i am.

anyways im caught now between a donut and a hard place and i neeeed them donuts. i then hand over my credit card and the deal is done. meanwhile a wiff of bacon wanders through the air, my nostrils flaring at the contagion, and as i turn to my left i see a pig ordering a cuppa. the copper fumbles in his navy blues for cash but can't produce the goods. so the cashier says for him not to worry, it's on the house. the copper with his big gun, and walkie talkie and flashy badge and octagonal shaped hat and acting all NYPD Blue, brooklyn-accents his way to saying he'll get some cash from his cop car, you know, the one with the red and blue lights that goes woo woo?. the cashier is insistent and choons the pig not to worry. the pig grips the joe and ducks. im there stunned thinking, gsus, what the fudjimori just went on?. i then pierce the cashier with my jelly eyeballs and dead pan i blurt out....im undercover.

without any haste the cashier's assistant had a donut happily wrapped and bundled into my donut bag.

from a russian bear hunter playing cowboys and injuns

Mile High Club Sandwiches part 2 19.12.2010

2011-01-10T08:48:00.001-08:00

Having alighted the plane in New Yarrk City with my kotch stained Levis Button shirt that has a collar, i made headway for a bus to philadelphia-the city of brotherly love, the sweaty cheese steak and Rodin's Gates of Hell.

my portal to the city of Philadelphia was always 30th street station, a beautiful edifice with excessively high ceilings and plunging light shades. her exuding royalty, her body adorned in golden signage, in romanesque filigree and fine detail. her sexily curved wooden waiting benches, and glossy floor enhance the waiting traveller's experience. her rounded bulbous brass clocks tick time travel. she harbours a powerful, godess-like statuette as her focus. her fluted columns, are a mark of a stately woman, she sits upright, she sits proud, she is the guardian of the city.

me, my M&M's and a bot of Dr Peper came to know that station. since, we have parted ways.

having my senses become romantically involved with the station, i came to and accepted a ride with an unafiliated taxi driver.

as i danced across the sheeny shiney floor heading for a taxi. a black guy offered me a ride in his limousine. i said 'ow much you gonna charge me?.' and he said, 'its 9 dollars.' and i was like, 'i can get there for 7'. deal is on. finally my senses flew back into my head through my ear and i questioned the driver as to whether he was an identified taxi. clear as day he wasn't by the look of his beat up ol caddy. anyways, i threw all caution outta the window which didn't roll down so well, and jumped into his blue-rope lit limo. but just as i put my head down to climb in, i said 'you aint gonna jack me, are you?'. he chuckled sheepishly, when i told him id survived johannesburg bare knuckled.

I did my first run in Philly about a week comma 5 ago, the temperature a cool 32 degrees fahrenheit. it was incredible. the air so fresh, so crisp. the goose bumps on my legs bursting outta my skin, my lips a dry river bed. the landscape background palate brushes of grays, light grays, blackened blues and deeper hues. the mangled figured trees and the charcoal rippled river. my breath pulling me on to try catch it as it heaved, propelled me. my heart aching beating, an unrythmic flow until i got warm. my ears a fiery inferno, my nose, a reindeer's red. my fingers, frozen crab sticks. my blood trying to pulse itself through the frozen pipelines of my body.
that was one of the greatest 7 mile blitzes i've done. it was incredible, it was exhilarating. i needed to share it.
that same day things fell apart.
it ended with my red philies cap strewn on the floor

Rocky punched meat here, he ran up the museum stairs. the fresh prince had his sitcom. Bruce springsteen, the Boss wandered its streets, Tom Hanks died of Aids and Brett Angel baked baguette.
the russian bear hunter added to the city's story telling

from the memoirs of a russian bear hunter

Mile High Club Sandwiches part 1 16.12.2010

2011-01-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

so every now and then one sets out on a journey, a journey of discovery, a journey that could change one's existence. one hopes one doesn't return with a missing frost bitten digit, heat stroke or a stained white tshirt. one also hopes that every now and then a blog entry need not be scripted, that a journey need not be a story, but that they walk into the sunset..i hoped this would be that adventure, but then some kid puked on me.

Flying on emirates is kind of cool, although because it's as cheap as chips in brighton south london, one gets the sense one's just another quarter chicken on the griller waiting to be basted. entertainment is buxom though and although its difficult to watch the tv when your knees are plugging up the holes of your nostrils and the fat bastard from Karachi in front of you decides its time to have a nap during dinner time, the service and the servers are deeligthful.

Emirates definitely is concerned about the face it portrays to the public, and that 'face' has super model status.

gone are the days when you're flying SAA, you shift uncomfortably in your aisle seat, blushing, while the air-hostess whispers, talks or rather offers you a coolie and tosses you a bag of salty nuts, she locks her eyes upon yours, your bottom lip begins to tremble, and the drool, it begins gushing from the side of your mouth. she then leans over to pass a drink and snacks to the window-seat person, and you just crumble like apple pie from her scented skin wavering through your nostrils, and from her curvature bursting from her buttoned top, causing the sweat to well upon your brow.

then she moves on, pushing her stainless steel coke and snack filled machine and as she passes you, you lean over just to get a touch of her skirt...hmmm.

emirates i do salute you and your bevvy of gorgeous babes:). fly emirates.

anyhows im at 30 000 feet, im engrossed in the steven spielberg and tom hanks produced epic miniseries, the pacific, when i feel a cold chill down my arm, down my back. i take no notice. but around me there's activity, swarming activity. i look down and there upon the carpet is a pool, a swirl of what seemed to be tomato puree, a soup of sorts. my eyes shoot upwards to the gorgeous airhostesss..our eyes lock...uh..., i look to her tray but i don't see any bowl of soup, nor do i recall us having soup and then my eyeballs slowly begin filtering out the hostess, she slowly begins to blur, the foreground begins to recede and the background, although out of focus, emerges. from being a snowy, bad reception, the background comes to the fore, and reveals the image of a podgy wee black kid with pig tails in a pink knitted sweater, the blurriness becoming more vivid. my eyes then pan around and settle on her chubby little pie hole, her knitted sweater and the gobby goop dribbling from her chin and her... kotch stained jumper. at this point i nearly shot an aneurism (got that from an ER episode) Oh my word i wanted to gag. i actually wanted to hooch on that fat lil bastard kid, pay her back. i cant even look at a bed pan, and now i have fall-out sprawled all over me.

the air-hostess rolls up and begins throwing down this disinfectant powder, its like hiroshima. i throw my shirt off and head for the bathroom, topless. she offers me a pyjama top, but can't find one. she offers me laundry service, but they dont have it.

thank goodness touch down was in a few moments.

and so this little episode, this little horror picture show would begin the beginning of the end for a trip to philadelphia....

end of part one

a russian bear hunter in a frosty land

Slice Oh Cheese 11.08.2010

2010-10-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

cruising through the heated streets of New Yark in none other than a pair of sneaks, cushioned for walking pleasure. they talk to me and this is what they say. "adi dassler was his name,his brother was a Puma, german engineered they were.david beckham kicks balls with them, steffi graf looked foxy in 'em too, they have stripes,3 in all, flaming, flash gordon red,they have lungs,theyre dimpled. i'm going too fast ,strap me in, velcro will do the trick. white,is it a colour?,antarctic white, hide and seek in the snow,'i can't see you'. 8 and a halfs, theyre just snug.apples and pears, they'll run me up of stairs.i see a leaf,its been through the shredder.best remembered through the revealed acronym 'all day i dream about se...uh i mean sport'. theyre adidas, and theyre great. wish you could see them".

these sneaks buffered me from the sticky,sweaty, sewer-stenched streets of new york. the heat of a new yark summer is a brewing experience. the burning tar, the rise of vapour from the bowels of the earth where the trains screech, peoples body warmth, the basting lamb meat-a sacrificial offering to the lunch time suits, the subway grip bars sticky as honey buns, sweat stained arm pits and clingy shirts pulse the heated glow of a coal furnace. as i evaporated my bodily fluids, a trail of salt strung behind me, it was time to replenish, to unleash a gush of Dr Pepper. i popped into a drug store, purchased a cool bottle of berry-brown freshness and strolled over to Washington Square. there i crashed on a wooden bench looking out onto a fountain with kids prancing, birds lounging and hipsters in tight denim shorts, plaid collar shirts and ferris-buellers-day-off sunglasses playing cool. with a forceful grip i took hold of that soda pop cracked its coil open and as its bubbly energy welled inside it began excitedly bursting all over the show. while the caramel coloured fountain of fun exploded all over me, a fat ginger haired guy wearing a new york yankees cap, a wife beater vest and shorts had a chuckle and said 'i hate that sh*t'.

the sugar coated sweetness was all over me. i'm an M&M

from a sweet russian bear

yours in candy coated goodness

TurnPike 23.08.2010

2010-10-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

so i got me safely to Baaastin, although staying in the ghetto is always riveting, i've emerged alive.

so last night me, Di Caprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon hung out at some irish pub on Union street. we drank 2 dollar pints of Miller Light, i was barely aware that it was even beer. the big lcd screens showed the patriots playing football. we weren't bothered, we were just catching up. in the back ground, the rolling stones filled the air waves followed by pink floyd's, 'comfortably numb'. great sound track to a great city. in my back pocket i pulled out a polaroid pic of the gold domed building that sits in the city centre of Baastin. the one that hovers just above the Baastin commons gardens, a real green retreat for a city dweller. i took the pic that day.although it was a little bent, crumpled i showed it to Matt. its the exact domed building Matt has a view of from his apartment. anyways we all went back to Matts apartment and listened to the Beach Boys and Patsy Cline on his quarter of a million dollar Makintosh sound system. it was reverberatingly awesome.

having left the lads, i returned to my hostel, where in my room i was greeted by 3 Bangladeshis. i realised quickly enough that this wasn't a scene from Slumdog Millionaire. since that took place in India?. the next day after a restless sleep cos those said bangladeshis were up all night talking cricket statistics, i notched up easily my 15th Subway Veggie sandwich experience on the great hallowed turf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. now what an institution. the campus sits in the city, it's sprawling, it's huge. it harbours some great pieces of architecture including eero saarinens segmented auditorium, his chapel, an alvar alto curvilinear residential block,and IM Pei school of Design. but then where all have created beautifuly downplayed non-ego driven edifices , there frank gehry goes pleasuring himself on MIT territory. Frank was it really necessary?

sketching my way through much of the university, i see this janitor, he looks just like matt damon,scrawling on the chalkboard. so i shout out, 'will, good grief will, what are you hunting for,the theory of relativity?'. anyways i decided not to bother him and left him while he chalk dusted himself. not long after i left Baastin did i find out that that same janitor won an Academy award. astonishing. thats MIT.

the sun still hung by a thread in the blue sky, so i figured i could squeeze in one last destination. Harvard. turns out it was orientation week. all the juniors beginning their lives in Big school. i have no doubt one of these kids will cure AIDS or make contact with alien life. fingers crossed.

Baastin, apart from one day was awash in rain. while trudging the soaked cobbled streets, i noticed a guy in a wheel chair, his wheels smooth as custard, struggling to wheel himself up a slopey hill. i thought, gsus, i gotta give this oke a hand. 'mate can i give you a push?.'he graciously accepted.so i pushed the ginger(if being in a wheel chair was so bad, G-d went and gave him orange hair and freckles) up the hillock. i felt this rather rewarding and for some reason gave myself credit.

that eve while holding up another irish pub, i was sat by a single empty chair.i offered to shift for a couple from LA-a radio DJ and his Petron-tequila crazed wife. said DJ says to the barmen, 'get this kid a beer, he doesn't allow me a word in edge ways. we get chatting, the night goes on and they move on, but before that,they drop some green backs on the arm pit stained bar, enough for another beer. enjoy the night bud.

ain't it crazy how things revolve, and i'm not talking revolving doors.

on friday 27th August i 'Departed' Boston

from a far flung lad in america which is like a scene from hollywood which is like the movies which is like a reality show on mtv

the russian bear hunter

Ghetto Blaster 12.08.2010

2010-10-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

washington deecee,
having booked passage upon the wifi accessible, plug-in-your-ipod boltbus, i was in the state capitol after 4 hours. sat next to this lawyer, mike. he gave me his calling card, offering his services should i be in trouble with the feds. i just munched my M&M's.
after finding my bearings, which were as round as those chocolate coated peanut M&M's, i made headway for the hostel. now on a map, the distance between things looks kinda small and so i figured id walk the mileage. after sweating like a cotton pickin labourer, being drenched like a dog in a car wash and having noticed quickly that the demographics changed from milky white to cappucino to all black, i realised that i was in the capitals ghetto.welcome to dc
DC, designed with a straight rule and a rubber,has barely a curve.
the capitol hill, which offers a free tour, something free in the usa.....oh and slaves, sits at the centre of the city's cartesian grid, the 'centre of the universe', with the rolling green hills of the mall extending, binding that huge column 500 feet high, a pin prick on the bubble blue sky, to forrest gumps reflecting pool to the gargantuan lincoln memorial, its a phenomenally awesome patriotic expression of the nation's ego.
perpendicular to the Mall the white house on its green checkered lawn with the black president sits looking south across the Potomac river. the theme of the Nation, its memory, and memorialisation continues in this vast envelope with the beautiful, engaging Vietnam War Veterans Memorial by Maya Lin-2 black granite walls embedded with the names of fallen heroes cut the earth in the shape of a V, and the statue riddled war scene of the Korean War Memorial.
being boa constricted by the grid, i made way for the Arlington cemetery a dominoes box of the fallen-open to the doors of tourists. JFK's grave site, the Challenger and Discovery astronauts, the forgotten war heroes, and Jacqui Onasis, all their memory embedded in the manicured lawns of the cemetery.
the museums and art collections that line the Mall are a vast resource of information and history. here they harbour some serious odes to mans endeavours and artistic masterpieces.the holocaust museum, as many as i've been to, always pluck on the fender that is my heart, the aeronautical and space museum was simply a phenomenal walk and visual explosion of man pushing the envelope.
staying in a proper ghetto, when i get on the bus i feel like i'm in a spike lee movie, i never knew there was another million man march.

the clusters of excitement are limited here in dc. if you stray off the tourist path, well you're in the precipice of nothingness.
i've walked my feet to blisters and i have asked, is america a reality, it all seems so hollywood, did america achieve all that they have, did they place a man on the moon, is this all real, or is it all stanley kubrick?.

From a russian bear hunter with blood shot eyes

Couch Surfing 16.08.2010

2010-10-20T06:26:00.001-07:00

new yaark yankees.

when you're in america, you gotta eat greasy grub like an american, you gotta drink soda pop like an american, you gotta laugh at americas funniest home videos even if it aint funny, like an american, and then you gotta indulge in its favourite past time, baseball while getting ice cream shmeared on your face, pretzel bits in your hair, beer on your shirt and a hot dog down your gullet.

with an eleven dollar ticket in my hand, this was me being a yank.

it was the New york yankees vs the Detroit Tigers that was printed in black on my self-download ticket.(i printed the tickets in black and white).

as i rolled off the D-train there it was. a modern day colliseum, a newly built edifice to the biggest baseballing franchise, a diamond in the rough of The Bronx, a marketing giant, a neon sign big and drawing enough energy to power up addis abbaba, hues of blues and whites, and the typical hum of a big game event. this was Yankee stadium.

as i skirted my way to the nose-bleed seats, there stood before me on the concrete walkway an oasis of light,the ark of the covenant, a fully kosher hot dog stand. i had to. i had to buy the dog, a 6 dollar dog. having gripped my dog in one hand, i pivoted to walk away. and then, like a kung fu kick to the head, i turned leprechaunous green with sausage envy. i glared noticingly at all the other hot dogs around me. all the other dogs were foot longs dripping in sauer kraut, creamy mustard and fiery red tomato sauce, all looking like 1945 ally submarines waiting to blast the living daylights outta the germans while mine, yes mine was all of a puny 6 inches. quickly i averted my glance to stare at the blond with the big breasts and i realised what i had in hand.

this dog was coloured to perfection, airbrushed to look gently brown, and smooth as a russian engineered V rocket.this dog was there to inflict excitement on my taste buds, to make an assault on my very senses that were craving this simple protein/ carbohydrate tangoing duo. my mouth dripping in excitement took hold of this rocket ship to be pulped giving my pulsing blood an all american roller coaster ride. its soft consistent texture delighted me. this synthetically engineered sausage, with squirts of sachet tomato sauce was rapturous. it filled no gaps in my hunger, added no nutritional value, but it was blisteringly awe-some.

the 4 hour beer drinking, hot dog shovelling, ice cream scooping, lets-go-out-to-the-ball-game singing frenzy lacked serious excitement. like sinisterly watching a mosquito land gently on your flesh, piercing your skin to begin draining you of your blood, while you gently hang around till the wee bastard is all juiced up, flexing your muscle to watch a surge of blood burst the little critter to smithereens, but being irritated that the lil critter beat the trap having buzzed away at the last minute denying you a sadistic experience, thats...baseball.

from the western exploits of a malnourished lad

the russian bear hunter

Toffeed Apple 03.08.2010

2010-10-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn Nooo Yaaark.

the sun baking hot, the tar a gummy liquorice. the airconditioned 4 train, in its shimmery shiny chrome skin, me, danny brawler, and gena g skidded out to Burough Park.

Borough Park is one of like a thousand little Jerusalems barry peppered around New Yark city. here its a wee lil shtetl where yiddish is probably the first language, pita and shwarmas the local delicacy. and if you listen closely you could hear the theme track from fiddler on the roof. here we rolled in the sweetness of apple sauce and burst into song at chocolate pastries. we tucked ourselves in the comfort of shlurpy mess-on-your-sunday-best falafels, and yiddished our way into popularity.the day was dusted for the D&G show and it was time for me to soak up more.

i caught a train down the road to crown heights, centre for the lubavitch jewish community and home to the late lubavitcher rebbe. the number on his door, 770. here in the streets, the black hat hovers, the black coat billows in the fresh breeze, and push prams cut grooves in the side walks. and in the background alicia and jayzee are shootin' hoops on the ball courts. i asked the locals if anyone knew fitz speigelman, and lo and behold i had a crowd of black hats scouring their 'berries for his contact details.

another day in paradise.

coney island, a once playground to the stars, a place of leisure, a place of fun. roller-coasters, candy floss, toffee apples and shoot-the-freak entertainment. all images that'd spring delight and excitement in a kids eyes. that was in the late 1800's.

coney island harboured this sorta mystery for me and on coming to new yark city it was sure to be one of my many destinations.

as the throngs of people burst outta the D train from manhatten i got the sense that i was back in south-end-on-sea up in the UK. from african americans, to russians, to chinese, to hispanics, to neon sign plastered strips, this was surely the periphery of manhatten. it was a culture shock i didnt quite expect and it was a view through a pin hole of what one could see outside of new york city.

all of a sudden the people swelled to xxxl, the russian talk threw me back to vodka swirled moscow, the american drawl placed me in that oprah winfrey movie, the colour purple, the hand ball courts threw my mind to ghettoised america and the people i saw at the edge, probably just wanted to fall off it. and thrown in amongst all this oddity were religious jews pushing prams, strolling, enjoying a sunday out and playing hand ball with the mexicans.

the promenade was full of take-out joints, dripping in fried goods, candy sticky and heaving to the sounds of led zepelin and the eurythmics. oversized cartoon characters holding hotdogs bobbed the skyline, the beaches full of bathers and frisbee throwers. the pier, strewn with fishermen in wife beater vests, stained to the chest and the pit.

at first sighting this lil kinda-island scared the begsus outta me, but slowly as i walked its path i began to enjoy its oddity, its strangeness, its freakiness, its absurdity, cos afterall this is where excitement lies.

from the trailings of mesmerized lad

the russian bear hunter

Rise of a Beigel 27.07.10

2010-10-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

ah what a day, after waking up sweating like like an olive in a desert,i got myself up early, and made a bolt for the Metropolitan museum of Art. the museum sits on two floors, and i have no idea how many square meters it consumes, but its like a wee megalopolis. anyhow it sounds rather strange but i get kicks out of antiquities, well primarily the greek and roman stuff,afterall i was a latin scholar. here too i rubbed shoulders with the kandinsky's,the cezannes, the monets, the mantes, the van goghs. the list is as big as a new york deli side order menu. huge.

after walkng this place for hours and by the end of it needing the walls to hold me up, it was time to get some suunshiine and a beigel.yea thats what i said, a beigel. Matt Ai suggested that for my first beigel experience it has to be Beigel Stix on 53rd and 8th. i entered under the glowing red neon sign, rolled up to the intimidating counter, pulled out my wee book in which matt had scribbled exactly what to order-lox nova, thin cream and an 'everything' beigel, and i just sat breathing up against the counter glass ,drooling like a puppy dawg. i grabbed the beigel in its bag, and made headways across town. while strolling, my body shaking, pulsing, at the excitement, like an archeologist unearthing the origins of man. i unbag the beigel, unwrap its tinfoil outter shell and peel back the wax paper, as it is revealed to me, it bursts in to colourful life before my very eyes.the seeded bun like a rocky desert terrain, the 15 layers of salmon, glowing pink, soft, tender, the massive red tomato slice, all sitting tightly between two thin layers of the creamiest cream cheese my taste buds had ever surfed. i took a bite, the cheese shmearing its self all over me, the salmon as tender as a fresh bruise, the bun fresh and warm.in my hands the beigel was simply uncontrollable, but i took the upper hand.and wow it was good.

so im scoffing this thing down, loving it like the first season of Friends, and as im crossing town i pass by the MoMo gallery, its like 7pm and theres music bursting outta its seams. i see a girl standing by, looking all summery and i ask her while my mouth is full o beigel, how the hell do i get in there. she choons me its invitation only but if i want she'll squeeze me in somehow. so i tell her not to worry, i gottta finish this bite of heaven,the beigel that is and ill sort myself out (getting into the gallery that is). she says just act confident and youll be in like princess leiah with han solo.anyways in my sneaekrs, shorts and tee i roll up to the counter.the lady at the desk tells me its invite only, so i tell her im the kinda guy that gets invites to these kinda events. i tell her im famous. she asks my name, i choon her the russian bear hunter. there and then she googles me.she shows me a pic of some guy thats just elephant-shot a bear.i say yeah thats me.she's like 'OMG'. her friend aint buying it so they call the manager.i tell her i blog, and she's like, 'wow,you blog?', im like 'whatever', she checks the blog, the manager checks 'my' bear hunter pic.he says 'no'. but the sweet girl behind the desk gently slides over a ticket when no ones looking, shebam im rolling with the big cheeses of New YArk city.

free drinks and im happy as the ending of a hollywood romcom.

a corker of a day in Noo Yaaark Citee

bobbing for apples 25.07.10

2010-10-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

sunday a day out.i steered my adidas sneakers to the american natural history museum. im not too sure why, but new york is pretty damn intimidating, it kinda gave me stage fright.i contemplated lingering at home under the air cooled atmosphere eating pretzels having been too afraid to step out into the world.

where do you begin to bite this fruit of a city.how do you approach it, how do you pounce? and hence the beginnings started well in the beginning when the world was created and Mcdonalds popped up on every corner.

so the history museum gives one the opportunity to pay whatever you wish, so its normally a hefty 20 dollars, but i had set my mind on 5 bucks.anyhow im in the cheapo queue and some poncy outta stater asks me how much im gonna give, so i tell him a 'fiver'.so he's llke 'whats a faiyver?'.its funny cos his wife got it. anyhow this f*ckin ponce tells me that 'know one in these parts knows what a faiyver is'.anyhow i kept my mouth shut thinking this oke was a total baseball head.

anyhoo i decided, f*ck him im paying 3 dollars, and with that i rolled in.

as i tried to read everything in this museum, trying to be interested i kept being followed by this smell, this scent of grandmas old flat in killarney, you know, that musty old smell that grannies have. anyways i smelled my pits and smelling like a fresh can of AXE deo, i realised that it was simply the teradactyl next to me. did i really need to go to this museum?

after 5 hours scouring mummies and old mexicans, penguins and dinosaurs ,ancient asians and prehistoric africans, rubbing rocks from space and rocks from the rockies it was time to head out side and take a sweet stroll through central park. there i cracked open the all too cool can of dr pepper and unbagged a stash of pretzels. im an all american.

this park is absolutely phenomenal, its vast, its green, its pleasant, it has runners and cyclists and walkers and talkers. its got frisbees and soccer, lollies and pretzels.

having greened my pants on the emerald lawns it was time for me to meet up with bochy, the blessed one. together we followed this dude to a bar in amsterdam avenue that sells beer for 3 dollars-the cows had come home and pigs could fly. but after 15 pints i could still remember high school calculus.(not to be mistaken with high school musical)

having asked for local knowledge on a fine slice of pizza pie, this college kid leads us to Freddies, a little dive entered below street level run by these like porta ricans. a real sweaty place only cooled when the coke refrigerator was opened. that lil triangulated wedge of ecstacy was the sweatiest tastiest slice of life i've had in a long time. i knew this was the place cos here on the wall i shared a moment, another(after wall street) moment with michael douglas and the great Sopranos.ssssiiiick.seems like michael douglas spreads himself thin.

after catching a cab, a frikkin yellow cab, typically driven by some guy from new delhi we rolled into Brandys across town on the east side (got the lingo down hey).its a wee piano bar, open mic night it was and gees like it was awesome.

the waitress after cheesily offering us drinks, grips the mic like a lolly pop, her flaming red hair glistening in the bar light, her green top glad wrapping her torso, her skinny jeans, like a scuba suit, and her black heels polished to a mirror conducts the piansist and begins to belt it. her lungs powerful enough to have turned the winds. her vocals squeezed tears outta my eyes, it was mesmerising. that eve not a single singer couldnt sing, pure freshly squeezed talent dripped from this bar. thats new york

sweet melons what a night, it ended in miss waitress singing a lady gaga tribute, i want your 'vertical stick'.

as i caught the polished chrome train back home with bochy, i knew i was a seed in the great apple.

from a scurvyless lad

the russian bear hunter

Hooligan Juice 12.06.10

2010-06-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

i always believe, yes i do, and i suppose the wizard of Oz just made it reality, but if you do click your heels 3 times(or your adidas boris beckers in my case) and you wish real hard,dreams do come true. and so the colourful life i lead just turned HD- i'm talking high definition.

this weekend on friday eve, i get a ring on the ol nokia hand held blower. its the berndawg offering me a ticket to Engeland vee USA for one thousand rand. im like 'no dude, its just too large'. 2 minutes later, after bernie held the okes nuts in his hands gently crushing them like soft grapes,the seller agreed to a face value R560.00. and lo and behold the red sea parted and we, that's bern dawg, bernie middle brother from middle earth and me moonwalked over to Rustenburg.

