[The Life of Shaun #343] Cambridge

Cambridge is fecking boring. It's not even all that pretty, and what is pretty they have greatly diminished by permeating it with All Bar One, Slug & Lettuce, the inescapable Pizza Express and the like.

Which was quite fine by Argie and me because all we really wanted to do was talk about and listen to Kris Allen, our favoured contestant and winner of American Idol 8, which we had just finally got to watch the night before due to the airing delay in the UK. Lottie, the sweet dear, had no chance of dimming our commitment and she gamely played along, as long as we were drinking, which we always were. We arrived to Cambridge, parked ourselves at the first beer garden we came across, popped out my portable iPod speakers and did not arrive at our hotel, just down the road, until five Kris-laden hours after our arrival into the university-cum-chain-store town.

For those not interested in Idol, this entry just ended, so you can go check out your favourite artistic site, read another chapter of Das Kapital, study Mandarin, light some incense and tea candles, or whatever it is you people do.

I've liked Kris since "Man In the Mirror" (group two, top 36, for those less well versed in Idolatry [Idol fact: Adam and Allison were the other two through from that group]) but in my voting pool, I was the only one who picked him*, so I know that my nascent adoration in the top 36 was not universal. But I just went with who I liked (my other pick was Anoop) rather than who I thought would win, and just like with JLS in the last X Factor (except for the losing bit), I just enjoyed each week he did well so much and was genuinely happy for him with each stage he made it through.

Danny - I never got him and could not stand him.

Allison - I am not a rock chick kind of guy, so she did not endear me at first, but her last two or three weeks were awesome; "Crybaby" was perfection.

Adam - His voice and his control over it are unmatchable, and I'd never protest otherwise. If his preferred repertoire were more in the "Mad World" vein than "Born to be Wild", I'd've liked him heaps more, but as it was, he began to grate on me a bit. However, he is the only other Idol whose songs I downloaded this year.

But Kris I just liked from the beginning; his style fits me much better, and everything from his aura to his looks to that hypersexy crooked mouth when he belts tickles me up and down. Who knows how much the "possibly gay" thing factored (my guess: too much), or perhaps America just doesn't need another rocker while David Cook's still making the rounds, or maybe people just started to see how great he was in his own right, but by "Falling Slowly" I thought he could win it and by "Heartless" I thought he should. So I am very, very happy (read: ECSTATIC!!!!) with the results, despite the vocal adamonishments (sic) from many of you.

Already miss the season, Kris and RyRy; glad to have X Factor to get me through till February.

Gushing,
Shaun


*This initial Krisism netted me $203 from an unsplit pot, so I am not unhappy about my now-prescient unique affection. Thanks, Krissypoo!


All pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=127991&id=713081334&l=3478b03634

Argie and Krisypoo in the beer garden

Fine white wine! And I quote: "Bottled in France".

Lottie's and my texts to the gay bar

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #342] London - New York - Miami - Atlanta - London

I just purchased my tickets for my tour of the American East this Summer.  The details are below, so those of you in that time zone, stock up on liquor, aspirin and Coke, polish your cha cha heels and let's celebrate the gays and America in style!

Looking so forward to seeing many of you soon.

Cheers,
Shaun

Flight Information DELTA CONFIRMATION #: D6BRX6 TICKET #: 00623090255911 Bkng Meals/ Seat/ Day Date Flight Status Class City Time Other Cabin --- ----- --------------- ------ ----- ---------------- ------ ------ ------- Sat 27JUN DELTA 4 OK U LV LONDON-HEATH 1005A L M 25B ROW COACH AR NYC-KENNEDY 105P Fri 03JUL DELTA 89 OK U LV NYC-KENNEDY 655P F 26C AR MIAMI 1032P COACH Fri 10JUL DELTA 74 OK L LV MIAMI 145P 15C AR ATLANTA 344P COACH Sun 12JUL DELTA 812* OK U LV ATLANTA 535P D M 40J AR LONDON-GATWI 700A# COACH CK *Operated by NORTHWEST AIR LINES

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[The Life of Shaun #341] Club Kali

Since moving to London, I have warmly embraced the nation's love affair with curry. In that vein, I often go to London's monthly gay night for South Asians (Indian, Pakistani, etc.) and their courters. Even if it's not your bowl of matar paneer, Kali is a great change from the typical Soho fare: Bollywood dance music and trannies in saris in what looks like an ex-high school gym. I thoroughly love it.

