John Walker's Electronic House

Some idiot reckons that Lucas Kane offof Fahrenheit looks like Jim Rossignol offof Magazines.

YOU DECIDE.

LA then.

It’s not really possible to answer the question, “What do you think of LA?” It’s a bit like being asked, “What do you think of England?” It’s sprawling, and seemingly very different depending upon where you are. We were in Westwood, and I can report back that it’s a surprisingly ordinary place, if a tad rich. However, that didn’t mean there weren’t other places that looked like this:

It was like being trapped inside a horrible Disneyfied cartoon. But there was a pretty girl in the Hot Topic shop, who sold me a Postal Service t-shirt, which made it all better. Unfornately, it was then made all bad again by the outdoor karaoke stall at the end of the street.

But for me, LA was about the puns. The first was encountered at Universal Studios, which requires a short digression…

Walking around Universal Studios: Hollywood is like being in the sort of haunted theme park you’d expect to see in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Faded paint, rusty metal, the entire place feels as if it’s been designed with a 1992 theme. The reality is, that was probably the last time they changed anything there. There are rides with vaguely more recent film names, but as soon as you enter it becomes obvious that it used to be the interior for something similar. Van Helsing being probably the most recent title to appear was very obviously some other cartoonish horror in a previous incarnation, and tellingly doesn’t feature either bats or werewolves, making the name rather peculiar. The main rides are still Terminator 3D and Back To The Future, the latter now so dated as to have taken on a “retro” styling. “Hey kids, this was how they used to do simulation rides when I was young.” The name takes on a deeper resonance. Terminator’s stage-show-meets-3D-movie is pleasingly effective… once you’re inside. Outside, during the queue, and the gigglingly bad introduction video, the aging nature of the decade old arrangement is all too obvious. Aging grey monitors show what might have looked futuristic in the early 90s, looking surprisingly like this:

The best part of the day was the studio tour – something I was expecting to be terrible. Driving about Universal’s lots is an impressive sight, in a well put together tour. We drove past the remarkable plane wreck from the recent War of the Worlds – a full size 747, destroyed for Mr Speilberg’s pleasure.

But more excitingly than anything I could have possibly expected, we went to Sunnydale! There are a number of ‘streets’ in the outdoor lots, each looking entirely real as we drove down them, but all completely fake. Even the trees, utterly real looking in every way, are all plastic and polystyrene. Everything in the following, which I think might have been Buffy’s house, is fake:

And here’s a weird thing. The same cul-de-sac on which the building lives, and indeed if you’re a fan you might have already noticed, is where the residents of Desperate Housewives glare at one another.

But the pun. It’s so glorious. Outside the Back To The Future ride, depressingly closed (adding to the haunted park theme) was the following stall:

If that’s not enough, then the “Chick Mall” we visted on Tuesday morning should convince you to book tickets to the city immediately.

Splendid stuff.

The ‘boys’ at The Triforce point out C&VG’s entirely brilliant headline, regarding the end of my arch nemesis (since Cryo died), the dismal Myst series:

“LACK OF GREEN MAKES CYAN BLUE”

Pure genius.

I’m declaring an international day of mourning for Cyan and the demised Myst series on the 16th September.

It’s official.

“Your tutors join me in offering congratulations on being awarded a First Class Degree. It represents the culmination of a great deal of hard work and effort, which has been justly rewarded. I hope that your future plans will be equally successful.”

Tee hee.

“great deal of hard work and effort”

Snigger.

You can call me Mr First.

This morning I did something I haven’t done voluntarily for six years. I went to church.

Clearly, working for churches for the last six years means that it’s not exactly unusual, but to go because I chose to, rather than because I was obliged to, is apparently quite a different thing.

So that was good. Anyway, the RULE of going to a new church is that you have to stand around looking lost to see if people will come up and say hello, or if they are all evil, self-enclosed Nazis. I’m pleased to report that they weren’t Nazis. Of course, if they were Nazis, then I wouldn’t have had to say the same things about myself ninety-seven times, while people feigned interest that I’m a freelance writer (I always say “writer” instead of “journalist” because when you say “writer” to customs officials in America, they don’t lock you in a jail cell for the whole of eternity, and it’s best to be in the good habit).