Rustenburg a wee lil town like 200 kays north of civilization harbours the Royal Bafokeng Stadium as well as a housing complex called Little Italy. the only thing rustenburg has thats italian is possibly an old worn alfa giulietta tyre from the early 60's used as a kids swing.

anyways the story goes like this. The Bafokeng tribe purchased land having sent its troops to work on mines to earn money to make such an investment. this land near Rustenburg happened to have one of the largest deposits of platinum in the world. you could just imagine how hysterical this tribe musta been.gsus. they probably sacrificed some poor kid.

although this humble little stadium sits in a rural settlement, quite a change from a stadium in say Berlin or in Barcelona, it still bubbled like a pre teen zit waiting to explode all over the the bathroom mirror.

as we arrived, i sessioned a car bar of green heneikens, cos i knew, yes i did that mister Shwet Splatter (sepp blatter), would rape and pillage my pocket like the meat eating vikings to some unsuspecting vegetarian tribe out in the andes.

as i drank my dutch brewed excuse for beer, bus loads of mcdonalds and coke drinking americanos began to roll in. the Americans, looking lost, trying to find lions to ride, just seemed outta place in this shebeen strewn drag leading up to the stadium. theyre like cartoon characters these yanks, can you even take them seriously? as a yank screamed 'Aaaammeeriiica' , a whole pancake stack replied 'F*ck Yea" in glorious unison, alluding to that great flik, Team America.

the poms loud and berry red, shirtless in the icey cold, decked in liquor jackets ,the red cross of saint georges pasted across their chests had arrived to make haggis out of american body parts. i wouldnt run to these okes if i needed a band aid.

while the hoardes continued to drink inside the bowels of the stadium, i felt i needed to batter my liver in fermented barley and hops just a couple more times. at R30.00 a pop my heart missed a cupla egg beats, and i nearly swallowed my nokia phone. but when the wave of euphoria washes over you, you just jump in and start swimming.and so i forked out 60 rond.sorry starving ethiopians

as i looked around me , the hum, the buzz and the euphoria of a big stage football match sent the hair on my back standing up, piercing through my 3 layers of tshirts, i simply stunned myself into disbelief.

entering a big stadium is always dramatic. you rise up the stairs looking out towards the landscape, then make a turn into the tunnel beneath the seats, the tunnel is dark but for the light at the end of it, a window, or a snap shot of whats taking place opens up to reveal artificial bright light and a heaving crowd, music over the PA and raucous excitement.its simply wow and a feeling that never dies. i sat alone, well with out any one i knew, but i found myself in and amongst the beer swilling, flag waving ginger americans. they were an animated bunch, they sang great footy songs, waved a flag i couldnt believe id be seeing in our home country, ate sweaty boerierolls and said things like 'caar' and 'yaeh'. it was an absolute gas.

i watched some of the greatest players on that green checker board field. rooney just couldnt make magic, well england on the whole were just shate.and then one blunder by one wee lad and every britisher wants to pop his eyes out with a blunt toothpick. its riveting stuff. it wasn't the greatest footy match i've ever seen. but the reality of seeing the greatest down here in the South was pretty mind blowing.

that very next morning as i walked the golf course having slammed my drive deflouring the virgin fairway, i thought to my self, 'gsus dan, thats one helluva life youve lived'.

i went onto double bogey the hole

from a city stewing with all the excitement of a teen groupie at a Take That concert

the russian bear hunter

Gandolf's Wisdoms 26.05.09

2010-06-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

up Until May of 2009 a haircut was the worst possible experience I would endure. the year 2009 became a torcherous odyssey,the only space it had going on was the vacuum left at the rear end of my pie hole.two gaping black holes.

these days it aint easy just giving up on one , let alone two of your gnashers. as a kid there was always money involved, it was an investment. you stuck a thread around your tooth, tied the other end to a door and got your older sibling to ram that leaf so hard, there was a possibility the brain stem attached to your spine would be ripped from the vessel that is your body. the possibilities could have been fatal, but if all went well you got your tooth, a shiny nickel, and your bro got to make you cry. it was a win win situation.

25years on and whats in me-organs, teeth, bones,appendages stays in me. so i thought.

as a wee lad, pimply, greasy and at the heat of the late 90's, my teeth found themselves incarcerated in the alcatraz of the day,braces. once them train tracks to stardom were peeled from the skin of my teeth, the dental fraternity have wanted my teeth, my wisdom teeth. I always denied these hunters a piece of me for they gave me no hassle and i gave them no grief. until i awoke one morn on this thin rubber of a matress in down town Tokyo to find a fillet of gum loosley flapping around my mouth,swollen like a jellied donut.my life with my calcified friends was about to change.

No sooner had I dropped into joburg did I have Doc doom on the ol blower,

'dan youre a good guy, you play a good golf game-nice follow through, and you give the ball good shape, but i have no choice, its either an absess every month that'll rot your gum or the teeth,ones of yous has gotta go'.

and so i was pushed over to the Maxillo facila surgeon-sounds like a Mad Max movie starring the guy with the perm, one mel giblets gibson.

and so it came to pass, i left work at 12 and said 'ill see you at 2'.

i tried to put on a brave face, the one Leonardo Di Caprio wore when he's about to meet his death in that final scene in the elevator of my favourite movie 'The Departed'...for the cute receptionist.but she'd seen the movie a thousand times before.

with my knees knocking a beat, i was Singapore-slung into the low lying tan leathered dentist chair, shown two zeppelin shaped gray penicillin capsules which i chugged back, rested my head unknowing of the carnage i was about to endure, had the doc then jolly jab me twices,my lower mouth a swollen jabba the hut. my lip a scoop, good for a two scoop.

the final scene of Braveheart had begun ,and i was in a lead role. Max begins to extend my pie hole wide open, pressing, probing, prodding with his rubberised hands. like a clay animation character he manipulates my face to begin his lumberjackin assault on teeth 17 and 32. my eyeballs shut, my heart leading the Americas' Cup, racing at knots, thumping its way down a white-horse-splattered sea. as i dared to take a peek, the blinding light shot my pupils to retract within themselves, to hide behind the white curtains of my cornea, shaking, shivering, squeezing out a tear.

the rubber hands continue pressing derobing the hugging pink gum against my tooth, the pressure of this force pulverising the gummy ness of my brain

it was a massacre with a chain saw, grinding away like a lumber jack to an old friend. the drilling couldnt have taken place off shore. my blood splattered face, a scene from Fight Club. this wasn't Hollywood, this reality tv.

The gaping jelly bowl, stiched closed,im raggedy andy. The gut tickling my tonsil, I wanted to hooch.

As I peered upon the stainless steel tray glistening in the morning light and nesteld on the obligatory blue tea cloth with all this weaponary, bloodied from this massacre,I could only imagine the pain William Walace endured. I shouted freedom, but I still longed for two faithful friends.

'Bag those chicklets,theyre coming home with me'.

My mouth dry ,lips cracked as a deserted alien planet. I sit here sucking soup though a straw, I aint no brawler. But today I went the full ten and im reeling.

I have the two in a jar, this tooth fairy is gonna pay, and I want bonds, bank bonds

I did not want to be a part of the evolutionary walk, now that my wisdoms are gone, I am.

a toothless Russian Bear Hunter will Hunt again

Irritable Bowel 06.01.2010

2010-02-26T07:42:00.000-08:00

i had to buy myself a gift-a new pair of siick high top converse chuck taylors, theyre prison jumpsuit blue with double stitching crossing the length of these nasty kickers, theyll make you say wawaweewa when you see them. they have no flash, no gel, no waffle. theyre just ordinary.. i knew when december kicked off i'd be a cruise-ader (no relation to darth v-ader)

the yodel of a december holiday, is the creamed custard on my warm apple pie.

the mozzie bite on my psyche had been itching me the whole damn year, i scratched it till it bled, and if december hadnt come when it did, id have bled out.

we were a trio-a hairy me, an hairier bones, and saulie. we were headed for a journey, i dont wanna call it a rode trip, that just aint carbon neutral, but we slashed the eastern cape in a fire bomb german engineered tri star, notching up 3600 carbon fueled kays. we were guided by a GPS. that frikkkin gps story blows my melon all shades of red. the world can see us, it knows where we're going, it knows i needed to pee a mega litre, to dispatch it in some one-stop, it now knows that i know that it knows.

we alighted the vehicle in a weee dashing lil town called Cintsa, i sniffed the air and i knew antarctica was closer to becoming a wave pool.Cintsa is a spitoons throw from east london-a town which should have undergone the romans scorched earth policy.

there we drank hectic style, drank cheap grotty box wine cos it was free, played beach volley ball on the grass until our feet bled, well not me cos well i just watch ball sports. then we hit the bar,and id just sit and watch sh*t unfold.anyways we swam in the sea, dug our feet in the sawft sand, we cycled to a wee Xhosa village and watched lil kids jump in beaded skirts. totally african experience i tell you. they asked for pennies, but there was no jingle jangle in my shorts pocket. we met tanned germans and over grown hollanders. we beat the sh*t outta cape tonians at table tennis.

cintsa you havent heard that last of me. pow pow
it was time to dust the crust off our underpants and so made a 1 prong attack on a lil horror show of a town called Kei mouth. its the kinda town that'd make a great backdrop for a b-grade horror flik. couldnt wait to get outta there.

the hike began. kei mouth, double mouth, haga haga, morgans bay, ganubie. we placed our green lil houses on this monopoly board. we got sand in our underpants, sun on our arms, we smelled like a mine workers pits, we wore only 2 tshirts,we ate noodles, we baked beans,we decanned tuna and 2 minute oats, we dipped ouma-all she wanted to do was play kalookee, we swam again, every day in the sea and in the lagoons.we used a teeny toilet ,like those portaloos at rock fests.never go into one of those bogs with just your socks on.we cooked on a wee gas cooker,drank sugarless coffee outta stainless steel mugs,bear grylls wouldnt have approved. we looked at rocks and shells, birds and whales, we were forced to cross a river and lo and behold we fell and wet bacame us. i lost my camera and one sock, it was sad,the sock drifted into the sea,never to be seen again.i miss you sock.my camera drowned and any amount of blowing,left it limp, pictureless,flashless.rust over came it.you served me well fuji man.
at Ganubie we stopped walking when we got to our hotel, they threw in a free breakfast.i drank all the sacheted sugar.

Bones ate poached eggs, but at addo elephant park we werent gonna poach animals,maybe bbq. we zooted there in 3 hours.we saw big bellowing muddy elephants,we saw roarring hungry man eating lions,we saw black backed jackals, wandering tortoises, a buffalo carcass and heaps of dung. we made fire,danced around the boerwors,sacrificed onions wrapped in tin foil. we read books and dried our underpants in the baking sun.

when we had chewed the fat of our last piece of biltong,we rolled into the boutique town of plettenberry bay (thats how swedes would pronounce it).
ah how i love this svelte lil outcrop.here we bbqed,and we beached the beach and saw great whites jumping, frollicking in the sea,we saw life gaurds shouting and people running,we saw drama,it was a steven spielberg dream. we drank and clubbed, not seals but bars,only one bar,and chillaxed to the max. we tossed the frisbee, i never tossed the cookie, i listen to my ipod,the sound track to 'into the wild' like a 1000 times,i read a book, 'around africa on my bicycle',now i wanna go be free, although you gotta wear the correct shorts otherwise youll chafe.believe me , i know. i walk like a cowboy after every run i do.ive always wanted to ride a horse, but not like this.
we fished, i caught a crab,rather it caught me,then it just dropped off the line and said cherry bye,we ate sweaty Steers chips and drank coke zero from an avatar can, what a shyte drink, rather run to lose weight i say.
i ran in hakerville, in the forest, ah it was bliss, i ran real fast, it ended in a bott of blue sweet powerade, gushing down my food gullet, cascading past my unnshaved chin, making blue my innards, like a sci fi movie.it was awesome.
it was new years it was debauchery,but full of shyte music,dance music for the masses,4am rolled by and Paddle Sticks wants to play golf.it was a corker way to start the year.
now holidays, summer days are dwindling. the days are shorter and the nighs alonger.

hope you all had a good one.

be cool stay cool and like apple pie, stay well baked

cahito (like a mohito, but tastes better)

Marie Antoinette 08.09.10

2009-10-08T03:07:00.000-07:00

Melrose Arch how I love thee

Melrose arch is a living, not a way to live. It is not a lifestyle but a life we’ve lived for centuries. Melrose Arch unearths natural city living, the natural comfortable human existence.
It is nothing new, but on the brains of joburgers it’s etched as something brilliant something extra ordinary. Walking to buy a carton of milk is liberating, it’s freedom and it is the expression of Melrose arch.
MA is about all sorts, it’s about the bustling meet-your-mates-for-a-pint watering hole at the end of the curved street, next door the linger even longer lingerie store.
MA is the unexpected turn, the hidden happened-upon, the surface scratched, it is not fake, it is real to touch, to feel.
The old quarter exhibits architecture, texture, soft and hard, it is tangible, one looks up and one looks down round back and forth.it is a kaleidoscope. The eyeball is engaged in a gymnastically entwined rapturous explosion of intricacy. It’s the grainy bits, the nooks and even the grannies. The square is pedestrianised, navigable by foot, its enlarged paving-space to rest your hand upon an ice cold bev.
As I cruise northwards juggling my coins in my pocket, glancing at the gallery, the pizzeria and the europa, I feel kinda cool, kinda breezy but then..

I cross the road, I trip heavily on the chainlink barrier, tearing my stomach, ahernia never hurt this much. the edge of the jewellery store knicks me on the chin, I stumble on a Swedish Tiger, phoxyyy. the stroll is pleasant and then into the bowels of the underworld I go- well that’d be exciting. But I turn sideways to mount the moving narrow stairway, rolling rolling down. like a stale 3day old tuna sarmy I cringe, struggling to devour the experience.
The mall-its clinical white insipid colours scream to me the dentist chair. Chewing glass I’d rather do. The floor nicely smooth, Michael Jackson woulda moonwalked this journey.
Ive seen this all before, it aint the dvd I’ll rent again. Im stunned by the deep spaces, maybe 9 of them. The post boxes, are they going for an industrial look, kinda new yorky, niice ,reeeal niiice.
The glassed mall, gsus. Its ‘floating glass roof, a scene out of wills smith’s Independence Day flick, frightening
I need colour, my eyes need an explosion of things to see to explore, to trawl, to engage. my eyes need something I’ve seldom seen before. Images of bleached facials and pimply, zitty mugs, the beauty salon makes me lurch. The Hairdressers sleeper wall, great touch and now…
There are greater places to enjoy an ice cream sundae on a summery Sunday in October.
I just wanna cry at what could have been. just as I sweated through the spine riveting crack of my wisdom tooth being extracted, so I endure the pain of the journey through the ‘mall’

The little record joint, the second hand book store, the corner café, the Gucci shop and Luis Vuitton they’re all integral to a network, to a fabric of excitement. You can’t have one without the other. if you do it’s a half baked egg. Integration fosters societies, breeds networks , links people, binds relationships.

Urban art enlightens, attracts crowds and passersby. Pleasant environs, spectacles, innovation, good planning, little hubs, urban furniture, little joints attracts a lad like me, a design enthusiast and heaps of my like minded honey bees. Show me the honey. goddamit.
Woolworths you make a pretty package, you’re now the face of a precinct, funk yourself up. You’re a canvass for a dream art work, a kentridge, a preller, or dumile feni sketch, be bold be brazen, grab the cherries.
MA is an innovation in SA, it’s a hub for flash. MA is a launch pad, it’s a pandoras box for innovation, for showcasing, for educating-lets scratch the surface.

The cultured crowd frown because there is nothing enticing, nothing to grip them by the brain stem and drag them from the bedraggled cracked beer bottled melville. give them an open art exhibition, a fractal of grey matter and they will swarm like fat bastards to a shmorgasbord. Mary Antoinette has an art gallery,’ ‘is there anybody out there’, what was pink Floyd thinking. Expose the gallery, is it on my monthly gallery trawl, I don’t think so.

MA is a destination, not a one stop mosey on shop.
Its aimed at the high heeled,but they can only purchase so many Shermans.
Im the guy, the regular guy the architect, the trendy tshirt wearing sneaker pimp that needs a local, a pint in a hand and an opportunity to say hi to spidermans sweet mary jane.
I can buy an olive or a pickle from a jar, lets innovate. we aint a mall, we aint a suburban dive, we’re a living sprawling amoeba, integrated innovative, pedestrianised living working playing entity that wants to engage to be inclusive.
The trump card , the royal flush-the merlose arch address no longer wins bets, its real action that is needed.-dancing in the square, architecture pavilions, cutting edge innovative design, entice me and my whacky advertising architecturing mates to spend time, to tread foot.

Why given the platform, the canvass to be outrageous, courageous, ballsy do we go on and create a regular sponge cake.
Show us your balls caster, show uuuuusss

Rock, paper, scissors 18.01.09

2009-07-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Swimming in the goo that surrounds my brain, the boat of my thoughts harboured the idea of someday sitting on the saddle and churning the peddles of a bicycle. I had this plumbers blockade telling me it’d never happen. but then my bingo numbers came up while living on the Island. it was fire engine red, as quick as an insane Bolt and 70 squids. it livened me up to the joys of two wheels, of having the cold icey wind cut through my hair. it replaced my imaginary friend and together we rode into the sunset.
but then i flogged in for 80 quid, made me a quick buck and bought a tube of Mcvities biscuits.

After returning to jozi, my boss chewed my ear urging me to saddle up. it was time. i harvested my nuts, sent an electronic transfer and all of a sudden I had this beast in the back seat of my car. Wheels rugged for off road, the frame matt silver- indiscretely welded together to give it the AArrghh effect, the brakes holding anchor at the gentlest of clutches, the shocks turning this ride into a moon walk. these great components all came together to create a machine the great Jackie ickx wouldn’t recognise.
Yes the afrikaaners strolled in to the hinterland to start the great city of jozi, but this my friends is the true Great TREK

It was off to the spruit on a bright sunnyside up Sunday.my padded shorts clinging to me, the paddding reminding me of days on the beach when my trunks were full of sand.
We were going off road, a narrow beaten path tracked its lengthy way mimicking the snaking river path. the flora bushy from the nights rain, the fauna, the rat on a stick.
i was really shyte on a bike, but i figured how hard could it really be. I sat behind my posse peddling, mimicking their every movement , the long wet grass slapping me around, the air of crushed eucalyptus billowing in my flared nostrils, snot cascading from my snout dribbling to a fine pool at the top of my lip, my heart screaming to be emancpiated from its rib cage, my eyes honed, zeroed in on the front mans movements, but then like the smoked salmon at a shmorgasbord, they were gone amongst the trees, vapourised/scotty -beamed up.
i was alone,my thoughts, my friend. all of a sudden the theme music raced,i took no notice. there in the clearing, a rock the size of Gibralatar lurched up at me. there was no retreating now, i was 300 AARRGG. my rubbered tyres attemptin a bite at the rock, rock paper scissors it was a no brainer. the rock gripping and flinging my tire which is connected to the shocks which is connected to the frame which is connected to the handle bars which is connected to ,well, me. sent me and my components on a stairway to heaven, but the return home was a horoshima fallout. I was over my handle bars flyin through the air like a pre blazing zeppelin staring down into the cavernous precipice and waiting for the rock bed to knock me out. My landing was made for tv. my arms were my airbags. the slow motion button released. i was back in real time and hurting like a hammered thumb.
'nah im fine, ill ride through the treachourous pain.' I got back on my chariot,whipped my legs into action and charlton hestoned my way on.
this was no march into the sunset but rather a treacherous road to ammarillo.

My left elbow as able as a beached ship was sent to the clinic, the blood pressure reading extracted in LED from the velcro wrapped around my arm, my bp good enough to 'keep me moving'
I had xrays, my arm laid out on the chilled stainless steel gurney,im sure dead bodies had shared this same experience as my arm. miss Xray nukes my limp panelled elbow. tzdt dzzt and there before my very eyes I could see in inside myself, I could see the bones that stretch my skin, that give me shape and form. it was a truely outer bodyily experience. and there too was the hairline crack, an addict would be proud of.

apart from eating a 3 day over expired yoghurt, im proud to say im truelly extreme.

yours truelly on a fine autumnal eve,
the russian bear hunter, master swordsman and soon to be proud donator of his name to a new series of gut splitting leatherman tools

coolio iglesias 16.10.08

2009-04-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

so last night i had a wet dream, i was doing lengths in the pool at the gym, but my arms weren't moving so lekker. i didnt drown, but i didnt take 8 gold medals either.

after very very lil sleep and rushin around africa like a seedless pomegranate i awoke to see the world through a china mans eyes -half closed and watery. i flew in to Japan after a mammoth flight from jozi to dubai(what a dump) and then swiftly onto Kensai Airport, Osaka. i rolled my knuckles over my eyeballs, the tears washed the past away and i set my red streaked adidas
onto the tarmac of the future. after a fashion shoot and having been inked i moseyed on through passport control into a new world, a cultural shock to my linux system.

Japan was me detaching me from the velcro of familiarity. as neil armstrong on a bicyle in a space suit in the tour de france would feel,with chafed legs and calloused hands, well that was me. phew japan was a foreign movie and there were no subtitles to decipher what the hell was going on. i never handled a knife or fork for 2 weeks, never slept more than 2 feet off the ground, never ate anything harder than a jelly baby and never spoke more than 2 words of grade two english. trying to harpoon my food with a wooden spear was a game i struggled with. trying sign language without giving the middle finger was hard, real hard.before japan, the most japanese characters id seen was on some over sized bird on the beach in cape town before the war. my vocabulary extended from konichiwa to bruce lee. short and concise like the oxford dictionary. Going to the bog left me with 2 choices, the squatter or the contraption that was straight outta Robotech with fully functioning seat warmer, fountain spray and blow dry. It was a no brainer

from osaka to tokyo and a whole stash between i blazed a trail.

like a cape town bergie without his two front teeth to box wine i chugged the city of Osaka. man i punished it hard, the residue spilling from my mouth down my chin, it was thirst quenching, moist to my dry mouth, washing away the desert that is joburg. i unloaded my back pack in a wee 5 storey, jammed between two buildings.i nearly didnt see it. the door to my room smaller than me but larger than a hobbits.a pair of blue granny styled slippers sat neatly perpendicular to the tiny sunken lobby of the room.my room as deep as the 1970's long jump world record and as wide as an israeli gherkin (the vegetable that is). my bed neat as an ironed sheet and the vhs
ready for action. i unpacked my spongey eyeballs, the ones that soak up stuff,tied my sneaker
laces and headed out into this foreign world.

Osaka is a city careering in 3 dimensions-it swoops below ground, glides along the ground, hovers above ground, beams you 173 meters up and drops you back to earth at a rate of a blitz. the city streets are a book stack with spines jammed, and fudged into place-it'd be a right royal task to squeeze your finger between two buildings. as my eyes caressed the stores, the shops, and the bars,the labels emblazoned upon the spines emerged as pure design pure excitement, pure eclecticism.

rolling my eyeballs like a township kid with a tire and two sticks, i stubbed my toe on Americamura Americamura, its a shaken bottle of coca cola waiting to be uncapped. it's osakas camden town, wet streets, throbbing stores, outrageous clothing, girls in teeny red tartan, white buttoned shirts and sculpted, caressed moulded hair. guys in stove pipes, elvin path beaters and Thriller jackets, hair architecturally cut, grafted and set. a wave of design, an insight into the future.if you wanna see the edge cut, bleed americamura.

From city to city i rode shot gun on the shinkansen. The shinkansen, the bullet train is flaming sambuca fast. as the train rolls into the station its nose a grave yard for bloodied splattered insects that weren't quick off the mark. Every take off and every landing is a sight one ought to capture albeit, a blurred moment.

a day out of osaka, and it had to be Kobe, the port, Japans largest. the earthquake shattered city, resurrected to once again walk the seas. when Kobe was ruptured, japans economy faltered, the next so many years were end of the month salticrax. but she emerged, she grew back, the lizards tail always does. i hugged the coast as i strolled the waterfront, i made my way uphill to find a treasure of swooping roads, new and old japanese, white buildings, cobbled streets and bouganvillea.I was lured to the cable cars, pondering my fear of heights, my vertigo, I dropped my 1000 yen and boarded ship. It was a sweaty escapade I knew id hate. I let my camera lensbe my eyeballs as I looked down upon my sneakers.back on earth, my pits a sweaty coalmine and my back drenched like in hollywood movies. my knees trembling, i found a bench, i cried into my
sushi or was it just the wasabi.

In a square box, sat my 12 upright uniformed soldiers,straight as a set square, each enwrapped in a rice jacket, hugging a burst of pink salmon, itching, crying for a salty gush of soy and a nose tingling whip of algae green wasabi. I sat upon the bench, as ungenteel as mr miyagi and handling the sticks like a claw handed invalid, I stabbed, drowned and crushed the sushi between my teeth. It was nice, real nice
kobe was a shoppers dream, with her tiny meandering back alley streets harbouring clothing gems and itsy trinkets, gaming cafes and bordellos. her high street fashion attracted the finest, it was beautiful. i left kobe, had me a shower, dropped a cupla yens for a can oh green tea and tucked me into bed.

