After a break of a number of decades I’m taking French lessons again.

It’s hard to figure out what is more depressing for me – how much I have to learn or how much I’ve forgotten. I’m hoping to shoot a documentary in France next year and so I thought, “now’s the time.” Not much use grabbing at the phrase book as the plane lowers its wheels over Charles de Gaulle is it?

Like most Brits and Yanks my grasp of any language, even my own, is atrocious and I’m full of admiration for the large number of polyglots who roam our streets. Heck even my gardener is bi-lingual. I’ve now been in LA for over 21 years and I can’t speak a word of Spanish. Pathetic.

So, I’m grabbing at my boot-straps and jumping in. Over the weekend I wrote a song in French. I anticipate delivering my first novel in the world’s sexiest language sometime before Christmas…or shortly thereafter.

Adieu.

Either a) Matt Taibbi is an out and out liar and should be locked up for life for spreading malicious gossip about those who rule over us or b) Washington is as corrupt as any third-world, third-rate autocracy and we’re all screwed.

In case you don’t know Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone, Washington is his beat, and his most recent article is entitled THE WORST CONGRESS EVER (RS1012 11/2/06). MT writes in a delightfully sarcastic, biting way and doesn’t pull his punches: “This is a Congress where there is little or no open debate and virtually no votes are left to chance…what you see on C-Span is just empty theater, the world’s most expensive trained-dolphin act.”

Ouch!

There’s no doubting which side of the political fence MT and RS sit but, until I see GWB’s henchmen serving MT with a writ, I’m hearing him say things which frighten the life out of me…

“Despite an international uproar about Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During Clinton’s administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the presiden’t alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list.”

and…

“While Congress did nothing about Iraq, Katrina, wiretapping (or) Mark Foley’s boy-madness…it has been all about political favors, all about budget ‘earmarks’ set aside for expensive and often useless projects in their own districts. In 2000, Congress passed 6,073 earmarks; by 2005, that number had risen to 15,877. They got better at it every year. It’s the one thing they’re good at.”

he concludes…

“Congress has embarked on a never-ending party, a wild daisy-chain of golf junkets, skybox tickets and casino trips.”

There’s more, plenty more, but you’ll have to just read the article for yourself. My point is this: tomorrow is polling day. It’s entirely possible that however you vote the new Congress might not act differently. But it’s just possible that we might be able to send a message and get our Congress back.

Go and vote!

In the meantime I’ll be watching to see if MT gets sued. My guess is he’s telling the truth and no-one will dare to make a comment. How frightening is that?

The lease on my gas-guzzling, man-hood defining, earth-destroying, frankly excessive status symbol has another 14 months to run but I’m already looking out for a suitable replacement.

Replacement vehicle requirements are: Must be fun, sexy and (I hate to admit it) vaguely manly. Must be fuel efficient. Should carry a bike if possible.

Prius – perfect. Except it’s not vaguely sexy or fun and is the automotive equivalent of a Best of Supertramp album.

Smart car. Fun, affordable, efficient and, like a Britney-in-concert ticket, not available till 2008.

That Honda thing? Girl car.

Conclusion: I don’t think there’s a perfect solution to my 4-wheel conundrum out there on the market (yet). And why not? Am I the only guy on the planet who wants to put his ecological money where his mouth is and wants a bit of styling to go with it? Come on people.

I don’t get it. Madonna wants to adopt a kid and the world goes nuts?

Full disclosure – I don’t have kids, never wanted one, and know nothing about being a parent other than it looks enormously stressful, tiring and expensive. Every parent I know says you’ll never know until you have one. I understand it’s very rewarding but all I know is that there are certain chains I wish to break and therefore I’ve opted out.

My point is the poor kid in question has been living in an orphanage in Malawi for his entire life and, until Madge walked through the door, his destiny wasn’t looking so bright that he needed shades for anything but the harsh African sunlight. Now it appears that two people want to spend the rest of their lives saying that they’re his parents and give him their unconditional love – how cool is that?

OK so the down-side is that they’re white, live in a big house in the English countryside and when the kid gets older he’ll have to watch Swept Away and tell his Mom what a great actress she is and tell his Dad what a great movie Snatch was. Frankly that’s a price I think we’d all pay to have someone tuck us in at night and tell us they love us.

I’m hearing people complain that the kid will not grow up knowing what his true culture is. Oh please! Madonna’s on record as saying she’ll let him visit his roots and it’s not like she can’t afford the airfare.

