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So, I’m finally getting my due 15 minutes… My photo of the sign adorning Gordon’s Wine Bar in London is now the official representation used for the popular drinking destination by the Schmap website (look at the top right of the page).

Actually, it’s a cool site—I wish it had been around when we were living over there…

I had never even heard of the Notting Hill Carnival. But in the build-up to last weekend’s Caribbean fete I heard of how it’s as big as Rio and has even more dancing and craziness. Time Out claimed it had a higher grinding quotient than any other street festival in the world. In London. With British people. I didn’t think it could be true.

Two million people and some beans & rice and cheap beer later, I’m a believer. What insanity. It was like Bourbon Street times forty. And set right in an ethnic and socio-economic crossroads, where the spoiled jetsetters of Notting Hill merge with the displaced but vibrant communities of Ladbroke Grove. Totally diverse, totally easy, totally drunken. Cops and pot smoke everywhere.

Once again, go London.

Watch the movie I made of it:

I love the Olympics. Every time it comes around I think that it’s losing its relevance, but then once it gets going I feel the same childish enthusiasm I remember from LA in ‘84. Being in London makes the charm of the Olympics even more salient — as an expat, the sort of one-world feeling of it serves as a good antidote to that tiny lingering homesickness and alienation of being in a foreign place.

And let’s face it, the Olympics rock when you’re from USA. We just generally kick ass. Even when we don’t win tons of medals, we’re generally contenders for all the big ones, so it makes every event worth watching. For that same reason, though, I think the Olympic coverage here is pretty perfunctory. Who can blame ‘em? Time Out compared it to CBS Sports showing hours and hours of cricket for two weeks straight. . . Oof.

Best quotes so far. . .

“Ohhhhh, Walchhofer… That was scrappy!”

“The judges are now conferring, looking for signs of anything skullduggerous. . .”