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Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Monday 25 May 2020
Friday 14 February 2020
Wednesday 24 July 2019
Thursday 13 June 2019
Worst to Best: Jarexit
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
During our great year of 2018, the Astroturf Wizard of Algoraz visited me threefold. With each appearance, he wielded his conscious spork with great vigour and smashed a chain attached to a limb, announcing a new form of liberation per every strike. First, the constraints of a fixed financial location were shattered, no longer forced to suckle at a master's teet wherever they wished to lay, for now, my professional avenue had been blessed with wings, allowing me to reap the fruits of my labour anywhere that the Wifi Gods spun the sky. The next chain to go was the alcoholic mistress and her nagging cackles placing curses upon my shoulders which not only clogged my love arteries but also raped my wallet for any which gold it may contain, now lifted from any future story forever. And, finally, the bounds of a lease were eradicated, my binding signature on that lawful scroll finally expiring, meaning that, for the first time in my life, I, was, well, and, truly, free.
And so I yanked out my trusty map and then I tore it to little shreds. I flipped a three-sided Smanko coin, I scanned Skyscanner for the cheapest flights and then I fucked right off using my middle fingers as paddles. There's nothing wankier than a circle of digital nomads massaging each other's shoulders about their digitally nomadism, but that's what they started calling me and I am far too busy to argue. Instead, I somersaulted from land to land using nothing but sheer determination, the Queen's money, and aeroplanes, ultimately visiting 14 cities in 10 countries in four continents in six months (and one day). And even though I have ample documentation which proves the trip took place (all photos included are my own, btfw), this story is already fading into the back of my memory like a hazy dream which never happened. Ah yes, the poison of Serosamu's brain flaps are always flaring up around this time of year.
Hence the purpose behind this blog. To hold my memory eggs close. And to show off, look at me, look at me. But mostly the eggs thing, I think. But wait! There's more! This report can also work as a wonderful resource for you! If you so ever wish to visit one of the countries below, seek this list and you shall find anything from my ratings of local hostels to my thoughts on their pub crawls and even my main tourist recommendations slapped at the end. Oh, and on the off-chance that our adventure paths crossed swords along this road, then don't be surprised if you find your name lurking within these lines. Although then again, there's also a huge chance I completely forgot about you, in which case, I bow my head and apologise without any idea who you are, sozlul. Get in touch and you shall magically appear.
You know, I was planning to write a brief intro and now look what you made me do. Here's the Worst to Best of Jarexit:
10. Cape Town, South Africa
Dates: 17 Feb 19 - 23 March 19
Accomodation: Family [N/A]
Talk about an unfair positioning, Cape Town came into the game with a slew of crippling speedbumps, far too disadvantaged to compete in the same weight group as every other stop on the Jarexit tour.
The primary problem is that I know Cape Town like the back of my hand because the back of my hand has spent over a decade living in the area, meaning that there isn't too much of this place that I haven't seen already. My mind has conversed with various other minds about this curious problem, and many agree that the anticipated welcoming sense of finally coming home isn't necessarily a given, and instead, the extended absence can actually work against its flavour. Regions generally don't change as fast as people do, and when people stay in the same place for too long, their pace tends to stagnate and mimic their immediate environment. Which is to say that while my last 10 years have been exposed to so many scary edges of the world, Cape Town has stayed largely the same except for less water (there has been a severe drought plaguing the city for the last few years with Day Zero threatening the headlines on numerous occasions), less electricity (some days we experienced six hours with no power which is impossible for someone who works from home), and more violent crime (we're currently 15th highest in the world!). To make it even worse, Capetonians are so chilled that they just keep on smiling, shrugging, "That's Africa for you!" while my soft pale British centre is screaming in panic, "Can't you see how fucked this is?!".
Shit gets worse on a personal level. You see, when I moved to London, I could forget my previous life and become a fresh me because nobody knew who I once was. Fake it 'til you make it, yeah? And eventually, I became the guy I wanted to be simply because I was no longer burdened by the mistakes of adolescence that we all carry (especially because those tumultuous years predated the infinite recordings of social media). But in Cape Town? People remember that version of me and then I look into their eyes and I remember it too. Oh no, it's you! I begin to shrink into a shell I thought I'd shed and I revert back to that beta Jared I despise, pining over ex-girlfriends who haunt every corner of this miserable metropolitan while I cry to my mommy and my daddy for help. Wash my stuff! Buy me clothes! Give me a lift! Feeeeed meeeeee! And as we go on, these dusty grooves are carved out stronger, the ailment only worsening over time, which isn't great when I ended up staying here for a month and a week. The longest Jarexit stay of them all! Too long!
Of course, at the end of the day, forget everything I just said, I actually had an excellent time. You'd struggle to find a city as gorgeous as this one and the fact that nobody but my sister knew I was coming provided us with some very unique footage. Speaking of which, my whole family went above and beyond to show me a good time, and that they did, with plenty of healthy hikes among the beauty of Cape Town's endless nature, and plenty of unhealthy car crashes following at the pub. One of the most testing aspects of solo travelling is the loneliness, and there was none of that here (unfortunately no shout-out list this round, there are too many of you!). Another one of the most testing aspects of solo travelling Europe specifically is the lack of vitamin D, of which there was no problem here, the sun was fucking cooking! And, finally, due to the free accommodation, the dinners provided by parentals, and the general depth of the rand, this stay proved to be an essential buffering period for the finances, providing me with a full house of rejuvenation, ready to march on with stamina in my step and a belly full of Pronutro. Did I mention I saw The Cure live here? I did!
Top Five Recommended Sights
Top of Table Mountain, The Bo-Kaap, Kirstenbosch Gardens, Top of Lion's Head (sunrise hike!), Boulders Beach.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 (Table Mountain exclusive) | Set 3
Monstrocity Drawing
Top of Table Mountain, The Bo-Kaap, Kirstenbosch Gardens, Top of Lion's Head (sunrise hike!), Boulders Beach.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 (Table Mountain exclusive) | Set 3
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Seven: Cape Town
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
09. Da Nang, Vietnam
Dates: 23 Apr 19 - 4 May 19
Accomodation: Motel Alex [7.9/10]
This tale begins with a Facebook friend I'd never met named Danny who, upon witnessing my adventures online, enjoyed regularly commenting that I better come visit him in Da Nang, "Or else!" (he didn't actually say that, but he was fairly adamant). I often explained how unlikely this turn would be, as I was trying to touchdown in capital cities for the most part and also, what the fuck is in Da Nang?
Then Thailand happened and my bank account was in tears which was when I noticed that Da Nang was not only a super cheap flight away but it was also a super cheap place to go in general. And that was enough reasoning for me! Let's go to Da Nang!
A lot of people that I've spoken to who have visited this city tell me they weren't impressed with it, but I am here to stand by Da Nang's worth and emphasise that this low positioning on my list has very little to do with the region itself. There are a surprising amount of sights to see, most of which combine natural wonders with man-made elements so harmoniously that I'm not sure I've seen such an impressive execution like this before. What's more, there is a fantastic community vibe wherever you go, everyone relatively friendly, albeit unable to communicate due to the language barrier and often staring at your hair because you're the first white person they've seen in weeks (although my nosering may have played a role). Even more cool stuff includes the Wifi which was strong and abundant (better than most first world countries), the currency which is called dong, and the exchange rate which translated deliciously in my favour. I was a fucking millionaire!
But shit went wrong. A lot of shit, all at once. I suffered from heat exhaustion which is way more intense than people give it credit for. I got into various large online arguments about spoilers. I broke my luggage wheel beyond usability. And I smashed my MacBook's screen beyond visibility (which, btw, I managed to get fixed within hours on a Sunday so props to those ninjas!). Couple this with the fact that I often spent hours in anxious tears trying to locate any vegetarian food whatsoever, resorting to cheese on bread more than I'd like to admit, and it's kinda easy to see why I fell into the darkest pit of my entire travels, a five-day uninterrupted onslaught of depression, feeling so alone (no pub crawls exist here!) and praying to just go back home to London. However, as I have noted before, who's to say this wouldn't have happened anywhere else in the world anyway? My depression is like clockwork. So predictable. Certainly hormonal.
Oh, and I did meet Danny in the end. Nice guy, which is always a relief.
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Dragon Bridge, My Khe Beach, Bà Nà Hills, Am Phu Cave, Sơn Trà Mountain.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Monstrocity Drawing
The Dragon Bridge, My Khe Beach, Bà Nà Hills, Am Phu Cave, Sơn Trà Mountain.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Nine: Da Nang
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
08. Berlin, Germany
Dates: 22 Dec 18 - 5 Jan 19
Accomodation: Happy Go Lucky Hotel + Hostel [6.3/10]
Much like Cape Town, the odds were shamefully stacked against Berlin. For, you see, this narrative truly begins in 2016 for my birthday, where myself and like 10 of my bestest mates visited the area for the first time and we were all awestruck by what we found. That's a different story entirely, but let it be known that when I left, I was announcing to the world that Berlin this was the greatest city in the whole wide world wide web, hence why I was soooo excited to go back despite my acute awareness that it had impossibly stretched stockings to fill.
In what I thought was a clever attempt to recapture that magic, I booked myself into a super sociable hostel, claiming one single bed in an eight-person dorm. As this was over the Christmas and New Years period, I had visions of making brand new lifelong friends and exploring Berlin's endless party scene with them until I fell in love with someone and got married and never left, sorted.
What happened instead was an endless revolving door of revolting people coming and going, zero connections made while a choir of snores extended my bedtime and frequent early morning arguments woke me up at ungodly hours with a frown. The streets were also explosively loud as one would imagine considering the time of year. What's worse is that this hostel had no kitchen, only one tiny designated fridge space per person (for a price) and an extortionate breakfast buffet if you needed sustenance. I had resorted to stashing bread rolls beneath my bed and slapping some cheese on them until they went stale, then replacing them to start the cycle again. Even decent restaurants and grocery stores were hard to come by because everyone was on holiday while almost NOWHERE accepts cards, it's ridiculous. So if you do the maths, my sleeping cycle was shot, my diet was void of any nutritional value, and while I was out and about, it also rained constantly, leaving my general arsenal fairly depleted throughout.
This journey of hiccups came to a grand climax when, on the 2nd of January 2019, some asshole stole my iPhone from right next to my sleeping head. Talk about a painful comedown, I woke up with a sinking feeling of violation and then I had to go to the fucking cop station to make a report, cowering beneath two scary officers who spoke a very rudimentary form of English. It was agonising.
