almostwitty

It’s amazing what you can cut together with rushes of interviews…

(The BBC documentary that was actually made partly from these rushes is The Virtual Revolution, presented by the divine Dr. Aleks Krotoski, Saturdays at 8.30pm on BBC Two)

Incidentally, it’s nice to know that I have finally achieved my ambition to have my name listed on a BBC network programme’s credits. Even if it’s only my netname, and it’s only listed on the website…

Mirrored from almost witty.

Every so often, there comes a point when you look around, and you wonder how you got into a certain situation.

For instance, like driving a Ferrari on the wrong side of the road and into traffic islands across the city of Houston, at 3am on a Saturday night, a bit the worse for wear on a malt liquor beverage.

It was 1994, and I was an exchange student at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, America. The friends I was hanging out with decided that since there apparently were no nightclubs in Baton Rouge, we should make a weekend of it and go to the next nearest major city. Alas, New Orleans (the logical choice) was nixed, and thus the destination was set for Houston. Six hours away. I hadn’t realised that the parents of my cohorts were so rich that they had tiny Ferraris, but they did, and I was in the back seat for six rumbling hours.

It was somehow decided that we didn’t have time to check into the motel that we’d organised, so instead we drove straight to the nightclub, arriving for about 9pm. Whereupon, with my training in British student bars, I headed straight for the bar and ordered a bunch of Zimas – then the coolest “malt liquor” drink being advertised on American TV.

Fast forward to 2am, and the group gradually assembled for the drive home, all of us a wee bit the worse for wear. Astonishingly, the main driver announced that he was too drunk to drive, and as I was the most sober person in the group, I should drive us home back to the motel. Even though I was still quite drunk, it was a sports car, and I pointed out that I was used to driving on the left side of the road. My objections were blithely over-ruled – and hey, how often do you get the chance to drive a sports car? – and I got in.

The group’s general assumption that i would be fine to drive were almost immediately quashed when I reversed the car, and turned it to the left – which is what you’d do in the UK. But apparently not in the US. The screams were almost comical, but fortunately we didn’t hit anything.

Unfortunately, over the next few minutes, I did scrape along the kerb, hit a traffic bollard, and mount a traffic island. In my defence, there’s not actually not much windscreen space in a tiny sports car – and of course, I’m not used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, I was driving quite slowly, until I got the hang of things. After a while, the group calmed down enough to realise that I was asking for directions they didn’t have, so we all ended up looking around for signs to an Interstate or highway of some sort.

Eventually, we found one, I finally had the confidence to put some gas on the pedal, and somehow we managed to arrive at our designated motel. Why the hotel staff didn’t raise alarm bells at seeing a Ferrari pull in at 2am and four kids get out, clearly the worse for wear, is beyond me.

What was worse was the same six-hour journey back across a rumbling highway, crammed in the backseat, but this time all of us hungover.

Unsurprisingly, these days, when there’s an evening of drinking to be had, I get a taxi.

Mirrored from almost witty.

Miss H recently did a Google search for a local pizzeria near where I live and she works. My picture pops up – because I once wrote a favourable review of it.

Better yet, if you then do the same search but concentrating on images, there’s a Google Ad inviting you to travel with 1200 lesbians. Sounds like my average dating night out to me.

Mirrored from almost witty.

Finally! Someone does an impression of a British-Chinese person without resorting to sticky tape or yellow-face make-up. On the other hand….

Mirrored from almost witty.

and this so sums up the next two weeks for me. I’m currently at the level of most stress just before the first yellow line…

Indeed these days I find I don’t get the holiday spirit until I see the words ‘Airport’, and once I’m actually sat on the plane, I tend to collapse and snore like a donkey…

Mirrored from almost witty.

One of those comedy funny songs by Asian-American comedienne Jenny Kwok, who wins kudos points because:

• her YouTube channel is called “A Certain Jen Ne Sais Kwok”, winning the award for most hilarious use of a Chinese surname. After, that is, my soon-to-be-released TV channel BBC Wong…
• her song “Everybody should date an Asian man” contains the immortal lyric: “Everybody should date an Asian man … at least f**k one, please please f**k one”

Mirrored from almost witty.

