Turn on your Righteous Anger Indicator: this is going to be a rant. A political one.

I have heard recently that GWB is considered the president with the worst environmental record in US history. That’s quite an indictment don’t you think?

The other day I read an article entitled ‘THE ALASKA CHAINSAW MASSACRE” by Osha Gray Davidson (Feb. 5th Rolling Stone) in which he describes the way that in 2002 the US economy paid $35 million to build roads into a unique and priceless piece of Alaskan wilderness so that the timber industry (friends and supporters of you know who) could harvest $1.2 million worth of lumber.

Do we need timber this badly? Apparently not. Davidson writes: “Tree farms in the lower forty-eight provide plenty of wood to meet the country’s needs, and a worldwide glut of timber has been forcing prices down for years. Today there are only 200 timber-related jobs left in southeast Alaska.”

It appears that these trees our governement is so happily helping to cut down to ship to Asia and turn into mulch aren’t just any old trees either – many of them are Sitka Spruce trees that are at least 600 years old. That means, as Davidson so eloquently puts it, these trees were “already 100 years old when Columbus set out to find a new route to India.”

Let’s face it this one piece of environmental insanity is just a pimple on the bottom of our incessant industrial greed. Why are we doing this to ourselves and more importantly to a world that Bush’s twin daughters and you and yours will have to live in? I don’t have kids. By the time all this insanity comes home to roost – and there are too many people and pollutants and not enough food & water to go around – I’ll be pushing up daisies. Assuming that the environment will support them of course.

I think we all need to think about what we have in this enormous and bountiful world that we live in. Davidson makes this very crucial observation about our forefathers and how we’ve changed the face of America & the world in the last 200 years: “From the moment they set foot here, European settlers mistook ‘vast’ for ‘infinite’ and ‘abundant’ for ‘inexhaustible.'”

We’re getting to the point where infinite and inexhaustible are perhaps no longer applicable to the world in which we live. In the months to come and as the election approaches please make sure this is an issue we all discuss.

(P.S. Please feel free to track down that article and tell me I’m wrong. It would make my day to find out that everything’s hunk dory out in the woods.)

(P.P.S. It’s not just about the woods either. Try tracking down CRIMES AGAINST NATURE by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the 12/11/03 edition of Rolling Stone.)

(P.P.P.S. About eighteen months ago our dear leader agreed to repeal a decision made by the Clinton government that would make the Big 5 Detroit Auto makers produce cars that were vastly more fuel efficient. I think the goal was to produce cars that would average 25 mpg. The Big 5 said they couldn’t do it in the time alloted. Being an oilman GWB said OK and scrapped the law. I’ve just discovered this piece of trivia in the Harper’s Index column of an old edition of Funny Times: The maximum number of miles a 1912 Ford Model T could go on a gallon of gas in 1912 was 35 miles. Such is progress that the maximum number of miles that Ford’s most fuel efficient 2003 car can drive on a gallon of gas is 36 miles!

Progress eh?)

Christmas 2003

Once upon a time I went to Australia for two and a half days to shoot a video for a friend of Boy George. For such a short trip it turned out to be quite an adventure involving many acres of burnt countryside, ten tubes of toothpaste, a super 8 camera and a strange story of adultery. I’ll give you the details on another occasion but I’d always felt the need to return for another, more detailed, look to the country that they always joked was different from yogurt. (Yogurt’s a live culture).

 DAY ONE

Land at breakfast time in Sydney looking forward to seeing my old friend Ed who’ll be meeting me at the gate. I should have known better he is still across town having breakfast. Later we find ourselves upon a boat of the Captain Cook Tour Line cruising Sydney’s amazing harbour. In an eerie re-run of a long distant Christmas holiday in which we’d stationed ourselves happily in the front of a sleigh on a cold Colorado night happy with our exclusive seats only to realize we were facing the arses of two exceptionally flatulent horses we now grab two rows of seats on the top deck at the back of the ferry and subsequently realize we will be down-wind of the boat’s exhaust system for the next two hours. In my highly jet-lagged state I strap on the iPod and listen to a Trevor Rabin era Yes album. The day ends with a Monorail trip back to our hotel after dinner. Ed’s upset that I’m not eager join him on an expedition to search for extra-mural activities involving willing Australian babes. I remind him that a) I haven’t been to bed for about 44 hours and that b) in the 30 years we’ve been going on holiday together neither one of us has ever scored.

