Reichtstag...
Last night we went to East Berlin to have dinner and to tramp around some of the bars. We ended up in a bar called Greif - full of young skins. We didn't leave until gone 5am. Not that I misbehaved you understand - I was playing Addams Family pinball most of the night! We got up fairly early today to visit the glass dome on top of the Reichtstag. Norman Foster's marvel of glass, steel and mirrors. Really very impressive - if not quite worth the 75min wait in the freezing cold. To warm ouselves up we settled down in Steam sauna for a few hours and then had a bite to eat. Being too exhausted to go to the club GMF tonight I've now retired early. We've got to checkout by 10am tomorrow and I need by beauty sleep.

Internet phones...l
This may be my most expensive blog entry to date as it has taken me 15 minutes to get it working properly and I am using my credit card. The German keyboard is critically, but not significantly, different from the UK one. Which makes life even more fun.

Checkpoint Charlie...
Last time I was here at Checkpoint Charlie was 26 years ago. I was on a school exchange trip and the family I was staying with had relatives in East Berlin. It presented a golden opportunity to show me the hassle it was to cross the border and what it's like to have guns trained on you as you cross from West to East - somthing I've never forgotten. Today's experience is very different though. The barriers are all gone. Checkpoint Charlie is just an excuse to sell T-shirts, hats and postcards. Even the museum near the site is lack-lustre. What a pity that the stories of the very real hardship of a city torn in two is translated so badly. The site deserves a proper memorial. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe it's all too soon since the wall was still there. Just Nov 1989.

Berlin - the tourism bit...
Got up early and visited the Bauhaus, Checkpouint Charlie, Berliner Dom, Unter den Linden, Brandenburg Gate, Charlottenburger palace and ended up having a meal at KaDeWe the big department store. Then had a haircut and took a breather before having a coffee in a skinhead cafe (yes they do exist) before doing a bit of shopping for nick-nacks.

Tonight we are going to plan to disco-nap earlier to make sure we are up for going some bars. Tom's is high on the list. First impressions: Berliners are a friendly crowd - but they don't smile much!

Berlin - the beginning...
We arrived yesterday to a grey miserable day. The hotel was pleasant enough - roomy, warm and welcoming. We spent the afternoon wandering around the district and getting to know the area. Found a friendly bar just across the street and generally made ourselves at home. 5 minutes later we were bored. Let's do something. So we went to the cinema.

And a very odd place it was too. There were very few seats and most of those were in booths. The films kept being changed to different film so just as you were getting interested in watching something it changed. Very strange. Not only that but people kept moving around and you wondered at times whether they were interested in what was being screened at all! In the end I simply resigned myself to the fact that I'd not be able to follow the plot of any of it and let myself go with the flow. Besides after two hours of trying to keep up with what was going on I decided to head home.

Rog and I decided to skip our disco nap and head straight out for food. Big mistake. After returning for a little sleep before going out later we where both out like lights. So we went to bed at 9:30 and never made it out of the hotel again until the next morning.

Busted...
I've been busted by the Webmaster at Aegean.net (George Michael's we site). I got a 'please remove all references to Freeek' and 'all MP3s of Freeek'. Legal jargon was mentioned. Naturally I did as requested as I'm a good boy. Please don't e-mail me asking for the files as I couldn't possibly send them to you. I really couldn't.

Ich bin ein Berliner...
Tomorrow I'm off to Berlin with Roger for five days for a bit of R&R. We have a few things lined up but are open to any suggestions as to things to do and places to go. Are there any 'must see' things that we just have to do? Are there any German phrases that we should really learn before we go? Any places where we really should eat and/or drink? Monuments that we just gotta see? Let me know ASAP and we'll try and fit it all in.

My blogging may be less frequent as a result of this trip. Or not. Depending on what we get up to!

Mini Gay Blog Meet...
Last night's Pop Quiz at the Retro Bar was made especially special as we had a mini gay blog meet first. Michael was down from Nottingham to join in the Tuesday night fun and frolics. He'd taken Wednesday morning off work and was staying with friends in Brixton. It was great to meet him and we wondered at his casual encyclopedic pop knowledge. Sadly we didn't win (pipped by half a point). Full details this afternoon here.