But with low lows come high highs, right? Right! And if we can ignore the hostel, Berlin itself still delivered as a city shouting with culture and awkward historical landmarks which changed the world. What's more, the (anti-)pub crawl I embarked on was loads of fun until we went to that absinthe bar and I lost everyone moments before I vanished off the face of the planet into a blank sea of green. Even better, New Years was off the fucking hook! My solid mate Brothers magically appeared out of nowhere and invited me to a small yet deborturous house party where I met Tim, Anne, and Martin, all of whom are legends and, by the end of everything, are now solid mates too. We watched the 360 fireworks from their rooftop which was about as insane as my racing heart could handle and then we spent the next day winding down at a giant spa where I saw roughly a thousand people naked (and spent roughly a thousand euros). That was one for the books.
I left Berlin battered and humbled, swiftly reminded that I was a little boy in a big world and life would fuck me up at any time if it so chose to. Alright, you win! Peace! Peace!!!
Top Five Recommended Sights
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, The Brandenburg Gate, The East Side Gallery, Nico's Grave, Alter St-Matthäus-Kirchhof cemetery.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Monstrocity Drawing
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, The Brandenburg Gate, The East Side Gallery, Nico's Grave, Alter St-Matthäus-Kirchhof cemetery.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Three: Berlin
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
07. Athens, Greece
Dates: 2 Feb 19 - 16 Feb 19
Accomodation: Athens Private Room [9.6/10]
You may start to notice a pattern when it comes to the lower section of my Jarexit catalogue, and that is this: if I've visited the country before, it tends to score lower. This is for obvious reasons. The sucker-punch of brand new sights and unique cultures is softened by memory foam, the overall wow-ness diluted as one retraces their steps rather than gazing at the world with a fresh batch of dribble decorating the chin. Athens had this problem, as I'd previously visited the region in 2012 with my then-girlfriend. This was her hometown which made it even worse because everything reminded me of her, yuck! Haha just kidding, hi, Lizzie.
With that out of the way, there was nothing not to love about this city and everything actually went smashingly well. Certainly, there weren't that many things to look at (I had to limit my sightseeing to one location per day just to stretch my time out) but the main attractions are so undeniably monumental that they do rise above pretty much anywhere else in the world in that "historic value" type of plain. It's impossible to avoid some sort of a funny feeling when you see shit like that. There were also plenty of other little spices which I adore about this location, for example, how the city is slowly crumbling all around you, how the abundance of street cats watch you from their peripheral vision, how Greek people do not give a fuck about anything AT ALL, how basically the first sunshine of 2019 hit my face here, and how the pub crawl I went on was a ton of fun (hello to everyone I met from that event, namely Hesam, Shabnam, and especially Jessica and Kathi who were kind enough to have drinks with me the next day. An extra happy point to Maria, thanks for showing us around!). And yet... somehow, above even all of these highlights, was my accommodation itself, as undoubtedly the most comfortable room of my entire trip. I felt like I was at home right away and I rated it higher on Booking.com than anywhere else. I could live there, easy. Also, this is the perfect junction to say hello to Max. Hello, Max.
Athens always had the impossible task of following up Rome, which nothing had the power to conquer. But, by the end, it had won over a very special place in the greater puzzle of my tour. I owe a lot of this to my intended slower pace which made for a much calmer experience and, weirdly, the time flew by way fast, concluding with an element of sadness, apprehensive to leave, which was a first by this point.
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Acropolis of Athens obvz, Gazi (for nightlife), Mount Lycabettus, First Cemetery of Athens, Pittaki Street (and the surrounding areas).
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Cribs video
Monstrocity Drawing
The Acropolis of Athens obvz, Gazi (for nightlife), Mount Lycabettus, First Cemetery of Athens, Pittaki Street (and the surrounding areas).
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Cribs video
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Six: Athens
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
06. Copenhagen, Denmark
Dates: 8 Dec 18 - 22 Dec 18
Accomodation: Guesthouse Copenhagen [6.7/10]
Copenhagen has set up a special little hut in my guts as the very first stop on my Jarexit journey. I feel like I was but a small child at this point, uncertain if my plan was even going to work, fumbling through life with my palms stretched out and a bottle hanging from my teeth, eager to step forward but also anticipating a face-first tumble, knocking the dominoes as I did so until they all fall down.
Thankfully, this city was a massive success and worked to stack upon my confidence while setting the fun-bar nice and high. I mean, I could have done without the expensiveness of this place, but it truly felt like a "you get what you pay for" type of scenario, where there was a certain type of magic here that even money couldn't buy (especially because Christmas was just around the corner, and their associated holiday markets are world renowned!). The sharp bites from the freezing air further added to this festive experience, keeping your mind on high alert as the surrounding visuals radiated with vibrant colours, granting ample breathing room due to the vast serene water landscapes which surround everything, with hardly any litter or poverty to block your fantasy skip. A-grade statue game too! I dunno, it just seemed that the quality of life here was super easy. Everyone was happy. Nobody was apprehensive to speak (a first-language level of) English to me. There was a lot of smiling shared between me and strangers, and it didn't even freak me out.
Considering that this was a big step towards the ultimate independence, it's surprising that some of my main highlights were actually of a social nature. On my first night, I met up with some old workmates who had no idea I was coming, and I then later attended the best pub crawl from the whole journey. I developed three particularly potent friendships during that event (namely Athena, Michelle, and Tristen, hi!) and these dudes were legends! Very friendly, welcoming me into their circle of trust, then inviting me to spend the whole next day with them, exploring this pretty city while comparing our hangovers. With a bit of luck, friends for life! Oh, and hey Katie!
I want to end with the Danish word called "hygge". I'm unsure how to pronounce it, but it means "quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being". There is no direct English equivalent of this word because its very definition is unique to this country's lifestyle. It's something I wouldn't have understood unless I had experienced it myself, but I have, and I do. Ok, but here's an English word for you: "Go!". As in, "Go to Copenhagen, it's rad".
Top Five Recommended Sights
Superkilen, Nyhavn, Freetown Christiania, the top of The Rundetaarn, The Little Mermaid statue.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Monstrocity Drawing
Superkilen, Nyhavn, Freetown Christiania, the top of The Rundetaarn, The Little Mermaid statue.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Two: Copenhagen
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
05. Melbourne, Australia
Dates: 18 May 19 - 1 Jun 19 (9 Jun Aus extended)
Accomodation: Hub Hostel (8.8/10)
Gold Coast Acc: Ash's House (N/A)
Australia was placed in a precarious position before I'd even washed up on their shores, purely because it was specifically chosen to be the grand finale of my six-month tour. And as it sits here, slap-in-the-middle of my lineup, it doesn't take a genie to calculate that it delivered on some fronts, yet fell short on others.
My main complaint about Melbourne (and Australia as a whole) is that it's lacking a certain historical flavour and ingrained culture which my tummy craves. I mean, there are pubs in England which are a hundred years older than this entire city. Hence why, due to this newborn freshness, it does feel a little characterless, and my brain tended to completely switch off during my explorations, not a threatening thought to be found. I can't even count the number of occasions I awoke, standing on the side of the road, waiting endlessly for the man to turn green, and I'd ask myself... wait, where the fuck am I? This place looks like literally anywhere! I have no idea what country I'm in right now! This happened a lot. What's more, it was their winter, and I was suddenly cold for the first time in over four months. Badly timed.
However, these are insignificant complaints when you consider this as a nation who are undeniably the most chilled out people that I have ever had the pleasure of sharing a space with. Everything functions, there is a lot to see (and I saw a lot!), and the overall quality of existence is so pleasurable that's it's kinda ridiculous that the British sent the convicts here. They should have come themselves! Leave the convicts in the snow! Too late now. Anyway, the vein of social activity also pulsated particularly strong in this region as I met up with old friends (all the love in the world to Soph and Hannah, you mah girls!!!), met up with new friends I'd never met before (shout-out to Greg and Cam, Pencilmation represent!) and my hostel was buzzing with life as one of the coolest accommodations I'd ever stayed in. The pub crawl was also decent even though I didn't chat to anyone except for Hannah. Furthermore (and this might sound a bit gross and Western-y), but after the lengthy South East Asia excursion, it was a relief to converse in English to literally everyone! And drinking water directly from the tap? What a treat!
Admittedly, Melbourne should actually be a bit lower on this list, but it was bumped up due to its sneaky little side step where I slid off to visit my top-shelf mate (and fellow Funpowder Plotter) Ash in the Gold Coast. And this place was waaaaay superior! It was like LA with its endless beaches and plastic people and sunshiny weather. In fact, it was still winter over there yet it was miles warmer than London's average summer, hence why I laughed as I went for a run in the heat whilst the locals freaked out about how it was "the coldest June on record". Furthermore, my last day was an ending so perfect that I couldn't have written it myself, as we hiked through a rain forest near Kez's place followed by some surfing then a meal with another long-lost mate, Al. Such a great send-off to conclude my entire Jarexit tale, my one and only regret being that I didn't stay longer. Too easy, mate! Toooooo easy.
Top Five Recommended Sights
Melbourne Museum, State Library Victoria, the fruit bats of Yarra Bend Park (go at dusk!), The National Gallery of Victoria, AC/DC Lane.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 (Gold Coast exclusive)
Monstrocity Drawing
Melbourne Museum, State Library Victoria, the fruit bats of Yarra Bend Park (go at dusk!), The National Gallery of Victoria, AC/DC Lane.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 (Gold Coast exclusive)
Monstrocity Drawing
04. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Dates: 04 May 19 - 18 May 19
Accomodation: i-Heritage [6.7/10]
The very fact that I was going to Kuala Lumpur showed little more than the reflection of a man who had given up completely. As the second-to-last country on my journey, I no longer cared where I was going because (after Vietnam) I simply wanted to get this over with and go home and curl into a ball and die in front of Mother Netflix. Literally, the only reason I chose KL was that the final destination of Australia became closer, meaning cheaper flights. That. Was. It. I remember even thinking to myself, "Ok, this is going to suck, it's going to be a tough two weeks, but if we can just get through it, then we'll be in Australia and everything will be ok again".