Kyoto-imagine a place where the apples are the size of footballs and the grapes the size of swollen testicles. i saw it with my very own eye balls. a temple, a cathedral, precision carved out of timbers , there's one for every day of the year-burnt incences, a buddha or two, red lanterns and timber flops. theyre the meat between the high risers. Kyoto is a bellowing city, it’s an outdoor museum tracing japan's history centuries back. Here I could caress the long gone past of a mighty nation.my hands were calloused. i set my eyeballs on a gold clad temple perched in the middle of a lake, it was indeed a treat, but the experience was a henry ford production line. i got my photo, you bet ya. I needed silence, contemplation time. I needed to wrest my wary feet from the call of the lengthy tarmac. i made a meal of a day and went to visit tadao ando's Asahi art gallery, there was no beer but Monets lillies. the concrete gallery sits upon a hilltop within a range of mountains, barry peppered by maple trees squeezing hard, turning red in the autumnal breeze, bamboo forests, vertical, the shoots thick and tall-a chinese torturers dream, khoi ponds and bonsai trees.this day was a welcome retreat and a piece of architecture i kinda said, 'oh well' to.

kyoto had excruciating moments. finding things i wanted to see became torturous.mapping here is so advanced, me with my hand sketch directions smacked of using a telephone book in the age of mobile phones.i was directionless, an untravelled rat in a maze. going 15 riotous rounds with the festering nightmare of heaves of tourists flashing lights and constant movement, i was beaten into submission. i needed quiet time, time off the beaten tarmac. i rapidly made tracks for
Yokohama

Yokohama, we know it as a tire. i knew it as a city harbouring an architectural master piece-the Yokohama Port Terminal it was a quieter retreat from the tourist mad frenzy that kyoto is. my
hostel was in an area set aside for ex war vets and looneys. it was zombied freaks in hospital gowns with mobile drips cruising the streets picking up litter that gave me the heebeegeeebees. daily i found myself just running as fast as i could to my hostel door,my hands shakin as i tried to force the key into the hole.i was in a horror movie and i wasnt loving it. apart from that, yokohama was rather tasty. i made a blazing trail for the Terminal. a port designed by Foreign office Architects. a piece of urban landscaping fullly functional for sea traffic. a place of leisure and contemplation- lovers licking ice creams, couples getting married, picnics on the grassy knoll and strollers strolling.ah the sea breeze and blue skies. It was a total retreat from the last three cities i'd licked.

jumble up the letters of Kyoto and you'll find me in Tokyo shawowee, this sprawling megalopolis was more fortune cookie than i could ever get my gnashers around. my eye balls had an outer body experience, dragging themselves around corners along clean streets. Tokyo is a colour
explosion in your brain . the streets jingle as an 80's pop music video, with the vending machines
whistling, and the traffic lights tinkling, the pachinko halls chingling, and the neon signposts flashing. tokyo is a sensual shmorgasboard, overwhelmingly carazy, violently illuminating. as an architect itll make you tremble at your knees, lay down in the foetal position with your large thumb in your mouth. it could either inspire or crush your wee lil soul. Ginza is everything youve never seen, its a faberge egged bedecked in the jewels of architectural mastery.my glazed eyes reflected the tree inspired Tod's, Mikimoto's paper cut out building, de beers sexily mangled extrusion,a crystalline Dior, an irridiscent ghost at night, simply mesmerizing and ofcourse prada's bubble wrapped magnifico.this building stripped me of any notion that anything is unachievable. with its bubble wrap skin and liquid innards it was gob smackingly orgasmic.in my worn jeans and scuffed boots i was a most welcome visitor to the Prada store. 'Diesel store in Sandton, suck my d*ck, you dont even know what exclusivity is.' By day the city appeared gray by night the werewolf begins to mutate, it becomes aggressively vibrant, its skinny back ruptures to sprout new features, its teeth reveal edgy crevices. as i walked the nights streets the pachinko halls enveloped my senses. 'Since i was a young boy i played the silver ball, from Soho down to Brighton i musta played them all, but i aint seen nothing like it...these japs, they sure play a mean silver ball.'
ching ching, theyre going nuts for it

i headed out to mount fuji, together with a bunch of all sorts germans and a frog. We all thought it was up the famed volcano we were to head to singe our nostril hairs, but alas one of the lasses had other ideas. We spent the day at the hotwater springs at the base of the mountain. Ah it was all I needed to rejuvenate my noodle hammered body. I turned into a raisin in the lavender scented hot bath, untied my knots in the jet streams of the Jacuzzi, sweated a river in the sweet smelling sauna, and had my toes nibbled upon by ravenous doctor fish.i got back to Tokyo and slaughtered a couple of premium Asahi beer. ah i was relaxed as as sloppy joe .

rappongi, you gotta see it. rappongi is beluga caviar. this district is lacquered in the finest sheen, well thats after i drooled all over it.
it's beautifully designed. its street furniture, garden paths, galleries, wide pavements, grassy contemplation spaces, babbling brooks and shopping malls expressed to me a city respecting its citizens.
i laid tread upon the paths of ueno and her galleries, museums, street shopping and pachinko halls, i idled over the masses of pedestrians at shinjuku, i was inebriated over hentai porn, i got to shlurp my rhaman noodles and drink straight from the bowl. i traveled sky high on the monorail swooping the city way above ground. i gasped at vertical parking lots, and manga comics. i got to be a spaceman in an alien world

Japan, wham bang apricot jam. it was overwhelming and absolutely foreign.it was infuriating and excruciating, it was beyond my senses. it was another world, it was alien. it was the epitome of human advancement, the pinnacle of evolution. but like my last rolo, id never have given it up.

Its been a while my furry friends, hope your eyeballs enjoyed.
this email was not sent from my blackberry, cos i ate it with my granola this morn. it was sent from my pee cee.
take it easy
the russian bear hunter

Virgin Knee Geria 01.10.08

2008-12-22T02:36:00.000-08:00

so virgin knee-geria, yeah that name will stick in my head like its been carved into my head with a blunt swiss army knife by some ex reckie who fought in the forgotten war.

so i make check in, this only after i had to deal with miss customs who is lying flat back slumped in her chair doin her nails,looking like jabba the hut. i aint sh*ttin you.

anyhoo i make a bee line for the departure lounge, well if you can call it that.so im reading this book, boo hoo.its about boo.com, an online start up that made billions but went crashing after its directors drank and partied it all away in 6 months. thats rock n roll i tell you.

the flights delayed for 45 minutes for refuelling, thats always gotta be a good sign, i mean afterall a full tank is a happy tank. im strapped in my seat, and ive memorisd safety procedures

so then this lame oke, literaly lame is slumped in his chair, after deliberating for 2 hours and after the sun had set, it was decide to wheel the lad off. bada bing. start your engines mr 767.okay now at the best of times im a frightened flyer, ive got loads of miles under my belt, but at 30 000 feet and dropping that don't count for much.

its a 50 minute flight and it rocked, as in like an ice cube in a glass of ice cold coca cola, this thing bobbed and weaved like muhammed ali.

anyhoo i was biting the seat..hard

it was ten minutes to land, but i just didnt notice the plane dropping slowly, then bang the floor of the plane drops.sweet gsus is it now that im gonna die while munching a muffin. an aside, the airhost says, 'cake or beef roll' , i went cake, these things are so dense the palestininans could use them as rocks, but boy these things taste a lot better than a rock.

so now im wanting to squeeze a tear outta my eye ball, then the pilot, the irish batsard with only a learners licence, starts pushing the thruster away from him(now i have no knowledge of flying but from what ive seen on tv, when the plane starts diving it means the pilot is pushing the controls away), i start slipping out of my seat, my knees up my nostrils cos im in economy(no leg room), sh*t in stowage starts shifting forward and im praying to kingdom come, okay so i stole the bottle of coke from the guest house when no one was looking, but hey.

anyhoo we're now racing hard i can imagine to get from 30 000 to 2000, in like 3 minutes.there's cloud cover and the light is flashing like in a horror movie but without the snakes. the landing gear cluncks out, the winds blowing at nauticle knots, im convinced im gonna die and i just see the front end of the plane rushin towrads me in a flame big enough for a marshmellow on a stick.

we then start leveling out but the wings are wobbling and im not sure the pilot was perfectly parallel to the run way, sweet mary jane.i was rattled. the planes wings, im praying, dont scrape the ground. sha wing the plane hits that runway hard like me after mike tyson b*tch slaps me. we skiddoo, onto that run way, and the pilot gooi's anchors, turns left and parks that amercian liner.

im alive, they say its gonaa rain but ill survive.

dan ger, a russian bear hunter and master swordsman who is happier with two feet rooted to the earth (but the pilot action figurine of the russian can still be bought, plane sold separately)

Sean Ghonnerea (Sean Connery) 15.10.08

2008-12-22T01:55:00.000-08:00

Like a 1970's low budget, B-grade made-for-tv nigerian soapie so was my first journey into Lagos, Nigeria.

A 2 prop plane-a magimix with wheels and wings, to Lagos from Accra, the take off as brief as drawing a short straw. it was the smoothest ride I'd ever taken. the mountain of an airhostess as gentle as a daisy offered me a box of nibblies. I was as happy as a frog in a sock until…..

Lagos, it sounds like Lego, but there's nothing fun and primary coloured about this cesspit. And you certainly wouldn't wanna receive Lagos wrapped under your Christmas tree.

As I awoke with cold sweats to the humdrum of a diesel powered generator, I couldn't pinch myself out of the nightmare, cos I was living it. When we dream nightmares, they're probably set in lagos- lights, camera, serious action.

The streets of Lagos are a pimply teen's mug after an over dose of Kay eF Cee. The san andreas fault pales in comparison to the crevices that tear this city's streets apart. Buildings are the canvas for the plumes of diesel bellowed from the chugging generators. the buildings are delapidated and havent been updated since the colonialists in their adventure hats picked up their gin tonics and set sail for mud island.

Traffic congestion is a flu inflicted kid with nose donuts(snot encrusted nostrils).alleviation comes in the guise of an okada, sounds like avocado but has absolutely nothing fleshy, fruity or green about it, and it certainly doesn't taste good with a pinch of salt. Okada's are modern day cowboys bedecked in kanye west goggles and helmetless heads. They're pilots, they're out riders. They're the pixallated enemy in space invaders. They're a necessary dr eevil. It's a taxi on a motor bike. They swarm in bunches, they take the high street and the low, they ride in formation, they're the Luftwaffe on wheels and they're scary as sh*t.

The city is a mosaic of black faces with white eyeballs densely packed together. each rummaging for a place in the overcast gray sweatiness that is Lagos. here everyone is trying to make a dirty sweaty naairah. the market, is truelly an African market, bludgeoned beasts, flies, hairy yams-it's the contents of Dammer's fridge, it exists on the streets of Lagos.

Highways are markets too- from toilet roll to meat roll, you can get it all. Highways are running tracks, highways are the pipelines of heaps of traffic.2 lanes are 6 lanes. Keep left pass on the pavement, pass over the car infront of you, then pass right over the pedestrian through the BRT lane, then cut off the ambulance, then mount the right pavement, then stop in the middle and buy a meat roll. It's the African jungle and it's survival of the ballsiest.

Lagos consists of 2 islands-Victoria Island, Lagos island and the mainland, all connected by shabir shaky bridges. The bridges swoop over murky bodies, dead bodies, of water that look abused and unfiltered. Local fisherman in home made boats with plastic bags knitted together to form masts, sail the seas plundering crustaceans.

i needed to pee the trauma of lagos down the drain, and it was a trip to Abuja, that relieved the tank.

Abuja is the capital city, custom designed for that purpose. it is rather beautiful- rolling green hills, litter free and at an 800m olympic pace. i was in and out of there in 3 hours, but id probably give it another scratch and sniff given the opprotunity.

Lagos opened my eyes wider on the state of Africa, i have no sympathy, i have no remorse, does the west really need to place a band aid over africa to heal her. i now know not. im glad to be back in africa, the south of.

Excerpts from an unfinished scratching:

Ice cold sweaty coca cola:

Lagos, ill take an ice cold coca cola, it arrives dirty as hell, the neck and mouth resembling a new deli public toilet. The bottle skinny, sexy, 350ml of pure joy , shafts of ice poking the top screaming for air. The coke emblem emblazoned on the side of the sultry elongated bottle, its dirty and worn as chafed leather. The perspiration of the bottle careering down the undulations of the chiselled bottle. The waiter cracks it open, rubs it down with a serviette

I'll take a straw thank you

Yellow brick road

i got to Lagos the other day, but there was no one to frikkin pick me up and every one always says make sure you have like a police escort and sh*t, anyhoo it turned out alright cos i got a ride with a taxi and i said to him, 'victor, im puttin my trust in you.", so thank goodness i wasn't kidnapped.

i got a huge room here with 2 double beds, what a lag, so i dossed in the one bed but it had a huge dent in it, then in the middle of the night i moved to the other bed, it was better, and then in the bath room i saw an empty packet for these long lasting s*x pills, eeuw

A rat in a hat

so the other morning i came into the boardroom where i work and there was this hectic smell, so i chooned 'there is a hectic smell' and i left the building, then the cleaners went in with a broom mopping about, the smell still lingered like a fat man to a steak roll. then with a bit of elbow grease the cleaner removed one of the ceiling boards and found a 16 kilogram rotten rat the size of a baby labrador in the ceiling void. oops i hope that chicken next door was real chicken.

Nothing here inspires, nothing is beautiful, nothing is sacred.

There's nothing soft, chewy or gentle about Lagos. If I never see her again it will be too soon. Lagos is the date you leave at the dinner table, you excuse your self to go to the bathroom and you just run, boy, ruuuuun.

so Oprah, next time you 'come home', stay in Lagos, then say 'im home'.

My humblest apologies for an uber late scratching, but it was rather difficult to scratch about a dump.

danel(the armaments leg of dan), a Russian bear hunter and master swordsman.

I have an ipod nano…who needs friends when you got an ipod

well what do you know, I found a pubic hair embedded in a Super C sucking sweet.

Blades of Grass 27.09.08

2008-11-07T06:53:00.000-08:00

Being holed up in a sweaty, self-catered, brown carpeted, slipslops in the shower, cream coloured, s*x-stained sheets square box on a Sunday afternoon aint what I call a pleasant dream.

No action stories were ever written in a vacuum packed bubble, well, that's unless it said 'bordello' in red neon lights on the outside. And I needed action.

It was time for me to hit the streets of Accra,Ghana and get me dirty.

I wanted to blow some cash on the local economy and so it was to the local art centre that I honed my scope.

Getting there I caught a taxi. I had like 5 okes screaming to get my business, the one oke with bottle of beer in hand is offering me a ride. 'Gees boet, the least you coulda done was put the bottle down before bidding for my business'.

I hop into a bee coloured cab and soon I pull up infront of the market and being a white man in a dark country I was there to be f*ckin raped. It's like I was the f*ckin game winning bingo card in the retirement village Tuesday eve games evening. In the eyes of these craft sellers I was the golden Charlie and the chocolate factory ticket, the answer to all their dreams. If only they knew I left my wallet at home, (a dr evil snigger ensues)

Like f*ckin festerin maggots to carrion, I was overwhelmed by marketers even before id stepped out of the taxi.

They swarm around me like vultures to a fresh kill, hovering, taunting niggling at my limbs

Mike valentine introduces himself, a Ghanaian named mike valentine? Whatever. Anyhoo im kinda enamoured by the guy and he draws me to his store, his minions, all 15 of them in tow. one would have thought this was some coke deal but all I wanted was a frikkin wooden aeroplane, was that too much to ask.

These guys musta thought I was packin a 20litre snakeskin bag of unmarked US dollar bills, meanwhile I got some scrappy ghanain cedis that had seen more action than a cheap whore in pearl harbour.

Having burnt my cash on wooden carvings which this guy's father (he showed me a pic of him) had apparently chiselled with his bare hands, I needed to get outta the den, yes it was dan in the lions den-sounds biblical huh?. the bastards had left me with enough cash to get home, a few shrapnels of silver. Finally after wading my way through the heaps of crafty crud I made it out to the clearing. I sighed relief, when a friendly lad, Rus obi (his name sounds kinda Star Warsy) led me to the taxi rank. there I picked up a trotro, an oversized mini bus taxi a shoe box on wheels squared off edges,and like lil chocolates in a box we sat, except there were no lil pleated chocolate brown cups to separate us-big mommas ass cheeks enveloped me.

After extricating myself outta the cab and eventually getting to where I didn't want to go, it was time to take to foot in the opposite direction. The sun so hot began sucking the life giving brine outta me. I found myself in a position in which I coulda died. Soon id be seeing things-coloured elephants and moving mountains, then delirium would set in ,then my heart would be palpitating fast enough to turn potatoes into mash, then id wither away. Alas I endured.

After walking minutes, I asked if I could walk home and people said 'nooo, its too far, and I asked again, how far is too far, and they said no its too far. In my head im calculating 2 and 2 and its not equalling too far. So I begin marching down the main drag in a direction I generally know will lead me 'home'. So I ask another dude in a black and blue striped golf shirt and he says, 'noo, its too far, catch a taxi', but I tell him I gotta walk cos I got no coupons. So mr golf shirt, after chatting to this other guy in checkered table cloth red shirt then offers that his brother gives me a ride back home enroute to getting his Aircon fixed. It was legendary, it was crazy man, it was a true Hollywood, or Bollywood or Nollywood ending.

This day was the worst experience I've ever had to endure while shopping, I became a stereotype, and I hated it. It's the exploitation of the tourist, it's a world wide phenomenon. But in the end happiness was the winner.

keep scratching my furry friends, from a relieved russian bear hunter

Barak Banana 23.08.09

2008-11-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

My dream came true, to work and travel.

but when the fairy god mother said 'be careful what you wish for, it just might come true', I shoulda listened-Africa was not on my radar.

After 6 hours and 2 viewings of Horace Hears a Hoo i dropped in to dark africa (it was night time).

me and about 20 two-toned button-shirted Saffers emerged outta that Boeing 737. on disembarking the vacuum-sealed aircraft, my jeans and t-shirt immediately sucked on me like a fat leach to a gangrenous limb. This place is humid as hell, sweaty as the underside of a west African equatorial fried egg.

Kotoka airport a low slung edifice emblazoned with 1970's way-cool white neon cut out letters, the 'O' and the 'A' short of a fuse, opens its standard hollow core doors to greet me. Entering the terminal, this musty grand ma smell klaps me in the face. Fans blowing the sweat off my brow leave a salt mine behind. I'm in a Hollywood movie of the 70's, but this isn't true after I ram myself into a wall

Remnants of the African Cup of Nations tourney , when the hell that was i don't even know, hang from the blistered ceiling.

I stand in a queue, this big black guy in army kit, looking like he's gonna start a revolution stamps my ink stained passport.

I stroll across the linoleum pasted baggage area, snatch my sack and head out into new territory. Outside the terminal I emerge into the reception area, into the bowl of arrivees surrounded by the festering taxi drivers eager to bundle me into their cab and hold me for ransom.

but there I see my name on glowing billboard-fat khoki marker scratchings like fly sh*t reminiscent of my name on A4 fullscap with lines and margin, punch holes included. Its ben and he's my salvation. He takes my bags-it's all I've ever wanted

My white hairy body is perspiring heavily, 'don't worry, you'll adapt my brother'...yeah whatever. what was the white man thinking when he colonised this place.

As we make way for my lodgings im overwhelmed.

Sweat stained pits, buttoned shirts, raga music, a black and yellow taxi, the wind blowing your eyeballs dry, where every day is a beach day, flapping palm trees, soiled roads , dense green bush, long green grass that you can get lost in, and heaps of that African crafty sh*t.

-this is west Africa, this is Ghana.

scratchings from a questionably african lad

a russian bear hunter

chicken catchatorie 21.03.08

2008-04-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

Scraping , shlurping the last bits of residue at the bottom of my chocolate milkshake, I still managed to suck up a bit of flavour at the bottom end of the summer.

Ant Ger,(his real name) and Dan Ger (his Hollywood name), made the journey outta suburbia to emmarentia dam, a public park, at night, in the rain. I think tony Maloney was scared of encountering a pack of man-eating banshees, but I chooned him to fear not, for I am the Russian bear hunter.

we went to indulge our ears with the rip rifling riffs of a sapling of the once salami purveyor family, dan patlansky. This oke, the height of a sergei bubka pole vault, and strewn with the gangly hair of krusty the clown, could wield his fender nimbly. His caloused tips extracting squeals, roars and metallic thrusts out of the catless gut. As the rain came a pouring down and patlansky played his melody, the halogen lights beamed us into sur-reality.

The 21^st March was the day the world came to Alberton-a hairy, crusty mole on the backside of f*cked up southern Africa.

My coke fest expectations were those of licking a dogs balls. Sweaty, unpleasant, and rather salty. this coke fest was none at the coffee table, credit cards and blow. This was pure unadulterated euphoria. My expectations were totally severed, a head in a jam jar.

We, that was one RoLo, Feedy and Ane in the Hay, stood in the cheap seats. The day, hot and dry. The dust forming stalactites up our nostrils. it was a spelunkers dream.

I won’t mention anything before like 4pm, because it was totally sheeite.

The first of the international bands arrived on the platform to the shrieks of teens- tonsils red and clanging.

3^rd rock from the.. uh I mean 30 seconds to Mars, a flash in the frying pan, a one hit wonder. They’re fronted by jay leno, uh I mean jared leto-a once rather respectable actor. But here he was rendering me sleepless in Alberton. The band were my sleeping pill. their syrupy, rehearsed rock made me ill at the bowels.

JL did surprise me however. Aside from his notorious yoddling he managed to turn ape man, mounting the scaffolding, and running a rampage through the hysterical crowd. For this act I gotta give him gambling coupons.
But as the crowd screamed ‘we want more.’, I responded with , ‘please not again.’

The Kaiser chiefs, the Kaiser f*ckin chiefs were an absolute cracker. They’re pure britishers, and I love them. Their eclectic form of rock/ pop rubs me up to blister. They’re so f*cking well oiled. Their beat is an eclectic ball of coloured plasticine. The Chiefs predicted a riot, but all they got was a b*tch slap across the face with an 18 inch cilbasa from the sober crowd. the spectators were Zombies in a b-grade movie. lacking lustre they were numb to the ripping riffs of a relevant band.

I didn’t need a receipt for services rendered by this band cos I wasn’t gonna ask for no refund. ai,

As my BP dropped to a lowly 80/100, I cracked open and chugged a half litre of ice cold coca cola. And as the sugary brown nectar slippy slided its way down my bone dry gullet, chris cornell and his trio of mega guitarists played the pulsating theme track to my salvation. After hearing Chris Cornell, I’m pretty sure, Jared Leto went home to his mommy with his head hung in shame and his thumb in his mouth.

Cornell, his chain saw voice and trio of guitarists are alchemists turning pure rock into musical gold. The world stopped spinning on its angled axis. It stood still and began beating a different rhythm.

Piet the hunter and his Martini managed to clothe us in stealth suits. And there we were in the golden O, the whole in the donut. It was gum boot territory but we didn’t give a rats rectum. And there we stood as our vision pixellated and we were no longer living reality. The Muse had radioed Huston and had landed.

Muse are gargantuan. They’re lightning, an epileptic fit. The kind of energy this band exudes mimicks a 7 year old high on red juice. They’re outta this world, they’re playing in a different league in a different galaxy. This rock band makes stonehenge look like a pebble. The back drop to their gig-the flashing graphic and imagery were psycho-delic, their music morphing animation. we drooled a flood. this trio of musicians sent us into a frenetic chemical eruption and blew us away splattering our senses onto the windscreen of our lives.
This gig was no archaeological dig, it was a lesson from a real school of rock.
Cry me a river

Korn, was some bone to chew on. I didn’t know until this day.

The bass, f*ck me, the bass, ripped at the apple core of my being, fragmenting my innards. The bassist slapped that guitar across the face of a back chatting teen. It was gigantic. The lead singer, dreaded and wearing at scottishers kilt, was a quart on the pint of a stage. His jeckyll and hide voice left me stunned, exposed and gaping. His eerie bag pipe blowing was a powerful exitude to a mind blowing eve.
Korn played it’s hibernating Goths like the piper of Hamlin the mesmerized rats.
They were the R50 note I found in my jeans 2 weeks after I’d rode them.

The day was long, I was ravenous-my stomach began waging war on my other organs. But the music was all the nutrition I really needed.

I believe I shoulda been born in the 60’s, to live through the great rock age, the age of real music when a guitar solo could move ones bowels to tip a richter scale and then finally end it all after Michael Jackson’s Thriller album.

That was a 12 hour session comparable with anything I saw in the Old World. It was phantasmagoric. I liked it like a lolly pop.

So I’m at my regular art class finger painting the night away. Some kid, a 14 year old tyke, is going on about his fledgling rugby football career. ‘geesus h Christ’, I belt, you train 6 days a frikking week?.’yeah he says, looking stunned at my Oscar wining reaction. ‘We’re in the gym 3 days and 3 days we’re chucking ball’. There’s dead silence-‘so how much do you bench press?’he inquisitively asks. ‘I stare blank, my brain function ceases, I look at my right arm muscle, he looks at it too. “oh, he retorts”.

Thanks for listening. the Russian bear hunter, master swordsman and 5^th member of the Fantastic 4.