DAY TWO

We drive to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. I’ve got my Bike Friday with me and I hope to achieve two ambitions this trip 1) to complete my 2,000th mile on the bike in one calendar year and 2) to see a kangaroo in the wild. After 11 measly miles of cycling I climb back in the car: there’s an unpleasant head wind, it’s unbearably hot and I’m still jet-lagged. We have a distant view of Sydney from a lookout and notice how the suburbs snake out from the city following the lines of the arterial roads. No kangaroos.

DAY THREE

Ed and I are godfathers to two wonderful sisters: Hannah and Zoe. We go to meet them and Eddie & Sheila (their Mum and Dad) at the airport and then race for the Ferry to Manly Island. Eddie is very manly and body-surfs while I fall asleep on the sand listening to Stevie Wonder.

 

DAY FOUR

Today’s big event is climbing up on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sadly none of us are BASE jumpers or rock climbers looking for front page news so we pay $150 Australian and, like extras from an old version of Star Trek, suit up in cheesy-looking grey boiler suits and undergo a 40 minute safety tutorial before we are allowed out on the hallowed structure. By the time we’ve climbed to the top our calves are hurting and our noses are roasted by the sun but Gavin, our genial guide, has furnished us with all kinds of wonderfully useless trivia. For example the British built bridge came with a 6 month guarantee and is now well past its planned 70 year life-span but they’re hopeful they can string out its usefulness for another 300 or 400 years.

 DAY FIVE

(Christmas Day) A flight to Melbourne and a drive down the Mornington Peninsula towards Portsea where we meet up with another eight of our friends and spend the afternoon on the beach which, I’ve always been told, is what all Aussies do on Christmas Day. For dinner we are treated to a sumptuous BBQed turkey and I get a rockin yellow Kangaroo keychain for a Christmas present.

 DAY SIX

I bike 42 miles and discover the Pig & Whistle, a gorgeous English style pub, situated high upon a hill near Arthur’s Seat that offers a stunning view of the Southern end of the Peninsula. All 14 of us descend upon the place in the evening for dinner and I order the kangaroo. It doesn’t taste like chicken.

 DAY SEVEN

My hotel is situated close to Sorrento beach and claims that is has freshly renovated rooms. While this statement was clearly accurate around the time that Nixon was President it (or the paintwork in my room) needs some updating. The bathroom and the communal showers are down the hall, my room is opposite the games room in which three year old children can be found at all hours of the day pounding on the piano. I’d venture to say that neither Van Cliburn nor Elton John need lose any sleep tonight. Around the back of the hotel there are very friendly and rather large black birds with white stripes on them, no kangaroos. I ride to Rye Ocean beach. Glorious views and very windy.

DAY EIGHT

I’ve finished my book about a German POW who escapes from a lead mine and takes three years to walk across Siberia and eventually to Germany. I’m now reading Bobke II by OLN’s hysterical biking correspondent Bob Roll. Though he says Whoa! rather too much he has a way with similes that is captivating. My two favourites are: “as nervous as a balloon in a pin factory”, and “spastic as a Devo guitar solo.” Ed, Steven, Ian and I take our bikes by ferry across the mouth of the bay and cover 29 glorious miles on the other peninsula that protects Melbourne’s southern approaches. There are no kangaroos there either.

