PowerPoint: the output of Satan's electronic bottom
Why do people inflict ghastly PowerPoint presentations which only echo the exact words the bloke is saying? Do I really need to see the words, 'our vision' projected five foot high onto a huge screen when I can hear the boring tosser telling me just that? Still, with pain comes pleasure, and that came in the shape of FREE drinks after attending the tedious presentation. Lovely!
And on a far more interesting note, the nearly-completed 'erotic gherkin' skyscraper looked great tonight, projecting purple and green lights across the Thames.

Foggy London town
It's a bit foggy tonight, but visiting Americans hoping to see the mass of swirling thick clouds shown in 'Gor Blimey Guv'nor' films about London will be disappointed - we don't get them anymore! Mind you, Charles Dickens knew a bit about 'pea soupers': "FOGS are, no doubt, not peculiar to London. Even Paris itself can occasionally turn out very respectable work in this way, and the American visitor to England will probably think, in passing the banks of Newfoundland, that he had very little to learn on the subject of fog. But what Mr. Guppy called “a London particular” and what is more usually known to the natives as a “pea-souper”, will very speedily dispel any hallucination of this sort"

Bleary eyed in Brixton
Friday night was party night down Brixton way as we first hit a packed Albert for some heavy-duty quaffing before moving on to the Canterbury Arms to see my friend's band play. Only trouble was, the night had been double booked with an Irish wake, so the two sets of people ended up merging together in a friendly, go-for-it alcofest with much dancing, drunken ramblings and, later on, falling over. Respect!

Pubs rule!
Let's be honest: is there anything better than spending a few hours chatting with your mates over a few beers? Things get even better when the Stella is only £1.95 in the Albert in Brixton - that's a mere $3 Americans!
And we get 'man-sized' pints too, not the comedy sized US mini-measures! (although your late night licensing laws make ours look like the joke they are). No wonder Brits get so pissed: we haven't got much time!

New York photos coming soon (honest!)
I've spent hours today trawling through some of the 800+ photos, weeding out the crap (there's a lot of that!) and optimising the decent ones for the site. Things haven't been helped by my PC fan doing a passable impression of a Jumbo jet at take off or my office being an horrendous bundle of wires, leads and cable.
Still, the mighty Wales won again and I got a lovely email from my mate Jim in NYC...

Internet Launch Party nostalgia!
Last night I went to a truly bizarre West End launch party for a really crap website, with a comically bad presentation that had all my chums thinking we'd been transported back to the web glory days of 1998! Champagne, free beers and canapés were stuffed down our freeloading faces while we tried to keep a straight face as the cheesy clip-art spectacular spoke of 'empowering the web' and 'hanging out on the internet'.
But no matter how bad the site - free beer = happy Mike.

Why am I still awake?!
I haven't slept for 36 hours but after being tempted out to my local pub the evening has proved to be a long one...it doesn't half feel weird being back in the UK after Manhattan.. everything shuts so early! I want a Ray's Pizza!

Back in the UK!
I know there's nothing more boring than some lucky bastard who's just been on a fabulous holiday whinging about being jet lagged, so I'll tell you the first thing I did when I stumbled into my flat after a sleepless overnight flight: I brewed up a lovely cup of Earl Grey tea and made a 'proper' cheese sandwich. Oh yes!
Apart from their ghastly Lipton's tea and feeble weakling cheese, New York was fantastic though: expect a mighty big update to the NYC photo gallery just as soon as I get some sleep!

A rainy day in Soho
The rain is still blasting down in Manhattan but we've spent a lovely day all snug on the Pink Pony cafe on Ludlow Street.
Now we've got to pack up our bags and go through the trauma of an overnight flight...

Hungover in Manhattan
Last night proved to be another lager fest, taking in an alcoholic stroll along the Lower East Side before finally crashing into the Raven Bar at 2am, much the worse for wear. Pissed off that today is our last full day in NYC but we'll do our best to make sure we go out in style!
The weather's gone gale-force rain again, so it looks like we'll spend the day doing a bit of art, coffee-shops and shopping.
Next stop: urban75 mini-meet @ the Pink Pony in Ludlow Street..

Argh! My hangover!
Spent last night hitting the bars of Williamsburg and it rocked! Our friendly bartender dispensed the free drinks and shots like they were going out of business and we were only too happy to wolf 'em down!
Later on checked out a mad punk rock outfit at the Luxx before grabbing a cheap cab home - why are London cabs such an arsing rip off?!
Earlier in the day we wandered through Central Park which looked sensational in autumnal browns and I finally managed to track down a UK power adaptor so I could burn a backup of my 500+ NYC photos!
Today, we're going to be wandering around SoHo and grabbing a coffee at my favourite cafe - the appropriately named Café Café on Greene Street.

