We did do some other stuff on Saturday (coffee on the canals, lunch in Liedzeplein, coffeeshops on the way home), but, for me, Saturday was all about one thing:

The Supper Club

The Supper Club's reputation preceded it, and justifably so. For starters, the place is the very definition of exclusive. It's down a narrow alley that you'd never find unless you knew about it. The thick oak doors are only accessibly via intercom- you can't just walk right in. Our reservation was made several weeks in advance, which seems to be the only way you can get them.

At The Supper Club, you don't get a table: You get a bed. The walls are lined with them. Ours was on the balcony level, looking down on the rest of the huge dining hall, which was dominated by an enormous videoscreen, looping footage of naked women swimming underwater. We were then served with five courses of some of the best food I've ever eaten.

Then (!) a masseuse came along and gave Adrian and Craig backrubs on the bed. After a brief and rather terrible performance from lipsynching transvestite, we retired to the underground club for a little boogie. It was one of the best nights I've had all year.

I love the Supper Club- it's worth going to Amsterdam for. Do it.

I got in at midnight on Friday morning. Adrian was working all day Friday, so I spent the day wandering about Amsterdam. The weather was absolutely perfect. I explored the canals, checked out the Reiksmuseum, wandered across Museumplein, and then spent a good three hours in Vondelpark.

Maybe it was the sun, but I just got such a good vibe off the place. Everyone was friendly and polite, there were bicycles everywhere, there was just a very relaxed atmosphere. As I drifted off to sleep in the sun, several times I thought to myself: "This is how cities should be. This is what happens when people are just allowed to be themselves, take responsibility for themselves, when the government stops restricting human nature and just steps back and allows people to take care of themselves. I really did feel as though it was the best city in the world.

I caught up with Adrian for dinner- we went to an excellent sushi restaurant.

"So how was your day?"

"Oh, it was great, I checked out the canals, hung out in Vondelpark, everyone was so friendly..."

"...oh God, you're not going to be like Craig and just go on about how Amsterdam is the greatest city in the world, are you?"

"Uhm...no..."

"You looked like you enjoyed that then."

"Yeah, yeah I did, they were good stuff. Wouldn't buy their album, though. And I think I've figured out why I almost never buy albums."

"What, just now?"

"Yeah, just while I was dancing."

"Why's that then?"

"Well, I was dancing and thinking how good these guys were, but I realized they were a bit, ah, what Scott just referred to as 'meat & two veg', like, they're good for what they are, which is guitar-bass-drums-rock(!), but they're nothing more than that, and there's a zillion bands that sound just like them, and their album wouldn't really be adding anything to my music collection that wasn't already amply represented. These guys are good for this environment, they're a great live band to rock out to, but I don't want to take them home and STUDY them, listen to them on earphones, read the lyrics, let them define particular moments for me. And I realized there's actually very few albums that induce that desire in me, and they're the only ones I buy. And the current musical digesis seems very much gearer towards looking backwards at the moment- I really don't see a lot of innovation, I don't hear much I haven't heard over and over, or can't hear some derivative of just by turning on the radio. Nothing I'd want to actually BUY."

I have my little sister to thank for putting me on to Nine Inch Nails. Embarassing, I know. I remember the day, the moment, even, with such "I'm still right there" clarity that it's ludicrous to believe that there's over ten years between then and now. I was in her room, mocking her musical taste (as big brothers do) when 'Ruiner' came on.

BOOM.

Never heard anything like it. Still haven't heard anything like it. It's just this amazing, epic, gangbusting porno-pop-hellpit of a song. I asked Clair if I could borrow the album for a bit- I still haven't returned it, although now I own everything NIN has ever released, and a crapload of stuff they haven't. I love NIN for a great many reasons, about half of which I probably can't articulate without sounding like the wrap-up of a classic Star Trek episode. One of the half I can express is that, for good or ill, it doesn't sound like anything else you're listening to. It pushes music forward. You're not going to mistake it for one of a million identikit bands all playing the sames notes on the same instruments. You're at the forefront of musical creation.

Which is why a new NIN album is something that generates a lot of excitement for me- perhaps too much. Perhaps my expectation, the idea that NIN has to actually push the bounadaries of music, create something new each time, is so high as to be unreasonable. This may be- but that's too bad because, for better or worse, that's what I look to NIN to do- show me what else noise can do that I didn't think it could do before.

Does 'With Teeth' (or what, thanks to Meathead's excellent review, I will always think of as "A-With-a-teeth-ah!") do that? Yes and no. It's kind of half-and-half, actually. About half the songs are what I'd call...'standard NIN'- they'd fit pretty nicely on The Downward Spiral or The Fragile. They'd be standout tracks on either of those albums (the individual quality of all the tracks on this album is VERY high- there is barely a bum note), but they wouldn't be breaking new ground the way TDS did. The other half shows...glimmers of expansion. Hints that the veil is being pushed- but not broken.

