Bug Me Later

Non-Gratuitous Buses

"London's iconic double-decker buses are getting a design upgrade (and greener powerplants), as revealed today on the city of London's website. Scheduled to go into service in 2012, the new bus boasts a more "light and airy feel inside the bus" due to extensive use of glass, including along the staircases (there's two), and a "hop-on, hop-off" platform has been added to the rear."

Well, when I was a kid, I was really stumped by the lyrics of "A Day in the Life," at least the part where the unshaven Beatle talked about getting a bus, then making his way upstairs and having a smoke, because I didn't know anything about buses with a second level. Here's a story that takes place ten years later than that particular day in the life: some punk in London was on the steps at the back of a bus and was helping some other people up, I guess to ride for free, when some dude in loon pants tried to get on, at which point the punk kicked the guy and said "No ride for you, hippie!" Now I seem to remember that the guy on the bus was Jah Wobble, but that anecdote didn't appear in his autobiography "Memoirs of a Geezer," which I recommend if you (the hypothetical reader; I don't know who you are because only one friend of mine ever leaves comments)are at all interested in Wobble, PiL, or that general milieu. I got it from the downtown CPL.

Here are some videos to do with London and its buses:

It looks quite small; is it a bus for ants?

Blossom Dearie, a tough groove, and a hip solo...

Viv Corringham "Together Then Created a Journey that both Forgot"
Film by Helen Petts

Here's the long version of the London bus promo:

Londoners seem to hate it. Jah Wobble worked on the London Underground for a time, in the stations and later driving trains (after leaving Public Image, Ltd.). I wonder what he would think of it...

Labels: buses, drums, Ethereal circuses of London, sax, subway

Will Patton's Birthday

Me and my dumbness, Pt. # Whatever: I was once out to eat with a friend of mine and his friend from New York, Will. We were at a Thai spot in Lakewood, eating curries and sticky rice, and Mike asked what movies I had seen lately, and I said that I hadn't been going to see any, but I was regularly watching the video of "Desperately Seeking Susan," and Mike said "Will's in that," and I was gobsmacked because I hadn't realized. On the other hand, Will wasn't OTT in person. Anyway, this clip has Will, Rockets Redglare, Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, Aidan Quinn, and a former member of Peter and the Wolves...

Labels: Stealing more TVs, subway, This is the way we eat in America.

Hey, You! You're Losing Your Vitamin C!

"While the earliest documented case of scurvy was described by Hippocrates around the year 400 BC, the first attempt to give scientific basis for the cause of this disease was by a ship's surgeon in the British Royal Navy, James Lind. Scurvy was common among those with poor access to fresh fruit and vegetables, such as remote, isolated sailors and soldiers. While at sea in May 1747, Lind provided some crew members with two oranges and one lemon per day, in addition to normal rations, while others continued on cider, vinegar, sulfuric acid or seawater, along with their normal rations. In the history of science this is considered to be the first occurrence of a controlled experiment comparing results on two populations of a factor applied to one group only with all other factors the same. The results conclusively showed that citrus fruits"