In the end, it was these very fatigued preconceptions which worked massively in this city's favour as I was caught staggering off guard by its proper city city vibes, so much so that it reminded me of London in various obscure aspects. So many different cultures and religions were mixed up together yet everyone speaks English because they learn it in school by law (a clever government tactic to encourage tourism growth). Plus the place simply works, I even managed to get my luggage wheel fixed here for free! In that same consumerism type of way, a visit like this is less about fancy landmarks you've heard of or sightseeing touristy adventures for the whole family, but rather more about the living breathing city itself, vibrating from an indescribable feeling while hiding little gems in every crevice, enough to keep me busy right until I boarded that plane again. Even the weather was absolutely fascinating with frequent explosions of downpouring thunderstorms despite the temperature never dropping below 30 degrees. I have it on good authority that it's like this all year round, and I loved it.
Side note: I watched the noise pop band Deerhoof here and then I met them afterwards SO THAT WAS NICE. Big fan, I totally groupied out too, yet another point to KL!
It's worth noting that I intentionally focused much of my time here trying to fix the gaping holes in my psyche which I punctured during Vietnam. I attacked my every fibre with all of the positive warfare I could muster, including a strict balance of exercise (I ran 33.55km over the two weeks, which is decent) and a healthy diet (I followed my self-penned Good Mood Food guide almost exclusively), which defragged my brain and filled up my stoked-pockets right to the brim again. Oh, I remember me now! I'm alright!
Finally, an extra special mention must be circled around the cute local emo girl I matched with on Tinder. We chatted, we met, we got drunk, we ate food, we fucked forever and then we stayed by each other's side for close to 24 hours following. It felt like we were in a real relationship for this brief flash of time and then we said goodbye, which was actually kinda sore. I would fly back just to see her again.
So, Kuala Lumpur then, any complaints? Sure. The drink prices are extortionate. The porn laws are ridiculous. The pub crawl was dead (hey, Ryan, how are you?). My hostel's internet connection made me want to kill myself. But other than those, this is one underrated location and more people should be talking about here all of the time. It's criminal that people don't.
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Petronas Towers from KLCC Park, KL Forest Eco Park, Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Park, Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Museum Of Illusions.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 (Deerhoof exclusive)
Monstrocity Drawing
The Petronas Towers from KLCC Park, KL Forest Eco Park, Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Park, Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Museum Of Illusions.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 (Deerhoof exclusive)
Monstrocity Drawing
03. Budapest, Hungary
Dates: 05 Jan 19 - 19 Jan 19
Accomodation: The Point Guesthouse [8.3/10]
Man, I struggled to articulate what it is I loved about Budapest, but I guess... everything? It was cheap cheap cheap, the land seemed very clean, the locals were happy to help, the atmosphere was laid back, there were plenty of beautiful historic landmarks to check out, the tidy architecture tickled my intestines, and the thick snow was a masterful touch to the slow beauty already in place. Plus, my insurance kicked in and my new iPhone arrived to replace the stolen Berlin one, so yeah! Everything! It all just went right!
In fact, my friends Tanya and Simon were visiting too, and it kinda became a running joke between us that nothing ever goes wrong in Budapest. No matter what we wanted at whatever time, it always seemed to fall in our laps around whichever corner and then we laughed as we explored these Hungarian landscapes while building snowmen and dranking drinks and ateing eats everywhere we went, costing us next to no pounds at all. Flawless! Perfection! The pub crawl was a ton of fun too and I even went on my first Tinder date ever here, so I mean... everything!
Ok, of course, I do have one complaint, and it was the guesthouse I stayed in. I mean, the private room was nice enough (and an absolute godsend after the eight-person dorm hell of Berlin), but the live-in manager was a total douche. We butted heads a few times, the most notable of which when I accidentally left a tiny piece of pasta on the kitchen counter. I was out drinking on a Saturday night when I received a very passive-aggressive text from the guy, condescendingly moaning at me for my oversight. Naturally, I apologised profusely and took extra care going forward, but when the time came to review this accommodation, I decided to mention this parental incident as part of my conclusion. This fucker then responded by calling me the messiest guest he's ever had, which is something I have never been accused of in my life! Which is why I was strangely proud of the honour. Little old me, all the way up at number 1! Imagine!
Anyways, of every place I visited, I feel like Budapest would be the one I'd most likely recommend to just about anyone because it ticks the most boxes and I feel even you could find what you're looking for here. It was pure therapy for me.
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Buda Castle, The Hungarian Parliament Building, The iron shoes on Danube Bank, The Citadella at the top of Gellért Hill, The Garden of Philosophy.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Monstrocity Drawing
The Buda Castle, The Hungarian Parliament Building, The iron shoes on Danube Bank, The Citadella at the top of Gellért Hill, The Garden of Philosophy.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Four: Budapest
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
02. Rome, Italy
Dates: 19 Jan 19 - 2 Feb 19
Accomodation: Legend R.G. [8.8/10]
The fact that Rome isn't number one on this list is daylight robbery because no city on Earth has ever moved me more than all of this right over here. I wrestled with this ranking for a while and, ultimately, this is how the cards fell. But let it be known that Rome is still my go-to answer when people ask me what my favourite stop was, hence why I'd like everyone to rather value this point as a tied first-place because that's what it is.
Oh Rome, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Three. There were three ways. As follows:
ONE: As with everything, practice makes perfect, and this applies to travel too. Rome marks my fourth Jarexit stop and, by this point, I had proven that my system worked. My footing was moving fast, my hours were being utilised to their maximum potential, and all of my previous apprehensions had evaporated into the mist, leaving me to flap my arms and make bird noises, finally free from everything. Italy's capital was the first city I truly dived into head first and, my God, I did not expect what I found. I only came here for the cheap flights, man!
TWO: In terms of historical monuments, Rome's unique slabs of recorded magic are unmatched. Any given turn and you find yourself in the middle of what felt like a film set, exactly how you imagine ancient Rome to look, perfectly preserved except twice the fucking size of what your mind could possibly illustrate alone. These seemingly endless sights tower above you, brimming with woah, a necessary distraction from the trashy streets below. It overwhelmed me with its monstrous presence and I had to eat so much pizza just to keep myself grounded. It was unhealthy.
THREE: My hostel was a social goldmine, cleverly designed to fan the fires of newfound friendships by offering free communal breakfast in the morning, and free communal wine in the evenings. And I met what felt like hundreds of people here, levelling up with at least one decent friend per each night, and usually a ton more. It was so good that even though the pub crawl was alright enough, I just wanted to come back and hang with these dudes. The number of times my heart broke saying goodbye in this hostel was enough to make a grown man cry.
There were too many of these soldiers to name, but I must give respect to the A-Team: Maelle, Lucie, Rodrigo, Sua, and especially Ahmed who was there from Day 1 until Day 14. The second-wave also deserves some love, so here it is: Gwyn, Emily, Curt, Noah, and Roshiwow. Oh, and of course, Luuk and Kaiting. And Elizabeth. Owen. Gabriel. Thiago. Dmitry. I've forgotten someone for sure.
So yeah, the thing is that there were multiple moments in Rome where the emotions rose above the vocabulary. I remember walking down the road a few times, happily chatting away with people I've only known for a few hours, off to find a pub, and then suddenly stepping out of myself, thinking... this is it. This is what travelling is all about. This means something. And then when I strolled into St. Peter's Basilica and nearly fell over, a profound spiritual experience took place within me, not exactly enough to convert my agnosticism to any solidified belief system, but a definite realisation of what Jesus meant on a conceptual basis. In one quick second, I understood the value of religious figures, not in terms of some imaginary relationship or debatable scripture or historical mumbles, but as an unachievable benchmark which I and you and everyone else could utilise to become better people. It was the closest example of a fundamental shift I've felt in over a decade and I nearly burst into tears on the spot. I was uber hungover though, so take that as you will.
Near the end, I fell quite ill, pinned to my pillow by sweat, hallucinating, the works. Perhaps this was my pores trying to reject Jesus? Whatever. The point is that this didn't taint my experience, but it did create a craving for a little privacy away from this shared space and I was ready to leave when I left. Except now I was armed with a new lease on life. I had a deeper connection with "God". And I no longer cared about trying to find something or myself on this mission because, whatever that was... whatever that was... I found it in Rome.
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Vatican City/Vatican Museums/St. Peter's Basilica, The Colosseum, The Forum, The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius, Trevi Fountain.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 (St. Peter's Basilica exclusive) | Set 3
Monstrocity Drawing
The Vatican City/Vatican Museums/St. Peter's Basilica, The Colosseum, The Forum, The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius, Trevi Fountain.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 (St. Peter's Basilica exclusive) | Set 3
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Five: Rome
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing
01. Bangkok, Thailand
Dates: 24 Mar 19 - 06 Apr 19 (23 Apr Thai extended)
Accomodation: Yaks House Hostel [8.8/10]
Koh Tao Acc: Summer Guesthouse and Hostel (7.9/10)
Koh Phangan Acc: Wan's Garden (7.5/10)
What's fascinating about Bangkok is that pretty much everyone I know who has been here told me that they hated it, and what's more, I would certainly hate it too. They informed me that a few short days were more than enough and I was insane to attempt to endure this city for two weeks. Of course, as you've worked out by now, this was not my experience. Not in the slightest.
What people get wrong about Bangkok is that it takes at least four days just to remotely get your head around the place. You've got to hang on tight otherwise it will overwhelm you until you freak out and run away like a little baby. I mean, after two weeks I had only just about got the hang of it, and even then I wasn't too sure. Although this may all depend on your appreciation for crazy cities because Bangkok is a fucking crazy city. I love crazy cities, by the way. It may also be worth mentioning that I had two of the greatest guides anyone could ask for, Angela and Henry, who showed me the ropes, took me to see Jimmy Carr, then set me free to play. Thanks, guys! Everyone needs an Angela and Henry in their lives.
Ok, so what's the big deal? Well, as with any all-encompassing-sensory-overload, it's difficult to dumb down a soul-shaping experience by using the limited space between the boundaries of language, but I'll start by relaying that it felt like my finger was stuck on the fast-forward button. This sentiment rings particularly potent when screaming down the busy intersections on the back of a Grab taxi scooter facing oncoming traffic. I could taste the backdrop of my adrenaline gland. Not to mention that the sex industry here is far more intense than Amsterdam and I spent many nights drinking in bright neon malls which were actually a collection of bars which were actually a collection of strip joints which were actually a collection of fancy brothels, enjoying the stream of 10/10 Thai models who were trying to fuck me for money while the ladyboys waved their little willies in my face. I may have felt quite powerful if I didn't actually feel as if the entire surface area of my skin has been covered with filth. Although that may have been the sweat because FUCK ME the weather was HOT. I don't think I actually breathed oxygen once while I was there.