I want to stress that this is a really, really good album- it's just not visionary. Trent said that his goal was to make a simple, stripped-back album that was just a series of good songs, and I think that goal is achieved. But it's disappointing. Trent's who I rely on to keep restaking the boundary points. He's made a great album within those boundaries- I had hoped for more.

Before I go on to a track-by-track breakdown, much discussion has been had on the ninternet about the odd packaging of the latest album (NIN CD-packaging has in the past been famous for being particularly complex and impressive), which consists of a web address, which leads to a massive PDF file which has all the lyrics/artwork on a single, enormous page. I imagine most people navigate through this page on their PC, but luckily I have a stonkin' great A0 printer in my office, so I've printed the whole thing out at scale- check out this pic for an idea of the size! I have to say that while I was initially skeptical about the idea (which Trent's reasons for doing are here), now that I've got the poster I just plain love the idea- it's bigger and better than anything that could have possibly been included with the CD. If the music isn't revolutionary, the packaging certainly is.

My doctor told me to spend the week in bed, but I came back to work anyway. I can't really put my finger on why. I guess after two weeks holiday I thought that taking another week off would be a bit of a have, plus after five days in bed I really couldn't stand the thought of another one.

My doc was a funny old guy- he kept making really lame jokes, laughing, then apologising, then doing it all over again. He also had a certificate on the wall which declared him the 'Doctor of the Year 1997'. He was very proud of this- he made reference to how he won the Doctor of the Year award (for contributory work on the 'spacer'- a sort of tiny chamber that helps you get the most out of your asthma inhaler) about once a minute, almost to the point of absurdity.

"Daniel, let me be telling you that your peak flow is dangerously low. Any night you could wake up and you will be kicking the bucket- and let me tell you that can be very painful on the feet. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I do apologise, I like to joke around a little. But I was still the Doctor of the Year 1997."

In fact, he went beyond the point of absurdity when he actually name-dropped his award in my prescription, which is just plain bizarre.

I mean, there's a time and a place to mention how you were Doctor of the Year, and I'm not sure that medical instructions are quite the place.

I wish he could tell me why this illness makes everything taste like chemicals, though. I've never heard of this before, but it's definitely affecting me badly. No matter what I eat, it's like all I can taste is this sort of artificial, crushed-paracetamol-like flavour. The only thing I can think of to account for it is that my sense of taste has been heightened and I'm tasting chemicals I haven't tasted before, because otherwise, I really can't figure it out.

Sven regarded me with the same mixture of fear and concern I imagine people in plague-ridden Britain probably had to start faking after a few months. Don't get me wrong, his expression was quite genuine: He really seemed divided on whether to fetch me chicken soup or wrap me in plastic and place me outside with an identification tag.

Sven is my flatmate. He's German. He was holding a box in his hand, and our hallway was full of boxes, because he was moving out. This would probably be the last time I'd ever see him.

"Dude," Sven says

- and, no, I'm not going to go to the trouble of somehow typing his accent into the story. Authors who try to convey accents [and, let's face it, they're always trying to convey Scottish accents] by mispelling words seem to forget the fact that English isn't phonetic. Muh. If you're going to have Scottish characters speak phonetically, you have to have everyone speak phonetically, because no-one, no matter how much BBC they've watched, speaks English the way it is spelled. So by mispelling words to convey an accent, you're kind of implying that they're saying the words wrong in some fashion, when this isn't the case. Just preface the person's words with: "They spoke with a Scottish accent." and throw in the occasional "...he said in his hearty brogue..." every now and then, and let the reader deal with how it sounds in their heads. You know: Reading. So: Sven has a thick German accent. Imagine the most comical, stereotypical, 'Allo 'Allo German accent. That's Sven. You know, you never realize just how much British TV hates Germans until you've had Sven as a flatmate. Almost every hour I've spent watching TV with Sven, he usually ejaculates, at least once: "Oh, here we go! Always with the Germans!" Although we do watch Hellboy a lot.

"Dude, you don't look so good." German accent, remember.

I don't feel so good. My bones hurt. My skin's tingling. Unpleasantly. I've got a fever. I'm slick with sweat. My throat hurts, my nose is a runny tap, I'm coughing uncontrollably. I was alarmed to see blood in my phlegm, and downright terrified to see it in my vomit. In summation (you may have wanted to skip ahead to this part): I'm not feeling my best.

"Sven..."

"Yes?" He puts his box down, and takes a step towards me. Then he thinks better of it and steps back.

"...Sven...How sick do you have to miss one of the first showings of Star Wars?" I've had tickets for months. It's in an hour.

"Dude ... pretty sick."

"Well [cough] I'm sick, but surely I'm not pretty..."

