Guy Brighton's Wishful Thinking

Fri 16th Sept : Italian Festival

Night Out To Newark's Little Portugal (or... 'Just Add Wine')

Pics Are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/search/tags:guy+brighton%2Cnewark/tagmode:all/?page=2

Now I just have to write about it!

Fri 18th Feb : Email To Danny Wallace

Danny,

It's all your fault. So I've been running this PSFK 'blog' for about 8 months andIt's kind of a collaborative blog  - i.e. different people writing on it. Check it here: http://www.psfk.com

So I read the first 50 pages of your US book (I'm a Brit in New York) and somehow I get inspired to ask if anyone wants to join PSFK. No details. Just simple. I get them to send a photo and do a little task (send a photo, write a story).

What happens? People start joining!  (DK is PSFK Joinee No 1 by the way) .

Problem is I've only read the first 50 pages of your book, so I haven't got a real clue what to talk to my joinees about. And they're already starting to ask questions.

Anyway. I send a photo of myself. The Hat is not mine, but the beer was cheap - The Champion, off Oxford Street. The last time I went through London.  Is that enough to join these days?

If you ever pass through New York - check out my New York Guide: http://newyorkguide.blogs.com

Cheers,

Piers

Sun 10th October : First Seattle Then Vancouver

I get up. It's very early still. I feel far away from everyone. I decide to go phone Davo to with him happy birthday. I search the streets of downtown Seattle to find that there's a ratio of 23 junkies to every 1 public telephone at 7am in the morning.

Back at the W I think I hurt the staff's feelings when I return the Seattle Times paper to the front desk and ask for a New York Times. The restaurant is open and I walk in. 'Michelle' looks at me as if I am one of those junkies down the street. OK, so I haven't showered yet. Can I sit anywhere? I ask. Her response makes me feel that I am in Europe again. I'm led to a table and I am indecisive about which seat I'm going to take just to piss her off a little.

The food is OK but in this mood I try to convince myself it is poor but I can’t forget the horror of the Continental Airlines platter from the previous morning. That microwaved mush must cost them about 24c to prepare.

The Lady calls me later and asks me why I'm blogging on this and PSFK. I feel like a jerk so I go see the Frank Gehry building. It takes a little time as I walk the wrong direction but when I get assisted in the right direction by a helpful taxi. Taxi drivers are either Eritrean, Ethiopian or Somalian. They are all wonderfully friendly and chatty versus the W Hotel management.

I must stop moaning about the W. My boss will find this blog one day and send me to a motel outside the city center.

When I set eyes on the Frank Gehry building I am just taken aback. My eyes bulge as they try to take in all the joyous information; all the curves; the turns; the troughs, the hills, the rises, the swoons.

Bilboa was amazing but Seattle's Music Museum is simply beautiful. Gehry must be the most important architect in the US today.

It's two now and I feel that I have 'done Seattle'.

I jump in the car and charge north to the border. The advice that it's only 2 hours was a little optimistic. Nevertheless I have passed through amazing landscapes filled with Dutch looking farm houses to reach the Canadian border. There I get a few questions about the burger costume at customs but they seem happy to have me. How refreshing versus JFK Immigration.

[More Photros To Come]

Vancouver. What a gorgeous city. Far more cosmopolitan than Seattle, in touch, buzzy, friendly. I drive around for an hour, pick up a bottle of red from British Columbia have some cheap sushi - they told me the seafood was great here, and it bloody was - then drive back.

A hundred more questions at the US border but as I drive home I am inspired to drive faster than the rest of the traffic by a radio station I find. No more prog-rock, no more middle class white kids screaming about the Armageddon of their privileged suburban lives. Now I am rocking to worldly house and tribal grooves. The oncoming traffics' bright lights and the grinding beats remind me of that time the sun came up in that club in Ibiza. In the dark everyone choreographed beautifully in an Eden connected on some soulful level. But as the sun climbed we were all exposed to be fakes: zombies, gaunt, aloof, ugly, controlled.

What a great thing to remember, eh? But a Zombie is how I felt when I got out of the car after 7 hours driving.

Worth every minute though.

Wed 6th Oct : 1st Day

It's a bright sunny Wednesday morning as I get out of the subway at Houston and Broadway. As I pick up my coffee from Cafe Angelique off Broadway the radio is playing the Beatles: "You say good bye, I say hello - hello, hello..."

A little apt sign for the new job I start today at Jolly Roger Advertising Associates Ltd.

I am given three things on my first morning: (a) A huge stack of reading, (b) a name badge that I hope I won't have to wear as long as this guy does and (c) a new BlackBerry.