It's finally stopped raining!
After two days of torrential rain the thunderous deluge over New York has finally cleared. Yesterday we walked downtown and passed the site of the WTC, decked out in flags and personal messages. It was a desperately sad place. A hot dog vendor was plying his trade with passing tourists: I guess that's a true sign of New York's recovery.
Last night we watched the excellent Michael Moore 'Bowling for Columbine' movie (a must see movie!) and then checked out some more bands, bars and cafés around Ludlow St. It's a great part of town. ;)

Update from rainy Manhattan
Still having a fantastic time out in NYC although the weather's turned to a London-stylee constant drizzle...The good news is that I've managed to get my snazzy wireless internet/laptop connection working - the bad news is that I have to sit in an arsing Starbucks to get a connection. Still, at least I get to use their electricity and comfy chairs without spending a dime there. New Yorkers sure do 'chilled' well here: there's a guy next to me who's fast asleep with his laptop on his chest while another has recreated an entire office around his table...
Last night we went to a small East Village comedy club with UK comedian Bill Bailey topping the bill (he's starring in a show uptown) - and he was hilarious! He's a dead nice bloke too - we had a chat with him afterwards and he was really friendly.
Today we're heading off down to my old haunts in Wall Street to take some photos and maybe take the Staten Island ferry if the weather isn't too grim. Then maybe the Natural Hiastory museum and a movie after. NYC is great!
More later!

NYC diary...spent the day hanging in Brooklyn and Williamsburg today: Brooklyn is a fab mix of bleak industrial grimness and beautiful Hampstead-esque village houses and W'Burg truly rocks - I want to live here! We checked out some great stores/cafes, browsed in a top political bookstore and looked out across the Hudson to see the Empire State at night... wonderful stuff... ;)

Greetings from New York! Flew over in a super-high tech Virgin AirBus. The video screen was so hi-tech, you could text/ring/email the ground, send text messages to fellow passengers and fart around with untold amount of video/audio settings. Once I'd finished trying to work out ways of updating urban75 mid flight, I setted down to watch the excellent ' Once Upon a Time In The Midlands' film...

We're having fun in NYC despite a near arrest after I - apparently - tried to photograph a 'high security' building: the Holland Tunnel!

Last night we visited my mate Jim, who was DJing at the Raven in the East Village. Resplendent in a mad Goth-meets-Duran ensemble, he played some excellent tunes (apart from a troubling death metal selection) while we wolfed down the junior-sized 'pints' (US pints being about a third smaller than UK ones - when you're drunk it makes you feel like your hand has expanded!)

Tonight we're off to enjoy a pub crawl around Tribeca... expect some updates soon!

Wohoo! What a night!
Met up with a mob of urban75-ers at the Hobgoblin in Brixton, wandered over to Brockwell Park to watch the fireworks display, then back to the pub for lagers and sparklers, before checking out the fab live jazz bands at the Effra Hall - one of Brixton's finest pubs...

Sun comes up, it's Tuesday morning...
A tale of loss and healing by the Cowboy Junkies

I took a load of photos over the weekend of people huddled underneath umbrellas and battling against autumnal gales - expect some in the photo gallery soon!

Check out this neat scratchpad and leave a note for me!

Thanks to the kind assistance of Emerald, I finally got the Blogger archives sorted. Flushed with success, I then spent hours redesigning the whassup page, which is now rapidly turning into a mini-site of its own!

Woohoo! We watched loads of fireworks tonight in Camden - and then drank in that top rockabilly boozer, the Elephant's Head: nice pub!

6 days to New York!
But today is a West End kinda day, with coffees at the Photographer's Gallery...

Style magazine bollocks!
I got this email from the trendy 'style' mag, 'Sleazenation':
"Hi- we've got together to do a nationwide survey with Diesel about youth protest and what the youth of today believe in and along with the results we're putting a load of quotes from celebrities and the like about what they believe in.
All ya have to do is send us a rant (100-200 word) about something you believe in. Deadline is today."
And here's my reply:
"Can I do a rant about how I loathe parasites like Diesel trying to cash in on the protest movement with their hypocritical ad campaign?"

They didn't get back to me - it seems like the only 'rants' they want are ones that don't upset their precious sponsors...

Friday's Tommy Cooper joke: "I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any"