Of course, their interest was always piqued at one point. I would say:

“Yes, I’ve just finished a degree in youth work and theology, and so now I’m working out what I want to do next. I’m concentrating on the writing at the moment, but there’s a project in Bath that I’m interested in setting up.”

What they would hear was:

“Yes, I’ve just finished a degree in youth work and… [YOUTH WORK! YOUTH WORK! HE DOES YOUTH WORK! HE COULD DO OUR YOUTH WORK!] …in setting up.”

But that’s not what I brought us all here to talk about this evening. Instead, it’s about how really quite impressively rubbish I am at talking to girls. And at the same time, how I’m absolutely the greatest person at it ever.

After the service, deliberately standing around looking lost again, but this time deliberately looking lost near a girl who looked over the age of 20 without being married (the Great Auk of church congregations), there was an awful moment when it changed from a new guy waiting to be talked to by people, to two people trying to look at each other without making eye contact, while each fought an internal battle of whether they should just bloody well say hello. I won/lost, and spoke.

We swapped degree information, she explained that she’s re-submitting one of the modules this week that she didn’t pass last year, and I suggested that she must be feeling very relaxed. She said that that was the problem, and that she had just bought Sims 2 and was playing that inst… [SHE PLAYS COMPUTER GAMES! SHE’S A GIRL, AND SHE PLAYS COMPUTER GAMES! MAYBE SHE WILL MARRY YOU THIS AFTERNOON] …wasn’t enough RAM in her computer. I told her that when fitting it, you have to push down so hard you think you’re going to crack the motherboard, and the ground beneath the computer. She laughed… [I MADE AN ATTRACTIVE GIRL LAUGH WHEN TALKING ABOUT RAM! I’M POSSIBLY THE GREATEST MAN EVER IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF ALL TIME!] …about how PC World was a dreadful place to buy anything, so she was getting it from the internet. I asked what she was going to do with her degree in Auto Mechanics and German [WHAT ON EARTH KIND OF DEGREE IS THAT? I MEAN, SURE, YOU JUST FINISHED A DEGREE IN YOUTH WORK BUT COME ON – HOW DO THEY POSSIBLY? WAIT – SURELY YOU CAN MAKE A JOKE ABOUT THAT “VORSPRUNG DIRCH TECHNIQUE” OR WHATEVER IT’S CALLED – THAT CLEVERLY COMBINES THE TWO IN A BRILLIANT WAY] …”so a joke about vorsprung durch technik would be appropriate then?” [DAMN JOHN, YOU’RE CLEVER – YOU MADE IT IRONIC THAT YOU WERE EVEN SAYING IT] “…a pound for every time someone said something like that…” [DAMMIT] “…thought about joining the army for a while, but then changed my mind.” “Was it the shooting innocent teenagers that put you off?” [WHAT THE HELL? WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING? SERIOUSLY, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?] “…four years of study and three years of service that did it.” “So the shooting teenagers bit was fine?” [GOOD GRIEF MAN! ARE YOU UTTERLY OUT OF YOUR MIND? YOU WERE SO GREAT WITH THE RAM THING, BUT WHAT IS THIS?] “…not thinking about that prevented it from being a problem.” [AM I SAFE? DID I REALLY GET AWAY WITH SUGGESTING THAT SHE DOESN’T MIND THE IDEA OF MURDERING TEENAGERS?] …how we would see each other again in a fortnight, and said goodbye.

By writing this, what I’m ensuring is that were the moment to occur when we both fell for each other, she would then discover this blog entry, and immediately think, “He wrote about me on a website read by 150 strangers? Man, that was close.” And never see me again. But of course, it’s important to ensure my everlasting lonely misery, and to make sure that I’m insured against the danger of any chances of happiness.

With a wave of laziness that can only be brought on by having fought in a war, I’m going to describe the last week and leave you to attach the right photos to the events by opening this link in another tab. (And if you’re still using Internet Explorer, then open this link and slap yourself until it starts bleeding).

I went to Poland this week. Flew from Heathrow at OH MY GOD O’CLOCK in the morning (the hotel generously decided to opt out of my 4.15am alarm call, but thankfully enough distrust had been developed to set my mobile alarm as well after actually having to have a real argument with a repulsively rude man on the reception when he tried to charge me for a pre-paid room, ignored everything I said, ran the battery down on my mobile phone after proving too stupid to operate his own telephone, and then lied to me about not being able to take my Switch card, eventually getting his manager who immediately told him off for being an idiot and fixed some issues. But this got so out of control (not the argument, but the uselessness of the hotel) that the Nice Man looking after us had to come to the hotel that night to shout at them, whereupon rather than charging all us innocent scabbing hacks for our own rooms, they instead charged the Nice Man’s company twice for everything. And so on. Do not stay at the Park Inn, Heathrow. It is shit).