Ah what id do for sunny day in the park a Frisbee and a Scratch.

go on give it scratch

granola bars 16.12.07

2008-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

Do you eat a 1 kg of cadburys chocolate at once?no you eat it in small chunks. This `like a greyhound to a furry rabbit so kick started my december 'summer' vacation.

cornwall beckoned, it was number 8.0 on the list of places my blue-inherited eyeballs demanded attention. , and having clicked our heels 3 times, the great south western who flung dung us into st ives aka stevies. Cornwall was to be a journey of discovery,. It was to reveal the flesh of the peeled banana.

St ives is the size of your baby toe, hemmed on 3 sides by ocean. It's a surfers paradise they say. the only barrels I saw were filled with beer.
We crash landed in a plumbers crevice of a b&b, and the grunts and groans of Frankenstein next door left us screaming looney tunes. Stevies is an art colony painted in rich yellowed roofs, tiny slim roads, bleached houses, knobbly cobbles and golden pastries. Burrowed mid hill sits the Barbara Hepworth house-creaky wooden floors, shards of stone and blunt sculptors tools and a treasure cove of rich sculpture revealing a masterful woman.
We crisscroseed the wall, cornwall like the tartan on a hairyscotsman's kilt.
St Austell, even if it read its own biography wouldn't have known itself once the now famous Eden Project, the fragmented eye ball of a common fly, grew out of a once abandoned china clay mine. The bulbous cellular organism siddles hard up against the edge of the clay pit like the greenest of soon-to-erupt pimples. The skeletal structure vacuum packed in hexagonal ETFE air-filled cushions envelops two alien environments-a tropical equatorial sweat-in-your-shirt air bubble and another bulb which left us feeling like being crusty croutons in a cheese fondu. The project finally came to fruition after the seed was sown in the hummous of my brain. I could feel it touch it, photograph it.this magazine article didnt need recycling.
Penzance, Cornwall, was a dream, plays were scripted on it. But yes it was all a dream. Like congealed fat to a bloodied artery so was Penzance.

Me and my sweet tooth made headway for Lands End. single roads hemmed on either side, jagged edges and a plunge to your death. We were there and it was deserted. we strolled and rubbed rocks, braved the ripping winds and tea-ed at 3, bus 17 was the last bus home and we were on it, but we disembarked at Mousehole-a nostril hair of a town, but an enchanting hair indeed. She is no larger than 3 paces of my size 8 Caterpillars. Her Christmas lights pranced at sea, on shore and on hillock.

The battered fish and chips clogged my arteries but it was abuse I smiled upon.

St just had been circled with a fat koki pen, initially we weren't sure why. St just was as worn in as a pair of leather underpants, and as gray and miserable looking as a decaying corpse but she harboured a jewel, no not the bowl of oats I scoffed but landscapes rolling, mended walls, beaten foot paths, an icey breeze and old england.
My eyes journeyed, indulged themselves in all sorts and reflected an emerald landscape. Cornwall she was, Cornish but not corny.

And before an imprint of my butt cheeks on the train to London could rise to greet others, I was on a jet plane to Scandinavia.
Norway was as sweet as a freshly squeezed bee .the flight there saw me juggled around like a wee marble in a shoe box. And then one of those 'crazy-sweet-gsus-did-that-just-happen-to-me-scenarios kicked in. 'queue doodoodoo music, queue lightning and cracking thunder, queue airhostess with vodka dry martinis. This was an episode of the twilight zone and although I didn't audition, I found myself starring in a lead role-i sat aisle seat, and she window .She asked me where i was from, i mumbled Jozi, she belted Shlaap stad. She was travelling down south, shawowee so was i. next thing I'm riding back seat in a RAV 4 with 2 girls I'd just met. 2.5 hours later having carved the highways , bridges, frozen fjords and lakes of southern norway, we arrived at Statoil Petrol station. Nic, who I hadn't seen after 10 years of books id read, foot steps id taken and heaps of hair id snipped, was waiting for me. 'dude meet Tessa and Antonia'. he knew her. i was in the twilight zone, 'maestro play the closing credits.'that dvd, yea that dvd is in my classics collection.

Tvedestrand, Norway, the size of an hobbits out stretched arms, hugs the top end of a Norwegian fjord. Timber houses, a cobbled road, one pub and the most glorious holywood setting. The surrounding burch forests and idle glassy lakes are the scene for an oscar winning landscape in the category of most pristine landscape.
I aint no foody but when it comes to fish, im a grizzly to a salmon run. I endulged in the freshest of Norwegian salmon, the fleshy pink in all its form and glory on Christmas eve, on Christmas morn, the nightmare after Christmas, and the morning of our bus ride to Oslo 2days after Christmas.

I lived dangerously, it was the year of living dangerously and so i walked on ice, licked a frozen waterfall and emptied a boat stuck in ice. I met crazy norwegians, drank heaps of beer, and warmed me feet in the bathrooms.

Oslo, was a whirlwind and it rained tears. Edvard munch gallery saw me screaming at the ice Scream. Days are short and nights are long. Punk rock seemed outta place but beer has become furniture. The streets at night are for everybody, the canal walks and parks too.i found a nation that eats fish for breakfast, recycles and has a two button toilet flush system and i dug it.
And so I bid farewell to Nick and Hilda and jetted back to londinium, hello darkness my old friend..

ah so new years hatched itself like a premature birth. i landed up at this house party, kinda crashed it like ayrton senna into a wall at a 100 miles an hour. i pulled in with 4 beers, but punished 5. the year began well. and those massive pretzels were a dream munch.
Time ticked by and I bid my sweet tooth farewell. She was hurt, yog-hurt.

I finally left Europe, the Europe I so love, and having left my brain on a newly painted bench in Warwick street, Soho I flew into the middle east with sweaty palms. It was hot, i licked them dry.
Dubai is a transients non-destination, but i was destined to visit pepe p, a kid i studied with. An airbed kept me afloat in pepe p and laurens apartment. it was super high, this was no short book, it was 36 stories. i was scared to look over the balcony. my ears shut shop, but i swallowed.

Dubai defies the brains natural senses for a city. she is barry peppered with heaps of tall buildings. each one a toothpick trying to vie for a rack of teeth to please. pedestrianisation is detroyed and public space is bubble wrapped in air conditioned shopping malls. She is sprawling and densifying, she's growing upwards, longways, sideways, and often i could only say, 'no ways'. Who the hell plants a tree in the middle of the sea?, i palmed it off and said 'that aint eco-friendly'.
Pepe, a syrian and i drowned my disbelief in Tiki puka puka juice. By the end i couldnt see, that day old pizza was my saviour.

Dubai is totally westernised, her only culture is AB.the american injection has pulsed through the veins of the middle east. She is slowly stirring herself into the arabic batter. She didnt come raging into arabia with m16's, bunker bombs, hum vees and two miunute noodles. she merely strolled in with a mcdonalds double whopper in one hand, a super subway sarmy in the other and planted her flag. see , one 2 3, its that easy.

anyhoo
i came back stronger than a fired up fat man. This journey differed in many ways from my other escapades. It had mega highs, and low GIs. I was proud of the way my jeans worked hard and by the end of this uber journey they could stand up on their own.

gravy boat 17.08.07

2007-10-28T07:04:00.000-07:00

sometime in august the gnarly hunchback tolled the end of an era. the sopranos, after 7 glorious seasons of pillage, butchery, plucking, shlurping, and thats just to make a parma ham sarmie it all ended before my very eyes. it's sad. monday nights will never be the same, a void has opened up in my life, a GAP on my hooded sweatshirt.
As dan stood before the burning bush in his leather strops he belted at the top of his air filled lungs, 'what am i to do, oh deary me, what am i to do?. Moses led a nation, i just wanted Sopranos back on the tube.
it was a year ago that klotzy plotted, preempted the down fall of monday nights. but not only did he add the double cheese to that steers burger, he also supersized that coke and made a megalomaniac out of a packet of freedom fries. the whale trail had our names graffitied on the pebbles we weren't allowed to nick and there we would lay tread where our tread had never been laid.

we flew Kulula. it's kotch green colours gave me the heebeegeebees and i nearly blew. i clutched those faux leather seats hard and read the information card like it was my blueprint to survival. thank goodness Kulula pay reasonable salaries cos we were on terra firma and ready to make a blitzkrieg for a wee town called infanta, just a sesame-seed coated bread stick's length from the hiking jump off point-de hoop nature reserve.
our two hyundai atos rentals- jam jars on raisins made Subaru rally cars look like old lemons marching over a pedestrian crossing. these wee shoe boxes took us from pop-up book readers to real live whale watchers in 3 blazing hours. we made a dust storm outta the gravel roads and punished all in our wake.-sorry beatrix potter

one thing the Monopoly board doesn't sell is southern african coastline, well
it didnt 20 years ago when me and my carpet-burned knees used to roll dice. why rissik street is still primo, beats the living sheeite outta me.
the whale trail begins in de hoop nature reserve, rises up steeply through the potberg mountains, where Potley was christened, plateau's a bit like a top deck chocolate bar and then like pamela andersons low cut top, plunges rapidly down towards the icey blue ocean and so begins to skirt along the craggy coastline. the path the 5 of us-milies, potley, leeroy klotzy and a russian bear hunter trudged upon steeply ascended the mountain range which was blanketed like an all american quilt stitched in the glamourous yellows, magentas, and flaming oranges of the majestic protea. the vultures did donuts above our heads leaving skid marks on our psyches-we weren't here to die man, we were here to harpoon ...uh i mean see whales.
the treacherous, yet beautiful coastline hasn't been defiled or violated by tuscan warts and the gangreen on the landscape that is shoppping malls. it's an oasis of unscarred earth. this was nature at its most prestine, syrupy, nice like hazel nut praline.
we spent 5 days bashing through the fynest bos of them all-kinda western cape .i packed nice and good-tuna, beans, noodles made soft in 2 minutes, ah and you can bet your bottom dollar i didnt forget to dip an ouma-went 4 rounds with her, it was a TKO.
this was no fast food extravagance, we worked like pigs, grinded out a foot path for other travellers to scuff their boots on. short of munching and foraging on maggots and live fish- Bear Grilles you complete me-we were the ultimate survivors, cooking on flame grilling gas, eating without utensils, and washing our own dishes.we did it like they did it on the Discovery Channel. our story wasn't filmed- it' was in our heads man, in our heads.

we drained the camels back thrice over and i was pissing triple distilled, as crystal clear as swedish absolute and as pure as morning dew. i coulda just added lime for a cool,sweet sundowner.
this was a no tolerance journey, the Hyundai Atos rented vehicles were super frugal on desert juice, and their carbon emissions low as a four calorie chocolate bar. solar power was our energy. had i not crushed that poor dung beetle, i could have cashed in my carbon coupons and antarctica could have been saved.
trudging at the coast the smell of the sweet sea breeze caved our nostrils in salt- we couldnt wait to hit beach and let the sea lap our limbs. Milies and I took the plunge daily, it was cold, ask my 3rd nipple.
we saw whales-, loads of 'em, bobbing, weaving, spyhopping and breaching. this was no scene from a jimmy bond flik, it was real, the real juice company real. the huge clunks of blubber bobbed in the icey waters safe from the mouths of sushi munching japs and norwegian trawlers, at least until the breeding season was over.

on the march, we sucked super c's, silly sucking champions we were, till our tongues were yellow and our worries dissolved. it was the dried fruit and nuts that caught me with my pants down. it was a soil enriching experience.

its marvellous what Milo can do for you, when you got mates drooling at your feet for a taste of the good stuff. i didn't need other's Milo, cos i got high on my own supply.
we kipped in huts, bunk beds, showered under the stars. there were no sounds just the heave hoing of our lungs against our rib cages and no odours, just the sweet smell of fynbos-it was chronic.

the journey ended at the end, where the sand dunes meet the sea and a coke machine greets you. we made like the swiss and roll-ed into Bredasdorp where the lady without her front teeth suggested we munch our fish and tsips at the corner cafe.it was straight outta the sea...of oil. it was so lekker. my heart thanked me by pulpitating. and with a greasy hand it was time to bid my fellow hunter-gatherers adieu, and off to Cape town i journeyed with Leeroy, pilot of Atos 2.

i crashed landed at the Haar-bingers place in sea point and that night went to a restaurant in the city called Mesopotamia, it was kurdish. i can now understand why Sadam went all bride of chucky on these people. the bird served up to me was an insight into what appears in little glass jars filled with formaldahyde found in biology museums.
cape town is always spritely and after many years Fishhoek greeted me.
what a journey it was. gotta dream, gotta see,gotta hear,gotta munch, gotta breath gotta keep walking

goo goo catchoo, its been a while since i last scratched the surface. hope alls well west side, east side, state side, sea side

be cool , stay cool
dna(my name as seen by dyslexics)

quote by unknown tag artist about scratchings on the streets of new york, 'reading has never been this much fun.'

Nintendo thumb 18.06.07

2007-07-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

jozi. trying to find super exciting things to write about in this here urbis is like trying to suck fillet medallions in a mushroom sauce through a straw. but every now and then a residue of steak breaks through the firewall and so spawns my taste for the eventful.

this is a story, a true story about a pair of boots, a pair of timberland boots.

i bought a pair of timberlands-sawft and leathery to the touch, cheese griller rugged underneath and with a shiny orange dot emblazoned with a tree. these skones would work harry potter magic through the snowy climes of finland, to the harshest of russian landscapes. i was now to test them under super extreme conditions in the dry rockyness of africa, rahh.

dring dring the blinger did ring.jingles was on the otherside inviting me to the drakensburg. friday rolled through and i cut the day in half.
we rode in one car- jingles, tijen and me, i felt good about it. 'al gore, let's talk carbon credits?'

the hilly hills of the drakies enveloped us with its open arms.
i unravelled my smurf pj's, shoved my chimpmunk cheeks full of marshmellows, warmed me gulliver at the open fire and viewed the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, all this in our thatched bungalow. i wanted to draw straws but they were too high.

the sun arose as an egg yolk and i saw Leatherface in my spilled milk.
it was hike time, and my boots new it.their rubbery soles grasped on every surface making a leach to a blood clot look like a pimpled, bespectacled harry potter sucking his forearm for kissing practice. these leather-upper skinned boots were amphibious cutting Thorpedo-style through lakes and streams up rocks and past savanna, it was dry but i couldn't smoke it. the crags,they were sharp, they were splintered-i was wearing run-flats. they knew my every move, they had intel inside.the icey wind turned my Aero chocolate cold and me into a milky skinned, red cheeked pommy. but thank goodness, my toes were safe from frosts bite.
the grunt of the man-eating baboons did little to scare my boots for they, like the goddess of speed, are nimble. those apes weren't gonna get my pastrami sarmy
hiking for 8 hours, dehydration is as common as 10 dollar monopoly money.a human in need of a kidney would do well to retrieve mine after i flushed those pie-fillers with 3 litres of H2O, some from the taps others from the sweet streams we waded through.
i could not have asked any more of my kickers.
on that rocky mountain i was introduced to a black cat peanut butter bar- peanut butter should only be found on toast. there at the top of the world with my heart clinging to my rib cage I found myself nibbling a peanut butter bar at 600 feet above sea level with the ever chirpy kev. Clearing my sticky palate, looking back at the footpath we'd carved, thinking 'gees i wish i was watching currie cup rugby now, oh wait, not really.'
but then we reached 900 feet, my lungs heaved under the strain of thin, fresh oxygen and fear kicked in. Me and my flashy kickers stared death, that's D.E.A.T.H, in the eye. and then death, or was it heights, ate me like a jelly donut, leaving the centre for last. it was time. the front of the mountain saw the back of me. i skidded down, my pants soiled.
'i came here to conquer you, but you drop kicked me like Naas Botha's boot to a pap rugby ball.'
this pair of boots trekked the second highest peak, but they didnt give a sh*t for being second best, the prom queen was still mine.

wow i left the drakkies feeling groovy and high on my own supply.
that experience and the landscape have clung onto me like a fat kids jam smeared fingers.

ey all my friends-androids an imagined
be cool, stay cool and keep reading cos watching telly'll turn your eyes square.

the dan, russian bear hunter master swordsman and the carbonated water in a fizzy drink.

tony soprano 20.05.07

2007-05-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Oh crikey, it's been a couple of months.
Like a ray barb through the heart I've been energized into exploring the landscape that is South Africa.

I witnessed over-grown 18 year olds, looking like chickens on steroids play in the local easter rugby festival at st johns college- a college, immaculately designed on a ridge dividing Jozi into north and south.

along with lil mikey razzo, i experienced the wrath of inebriated small town folk, loaded up with booze, skimmed stones, rode rough quad bikes till our jeans stood up on their own and ate hake in the trout fishing capital, all in the wee town of dullstroom.

I let my golf game slide a slippery slope and instead got sunburned like a gas- torched peppadew, suffered lex lutherian megalomania on crushing termite mounds, was confronted by large man-munching gorillas and soiled myself at the prospect of bumping into one of a gazillion indigenous snakes as featured on the snake chart of South Africa, kicked my kit off and plunged toes first into the string of pea-pod like pools and allowed the gushing Lipton's ice tea to wash the red dust off of my parched African lips. This was all in a day on a hike with the lyrical Jingles, the Chuckles chocolate ball that is kev and a peach, dijan, in the red earthed, rocky landscape of the Magaliesburg.

Li'l dan and I traversed every Spar and every petrol station that Roodepoort has to offer to navigate our way to the Roodepoort botanical gardens. There we saw the lesser spotted black eagle and her two eggs, and were denied the right to toss Frisbee.

And then just as I thought the bloodied graze on my knee that was my nature experiences was about to clot up, along came this past weekend.

Alice, invited me to lecturer Heinrich's, Thabaphshwa. It's a massive farm set betwixt the hills of potgietersrus, spotted with wandering cattle. the camp we crashed at, 'kanniedood' is a hut perched on the rocky face of an outcrop, isolated from humanity, electricity, pizza delivery vans and jehovahs witness knock-on-door conversions.
It was only two days so we needn't forage for fruits, nuts and berries. It was all carnal, grr, raah. The undulating landscape was our bedroom, the cool breeze was our ventilation, a bamboo screen was our lavatory protection, the roar of baboons our morning call and the sunrise our eggs, sunnyside up.

I barbequed chicken like no Nando's slave could. the big bird lay flat pack against the grided fish grill, and simmered over a low coal as I punished my windhoek draught and lemonade. I was keith ffloyd.
Gazing upwards, the African evenings are a wonder.
The night skies are a sensual, gorgeous Claire Forlani in a, glittering, sequened, turquoise evening gown.
Shooting stars blitz the heavens, is it a bird is it a plane or is it kulula.com? everyone is an astronomer when the stars come out-the 'milky lane' was splendid in the autumnal sky.

The final day left us without water, and monkeys on the rampage. We were in a situation in which 'we coulda died.' But my pig skinned water bottle was my swiss army knife.
I'm still getting to grips with nature. I do believe I'm a city boy, but I think beneath the chocolate coating, the sprinkled almonds and the nougat, lies a caramalised nature lover.

Anyhoo all my fans, Albert Einstein once said, 'life is like a bicycle- In order to keep balance, you need to keep moving.' Johnnie walker confirmed this.

Stay cool, be cool
The dan Ger, russian bear hunter, master swordsman and soon to be action figurine. safari khakis sold separately.

paper cut 28.04.07

2007-05-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

29 the of april was a wee man-eating two-tone bee to a sticky koeksuster.
Like a geologist scrubbing rocks, and picking cavernous caves, so I've been searching the crusty cracks of this sprawling megalopolis to expose my serotonin.
Christie, a wee lad who I worked with in londres strums the lonely bass in his rock band called 'Bonsai'. Bonsai are gathering fame not from being picked, probed and clipped by mr Miyagi, but rather by their lyrical, sunny side up expression of afrikaans rock.
I hadn't seen the kid in a well rounded 8 months. He was gigging with his lads at back2basics- a live gig venue splashing out greasy grub on wooden décor. It's as cheap as east London chips, but lively as a punctured lung. It's perched just left of the energized centre of the cbd at the far end of the bowling lane that is over looked by johannesburg's two premier universities. One as liberal as a hooker and one formerly governed with an ironic fist.

Bonsai belts out rock in the trekkers tongue-afrikaanse. I hadn't been exposed to much of this genre of rock, rather close to a doughnut's worth. this was the eve that the radiation that is afrikaans rock would turn me from a green banana into a ripe one.
This Bunch of good lads, the guys that'd invite you over for a barby on a Sunday and share their smokes, dressed in Sunday's premier best, got me jumping and foaming at the mouth. Although the lyrics were alien to me, I was there to greet the wee li'l green men with open paws.

Foto na dans,the main act, robed in black skinny jeans with jewels breaching the boundaries of zippers, were bigger than the stage. Trying to fit these four pimpled skinny teens onto that raft of a stage was like trying to squeeze a t-bone steak through a straw. Their groupies were everything they weren't-blonde, sexy, lolly pop sucking sweet apples ready for the winter harvest. The lead with, a popsicle stick of a body and an oversized cotton ball for an afro, lead his charges into afrikaaner rapture. This was no boer vs british, it was the fight for the royale cause of rock n roll, Afrikaans rock.

The raggedy rag doll trumpeter, keyboardist and squealer, flung his mopped melon so hard I thought it'd pop off and bowl him an impressive 360. His blood shot eyes raged in fury, and bulged out of his head. Their industrialized rock made the iron ore manufacturing process look like a chocolate bar purveyor. These dudes were poets clad in cast iron battle armour. frenzied, their energy exhausted carbon monoxidous rage.
My Afrikaans is like the part population of iraq-sheeite, but I needn't 'praat die taal' to dig these dudes.

It was a cracker of an eve in which I had too a revelation. My new choice of brew is Windhoek. Sorry amstel it was all you my friend but then you shoved that blunt rusty meat cleaver through my heart.
stay well , be cool all my far flung, short sprung friends. from the scratchings of a Dan Ger ous lad.ole ole

rubber ties never break 23.03.07

2007-05-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

I dropped back into jozi and all is pretty cool. My lungs have adapted to the altitude and my blood has cooled down. my toast pops up after 3 minutes, gently toasted to a fine crispy crisp. The peanut butter melts just like I like it-from the centre outwards to the four corners of the crust. I munch my corn flakes just before they get soggy and the coffee takes 2 and a half sugars to leave its drinker sweet. I walk to the tv room and all is fine. I continue thinking of the next opportunity to do some scratching, I feel that no time can be wasted. Yip, it's true, the Big Cheese holds the griller, the George Forman griller, and when He wants us grilled, He 'flicks' the 'on' switch. So I need to take every opportunity that falls me merry way.
A round of golf cancelled, the key to my office so fat it couldn't fit into the key hole and hillary rodham clinton's autobiography. This was the borsht of Sunday morning the 16th and it was only 8.30 am.
The 14th hundred hour had rung its chime and Berger was waiting at the haloed gates of the home of Transvaal cricket, the Wanderers cricket stadium-a fortress of invincibility. A form of cricket has engrossed the masses in these parts and I'm not convinced, it's gross. It's called pro 20/20. 'You call that cricket?', I enquire. Pro 20/20, is a feckin abomination of the old age imperial game of sticks, bats and balls. It's an absolute corrupt form of a gentlemanly game. Vissie calls it 'soek and moer.'-another name for garden cricket.But I loved garden cricket-grass burns, broken windows, grazed knees, WWF aggression, red juice drinks breaks, neighbourly meetings and ball searching sorties. But even this form of the game didn't have a time restriction. One had to grind out an innings, or bowl a consistent line and length taking into consideration the mole hill just off leg stump. Only at the fall of the sun when ball sight was restricted or your mom called you in for toasted cheese snack-wedges would the game be called off. These were real concerns. Pro20 20 you have nothing my friend.Aside from the 'cricket', the day was a ripper, for as berger explained it, 'it's the only time jo'burgers get out in public and consume loads of booze'. It's our sandy beach and we love it. The game ended and I walked home numb. Instead of killing bob woolmer, maybe they should have beaten the guy who invented 20/20.
Back in jozi, I tend not to breach the ten kilometer radius that surrounds my house, largely cos I find all that I need is within the 'golden circle'-fresh milk, oven baked bread, my place of work, the tv remote and my mom's spaghetti bolognaise.
Anyhoo Saturday rolled in like Hymie and Abe's Sunday morning game of bowls- slow, dry and not much room for action replays. But then I spoke to Tal about Saturday night. tal had exhausted me while eating a dry mint icing cup cake, about the fact or non fact that there is loads of sheeite to be done in jozi. one just needs to be the carrot top from CSI New York to find it.He'd been gnawing on my left calf, chewing it to the bone demanding that I head off on one of his rendezvous' and so, short of my calf catching gangrene, I obliged.
The venue was the Red Room. it's red 'cos the lighting is red(I noticed the energy saver light bulbs, niice), the 80's Carpeted wall is plush red, the ceiling is, well, red, and I wore a red Tee. and it's a whopping 30km out of my 'safe zone'. Thank goodness I didn't need a schengen visa for this excursion, I just needed a tank full of cream soda-unleaded Iraqi jet fuel. My Toyota tazz was going to take me to the far ends and beyond.
The red room probably once featured as the dining hall/ bar of the road side s*x motel in which it sat with its cheesy terracotta tiles, strip timber ceilings and wooden bar tops. It's tacky and stuck together with chewing gum, but that's rock n roll, and I love it.It's a rock, indie venue stuffed like a meaty blintze with tagged teens, leather pipes and greasy metal junkies. The music ranged from the 'scream-your-lungs-out-of-their-ribbed-cavity, to the slow melancholy of radiohead, to the bash-your-melon squeals of pearl jam. I sat alone propping up the bar, sucking on one of the last locally brewed Amstels ever, awaiting Tal, the craziest yid I know and his side kick, robin's, (no not batmans' robin) imminent arrival. The Prodigy mix was spinning and so we wiped the parquet floor to a polished amber glow with our slides, jumps and moonwalks. It was a sickly tiring experience. I quite enjoyed the journey to the unknown and hope to do it again.
Well my friends far and oh so wide, ill leave you with a cracking quote i saw on the side of the road on a johnnie walker advert.'i'm a slow walker, but i never walk backwards.' abe lincolnfrom the scratchings of a content laddan, middle name GER

dip a ouma 21.01.07

2007-03-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

as is customary with our action hero,no journey is as easy as two minute noodles.