People carriers. They’re for married couples who have been overactive with their loins, and suddenly find themselves in charge of four screaming mini-me’s who they don’t really like, and so decide to keep them out of the house as much as humanly possible by keeping them active in endless football / karate / ballet lessons, which involve using up what’s left of the Earth’s oil resources to ferry them around, so that by the time the kids are old enough to inherit a planet choking in carbon emissions and rising sea levels, at least they’ll know how to dance to Swan Lake. Although they’ll have never seen a swan.

To avert this terrible fate for people carriers everywhere, my ex-uni mate Di (who is usually seen generally cooking up amazingly silly ideas – she could be a Kari Byron for the Birmingham edition of Mythbusters) has turned a people carrier into a mobile disco, which is a much more sensible use of such a car. Watch the video, and then go and vote for her idea.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Top Gear…

Mirrored from almost witty.

Courtesy of b3ta:

"I was at the Leeds Fest riots in 2005.

The Foo Fighters had just headlined the main stage, and we were making our way back to the campsite only to find downtown Baghdad. There were huge fires all over the place, with the sound of gas canisters blowing
up every few minutes. People were knocking down telegraph poles and destroying tents. I seated myself at the top of the hill looking down on the most tribal primitive and yet awesome sight I had ever seen.

There in the clearing were hundreds of people running and dancing around a huge fire made of what was once the cider tent, the Carling tent and a telegraph pole. One guy was playing the drums using two tent poles and
the upturned kettle drum bins while everyone danced around the fire with glow-sticks. There were people juggling fire, practising poi, and generally having a really good time.

A Carling (beer) truck that was nearby had been broken into and was in the process of being relieved of all its goods. It looked like the apocalypse had come. And yet... there in the middle of all of this chaos, we rioting Brits had formed an orderly queue to pillage the Carling truck.

Even in the middle of a riot we were waiting patiently as one guy grabbed 24 pack after 24 pack and offloaded one by one them to the waiting 'soon to be' drunks."

So, via eBookers, I booked a flight to take my parents to the United States. But when I checked the booking details later, the middle names of my parents hadn’t been transferred over. Although the middle names of my sisters *had* been transferred over.

So I called the eBookers call centre (which turns out to be in Manila) to query this, and after speaking to a curiously disembodied woman on the other end who was either Dutch or Irish, but was definitely in the middle of a sandstorm in the Sahara desert, I was told that:
- their GDS system didn’t allow for the insertion of a middle name
- (eventually) that it didn’t matter anyway, since the names on a ticket don’t need to match the passport.

Then I called Air France to check on this, and was told that yes, the names on a flight ticket DO need to match the passport if you’re visiting the United States.

So, back to eBookers. They end up putting me on a conference call with Air France, and asking to speak to an Air France supervisor.

After 30 minutes of being on hold, I’m eventually told that:
- it’s recommended (but not *essential*) for the names on the ticket to match that on the passport
- because it’s recommended - but not essential - then I’d essentially have to cancel the ticket and buy a new set of tickets, according to Air France
- eBookers aren’t willing to make the name change, because it’s not essential

and then I get cut off. After 50 minutes on the phone. I then try to call eBookers back, only to find that I’ve been put through to a different call centre in Bombay. (!)

The upshot of it all is that Air France would probably allow my parents onto the plane, but not necessarily. Especially if US immigration insists that the name on the plane ticket matches the name on the passport.

Does nobody know anything any more?

Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.

Obama and McCain in a US Presidential candidate funny face-off at the Alfred E Smith memorial dinner:





Admittedly, they probably had the best gag-meisters in the world working on their respective routines, but how did we let America steal the comedy crown? First Friends and now this. (I refuse to acknowledge The Office - it is the demon child of British Comedy which will one day be rightfully shunned by its peer group) I can't help feeling a Brown vs Cameron comedy face-off would be incredibly dull, especially if this constitutes a Brown joke.