For me the big problem is that I’m sure there are other kids in that orphange in Malawi whose future doesn’t look so good. Poor bastards. What does their future look like? I understand that it appears Madge & Guy are buying their way into this but heck give ’em a break: they’re about to enter into decades of hard work and they don’t have to do this. More power to them I say. I wish I had their heart and their guts.

I don’t think this is about money.

Famously Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a dead soldier, who camped out on GWB’s doorstep last summer and demanded to meet him: she failed brilliantly. Inadvertently, by turning his back on her, Bush fueled the first embers of an anti-war-in-Iraq campaign.

Sheehan’s book, Not One More Mother’s Child, is a collection of blogs, e-mails, speeches and rants. It is frankly repetitive and someone needs to tell her that the use of more than one exclamation mark at the end of a sentence is the kind of thing teenagers do in chat rooms.

On the plus side Sheehan is articluate and driven and, in the book at least, not particularly fond of her celebrity unless it can put her in a place where she can confront this foolish Texan who has done so much damage to our world. As I read her book I ached , not only for Sheehan and her loss, but also for a once noble country which has lost its way and supports aggression and cronyism in the name of peace and democracy.

Sheehan begs that “every citizen of the world do one small thing for peace each day.” God knows we must support her in that. The unsolved issue is that different people translate that idyllic quest in very different ways. For myself I can only say that our continued silence about this government, its hypocrisy and the way it chooses to do business is an extremely dangerous road to continue down.

An e-mail arrived while I was out riding this morning. The e-mail was a suicide note from someone who I’ve known for many years but who I haven’t seen recently. It was a note full of sadness and pain and some details that I didn’t need to know. I was gone about 26 minutes but by the time I opened the e-mail it was already too late to do anything.

The shrink I used to see, a man who didn’t mince his words, once told me his views on suicide and I could see the fury and anger in his heart as he talked. Certainly we are all effected when someone we know passes and even more so when it was preventable. For myself I had no knowledge of the events which led to this morning’s tragic denouement but it still raises the question: what if?

The universal truth is that this act is a cry for help and, when it’s too late, we all say if only we’d known perhaps we could have helped. But if you hurt that much can you deal with the loss of pride that comes with: “I’m suicidal”?

On this sad day all I can share with you is this. If you feel suicidal – don’t do it. I have felt sad and terribly depressed in my life. There were times, years in fact, when I felt unbearably alone, that no-one understood and that it would be fabulous to end all the pain. But I stuck it out and I’ve found contentment and joy in my life that I never anticipated – and it didn’t take drugs or a loss of pride. What it did take was a lot of hard work and the work never ends – but it’s been, and continues to be, all worthwhile.

So now I say a prayer for a dear man who had a big heart and ask myself again: “What if?”

Let’s play word association for a moment. Imagine the images that these wonderful names bring to mind: Sequoia, Yukon, Sedona, Tacoma, Sienna, Silverado, Denali, Tundra, Sorento, Tahoe, Durango. Aren’t these emotive words wonderful? They make you think of majestic trees, national parks, mountains, fragile eco-systems or relaxing holiday destinations in out-of-the-way places.

Sadly they are none of the above. They are all the names of large trucks, SUVs and people-carriers that sit on our freeways gurgling gas. It was once pointed out to me that new housing developments are always named after the very things that were destroyed to create them: Happy Valley, Vista Del Mar, Pleasant Meadows etc. Well now we have the automotive equivalent.

As if this weren’t enough the adventurous alpha-male in all of us is seduced by all the activities we’ll never partake in on our daily commute: Trailblazer, Forester, Expedition, Range Rover, Freelander, Explorer, Pathfinder, Discovery; and the place we’ll never reach: Frontier. And in a last ditch effort to really make that trip to the mall seem extraordinary we belive that we might be a Pilot or a Navigator on an Odyssey and consequently Escape and find Liberty.

Enough already. My 10 year-old original-style Cherokee (indiginous tribe virtually anihilated by rampaging white folk) is dwarfed every-time I pull up beside an Escalade – a vehicle which is usually tricked out with spinning shiny rims, a gold plated roo-bar (odd: kangaroos are not usually found in LA) and rattling with its powerful bass-tweaked sound-system that would definitely intimidate an angry rhino were it to come across one at the junction of Sunset and La Cienega. But at least the Escalade does not hide its shame under a soft mantle of faux tree-hugging. My Webster’s dictionary describes ‘escalade’ as the act of scaling the walls of a fortified place with ladders.