i didnt enjoy sleeping on a sweat,kotch and snot stained heathrow couch,nor did i enjoy sleeping on a leather lounger in schipol airport,nor did i find it pleasant not showering for 2 days. nor did i find it pleasant missing every connecting flight that id booked, nor was it true that sheremetyavo 2 and sheremetyavo 1 (moscow airports terminal) were within walking distance and nor was it a dream missing a day of my tour to russia. for those 2 days the only solace i got was reading albert einstein's biography in an aiport toilet cubicle.

the russian airline dropped us skidding on the frozen runway safely. like a furry moth to a fluorescent light, so the greasy taxi drivers were drawn to me by the glint of my smile. having parted with loads of my US dineros, i was driven in a car built pre-yuri gagarin's orbit and dropped in the safe hands of a 3 star hotel.
St petersburgh is straight out of a james bond movie, i was now in russia and i was full of love.
st petes wasn't white with snow, but Mars dusty. she's large,rather large,with vast boulevards wide enough to accomodate a tank, a missile launcher,mig fighter jets and ten thousand troops side by side. the boulevards are lined with buildings stark,edgey, intimidating and brutal. i was a bumbling idiot,shivering at the knees.
the nevsky prospekt is her primary artery, it left my blood pulsing at the beauty of russian woman, what with their icey blue eyes,porcelain smooth skin and a seemingly unknowing awarness of their powers of attraction.many most adorned in furs,and furry hats. PETA wouldn't dare be flashin naomi campbell in these parts.she'd be shot,gutted,strung up to dry and woven into a pair of snow boots.
the icey cold of russia is surely intimidating. the cold is made colder by the harsh environment that russia is.
i visited the winter palace and its guilded interiors,walked on a frozen lake,shat a load but i was safe.i avoided indoors as much as possible,i needed the frosty environment to burn my withereing dry skin,i needed to feel russian.i needed to allow my long johns to play an active roll,they didnt. i criss crossed the city on foot,covering as much as a poppy seed on a hamburger bun. the massive river throbbing through the city was frozen stiff,the ice flaked like a wedding cake. it was awesome.

pskov a once trading port at the confluence of a number of rivers, took boiled bay leaves and beat the living blood outta me,heated me to 80 degrees celsius and dumped me into a frozen lake.where im sure i dislocated my arm having slipped on the ice.i was no eric roberts screaming, 'pop it'. but i sure couldn't feel myself after that. we certainly did over kill on the cathedral front,but joy came to me as i slid down hills,drank rusky vodders,munched russian naartjies and punished russian bears...uh i mean beers.
we hit a rusky club real hard. after heading to the bar more than 5 times i was awarded a chuppa chup.it was the dream gift to keep my drool in me and not on my blue suede shoes.
the pechory monastry is alongside estonia. we snaked its under ground cemetry,i wasnt scared, cos i dont ssee dead people.

me and the XL chuppa chup i bought boarded an over night train to moscow. i was in a cabin with our rusky guide, my chuppa chup and this other rusky. so i figured i'd pull out my best russian and start chatting. so im struggling with the word zdravstvu..zdrasv, then he belts out, 'i speak english.' gsus i felt like a bit of a left over burnt chop on a sunday barbeque.

moscow is a far more globalised city than the quiet st petes-it's bustling, energised, and frikking freezing. this city too is so huge if id walked it im sure id be a midget by now,wearing myself away. their underground is efficient,negotiable and rife with pigs. each station is unlike any other.the decoration is detailed,the spaces vast. the trains-wooden ply and leather. the network is in the 30's,its in the past, and i was loving it.
saw an ice hockey match,didnt know my a*s from my elbow regarding rules and stuff,but if millions of americans dig it, it must be alright.
i stumbled and slid on the black slate stoned iced red square and saw lenins embalmed body.was the red granite monolith housing the body russia's answer to madame tussauds?.
i peeled the veneer of most moscow post cards and revealed the tangible,fairytale of the detailed onion domes and magnificent colours of st basils cathedral. it left me in tears.

moscow is full of wealth.it was like a showroom of ganster vehicles, louis vuitton, bentleys and my weary levi's jeans. it constantly felt as though i had someones eyeballs plastered to my back. i didnt know what i could photograph,or who i could stare at. the intimidation factor felt huge, left me uneasy like an egg fried in a non-teflon pan.

so its not very often that wrigleys gets you in trouble. but again surprisingly the fresh mintyness of the wrigleys bead did a hulk hogan bear hug on me,threw me against the ropes, slapped me in the face,then had me in a hold on the floor as the 3 count was called and left me shouting, 'mommy'. it was along side the Kremlin that me and katya were nabbed by the po-lice for exchanging the cool flavoursome wrigleys bead. all of a sudden those russian blood filled veins sewn throughout my body,sank back into the depths of my nervous system trying to look oblivious.
the pigs demanded identification and after like 20minutes they begrudgingly let me be. bastardos

gorky park, sounds a little dorky but it was an organic ice skate park.ey i dont do ice skating,so i watched the russian antics from behind the can of Baltika 7,its a russian brew,rather tasty,it warmed my blood up like alphabet noodle soup.

unfortunately the only bear i saw was the unshaven me in the mirror,scary,real scary.

got my a*s from behind the iron curtain by flying home via amsterdam. i was treated to a flight in a fokker 50. its a dutch designed 50 seater turbo propelled plane. i sat window seat. ive never been in a plane with propellers so i had one or two safety concerns. i just hoped that the kotch stained seat infront of me was no indication of the rippin ride i was about to venture on. it turned out really cool,probably the best flight experience to date.

most of my journeys have been driven by the lure of architecture,this journey to russia was an exploration,it was a journey of discovery-scratching away the shrouds,the heresay.
russia seems to run parallel to the western world. seldom did i see points of intersection between the two. she appears as relevant to any place in europe that ive seen although operating a wee bit differently. i will return someday to exhume my russian roots.

hope you all enjoyed the last of a series of european adventures.stay well my far flung friends.until another day in the sunshine tossing frisbee barefoot.
the dan russian bear hunter,master swordsman and soon to be action figurine,russian blood sold separately.

ps when eating this email it might contains traces of nuts.

play mobile 21.12.06

2007-01-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

having been stuck to the sticky dirtiness of the over night train seat,i awoke with glued eyes in madrid,spain. i headed to my hostel, it was properly grosse, damnit . but after a kip, a dry croissant, and cawfee in a plastic cup,madrid and i became nearly buddies.
my usual buttered moonwalk left me in the city of madrid. my heavy boots weighed me down as i lugged my battered weary body through the large boulevarded landscape and past stately white buildings, skirting red light districts, plazas, city centres,sunday markets scrapping my jersey on walls, all without a hint of recognition. ive never felt more alone,although i was riding Han Solo.
allthough as pap as an over used tennis ball that's done its rounds in garden cricket, i did manage to unearth one of the greatest art galleries id ever been to. it was the Museu Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia. jean nouvel added an add-on which was fire engine red,my kinda red. it wasn't the architecture that left me flashing my pearly's but rather the art.the surrealists left my face screw ball, dali left me scratching my nose on my knee and picasso left me patting the bull i never had and the geometries of josef and annie albers left me on the straight and narrow. the architects Legoretta and Barragan commended the Albers,and the shivers raced at knots down my spine. shawowee

like sand through the hour glass so monday the 18th was a day of my life. unlike a sunny-side up fried egg,it began in a bus. a dry cheese baguette added the excitement and arrival in a wee northern city called Bilbao simply was the gift the tooth fairy gave me for that 3rd incisor i lost on the log ride at gold reef city. bilbao is basque country, this was not the spain barcelona nor madrid offered me. the home region of eta and the master piece that is frank gehry´s guggenheim museum left me mute,for english they dont speak.
the best way to understand the nature of local inhabitants is to rendezvous with them after sunset.and so im walking in an easterly direction and thousands bedecked in red and white scarves, in the other. with my Moses super powers i simply could not part the ocean. so in a classic case,of 'cant beat em join em' me and my flashy adidas' did a pirouette baryshnikov woulda gaped at and followed the hoards. to the home of atletico bilbao the piece of drift wood that i had become, settled.there was a party and i hadnt rsvp'd, mind you i hadnt as yet been invited. so i bought my invitation and settled in to watch spanish premier league football.the bar coded red and white strip of athletic bilbao had mountains of bird seed,bird seed that the supporters crack with their two front gnashers and spit for-wards, to climb. the supporters were an active bunch,smoking and grilling hash browns under the nostrils of pigs, shouting the names of pizza,puta for instance.it was a donut for each side. i think bilbao came out the better for it.

at the end of the boulevard it sat. frank o gehry, on a coffee-ring-stained serviette had scratched his tin foil 25th century masterpiece, and there it was before me. its titanium skin shiny shimmery,and more glossy than the gazillions of publications it's emblazoned. i had pitched tent in bilbao for 3 days,and for 3 days i oggled over this thing. it cannot be classified as building for other than a front door it holds none of the characteristics of building. i circumvented this building a million times,i climbed beneath bridges-my fear of heights couldn't hold me back, i climbed on bridges, and went long and came in short to photograph it. its cavernous bowels forced me into spelunking, touching, feeling, riding every obscure surface. its sheathed in splintered glass,sand stone and art so large it dwarfed me. this thing blew me away,blew me outta the rice paddies that are the principles of architecture and left me sprawled, unconscious and dazed.
my final day in this fantasmagoric city saw me walking through the streets of the old town. there i bumped into about 3000 people cueing up for a cupla hogs on the spit.the blood-sausage-wrapped-in-a-tortilla stains on the city dwellers would take more than OMO to cleanse them of their joys. for some reason the whole town just didnt pitch up to work that day.they drank and munched and wore green scarves. it was weird, 3rd nipple weird.
bilbao was a total surprise.i ventured there for a piece of architecture and what i found was frodo's shire.

a day arrived,it stuck me on its back, and galloped me into San Sebastian.i dont know what the hell san sebastian was other than a beautiful town,rusted landscape art,crazy humans swimming in the sea and a tennis club named Wimbledon, but a hard court version.

and so like bubble wrap in the hands of my sister, what was going along as the perfectly planned vacation,went pop.i had built in 4 hours to do a 20 minute journey to Bilbao airport. price for the journey:1 euro 20,time to airport without glitches:20 minutes,what happened to chaito:priceless.on the bus front the dot matrix read AEROPORTO, now i aint no spaniard, but that means airport to me. when i said aeroporto to the driver he replied SI,now i aint no spaniard, but that means YES to me. with backpack on back i squeezed through the bus aisle like mashed animal through a mincer. that was clue one that this bus wasnt going to the airport. clue 2: the bus driver charged our hero 3 euro. clue 3, the road signs pointing to the airport were facing the other way.and finally clue 4: after 45minutes i again asked the driver if this bus was taking me to the airport. his head swinging my way and with a look-ma-no-hands action he said, 'no no',and so did the 20 or so fellow passengers. it was an hour to the next city,an hour back. my driver drove like a bat outta hell to get me back to the bus station. it was a riot.i chased and hunted the airport bus down and to it i arrived with time to spare. oh and did i mention there was a 4 hour take-off delay?

oh folks what a journey it was,what a piece of architecture and what a life i live. hope alls well my far flung friends.stay cool, stay fresh, keep walking.yours in home made custardthe chaito man,russian bear hunter,master swordsman and action figurine who is billed to compete with the Playstaion 3 for the hearts of kids.

so come on folks,if the pakistani cricket team can scratch,then why the hell can't you, SCRATCH
http://scratchingsofdan.blogspot.com/

sirloin steak 07.12.06

2006-12-31T09:46:00.000-08:00

i arrived in porto, but the flight getting there was the scariest i'd ever encountered. the plane shook us up like a james bond martini, shaken not stirred and there was certainly no twist of lemon included. were kids inebriated on wine gums controlling the pilot's joystick, fending off the commie bastards,or was it just turbulence, according to the pilot, that rocked this wee boeing?. i clutched my olives tightly,but if the plane was going down ,well i was going down with it. extreme cloud cover and the flashing wing lights left me feeling as though i was in the scene of Die Hard:with avengeance and was hoping for another take but this was no movie, ooh it was scary. i sniffed the air on arrival and i could smell portugal. what it smelled like i cannot say, was it prego roll,was it chourico or was it the flame grilled peri peri nandos half chicken and chips?popping outta the metro ,i emerged blinded by the glint of the blue white tiles that clad the old dirtied church before me. the moonlight bounced off the haphazard mosaic paving, leaving me with a warm rich cadbury's chocolate milk joy in my heart. it was a randy lil impression that i first got of porto. the pavements, although not the yellow brick road, left me feeling that this lil town was my Oz.

again the guttural dutch architect, rem kolhaas left me numb at the knees at his casa da musica.the balding not barefoot dutchman plucked the identity of porto from its grimey, spatchcock chicken,port wine stained mosaiced streets and weaved it into his modern day sandstone, stainless steel glinting edifice, that is neither straight nor curved, but was dropped from the sky and so as it landed it shall be. koolhaas has created or manipulated spaces humans simply aren't accustomed to. he rearranges space in a way we´ve only experienced in the movies. was i walking straight, were the walls skew or was i just drunk from the fresh air?. its a kick *ss piece of architectural dreaming that inspires.

the museu serralves that i walked hours to find is the modern art museum. the building designed by the now buried alvaro siza, sits in the most awesome gardens,lush with greenery,wetted by lakes,ponds and falls and scented in crushed eucalyptus, and houses a whole bunch of contemporary art which turned me green, and left my throat drowning in bile. aargh somebody hand me a noose so i can hang myself and feel the burning sensation of rope against my skin rather than look at contemporary art.

it is not wise to be a member of alcoholics anonymous and to vist porto, for porto is mothership of port wine and bachannalian activity. the nipple from whence the juice flows is in Gaia, which is nestled in and amongst hills and that lies across a grey black cast iron triangulated bridge designed by an apprentice to Eiffel himself. tearing my calf muscles up cobbled windey walkways, only to endure that for the sweet syrupy taste of port. i visted 3 cellars,did the walking tour 3 times, leaving me well versed in the production of this fine juice, and shlurped loads of free port. hmm hmm. having consumed the ruby red, i know i aint a scottisher, aint an englisher but a porto-geezer.
the 10.12.06 saw me arrive in Aviero. i was so tired from too many late nights that i walked this snazzy lil town with only half an eye open. but that half eye new that the sun was a fireball in the glassy blue sky and the bright glint and vibrancy of the ceramic tiles on the coloured houses informed my spongy brain straight away that i was by the sea. returning to porto from aviero, i was stuck on a train with a whole bunch of portu-geezers. usually i'd have stood up and offered my seat. this time i just sat slouched and drooled down the side of the train while staring into the sunset.
i paid and made the 3hour journey to lishboa.it's the most torturous city you'll ever walk through. i enjoyed the city for it seems to still be etched in the granite rock of old europe. globalisation still has not quiet sunk its claws into the once great super power. this rough diamond has begun undergoing the process of polishing with its flashy, efficient metro and having been cradle to the Lisbon expo of 98-a futuristic expression of portugal with its sail like vasco da gama tower,ski-lift and oceanarium which sits on a man-made island, stands out amongst talked about cities. my eyes like venus flytraps sucked the creativity outta alvaro siza's catenaried pavilion, santiago calatrava's oriente station-an organic sculptured master piece and the other back-bending architectural feats.
belem and its custard pies left my shirt stained. there i was confronted by da gama and friends staring at me out of the stone that they were carved. a wee wooden tram powered itself up 45degree inclines and dropped me in Moorish alfama. i hit sintra, a mountainous city. got a jungle fever stumbling through under ground grottos, and rising turrets at the quinta da regaleira, a mystical, fantasmagoric landscaped garden. i ate something portuguese, ordered it off the menu, my finger being the pointer. i dont think it was a portuguese but im here to tell the story. thank goodness it came with a side order of beans to help indigestion. i ate the tapas too, without knowing that it wasn't for free, they carved me big dineros, big bobby dineros. i didnt know what i was getting into.and finally having spent my life savings on a beer in a bar that was decorated in all the GI joes i could ever wish to stand alongside,i felt at home. it was just about time to leave this old rice paddy and so off to spain to siesta i rode.i had booked over night passage for madrid.
stay chooned my far flung friends. yours in the smells of tangerines, the russian bear hunter and master swordsman,fighter of fires and rider of red bicycles. all additions sold separately
ps all action heroes are breast fed, so ensuring powerful immune systems to fight unwanted disease and to fend off colds and flus. the russian bear hunter supports breast feeding. this was a public announcement

skin graft 26.11.06

2006-12-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

ah so brixton academy dialled my number and having left a message, i returned the call. outside the academy it said 'the killers. sold out'. but i was luggin tickets.
i had purchased some wild cherry flavoured stimorol in a dark purply packet rippled for effect in denmark. they'd cost me many a danish crown but hey i was getting rid of small change. i was packing these chewy flavoursome gums for the tasty rush id need while sweating like an afghani in a deseret hole hiding from the allies.so i get to the front door of the brixton and the fecking bouncer stops short of an anal probe and then says, 'whats this?', so im like, 'whats what?' and he's like, 'this?' and i'm like 'what?, oh thaat, its my chewing gum from denmark', and he's like, 'well can you please toss them in the can'. So i stare at him like he's a vegetable. 'well then ill chew them before i go in.' 'no can do'. so im like, 'why?'. so the bouncer retorts, 'cos if 50 000 people throw their gum on the floor someone's gotta pick it up.' at that point in my mind i was thinking, 'go f*ck yourself buddy, those gums were important to me, they had sentimental value.' and so it came to pass that i lobbed the poor bastards in the trash can and there they huddled all lonesome amidst the half consumed bottles of water. farewell gummies.
anyhoo lb and i headed straight into the bowels of the gig, but first i had to take a leak. finally when the flood gates had been evacuated we headed into the venue and similar to the iraqi people's pain and suffering we too underwent a gruelling task of listening to two bands, one whose frontman had jeans way too tight and who squealed like heidi and another band who i simply have forgotten. so much for presentation, buddy. we were stood by and subjected to the over eagerness of two 'hobbits' from the island of wight, who warned us of their impending over reactions and excitement to the onslaught of the killers. hell i didnt give a toot, they were unaware too of my transformation into the hulk at the riffs of rockn roll. he he, mwah mwah
set up like a cheap surprise party, the stage was littered with coloured flags, fake rats and mini skeletons. and emblazoned with the title of their second album, sam's town.lead singer flowers dressed in a penguin suit, and sporting a hairy 'stache like a squirrel stuck to his upper left played the crowd into frenzied vegetarians in a butchers shop. i sweated loads and shed kilos. i elbowed, i stood on, i jumped and i screamed. it was a moshing pit and i was loving it.it was a super duper gig, and one more dream come true.their tunes are pop rock and easily listened to, they rocked until i couldn't hear, i stopped short of blowing loot on merchandise. i was a winner. it was an uber nightand one for the scrap book.
thanks to lb for the pics

caesarean section 19.11.06

2006-12-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

having peeled myself off of the velcro that is the hot swedish babes, i made a run for it jumping onto a moving ferry. once it docked, i jumped ship and landed in Helsingor, denmark. so i get there and start missioning for a hostel. i land up walking like tom hanks in a liquorice factory for about an hour, i get to the frikkin hostel which was honestly in the sticks and the cherry behind the desk choons me, 'sorry buddy but we're allbooked up' so i swear like an ally thats been dropped into a ring of maraudin iraqi insurgents, forget about the city, hopped on a train andlanded on a large manure heap called Arhus.

its a student town and was described as a 'small city that has everything you need.'i didnt need anything there, i just wanted to get out.and after 2 days ejected my own a*s outta there.but first i had to endure a hostel that was packed with bosnians running a food trade from my room. it wasnt cool-i was scared, really scared. i passed as little time in the room which involved seeing the same city streets over and over again. the city was dank and grey, with a peehole of a city centre, and a dainty little canal. i couldnt wait to get my scrawny a*s outta there.

i screamed running for copenhagen,or koobenhavn,like indiana jones runnning from that big rolling rock. ahh ahh,
if youre into irish pubs, f*ck dublin, go to copenhagen. i watched man united get the false teeth beaten outta them by celtic surrounded by scotsmen, it wasn't pleasant i tell you.its a city of squares and boulevards,of ports and statues. its modern architecture makes front covers of the glossy mags, and even the city hosted the mtv music awards. i visited the docklands. watched bulldozers make reinforcing steel bars look like spaghetti, making way for stainless steel and glass tower blocks, got my sneakers dirty and got denied entry to MVRDV's seed silo apartment block, a modern edifice, again. scuffed my shoes on the dump that is Christiania, now a shadow of its former drug induced self. it rained buckets and i cursed. i travelled for minutes to see zaha hadids Ordrupgaard extension. its an art gallery, moulded in black and set in a forest. it rained and i photographed it till i smelled like a wet puppy dawg. i was told not to take photos inside,i did.copenhagens landscape is pocked with wind farms,its the future now.went to see an art exhibition by robert raushenberg, man alive this dude is shyte hot. he's 79 pushing octagenarian status but i loved his youthful scratching. got my eyes involved in the history museum and dug it like a kid sucking on jelly sherbert. the vikings were a rancid bunch-they loved gold, jewels, and some seriously ornate weaponry. argh argh. i drank reasonably cheap booze and met a theologian who took up a challenge not to drink for a year. that night we met, there was 100 litres of free booze being channeled through the digestive systems of most kids there, bar this oke.
and finally it was time for me to cross the Oresund bridge. to make it from copenhagen to malmo and not get wet. so i jumped a train, and after 20 minutes i was in sweden. i thought itd be like appollo 13´s adventure to space but it turned out like dehydrated ice cream with julio iglesiais´ son singing background tracks.
im not too sure that this was a cool city\country or not. i figured it´s a pretty homogenous european city, although it´s scandinavian. so sorry copenhagen, but this here action figurine aint gonna use you as his hideout lair.
please note:no animals were killed in the making of this email,although some were badly injured and might never walk again

free range eggs 09.10.06

2006-12-24T06:40:00.000-08:00

wow so i returned to londres and i hit the tarmac like an over zealous down hill luge rider in a hailstorm. my days have been both lack lustre like south africas batting and yet ive had some absolute corkers.
like a rat in a blender i was off at 100 rpm. i kicked off my stay back in londres with a field excursion to richmond park where i elloped with the deer, spotted their spoor, threw stones into the pond, jumped a bus and landed in kingston which is a right royal blast. so with time running oh so short i visited a scratch on the earth's a*s. it was croydon that i fell and to the croydon museum of all places. i sat in plush red seats in the bleachers, the cheap seats watching buddy bochy in his touring production of gilbert and sullivans Pirates of penzance, and then squeezed my emaciated body in to the brixton academy to see the Raconteurs make meat balls outta the lunatic crowd. fried fish and battersea power station was next on the ol list. its up for renewal, but the chinese preceded its battering with an absorbing exhibition within its carcass. i viewed the tate modern's innards which were infested by sliding shimmering worms. i have a fear of heights, so i said i'd just watch. they called it art, but i thought they were joking.my love of the series ER, and my now extensive medical knowledge enthused me to check out the oldest operating room in europe as well as the royal medical museum full of animals and human severed parts, it didnt even freak this dawg out. i went home to eat meat stew.
it was a whirl wind three weeks, shawowee.

bruce kawakimoto 06.11.06

2006-12-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

scandinavia, and i'm not done with you.

turku,10 hour ferry,stockholm,4hour train journey, the loss of my only pair of H&M gloves and in malmo,sweden our x2000 train docked. crashed in a hostel which resembled an IKEA show room,and i aint sh*tting you. the light piney wood and greyed steel consumed my every waking moment, even evading like river algae my mind, leaving me dreamless.

the city is the sponge, the old town forms the oozing mousse of this chocolate eclair that me and elli munched like the fat german bastard kid in charlie and the chocolate factory,shmearing our faces sick. the city's cobbled stones,her waynes coffee, her old square, her parks dressed in golden autumnal colours,and the statues green with wear. i surveyed cemetaries,sigurd lewerentz made his mark there with chapels and crematoria,it was a blast. we perused indoor skateparks run by grannies selling pastries and cinamon buns. the half pipes, pools and street set-up -their smell of fresh plywood filled our noses, were being carved by beanies,skinny jeans,connies and the echo of rock n roll band Placebo. wow what a city.

malmo has become an anchor of the Oresund bridge which ties Sweden to Denmark. since the link the city has grown and continues to grow. it's a pretty large city, with a harbour area that's being transformed into multifunctional spaces lying in the shadow of santiago calatrava's twisting torso building which is a beacon that can be seen from afar. elli and i tried to wangle our way into the torso, but were halted by the nastiest swedes we'd ever met. it just peeves me that a company gets a great architect to design their building,yet no one is allowed in to see it. its like creating an artwork and hiding it in the garden shed away from prying eyes. bollocks i say, bollocks. the housing that's been developed consits of all types of design from pure tasteless sh*t, to money-can't-by-class, to absolute peaches. as we snaked our way in and out of the many stone-paved alleyways and over fake lakes,we turned a corner and there in the distance was the postcard picture of the Oresund bridge spanning the sea. ah it was an awesome sight and one i'd yearned for over cornuti pizza. eventually, sadly it was time for me to bid elli farewell.