I take a step forward. This is when the world starts to spin. I've got this technique I use to counter the spins. You know how, ah, if you drink too much, and your inner ear just says: "My body's trying to kill itself, I'm abandoning my post to make preparations and say farewell to my family (earlobe, wife; and trachea, son)" and the room starts spinning? Well, what i do is, I find any three intersecting lines. Four is even better, but three are easy to find because every room has several at the ceiling corners. I make the center of these three lines my focal point and I stare at them until the spinning stops. If that doesn't work, I start groaning: "Stop spinning world, please stop spinning!!" over and over. This hardly ever works. In fact, it's only worked once to my recollection, but even if it only has a 10% chance of success, can't hurt to try, right? Actually, if I was sober, a cost/benefit analysis of loudly groaning something stupid would probably result in me not doing it, but that's never been the case.

Until now. I'm sober, I'm spinning, and nothing is working. I fall into the door frame of my bedroom.

"Jesus!" It occurs to me at this moment that people who claim to take the Bible "literally" are full of crap, cause Jesus used analogies all the time. He referred to himself as "The Lamb of God." No-one takes that literally. He would say that all men are his brothers, yet also bang on about how he was everyone's father. That doesn't track, either. I should probably focus on getting well.

Sven finally overcomes his revulsion and grabs me.

"You gotta lie down, dude."

"Star Wars. Ben. Dagobah system."

"Star Wars is going to have to wait. I'm calling you a doctor."

"Awww SNAP!"

I've forgotten my PIN number.

This isn't entirely rare. See, I never really 'remembered' my PIN number- I never possessed it as a string of numbers in my head. My fingers just remembered the pattern you need to make on the keypad to make the money come out. If I walked up to a cash machine, the fingers would just do their thing to make the correct PIN number work. It was like I stored the memory in my finger muscles to save space, or something.

Sometimes, usually when hungover, I'd come up to the machine and...nothing. They fingers wouldn't know the pattern, and then I'd think too much about it and they REALLY wouldn't know the pattern, because it was all done unconciously so thinking about it just totally destroyed the magic.

Since getting back from NZ I've been suffering from mild jetlag (not the type that makes to tired, the type that wakes you up at 3am and doesn't let you go back to sleep), which has left me kind of 'spaced' for most of the day. So whenever I go up to a machine, I just kind of star at it, not knowing how to make the money come out.

I can remember three of the numbers, and they order they are in, but not where they appeared in the string of four (ie- first or last). I also remember that the remaining number is the same as one of the other three. This leaves a total of six possible combinations (assuming I'm remembering correctly), of which I've tried, unsuccessfully, two. Does anyone know if the whole 'machine will eat your card if you get it wrong three times' thing is like, per machine, or collectively? Does it reset itself after a day? I feel like the next time I put my card into the machine, it'll all be over for eating.

So I haven't had any actual cash since I got back from NZ (I don't really like cash, anyway), and I'm constantly asking stores if I can sign for whatever I'm buying "because I don't remember my PIN number", which causes them all to look suspiciously at me, and I told my date on Tuesday that we had to leave this vegan cafe we'd gone to because they didn't take switch (vegans!) and I couldn't remember my PIN number, which made her look at me suspiciously.

So it's all a bit of a bother, really. I suppose I could go into my bank and ask them what it is but, much like applying for tax returns (which I haven't done in four years so I'm probably owed, like, a buttload), that sounds like a length I'm not really prepared to go to.

Heckler: You suck!

[pause]

Bill: You suck?

[long pause, deep breath, seems to be considering something]

You fucking cunt, get the fuck out of here RIGHT NOW! Get out! Fuck you! FUCK YOU, you idiot! You?re everything about America should be flushed down the toilet, you fucking TURD! Fuck you! Get out! Get out, you fucking drunk bitch! Take her out! Take her FUCKING OUT! Take her to somewhere that?s good! Go see fucking Madonna you fucking idiot piece of shit.

Laugh.

Doesn't sound like the words of man who thought that 'all of us are one', does it? And yet, somehow, it makes sense, given who Bill Hicks was. He did believe we were all one. He did believe in loving all the people. He got it, and he spent his whole life trying to make other people get it, and he got very, very angry when nobody did.

Ah, Bill. Like Rage Against The Machine, we need you now more than ever. Also like Rage, your shit sounds more appropriate to THIS age than the one in which it was written.

'Agent of Evolution' is the biography of Bill Hicks. It was assembled by one of his best friends, Kevin Booth, but it's not written solely by him. It's written by everyone who ever knew him. The list of writers in exhaustive. His friends, his enemies, his brother, his lovers, his fellow comedians- the perspective flips several times a chapter, and the viewpoints are refreshingly balanced and realistic about Bill's strength and flaws- as I'm sure he'd want it.