The BlackBerry, I am told, will be wonderful. Anybody can contacxt me any way (email, sms, phone, IM) any time, any where. I roll up my leg and feel the shackles get attached. Well, it's the first job in 3 years where I get salary!! I'll do anything for that regular pay check.

Except work for free again.

SEASIDE MINI UPDATE

Yes. I'll be back on Friday and this will be forever updated regularly.

The Lady left today. She wasn't too happy about the trip I think but hey.... what did she expect from an Irish p*** up in Norwich....

I'll explain later.

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001008.html

Rye:

Thurs 16th Sept : Out of Touch Once Famous British DJ Begs For Money & Attention

SEPT 13th SEPT : WALK ABOUT NOTT HILL

Taken with my UK Sharp Mobile Phone

SEPT 12th SEPT : LONDON UPDATE

When Bella handed me the keys this morning I tried to assure her that her and her husbands flat was in safe hands. She then said well you couldn’t really do anything worse than what the porno video you shot last time I stayed.

So…. She still hasn’t forgotten that has she, I thought to myself.

I have just moved into a flat for 2 weeks in Notting Hill. The start of this trip has been spent in Beckshell On Sea to see the folks. Potted about and managed to get my tooth crowned for £300 rather than the $1900 I was quoted in the US. Went and celebrated Davo and Mina’s engagement party and Anthea & Richard’s military organized wedding too.

London was a little bit of a shock at first. I found it a little pedestrian, despite the blue skies I longed for the heat and energy of New York. I was beginning to agree with Si’s comment that NY was an adventure playground for people in their 30s and London a theme park for people in their 40s.

Thank goodness I popped into Soho. Soho Saves Souls. Turn off the ever-nagging danger that is Oxford Street and you are suddenly hit with another city. Young people of all ages looking great. Soho of course is one of the creative districts of London: advertising, film making, music companies. Suddenly I was in love with London again. I spent my lunch on the steps of a building watching people walk past – you could have been in SoHo with all the clothing: Mexican wedding shirts, faded jeans, Ts declaring ‘New York City’!

Notting Hill where Bella and Dan lives saves souls too. They needed someone to sit their flat and feed the cat whilst they went on holiday. They live in the sort of square you’d expect Hugh Grant to live in. White regal mansion blocks surrounding a private garden with roses and lawn. What I do like about Notting Hilll is that it’s mixed with people of all different backgrounds. The place, by rights should be the haven of the affluent but because of WWII damage a lot of property is owned by the Notting Hill Housing Assoc that helps out lower waged souls.- i.e 'normal' people like Dan and Bella.

I’m not too sure why Bella worries about what I do in the flat to be honest. OK – the last time I stayed at their place – I think during their honeymoon - I shot this little film with some friends. I had been running one of the first viral marketing agencies in London. Our speciality was making emailable video clips. We were a little early to market and after some ads for Nissan business went dead.

The way to drum up business – my partners and I agreed – was a man, a woman and a bed. That would bring us the scent of success. OK, ok. Maybe we were all too excited about the fact the ‘actress’ was in fact a glamour model and she’d walk around without her clothes on for a couple of hundred quid. Maybe this excitement caused us not to Google her name until after the shoot when we found all those risqué images of her. So, yes we did bring a porn star round to Dan and Bella’s but who were we to know.

I wasn’t quite expecting Bella to find out about what we had done for a long while - the place was perfect when Dan and Bella came back from their honeymoon one Sunday evening - and I hoped that by the time she found out we could all sit back and laugh about it.

The call came in at 9.15am Monday morning. It would have been 9am but she had to look at some of her wedding photos. And one her baby cousin. Then she opened an email from a friend which included a saucy video attachment. This was our video. It was out and was already being passes around.

This was the first and only call that this campaign generated though.

When she watched it, Bella must have noted a woman strip off in her bedroom, climb onto her marital bed, shuffle over a naked man chained to the martial bed and then spin round and let a fart on the chap’s face. Maybe the ‘Let Loose with Set Loose Movies’ tag line gave away the originators. Maybe she took the words ‘Let Loose’ quite literally as my ear was red for days after that.

You can see the clip here: http://www.setloose.co.uk/movies/WindMedia.wmv . Quite innocent really.

I’m sure anyone could trust me with their apartment after that.

THE PS1 POST HAS RETURNED

Photographs

http://newyorkguide.blogs.com/uknyc/2004/07/saturday_31st_j.html

Oh I also added a post about the Libertine's concert: http://newyorkguide.blogs.com/uknyc/2004/08/mon_17th_libert.html

Food I ate tonight that I wouldn't have dared if the Lady was not at a conference: Fish & Chips at Salt & Battery (I wonder if that miserable bald bloke in there will ever smile).