with glazed eyes, i dropped into a wee town called trelleborg, sweden on the 17 11 2006, a day that has become an infection on my memory. i'll definitely erase it from the deap echelons of my carazy mind. i should have known what to expect having seen a wee hillock, emblazoned on it in white rocks the name of the town. as we approached it, i thought, 'gees what a dump', and figured like all small citiesthe outskirts being industrial tend to look like absolute po*h. i was sure the centre would be awesome and the sea edge would be like the carribean on abalmy day. but nooo... the gateway to the centre was a trashy lil library, then came an empty market square, then an H&M and then some small toy store with crappy toys and then more crap and crap and the long town that it is just resembled the biggest turd, like mr hanky p*oh.ive never given a town so little respect, and so jumped ship after a torturous 2 hours and returned to Malmo.
goodbye Malmo and off to helsinborg, pronounced helsing boerie, 'stop lauging thats how the swedes say it',i trained.what a dainty little town, described by the swede at the hostel as the swedish french riviera. having walked the mountainous port city, i came to realise why it's called HELLsinborg. i walked its glorious forests and bumped into her crematorium.there i drank carlsberg gold 'imported' to sweden via a white van driven by a bosnian from germany,with Jason,a glaswegian ex con who did time for dancing with mary jane. i photographed yachts, ships and panoramic views.
it was time to tear me away from the gropes of the swedes,and into denmark id run.the adventure continues and the boots are looking sturdy.

oops i did it again 02.11.06

2006-12-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

you wont believe what bloody well happened to me when i arrived at tampere, which is the city from where i would then go to turku to meet elli in finland.

arriving in tampere at 11pm touching down on iced over runways and mounds of ploughed snow, hearing the crazy apple bite of crushed ice under foot,i was sure i could crash in a hostel i'd been to previously,no probleemo... pasted on the hostel door, 'sorry closed for the winter.' written in the conversation bubble of the comic book story that is my life, 'f***ck, not again,why me?'kicking and screaming under the clear icey-below-6-degree skies i head for the boozed bum-filled train station. sitting comfortably i find my nostrils peaking tothe waft of bacon. some pigs come round, it's 2 am and they choon, 'sorry buddy but we're closed tilll 5am, come again soon.' gsus you're joking. now im really in sh2t street, corner ball sack and hairy crack. the boozers and i were discarded like the bums they were.a 150 euro hotel room and i make sure i figure out other options. now its minus 6 degrees,so i walk to this other hostel.....closed.my gob stopping glazed eyeballs just wanted to squeeze out a syrupy tear-to cry like a wee girl just one more time. then this kids story just went and got itself a whole lot worse,as he slipped, bags and all,ploughing himself into the heaped snow.
'i could have died' is what i'm talking about.with hand aching, throbbing and freezing,i hobbled, making notredam look like a sissy.hobbling, hobbling, my hand feels all wet so i pull it out of my pocket. it was just about swimming in its own bloody blood. plunging my hand into the crisp fresh snow i shouted expletives. with my hand in the snow, i thought that id have to saw my arm off with my swiss army pen knife, i nearly died.the golden arches had never looked so inviting. a quick stop in macdonalds gets my sugar and blood levels back to a stable bp 360 over 60.
its like minus 6 still. i begin walking to the hotel but then iread this pamphlet advertising another cheaper hotel on the same road, so after a trudge of about 3km in heavy snow,gail winds and icey pavements i arrive at the self service hotel. 55euro a debit to my card,and a supposed access key code which made itself scarce to me. 2 hours spent outside the room trying to work out the code and eventually it was back to the train station. it was properly like a national geographic exposei thought i was gonna die, man. in that cold, but im alright, and havent suffered much more damage than a paper cut.

elli the finn, joined me for another chapter of this crazed comic book story. and it was off to Rovaniemi that we did go. billed as the gateway to lapland and the home to santa and his crew if you got 30 euro to fork out. it's where santa has his village and there you can meet the ol' geezer and send a post card, i didnt. one road, one bridge and an iced over river, which left my mouth to dribble. a great cawfee shop, drink as much as you can and an alvar aalto centre, and ofcourse a town square named after the eurovision winners, Lordi. it was a pretty pleasant town/village, but won't get awards for being party central.

we breached the arctic circle and into Inari way up north we bussed, carving the snowy fields and sugar dusted pine trees. shawowee it was uber toitwe were heading further north and far colder ,-18 degrees and a great ice creamyou can have. there was so much snow. we saunaed and plunged into one degree water, totally freezed my wee goons off, walked a mountain as the sun reflected off the snowy crystals in the icey cold , it was the most unbelievable experience ever. it was my small step for mankind. and then the hot english mustard on the pot roast of this adventure saw me and elli gazing, dribbling at the surreal northern lights-red, yellow, blue and green,the sky was awash. reminding me of scenes from 'close encounters of the third kind'. spielberg wasn't directing this wee episode.

it was an adventure that i could never have imagined being involved in. i was a sunny african calloused from walking barefoot, kicking cans in the streets of cooking jozi,but who was now bundled in woolies thermals, H&M gloves, a primark jersey,a jacket,a set of you-look-good-on-the-dance-floor blue long johns and an austin powers-like hairy chest and a tiger named elli.

i am a rock n roll fan 14.09.06

2006-10-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Richie and I headed to Milton Keynes for what could be the gayest story of my life. It could leave me excommunicated, harangued and left guttered in a stew of old frot tomatoes, spinach and diced pumpkin.
The 14th September was ignited by former take that minnow Robbie Williams and me, richie and about 64 000 women shrieked like lunatics (well me and richie didn't).
We called the proverbial sickie on Thursday and rocked up in milton keyes having ridden Virgin style from Euston station. I ordered a super veggie subway, hoping to munch it in the grassy bowl that is the Milton Keynes concert venue., but nooo, that fat bouncer made me shove all 12 inches down my gullet. The grub was sprawled all over me like a two year old being force fed mashed carrot.
We slid our way down the side of the grassy bowl and into the golden circle we were. We felt like heroes. The golden circle at Milton Keynes resembles the wee pool of milk where the last few super absorbent soggy cornflakes at the bottom of your cereal bowl settle. Those flakes are difficult to get to, but boy they have the sickest lil view. The stage sits so close, I felt like a rock star. The well oiled, well connected curved yellow meccano-set-from-the-80's that was the stage huddled over us, the support bands and the mighty Robert Williams. Personally I was a lego maniac.
Orson, certainly weren't that, they got a coupla decent radio lyrics, but hey, I probably wouldn't buy the album, pirate their cd, copy the tape, stick them on my pod or even let them pay backing tracks to z-grade horror flicks.
Robby rolled onto stage amidst flames and kabooms and every sort of pyro mania shyte you could think of. I couldn't stop chuckling to myself knowing that I was in and amongst once Take-That fans. The show was like a massive bubble chewy gum. as the wrapper was unravelled the candy sweetness of it left my teeth rotten to the gum. It was so poppy the massive bubble that the experience blew, burst and we were covered in the sticky gooey sugary strawberry flavourness of it all. It was so bubble gum and candy floss that I no longer have a sweet tooth.
Robbie puts on a show, a show biz show. this is predictable, rehearsed, its true West-End. What its doing attracting gazilions of frenzied bra-waving chickita's to huge football stadiums I simply do not know, but he does it. We were swimming in a sea of oestrogen, a pool of drool. This is what Robbie does to girls. But what I do know is this dude is pure entertainment, pure gimmick. He's f*ckin good in anybody's lingo.
after the gig the masses drained outta the milton keynes bowl, and hopped onto packed trains, packed African style. It was carazy night and one i wont tell my grand kids about.
farewell my far flung friendsthe russian bear hunter, master swordsman and clubber of baby seals....oops did i say that allowed?

This message will self destruct in 5…4…3…2….1……KABOOM,

sub woofer 31.07.06

2006-10-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

the time it takes a steak from being grilled medium to well done was the amount of time by which ryanair decided to close the big vacuum sealed doors of one of their teeny tiny boeing 737's so leaving me stranded like tom hanks in cast away at stansted airport at 18.30pm.
next flight to Gothenburg City........7.15am the next morning.
FU...............................................................................................................CK

i had to fork over 40 squid rings (copyright capitan america) and believe you me that didn't come garnished or with a side order of rice. that's the price you gotta pay for missing a flight with the flying rodent that is ryanair.
and so began a torturously exciting adventure, but luckily in my company waiting for me with a subway sarmie on the swedish side was ray 'bones barbone', who was nearly shot while attempting to make a pat cash on the swedish royal palace one wednesday morning.

bones and i chewed the fat,grizzle and meaty bits of a two legged journey which culminated in stockholm.
the airport at gothenburg is no bigger than my garden shed, and i aint sh*tting you. our bags rocked up off the plane on a frikkin tractor. it was all agrarian to me, all green and woody. saw dust filled my nose and i was loving it.
i dig hostels, you never know who is gonna be cooking their pasta next to you. me and boney man quickly made buddies with some other travellers and all of a sudden the city was all ours. we bent that wee town like a pole vault attached to the hairy sergei bubka.
Gothers is a wee little city, again like most european cities, it sits real perty on a river. we quickly whipped though the city like tasmanian devils, drank all their beer, chewed their sh*tty tobacco and punished our jamesons. we punished that jamesons so hard, it made guantanamo bay look like play school.

having raced through gothenburg, stockholm would find us weathered and tired at the end of the track.
Stockies aint no joke. she harbours loads of water and is pocked with emerald green coloured onion domes and roofs. her architecture is detailed and vibrant in colour. her patch work city layout is stitched by fingers of water, squares and grassy playgrounds.her old cobbled town is quaint and steep with streets only 4 people deep.
the swedes are icy blonde, air brushed and strikingly beautiful. the two of us were burdened by our fat lips we dragged behind us, and our eyes needed to be soldered to their sockets after each days journeying.

we had booked one night in the old town thinking we could then book another as we pleased, but noo, stockies had to go and be difficult. it so happened that every gay in every village was in stockholm for her gay pride parade. so me and the boney man having burnt our rubber soled shoes to chewy gum looking for available beds decided to go the night sleepless and so a night of torture began.

we jump started the night punishing a litre of my favoutite jet fuel vodka in some kiddies park in wee swedish suburbia under the guise of dark. we bar hopped and made an attempt to party the night like there was no tomorrow. we chilled in a park and watched the sun rise from a bus stop bench. wow what a night.

that morn boney man left me stranded on a hard wood train station bench to stew in the putrid stench of stale cigarette smoke and humid sweat. i stayed on for another couple of nights battered and as tired as john waynes old leather belt.

the architecture of sweden occupied my days. gunnar asplund's chapel left me with grass burns and his library, unfortunately inaccessible, left me wandering and illiterate.

the sunny days saw me strolling the bays and soaking the sun. every swede was out baking to a fine crisp, and plunging the waters.it was an incredible sight.

swimming in the black water bay of stockholm after a night of cheap heineken was as freaky and as surreal as a b-grade horror movie.'ill go get my swimming trunks before we go.' sorry dude but we dont have time for that, we'll go bare ass, you can swim in your jocks.' hmm mm. from the water i peered long at the lit city and high at the overhead concrete bridge. it was an experience ive placed in my back pocket secure from being erased.

i continued to spend my days dangling my raw feet over the harbours edge staring at the glorious sparkling Baltic sea, munching pre-made salads, industrialised french baguettes and sipping ice cold coca colas. i saw design museums and the great vassa museum-home to a splintered viking ship. i walked my way to the geodesic dome that is the ice hockey stadium, bought a california shirt from a svelte swede who was a fan of Oasis, 'keep listening to rock n roll', i watched gays on motor bikes, gays in trucks, gays who worked for Ikea, gay cops, gay docs ,it was the gayest thing i've ever seen. phew what a day, a day as gay as the hills

finally i had found a city that had not been drowned in the gangrenous rot of globalisation.
stockies, you are my friend, so long buddy, i do hope to return.

from the scratchings of saddened lad.
stay well my far flung friends and remember, skating goofy aint mickey mouse.
sweetly
the dan russian bear hunter and master swordsman

red peppadews 23.07.06

2006-09-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

'i will be there one day,o yes i will'.
4 years ago i uttered these words over my mom's oven baked chicken, gently steamed peas and rice and while watching a snippet of the Farnborough Airshow. and so it came to pass that i made a melon-sized opening in my diary and circled the date of the 22nd of July with a big fat khoki pen for this carazy event.

a great airshow requires a massive landing strip, display space, cheap dry and sh*tty noodles,some eager beaver airplane fanatics-eugene, chaito, geller, the seligmans and flying machinery that makes your bmw 325i function like a commodore 64. the planes on display were the greatest that any army has to offer and we got to breathe the fumes of their wrath.

lurking at the far end of the runway alongside the portaloos and probably the highlight of the breezy day was the new Airbus A380. its an absolute behemoth. as it stares you down, you shiver like a quiver. it's bulbous head, and beady eyes, and its stubby body would see it playing the starring role in an Alien movie. its arched wings are rather beautiful. she's chunky as hell. try staring her down, this bad girl aint the playground bully, but she'll lift all 550 of you and dump you across the ocean.

the 5 people deep crowd munching on sweaty pies, oggling the sling-shot take-off speeds, smelling the oily air reeking of high octane jet fuel, and hearing the roaring grunt of jet engines, stared non-believing at the noodle-like A340, the longest commercial beast to puncture the skies. it is as nimble as jack and her antics will leave you frothing at the mouth. she pulled moves out of her top drawer leaving us stappled to the tarmac with dry mouths,and deadlegs. the euro fighter, named the typhoon, is a piece of european engineering built to scare the sheeite outta any iraqi.

we saw jump harriers-the pride of the royal airforce-it's full of hot air, but it'll blow any insurgent out of their toyota diesel pick-up. we saw mother russia's MiGs-they're as nimble as a toy aeroplane in the hands of a 3 year old and as pure as the vodka the commies drink. we saw apache attack hellicopters-she is american and yet she is not, she is slim, she is stealth. the swedish grippen, protects south africas skies, from whom i cannot say. she tore the sky into absolute shredded tuna yawing, rolling and pitching her way through the air space of farnborough. the bomber of today aint the big tin can you kicked around the school play yard in days gone yonder. they're known as bones. the B1-B bomber is as sleek as a bone,it's tar black and it'll tear the skinoff your skull while doing mach 2. 'chew on that,fat boy.'

it was an absolute ripper of a day that i've pencilled into 'chaito's top 10 excursions of all time.'

i went to see with elli from finland the Serpentine pavillion by rem koolhaas. each year someone out there chooses a famous architect that hasn't built shyte in the UK to put up a temporary pavillion. this year it was the dutchman rem kolhaas who was drawn out of the lucky packet. honestly dude, that big bulbous piece of inflatable cow turd is a stain on the rolling fox hunting hills of hyde park. may a hungry furry fox come and chew the polycarbonate walls of your pavillion and may sesame street's yellow big bird pierce that swollen dr bean that is the roof.
hope you enjoyed another adventure from our intrepid russian bear hunter.stay cool my friendssweetly, the dan, russian bear hunter, master swordsman and soon to be the action figurine all the kids wanna own.

salty nuts 04.07.06

2006-07-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

i was as pomped as a german x-rated dvd on arriving at Ben Gurion airport,tel aviv on the 4th of July, a great day for tom cruise and american independence too.

in all my days i haven't been to a gazillion airports, but this airport was pretty overwhelming. it has no neon signs or sparkly bits in the floor tiles,it didn't remind me of scenes from the second Die Hard movie nor did it make me feel at home knowing there was a Macdonalds around the corner.rather its use of warm, sand coloured marbles,rough and smooth textures, an efficient movement of people, views air side, land side, west side and east, its staggered passport control and hot israeli girls in fitted uniforms all made for a glinting smile that'd make my dentist say 'nice work son, where can i get a set?'

i went to yeshiva for two weeks on a programme,to learn the ancient texts of my people. but i found myself unpacking chicken breasts and loading them onto trays and packing fridges-its a good thing i have space planning skills and am half descent at Tetris. anyone doing this job without that knowledge would surely have plummeted into the dark abyss of depression. maybe these were measures for turning me into a better scholar-wax on wax off. that chicken experience left me tender and as a result i spent eves huddling over the porcelain soup bowl heaving my lungs. i walked outta there emmaciated and scurvied,but learned in the way of the jewish people.

i trekked and carved out a dust path through the city and hills of jerusalem,retracing the battles fought by the defense forces. i visited the wailing wall,it was heaving with people,i just wanted contemplation time. i walked the uphill streets of mea sharim and felt a wee bit of an outsider. i saw the supreme court, but was not close enough to touch it. its a hilly city and the only way forward is up.

Yad Vashem, a holocaust memorial is an architecture of symbolism. it is a marker, a timeline of european jewry from its flourishing beginnings, to its near demise, to its 'freedom' at the establishement of the State. designed by Moshe Safdie, it is one of very few buildings in Jerusalem not clad in the bright burn-your-eyes-in-the-reflecting-light jerusalem stone. it has a zig zag interior for surely our history has been no yellow brick road.

a ten minute drive from Jerusalem one experiences a moon-like landscape and there we trekked up Masada-it was the last stronghold of the jewish people after the 2nd temple was detroyed by the Romans. the plateau affords happy trekkers views to the dead sea and beyond to our arab neighbours. the journey left my dust filled nose a cave for bats. we soldiered through an oasis-Ein gedi, and finally having sweated and shimmed like a mine workers arm-pit in africa, we made tracks towards the dead sea and a plunge and mud bath awaited.the dead sea. it's dead cos if you flogged it it wouldn't get up. its one big chicken and matzah ball soup-its as salty as hell, tepid like a flat coke on a hot summers day and you float like a matzah ball. all in all a recipe for good health. i donned the dead sea mud, became a coconut and shrivelled to a raisin, but my skin glows now and i can't fall asleep.

jerusalem is a carazy city. the city is no artefact for we touch and inhabit ancient history. all that has been excavated becomes a living element of the city. the city does not become the museum, it integrates itself into modern everyday life. it is a hotbed for all the great religions of the world. and only someone who has visited would know the proximity of religious sites. i have a strong identity towards the land,and at every turn, besides smelling the garlic breath of a local, i feel ive walked where my people did for so many years, i feel ive touched the same stone they had, and studied and read the same text too. a crazy thought, huh?

we spent friday night at the Wailing wall and off to a trio of tishes at around 1am. im not sure i can explain 'tish', so google it. anyhoo one of them was in a room. the 4 walled room was surrounded on 3sides by tiered seating. the charaydim, the religious jews wearing furry strimmels and delicately embroidered, golden robes stand on these benches swaying, singing till the early hours of the eve. their tune is calming, whimsical, uplifting and subliminal. to an outsiders eye,it is totally surreal,almot unbelievable. it reminded me of a scene from the matrix. it was something out of judaism i simply could not have conceived of. fruit is then offered to all those in the room. it was a sweet, juicy, cling-peachy ending to an other worldly experience.

a week into my journey something of ours was taken which did not belong to them, and like my mom would always say, 'stop fighting boys, someone's gonna cry.' this episode ended a possible adventure to the northern cities of Tsfat and Haifa. they'll have to wait another day. bneia brak and a goof in the oh so warm, jelly fish riddled beaches of netanya were a pretty sweet substitute nonetheless.

so im chatting to this cherry,a friend of mine in a bar in jerusalem. at the time i had a beard that would have made tom hanks in Castaway turn into apple crumble. so she goes, 'listen dude why dont you shave that beard, get a proper job, stop f*cking around and...' here comes the killer......'GET A BMW'. i stared her down, my eyes fired green lazer beams to turn her into jelly and said, 'gees lady, i wouldn't be caught dead cruising in a bmw, im an Audi all- roader sorta guy-with fake mud application.'

while seated in Ben Gurion in the smoking section (the seats were the most comfy), dammit, staring out into the hazey distance that was Tel Aviv, i notice on the tarmac a stream of ethiopian yids get down on hands and knees and kiss the holy land. it's the land im apart of.

anyhoo my friends, country folk and groupies hope alls tough and sturdy like a well jointed brick wall. keep it cool and eat the skin of a potato, it's the best part.

sweetly

the dan russian bear hunter, master swordsman and heir apparent to a pretzel bagel factory(my favourite snack of late)

quote of the day:i over heard an american cherry half my size belting out the following words over her blinger while standing in Ben Yehuda street on going into a club, 'its gonna be cool the more drugs the better.'

i am a donut 28.06.06

2006-07-30T04:49:00.000-07:00

a ticket the length of a bread loaf to a world cup game lead me and 2 chommies, Eu-go and Moonshine to the cap city of berlin, germany.

dropping into the city,i expected to see this dark dank DC comics depiction of a city.

the modern slick new city had taken an electric grinder to my psyche and had ground down all preconceived notions of it, however still not leaving it splinterless.

berlin is fresh out of the bubble wrap. the city which harbours cutting edge, monumental-but -not-imposing architecture that could amputate a limb is full of exciting, diverse spaces buffering large boulevards and dispersed green lungs. its an egaging city that leaves the eyeball wandering where the hell it should look.

it holds very little physical residue of the past-it was bombed to weetbix shreds , no carcass, no carrion.

berlin is an electric city,emerging with varying and numerous hotspots. some slick some grungy,some above ground, some underground, however the common thread is a pint of beer.

being a regular at the annual german beer fest by WITS i felt a slight sense of well being-beer binds us.

we crashed at this hostel which was so outta town that i might have seen tumble weed blow across past my bed,although if you were a big fat,hairy powerful scotsman you could probably toss a caber the distance we had to walk to potsdammer platz. ooh it was so hot,i thought i was gonna platz.

the city openly exposes the tragedies of the past and brings the memory to a tangible fore.

the jewish memorial is a landscape set in a heavily pedestrainised public space. it is an undulating desert of step-up step-down monolithic blocks all set in exposed polished concrete.

the rythmic play of light shadow and dark shadow reveal its architecture, its dynamic aesthetic. if you are not there it is not architecture,you become the navigating ship through its rectilinear grid.

the jewish museum is theoretical and architectural in its stance. it's lightning bolt prescence is carved out of a suburban garden hedge,and grafted to a classical portico. it is sheathed in stainless steel, with cuts and wounds as windows pearing towards historical memories. the jaggeded building with its portals is the revealed element of a hidden lattice which only comes to light on closer study. the internal layout is pretty disconcerting,disorientating.

it is a special building.

ah a papercut from that oversized ticket to the 1st quarter final nearly bled me to death,but hey, i could tell my grandkids a war story. the mighty mighty germans with their ironed shorts took on the greasy argentines in their blue and white pyjama strip. berlin,mother-in-law to the greatest modern day tragedy was to host the game at the olympic stadium which is one of a few nazi-fascist buildings that still stand in the city.

the beer started to fill mugs before noon, capped supporters-their flags as their super strength, ticket touts were there to leave supporters outta pocket, it didnt matter we were in the 2nd tier.

it was the germans that flatlined their meat eating counterparts,and to the semi-finals they would go.

the stadium drained like the blood out of a butchered antelope and to the streets the people flowed. hooters, jumping germans, cars and buses stapled still. Koedam like an over fed 5year old at a cake and candy fest was bursting at its buckles. it was a day etched into our brains, 'dan, eugene and shauno wuz here'

ah the Reichstag. set atop a plinth,proudly over
looking the berliners has been crowned in a jewel by the podgy Foster. the dome is the yolk of a fried egg-glowing and emitting ideas of new birth. it is an element of pure decoration,holds very little for practical purpose yet has become the looking glass for visitors and germans alike. the 'Stag is now a government building that has opened itself up to the people becoming a public face. its un an unbelievable space and an experience which one doesn't pick up at a 'buy bulk and save store.'

perched on empty beer kegs along the fan mile under a tree we watched the portuguese make chourico sausage outta the english. we joined a pub crawl in oranjesburg. free booze was on offer and we raised our hands, we drank like we were thirsty, screamed like lunatics, dragged Moonshine through the streets, watched an arsonist wield his flame thrower,which probably didnt fulfill occupational health and safety conditions especially since the bar and trees were all of timber. we were on tv and we didnt give a sheeite. my booze wasn't finished so i took it home. we walked the streets with an over excited tour guided on speed, the pergamom museum cultured us on berlin's roman history and the gates of babylon reflected blue in our eyes. we saw the ampleman, he's the traffic light now he's emblazoned on our tshirts. we walked for hours looking for subway sarmies, when we saw one ,we knew we were safe and cos thats all chaito wanted.

wow what an absolute cracker of an experience. and dont forget, dip a german they taste great in chocolate so oh far flung ones,if opportunity knocks,definitely open that wee door-alice did.

sweetly

the chaitoman,the russian bear hunter, master swordsman and clip on beard sold separately

popped lung 22.06.06

2006-07-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

shrouded in a plume of orange smoke, glowing with the red light of a robot, emersed in veins of canals-not for shooting up, but for boating- lying just right of the centre of the world and full of people that remind me of bergies, lies the netherlands. hell, who ever thought of the netherlands. it's debaucherous, bacchanalian and full of examples of your primary school sex ed teacher's hold up cards. but this little land mass aint all sex, drugs and heineken beer. it was once a former empire, setting sail for unknown lands, raping, pillaging (or maybe not), and plying its trade in goods. its a stewing pot of great architecture, beautiful woman bicycles, flippin bicycles, a vibrant street culture, slap tjips(frittas), plateau toilets which simply are unpleasant and words like 'asheblief'.

if you were a kid that got on your mom's nerves, she'd tell you to 'go play on the highway'.in this particular instance you'd be run over by a car.but in holland it's more exciting, for you could firstly be panneled by a tram and left looking like a snackwedge machine left its marks on you, then with grill marks and limp arms a bus will rip half of you apart dumping you in the car lane looking like a half eaten cheese blintze. then while you find half yourself leopard crawling along the vehicle lane a car will leave a portion of you splattered on its windscreen and embedded in its tread. now looking like your mom's apple sauce, thinking your'e closer to home, some crazy loony on a bicycle, yes a bicycle will probably run into you ringing that nasty little jingle bell to tell you to get the f*ck outta the way, and this'll be done without the hint of slowing down. thanking goodness up until now i have survived, its now only the raising and lowering of the canal bridges that i need to overcome-bridges that could leave me pulped and ready for canning.

