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 My blog is moving, I'm going to blogspot.

Follow me to:

http://andrew-newsham.blogspot.com/

 The new blog is called, 'Newsh'.

It is there that I will continue to record my notes towards an understanding of the world.

http://andrew-newsham.blogspot.com/

You will be able to add comments.

All the best and thanks!

Andrew Newsham

I don’t like driving next to trucks. It’s an obvious aversion, they could easily smash me to a bloody pulp with their ten-ton rigs. All it would take is a simple misjudged turn or a careless acceleration. As I drive next to these grim metal behemoths I find myself contemplating their lives. I worry about their health. Have they slept well? Have they spent too long on their own and become crazy? Their noodles fried with cabin fever, Republican shock jocks bellowing nasty lies and propaganda into their ears until they are incandescent with rage…

After his prediction of his home country's loss came true, German TV showed footage of a grilled octopus. That prompted Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to fret about the safety of "El Pulpo Paul," as he's known in Spain. "I am concerned about the octopus," Zapatero said. "I'm thinking about sending in a team to protect him."

Late night drive back from L.A. with a station called K-RTH (sounds like K-Earth when they say it) on the radio playing classic rock. Clear roads. Jenny snoozing in the seat next to me, plum tuckered out after the opening night of her new play 'The exile of Petie Delarge'. Great night, a triumph. Thin Lizzy became Early Floyd and then a bunch of adverts. Normally I would retune the station to keep the music pumping but the late night K-RTH selection had really been hitting the spot. You just don't know how long you've been missing classic rock until you hear a snatch of Led Zep and you're suddenly nodding your head to the beat.

Seen Through The Windscreen

Five snapshots from a road trip to Death Valley:

#1 Old Fords

In the desert, near Baker, on route 127 towards Death Valley Junction we got stuck behind a convoy of about twenty Model T Fords going at 25mph. The sightlines for seeing on coming traffic in the desert always seems to be good, vast expanses of nothing, miles of tarmac in either direction but it’s strange and deceptive. It makes people drive like lunatics, like drag racers, a car coming at you in the distance is probably topping a hundred. The motorbike on your shoulder came from nowhere and was pushing 120mph. The roads are full of impatience and wonder, desert people, the military, Area 51 freaks, nomads, drug runners from meth labs, locals in a rush to get home to places with names like Searchlight, Zzyzx and Pahrump, people hauling boats, packs of dusty Hells Angels out of Smokey and Bandit wearing actual spiked Kaiser Helmets, truckers who may not have slept for two days hoping to make a delivery bonus, tourists in rental cars going slow to stare at cacti and ghost towns. The yellow line down the middle of road instructs you not to pass, then fades into a dot dash dash of morse code temptation. The road surface is a mess. Signs warn you of packs of wild donkeys, descendants of escapees from nineteenth century gold mines. Strange fading memorials to the dead. The bends where there have been too many accidents are marked with speed limits, but how many are too many? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? Other bends without speed limits are just as bad. This is no freeway. People suddenly driving towards me in my lane trying to overtake quarry trucks force James Dean’s last words into my mind, ‘That guy has to stop…?’. Sections of road tight and not really built for the ‘Canyonero’ SUVs. Abandoned hotels and gas stations adorned with fading 1950’s coke ads.

Recent Animal Sightings

Humpback whales. On the boat to and from Santa Cruz Island in Channel Island National Park we saw whales. The captain of our boat actually yelled, ‘THAR SHE BLOWS’, and damn it if she didn’t actually blow, a spout of water hanging in the air on the horizon. As the whale dives for food it swallows a couple of swimming pools full of water and has to blow it out of its blowhole when it comes up to breathe. Once more reminded of the gulf between the abstract and the experienced. Crazy big creatures. They really do have humped backs. The water is thrown from the blowhole in a fountain spray twenty foot high. Hence the way you can sight them and chase them. The one on the way back showed us its full tail, flashing in the sun, as big a car, as it dived down into the depths. Must read Moby Dick.

Room Service

My recent trip to Vegas allowed me to check on my data gathering sources at the front desks of the major hotels. The following is a list of special items requested from room service in the past year. I had expected the recession to impact the frequency and eccentricity of special requests but if anything, the financial collapse has inspired more wanton profligacy than we have seen previously. This could offer further support to Chomsky’s ‘Last Days of Rome’ hypothesis.

Changes in desk staff at some hotels have led to an absence of data for several months from The Mirage, Treasure Island and Binions. Other problems continue as to the recording of the data. It is a tricky endeavor spanning many hotels requiring the participation of hundreds of employees working both day and night shifts. Where possible I attempt to personally verify the stranger items with the desk staff who took and attempted to fill the request but with the staff turnover it is not always possible. I have chosen to add additional comments in speech marks that have come to me from the staff members when they prove illuminating.

Dear NBC News San Diego,

            I watched your 11-o-clock news show on 2/24/10 and have a couple of questions about the report you did on the death of the whale trainer Dawn Brancheau.

            You presented the tragedy, the response of Seaworld San Diego in canceling their afternoon Shamu show and a short history of the whale’s connection to two other deaths but you failed to mention anything about the growing consensus that imprisoning Orcas and forcing them to splash, tap dance and cuddle for a crowd of braying yahoos is anything other than exploitation and torture.

Beggar’s Banquet

“Can I have seventy five cents,” said the beggar. He’d edged up to us as we waited to get served at our local taco stand.

I never pony up but this guy caught me unawares. He was Mexican and egg shaped with loose jelly like eyes. About forty. There was something strangely soulful about him. Like a street after a carnival, a lone flower in an overgrown  cemetery,  a page of a telephone book lying in the gutter. His music was low Spanish guitar.

The Andy / Jumanji Project

Watched Julie and Julia at the weekend. I had put up some resistance to seeing it but as my wife watched Inglorious Basterds with me, it was only fair. And it really wasn’t that bad. It sounded lame, some blogger trying to make all the recipes in some old cookbook. Who cares?  It seemed a bit like those people who expect you to sponsor them for skiing every Alp or backpacking across China and expect huge applause when really you’re just thinking, ‘I wish I could ski down every Alp… how much money did you really give to Oxfam? I bet it would have been a lot more without the deductions for ski passes’.