 DAY NINE

If I can cover 36 miles today I will achieve my 2,000-miles-on-a-bike-in-a-year ambition. If you’re a real biker my goal is pretty lame let’s face it the TdF guys do that in three weeks (AND they have two days off!) but for me it will be a major achievement. I’ve decided to head for the settlement of Cape Schenck. There’s an impressive scale to the typeface on the map which suggests that it’s a big enough place for me to be able to purchase food and water there. It’s very hot today and I know that I will run out of water if I have to do the full ride with no support and  this peninsula, as I’ve discovered, isn’t exactly groaning with 7-11s and convenience stores so finding supplies will be crucial. As I set out I realize it’s especially windy today and every road in this land seems to have a head-wind. I hate head-winds. I pedal on.

I reach the point on the map, a road junction, designated as Cape Schenk. Bad news, it has only one building and it’s not a shop. Good news, it has a sign which says “Beware Kangaroos for next 7km.” Right on! Now we’re talking! I decide that rather than turning right and cycling down to the cape itself I’ll go straight on towards Flinders and look for kangaroos.

2km down the road I find a second sign which insists drivers slow down and suggests that the ‘roos appear mostly between dusk and dawn. It’s broad daylight but I’m feeling optimistic and I press on. Apart from incessant head-winds, flesh-melting sun and seven out of ten of the worlds most deadly species Australia is also notable for its wicked fly population. After much pedaling I’ve discovered that at any speed above 12 mph the flies can’t keep up with me so I’m working hard on all the hills but the wind goes out of my sails when one of my ambitions is sadly realized in a form I’d not dreamt of. There in front of me is a host of teeming flies the like of which I’ve never seen in my life before and underneath it a dead and partly decomposed kangaroo. Ugh. Apart from looking very dead the kangaroo looks rather small. A quarter of a mile later another one. Also dead. Also very smelly. I’m at the top of a particularly steep hill and I know that if I pedal down it I’ll only have to come back up so I turn around and head for Cape Schenck’s lighthouse. I’m out of fluids so I’m happy to discover a tiny wooden shed selling sausage rolls, steak and kidney pies and bottled water at the usurous rates expected in a State Park. But the flies! The flies taunt me and terrorize me. As I try and eat my lukewarm steak and kidney pie they climb under my sunglasses and inside my helmet, they tickle my arms and crawl across the back of my neck. I’m feeling like that dead kangaroo on the road to Flinders. I climb upon the bike and pedal out of there fast as I can while the sauce from the steak and kidney pie dribbles on my cycling shorts and makes it look like I’ve shat myself.

On the way home I finally clock that 2,000th mile and it’s a desperate anti-climax. What now? I guess I have to try and ride more next year. Bob Roll’s 7th bicycling commandment is: One year vow to cover more miles on your bike than in your car. Hmmm.

 DAY TEN

The grown ups go and see Lost In Translation. As I’ve already seen it (and I’m probably not a grown-up) I join the younger members of our party and go see Lord Of The Rings part 3 instead. I’m reminded that Tolkein’s book was the inspiration for one great Zeppelin tune (Ramble On) and about twenty truly awful 70’s rock bands (Shadowfax, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf etc.). I fall asleep – seen one battle against the forces of evil and you’ve seen ’em all.

 DAY ELEVEN

Ed, Steve and Ian play golf. I follow them around the course reading Amy Gray’s Spy Girl which, despite its encouraging title, inspiring cover blurb and hip Catch Me If You Can style jacket design, has no intrigue in it whatsoever (she does most of her PI work using Google!) and is really a long whine about the endless stream of unsuccessful dates and one night stands she has with a number of very tall men. At the 17th hole (Par 4, 345 yards) Ed spots a rather fat lizard crossing the Tee. I go and study it closer just in case. Sadly it does not have a pouch or large hind legs or answer to the name of Joey.

 DAY TWELVE

Back in Melbourne I end my day in front of the TV and watch Australia A lose to Zimbabwe by 9 runs. During a break in play there is a TV commercial in which a kangaroo plays a significant, if momentary, part. It’s an animated kangaroo.