A lot can be said for chaos, I'm all about it, but this alone is not enough to dominate all of my travels ever. Instead, the key to Bangkok was the absurd juxtaposition of it all; the disorderly seediness balanced out by the polar opposite spiritual essence, the exact point on earth where the sinful meets the holy, a loud vibration of turbulence worn like a coat upon a deeply calm centre. Buddhism, man. It's so chill, so humble, so welcoming. Just how they treat tourists with such respect is unlike anywhere else on my trip, and any exchange came with a mutual understanding that we were both helping each other out in our own ways. So yeah, take this religious stillness fucked with perverse indulgence, and you pretty much have Jared in a nutshell.
My main testament to the power of Thailand was that I quickly realised that my already-booked flight to Singapore was simply not going to cut it and I promptly skipped that part, opting to explore the country a bit further via their infamous island lifestyles. One Facebook vote later, and my friends sent me along my way to Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. You may think that this subplot has unfairly manipulated the score to prop Bangkok up on this pedestal and, yeah, you're probably right. However, arguably not as much as one would assume, as these two locations somewhat cancelled each other out.
On the one hand, Koh Tao was a paradise on earth which could easily suck you in forever (I met some of its victims). It's basically a long casual festival vibe bursting from young people who chill on the beaches and hike through the mountains while popping the over-the-counter Valiums—just a real holiday feeling which I used to eat and exercise myself back into health and cleanliness. Oh, and that pub crawl? Massive. Excessively so. The biggest in Asia. About 130 people. Insane.
On the flip side, I spent my time in Koh Phangan pretty much just running away from vicious dogs trying to eat me alive, so that wasn't as great. The Full Moon Party was definitely as epic as everyone said it would be, but I am decidedly too old for that shit, and also, seriously, that dog thing still haunts me today.
All in all, I went far too hard, my accommodation was always above par, I met many cool people (hey Keyaria, hey Tobi, hey Doina, and especially hey you, Eve), and I ultimately loved it so much that I overstayed my visa by one day, my passport now proudly sporting the Thai stamp of naughtiness forever. Worth it!
Hope to see ya'll next time around!
Top Five Recommended Sights
The Grand Palace, Nana Plaza, Top of the King Power MahaNakhon, The Ratchada Night Market, Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 (Koh Tao exclusive) | Set 5 (Koh Phangan exclusive)
Monstrocity Drawing (Bangkok)
Monstrocity Drawing (Koh Tao & Koh Phangan)
The Grand Palace, Nana Plaza, Top of the King Power MahaNakhon, The Ratchada Night Market, Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan.
Instagram Snaps
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 (Koh Tao exclusive) | Set 5 (Koh Phangan exclusive)
Definitely Not a Cry For Help, Chapter Eight: Bangkok
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
This episode is out! Click here to watch it right now!
Monstrocity Drawing (Bangkok)
Monstrocity Drawing (Koh Tao & Koh Phangan)
Follow @LegoTrip
Thursday 23 May 2019
Wednesday 24 April 2019
Thursday 7 February 2019
Monday 7 January 2019
Tuesday 18 December 2018
Tuesday 16 October 2012
It's My Birthday
Turning 28 was never something I intended to do. Some people freak out when they turn 30 or 40 or some other landmark number, but for me 28 was always the age I never wanted to reach. No doubt for many of you this may seem ridiculous or dramatic, and perhaps in some ways, it is. However, it has been on the forefront of my mind for a long long time, and I’m going to try and get it off my chest right now, before your very eyes.
It becomes a little easier to understand my troubles when you take into consideration that I have been thinking this way from as young as 14 years old. I had recently come across various writings to do with the legendary 27 Club, and had instantly developed an obsession with it. Kurt Cobain was my hero above all heroes, and the romantic spooky aura surrounding that special age which had swallowed up my god was swallowing me up too. Brian Jones. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. It fascinated me that, for some reason, these pioneers and pinnacles of rock music had all passed at such a specific time of their life. Do a little research and you will find there is no other age like this. There is no 26 club. There is no 28 club. And there is a reason for that. So, armed with this new found knowledge, I birthed a plan.
It’s disorientating as to how fast time slips away, and it’s even more disorientating at how glaringly obvious this fact becomes when a birthday is upon us. For as long as I can remember, I was the kid who practiced the Grammy speech in front of the mirror, or had an imaginary interview with Oprah before I went to bed. I know we all did that to some degree, but I still do that every single day, to this day. In my head, my heart and my soul, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that all my dreams would come true. Even before I was a teenager, I would draw pictures or write songs, and I could hear the screaming fans as they marveled at my work, despite the fact no one ever saw those projects. In my drawer right now I could show you hundreds and hundreds of pages worth of comics, short stories, concepts and drawings which I have never shown anyone. I have over 500 songs written that were never recorded and about 6 albums worth of recorded material that (up until recently) nobody had ever even heard. But it didn’t matter to me that I never showed anyone, because I had convinced myself I was a genius and an asset to the art world. It would simply be a crime of fate if I wasn’t discovered.
Reality bites, and it bites harder the older you get. Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that a large portion of my older friends are sneering at that remark right now. A 28 year old talking about getting old? What could this child who can’t grow a beard and has never had a grey hair possibly know about age? And that’s fair enough. But in my imaginary world, things did start to collapse a bit even by the time I turned 18. Why hasn’t anyone knocked on my door offering me money yet? Where are the screaming girls mugging me outside my house? Slowly but surely, the weight of it all began to solidify in my mind. This wasn’t going to just happen. I was going to have to do something about it.
When I turned 24 and I moved to London, it hit me as hard as the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac. It was almost in that instant that I realised I was not going to get anywhere if I kept creating art in a world inside my head. It was great to already be a superstar in my mind, but ultimately useless when no one else was granted access. I freaked out. From that day in August 2008, I frantically did as much as I could, and if you look at what I did, it’s quite a lot. I made a facebook group that clocked more than a 1000 people before getting shut down; I started an art website which hosted work from more than 40 artists; I made a website to meet Lily Allen and succeeded; I started this very blog website which I still regularly update with 12 substantial posts a year (more substantial than your blog posts anyway); I joined a 6 man film crew who have put out 18 videos to date; and I released a 4 track EP of songs, each with their own cartoon music video. This was all done while holding down a 9-5 job, and over the space of a mere 4 years. One can always work harder, but I worked pretty hard. I was trying to make up for lost time, because while my entire life had changed, one thing had not: I needed to be something. I needed to be something bigger than what I already was. I wanted to be discovered and recognized.
But with turning 28, for the first time in my life, a dream did not and can not come true. I guess it is a rare case, being the only major dream I had with a time limit and all, but it’s a failed dream all the same. I wanted to get famous before 28, and then die. I wanted to join the ranks of Brian and Jim and Jimmy and Janis and Kurt and, yes, even Amy. I never once doubted that this was going to happen, until recently when reality bit, and as of today it is impossible. All the countless years I spent researching the topic; all the essays I wrote and pictures I drew; all the material items I purchased on the subject... are now pointless. Because you can’t be a 28 year old obsessed with The 27 Club. That would be sad.
It’s at this point that I warn you I have no idea where I am going with this. I started to write down my thoughts in hope that I might work something out. It was a reflection piece to try and make sense of how miserable I have been feeling over the last few days. I have attempted to speak to people in person about it, but they can’t seem to grasp the concept that I am literally unhappy because I am not dead. They fail to see the importance of the whole thing. Yes, I am grateful for my life, and yes, I am sure staying alive will be beneficial in the long run. But I just lost a fucking dream. A big one. It’s gone. And I don’t feel any better now that I’ve put it to paper.
However, I am a trained optimist, and there are some silver linings (as there always will be). For starters, age means nothing to me from here on out. My life’s thought process has always revolved around being dead by now, so ages like 30 or 40 or above don’t scare me. If I’m older than 27, then I’m not 28 or 29 or 42 or 56. I’m just older than 27. And as I used to tell my friends: I will either die at 27, or I will live forever. I guess that can be my new obsession. It’s a fairly common one.
The other silver lining is that I feel less desperate now. Whether you achieve a dream or you don’t, the result are much the same. You stop trying to achieve it. I can’t go back in time, and so I have to gracefully accept that God fucked me once again, and watch this dream shatter. It is the first dream I have ever watched shatter, and it hurts, but it does lift a lot of pressure off of my future. I no longer have a deadline. I no longer have to panic about reaching a certain plateau before a certain time. Now I can just forget about myself and grow old with everyone else. Like the normal person I never wanted to be. It fucking sucks, but what can I honestly do? Suggestions?
In closing, I’d like to say that this is the worst birthday of my life. Thanks for reading.
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Thursday 28 October 2010
Until It Happens To You: My Paranormal Experiences
Fuck, I love Halloween. It’s the only day that, in my opinion, we can properly celebrate our creativity and imagination in the areas of evil and fear. I dig the idea of promoting mischief from the hands of little children disguised as monsters, knocking on stranger’s doors begging for candy. There is something exciting and a little twisted about all of this, and that’s what my life is all about personally.
The origins and reasons why we enjoy this holiday are interesting enough. This was the day that the Celtics believed the border between the living and the dead became thin, which allowed spirits to cross over and visit us. Some viewed this as a good way to make passed loved ones feel missed, while others viewed it as a dark doorway for harmful entities to cause trouble. In fact, this is why we dress up today. The tradition of wearing scary clothing on this celebration was meant to protect and ward off the evils, although I find the children themselves to be much scarier.
A while ago, my internet-friend Erin asked me on formspring if I had experienced any paranormal activity in my short lifetime. As I began to answer this, I realised a story with this many details could not be lost on a page filled with what is usually pointless tongue-and-cheek answers. So instead, I saved it for this very day, my way of starting off your 2010 Halloween weekend with love.
I have told a handful of people this story before, and reactions vary. If you don’t believe in the paranormal, this won’t be the story to convince you. Many skeptics have been quick to point out logical explanations to all of the pieces I am about to tell you, and I don’t disregard this, I am not here to promote these ideas at all. I am not going to even go so far as to say that I believe in ghosts and demons and other such unexplainable entities, because I don’t know. What I am here to tell you about is a bunch of shit that freaked me out. I can't justify calling these paranormal experiences except that nothing about this felt normal whatsoever. If you want to email me and tell me that I am making a big deal out of nothing, by all means go ahead, but this blog is not written for you. Because without a doubt, those who do believe in the paranormal and/or have had experiences themselves will definitely enjoy this more. And no matter what your stance, something bad is going to happen to you very soon.
