You know how I always sometimes write about things that are more self-indulgent than not? Like my Brendan Fraser updates? We’ve decided to cleverly group these items into a segment called Walker’s Wheelhouse. It’s self-serving, assumes that you care about what’s in my wheelhouse and that you know what a wheelhouse is. But it also herds these ideas together into one palatable whole, so you can chose to get in my wheelhouse or stay out of my wheelhouse. Whatever floats your wheelhouse.
Welcome to the first edition of Walker’s Wheelhouse! For the inaugural post I’m going to show you pictures I took on my vacation to the UK last week. You might have noticed my absence? Or not, whatever. Anyway, a few weeks ago I got my mom black out drunk and asked her if I could skip Thanksgiving. She said yes (or so I told her later), and so I bought a ticket to London so I could join my friends on tour. They’re in a band called We Are Scientists and I slept on their bus as we went from Leeds to Glasgow to Newcastle to Nottingham and finally to London. I’d just like to make the distinction up front: I was a hanger-on, not a groupie. A groupie implies some giving of sexual favors and each band member assured me, with a great deal of adamance and relief, that I did not perform any on them.
Alright, let’s kick this Walker’s Wheelhouse off right! I’m going to jump ahead and present a photo from Nottingham, home of Evil Sheriffs and CELEBRITY APARTMENTS!!!!!
I put a deposit down. The lease is for five years and five million dollars.
Leeds was mostly a blur because I was running on no sleep having flown all night and instead of sleeping I watched 1/8th of Eclipse, 3/4ths of Inception and half of Toy Story 3. The rest of the flight was spent trying not to touch the arm of the dude next to me.
After making my way from London to Leeds I definitely cried at the Leeds train station when I thought that I couldn’t leave the station because in England you inexplicably have to show your ticket to leave the station. They literally check it 3 times before you get on the train and on the train, but they still don’t trust you so they check it again when you leave. And if you don’t have it then you charge you again. 82 effing pounds. That’s so many pounds and so many more dollars. So, in my cracked out strung out no sleep state, I thought I had lost my ticket. When I showed the train people my receipt they said, “That proves nothing.” THEN WHAT IS THE POINT OF A RECEIPT OTHER THAN TO PROVE THE PURCHASE OF A TICKET. However, when I proceeded to break down into pathetic tears, they let me through. It helped that the lady who was in charge was a kindly matronly woman with a cute hat who took pity on my shell of a self and said, “Let this be a lesson.” Not two steps after she had let me out I put my hand into my pocket to discover my ticket. Lesson learned indeed. Lesson being that I’m a huge a-hole.
Glasgow is a very metropolitan city, as evidenced by their food shoppes:
Sorry about the lack of centering/professionalism in these photos. Anyway, “Giant Hotdogs”? That’s what Kim Catrell’s character said!! I also found some really fun fan art there:
I can’t tell if that’s meant to be Mel Gibson as William Wallace or that’s just what the artist thinks William Wallace looked like.
Next up, Newcastle! Home of Cheryl Cole!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can tell, because they sell these:
Also in Newcastle, the night before Interpol had performed at the venue We Are Scientists were playing at.
Some of the signs from their tour manager were still up in the backstage area. Including this one:
This is totally real and not something we made up for the sake of comedy. At all. OK, we made it up. But note the Comic Sans font!
After Newcastle we drove to the aforementioned Nottingham and then We Are Scientists were all like, “Um, can you leave now?” And I was like, “But we’ve been having so much fun!” And they were like, “Seriously, you have to go.” And I was like, “But-” And then they opened up the bus door and shoved me out. Fortunately, this has happened to me before so I knew the safest way to roll out of a moving vehicle. So I hitchhiked my way to London to stay with my friend there. We spent Saturday night watching X Factor. This was one of the performances by a dude named Wagner:
He got voted off.
So that was my British vacation. What did I learn? I learned that for the most part, girls in Glasgow are better looking and nicer than the girls in Newcastle. Sorry, Newcastle, thems the breaks. You have Cheryl Cole, what more do you need? I learned that I like X Factor a lot more than American Idol, though I couldn’t tell you why. It’s the exact same thing. I learned that crying really does work to get you out of a jam, even though I SWEAR that I didn’t do it on purpose and I never will again, because the shame I felt was terrible. I learned that those might as well have been Interpol’s signs. I learned that English people love curry. I had it for basically every meal. And finally, I learned that watching Face Off is an excellent way to spend time on a tour bus, despite the fact that the actual movie is the worst and somehow makes the beautiful Joan Allen look terrible.
Hopefully you’ll come back to my Wheelhouse. Mi Wheelhouse es su Wheelhouse.