rotterdam was first my port of call. its an amoeba of differing architectural forms and designs. if you can sketch it on a serviette, the 'dammers' will build it. it's not the prettiest city and if it was my daughter i'd probably put her up for adoption, but wow, she has a great energy. i did get excited by the masses on their bicycles and there's an array of colours too as long as its black. there's a fortune of urban regeneration taking place, it's hard hat territory so watch your back cos you could be skewered by scaffolding. the port is the largest in europe, criss crossed by tension and structural steel bridges. its a humble city and home to one of the greatest architects, Rem Koolhaas. it has tiny houses, with on street glazing, and if you took a stroll at night through suburbia it'd be like window shopping. while here the city was awash in orange. orange always seemed to me like the colour nobody digs,its the sorta colour that gets picked last when choosing a colour for a wedding retinue, but the dutch just seem to make it awesome. all of a sudden you just wanna eat the dutch thinking they were these nutritious glowing oranges.

after 3 nights rotting in the dam, i jumped ship and headed for Den Hague. it sounds so poncy, and i suppose it is. but the air of snobbyness is crusted in sh*t too. its not a well knitted city. with its hotspots here, there and past the train station. the local fare was haring. it's raw herring jammed into a roll and sprinkled in onion cubes and im a fan.the haring aint for sushi eaters. its the next level. only bowels clad in pre-rusted steel will endure, just ask me.
as i wandered the streets of den hague i saw surf boards and i thought, 'what the f*ck'.the lady behind the bar who hucked me so much i nearly tripped over my fallen ear, told me she was a surfer and i thought, 'what the f*ck', i saw the map-the hague is bounded on one side by a big blob of blue and i thought , 'what the f*ck'. so i caught tram 11 and there it was the powdery brown beach of holland, its copacabana, its tequila sunrise, its pina collada. and all i could think of was, 'what the f*ck'. i chilled on the beach one sunset-just me myself and my wine gum joob joobs. did i get drunk? i'll let my liver tell you.

i left the hague one morning after my cornflakes and shawowee i landed in amsterdam an hour later. its world famed, asphyxiated in its own billows of sweet smelling herb and nestled on reclaimed buttressed land. its full of dykes and rainbow flags-its the gay capital of the netherlands. the city is a segment, veined in canals-a graveyard for old bicycles. its flipping large and i know it. its overwhelmed by tourists eager for the freedom to hit the ol' binger-i didnt give a sh*t, i can buy it from the BP-its more fun to steal marbles than to be given them- pork a pro and drown in heineken beer. the beer they serve has large head, normally i'd argue, but hey the folk are willing to serve. it really is a beautiful city, steeped in history, awash in great art and culture. anne frank was there, in bronze, nestled among the flowers of sorrow. rembrandt was light and dark, affluent and debaucherous and a night watch he did paint, but he died a pauper, blowing his loot like he owned it. van Gogh wasn't trained but he was a genius, a loony, an earless wonder. one of the great cities of the world and i was there, man

ah utrecht, my final stop and probably my most favoured in the netherlands. it's not a city and its not a village. it fits in to its place like a frog in a sock. i stayed in this hostel in which everyone seemed to work there and there was asmuch nosh as you could feed on. utrecht's canal lined streets, its cobbled stoned walk ways, its vicious cycle riders, its little bunny named miffy, its gerrit rietveld gem, and its rem koolhaas master piece all excited me like a beetle in a dung ball. its all happening in utrecht and im loving it. it's a student town, with an expansive university, littered with buildings by Meccannoo and OMA. its full of squares and genteel folk.
i visited the gerrit rietveld schroeder house and it totally took the magic carpet from under my feet. i was absolutely blown away by this wee piece of modern architecture. i'd seen it in tacky old library books and on the grimy over head projector,but now i got to feel it(thats a lie,we weren't alowed to touch anything, it was all rubber gloves and plastic bootys),to experience it and wow what a building.its a true building of the machine age with its sliding moving walls and its glass bottle ability to allow for light. the way the house unfolds, unpacks and reconfigures itself would leave the Transformers' looking as impotent as an 80 year old wearing tight jeans.
gerrit wasn't trained as an architect, but as a furniture designer. while other kids were playing with wooden horse drawn carts, gerrit was playing with lego.he was given the task of creating a house that'd look like a parrot amongst pidgeons. it's pure genius.

while in utrecht i watched holland battle the argentines and the city was awash in orange. there were no celebrations but all were drowning in half pints of heineken. from this wikeed experience, its become known to me that the dutch are a liberated bunch for they BBQ on the sidewalk, they walk the streets and canal lined terraces without fear, they leave their bikes along the garden wall and it chooses to stay there. they have a public transport system-who needs a car?. they are a happy bunch and they arent even on drugs.

what a country and it felt good again to flash my pearly whites at someone and to receive a string back.

anyhoo oh far flung ones,another journey and another story for the grand kids. im a wee bit in arears with the blogging but soon the rivers will flow and don't forget youre not gonna win the lottery if you stop scratching.
http://scratc hingsofdan.blogspot.com/

wise young chaito 24.06.06

2006-06-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

i got myself totally wasted like a 3 day old blueberry muffin. it was my birthday on the 14th May and i managed to amass a whole bunch of my lunatic friends together at dust bar,and what we did to the place was turn it into an absolute carvery. sorry all you vegetarians.

i dunno but ive always had green finger's,so my gran said.
diggin in the dirt, pulverising cut worms, growing fertiliser heaps, sticking potatoes in my cupboards so they'd sprout and looking after the falcke heirloom. i even had a couple of bonsai trees which perished after a holiday in plett-i came home to find the poor bastards dry as a dinosaur bone. so it would be most fitting that one would find me at the Chelsea Flower Show. a sold out event i might say. i took a half day off work to enjoy the glorious sunshine and the sweet colours of bloomin gardens, folks in gumboots sucking a lolly-you see, a bergie on the beaches of clifton aint the only one to make you jolly, an array of secateurs that'd make any ninja crumble with fear and mile long snaking queues to view the prize gardens. under the tent there were mushrooms like smurfs lived in, there were stringy, gangly orchids, there were carnivourous plants-alien like which'd scary any predator, there were kaleidiscopic rhododendrons, the ones that line amen corner at augusta national, red roses and Lady Di's too. there were garden gnomes, fake plastic trees, a manure heap and many a sweet pea. and then there was a kirstenbosch- detailed in proteas, stone work, water features and dried namaqualand daisies-it was suif african and it was a winner. it was a kick ass event with some uber toit gardens. but there were many too that just boarded on boksburgh cheese. a cracking event and one for that itinerary. it'll make your grand ma say,'gees that was kief.'

since my bday ive pretty much flown below the radar undetected and close to sober. so after a glorious kip the night before, me, marcus corniman and hurwi set sail for twickenham rugby stadium for the world rugby sevens. ive mentioned that touts who sell tickets at the stadium epitomise the shyte between my toes,but hurwy managed to find a 'good one' who flogged his tickets for less then their asking price. so i said 'uber toit', and for 5 squidders we had a riotous day out. the rugger was fast, swift and full of grass burns. it was a cracker of a day which saw SA triumph in the soup bowl event, good on you bokke.a true patriotic moment.

the weekend of the 9 june was a ripper that squeezed itself like an orange in a garlic press.me and richie gave a two fingered whistle and the isle of wight music festival came galloping towards us,eager to be hitched and to be rode like a crazy horse in the wild west.we rode tube, we rode bus, we walked and we ferried. we were on the isle of wight and it was our turn to colonise. we pitched tent,it was my first. we made use of the rows of portaloos to break the prevailing winds-a strategy Hannibal might have even employed enroute to conquering Carthage. settled in , richies air bed inflated andnow rock n roll would be my doggie bone for 3 ripping days. when you fork out your pickled testicle for a ticket, you fork out and do away with all humanity, hygene and dignity. you will shim like the french hugenouts after the laborious journey from france, but at least youll have heard the greatest rock bands. for three fine days the little island cooked-it was scorching hot and beer was the choice of champions. girls in cowboy boots and cowboy hats, hippies dry and wrinkled as seedless raisins, little kids with mud caked feet and snotty noses. the isle, a quiet scratch on the earths surface was now transformed into a refugee-camp like mass. the prodigy headlined the first eve with placebo. placebo are one of my fav bands, but the melting soft-serve ice-cream they dished up simply left no sweet taste in my mouth, but rather stains all over my tshirt. the nuttiness of the prodigy erased all the heart ache and took a whithered, limp crowd dry from exhaustion and boredom to a frenatically aroused, hedonistic state.the crowd heaved and bounced like crazy people on lsd, moshing, elbowing and stamping on feet.it was great fun and like ronald mcdonald, ' i was loving it'. the crowd were enchanted, and nothing on earth woulda peeled us from the mind manipulating lunacy that was the prodigyfor two more days with stewing pickled livers and with dust filled nostrils and sweaty pits we heaved to old rockers primal scream, lou reed and the legendary foo fighters. new emerging band Cathead drew inspiration from pink floyd and the genius of radiohead to excite me.the upperroom and the windows were exposed for the first time to a massive crowd and an international stage, they musta shat enough bricks to rebuild wore torn bosnia, but they were damn fine. there was also turd dished out. coldplay were so gay that i was embarrased to be in the crowd. i stood alongside about 7 teeny bopping chicks that went absolutely loony for the band screeching like wild banshees,it was scary. richard ashcroft is just sad and full of political bulsh1t and i reckon if he took drugs he'd probably feel a lot better. get over yourself mate, smoke a doobee and forget about the past.
finally the festival exhausted itself out, burnt itself out to its last cinders and i had to get outa there.
getting outta the isle took 8 hours and included being picked up by an isle of wight inhabitant whose future had been palm read, a kip on a bench at a train station, 4 apples and a freak who told me i was going bald. but i let it all slide cos rockn roll was my disprin.
i have vowed that soon, oh yes soon, i shall have a rock n roll band. so ma start padding my room, cos its gonna be loud.

so all you heroes in a half shell, hope you've enjoyed another Chronicles of Dan and don't forget, 'if the paint is peeling, scratch it'

credits roll on........

post script.
'wise young chaito' was a quote penned by hazey b
'Chronicles of Dan' was a quote penned by jacque c

chuck yeager 02.02.06

2006-06-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

Ive peeled the shiny red wrapper of the last couple of weeks to reveal one of those great Quality Street chocolates that get eaten first, leaving the liquorice ones with their coloured seeds to rot and die in hell.

as a kid of the 70's with a snotty nose and an aeroplane tshirt which i wore everyday, i was introduced by my older sibling to the glorious bluey purple album of the dave mathews band. if i look back into the cavernous library of my brain, i would probably remember that it was one of the first albums i ever blew my hard earned loot on.

and so it came to pass that dave mathews was playing and we were going. birmingham was our port of call. word had it that the midlands was a brewing stew of red, finely chopped brutality and a side order of violent folk. it was also said that brirmingham was the biggest dump. personally i kinda dug it. it has also become a hotspot for an obscure piece of architecture-the selfridges blob- a mutation of a scoop of blue jelly smothered in sprinkles. in a previous scratching i wrote of future systems, specifically Jan Kaplicky as the biggest turd of an architect. but now i was sitting and shlurping on a cupa hot chawclate in one of his buildings and i actually thought it was great, the building that is. its this amoebic blue blob skinned in a blue sheath and pimpled with wee spun-aluminium discs. if you threw them you could probably cause damage.
contextually the lump both fits in for it totally contrasts all that it surrounds,and it doesnt for it simply has no realtionship to anything around it. it makes me believe that what ever doodle i scratch while ordering fast food over the phone, could be built someday.

the time for the gig had rolled through.the carling academy, no not a school for drinking, is like a big school hall worthy of demolition,but when packed to capacity it becomes another animal. standing, we were engulfed by the herbal reak of sweet mary jane and the sweaty pits of folk from the hinter land. the crowd was tightly packed throbbing, ebbing and drifting to the slow drawn american drawl that has erased all remnants of a boytjie from SA. he played Han Solo, tweaking and straining his voice to belt out a plethora of sounds, thought possible only in a recording studio. he strummed that geet with fingers nimble enough to screw in a maglite torch light bulb and drank tea. it was a great concert and to be watching a master at work was a birthday weekend i probably wont forget.

so my colleague's computer crashed, so he told me and i responded, 'what did it crash into?

the 14th May and my bday rolled itself out onto the grassy pitch of Lord's cricket ground. ah Lord's the home of the gentlemanly game of cricket. kev,richie and i pulled into the ground to see the 'lankans etch out a draw against the poms.
black bowlers...umbrellas and bow ties, and freddy lobbing it in from the grove end. the great greens of the MCC slope forwards and back, its a sea of green but i never got sick. you may not scream ,you may not shout, cos the smell of pigs wil have you in cuffs. candy stripes and old boys clubs. it turns its nose up at you. its a tiny looking stadium, the romans woulda laughed. its hemmed in on one side by the ancient sandy club house and on the other side by Future Systems' press box-the slick space odyssey-esque sausage thats been split while being boiled and glass front inserted. the cricket wasnt worth the salt i added to my slap tjips, but nevertheless it was a totally sweet day out

when i was a wee tyke, with big zits the size of mount fujimori in japan, an afro the size of peter beardsleys and one friend named sven who i kept in my cupboard with my other toy action figurines and a latin translation that needed doing, my bro slipped a radiohead album into my hairy paws. huh, who the f*ck was radiohead?. i didnt know my a*se from my elbow when it came to music. but this little album,called the bends, and i would begin a journey, a relationship which would become stronger and more powerful than any pokemon power.
the 18th of May at the alexander place in Hammersmith will be a day which has been chipped into my memory for all time.
Radiohead were headlining and i nearly cried. on the tickets it chooned 'special guest', i figured that was me and kev.
we sat upstairs in the behemoth that is the Palace, my knees were up my nostrils and people wouldnt sit the f*ck down, but i didnt give a sh*t (partially).
the stage was tightly set up with guitars, keyboards, pianos, drums andsynthesizers. the tools radiohead know how to manipulate and thats exactly what they do. there are no rules , there are no musical boundaries
jonny greenwood hovers, shelters and cradles that guitar of his like a kid who has stolen his best mate's marbles. how many musicians make use of their geet as a violin-johnny greenwood does.,how many musicians can play piano-johnny greenwood can. thom yorke, the front man, a scrawny rat who has the facial features of the bi-product between the monster from goonies and shrek can torment words and frighten lyrics into creative genius. his bodyily movements, contortions and torques would see him handcuffed and thrown into a mental institute.
radiohead have a palette of sounds that is simply beyond comprehension.the band is so tightly composed. the flashing lights and strobes woulda left a japanese nintendo playing 12 year old in sugary sherbert convulsions. to tell you that it was one of the greatest experiences of my short little life would be an understatement.

so ive come up with this idea.they say that computers will rule the world.i actually believe them, but not in the way that tom cruise found out in war of the worlds, but rather in their choice to simply not function and leave the world pondering what pencils and paper are.

i bought the Guardian newspaper. it took me a couple of bog sessions, a couple of days, a 450mile return train journey, a fish and chips meal and a tube ride to chew through it. part of it still sits on my floor.

my boots just keep on walking,dragging me behind and leaving me scratched and torn and needing skin graphs. ive bled because of those boots, ive sweated because of those boots, i now have an ingrown toe nail thanks to those boots. but when they pull me-kicking and screaming like a hungover raggedy anne and andy doll to a wee town down south called Bexhill -on-sea, i can only give them a wipe down and say 'thank you buddy'.
Bexhill is honestly at the crack end of britain. its where old folk go to take long strolls on the knobbly, pebbly beaches that seam this islandic landscape to rid their feet of callouses. fishermen cast their hooks yonder so that i may feed on the best fish and chips ive so far munched. the day i dropped into Bexhill was on a sunday and as always on this little island it wasnt sunny. it pelted down with the rain so hard on my face, the sky was dark and grey, the sea was a stable heaving with white horses and as i sat on my knees crying 'NNNNNOOOOO' , 'the camera panned upwards filming from a birds eyes view. from what i saw, there was an old age home consuming an acre of prime beach front property, a fish and tjips cafe, a museum that got in the way of my intended destination and an extremely beautiful modernist building. eric mendehlson designed the de le warr pavilion and oh what a beauty it is. it was the first modernist building to be built in britain.this building didnt need glossy magazines to make it look phenomenal. the way it sat on a patch of diagonally mowed lawn with its stark white washed walls juxtaposed against the redy orangey browny blobbyness of the beachs' pebbles was simply the perfect setting. its an elongated body with semi-circular glazed stairwells at either end. it has neither front nor back. its ribboned windows are light thirsty and its terrace is great for a game of bowls.3 grandmas perch beneath the sensuously spiralling staircase,looking outwards to the sea pondering beef stew.

what a great building, what a great architect. he's a guy whose book now siddles along side me.

well good folks, its the time when i leave my job as well as endless hours of internet connectivity.so if you dont heaar from me for a while,dont fear,just keep scratching. im going on many a journey now, and eventually will scratch them into your pc' s.so hang tuf and dont cry.
sweetly
the chaito man russian bear hunter,masterswordsman and soon to be Cahity,spanish action figurine version 2.0

Milk Coupons 15.05.2006

2006-05-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

i picked up a copy of Time magazine in gay paree where i met my folks.the article announced the demise of our world,this all occuring while i sipped on a cup of cawfee in a polystyrene cup.

on my return from gay paree i was well fortunate to have in my possession a ticket to the haloed ground of Old Trafford to watch the mighty Manchester United hopefuly make perogen outta middlesborough.lo and behold it didnt happen-RUUd RUUD, the limp dutchman missed a peanut that i coulda scored. but what a day it was,what a stadium.It runs with the efficiency and precision of a german saurkraut factory. it glows with this red halo, and has sprouted like a denny mushroom out of the sh*ttest part of the glorious city of manchester. sir matt busby watches over the inhabitants of manchester and down upon the 'city' fans. i sat south stand behind the dugout in and amongst a frikkin united nations of supporters. it was really surreal to see the footie stars ive only seen on tv-i nearly drowned them in my gob. although it was an absolute corker of a day ,what grilled my cheese to a burnt crisp was the lack of vocal support from the crowd where i perched.i mean i gave my best efforts but the feckers around just watched and ate hotdogs. so i figure United is a truelly globally supported team. but why do i support such a team?well wouldnt you if the company as a whole has a concern for our environment. they have separate bins for plastics bottles and paper rubbish. there are even wee slips of paper into which you can squash your bubble gum. now thats a team, an environmentally concerned football team.so to all you pommies who cant understand why i support such a great team,that is why.

so i bought the ticket to see the footie, but didnt even consider how i was to get there or back. it so happened that there were no trains that night after the football,so i crashed my silly a*s in picadilly train station for frikking 7 hours. now ive pulled all nighters in my wee life time. but staring at a clock and being watched by a bunch of degenerate half breeds on crack is not my idea of a pleasant, creative allnighter. by 5.30 in the morn i felt like a white washed pair of socks that had been on their owners feet for a gazillion kilometers and went straight to work.gsus what a day.

Beaulieu Motor museum( i actually had to ask the bird at the counter how to pronounce b-you-lee) is out in southhampton. its a museum housing a collection of vehicles owned by one uber rich lord montague. crikey its a sprawling behemoth of a piece of a land that this kid has organised himself. im sure every time his gran sent him to buy the bread and milk and told him he could keep the change,he hoarded those pennies, hoarded them like an oversized hairy squirrel on speed. the museum is quite phenomenal, and the cars that he hoardes are rather subliminal too. from back to the future's stainless steel delorian, to james bonds amphibious lotus. some day soon id like to pick up my cherry from her parent's home in one of 4 vehicles that i saw there.
vehicle number one. a vehicle that has surpassed all eras, nullified all fashion fads, left all other cars in its rip roaring wake-the shelby ac cobra is a gloriously beautiful ,aesthetically killing piece of shrapnel. i can see my cherry's family drooling all over it. vehicle number 2. the Ford GT40, a classic american svelte road chewing machine with its curvaceous lines and painted blue candy stripe. this vehicle would see my cherry hugging the car thinking it was me. vehicle number 3, the willy jeep, the willy jeep that rushed through vietnam, mowing down any Charlie in the glow of its rounded headlamps. it would need to be pre-sprayed in fake manure to give it that authentic feel. this vehicle would see my cherry's kid brother chewing on the 16inch 'takkies' thinking he was in a candy store. and then of course the wee orange car that' if it goes beyond 50miles per/hour,it tends to 'roll''. this one would see my future parents-in-law dis-own all their kids and take me as their adopted son.

cool house is a house that isnt decked in spanish roof tiles,precast concrete ionic columns bought in kyalami, bathrooms with gold coated taps, walls rendered in the 'aged' look or garden hedges cut in the shape of the venus de milo,thats what we call Tuscan sh*t. koolhaas, rather, is one of the greatest architects to walk this round planet and not fall off. Rem as id call him if i knew him personally is a dutch man and penned a book that altered the way architects think, analyze and conceive of their manifesto's. this was all done when he was a wee sapling at 28 years old. this dutchman is way huge. he presented his most famous piece of literature, Delirious New York to about 150 freaks commonly known as architects. he spoke for 1 hour and we clutched every word he uttered in his guttural accent. dutch,that certainly aint no language of lurv.
again i was inspired by a great architect

i jumped the jubilee line to a cd sale at wembley, not thee wembley stadium but rather a wee mangy little appendage that had perched itself in the shadow of the modern slick new Wembley Stadium. there were all sorts of music genres and all types of music formats , from cd to tape to vinyl. it was packed with weirdos that were in to musty old vinyls and japanese imports. i managed to splash out on 2 albums,Ash and Harry Connick,both set me back a whoppping total 2 squid rings, battered for extra flavour ( copyright: captain america).

anyhoo compadres, ive tried to pull out all stops on this one,but hey,the bath tub is empty
so hang tuf oh far flung ones.until another day.

sweetly the dan russian bear hunter,master swordsman and soon to be action figurine with biodegradable package to be environmentally friendly.

Freedom Fries 05.05.06

2006-05-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

so pesach rolled through with matzah balls in tow and i was left dry in the mouth. my compadre brad, on leaving this wee island offered me what could be considered his trump card,his most rare garbage pail kid, his rubber duckie when he was a wee tyke-it was his george foreman. before i knew what living alone meant,i thought george forman was a fat bastard heavy weight, but now his name is synonymous with kitchen appliances.(so be careful what you wish for, for george surely wished only to be heavyweight champion of the world).
there's only one george forman. forget about the 'rumble in the jungle', lets talk about the griller thats a thriller. who the hell needs appliances?.well now i know.this modern marvel, shiny white on the outside,teflon black on the inside, ridged and valleyed to give a burger the perfect texture, was now all mine. i was just waiting for all those years of watching Floyds and jimbo oliver's cooking programmes to be soaked up by my pip like a dry bun in gravy.i dont need a pot and a pan and a spoon and a hoover and a dish washer,all i need is a george forman griller.being a master chef seems so close,so close indeed.

me and daniel managed to organise davis cup tickets. we didnt give a shyte that the venue might be in a back street of glasgow,we just thought 'ey big event,have ticket will go.' we travelled so far and for so many hours that frodos search for the ring was an absolute joke,certainly not worth writing 3 books. the journey placed infront of us torturous tasks like chatting to grannies, catching public transport and speaking to local inhabitants about yorkshire pudding. in glasgow we partied like partial glaswegians-we didnt deliver a pavement pizza after the night, we chowed the worst fry up ive ever munched,and then we finally arrived to see great britain lose.

so i was fortunate enough to get my gruby bear hunting mits on some seriously exclusive pearl jam tickets. if i wasnt all for the experience id have flogged them off for a whopping 400 squiddinks each.but i figured,nah,i hate the f*ckin tauts,so why should i become one.anyhoo pearl jam played after a six year absence at the london astoria. another art deco corner building with its towering domes expressing the corner to a heaving street,tottenham court road. its plastered with an old school billboard with movable letters.the only surprising thing is that it didnt have 'pearl jam' emblazoned all over it.well me and my pepperoni munching wee italian mate andrea got inside.the interior is this cavernous black bowel. everything is black,tiered to the front and rises to a stage.

after a wee wait the bowels of the astoria erupted like a prune induced enema. eddie vedder with his long locks and definitive sand paper grinding voice supported by 3 geet players lunged on to stage belting out 'world wide suicide.' the one geet player mike mcreedy,was honestly a show on his own,that dude played one of 4 geets. he strummed those geets, included the classic v-shaped one, like he owned the astoria. this dude was simply awesome.
the crowd was made up of true Jam fans,belting out his lyrics like they wrote them and all i wanted to shout out was, 'shut the f*ck up, i never paid 40 squids to hear you a**holes singing.'
the crowd bounced to the rifling rythms of the guitars and the meat tenderising thuds of the basey drums and we did too.

wow what a gig,and although i wasn't the biggest jam fan,ill definitely now spread it on my sarmies.

so i met this friend of mine and we were to go out.she chooned me she was on antibiotics.so, amazed and unable to gather my thoughts i said 'gees like what for?',a kidney infection,she responded. so i chooned her to talk to it nicely.

have you ever started baking a potato and something quite extraordinary happens when the microwave clock strikes 2minutes 45. well it all happened to me on a carazy day in april.
while baking the king of vegetables, he spud,the alarm of my humble abode started howling like a banshee caught in a hunters trap. i figured,ey its probably a test run,like when youre at achool during exams and some kid gets their mate to phone in a bomb scare.but i got it all wrong. the frenchie i stay with went to do a wee bit of reconnaisance,and followed with a heaving call to arms.we rushed to the scene, to be greeted by billowing smoke from some dudes room. trying to kick the hardwood door,like they do in the movies,we looked like darn right mary poppins'.that door,she wasnt budging. 'quick lets get our as*es over to the window outside.' with hydrant in hand i didnt give a sh*t,i was gonna smash that window and save the kid's Marks and Spencers dress shirt. a fellow inhabitant yoddled at me not to smash the window fearing a backdraft-'dude you been watching way too many hollywood flicks'. but then reasoning set in and i simply opened the window.
we blew our hydrants onto that wee fire like we were kids with big water pistols. eventually the fire lads pulled through,flashing lights and two,yes two trucks,as if it were 9/11. what a great story and a true adventure for a superhero action figurine. for every action figurine needs CV references when applying for work.

anyhoo folks keep it real,and put suntan cream on when youre out in the sun even if it is over cast.
sweetly
the dan russian bear hunter master swordsman, and fire fighting action figurine,with wee dag with spots called charlie sold separately

and dont forget folks when you have chhiken pox as a kid your folks tell you not to scratch, but im now telling you, scratch scratch till they turn into scabs

ps.note me and my pa hunting bears in paris

cheese cubes 19.04.06

2006-04-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

again the Lord fired up His 15 000 candle power maglight, double AA batteries included and beamed it onto me and i glowed.
thursday could have been just another day- saying farewell to a work colleague and munching volumes of hazel nutty baclava, but no, i needed a story, a story i could tell my grand kids about.