I am also taking a huge risk here, because every time I tell this story, my life get effected. I haven’t dabbled in these thoughts since I have arrived in London, so I am hoping that I am not inviting things in that I shouldn’t be. I will keep you updated if things go strange, and if I die mysteriously, you know why. Haha, just joking, I’m immortal.
I guess my mind became heavily curious when I was around 10 years old or so. I went on holiday with the family of a friend. He and his sister were allowed to bring one person along, and we all shared a room. His sister and her friend were much older than us, super hot, and proceeded to tell us that they were witches and had many experiences with spirits. That midnight they took us to a graveyard where we casually and calmly walked around, and we found this black cat who followed us all the way home. Nothing about this was weird or scary, it was fun and I felt safe with these two girls. Once home, we made a circle where they claimed to contact the dead and continued to hum in unison and say very peculiar things. I will be the first to brush this off as mass-hysteria, but the room felt very fucking weird. Everyone’s faces were changing to the point that I couldn’t tell who looked like a boy and who looked like a girl. The most stand-out occurrence was when something invisible began to pull on my face, and I freaked out and started crying. It didn't take long until everyone was crying, it just all felt really out of place. I look back on this not so much as a paranormal experience, but more the moment that I began to become very interested with the idea of the unknown and making contact with the dead.
After this, I dabbled in a bit of witchcraft myself, and cast a few successful spells. As time has gone on, I believe that spells are the same as prayers are the same as The Law Of Attraction. It’s putting your focus on something you want, getting your emotions in tune with it, and then manifesting it into your life. But it just shows where I was in my thought process and my interests at that age, and what path I was heading down.
This story only starts now.
Believe it or not, Ouija boards are very fucking powerful things. People are quick to debunk the tool, but when you consider that the first example found was in China around 1100 B.C., it’s hard to imagine that well over 3000 years have passed and yet no one can still completely explain it. People all around the world still swear by it’s authenticity, I have proven it many times to people, and can prove it to you. I do this often by setting one up and getting the person who I am playing with to ask the board a question only they would know the answer to. Maybe like “What is my mother’s maidens name?” or “What is my Gmail password?”. The Ouija board will tell them, which would mean that either they are pushing it around despite wanting to disprove it, or there is actually something there.
It’s a nifty seemingly harmless pass-time, but they are in reality very dangerous. If you do a bit of research you will find that almost anyone who has played the board regularly has advised others that it isn’t a good idea. And that is exactly what this story is about.
Ouija boards are interesting in the way that the more you play, especially as a team, the faster and more articulate it becomes. It didn’t take long before full sentences were flashing before our eyes as fast as we could read them, telling us how we would one day die and who we would one day marry (although as any player knows, spirits have as much ability to lie and exaggerate as any alive person would). And as it is often documented, there was a point where one spirit had grown quite attached to us. He introduced himself as Pion and seemed to really enjoy messing with us, quick to answer our questions with his seemingly logical predictions. Everytime we started a new session, in would come Pion with his opinions of our lives and life in general.
One particular day, the group of us were playing the board in the attic of my girlfriend’s house. For some reason, she was sitting this round out, and the boys were asking stupid boy questions, as we do. One of the oh-so-mature questions we asked, and the question that heavily influenced my life for sometime to come, was “is anybody in this room bisexual?”. The planchette slid over and highlighted “Yes” and there were many giggles all around. Naturally, we asked “Who?” and Pion proceeded to spell out my girfriend’s name. Despite this probably being true, this really pissed her off and so she abruptly ran over to the board and kicked it, the glass planchette sliding far away from the board and everything slipping from underneath our fingers.
This is a very bad thing. The number 1 rule about the Ouija board is to never play alone. The number 2 rule is that if you ever decide to play (don’t) you must NEVER lift your fingers up until the spirit has said goodbye to you. The reason is that it supposedly damages the spirit’s spirit as it were, and this upsets them greatly. You don’t want that.
We frantically scrambled the pieces back together and apologised profusely, but it was all wrong. It began to spell out “B-A-D-M-I-S-T-A-K-E-B-A-D-M-I-S-T-A-K-E-B-A-D-M-I-S-T-A-K-E” over and over. Eventually it began to threaten us, warning my girlfriend that something very bad was going to happen to her. It also began to tell us how it was fetching all of it’s demon friends, calling them by their first names, claiming that they were filling up the room. Needless to say we were shitting ourselves, and as much as we begged it to say Goodbye, it wouldn’t.
After some time we managed to calm everything back down to a decent level of communication and we slowly continued to talk to Pion about less and less serious things. But man, I was spooked, and pretty soon Pion noticed.
After some time we convinced Pion to leave us alone, and we packed it up. It was then we noticed my girlfriend was missing, so we ran around the entire property screaming her name trying to find her. It was panic to the point of tears. Eventually we found her hiding in her Dad’s workshop, but we were all so convinced that something really bad had happened to her, that we got rid of the board and it was never played on again.
You would think this would be enough to stop me, but it wasn’t. And luckily/unluckily for me, the one guy we played with a lot felt the same. So without telling anyone, we constructed a crude Ouija board out of cardboard and continued to play this in my room for months. It worked pretty well, it wasn’t quite the same, but we continued to get a decent amount of communication from the spirits. Even Pion visited us once or twice. It was here that we were told that everyone was on a level when it came to connecting with the dead. We were a 7 at that point, and the more we played, the higher we got. We were told that once we reached 10, the spirit could make us float, which is obviously a level that we never got to, but on occasion we would level-up and it would be extremely exciting. In hind-sight, this was probably total bollocks, just the Spirit’s way to encourage us to play more and more Ouija board everyday - and it worked. My mom even knew about it. I can guarantee you that this over-indulgence is what fucked it all up.
Over this time, my room had become a cold place. It was very damp anyway, mold was growing on the walls and I would often find snails or worms or other creatures trying to make a home there. So it wasn’t a sunshine kind of habitat, and reflects how messed up and depressed my life was at that point in time anyway.
But more than anything, it was how it felt in there. It had a very dark and tingling feeling to it and I never quite felt like I was alone. Now, I know I can’t completely attribute this to some paranormal activity, people are quick to point this out. And when I look back, maybe you are right. But what I know is that there was a very distinct vibe in there for whatever reason. I could never explain this to you properly as no one can ever explain a feeling anyway, but it just felt fucking wrong. Believe me, it did.
However, odd things would happen. I would hear noises all through the night. It sounded like things were constantly outside my window - a point proven when people actually did break into my house when I was awake, but I ignored it because I was so used to the noise. My computer was quite effected as well, documents would remove data, sometimes full files would disappear. One of the more interesting things was that randomly, almost once a week, my printer would print a tiny smiley face. You never knew when, but suddenly my printer would start up and print this minute smiley webding. Of course, this to me was a good sign, that whatever was doing this was at least on a happy vibe. These events can be explained by many other reasons, and go ahead and do that, but from where I was standing it was very eerie.
What sealed it for me was when my one friend was visiting. His parents are both very much into the spiritual scene, his mom selling natural medicines and practicing alternative healing as her occupation, and his Dad being one of the forefront South African hypnotists, exorcists, channels and many other paranormal things. My friend had been exposed to this lifestyle since he was born, had good knowledge about all of it, and was drinking beer with me in my lounge. After a while of good laughter, he needed to piss and went to my room to do so. He came out with a very different look on his face. “There’s an entity in your room Jared, did you know this?”. I laughed, and told him that it was a friendly ghost, surely, and explained the printer story. He didn’t dig it and refused to go into my room ever again. I didn’t take it to heart, but that was definitely the point that confirmed it for me.
Two nights after I had put it up, I went to bed, and literally the second I fell asleep, I felt these evil arms come around my back and hang onto me with all their might. The presence of evil was all over me and I was fighting the best I could, completely in blindness. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but what it seemed like was that I was almost asleep, but this thing wanted me to stay awake, restraining me in some kind of mid-point.
I woke up in a panic. And above my head I could hear the Exorcist poster slowly peeling off of the wall. It was stuck there with Blu-Tack (Prestik as we call it in SA), but it sounded more like someone had stuck a piece of masking tape to the wall, and were slowly removing it. Like a sticky hissing. I freaked, jumped up, ripped the poster down and threw it on the floor. I then went back to sleep.
The next morning the poster was still on the floor, so I was definitely awake for that noise.
In 2007 I moved house 6 times. They say that moving home does not guarantee you will loose your follower, but there are reports that it does make it easier, and at some point I had definitely lost it. I had also moved on with my life. I was far more into other things and so I wasn’t so prone to allowing it into my experiences. They say that by giving it thought and attention, it becomes stronger, which is why it had left me alone at that time. And which is also why I was so reluctant to write this blog in the first place.
And then in an act of complete stupidity, around Halloween 2007 (exactly 3 years ago), I decided I wanted to have a freaky one. I began to read reports on the internets all about people and their paranormal experiences. The one really stood out for me was of a girl who went so far as to even having sexual contact with a spirit. She had multiple different beings contacting her through various methods, some urging her to continue having sex with this one specific entity, others warning her against it, all of them lying and tricking her into different acts. Eventually they were talking to her constantly throughout her day, narrating her life until she actually had to go to an institution for a while. I don’t know why, but this story seemed to open up the gates of my mind a bit, and I was there with open arms. I was trying to get this shit back into my life because so much time had passed that I had begun to doubt my own experiences. It didn’t take long before I definitely felt a presence anywhere I went. It’s difficult to explain but it feels like someone is permanently staring at you, as cliche as that sounds. I always feel it in my back, like a constant borderline chill. It looked like I was going to get my freaky Halloween after all.
A couple days into my stirring, I was driving up to my apartment in Kenilworth and pulled into my parking space. There sitting at the end of it, blocking me from parking properly, was an old African drum. It was full of dirt, very wide but short and looked ancient. I was stoked and didn’t think twice about it. I happily took the drum back into my apartment and sat it in my hallway, chuffed with my new toy.
Regardless, this time was very different. I felt a presence all over my room, definitely as if something was hanging over me. I could hear my housemate talking to his friend in the next room and I tried so hard to scream for them to help me, but couldn’t get a word out. And the freakiest part of all is that the drum was playing itself, a slow timeless beat coming from the hallway. There I was, completely paralysed with all this mass noise going on around me in complete panic, and I don’t remember what happened next.
The next day I went to work and phoned my housemate to tell him what had happened. And he said “That’s weird man, I wasn’t even home last night”.