Hum. Take a look at that monstrous, guzzling heap of steel and plastic and shiny crap that will look just dreadful in about five years: do you really think an Escalade would even make a dent in a fort? No chance.

Very likely my next car is going to be something that at least says what it is: Mini. Can you make sure that comes in a bright red with a hybrid engine please? And, seeing as I’ll be leaning on the horn a lot and racing at the lights and generally being impatient in it, feel free to call my model the Dick.

So today another man is dead in Iraq. This time a man died who we’ve learned to hate and, without doubt, this man has been most hateful towards my country and what I have chosen to believe in.

It would appear that this man who died today was the man who beheaded US businessman Nicholas Berg. CNN interviewed Berg’s father to get his reaction. Berg Snr. was appalled that others would think he was happy, and that his son had been avenged. He concluded: “Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don’t get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?”

Once upon a time, while working at Stiff, it was my job to do PR for the release of the new album by Desmond Dekker. The label, it seemed, couldn’t find any new artists to sign so we were issuing albums by acts who’d slipped off the rock n’ roll map in the hope of rekindling their careers.

Des was a quiet man of average build who would arrive in the office wearing a beret to hide his receding hairline. This ordinary man, who’d just ridden up from South London on the bus, was a musical groundbreaker: the first artist to ever have a Number one record on the pop charts with a reggae song – the unforgettable ‘Israelites.’ I was never ever sure if I got the words right but I remember my version of his song which started off: “Get up every morning same thing for breakfast…”

In a word Des was a legend and he’d re-recorded ‘Israelites’ and a bunch of other songs for his first release on Stiff. Cheekily Robbo decided to call the album Black & Dekker!

I rang up the music papers and told them we were releasing Des’s new album. I was trawling for a journalist who would want to interview Des and let the world know his new record was available in the shops. I didn’t expect it to be easy but I never thought it would be that hard. No one was interested – not a soul. I stared at the wall searching for inspiration and decided I would interview Des myself. Heck I might learn something and at the very least it would give the man the impression that we were on the case.

Des appeared in my office, removed his beret, and settled down in front of the tape recorder. My first impression was it was as if I was interviewing an old Mississippi blues man: he was famous, he’d written hit songs, he’d changed the face of modern music and he didn’t have a bean. We went back to his first days in Jamaica and Des explained how he’d worked as a welder during the day and as a musician in his spare time and had recorded his first four songs for a local producer who’d given him pennies for the rights to his songs.

During one summer, the English cricket team came to play the West Indies. Des and another young welder would clock in to work in the morning then slip out of the welder’s yard and run to the cricket ground where the match was taking place. Having no money they climbed onto the roof of the cricket ground and watched the game from there.

By this time Des was an established artist in Jamaica, though of course still as poor and as innocent of the concept of royalties as that poor Mississippi blues-man, and Des’s young friend played him some songs and asked if Des could introduce him to the producer who had made Des a star. Impressed by the young man’s talent Des took him along to the studio and the producer recorded the young man’s songs. When Des asked for some kind of credit for discovering this new talent he was quickly shown the door. Des never received a penny for his kindness.

The young man was Bob Marley.

Des’s life was a collection of many such wonderful tales and, pretending I was writing an article for a paper, I transcribed his interview ready for the albums release. I sent out the article with Desmond’s new album and heard nothing. No journalists rang up wanting to talk with Des and hear for themselves the details of his wonderful stories about ‘It Mek’, ‘Israelites’ and what it was like coming to England as a Jamaican pop star. I was crushed.

But then the newspapers hit the stands. All four music papers printed articles headlined: Man who discovered Bob Marley releases new album. My article was printed word for word in regional papers up and down the country – usually with the local journalists name listed as the writer – I didn’t care: I’d had a pleasant afternoon in my office with a living legend and done my job.

Des died suddenly from a heart attack last week. He was 64. In the New York Times obituary it says that Bob Marley discovered Des not the other way around. Already the truth is being distorted but I’m sure Des would smile wryly and this quiet man would be proud that his life is being celebrated in the world’s largest newspapers.

I’ve lived in the USA for 20 years now and people always ask me if I miss England. I do – and it’s mostly the humour & wit that I find wanting in my new home.

Example. Norman Balon, reputedly London’s rudest pub landlord, has just retired from running the Coach & Horses in Soho. When asking a customer to leave his hostelry he added: “You’re so ugly you’re upsetting the customers.”

Now, where can you find that kind of bile in La-La land?