Sooo London....

     Well I went to London this weekend and what a trip. Almost too much to write. I was trying to concentrate more on the atmosphere of London more than your usual "Big Ben" and "London Bridge" thing.  Well to be really frank about it, London is EXPENSIVE. That's right folks I kid you not. In fact it is the second most expensive city in the world next to Tokyo.  It was so hard to really enjoy everything because I'm on a real budget, so I have a more visual from the outside kinda view about it. I went along the Thames. That was cool..... No really I mean cool like  65 degrees cool. I was not prepared totally for that in the middle of July. I mean come on. Anyway, I went down to Piccadilly Circus and no I didn't see Marcus, but I saw someone with his guitar..... Strumming along and singing. There was a thing called the SOLDES which means a sale, but not just in one store.. ALL the stores!! I mean like 50 and 60 and 75 percent off. Well I got a couple of T-shirts, some books, and some soap! That's right, I went to this really cool place to buy just soap. It was nice. Went to the Saatchi Museum near the Eye of London where you can find the oddest pieces of art. (Not the oddest in the world mind you,but odd) The real highlight of my trip was seeing MeShell N'dgeocello play at the world famous Jazz Cafe (where I will one day play!) . It was a nice surprise also to see Goapele play after. I had no idea that she was gonna play some of her songs after the jazz set that MeShell had.  incidentally, I was pretty angry that people were yelling at her (MeShell) to sing during the concert. If they had read anything in any paper they would have known it was a jazz set. She's a bassist... Let the girl play!  Anyway, just my opinion. I also spent a lot of time in the underground subway system because apparently London is huge  and everything is far apart. Too far apart in fact to rent a car and drive it around without getting lost. So,  with maps in hand I tackled the bus and underground public transit system. Really different than Houston of course or Detroit or anything like that. You pay something like 16 dollars to ride around all day.  I of course, stayed in the Docklands, which is 35 minutes East of London. Then another 35 minutes to get downtown. Keep in mind that the last subway is at midnite for the Docklands. After that you have to take the night busses or the taxis. And this city is just full of people from everywhere. I mean you could hear any language at any given time all around you. Most of the staff people in restaurants and hotels and stands were from Spain, Portugal, Poland, German, African, Chinese, and Japanese. It was really something to see.

       On a different note, while reading a paper on the subway, I came across an article on Linda Ronstadt.  Apparently, she was "removed"  from the stage and out of her hotel room for dedicating a song to Michael Moore........... What are we coming to people? I thought we had free speech here. What's going on here?

     I even heard that Whoopi was fired because of her words and well we all know what happened to the Dixie Chicks.  I know we don't all have the same opinions but removing someone from the hotel and not allowing them to pack their own bags is straight  crap and it makes me ashamed to be American. The name of the place where she was kicked out is called  Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay. I think we should all do something to stop these unamerican ways. It's really embarassing. We have free speech as long as it's not about our presdient whom we like or dislike. Give me a break. We are in the land of the free right? ......