Last month when I was there, at some drunken point I took this video, so thought I'd share this little slice of South Gaysia, London style

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #340] The Inbetweeners

Hoorah for tvshack.net!

I stumbled upon The Inbetweeners changing channels a year ago, half way through episode one.  It turned out to be one of the funniest things I've come across in Britain, I absolutely love it.  If you'd like to check it out, you can see it here:

http://tvshack.net/tv/The_Inbetweeners/

Season two started and they're being posted as they air.

Enjoy!

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #339] Gay Grand New Greater Grand Forks!

Many of you didn't know me eleven years ago, but it was not a happy period of time in my life. I had fairly recently left Fairbanks, Alaska, which I actually loved, and moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, which I actually hated. My boyfriend, Brent, at the time had been accepted to medical school there and the move was a noble attempt to keep the relationship going.

There were no gay bars in Grand Forks - indeed, there wasn't a single gay bar in the state of North Dakota (Fargo gays had to tromp across the Red River to Moorhead, Minnesota for sodomic socialising). The one gay night I had out was when the University of North Dakota gay & lesbian organisation arranged a night at a local hotel. I went, and the day after I wrote about it, squeezing as much venom about my situation into it as I could (and as many exclamation points and as few returns, apparently!!!!!!!!). Russ recently found a print out of that letter and typed it up for me last night.

So, below, a peek into The Life of Shaun 1998.

Cheers,
Shaun



Date: Saturday, 18 April, 1998 12:57:46 PM
From: scoley@prairie.NoDak.edu
Subj: Gay Grand New Greater Grand Forks!

OK, I have lived in many different places of varying degrees of gay life. Las Vegas was no mecca, and Fairbanks was merely a drop in the bucket, but never have I been to as sad a gay function as last night, here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the Sunflake City, the Heart of the Red River Valley…. It was actually about what I expected, but maybe a little worse! First off, the dance is held at the end of the Westward Ho. Yes, it’s held in the Chuckwagon Room in the Westward Ho. The Westward Ho is “frontier” style – nasty looking wood trying to be Western. Didn’t work. Anyway, it was an unreasonable $5 to get in (if you added up the cover charges of every other place in “Great New Greater Grand Forks” that night it might have totaled a quarter…). We paid since Brent had med school friends that were there. Anyway, the people. The PEOPLE! They were… well, you know what it means when someone tells you someone they met is “interesting” – well, they were ALL interesting! ;P Most were 40+, overweight, dressed like you’d expect an overweight 40+ North Dakotan to be… About a 1:8 gay man/lesbian ratio. The dancing… Ugh! There was this one man who insisted on hopping the whole night. He was wearing a flannel with the arms cut off, and would stand with his hands in his pocket and HOP. Of course, he hopped off beat too. Well, not that the music was good anyway! (Surprised?!) Fairbanks had bad music too, but this was out of control! At one point the DJ played Madonna and people danced some, so after that for quite a while EVERY OTHER song was a Madonna song! Finally that stopped and she actually played a couple decent slow songs (Sarah McLaughlin and Jewel – Yay!), and STARTED playing Robert Miles. However, the CD was skipping, so then she tried to fast forward past the skip! Which sounds REALLY great on the dance floor! :-) So that CD went off… A little later she played “I Will Survive” (is that by Donna Summers?), then the next song was Supermodel, then the next song was “Express Yourself” (Madonna again), then – GET THIS – she played “I Will Survive” *AGAIN*! Just 2 songs later! We also heard YMCA twice within one hour, and then to add insult to injury she played “Macarana”! The North Dakotan version of the dance seemed a little different! At least at this dance! Here they do one part where they put their hands on their butts and swish it from side to side, and then they crouch down with one hand in front and one behind and rock back and forth touching the floor in front of and behind them. It was truly, truly sad. And I couldn’t event drink myself into apathy! The LI Iced Teas had so little alcohol in them they tasted like Kool Aid!!!! Obviously, I did something very, VERY bad in this life to have had to endure this, and I promise to any forces that be, I won’t do it again, whatever it was, cause this is TOO MUCH! So, that was my experience with gay Grand Forks… Anyone still wonder why I am 100% willing to transfer to my 6^th undergrad university? :-)

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #338] On the up & up!

My friend David sent me Justin Bond's Facebook status.  Justin Bond is the performer who does Kiki of Kiki & Herb, whom I love, and who  represent so much of what I love(d) about New York.  The news is good!