Left to right: Ian, David, Dave, me, Michael, Marcus. [Thanks to Marky for taking the picture]

George Michael's new single (again)...
Are you a George Michael fan? Are you? ARE YOU? Well Jonce here has got a little present for you: the full 4 minute 20 second version of George Michael's Freeek for you to listen to. You lucky, lucky people.

I have also now made the track available for download in either WMA or MP3 format. Simply right-hand mouse click on the format you want and select "Save Target As..."

The track is obviously 'inspired' by internet sex sites as the samples of modems and heavy breathing at the end are a bit of a give away.

Glued to the set...
Having downloaded it from Morpheus, we finally got round to watching a recent(ish) Star Trek: Enterprise episode called Dear Doctor last night. It was really quite good. Thought provoking. I think the series is improving as it progresses.

I have also found myself in possession of a Video CD of Lord Of The Rings. A very good copy too. It'll be fun to watch it again at my leisure and maybe reassess that I think about it. Mark hasn't seen it yet (he didn't fancy watching it at the cinema) so we'll probably watch it while I'm packing on Wednesday night.

George Michael's new single...
George Michael's new single Freeek! is out on 18th March 2002 in the UK. I heard it on Radio One's Breakfast Show this morning and it sounds brilliant. Big beats with those inevitable GM vocal stylings. Rumour has it that it's co-produced by Daft Punk. You can hear a audio 30sec clip here. He has an album out later this year. Word on the street is that the album will be very "up". Can't wait.

Superman...
In 1999 I bought Mark a DVD player. To be exact an Hitachi DVD DV-P250. It has worked perfectly since then - but with one slight problem. It would only play region 2 DVDs. So we couldn't watch DVDs that we had bought or been given from the States or the Far East. Well last night this annoyance got the better of me so I started trawling around on the Interwebnet to try and find a solution. And I did. I downloaded two disk images that contained a ROM eraser and a cracked updated ROM. I burnt them on to two CD-RWs and armed with a short list of instructions set about hacking the Hitachi's region 2 ROM. Two minutes later I had a fully working 6 region DVD player! Fantastic. I love the Internet.

The first DVD I watched was one that Kit had lent me sometime ago but I'd been unable to watch until last night: a DVD of the original "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly!" movie: Superman

Great film. Still stands up after 24 years believe it or not. The DVD was final released last year and is a treasure trove of trivia and features. The most revealing for me was the the casting documentary and in particular all the actresses who read for the part of Lois Lane before Margot Kidder was finally chosen. These screen tests were recently discovered in London and were edited into a montage for the documentary so almost each shot has a different actress reading a line. Amongst the unsuccessful hopefuls were Stockard Channing, Leslie Ann Warren, Ann Archer... the list goes on and on. Catch it if you can.

Gosford Park...
Yesterday was a film day: Film # 1. What a delightful, remarkable and thoroughly entertaining film this was. Gosford Park is an old fashioned whodunit mixing Upstairs, Downstairs, The Remains Of The Day and Murder On The Orient Express. Robert Altman was produced and directed an amazing ensemble cast of luminary British stars each giving outstanding performances. Head and shoulders above the rest was Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith). She had and amazing array of Wildean oneliners and putdowns that reduced the audience to hysterics. Very bitchy, very funny.

I urge you to go and see this film if you haven't already. It's well worth it.

Sexy Beast...
Yesterday was a film day: Film # 2. This was fun, entertaining and the darkest of the films we watched yesterday. Sex Beast centres around a robbery that's being planned in London for which mad-boy Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) tries to persuade retired gangster Gal (Ray Winstone) back out of retriement from the Spanish Costa Del Crime. It treads the line between humour and crime quite carefully. Never being too jokey, Kingsley puts up a performance that must rank him amongst the most evil villains in quite some time. The brutal nature of the film is somewhat lessened by the fact that Teddy Bass (the 'Mr Big' who is organising the heist) is played by none other than Lovejoy's Ian McShane. Still, his steely blue eyes did have a certain menace about them.