Arrived in Warsaw, put on a coach, driven to an airfield, and put onto a 12-seater bi-plane. This offered an hour of being shaken about in a manner that was at first very exciting, and then for the last 50 minutes extremely boring. Land somewhere in the north of Poland, and am then piled into an open-topped, open-sided, open-everything 1940s army jeep, and driven at a hundred thousand miles an hour along dirt roads for ages and ages. This was entirely brilliant. Someone comments, “There’d better be a 4-star hotel at the end of this road”. It was better. A couple of beautiful buildings, one being our hotel, the other being where they hid the Xbox 360.

Evening comes, and we’re off in the jeeps again (driven by men in US WW2 uniforms) to visit some WW2 bunkers nearby. We stop along the road as a large branch is across it. The journos in the front vehicle got out to move it, which was the moment the camoflaged Nazis burst from the woods, shot our drivers, and then forced us all to get out the jeeps. Rifle-butts shoved in our backs, we were pushed and “SCHNELL! SCHNELL!”d along until we were split into two groups and, er, given guided tours of the bunkers in which Hitler had stayed for a long stretch of the Second World War. An astonishing place, including the building in which the failed attempt by a brave Nazi officer to assassinate Hitler had taken place. A pleasing lack of health and safety meant we were allowed to climb the iron rungs onto the top of the bomb-blasted remains of Hitler’s main bunker and explore the remains of the machine gun turrets and so on.

Fortunately some more American soldiers turned up and killed the Nazis, so we were able to get back to our lodgings for a fine bbq feast and campire apples-on-sticks roasting.

Next morning, up nice and early to visit some more intact bunkers in the next ‘town’ along. Poland is a pretty poor place. Warsaw was a sad sight – derilect buildings festooned with brand new advertising hoardings, Capitalism having raped and pillaged its way through the city, leaving its foul graffiti across the walls. The moment we left the city, it was just farmland for as far as we flew. Around the area we were staying, a ‘peasant’ lifestyle seemed the norm, tiny self-sustaining communities impossibly far away from anyone else. It was a strange feeling of decadence combined with utter weirdness to go hurtling through such places on an off-road army jeep.

We reached the site of the bunkers, explored them, walking through the warren-like corridors, and then went for a short walk down a river to see the astonishingly huge U-boat lock that remains almost entirely complete. It’s quite odd that Germany has destroyed so much of the Nazi’s constructions in order to move on from a difficult past, while Poland has kept the works of their invaders intact. I think the Polish decision is wise. To have it there, in front of you – to be standing inside the buildings Hitler lived in – it’s chilling, hideous, and impossible to pretend didn’t happen just recently. Those incredible buildings of engineering accomplishment and terrible evil don’t let the Second World War become as much a part of history as schools would have you believe, shelved up alongside the Romans, the Middle Ages and the Spinning Jenny. Instead it’s something that happened only 60 years ago, and damn well could happen again if we ever get complacent enough. Let the ugly concrete stick up on the beautiful land, crooked teeth to remind us of where things went and could go again.

There was some sort of distraction where we were made to play some game or other in the afternoon, and then the evening saw a ludicrous and enormously fun jaunt on the top of a vast behemoth of an amphibious tank thing, charging around tracks not nearly wide enough for the caterpillar tracks at tremendous speeds.

I was nervous about a WW2 themed trip to Poland. It could have been in terrible taste. And while I’m sure some of it could sound as though it had been, it never felt that way. The Nazis were portrayed by a dedicated group of young Poles, who were involved in re-enactment socities, their equipment authentic, and their knowledge immense. One lunchtime was accompanied by a 30 minute lecture on all the equipment they had with them, meticulously explained. The subject matter was taught to us, rather than used as a form of entertainment. And while being ambushed by Nazis is always going to be a bit… odd, it was impossible not to allow yourself to consider that this happened so recently for real, and to feel that fear.

I’ve played on an Xbox 360 and you haven’t.

Ner.