And I'm back...

(Upon realizing that I was spending the day following my 33rd birthday by sitting in a pub outside of the British Museum and drinking a pint of Guinness)
EC: “You know, given how much I bitch about things every once in a while I have to admit that my life freaking rocks!”

Yes, I am back after a slight sojourn over the pond to London to attend a conference. I can now officially claim that I am, in fact, an international businessman. It was a really quick trip, left on Monday and came back on Friday, which means that my body is now really confused as to what time it is. The jet lag wasn’t that bad, I was tired over there more for the fact that I was constantly busy and I spent yesterday on the couch watching football, which too be honest is probably what I would have done if I had spent the entire week in Kansas City. I have a vicious head cold though that is probably due to the twenty hours I’ve spent on planes this week.

(And in what is either one of the coolest or dumbest things I’ve ever done, I even played in a trivia contest on Friday night even though I was in London that morning. And I was still the only one in the place who knew that Chairman Kaga is the host of Iron Chef and one of the few who knew that David Yow headed up The Jesus Lizard. That’s basically the type of knowledge that sits in my brain at all times.)

The conference was cool and I was able to spend some time wandering the city. Picked up a Frames CD and two new Mike Gayle novels, which saves me from ordering them online though the cost ended up being the same. Wandering around London was a bit maddening. Maybe I’ve just spent a little too much time in KC but those crowds were just beyond anything that I’ve ever encountered. I probably walked in two miles in one direction and the crowds never ended. Even as a Chicago kid I never dealt with anything like that. Maybe it is like that in New York or LA. (Side note: it dawned on me that this was my third trip to London yet I’ve still never visited New York. And I’ve never set foot in California. That’s pretty amazing.)

Now there are two news stories that I missed that I need to discuss. The first is Paris Hilton’s drunk driving arrest. I was very upset that the BBC only felt that this deserved a blurb on their news ticker. Somehow Tony Blair preparing to resign as prime minister was judged as being more news worthy, though I can’t tell on what planet that could be true. Here’s what bothers me about the story. A) She was driving, which means that someone gave her a license to operate a motor vehicle in the first place. Don’t you have to pass a test or at least prove that you can read to do that? B) She was going to In-N-Out Burger and as a former spokesperson for Carl Jr’s that is a degree of hypocrisy that I would not expect for someone of Paris’ character. C) She was going for a burger? That might be the dumbest way to get arrested when you are a high profile debutante.

The next story involves Lindsay Lohan’s stolen luggage at Heathrow on Thursday. First of all, I would like to squash the rumors that I had anything to do with the incident. Just because we were in the same place at the same time doesn’t mean that I left the conference early in order to steal her asthma inhaler. (And yeah, that would be what I would have taken. Screw the jewelry, how awesome would it be to have that on your mantle? Ok, maybe I shouldn’t have shared that…) But it does make you wonder just how scatterbrained she is as she misplaced a bag with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry while wandering Heathrow. I mean, I don’t let my passport leave my side during a trip.

Oh, and they did show Lindsay’s film, “Just My Luck” on the flight back. And I, the committed fan that I am, lasted about ten minutes before I turned it off and went to sleep. It was that abysmal. Lindsay sounded as if prior to every scene she had a pack of cigarettes and downed a bottle of Jack. Which too be honest, might be a pretty accurate description of the set.

The five random CD’s of the week (featuring bands you know):
1) Smashing Pumpkins “Siamese Dream”
2) Jack Ingram “Electric”
3) Jon Dee Graham “Full”
4) Coldplay “X&Y”
5) U2 “Achtung Baby”