In Vegas

This is how I know I'm in Las Vegas.

• The ATM minimum is 200 dollars, going right up to 2k, and yet whenever I get change they give me 1 dollar bills.
• Everything I own now smells faintly of cigarettes.
• I've not seen the sky for 48 hours. I've stopped looking at my watch; time is meaningless, everything is open 24 hours.
• I think I had six desserts yesterday.
• I feel amazingly stylish which is new for me.
• I have an astonishing looking hot tub in my room which I cannot bring myself to use. It has many nozzles. I'm worried that what happens in Vegas may have happened in my hot tub.
• I'm genuinely looking forward to my 11 hour flight home.

Star Warts

I saw the new star wars film last weekend, The Last Jedi. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading this now.

I thought the last Star Wars movie was mostly dreadful, so I'd set the bar very low for this one, but miraculously they managed to still crawl below my expectations. I think The Last Jedi is a horrible film. The storyline is lazy, it's full of continuity issues, gaping plot holes are everywhere and rather than suspending my disbelief it required me to take it outside and shoot it in the head. Only by telling myself that this is a very clever parody was I able to sit through all 235 implausible minutes of it.

Where to start. Cynically we now have two new merchandise opportunities wedged into the franchise to join BB8, a sad-faced space gerbil and some foxes made out of icicles. I always like to be reminded that a filmmaker sees me as a revenue stream when I'm watching their art.

The main characters, despite being about to die for the entire film, still have time to joke around or pause inexplicably for minutes of tepid dialogue. Even mid-battle, we get Leia and Luke having a tender moment whilst presumably the giant battle outside is sitting having a coffee until they are done. Countless people die with little more than a shrug and some frowning.

Force practitioners can now apparently Skype each other with their brains for a bit of a chat. Oh and they can even 'touch' which makes me wonder why Luke hasn't skype-punched enemies to death long ago. In fact, we even see the Force used to switch a lightsaber on from across the room to murderous effect; will fight scenes now consist of two people furiously switching each other's lightsabers on and off?

Star Destroyers apparently don't have guns anymore. For most of the film, we ludicrously have five of them chasing a rebel ship which appears to be about 200 meters ahead of them but is apparently out of range of their space guns. Rather than bring in faster ships, or warp ahead of them, they spend 16 hours driving in first gear behind a rebel ship as it slowly runs out of space petrol. What the fuck? At other times the Star Destroyers sit around whilst their super giant space cannon ship gets wrecked, and they do nothing. They don't even pull up alongside to wave.

Oh and space cruisers now need a human to 'drive them' in a straight line whilst they run out of space petrol; despite having free thinking bipedal robots all over the place, there isn't a basic cruise control button on a giant spaceship. Even a Ford Fiesta has that. That whole scenario made no sense whatsoever.

New 'Han Solo Lite' character, a pilot called Poe, spends the film being generally mutinous and ignoring orders, but you can hardly blame him as Holdo didn't bother telling him her awesome plan to save everyone (why??). At one point early on he causes the Rebels to lose an entire fleet of Bombers, but he's totally unaffected by guilt or remorse or even mild indigestion. Han Solo was cheeky, and reckless, but never a complete asshole.

Kylo Ren is apparently very very dim. He fights Rey, causing Luke's lightsaber to be ripped apart and destroyed and then seemingly doesn't notice when Luke turns up waving exactly the same lightsaber around. How did he not realise something was amiss??

Princess Leia is space-proof. It's a neat trick, to be blasted into outer space and survive but she managed it. She adopted a weird superman pose and flew back to the remains of the ship where they just popped open a door for her to fly back in. I mean seriously??

I could honestly go on for another twenty pages. This film felt like 235 minutes of someone taking the piss out of me. Everything in it was ridiculous, impossible or implausible. I don't mind a bit of artistic license but there has to be something that is genuinely plausible and makes sense, but nothing in this film does. Horrible horrible film.

Hyatt setting the bar low..

Me.. "Do you do a cider?"
"No sir"
I stare at the drinks menu.. "Really? Cos it says here you do"
"Oh you mean like scotch?"
"No, really no. It's made from apples"
"Like the fruit?"
"Exactly"
"No. We only have apple cider".
"Oookay, yes. That's the one I'm pointing at."

She looks vexed. "Sir, you know that's a hard cider?"
"Harder than what, I don't know what that means"
A long pause.

"Would you like that in a glass sir?"
"In the bottle is fine".
"A bottle?"
"??"
"It comes in a box, sir".
"I give up, Diet Coke please".

Set excitement to 10

Last week I ordered a new Triumph Bonneville T120 motorcycle. Today, I stumbled upon this photograph of Steve McQueen on his own Bonneville, taken here in San Francisco. I think it's Jacqueline Bisset on the back. After much clicking, I think it was taken at the junction of Jackson and Octavia looking towards Alcatraz (https://goo.gl/maps/do8CLZZf6jn).