 DAY THIRTEEN

Fly from Melbourne to Sydney on Qantas. The Qantas terminal has a row of their planes parked outside and they all have kangaroos on their tails. In Sydney I make my connection for LA. As the jumbo staggers into the sky I look over my shoulder and the last thing I see is the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge with the two flagpoles and the Australia and New South Wales flags flapping in the breeze on top. When we passed under those flags last week Gavin told us to make a wish and he smiled and added: “Just remember I’ve been working on this bridge for four bloody years!”

I made my wish but I didn’t see a kangaroo and I can only conclude that Gavin will still be working on the bridge for the forseeable future.

Back in the mists of time as I would sit in my tiny London bedsit with the latest copy of Melody Maker I would always dream of going on the road…you know a real rock n’ roll road trip complete with middle of the night truck-stop excursions, strange vehicular adventures, cross country driving marathons, all access backstage-pass laminates, endless guitar solos on a huge stage, nightmarish storms, weird gigs, foreign borders to pass through and guiltless, yet exciting, dalliances with eager and attractive members of the opposite gender.
I’m delighted to report that over the years all of the above wishes have been granted to me but as they say be careful what you wish for. Of course in my perfect dream the world tour I was on was my own and the band I was hanging out with were my band and the groupies pounding the side of the bus were hoping to shag ME but as we know the fates have a weird way of messing with your dreams don’t they?

I can reveal that I’ve found myself perusing the late-night roadside shopping possibilities with Staind; I’ve had a strange vehicular adventure with Lene Lovich; I’ve driven wildly across the country pursuing Peter Himmelman; I’ve collected laminates for Oasis and Ozzy, Guns N’ Roses and The Corrs; I’ve soloed endlessly on stage with Billy Ray Cyrus’s band at soundcheck (oh the shame!), endured a twister (Billy Ray again), shot a gig in broad daylight at midnight with Toto north of the arctic circle, smuggled something through a border with Madness and even, on a dark and soggy night in Oklahoma, gone home with an eager young female – sadly she wasn’t attractive and it wasn’t very exciting but after selling T-shirts for six weeks on a tour with non-stop rain earning a measly $25 a night I was getting desperate and depressed – and that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it!

Which brings me to my recent adventures with the very talented and enormously decent Jason Mraz. Before we go any further a brief disclaimer: though there were shopping opportunities in the truck stops and long drives through the night there was a noticeable lack of sex anywhere – not in my bunk anyhow. OK, I admit it, there were some guitar solos but none over 16 bars and while we’re talking plank spanking the one Jason plays on Absolutely Zero (a bullet straight into the top three of my fave songs of the year chart) is bloody gorgeous.

And so to the guilt.

I was hanging with Mraz to shoot a live DVD which we all hope will be available sometime in the New Year. The plan was to do one show with the mobile truck and the multi-camera thing and then yours truly would dispense with the luxuries and, armed only with a spare pair of sox, a mini DV cam, a box of tapes and a pile of release forms, I would become invisible and document what it’s like to be the hottest man on the charts with a Z in his name as he traversed the Midwest and beguiled thousands with his whimsical wordplay, magical melodies and extraordinary voice. In advance we discussed how I would wake him up on the day of the gig, shoot him in his P-Js and follow him through all the exciting stuff that rockstars get to do on the road, i.e. talk to journalists on cell phones, sign autographs, have their picture taken endlessly with sycophantic well-wishers (that’s you and me everybody), do stupid radio station idents (OK one of them was funny), answer numerous questions about chickens and psychics, soundcheck and try and remember the words to the
second verse of Sweet Child O’ Mine.

Throughout it all Jason was quite the gent, never held back, was always honest, very often funny and even lost his temper a few times. He was real. (I hope I’m not ruining for you all out there in Amazon.com land). He even made me really jealous a) because there were a lot of adoring babes who were obviously just besotted by him but more importantly because b) he’s a great musician and how dare he be THAT good a guitarist and songwriter after only 5 years. (Note to self: If I get my hands on a pair of pliers and Mraz is in the vicinity nobble a few fingers and then maybe I can catch up again…but what good would that do? – I’d only turn him into the new Django).