Well worth seeing. Even if it's just to watch Kinsley's threatening psycho go 'ape'.

What Dreams May Come...
Yesterday was a film day: Film # 3. This was definitely the least pleasurable of the films we watched yesterday. What Dreams May Come is utter twaddle.

Don't bother. The dog dies, two children die, the dad dies, the mum commits suicide. There you go. I've saved you the bother.

Say Hello...
I said I was going to do this sometime ago but at last I found time. Here is the full performance of Marc Almond singing Say Hello Wave Goodbye on Jools Holland's New Year's Eve show.

Pop Idol...
Drew and I were in the pub celebrating Matthew's 31st birthday so we didn't watch Pop Idol last night. But it felt like we did. We got all the latest updates texted to us from Marky and David. We even did a bit of last minute canvassing in the pub ourselves for Will. In the end as expected Darius Danesh was kicked out. He sang Toploader's Liza Minnelli's "Dancin' in the Moonlight" and The Walker Brothers' "Make it Easy on Yourself", both songs chosen by the judges. Hosts Ant and Dec revealed the two finalists, William Young and Gareth Gates, had polled 39.8% and 39.3 % of the 5.8 million votes but did not say which had which. So it's closer than we'd thought. You can watch a clip from the boys here: Will and Gareth. But prepare to cringe at Gareth's "I want to help the homeless, the starving and the needy" bit. Will DEFINITELY gets my vote now.

The Windy City...
The UK is being battered by storms at the moment with 80 mph gusts of wind. When we were going out last we were walking down Upper Street watching the whole city being battered about. The odd tile was being lifted from the rooftops and crashing around us, scaffolding was shaking and wobbling, windows were rattling and litter was tumbling down the street. It was really quite exciting.

Birthday present...
To celebrate the fact that I am one today (and also the fact that I got paid yesterday) I've just a put a deposit down on an X-Box. It gets released here on March 14th and I hope to get one that day. Has anyone else got one and can recommend any games I should get for it?

One year old today...
Happy Birthday to me! So this blog is one year old today. Since starting out the earth has circled the sun just once and in that time blogging has rather taken over my life. I've done it an work, at home, in Boston, in New York, in Amsterdam, in the Middle East, in Vienna, in Madrid, in South Africa, from a speeding car, on the beach, on a train, at the airport, at a railway station, at a friend's house, at my parent's house, while out shopping, in a cafe, in a pub, in a night club, when I get up in the morning and when I get home at night. In times of delight and in times of sorrow. There is nowhere I wouldn't consider blogging from. I guess I'm an addict. Neil McIntosh's article in the Guardian yesterday rather hit it on the head when he said, "It is not often you can say a website has changed the face of the web, and had an impact far beyond the confines of its own domain. But, for many, Blogger is such a site." To a large extent blogging skews my perception of life and what I experience. I often think about how I could put such experiences into words and what I really think about what I'm experiencing. Blogging has enriched my life a great deal and yet made me it's slave. It has reintroduced me to the joys of writing; something I had long forgotten how to do. It has caused me to meet new people, many of whom have gone on to become firm friends; on both sides of the Atlantic (see side panel for the full rogue's gallery). It has forced me to think of thinks to say when perhaps I don't want to or shouldn't. At times it has got me into trouble and at the same time allowed me to get things off my chest that I couldn't in any other way.
So I thank you, dear reader, for your indulgence in what is really only an exercise in 'vanity publishing'. I do hope though that in some small way you might find this site fun or a bit of giggle. If not and if I offend you or bore then please don't think ill of the medium. There are a lot of people out there who do blogging a lot better than me. Tonight I shall be celebrating though. Celebrating my blog's first birthday. Because in many ways my blog has liberated me. Set me free to express myself in a way I've never done before. And that needs to be celebrated. It is just a strange twist that it has also enslaved me. I'm addicted to it. Ironic really.