Easier done than said

I'm off on my travels again next week, and I realised my passport is about to expire. Even though it still has long enough to run before I get back, the US don't like people turning up with only a short time left, so I figured I'd better get it renewed. Dave's off to the US as well, and his passport is totally expired, so we decided to go and get fast-tracked through the renewal service.

To my amazement, it was a breeze. This isn't one of those tales of officialdom gone mad. Sorry.

On Friday afternoon, Dave booked us into Peterborough, and we got an appointment for Monday morning. We duly turned up, and got seen half an hour early, after waiting for about two minutes. (We'd have been seen even quicker, except I was waiting for the photo machine which took sixty seconds to print my pictures.) We handed over our documents, waved a credit card at them, and then went and had a late (and rather fine) breakfast in Harriet's Tearooms. Then we wandered round Peterborough Cathedral for an hour or so, went and had some pastries in Le Petit Four, and dashed back through the hail to the Passport Office an hour before our official collection time. Our passports were ready and waiting, and that was it. Then we went home.

Despite all the horror stories we'd been told about how bureaucratic and time-consuming it's become these days, the whole process was easy, quick and straightforward. Even the security on the way in was good-natured and lightweight. In fact, it was all far, far easier and quicker than when I had to do the same thing ten years ago, pre-9/11.

Hmmm, that's not really much of an anecdote, is it? It needs some Kafka-esque drama in it somewhere, or at least Ian Rankin... maybe I should throw in the barbed wire and armed checkpoints all round Peterborough, or the big signs threatening to haul you off to Gitmo if you make jokes about faking your identity, or the Daily Mail-reading Passport Officer who makes you prove your Britishness by reciting the Litany of the Good Works of Saint Diana Princess of Wales and asking you trick questions about whether fish and chips or chicken tikka massala is the True National Dish of Britain. It would have been so much more interesting that way.

Mongoose has left the building

Hi all - welcome to the new home and new name of my blog. All the old "Mongoose World" content has been moved here.

Why?

Well, I decided it was time for a change. The Mongoose persona was something that meant something to me a while ago. I left a slightly cryptic reference to it in the sidebar, but never really explained it. Here you go. It's in the third paragraph. If it doesn't make sense to you, never mind. I said it was personal.

But that time is gone, and so's the Mongoose. I'll miss the little bugger. Hope he's happy, wherever he is.

Halloween in Times Square

It's 7.30 am in Manhattan, I've had four hours sleep, I'm jet-lagged and there's no coffee in this hotel room. I may have to get up and go and find some shortly.

I'm in NY for the Machinima FilmFest 2008. The flight was great. I normally like to fly Virgin, because of their inflight entertainment system. Well, BA have finally got around to putting in some good entertainment too, and it made the trip a whole lot better than usual. I didn't even open my book, let alone listen to any of the podcasts I was going to catch up on. (Sorry, Phil!)

I thoroughly enjoyed Speed Racer. It's the sort of cheesy special effects kids movie that I normally hate, but this was just what I needed at the time. It had elements of Spy Kids, and Matthew Reilly's Hovercar Racer, it's made by the Wachowskis, and it has John Goodman in it. It has that hyper-real CG style, with primary colours, and completely OTT visuals, the racing scenes are ridiculously cartoony, and it's obviously completely tongue in cheek. Great fun, as long as you're not expecting anything too serious. And, ashamed though I am to say it, it actually made me want to play the game.


For a complete change of pace, I then watched Tashan, a Bollywood thriller. Well, not so much a thriller as a comedy gangster caper movie. OK, OK, I'll admit it, I only picked it because it has the lovely Kareena Kapoor in it, but I'm glad I did, not only because she's very easy on the eye. It has a great story, full of twists and turns, and uses that wonderful narrative device of having characters talk straight to camera, interspersed with flashback. And it has exotic locations, great dances, and some good action scenes. The subtitles are unintentionally (I think) hilarious, especially as much of the film is about speaking English. As lead character Jimmy Cliff says, "Here even Hindi is spoken with an English accent." It has bags of style - Tashan means "style" - and was a great way to pass the rest of the flight. One to buy when I get home.