Anyway, imagine my despair when Bill, Jason’s manager, forwarded an extract of Jason’s web diary to me. JM confided he was locked in the bathroom away from the glare of the camera (that’ll be me) writing his diary : “I don’t need the room for any other reason than to sit and think, to meditate…on the other side of the door awaits thousands of ears and possibly millions of eyes.” He concludes, “I wish this bathroom could remain locked all night.”

And here’s the rub. This is what life on the road can be really like. While you’re locked in bedsit land it seems like such a dream – the riches and the babes, the guitar solos and the priceless magical laminates (real value – about a buck!) – but the guys on stage become isolated in their travelling world, nervous of those who attach themselves for a few days and always dreaming – despite the monstrous buzz of those two hours a night – of being in their own bed for a few nights and getting some different, clean clothes to wear. The road is surely a mystical place but there really is no There there. To really be on the road you must always be moving someplace else as if you’re searching for an end to a rainbow that remains constantly elusive. I’ve now been on so many tour buses that even their plush seats and tinted windows can’t disguise the feeling that it’s a kind of comfortable rolling prison with an annoyingly small moving toilet that protocol says you can’t take a dump in.

And so now I’m home and sleeping in my own bed editing Jason’s footage while he and the band and his crew still plough up and down the freeways plying their wares and doing what they love. I’ve felt guilty about disturbing Jason but I’m fighting that guilt because I think we’ve captured some of his magic for you to share and because I was doing my job. Perhaps if I’d done it better he might not have noticed me but it’s that observant and vulnerable quality about him that makes his music so intriguing. It’s now my dream that by the time the DVD is done Jason will be out of the bathroom and you and he both will think it was worth it.

It was a sunny morning in August as I sat down outside a small coffee shop on Fairfax and met the producers of a script called Chasing Fate.

All meetings follow a similar pattern. You shake hands and exchange small talk about what you’ve been up to and then eventually you talk about their script. What you have to say and how you say it is undoubtedly crucial. They’ve been working on the damn thing for months, they know the characters inside out, they know what they want to hear and you have no way of seeing inside their heads to see if you’re flying on the wings of genius or crashing and burning like a stricken fighter plane in some grainy History Channel War In The Pacific documentary. Like the pilot in that old film you take your life in your hands and propel yourself along the deck of the aircraft carrier and see if you’re flying yet. They nod as you wax lyrical about what you love and what you would like to change in their script. “Am I flying? Am I dying?” you wonder.

Just a few weeks previously I’d gone to meet a bunch of people over at Disney about a teen action movie. I felt the meeting was going great – my preparation was paying off until, on the spur of the moment, I suggested a minor approach as to how I felt you could (not should but could) take the look of the movie. They all jumped upon this idea. “Elaborate!” they asked and I did, feeling that they were truly enthusiastic about my radical idea, and their heads continued to nod and then slowly and imperceptibly their smiles slipped from their faces. I saw I had just written myself into the long list of also-rans: I was not going to get the gig. Nothing could make the last five minutes rewind. I’d crashed and I’d burnt and there were other pilots waiting to sacrifice themselves like I did knowing that just one of us would land safely at the other end.

So, as we sat in the sun and watched the traffic rumble along Fairfax Ave., I was honest. I asked the producers what they wanted to hear. They said they wanted the truth and so I strapped on my flying helmet, yelled, “Chocs Away!” and hurtled blindly into the sky. I gave it to them straight, I talked about things I wanted to change, ideas I had, cracked daft jokes and showed them a book I’d once bought about Screwball Comedies and looked for the tell-tale signs of an imminent prang.

Eventually I was out of breath and out of ideas and they shook my hand and wished me well promising me they’d be in touch. Yeah, right. Everyone says that. I walked to my car and went to start work on someone else’s script.

Well it seems that when I turned left everyone else turned right. Everytime the tracer shells came my way they either fell short or I dodged them. They tell me I’m their guy. I’ve landed safely and, looking back over my shoulder, I can see the burning wreckage of all the other pilots who didn’t make it.