"Justin Bond just saw a naked girl pissing in the street outside my house. She dropped her phone and her purse in the pee puddle. Clearly NYC is on the rebound!"

There is hope yet!

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #337] The British Mason-Dixon Line

Like America, England has a deep psychological divide between its North and South. Conversely to America, Southerners scoff snidely at the provincial Northerners, Northerners cast the Southerners as snooty with upside-down values. Being largely a unipolar country, London is the glorious jewel in the crown and, roughly, the farther away you get from London, the more Philistine you are supposed.

Prior to moving here, my only experience as an adult outside the M25 was Manchester, which I absolutely love, at least Canal Street and its environs, which really is all I ever see, so I never really believed it was that bad (er, different) up North. But now that my Northern exposure is growing - Middlesbrough, York, Blackpool, Preston, Nottingham, Birmingham (these last two aren't strictly Northern, but they're not exactly Southern, either) and now Bradford and Leeds - I am beginning to understand the truth in the generalisations.

Bradford and Leeds form two ends of a single conurbation (in Britain, 1.5m make a metropolis). My plan was one night in Bradford and two in Leeds, the more urbane, vibrant and worldly of the two.

Bradford is soul-destroyingly bad. Physically, it's not instantly offensive like, say, Middlesbrough or Croydon, but there is no discernible life in the city. Even Middlesbrough had a pulse (as chavtastic as it was); Bradford literally seemed to be draining the spirit out of me as I happened from one lifeless spot to the next, and its gay scene was the worst I have seen this side of Reno.

I can say just one thing to Bradford's credit, and this is that I had one of the best curries of my life there (and, truth be told, this was all I really hoped to get out of the city) at the "world famous" Mumtaz (replete with cardboard cutout of the Queen dining there). This comes from the South-Asian population that has become the majority in the city. I have to say, I think it's rather nice. It reminds me of Detroit - both are cities whose residents abandoned to die, and Muslims have immigrated from around the world to take their place. Now, they haven't turned either into a new Mecca, but at least they are giving the cities some chance of a new birth in some form. I say, if migrants are willing to try and rebuild dead and dying cities, we should cast an open door to them*.

As soon as I woke up the next day, I packed and headed East to Leeds, which was instantly an improvement. It is actually quite a lovely little city. I am not sure what brought the city into obscurity in the 1960s, but whatever it was, Leeds should be thankful as its centre is largely devoid of the concrete travesties that proliferate most British city centres. Its streets are lively and vibrant, its shops and pubs full, and there is a general air of contentedness. The gay scene is small-to-medium, but diverse and there is a compact, but distinct, gay district in the heart of the city. It would be a great city to live some years younger in life, when your ambitions and prospects are fewer, and I can see why it's so popular for university.

I had very nice night exploring the half dozen or so bars and ended up in bed earlier than is normal for me on a gaycation, but I wasn't disappointed. I then woke up at 08.30 the next morning, completely awake, and not able to think what I was going to do with myself for twelve hours in Leeds before I could start drinking in earnest again. I just didn't feel like staying, so I impulsively packed my bags and headed back to London on an early train. And then I got to London and wondered if I should have stayed. I fettered away the day, restless but uninspired. I wanted to want to go out, but didn't. I eked anxiously from one idle task to the next, till I gave up and settled in with a valium, glass of red and a book and put an end to my testy day. Turns out what I needed was a potato day with a friend, which I had with Argie for an Idolathon on Monday. I felt totally reset and revived afterwards. Travelling is my obsession, but sometimes nothing's better than eight hours of TV and conversation with a friend at home.

Cheers,
Shaun

*Canada has a policy where if you are willing to settle in less popular areas, you can migrate more quickly than those aiming for Toronto, Montréal and the other hot spots. It's caused some controversy, but I think it's a brilliant idea.

Full pics:

Bradford: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=713081334&k=4XGUPYVS4X4MYJ1FSD64W

Leeds: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=713081334&k=4YA4XXU6WVXMYJ1FSD64W

A selection:

01. DSC00002 - Not a pic from the trip, but I love my new PJ top :-)

02. DSC00003 - View from my window, and the first signs of the crime of the 1960s (of course!) planners who razed acres of the Victorian buildings to build "The Bradford of Tomorrow!"