Scala, a former porno venue,theatre to the test tube careers of James Blunt and wet cotton wooled saucer to the kidney bean that was Coldplay.
i ran there hoping to get into a sold out gig. who was the band? hell i didnt know but from what i gathered from a newspaper article,they were the 'hottest shyte since godzilla soiled himself on seeing King Kong' .
i waited as a ticketless hero against the stark stuccoed wall of the Scala. 2 school girls waited in front of me,i enquired from them if there were any tickets available,they said 'no,they dont think so.' then one of them went on to quip that 'it seemed that every one seemed to be scratching their nuts today.', i followed on with 'maybe its cos its spring,its that gathering season.' we shared a chuckle.
i reached the finite point of the queue.'ticket?. 'i dont have one,are there any available?'. 'buy one from the touts', said the big massive dreadlocked bouncer, with forearms the size of boabab trees.'i dont deal with touts.' so he gently escorted me away. i figured lemme linger, cos if you linger longer you never know what might transpire. the queue eventually thinned and i returned to the bouncer,'dude are there any returns?,as the big oaf replied 'NO',that Maglite all of a sudden shone mightly hard upon me and some good chap said 'anyone want a free ticket?.' all of a sudden there were melodies in my head,symphonies were going off. again i let fate cast me deep into the river current, and with it a huge fish i did ensnarl.
the mosaiced stairway led me to the bar, i searched for the good chap.
The Scala is a tiny venue, only 800 raucous rock fans could squeeze in, 3tiers of standing room. at the back of the venue you could taste the sweat on the lead singers brow. 2 support bands pulled through,one was a jamie cullum wannabee,except he played a guitar and was a pommie,the other, a trio of rockers,all geet players called bright space.
i didnt know what to expect from OK GO,the main act. but what we were dished was paisley backgrounds and the intro to a rolling stones track. 3 mick jagger lips lookalikes and one melon with a goatee. these were chicago's latest export. they ripped into their geets like a bare knuckeld fighter to a traitorous spy. the knee jolting energy of the lead was awesomely inspiring. they howled and they squeeled and they said' f*ck off,mother f8ckers' and i lagged and i said ,sh*t these okes are damn fine,damn frikkin fine.

Sunday ascended feeling 30 kilos heavier after a night of carboloading. it resurrected itself and was greeted by a bowl of granola,warm 2% low fat milk and a slice of toast smothered in medium cheddar cheese slices.
i was off to blow some coupons on a pair of boots. i knew what i thought i wanted,i just hoped id dig them.so i chooned the store help who was as lazy as sh*t for a pair. i tried to squeeze into them but struggled,so the dude said he'd help me. trying to force my foot into the boot at a most crooked angle, my once limber body contorted and twisted liquirice-style. eventually my right foot said 'f*ck it, i dont want to be a part of you and this fiasco any more.' and so it started to send me into this pulverising,chew -my -arm-off kinda painful cramp. eventually i busted out, 'ah gsus dude let go.' the oke didnt exactly comprehend. short of kicking him unintentionally in the goons,i managed to wrangle my self free and my right foot succumbed. phew,whatever happened to cruising around barefoot?.

that day worked its way into a trip to the Thames to catch the big boat race. the titanic battle betwixt cambridge and oxford. i was pretty excited. richie and i rode shotgun in cart number 6 on a train headed for Hammersmith to meet sam and her bro.so we waited peering over all these human heads,eventually the boats arrived and then they were gone.

tuesday reared its head bucking, kicking and torquing, trying to get rid of the tassled, worn-leathered-boots-day that the tuesday work day was. i figured i was gonna try squeeze my 6-foot-so-many-inches-wire-frame into a sold out gig. but the kev gave me a jingle on the ol digital mobile.'dude wana check one flew over the cuckoos nest?' i was so keen that i bolted outta work so fast,i left my skin limp on the chair.
charing cross and there it is, The GarrickTheatre. 10 squidders and a wink to the cherry tearing tickets and we were in. we sat in the bleachers,but hey,columbus didnt just fly Easy Jet to america eating caviar and salticrax,no he suffered,,he suffereed scurvy,wood worm and a bunch of rotting deck hands. the movie for me was what some might say of War of the Worlds, the best movie ever,well not ever but it was a damn fine piece of 8mm. i expected nothing less of the stage pro-duction. slater reminded me hugely of jack nicholson with his greased back locks parked on his head like a bat, his russian bear hunting, vodka swirling raspy voice and that energy that only 7 year olds have when high on red juice.
what a great show, my bones left there feeling theyd been tickled

i went off see my mate bochy in his production of Galileo in the sticks they call guildford. bochy played the lead and i was well impressed. we went out for a toot afterwards and realised actors are just people too.

anyhoo compadres,its been fun.
so keep it cool and dont wear more than you have to,cos where the hell are you gonna put it if you gotta take it off.

sweetly
the dan russian bear hunter,master swordsman,and soon to be real fire fighting action figurine

porcini mushrooms 12.04.06

2006-04-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

A new day began- blood red poppies, blazingly bright green emerald freshly mown lawns, carpeted grassy nolls blanketed in white daisies,blue skies as blue as a fresh pair of finely sewn levi's jeans,sunny side up sunshine oh so warm on my face and the putrid stench of dried urine and calcified sh*t. ah, i was in rome

day one saw me orientate myself-where the tourists are and where there are even more tourists. i happened to crash land my fighter jet smack bang in tourist central at the colliseum and forum vicinity-the strawberry jam of the donut that is rome. the Colliseum is simply a phenomenal master piece. i went on a guided tour of the place given by Mauro,the purple wearing jumper-and-leather jacket italian from Tivoli(and i thought tivoli was a pasta restaurant in Rosebank). Mauro came with Topgun sun glasses and a swagger like al pacino.this guy was definitely worth a chuckle. he guided us on the history of the place-the gladitorial battles that saw russel crowe become an oscar winner and the thumb up and thumb down that caesar used to determine the fate of a battered pugilist. he explained the genius of the roman builder and the construction of what would be today a modern cathedral, for today sport is a religion. he led us from the entrance to the exit and no further. he tried to sell us guide books cheap cheap. man alive what an edifice.
neighbouring the colliseum sits the palentine hill and the roman forum. i touched the stones Caesar my hero once did and all of a sudden my latin classes i did at school were becoming real to me.

the vatican city,sits on the other side of the river,it rained and cos i like to be nimble,i travelled with no coat.for nothing to remember nothing to forget. i queued for the vatican museum for as long as it would have taken me to hand wash a pair of socks in a drying river. the line was most swift and into the museum i deposited my payment fee.theres only one route to the sistine chapel,you may not go left,you may not go right,theres only one way and that's the popes way,upward and onward soldier. after wading through concrete busts,tapestries, fine bronze vases and salad bowls; through parqueted floor and marble too,upstairs and down stairs,'dont touch anything,im watching you boy' and through a pokey little door ,we finely landed smack bam hook line and sinker into its beanming luminosity-the Sistine chapel,painted by Michaelangelo. it is really quite subliminal,extra-ordinarily colourful,and most intricately detailed. i always thought the world was black and white having watched many a TNT tv show and glanced at many a photo from the early 60's and before,hmm so much for that thought.

for saint peters basillica i again queued,and boy did it rain,so some little granny grabbed my arm and pulled me under her umbrella.we walked, after a while she enquired 'you arent in our tour group,are you? 'no' i offered,she duly released my arm and left me to dissolve in the acid rain that is rome's, and off with her brollie she went. The basillica is probably the biggest space ive ever been into i felt a bit llike frodo,besides my hairy feet,i felt what its like to be one eigth my original size. again he detail is quite special,ive probably only seen this sort of detail on the once great star wars action figurines of the late 70's.
i wanted to be the non-tourist and not take a photo of the pieta-i didnt

rome was so hot i nearly spontaneoulsy combusted.

i visited pompei for the day,wow what a place,i mean i started walking into the city and thought 'gsus what an absolute dump',i could see vesuvius out in the distance and i thought 'gsus why hasnt this town been drowned in another lavatic eruption-it deserves it.eventually after 25minutes of strolling towards Vesuvius and past arbitrary fruit stalls i kind of figured i was walking in the wrong direction,after all i did ask the lady at information,i just didnt listen to her. anyhoo i felt a lil peckish-bird flu? so i picked up some sorta greasy mozzarella and congealed tomato italiante pastry and strolled, having paid a teste, into the real real pompeii. let me tell you that the romans were f8cking geniuses,there's simply no two ways about it. ive realised now in terms of my architectural education,im still that wee kidney bean experiment that kids do when theyre at school that is trying to sprout a leaf. the romans could create/manipulate space, enhance the buildings lightness through detailed mosaicing. they got their hands dirty tending beautiful gardens, they understood gutters. wow i say,wow.
pompeii is extraordinary for having been encrusted by Vesuvius' bile. only 66hectares of its roman self have been revealed and only indian jones will be able to reveal it all,stay tuned for episode 800 .phew.

my trip to pompeii forced me to stop over in naples for an hour,thank f*cking goodness. initially i thought 'wow,a new city,a new experience some new folk i could meet, hell, lemme check it out'.so i leave the terminal building and walk towards the sun, and supposedly the best pizza Italy has to offer.
what i saw around the terminal building were lunatic italians boozed to the hilt,i thought 'hey, this dirty trough aint a place for a kid with a fresh white t-shirt. the only person i met was some italian who thought i was eye-balling him,he actually intercepted me with a bit of agreesion and was about to beat me and stretch me like a mozzarella ball luckily in my best italian i just reponded 'enles engles'. he smiled and walked away from our intrepid, brave hero. ive never been so chicken sh8t. i got back to that teminal building so fast, hid behind a column and didnt look back,adieu naples adieu

i visited the jewish ghetto in rome,a tiny 2 block area,it was toitally jewish,naturally. overlooking the Tiber river sat a huge synagogue.one of or rather the most ornate synagogues id ever seen,detailed in a baroque style-gold leafed and ornate.something special ill say was the rainbow coloured glass petalled dome above. i didnt munch on a shnitzel on a bagel i rather settled for pizza from a big hairy italian,buffallo mozzarella not sold separately,yet more expensive

finely i found true rome,true italy. i needed to get away from the umbrella sellers lingering around the spanish steps awaiting a down pour. i needed to dissasociate myself from those throwing pennies into the fountain with their back to the water and getting their sugar to take a snap,i needed to extricate myself from the the oke selling little ash trays that resembled colliseums.i needed to find the real guiseppe and the real andrea and vittoria(an italian hairdresser that used to cut my hair) and the real mario and luigi. lo and behold, indiana found his temple of doom and i found my true italy and my true pasta, (cost me my nest egg,but hey). i found it across the river in trastevere. its a wee area with break knee cobble stones,and bouganvillas. a street network like abowl of tagliatelle, hordes of foxy italians and a vespa motor bike in every crevice.
for me i enjoyed that the most about rome.

ive become quiet cultured of late ,not dissimilar to a great creamy yoghurt from Woolies. i visited Moses,after searching hard for the leather sandled lad. i kept asking the guards, 'where's moses?',they just stared.
moses was phenomenal, extremely real, extremely glossy-a laser beam would surely deflect. moses was so real and that what i hope to achieve through my soon to be aon sale action toy figurine.

so my good readers i could continue scratching for hours however i dont want bleed

so until another day,farewell my far flung friends.
sweetly
the dan russian bear hunter master swordsman and soon to be action figurine,vespa and p*ss pot helmet sold separately.

Born Slippy 29.03.06

2006-03-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

there's a country not far from here, a race not dissimilar to me.they arent hairy backed with big feet and live in Gondor,they are quite human i might say.they live in a little square inch of england and its called wales.Cardiff ,(sounds a little like non-milky butter),is its most cosmo city.its home to the millenium stadium and..uh uh

we dropped in on a big rugby day,millenium stadium was sure to be packed to the rafters,heaving like an over stuffed blood sausage. it was gonna blow ,splatter like a jackson pollock master piece.but only in time. that time was after the game,and boy did it splatter. the entire city of Cardiff got stuck into this sporting event like an over keen 13year old bear foot rugby player. people were bloodied in their red wales jerseys and flags. in a bit of a mental manoeuevr or not we decided to head to cardiff bay which is a hope skip and jump from the city centre rather then breathe in the drunken stench of a victorious country. i really needed to see a Richard Rogers building,the welsh general assembly.its pretty simple in its form,pretty transparent like all modern day public buildings,yet it has a ceiling which is gloriously detailed in strip timber in a most curvaceous,voluptuous way.you almost wana caress it.but its too high and you might just get a splinter.
on returning to the city after the rugger,there was absolute chaos-pubs packed and fish and chips shops doing over time.at the end of the exhausted night the city swam in a pool of its own vomit, in dirtied bags and short sleeved heroes. a crazy city indeed and one that needs to be torn apart

so monday nights are those slow ones where by i recharge the proverbial battery,stick on the telly, make a splash of pasta and increase by medical knowledge while watching ER. but a couple kids from work were heading to the 'poob' for a cupla toots.so i hailed my horse,rode on,lassooed the boy to his watering trough and sauntered into the Masque Bar.early enter early leave. and to Tescoes i did go.italian pasta made in england and mushroom sauce for the nights feasting,toothpaste for those glinting pearly whites and soap for a daisy freshness. packet in hand and i was going underground. im no paranoid android, but i see im being watched,or so i thought, by this foxy uber babe. now im a pretty mysterious sorta chap,never venturing to the same place at the same time on any given sunday.so i never usually catch the Highbarnet branch of the northern line but i figured on a night like this id launch a cherry flavoured assault on the aforementioned tiger. meanwhile out of the dark little pokey corner of my glazed blood shot eyeball i could see this other sugar enquiring about her journey from a boozer,with limp arms and sweaty armpits. in my opinion he was making an absolute abortion of the interrogation.

im just about to mount the super tube when the sugar asked me for directions. always keen to help, but 'caught between Iraq and a hard place' i answered with Yoda like wisdom. all of a sudden the doors begin to whistle,'come in boy or stay out cos this boats on the high road home.' my arms are all over the show- in the tube out the tube, with packet without packet. luckily i manage to extricate myself knowing that if i didnt id be a 'quarter chicken mild peri peri with fries on the side, oh and an ice cold coca cola to go.' but unlike Indiana jones who always retrieves his hat, my poor lonely bag of shnacks was caught hanging in the door,all exposed with nowhere to go.i waved like a storm trooper, but to no avail.
good bye little packet, it was nice to know you, may you and your contents feed a thousand impoverished ethiopians.

the serpentine gallery is a square. it sits in hydepark in a forest and rolling green scape. it aint much bigger than a rubics cube and in it an artist had injected it with an installation of everyday corridors. rather strange ill say.hmm contemporary art? what does it all mean?

ey oh far flung ones hope youre all doing well, and if you arent,suck on a Chupa Chup 'cos it aint gonna suck itself.

stay well, until we meet again adieu adieu
the dan russian bear hunter masters swordsman and stand in action figurine to Russel crow in the movie Gladiator.

Pat Cash

2006-03-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

so i checked the weather forecast, it said rain expected. it rained.

its not about what you know,its about those connections we have,daniel has them.billy bumpkin elliot was on offer at the lowly price of 30 squiddinks,and oh yes we were gonna be given a hand,and sure as hell we were gonna take an arm, the arm came in the form of the chocloates daniel gave as a gift.once again theatre just wasnt for me.firstly cos id have to sit next to someone,the second cos of bad past experiences.but billy elliot blew his duck whistle and the chaito man came a flying in,thank goodness there were no blood hounds and duck hunters.victoria palace with is plush velvety red flip up chairs, flowred carpets and hand scooped interior decorations was were it was stationed.we sat pretty high up,but no bother. the show was,as daniel put it totally gay but totally sweet.great music, great dancing-it was all like a big sugar dusted jelly donut.the kid ,billy would surely have done his grandma proud

the weekend was full of the goodness and richness that a well mulched garden manure heap should be.
i dunno ive always had this sorta thing for Kate Moss,she's this sorta enigmatic tiger.she isnt gorgeous or beautifully hot.she's got this sorta razor blade edge to her.she has this like killer look to her.she could probably stare you down and turn you into Morphs cousin.so anyhoo theres been a lot of media surrounding her, but ive been with her all the way.saturday was a day when i came the closest ill probably ever come to this absolute peach. it was a photographic exhibition of her when she was say 18,untainted by powdery blow and the glories of rock n roll, unscarred by million squid clothing deals, and unscented by liquid gold perfume sponsorships.she was as raw as the freshly pulled carrot from your backyard veggie garden. however all these wee chips on the roulette table have given her the rock chick status i have so come to favour. its not about going into an ice cream parlour and choosing between ordinary strawberry and vanilla,its about that flavour that no one really digs.
the gallery sidles itself off on a side street away from the worst that tourism has to offer-crowds,huge f*ckin crowds. i hate crowds. the white washed modern cube interior in which her images were portrayed was a simple,humble canvas onto which she could be devoured by my googling eyes.wow.

the gallery and the images of kate,gently emblazoned into the valleys and ridges of my marshmellow brain,led me into mayfair, old bond street and the ever so close yet at the moment,far, Saville Row. the road is quiet,not at all intimidating.advertising is subdued,the asking price for a handchiselled suit simply aint. a 2000 pound suit ,cappucino-hold the sprinkles- and a mint will be mine,oh yes it will.

there was an anime exhibition on the south bank,around 6months ago,i though it had disappeared,it hadnt. animae or manga is id say a japanesey kind of cartoon. often the characters are well versed in cutting humans in half with their bare hands. the detailing is often explicit. it was one image that absolutely plucked my heart out, dusted it in sugar powder and placed a silver spoon into its depths. it was an image entitled 'chick in a club'. she dripped my pure syrupy fantasy.its rather cooky how an image could be so damn intimidating,so damn fine.

monday nights are slow chilled and i went to a lecture by Eric Owen Moss.
university days had seen me thumbing my way through books by this kid and many others. i knew the library-its strange ordering system, its danky smell-the library was my salvation, and my nickname became turbonerd.
eric owen moss is an american with the thickest american accent,thicker than a dolls house double malt with sprinkles.his tongue was so drawn out it was as though he'd just smoked the biggest fattest bob marley rolled joint this side of the caribbean.his humour was as dry as a 2day old turkey, tomato and lettuce sandwich.this oke was brilliant,he didnt speak of 'his' buildings, rather about a building that was built..this kid's work is hot,sh*t hot.he's like the rock band Oasis-he has this sort of f*ck-off attitude,like f*ck it 'im good,i know im good,you know im good,so lets cut the crap and get on with it.'i dig it. what he produces takes balls,and his balls are iron clad,pre-rusted and swollen to 8 times their original size.
uncle eric, thumbs up to you boy.

aar sunday mornings-i dont wanna be in bed,and i dont wanna sleep.whats a lad to do?so i munch my granola,ingest 750mills of h2o,get on my horse and ride.
the camden town arts centre sits on finchley road.an exhibition by hilda af klint. she's a swede id never heard of, i thought it was klimt,but hey who ever knows these things.this swedish babe or not was really cooked-she was into astronomy and speaking to the dead and out would pop art.brr that gave me the shivers.so i skimmed her work, stood close,stood far,read the insets and came out a knowledgeable lad. i must add the building itself was really the fine piece of art.its light parquet flloors, whited walls, bronzed iron mongery streaming natural light and a garden you could play lawn tennis in.go see it,it might just excite you.

so i leave the centre and strolling up the road,somee dude in his VW honks his horn and asks me,'ey mate, y'know where camden market is?', so i say'yeah,camden town'.

anyhoo good folk keep it keep ,keep it running and dont forget 'cool kids play with lego.'

sweetly
the chaito man, russain bear hunter master swordsman and red indellible crayon, yellow and blue sold separately

table tennis 01.03.2006

2006-03-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

these past few weeks have been like an amstel beer, slow brewed yet extra matured.ive been patient waiting for the egg to crack, to splatter itslef all over the show,to stain the linoleum floor tiles,and leave me with a story.let that egg splatter as it will, is waht i say.

have you ever been so pissed off that you wanted to turn into the hulk, tear the fluff out of your sisters teddy bear and burn it at the stake?.well thats how i felt after my ebay experience,it all began when graham sent me an email suggesting i read a book called One city,tis about edinburgh,so i thought hey ill give it a wee squizz.so i championed my way to charing cross road where all the book stores lie, rummaged through the ol dirty second hand book stores,and emerged smelling as though id just exited some grandma's flat, minus the stale chocolate.needless to say i didnt find the book.eventually i blazed into Foyles, requested the book,but at a scorching 5 pound 50, i thought 'gsus with that dosh i could buy an oil field in nigeria and a farm on Rissik street', i figured id jump into the unknown abyss,aqualaungs and all and go bidding on ebay,ooh ebay,each letter glowing ina primary colour, each letter written in kids writing, leaving me thinking this is like playing in the sand pit-ill get a few diseases, ill ahve fun and at the end of the day the sand castle i was building would emerge.,ooh ooh.so i found the book.bids kicked off at a whopping 99p,i already knew i had a winner.so i threw in an unbeatable 1 squid 20 and waited for the bid to brew and consume all pretenders.a week later i notice 2 squid 70,it topped me.not cool i say.for some reason, one unbeknownest to me, i eventually won the bid.dont ask i just did.but now the seller wished to use a 3rd party,the only 3rd party i know is the one i go to when im liquored up after the second party.now setting up this 3rd party pay thing just wasnt easy, and this was the point where i wished to turn into a crazy lad in a rubber room beating the shee-ite outta my work colleague. setting up this frikkin account took like 2weeks.eventually i overcame,today i have since read the book and am far more re-laxed.great book graham, and id say it was worth the absolute torture

hampton court palace, its a palace thats bigger than castle grey skull,older than the smurf village, and it nestles in suburbia,which i found rather cooky.there were these folk dressed in victoriana clothing and spoke as though they had jacket pottaoes propelled up their butts.however what they said was most informative.i traipsed this wee castle like the fat bastard henry the 8th did but couldnt find the tv room.i strolled strolled the gardens with their toppiaried trees and symmetrical layouts and got my kickers dirty. twas a toit day, a day i flew Han Solo.

Ah Bath, what a gloriously wee town. a 3 hour bus ride with my fav show on board-Top Gear. its stoned in white and cobbled like a lunch bar. we had 4 hours of daylight to kill, 1 hour we beat munching fish and greasy chips,the other hours were spent cooking chicken soup style in the Roman Baths themselves .befiitting a town named Bath,there were baths.now im no latin geek, although i was one,but this lil place left me totally excited.warm naturally heated pools of green water surrounded by rough stone. and then there was the inevitable body of water filled with coins,gsus,why do folk lob their coins into water,what the f*ck is so thrilling about it?.rather go gambling.someone once said it was lucky to throw coins but someone also once said that the policeman in Noddy was gay.

i went to this lecture by the RIBA gold medal winner, its an architecture award.awarded to the gretaest architect of the year, the architect that has the grreatest influence on the world, from days gone by and will have an influence into infinty and beyond.toyo ito, is actually a tall japanese human, i figured most japs were yay high(id be indicating height with my hand at this point in time).now his architecture was pretty swell.only prob was he couldnt utter much english even if his life depended on it.so i figure the bruce lee interparting his words didnt do him much justice.nevertheless his architecture did have a certain , shall i say 'gin e say quae' about it.

this past thursday needed to be stuffed like a christmas turkey.before a farewell party i needed to show face at, i decided id go to a lecture at the AA, archticture association.the speaker was the great charles jencks.this kid was a guy that i studied with,well not really.many of my lectures at varsity used him to cause riots in our minds, to get us thinking,get us feeling like bumbling idiots.now i was gonna hear the lad speak directly to me.this is excatly whats kiling me bout this lil island.im engaging with the greteast that architecture and culture has to offer.back home these greats were invincible, a little like the super hero i am, althought hey dont have similar see-through-wall super powers.

so im gonna kill this email with a quote i found quite cool, cool cos it sorta reminds me of one of my favorite movies,Alien, and if you think about it long enough you might just have a nighmare. Eminem told ROLLING STONE Magazine, 'i would rather have a baby through my p*nis than get married again.';

quote of the century, heard at the Charles Jencks lecture: 'arrtichokes are what dyslexic folk call architects.'

ey folks, ive sort of put all my scracthings on a blog if you wanna check them out.someone told me that once my scratchings found themselves on a blog then that would force me to do some editing..........................riiiiighhhht

http://scratchingsofdan.blogspot.com/