It doesn't repeat a lot of his material- that part of Bill's life is amply documentd in the excellent Love All The People, which I would recommend reading before trying this out. AoE follows his childhood, the rise, fall, then rise of his career, the trial of his alcoholism, his legendary 'cancelled' set on Letterman, and his untimely (yet, somehow, appropriate) death.

It's good. I read it in one sitting, and never once felt unentertained. It's the story of a decent, wise, funny, intelligent, angry man, that everyone (who gets it) should read.

d

As usual, this book is up for grabs! Comment your desire for it, and I'll mail it to you.

One of the interesting things about Sin City is that when I think back on the film, I see the comic strip in my mind, not the live action. This is kind of rare. Can anyone now read The Lord of the Rings and not visualize Gandalf as played by Ian McKellen?

Let's face it: Comic-to-Film adaptations suck. They suck because Hollywood gets in there with their fucking retarded fingers and starts messing up the vision of the comics' creator and you end up with this horrible hybridized beast, in which you can see the intent of the original work trying to get through, but not quite making it through acres of "ooh this demographic needs this" shite. As a result, pretty much all comic book adaptations have, if not actually sucked, been pretty pale imitations of thier source materiel.

Until now. Robert Rodriguez literally used the comic as the storyboard for the film- every shot in the film is the extrapolation of a panel from the comic. It takes faithfulness to a whole new level, and as a result the film is very much just like looking at the comic book, in motion. It's almost not even a 'live-action' adaptation, because, outside of the actors, the whole thing is animated. The Maltese Falcon has long been praised as the ultimate noir film- I'd say Sin City not only succeeds it, it invents an entirely new subgenre of pure noir, which TMF and Payback are merely hinting at, but Sin City actually realizes. This film, for what it is, could not be improved- it's the world's first perfect adaptation.

Well, (as Samwise says at the end of The Lord of the Rings) I'm back.

One of the downsides of being scrupulously honest (!) is that it makes certain 'pleasantries' kind of unpleasant. Since arriving at work yesterday afternoon (only three hours after getting off my 24-hour flight, no less), I've had the following conversation about 20 times:

"Hey! You're back!"

"Yep."

"How was your holiday?"

"It was pretty rough, to be honest."

"Oh, why is that?"

"I went home because my parents are divorcing and my mum is inconsolable with grief."

"Oh. I really wish you hadn't told me that. I was just saying hi. Couldn't you just have said: 'fine' and spared me the details of your home life?"

Okay, that last line never happens- though it does make people uncomfortable. But, bloody hell, my 'holiday' consisted almost entirely of a low-level anxiety attack that occasionally escalated into full-scale nauseous can't-breathe panic attacks, and people want to hear that it was fun?!? Sorry buckos, I didn't have fun living it, you think I'm going to let you merrily go forward with the illusion that I did?

I'm being a bit harsh, really. I did have some fun. Going to San Diego and seeing my brother was a lot of fun- San Diego is great. Everyone is super-friendly, the weather was GREAT, the surf was great, it was great to see Ben, just, well, it was fun. I'm going to do that trip a lot more often, I think.

Spending time with my nephew and his dad was really good- he's such a dear little soul. Playing with kids is fun because you get to be a kid again, for a little while (until they start screaming for no reason, then you get to hand them back to their parents- luckily Felix was abnormal in this regard and was largely sensible), although some might say that's not much of a departure for me.

Whiritoa was, and always has been and always will be, great. The place is just...cleansing? I don't want to sound like too much of a hippy. It's just beautiful and quiet and peaceful, and it was good to catch up with old friends, if sad to know that I won't see them again for a while.

My friend Grant gave me a copy of the new NIN album, and I have to say the timing could not have been more perfect. If I ever needed a burst of nails before, I needed it then. I listened to it more or less nonstop since I opened it- review forthcoming.

Having my niece born, and getting to see her before I left, was definitely the highlight. She was ten days overdue, and I'd pretty much accepted that I wouldn't see her, but I woke up on Sunday and just knew that she'd be born that day, and a few hours later we got the call that Linda had gone into labour.

The sad thing, apart from the problems with my parents, was that the last time I was in NZ, I felt like I was home again. I felt like London was the life above my real life, and meanwhile that was waiting for me, like a safety-net, and if ever life in London went pear-shaped and everything fell apart and I had to escape, NZ would be there to catch me and I could just slip into my older life. This time, my older life was gone. The house I left was sold, my dad's fled, my family is scattered. I went and saw one of my oldest and best friends, Troy, and we hung out and got mashed and played LAN games and it was just like old times. But I looked around and thought: "Thank God I haven't been doing THIS for the last five years." and I think I knew at that moment that the safety net was gone. NZ is just another place now, removed in time if not in location.

London is my home, for better or for worse.

d

Once again, I demonstrate my awesome skillz at balancing most anything.