The A-Train

Cannes '09

Things I have inadvertently sent to the Cannes Film Board on promotional DVDs, labels and other materials:

- Human blood (papercut)
- Enchilada (enchilada)

thank you Essex

QUICK SOMEBODY TELL ME THE FASTEST WAY TO THIS PLACE AND ALSO IF IT IS REAL OR SOMETHING FROM A MAGNIFICENT DREAM

Occurances/sightings brought on extraordinary sleep deprivation and jetlag upon my return to London, where the streets are paved with gold

-shapeless green entity in my peripheral vision

- twitching. Twitchings.

- brushing my teeth 5 times with the French version of Sensodyne. Yucky.

- momentarily believing my newly acquired pounds (£'s) to be Confederate money.

I will be in Edinburgh tomorrow where I plan to sleep and sleep and sleep but if I'm not sleeping and you are in Scotland you should probably hang out with me.

"You're an idiot. You should leave." - Marisa Tom

The problem with dual regionality, and really just having two of anything, is this tendency to get really compare-ey compare-ey and swept away with little details of both places/things/ideas. For example last night I went to NoPa, Nopark, whatever, for the first time. It being new and nice and a sheep's throw from the Full House house made me nostalgic for a San Francisco that I've never actually had much experience with. There's a lot of SF lore that you kind of can't help but absorb, and I've usually been good at keeping it in check with the help of my Anglophilia or whatever. But all it took were a house full of people I genuinely like, Glen Perry getting me ginger ale in the morning and the mere idea of attending the GLAAD awards with Marisa and I'm thinking about apartment prices and BART passes and crab baskets.

But then I know the minute I get back to London and the PPC starts up, all the gatorade and taco bell in the world couldn't lure me back. At least for now.

And back.

I am in California. Yesterday I hung out with some of the 588 fellas and it made my trip home completely worth it. Like, thing number three that one of my favorites said to me was, "So why have I seen your face all over the internet?"

I miss Brittany.

Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco (1996)

As it turns out I am going back home to California on Monday for two weeks. These have been the most bizarre couple weeks of my graduated, professional life. Between writing for Vice and the Rubbish LFW stuff, I have come to the conclusion that I am qualified for the following occupations:

- Blogging
- Being an in-store representative for a company which 3D models your body to design custom jeans.
- Wear jodhpurs and be on the receiving end of some lighthearted harrassment.
- Going to Vanity Fair parties, getting embarrassing on free champagne and being carried home by the Mantern.
- Post-production work. Everything you've read up til now may have been a prelude to this, and whatever I'm a nozzle. It looks like I got me a placement at PPC, a film marketing company in Soho. I'm embracing the whole now-is-a-good-time-to-do-anything-but-be-actually-employed mentality, and I'm completely psyched about this.

But until that, all I can say is, I cannot wait to see these two:

This post is a little bit about Amsterdam, and a lot bit about my pictures in Vice

Amsterdam - not that great.

The Fashion Issue of Vice - There are pictures of me in here, but they call me Fiona (not my name) and things are written that I did not write. For example, on page 101 where I look like a fat hooker, I DID NOT WRITE: "My initial plan was to visit a guy I used to, ahem, screw but then I realised he wouldn't know anything was up."

Not me. False. Intern Fiona. Who is wonderful. And lewd. Jokes. How my pics got in instead of hers is a long story, and a fun one, and this was all planned and fine. I just wanted to clear that up.

With that said

hoo ha mah pictures are in a mag-aw-zine!

It happened - I was mistaken for someone trying to suicide bomb a synagogue in Istanbul

 

Istanbul is a dynamic city. The interplay between European, Asian and Muslim cultures left me awestruck and sweaty. I was most recently there to escape London snow and get some quality time with Gizmodo writer John Herrman and someone literally named Michael Caine. 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across this bookshop where a very nice older man explained to me that he recently had to close shop in protest of a police booth stationing itself next door (in front of the Dutch embassy no less), and sold me loads of starcharts for cheap because I knew a little bit about the Ottoman Empire. When I stepped outside it was raining, so I shoved the priceless (45 lira) mounted maps into my jacket. I liked it because it made me look like a big pregnant robot. Also I figured it might stop Turkish guys from staring at my boobs. It did not. About an hour later it was still raining hard, and we stumbled across a building with a star of David on it, and, having been the only Jewey thing I saw in a country which I know used to sort of have a Jewish population, it drew my attention. Then I noticed that it had a huge police van parked out in front. So I decided to get a picture of myself in front making a worried face. Comedy gold! 

 

Then I heard running, and then the expression on Gizmodo's John Herrman's face was that of some complex hideous joke coming together, and in a few seconds following this picture being taken several things happened at once. I realised that I was stood in front of a synagogue. With a police van. With what looked like a box-ey thing under my jacket. Some Turkish cops came out and spoke in Turkish very quickly, and I tried to show them that the bomb-shaped lump I had under my jacket was not a bomb, but they made the universal 'STOP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING' signal and kept speaking loudly for a long time, but DURRR I don't speak Turkish guys! So I said that, which I think helped, because after that there was significantly less gun-touching, for which I was grateful. Finally they signaled for me to unzip my jacket, looked through my maps, and waved us along. 

I think they were just trying to look at my boobs. Posted on Vice