That evening I went to visit my sister and had pretty much written the whole thing off as another weird dream. That’s when I got a phone call from my housemate telling me that he had locked his keys in his car and needed me to come and open the door for him to get his spares. Angrily, I went and picked him up at some pub and we drove to the house. We put my keys in the door but they wouldn’t turn. There was nothing we could do, we tried and we tried, but the door just wouldn’t budge. It was as if something was holding the lock from the inside. I didn’t think much of it, I was too irritated, so we decided we had no choice but to go back and get my housemate's keys from his car.
We drove back to it and found a homeless man who obviously had some kind of experience with breaking into cars. He came with a wire and began trying to open the car door. Casually while he was doing this, we told him how we couldn’t open the door of our house and how weird it was. This complete stranger turned to us with fear in his eyes and said “There is something in your house. You guys better be careful”. The night before rushed back to me, and I was like “Shit dude, the drum!” and my housemate suddenly realised what might be going on.
We got into the car, drove back to the house, and just like before, his keys would not turn. So it couldn’t have been the keys themselves, but still meant that maybe the lock was fucked. We had no choice, we smashed a window and climbed in. We went around to the door and it was just as it had always been. We turned the lock, and from the inside, it opened easily. Nothing was wrong with it. We tested the keys again, and suddenly they worked fine. For some reason, it had refused to turn from outside just that time. In fact, I lived in that house for almost 2 years, and it had never happened before or after.
Together we took that drum and threw it away. A big sense of relief breathed into me and I decided not to tell anyone the story. Although I have mentioned it since then once or twice, most of my close friends will be hearing about this for the first time. The reason being, of course, because I had to purposefully avoid giving the whole ordeal any attention and basically ignore it as much as fucking possible, which worked. It stopped bothering me pretty soon afterwards and I went on with my somewhat normal lifestyle.
And that's the end of my story, hope you liked it. If anything I learned that no matter what the hell was going on back there, it wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t immediately explainable and it all seemed centered around moments I opened myself up to the experiences. It was enough to satisfy my curiosity and I will never go back to that place ever again. Of course there will always be critics, and all I can say to you lot is that no matter what you believe, if you were there, you would’ve shat bricks. Until it happens to you, you will never know. Go play Ouija board in a graveyard and I promise you your mind will do back-flips and you will cry to your mommy. Then write a blog about it, I dunno.
Finally I must just let you know that various times during the writing of this blog, I felt very weird. I compulsively saved my work because I had this feeling it was just going to disappear on me, I don't know why. It's hard to say if my mind was just playing tricks or not, but it was such a familiar feeling that a few times I considered scrapping the whole thing. At least I never have to tell this story again, I can just post the URL. God bless the internet, and Happy Halloween to all of you. Watch what happens now.
Follow @LegoTrip
Monday 24 May 2010
Easter Eggs Up Your Ass
Originally Written: 01/04/10
That time of year is here again where we celebrate the murder and resurrection of Jesus Christ the savior. I don't care what your beliefs on the subject are - coming back to life is a pretty impressive party trick even 2000 years onward. And as any kid will tell you, what better way to honour this than to eat a bunch of colourful chocolate eggs hidden by a very cunning bunny-rabbit.
Now, there is one thing always pisses me off about this time of year. It's when you're sitting in a room and some uneducated fuck thinks he's so smart and funny, and proclaims "what the hell does bunny rabbits and eggs have to do with the rise of Jesus?" And everyone else in the room nods and drools and agree's "Wow, I never thought about it like that, you are so clever and beyond us."
I swear to God, this happens every fucking year. And each time I have to hold back from casually walking over the schmuck, slapping his/her face like a bitch and then pissing all over his/her designer trainers. Where did you get this amazing thought? Did you think of it all by yourself? Well - let me ask you this - do they have the internet where you come from? Oh, they do? Well, why don't you take your useless fingers over there and go onto wikipedia, you stupid prick, before putting stupid ideas into these poor sheep brains?
It's symbolic. Rabbits are known for their excessive breeding habits (the little sluts) although I doubt they match us humans. Cos we fuck a lot. Eggs, on the other hand, are an obvious representation of birth itself, waiting to be hatched into the world. It's LIFE people, symbols of the creation of LIFE. Which has a rather fitting connection to the death and resurrection of Jesus, wouldn't you say? Yay! All is not lost! You can go back to bed now.
Besides all that nonsense, I love any holiday - it's an excuse to celebrate. I will have an extra pint just because I did my washing this week, so personally, I enjoy any justification which is a little more globally accepted. And let's face it, ever since I moved out of home, the chances of me even receiving a single Easter egg is next to none. Unless I buy it myself, which I am just not willing to do.
It's about here that I realise I have no conclusion to what I was talking about - please forgive me as I take this in a completely different direction.
Much like the sadistic rabbit (I decided he was sadistic just now) hiding Easter eggs for kids; artists and media developers around the world enjoy a similar practice too. I'm talking from programmers to painters to film directors - they love to sneak tiny in-jokes into their products so that we as the average people have to search and search to get the humour. And by search and search, I mean go to Google, type some words, click "Google Search", normally the first hit. Fittingly, these little gems are called Easter Eggs. You see? You see? I didn't completely go off topic now, did I? No.
If you know anything about me (and let me assure you, you don't) you'll know that I am only educated about 3 things. The first is vagina - let me prove this to you sometime. The other 2 are the internet and music. And for that reason, I will be focusing on my Top 10 favourite hidden Eggs in albums and songs I feel you should know. Please enjoy. Or don't. Either way - I win because you are on my website.
PLEASE NOTE: This note wouldn't have been so easy if it wasn't for the badly designed but thoroughly contented website knows as Easter Eggs over here: http://www.eeggs.com
Also, no backward messaging was included, because that way of hiding stuff is so lame.
10. The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band (1967)
This specific technique is my least favourite execution of any hidden-track method, only because it has been done like a 1000 times since. However, it is only fair to include this example, as it is the first hidden track ever. Yup, first at everything, you're oh-so-cool Mr. Beatles.
After the final song (The EPIC A Day In The Life) we are treated to 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone, which generally can only be heard by dogs, but I can hear it because I am SOMETHING BEYOND EVERYTHING. This is immediately followed by a weird loop of laughter and gibberish. This works especially well on the Vinyl editions because the track loops perpetually within the inner groove of the LP, an effect lost on the cd-release.
Since the release, there has been massive amounts of debating over what the hidden track means. "What does it really mean?" they say. Some have reported that it is just McCartney saying "It really couldn't be any other" which sounds pretty close. Then kids started to play the message backwards (which isn't that strange because by now every single second of The Beatles catalogue has been listened to backwards extensively just to find, well, anything). Backwards interpretations are often cited as "We'll fuck you like Superman" and lesser so as "Will Paul come back as Superman?" which fuels the Paul is Dead Theory even further.
Anyways, you try work this all out for yourself, the hidden track is here.
Since then, this "play a track after the last track" technique has been used by any lazy artist who wanted a hidden track. One of the most famous examples being Endless, Nameless by Nirvana on their classic album Nevermind.
The Beatles themselves didn't stop there either, with their Her Majesty being hidden much the same way on Abbey Road. Even cooler was their track Can You Take Me Back which is unlisted on the White Album, playing just after Cry Baby Cry and just before Revolution Number 9. And of course, there are literally hundreds of other hidden things all around The Beatles catalogue, some of which may be on purpose, most of which can be just credited to crazy fans. I'll leave you to it then.
09. Blur - Think Tank (2003)
Unlike the previous example, this technique could be considered as a "real" hidden track because you can listen to the entire album and never find it. Ladies, gentleman, inbetweeners: The Pregpap.
How this works is like this: instead of just hitting "play" on track 1, the listener can actually rewind the first track into negative numbers where a bunch of hidden audio is stored. Hell, this audio is so well hidden that it doesn't even work on some cd players. That's pretty fucking hidden if you ask me.
Some of the best examples include Queens Of The StoneAge's Songs For The Deaf which is just the sounds of someone getting into their car. Muse's Hullabaloo Soundtrack contains a sample of Tom Waits' What's He Building? on Disc 2. Limp Bizkit's Significant Other has a few of these all over the album.
Personally, I have chosen Blur's Think Tank album as my favourite example of this. My reasoning is terrible: I just love Blur and I love this album. Also, the track in question "Me, White Noise" is a full-on over-6-and-a-half minute electronic track with guest vocals from the cockney Phil Daniels (who also provided vocals on the band's track Parklife).
However, this method is still used extremely often in modern media, and so isn't anything too special. For a detailed list of all albums using this, check it out here.
08. The Bloodhound Gang - Hooray For Boobies (2000)
Ok, now that we have got the 2 most common examples out of the way, it's time to start rewarding the truly clever.
To some, using the words "Bloodhound Gang" and "Truly clever" in the same sentence might be an oxymoron, but let me assure you that Jimmy Pop is (or, at least, was) a lyrical genius. A VOICE OF A GENERATION is what I wouldn't go so far as to say. And Hooray For Boobies has got to be their best work just because of how much effort was put into this album alone. Besides the 13 album tracks (which are generally really good), we also have 5 other joke tracks scattered among them, bringing the total to 18 all together. Then we find ourselves listening to silent track after silent track until we hit track 47, which is called "Studio Bullshit" and is just that - a bunch of talking and ridiculousness.
As much as this is a hidden track, it still isn't the most original way to do it, and is in essence the same idea as the first entry - a bunch of blank space before the final unlisted song. So most people who own this album have found this track all by themselves, well done.
What most people do NOT know however, is that when the album is played through a program like winamp, the 28 blank tracks are each assigned a letter. Which when spelt out in order, reads "Tracks 19 Thru 46 Are Just Silence". Which is true.
This is the only example I can find like this anywhere, and even the most hardcore BHGroupies somehow seem to overlook this.
People have also said that the 47 tracks are a reference to the 47th chromosome, which is the one that causes Down Syndrome. And I guess if you know Bloodhound Gang, that is a definite possibility. FUNNY.
07. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
Radiohead like to do things differently, and while other bands were hiding tracks on their albums, they went ahead and hid an entire cd-cover of artwork.
The original UK pressings of the album had a hidden booklet, all you had to do was lift up the tray underneath the cd, and there it was: 8 pages of really, really weird stuff designed by Thom Yorke (under the alias Tchock ) and Stanley Donwood (who does all their artwork anyway). This is way above the line of duty, I am sure we can all agree, as even the main booklet itself is filled with tracing paper and other weird fold-outs that no other album I have ever seen has made use of.