I was already pretty excited, but now it's x10.

Hi Eric

I'm pretty sure that Eric Clapton just walked into this cafe (which is unexpected as I asked for No Cream).

Plum Hunt

It’s late evening, I’m in #wholefoods in London failing to find plums in the giant fruit section. 

‘..excuse me, can you tell me where the plums are?’

She looks confused for a moment but then *lightbulb* and she says..

‘oh, you mean, err, like bananas?’. 

She then mimes a banana shape in the air. It looked wildly inappropriate.

‘Er, no. I’m looking for plums.’

I tried to mime ‘plums’ but that wasn’t helping and looked, if anything, even more inappropriate so i stopped. She still seemed baffled though.

‘..but they are yellow, right?’

‘well, they can be yellow, but not banana yellow. they can be purple or green too’

Then she played her ace.

‘have you looked in the cereal aisle?’

‘um no. would plums be there?’

‘yeah, I expect they are there if we have.. umm..’.

‘..plums’

‘yes, those. the cereal aisle is across to the left’.

I wandered to the cereal aisle. Unsurprisingly it had a total and complete absence of plums. Not even a wizened old dried prune did I find there, in the aisle of cereals. I trudged back to her; she was unpacking oranges, a fruit she was apparently familiar with.

‘nope, no plums in the cereal aisle - so I guess you don’t sell them?’

‘ah oh okay. could be that they are out of season’

’no, they are definitely in season’

‘..but they may not be. i expect that later in the..’

‘they are.’

She just smiled happily at me, clearly convinced this was the explanation.

At this point I had to just leave the store. She had totally defeated me. How can someone working in a fruit section not know what a Plum is??  I’m still in shock 3 hours later.

Cruunch

Trying to pull my plug from train socket, managed to rip the entire mechanism from the wall. Wires, plastic, bits of metal. Little bolts are rolling around on the floor. I must use my new found superpower for Good. Am now awaiting contact from other Superheroes who must surely have sensed me.

[update]
Still no contact. In a seat nearby is a heavy set man with very large hands, could he be a fellow superhero? Hard to be sure. Right now he's eating a huge Pie. I must be patient and try not to break anything with my new powers.

[update]
A new development. Am struggling to open a diet coke, could this be my kryptonite? It defies me! I must hope that my first encounter fighting evil is not beverage related. When contact is made with the forces of Good, I will ask about mittens.

Yum x10

There is a magic that happens when blackcurrent preserve meets hot buttered toast.

Eating in the hotel restaurant tonight; I've always liked it when the kitchen is open and visible to the diners. I like seeing all the chopping and the busy work and the industry that's going into making me a little more winnie-the-pooh shaped than before. However, I like it less when the chef clearly has some contagion and is coughing whilst he preps food. And you know when your brain sees an opportunity to get ill and that actually makes you feel as though you are, in fact, getting ill?  Argh.

Super Uber

Today I used Uber for two trips across San Jose. It just doesn't get much smoother than the user experience of Uber. Watching your Driver on the little Map as he comes to pick you up is weirdly compelling and the fact that no money is required is just genius. One day someone will disrupt industries like Property or legal services to be as seamless and effortless as this.

Not Home Alone

Every single year, around Christmas, I end up watching Home Alone. I never seek it out but that movie always finds me somehow. So here I am today, stuck in a crappy hotel in an even crappier area of Santa Clara, and I turn on the tv to find McCauley running away from a policeman. And just like every other time, I will sit and watch it through to the very end. 

[Addendum: 24 hours later and I've somehow managed to land on Home Alone 2. It's uncanny. And yes, I did watch it.]

Lovin' Yorkshire

This is why I love Yorkshire. Stood in pouring rain outside the railway station; a teenage lad staggers up, very drunk and soaked, wearing shorts and a tshirt.

‘..buy a fag, mate?’
‘excuse me?’

He rocks back and forth for a while staring somewhere over my head.

‘A fag. For a quid mate. Give us a smoke.’
‘Ah right, sorry.. I don’t smoke.’
(we’re both stood under a huge No Smoking sign, me under the canopy, him still in the rain)

He then starts to walk off but walks straight into a metal column. Picking himself up he careers off into the station and is gone. Five minutes later he reappears from the other direction.

‘Mate, ah say, mate. Sell us a fag like. Go on.’
‘As I said, I don’t smoke. So I have no cigarettes to give you’.
He looks utterly distraught by this so I add..
‘..why not go to the actual Smoking Area, someone there will have one I’m sure’.

He blinks for the longest time, thinking this through. Then pointing at me he exclaims..

‘You. You’re like, you’re.. like fecking Mastermind or summat, you are.’

And off he goes again, in completely the wrong direction.