Johnnie and I got to our hotel on Madison Avenue mid-evening, and I realised I'd forgotten to bring mobile numbers for just about everyone I know in the USA, so we failed to hook up with any of the other machinima crowd. So instead, we took a walk three blocks into Times Square and watched the Halloween partygoers, at which point I realised I'd left my bloody camera in the hotel so I can't show you any of the fantastic costumes. Let's just say neither of us was looking at the Manhattan architecture. Sorry, peeps.

I did wonder why I kept getting admiring glances, and was feeling rather flattered until Johnnie punctured my ego by pointing out that I was wearing my usual Stetson and trenchcoat, so everyone assumed I was in costume. Not my devilishly handsome good looks making an impression on the young ladies of New York then. Shucks.

We ended up in the Heartland Brewery, where the beer was truly fantastic.* The Red Rooster was punchy and toffee-flavoured, and then we sampled the Smiling Pumpkin, which is indeed made with pumpkins, and flavoured with ginger, cloves, vanilla, and so on. We then noticed that they do a sampler where you can try small quantities of half a dozen different beers, and wished we'd gone for that instead. However, by this time we'd been up for 20 hours, it was starting to feel like 5am, and the need for sleep was kicking in, so we had to pass on the rest of their selection.

And now the sun has risen over the Manhattan skyline, and I've realised I forgot the cable for the camera so I can't show you that either. Damn, damn, damn. So instead, here's another picture of Kareena Kapoor in Tashan. Much, much prettier than skyscrapers.

Reminds me of Salma Hayek in Desperado. Which can't be bad.

Edit: now I'm home, here's the skyscrapers.

*A quick aside to some of you European beer snobs. Not all American beers are Budweiser, Coors or Miller. Some of my very favourite beers are American. Don't knock them till you try them.

Mongoose Overdrive

Every so often, a week comes along that just throws things at you from every which direction, and doesn't stop till you beg for mercy. Well, to be truthful, it doesn't even stop then. This has been one of them.

Some of the highlights of this week have included:

• Being asked to be a judge at the Machinima Expo
• Being asked to be a judge for a design competition at Long Road 6th Form College
• Having a movie I worked on as technical consultant (Leaving the Game) get nominated for an award for technical achievement at this year's machinima festival
  
• Having one of my photos, a picture of Reality Checkpoint on Parker's Piece, selected as part of a guide to Cambridge
• Meeting a whole bunch of interesting people at a conference and being asked for help using Moviestorm in some very cool and socially rewarding ways
  
• Getting invited to do a screening and workshops at one upcoming UK film festival, and being asked to speak at another
  
• Meeting a British Vice-Consul based in San Francisco, discovering he knew who I was and what I do, and being asked to go out there and speak
• Finding my photo in a local photographer's online gallery - Gordon Tant, who took the picture of my hat that I'm now using as my avatar
  
• Doing some of the most creative personal work I've done in ages as a result of some random research turning up some extremely surprising things

Scene from Leaving the Game (American Film Institute, Kuma Reality Games, Short Fuze, Cartoon Network, Disney, IBM, Microsoft, Method, Georgia Tech, Furnace Media, and others, 2007)

It's also been a good week for catching up with old friends, and making new ones, especially via Twitter and Facebook. My son got his first job, washing up in a local restaurant, saving up so he can build himself a computer. We had some great Moviestorm movies, including the marvellous Star Wars Election 08, and it looks like I'll finally be getting around to some podcasting again. It seems as if everything I've been doing for the last 18 months is finally coming together.

More weeks like this, please. With the aid of Red Bull (and Stolichnaya) I'll be just fine. I'll sleep in November, after the Machinima Festival in NY...

Reality Checkpoint, Cambridge, 2007

Life.

Nuff said.