03. DSC00007 - This one escaped

04. DSC00011 - "Student Record Officers' Conference" - I could tell I was in for a wild night in Bradford!

05. DSC00012 - Islamic McDs?

06. DSC00013 - I've never had such a holy pee!

07. DSC00014 - Going my way?

08. DSC00016 - The Sun, Bradford's main gay pub. The mostly-destroyed attached building adds a certain charm, no?

09. DSC00020 - Candy, Bradford's gay club. I love the delightful patio area, but mostly I love the barbed wire lining the outside of the club.

10. DSC00024 - The buildings that stood where I stayed obviously did not make it

11. DSC00031 - Leeds is a vibrant, alive, Northern city

12. DSC00041 - And a very pretty city too!

13. DSC00044 - Leeds is the capital of the housing bust in the UK. Tons of high-rise new developments went up in the city centre without taking heed of the fact that the kinds of jobs that attracted people who wanted high-rise city-centre living are mostly in London. People who move to the North want a house, yard and car. Many units are empty, and those that aren't have lost 2/3rds of their value.

14. DSC00047 - A fat drag nun - what's not to love?!

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #336] Britain's self-harming

Heading out the door to catch my plane to Barcelona a few weeks ago, I grabbed Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Small Island" off my bookshelf so that I'd have something light to read should there be delays long enough to run out of battery life and, therefore, The Wire. I'm on my third read of this book now, and enjoying it quite much as it's coinciding with my year to see Britain. His intents are certainly different than mine, and our destinations only overlap in the middle, but the spirit is the same.

I've just reread a passage that explains so well a constant confoundment that comes with living in Britain. The passage is specifically about Oxford, but it could be transfused to any corner of the country and be just as true. So many times you walk around these isles and think "How did anyone ever let that get built there?" (And in the case of Milton Keynes, a whole city.) Fortunately, I am fascinated with ugly architecture, so it's a bit of a paradise for me. But it is still shameful that I am able to quench my fetish so readily in one small country.

Here, better than I could ever say it, is Mr. Bryson's lament:

But there is also so much that is so wrong. How did it happen? This is a serious question. What sort of mad seizure was it that gripped the city's planners, architects, and college authorities in the 1960s and 1970s? Did you know that is was once seriously proposed to tear down Jericho, a district of fine artisans' homes, and to run a relief road right across Christ Church Meadow? These ideas weren't just misguided, they were criminally insane. And yet on a lesser scale they were repeated over and over throughout the city. Just look at the Merton College Warden's Quarters – which is not by any means the worst building in the city. What a remarkable series of improbabilities were necessary to its construction. First, some architect had to design it, had to wander through a city steeped in eight hundred years of architectural tradition, and with great care conceive of a structure that looked like a toaster with windows. Then a committee of finely educated minds at Merton had to show the most extraordinary indifference to their responsibilities to posterity and say to themselves, 'You know, we've been putting up handsome buildings since 1264; let's have an ugly one for a change.' Then the planning authorities had to say, 'Well, why not? Plenty worse elsewhere.' Then the whole of the city—students, dons, shopkeepers, office workers, members of the Oxford Preservation Trust—had to acquiesce and not kick up a fuss. Multiply this by, say, two hundred or three hundred or four hundred and you have modern Oxford.

And in continuation of my journeys around my adopted country, I am spending the long weekend in Bradford and Leeds, a dupolar metropolis in the North. Bradford is known for being the first (or second, maybe Leicester was first) city in the UK that was minority majority and for its race riots a few years back. Leeds is known for, well, everyone knows someone that went to university there. I am getting the same amazed looks about going to Bradford as I did for Middlesbrough and Milton Keynes, so I am braced. At the very least, I expect I can get a decent curry. Leeds, I imagine, will be a giant stag do, but promises to be a fun bank holiday diversion. But in both cases, I am certain the paragraph above will assuredly apply.

Have a great weekend, all!

Still excited to take a journey by train,
Shaun
Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #335] Barcelona 2 + 999

I had this thought while writing about Barcelona the first time, but that eMail was tomeic enough, so I decided to hold off.

I had a little relapse into the excitement of Europe while I was there. I was invited to a dinner party the Saturday night (official start: 21.00; first course: 22:45; last drink and exit to the first bar: 01.45 - Spanish agendas are hard on us Northerners.). There were seven guests: two Spaniards, two Frenchmen, an Irishman, the multinational and multi-lingual host and me. As I was there, the American shame dictated that all common conversation was in English. When in Spanish, I could understand nothing, but the Irishman enough to get by; when in French, our roles reversed.