The hidden booklet caused some controversy with a demonic portrait of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with many other strange quotes and teddy bears. Of course, you can't find this anymore, but if you want to look at the entire thing, you can, over here.
You're welcome.
06. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
I was torn whether this could actually be considered an Easter Egg or not, but seeing as the original pressings of this LP are hard to come by, and the CD versions most of us newbies are familiar with do not include the gimmick... why yes, I think I'll include it.
It is one of the most recognizable cd covers of all time, even though it is just a banana. Of course, when is anything just anything when Andy Warhol painted it? And in true Warhol fashion, you had to look closer just to get the joke.
A little message and an arrow invited the listener to "Peel slowly and see", aimed right at the banana stem itself. Early purchases of the LP surprised people when they did just that, peeling the top layer of the banana to reveal a skinned one underneath. This must've been super expensive and probably the reason why they stopped printing these very quickly.
However, if you have one, sell it on eBay and make money. Or give it to me. Or don't, whatever. I'll kill you.
05. Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door (1979)
While we are still on the topic of album covers an what-nots, this one took me by surprise. Whilst researching for this article, I came across this one I had never heard of - which is weird because I thought I knew everything about everything, let alone Led Zeppelin.
It's so good, it deserves a little introduction. First of all, it was designed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of the Hipgnosis team. Do a little bit of research, and you will find that almost every incredible album cover ever made was done by these guys, from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, to Muse's Black Holes and Revelations, and all the Genisis's, Black Sabbath's and Mars Volta's in-between.
But this one is special. And I don't mean just because there 6 different versions, each showing different angles of the same scene (a man burning a letter at a pub). I also don't mean the fact that the album was covered in a brown paper bag so that the buyer had no idea which one they were purchasing (an obvious ploy to get more money from the collectors).
No, the genius here lies that the images were black and white, but when wiped with a damp towel, became fully coloured. Yes, just like those books you had as a kiddie. The technique was completely irreversible, and Hipgnosis was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1980 for this stunt.
04. The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973)
Ahem, back to actually hiding music within an album, we have a very special technique that is so special that modern day Cd's just cannot do it. It's called Double Grooving, and despite my best efforts, I can only find 3 examples of it ever being used.
The first is Tool - Opiate. The Cd version of this album contains the hidden track The Gaping Lotus Experience, hidden in the traditional format: lying after a bunch of silence following the final track. However, on the Vinyl, people disovered that it just wasn't there. Oh - but it was... By dropping the needle in just the right place during Cold & Ugly, the listener could find it. It is like a hidden groove on the record that if the album was listened to from the beginning to the end, it wouldn't be picked up. Very cool.
The second example of this would be Mr Bungle's Disco Volante, which is an untitled hidden track, but requires the listener to drop the needle in just the right place during Carry Stress In The Jaw.
But you can't beat Monty Python's use of this technique. We aren't talking Hidden tracks here: we're talking an entire HIDDEN ALBUM. That's right, the worlds first and only triple-sided LP. So much so that the official name of the release was Free Record Given Away With The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief.
Much like the previous examples, the second side of this album played 3 tracks normally. But if you placed the stylus right, it would play 4 completely different tracks. To further the joke, the album did not have a track listing. This means that the listener may listen to the album a few times before suddenly being surprised with a bunch of tracks he/she had never heard before. Long live the kings of comedy.
03. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979)
This Easter Egg is so simple that it won't take long to explain, but is so incredibly genius that it is often overlooked despite being the best selling album of the 1980's in USA.
Within the very first seconds of this album, if you listen closely, you will hear someone faintly say the words "...where we came in?". You might have never noticed that before, but you will now.
Then listen to the entire album. Do it with headphones. Do it stoned. You may never come back.
After your double-album journey, listen carefully just as the album ends, and you will here that same voice, but this time saying "isn't this...?" and then the cd cuts out.
Set it to play the first album after the second, and you will get the flawless sentence: "Isn't this... where we came in?", a perfect way to listen to an album over and over and over.
Pink Floyd are like Easter Egg shitting machines, so I suggest you do a little more research on the topic about them. This is merely my favourite one.
02. Tool - 10,000 Days (2006)
Yes, I like Tool. We all like Tool. I just don't like Tool as much as everyone else seems to. And as far as Tool album's go: 99% of us agree that this was their worst offering, despite the excessive packaging to try and fool you otherwise.
However, Tool are pretty much the heavy-weight champions of modern day ProgRock, and that isn't a title anyone should take lightly. Their collection is so long and trippy that it almost feels like the entire thing is one giant Easter Egg. But this does not stop them from hiding stuff from us, and that is the reason why this band was not only mentioned in entry #4, but why they also have this entire entry to themselves. Because this, my friends, is fucking GENIUS.
It requires some work on your part, but give it a shot: download (or rip - if you are a good person) tracks 3, 4 and 11. Now open tracks 11 and 3 (Viginti Tres and Wings for Marie (Pt 1)) in one media player and track 4 (10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)) in a separate media player. You will notice that these tracks, when added up, both reach 11 minutes 13 seconds in length. This is not an accident.
If you manage to press Play on both players at exactly the same time, you will shit yourself as you realise that they sync up and create a monster track together as one.
So let's recap here: there are 3 tracks, when combined, make up the hidden track. Have you ever heard of anything like this, ever?? Fuck-off cool.
Marie, of course, being Maynard's mother who died before this album's release. Some people even argue that the 11 minute thing has something to do with the fact that she died in November. Yeah, maybe.
01. Aphex Twin - Windowlicker (1999)
Richard D James is the king of everything. As far as Experimental Electronic music goes, no one has yet to do anything even remotely as good as he has, and even more so, this particular song.
For anyone familiar with his work, you know that he loves to put his face on everything. EVERYTHING. In the video for this song, his face is superimposed onto the bodies of models in bikini's (much like the above image), scaring little kids all across the world. But what not many people know is this: his face is hidden INSIDE of this song.
Impossible? POSSIBLE!
All you need is a spectrograph program - try Spectrogram, and then watch the pretty patterns this song makes just like every other song in existence. The key hits around 5:27, a massive noise you have probably heard before but paid no attention to takes place. But when viewing through the spectrograph, suddenly you are looking at Richard's face - in the music.
Lazy? Ok, it looks like this.
The song also ends with pretty spirals made by the same technique.
Since then the band Venetian Snares has hidden cats in their songs, and various images of hands were hidden in Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails (which is also smothered in Easter Egg gold all over), but this is the first and possibly the best example in history.
This, my friends, is Easter egg holy grail, and nothing is better.
CONCLUSION:
What, haven't I said enough?? Follow @LegoTrip
That time of year is here again where we celebrate the murder and resurrection of Jesus Christ the savior. I don't care what your beliefs on the subject are - coming back to life is a pretty impressive party trick even 2000 years onward. And as any kid will tell you, what better way to honour this than to eat a bunch of colourful chocolate eggs hidden by a very cunning bunny-rabbit.Now, there is one thing always pisses me off about this time of year. It's when you're sitting in a room and some uneducated fuck thinks he's so smart and funny, and proclaims "what the hell does bunny rabbits and eggs have to do with the rise of Jesus?" And everyone else in the room nods and drools and agree's "Wow, I never thought about it like that, you are so clever and beyond us."
I swear to God, this happens every fucking year. And each time I have to hold back from casually walking over the schmuck, slapping his/her face like a bitch and then pissing all over his/her designer trainers. Where did you get this amazing thought? Did you think of it all by yourself? Well - let me ask you this - do they have the internet where you come from? Oh, they do? Well, why don't you take your useless fingers over there and go onto wikipedia, you stupid prick, before putting stupid ideas into these poor sheep brains?
It's symbolic. Rabbits are known for their excessive breeding habits (the little sluts) although I doubt they match us humans. Cos we fuck a lot. Eggs, on the other hand, are an obvious representation of birth itself, waiting to be hatched into the world. It's LIFE people, symbols of the creation of LIFE. Which has a rather fitting connection to the death and resurrection of Jesus, wouldn't you say? Yay! All is not lost! You can go back to bed now.
Besides all that nonsense, I love any holiday - it's an excuse to celebrate. I will have an extra pint just because I did my washing this week, so personally, I enjoy any justification which is a little more globally accepted. And let's face it, ever since I moved out of home, the chances of me even receiving a single Easter egg is next to none. Unless I buy it myself, which I am just not willing to do.
It's about here that I realise I have no conclusion to what I was talking about - please forgive me as I take this in a completely different direction.Much like the sadistic rabbit (I decided he was sadistic just now) hiding Easter eggs for kids; artists and media developers around the world enjoy a similar practice too. I'm talking from programmers to painters to film directors - they love to sneak tiny in-jokes into their products so that we as the average people have to search and search to get the humour. And by search and search, I mean go to Google, type some words, click "Google Search", normally the first hit. Fittingly, these little gems are called Easter Eggs. You see? You see? I didn't completely go off topic now, did I? No.
If you know anything about me (and let me assure you, you don't) you'll know that I am only educated about 3 things. The first is vagina - let me prove this to you sometime. The other 2 are the internet and music. And for that reason, I will be focusing on my Top 10 favourite hidden Eggs in albums and songs I feel you should know. Please enjoy. Or don't. Either way - I win because you are on my website.
PLEASE NOTE: This note wouldn't have been so easy if it wasn't for the badly designed but thoroughly contented website knows as Easter Eggs over here: http://www.eeggs.com
Also, no backward messaging was included, because that way of hiding stuff is so lame.
10. The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band (1967)This specific technique is my least favourite execution of any hidden-track method, only because it has been done like a 1000 times since. However, it is only fair to include this example, as it is the first hidden track ever. Yup, first at everything, you're oh-so-cool Mr. Beatles.
After the final song (The EPIC A Day In The Life) we are treated to 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone, which generally can only be heard by dogs, but I can hear it because I am SOMETHING BEYOND EVERYTHING. This is immediately followed by a weird loop of laughter and gibberish. This works especially well on the Vinyl editions because the track loops perpetually within the inner groove of the LP, an effect lost on the cd-release.
Since the release, there has been massive amounts of debating over what the hidden track means. "What does it really mean?" they say. Some have reported that it is just McCartney saying "It really couldn't be any other" which sounds pretty close. Then kids started to play the message backwards (which isn't that strange because by now every single second of The Beatles catalogue has been listened to backwards extensively just to find, well, anything). Backwards interpretations are often cited as "We'll fuck you like Superman" and lesser so as "Will Paul come back as Superman?" which fuels the Paul is Dead Theory even further.