As conversations morphed and splintered off between topics and parties, they passed from one language to the next. It felt so foreign and unfamiliar, so distinctly not home. This is a feeling that has dwindled while living in Europe; it doesn't feel nearly as exotic or monumental to get on a plane and be in Rome, Berlin or Amsterdam in 120, 60 or 30 minutes as it does to hole yourself up for twelve hours, trying to sleep overnight, dozing off in one world and waking in another. It's thrilling to get to travel to so many places relatively easily, cheaply and frequently, but it can't be escaped that the thrill is unavoidably diminished by doing so. You become sort of a travel junkie, having to go farther and to less convenient places to get the same high - China, Australia, Brazil, Zambia - after a while, a long weekend in France starts to sound like a long weekend in Ohio.

Disapropos, I helped a lady get an ambulance yesterday! She was walking and just tripped and fell over forward, hard (kind of like you, Lottie!). Unable to brace her fall, her face smashed into the sidewalk of Commercial Road and she started bleeding all over. She was totally dazed, so I helped her sit up, asked if she needed assistance and called 999. Bit crazy to see someone go down like that rather than being the one tripping, but now I know how you all feel hanging out with me!

OK, it's the weekend - HOORAH! I am off for TVpalooza in Crystal Palace with the Watkinsons (less one) - have a great weekend, all!

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #334] Europe's San Francisco

My first trip to Barcelona was in April 1999, just after moving to the New York area (Hoboken, for the geophiles) to go to Stevens. My sisters had moved there after stints in San Francisco and Toulouse and my Mom and I went to visit them for Easter. I liked the city well enough (and fatefully met one miss Natasha Rankow my first night there), but did not feel driven to go back before now.

I had a sense I would like it better in my 30s than I did in my 20s and I was right. I wasn't sure what didn't quite gel with me back then, but I do now. Barcelona is much like San Francisco in spirit, mood and real estate; it's set between/on mountains and the sea, is perfectly manageable in size, laid back, easy, relaxed, pleasant, pretty - basically, how you think a city ought to be if you could design it from scratch.

Only I had just left San Francisco, a city where I had all those things, 18 months before as, lovely as it was, it just didn't speak to me - it's almost too nice. I needed something more frenetic, faster, crazier, edgier - just more. I had just landed in the home that would provide that for me, but hadn't realised it yet, but something in me felt it wasn't in Barcelona either, so it stayed pretty fairly deep in the back of my mind since then.

After more than a decade gorging myself on the more of New York and London though, I am full enough that I've added new things to my palate - dinners with friends, wine on a terrace, long, lazy days with no intents at all. In sating those pangs, but without losing the vibrancy of a city, you'd have to go far and wide to find a better place than Barcelona.

The original plan was to go with my friend Rachel Klem. However, her grandmother died the day she was supposed to come to London and she ended up going home to Vegas instead. I was very sad about that, but my trip instantly became a different one, a weekend for just me rather than reexploring with Rachel.

Freed from any potential need to do touristic Barcelona again, I could do as much or as little as I felt - and I stuck with the latter. Don't get me wrong, it was a gaycation so I was out till the wee hours of the night-stroke-morning (then again, all of Spain was), but I was at liberty to nurse my hangovers with reading, The Wire, Sopranos, Howard's terrace and everything else amateur tourists shouldn't be doing.

And I had a lot more fun out now than I did ten years ago. I am not sure if it's because I've aged into a comfortable place with what Barcelona has on offer, if its scene has grown, or I am just more comfortable being out in an unfamiliar city, but there seemed to be a whole lot more agreeable ways to pass the time between sun-down and -up than I remember. For me, this is the best and most important part of any trip I take (I will have plenty of time to look at tile mosaics, flying buttresses and Sistine Chapels when I am 60, thankyouverymuch). So with this improvement, Barcelona is now frontal lobe.

I feel recharged, and I am enamoured with Barcelona. I still couldn't live there, though - I have a few more years of gluttony left in me.

Adios,
Shaun

1) DSC00399 - Me out with the boys

2) DSC00400 - The only picture of the city I took. I knew Howard's & Sergio's place was central, but I had no idea they'd be around the corner from this!

3) La Sagrida Familia - lifted picture, but including it because it's just so damn cool.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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