Anyways, you try work this all out for yourself, the hidden track is here.
Since then, this "play a track after the last track" technique has been used by any lazy artist who wanted a hidden track. One of the most famous examples being Endless, Nameless by Nirvana on their classic album Nevermind.
The Beatles themselves didn't stop there either, with their Her Majesty being hidden much the same way on Abbey Road. Even cooler was their track Can You Take Me Back which is unlisted on the White Album, playing just after Cry Baby Cry and just before Revolution Number 9. And of course, there are literally hundreds of other hidden things all around The Beatles catalogue, some of which may be on purpose, most of which can be just credited to crazy fans. I'll leave you to it then.
09. Blur - Think Tank (2003)Unlike the previous example, this technique could be considered as a "real" hidden track because you can listen to the entire album and never find it. Ladies, gentleman, inbetweeners: The Pregpap.
How this works is like this: instead of just hitting "play" on track 1, the listener can actually rewind the first track into negative numbers where a bunch of hidden audio is stored. Hell, this audio is so well hidden that it doesn't even work on some cd players. That's pretty fucking hidden if you ask me.
Some of the best examples include Queens Of The StoneAge's Songs For The Deaf which is just the sounds of someone getting into their car. Muse's Hullabaloo Soundtrack contains a sample of Tom Waits' What's He Building? on Disc 2. Limp Bizkit's Significant Other has a few of these all over the album.
Personally, I have chosen Blur's Think Tank album as my favourite example of this. My reasoning is terrible: I just love Blur and I love this album. Also, the track in question "Me, White Noise" is a full-on over-6-and-a-half minute electronic track with guest vocals from the cockney Phil Daniels (who also provided vocals on the band's track Parklife).
However, this method is still used extremely often in modern media, and so isn't anything too special. For a detailed list of all albums using this, check it out here.
08. The Bloodhound Gang - Hooray For Boobies (2000)Ok, now that we have got the 2 most common examples out of the way, it's time to start rewarding the truly clever.
To some, using the words "Bloodhound Gang" and "Truly clever" in the same sentence might be an oxymoron, but let me assure you that Jimmy Pop is (or, at least, was) a lyrical genius. A VOICE OF A GENERATION is what I wouldn't go so far as to say. And Hooray For Boobies has got to be their best work just because of how much effort was put into this album alone. Besides the 13 album tracks (which are generally really good), we also have 5 other joke tracks scattered among them, bringing the total to 18 all together. Then we find ourselves listening to silent track after silent track until we hit track 47, which is called "Studio Bullshit" and is just that - a bunch of talking and ridiculousness.
As much as this is a hidden track, it still isn't the most original way to do it, and is in essence the same idea as the first entry - a bunch of blank space before the final unlisted song. So most people who own this album have found this track all by themselves, well done.
What most people do NOT know however, is that when the album is played through a program like winamp, the 28 blank tracks are each assigned a letter. Which when spelt out in order, reads "Tracks 19 Thru 46 Are Just Silence". Which is true.
This is the only example I can find like this anywhere, and even the most hardcore BHGroupies somehow seem to overlook this.
People have also said that the 47 tracks are a reference to the 47th chromosome, which is the one that causes Down Syndrome. And I guess if you know Bloodhound Gang, that is a definite possibility. FUNNY.
07. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)Radiohead like to do things differently, and while other bands were hiding tracks on their albums, they went ahead and hid an entire cd-cover of artwork.
The original UK pressings of the album had a hidden booklet, all you had to do was lift up the tray underneath the cd, and there it was: 8 pages of really, really weird stuff designed by Thom Yorke (under the alias Tchock ) and Stanley Donwood (who does all their artwork anyway). This is way above the line of duty, I am sure we can all agree, as even the main booklet itself is filled with tracing paper and other weird fold-outs that no other album I have ever seen has made use of.
The hidden booklet caused some controversy with a demonic portrait of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with many other strange quotes and teddy bears. Of course, you can't find this anymore, but if you want to look at the entire thing, you can, over here.
You're welcome.
06. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)I was torn whether this could actually be considered an Easter Egg or not, but seeing as the original pressings of this LP are hard to come by, and the CD versions most of us newbies are familiar with do not include the gimmick... why yes, I think I'll include it.
It is one of the most recognizable cd covers of all time, even though it is just a banana. Of course, when is anything just anything when Andy Warhol painted it? And in true Warhol fashion, you had to look closer just to get the joke.
A little message and an arrow invited the listener to "Peel slowly and see", aimed right at the banana stem itself. Early purchases of the LP surprised people when they did just that, peeling the top layer of the banana to reveal a skinned one underneath. This must've been super expensive and probably the reason why they stopped printing these very quickly.
However, if you have one, sell it on eBay and make money. Or give it to me. Or don't, whatever. I'll kill you.
05. Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door (1979)While we are still on the topic of album covers an what-nots, this one took me by surprise. Whilst researching for this article, I came across this one I had never heard of - which is weird because I thought I knew everything about everything, let alone Led Zeppelin.
It's so good, it deserves a little introduction. First of all, it was designed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of the Hipgnosis team. Do a little bit of research, and you will find that almost every incredible album cover ever made was done by these guys, from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, to Muse's Black Holes and Revelations, and all the Genisis's, Black Sabbath's and Mars Volta's in-between.
But this one is special. And I don't mean just because there 6 different versions, each showing different angles of the same scene (a man burning a letter at a pub). I also don't mean the fact that the album was covered in a brown paper bag so that the buyer had no idea which one they were purchasing (an obvious ploy to get more money from the collectors).
No, the genius here lies that the images were black and white, but when wiped with a damp towel, became fully coloured. Yes, just like those books you had as a kiddie. The technique was completely irreversible, and Hipgnosis was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1980 for this stunt.
04. The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973)Ahem, back to actually hiding music within an album, we have a very special technique that is so special that modern day Cd's just cannot do it. It's called Double Grooving, and despite my best efforts, I can only find 3 examples of it ever being used.
The first is Tool - Opiate. The Cd version of this album contains the hidden track The Gaping Lotus Experience, hidden in the traditional format: lying after a bunch of silence following the final track. However, on the Vinyl, people disovered that it just wasn't there. Oh - but it was... By dropping the needle in just the right place during Cold & Ugly, the listener could find it. It is like a hidden groove on the record that if the album was listened to from the beginning to the end, it wouldn't be picked up. Very cool.
The second example of this would be Mr Bungle's Disco Volante, which is an untitled hidden track, but requires the listener to drop the needle in just the right place during Carry Stress In The Jaw.
But you can't beat Monty Python's use of this technique. We aren't talking Hidden tracks here: we're talking an entire HIDDEN ALBUM. That's right, the worlds first and only triple-sided LP. So much so that the official name of the release was Free Record Given Away With The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief.
Much like the previous examples, the second side of this album played 3 tracks normally. But if you placed the stylus right, it would play 4 completely different tracks. To further the joke, the album did not have a track listing. This means that the listener may listen to the album a few times before suddenly being surprised with a bunch of tracks he/she had never heard before. Long live the kings of comedy.
03. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979)This Easter Egg is so simple that it won't take long to explain, but is so incredibly genius that it is often overlooked despite being the best selling album of the 1980's in USA.
Within the very first seconds of this album, if you listen closely, you will hear someone faintly say the words "...where we came in?". You might have never noticed that before, but you will now.
Then listen to the entire album. Do it with headphones. Do it stoned. You may never come back.
After your double-album journey, listen carefully just as the album ends, and you will here that same voice, but this time saying "isn't this...?" and then the cd cuts out.
Set it to play the first album after the second, and you will get the flawless sentence: "Isn't this... where we came in?", a perfect way to listen to an album over and over and over.
Pink Floyd are like Easter Egg shitting machines, so I suggest you do a little more research on the topic about them. This is merely my favourite one.
02. Tool - 10,000 Days (2006)Yes, I like Tool. We all like Tool. I just don't like Tool as much as everyone else seems to. And as far as Tool album's go: 99% of us agree that this was their worst offering, despite the excessive packaging to try and fool you otherwise.
However, Tool are pretty much the heavy-weight champions of modern day ProgRock, and that isn't a title anyone should take lightly. Their collection is so long and trippy that it almost feels like the entire thing is one giant Easter Egg. But this does not stop them from hiding stuff from us, and that is the reason why this band was not only mentioned in entry #4, but why they also have this entire entry to themselves. Because this, my friends, is fucking GENIUS.
It requires some work on your part, but give it a shot: download (or rip - if you are a good person) tracks 3, 4 and 11. Now open tracks 11 and 3 (Viginti Tres and Wings for Marie (Pt 1)) in one media player and track 4 (10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)) in a separate media player. You will notice that these tracks, when added up, both reach 11 minutes 13 seconds in length. This is not an accident.
If you manage to press Play on both players at exactly the same time, you will shit yourself as you realise that they sync up and create a monster track together as one.
So let's recap here: there are 3 tracks, when combined, make up the hidden track. Have you ever heard of anything like this, ever?? Fuck-off cool.
Marie, of course, being Maynard's mother who died before this album's release. Some people even argue that the 11 minute thing has something to do with the fact that she died in November. Yeah, maybe.
01. Aphex Twin - Windowlicker (1999)Richard D James is the king of everything. As far as Experimental Electronic music goes, no one has yet to do anything even remotely as good as he has, and even more so, this particular song.
For anyone familiar with his work, you know that he loves to put his face on everything. EVERYTHING. In the video for this song, his face is superimposed onto the bodies of models in bikini's (much like the above image), scaring little kids all across the world. But what not many people know is this: his face is hidden INSIDE of this song.
Impossible? POSSIBLE!
All you need is a spectrograph program - try Spectrogram, and then watch the pretty patterns this song makes just like every other song in existence. The key hits around 5:27, a massive noise you have probably heard before but paid no attention to takes place. But when viewing through the spectrograph, suddenly you are looking at Richard's face - in the music.
Lazy? Ok, it looks like this.
The song also ends with pretty spirals made by the same technique.
Since then the band Venetian Snares has hidden cats in their songs, and various images of hands were hidden in Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails (which is also smothered in Easter Egg gold all over), but this is the first and possibly the best example in history.
This, my friends, is Easter egg holy grail, and nothing is better.
CONCLUSION:
What, haven't I said enough?? Follow @LegoTrip
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