Week One But The Year’s Not Begun
After two days of lazing about consuming thrice the amount of calories any normal human being can ever require and indulging in vices with happy disregard for their naughtiness, normally accompanied by guilt, we feel like DOING stuff by the day after Boxing Day. Yes some of you went for a Boxing Day hike and some may even have gone to the sales (although I suspect my readers of being part of the online shopping growth) but there’s been a quasi-weekend and today, queasy or quasi, there are many at work. I finally got Mr. Stuhlfelder’s Best-Ever-Talk-Audio-Swag sent out, as well as some tea posted with customs declaration, to the USA (although I fear I goofed as it’s bags, not leaves) and a precious parcel to a business chum.
The swag was a dual time zone watch in a posh sprung leathern box. It was for globe-trotting JVC executives and was also given to pressmen, which is how I got mine. It has been in my possession for far longer than my time here at Talk Audio or even my time with Fast Car. So it is brand new but Max Power era, never having had the plastic cover taken off the dual-face oblate front. I had an attack of the Toy Story 2 Imperative and decided it was Christmas and so aughta be given away after years of Smaug-like hoarding. And the idea of ‘˜selling’ press swag you got for free is repugnant. I know the recipient of the penknife with ‘˜Alpine’ on it will go bonkers with delight when they open it up. Incidentally, Victorinox have opened a flagship shop in London, where you can get knives made and minor repairs done. I loved shopping there.
The tea was from ‘An Original Idea By Adam Rayner’ that was in fact stupid and has amounted to a daftly delayed Christmas present. I was going to post it to the Bass Mekanik (as he loves Sainsbury’s Red Label) but from inside continental USA, once I got to Las Vegas. Then I realised it was like wanting a post office at a huge resort in the Mediterranean. For it is a resort, by name and nature and I thought the cost-effort to be far less to simply post it from England to ‘˜Murica.
I did, today. Murrrrrrr..
However, I have a 5:20pm to 7:55pm lay over in Miami, FLA en route. So Geezer, if you fancy coming to meet me as I appear land-side, I may be able yet to rectify the not-leaves thing and hand over some British Special Import Herbs. Hmmm. Importing herbs (as in Tea) into Miami International Airport. Can’t imagine I’d have any issues.
Why no direct flight? Well, I deeply appreciate the motorway services break and the use of immigration at a slightly less pressured entry point. And the sheer joy of American Airlines or US Airways (now merged) genuine service of lovely staff versus the snooty superiority of the Virgin Atlantic girls. Seen as a glamour job, one got a round of applause one year as we landed in McCarran, as she was leaving Virgin to go and be a chorus line dancer in a big Vegas stage show. The passengers and crew all roared. On US Airways, they are all like your mum. That said, I swear I used to hope for a kind gay man on my patch of economy on Virgin flights, as they would treat my chubby self with professionalism (as they are all highly trained in stuff we don’t want to know about of course, there is no intent to insult professionally, but there is, personally!) but without the #youfuglyfatbastard sneer. It gets wearing after like, eight hours.
Thus I am also properly announcing that I am going to the Consumer Electronics Show or CES, as a scholarship journalist as the luckiest git ever, for a second time. This means you are a direct guest of the show’s organisers, the Consumer Electronics Association of America, or CEA. I did work like a bleeding ant last time and the poor PR executive got sick of the amount of writing and video that was just all over the site for a while. ‘There was so much, it actually got annoying’ she said to the chap from the CEA at the Groucho Club in London, where the initial ‘˜CES Unveiled’ invitation press event was held. I think it was a masterstroke of reverse psychology. Becky, I want to know what calls your name in Duty-Free
So yes, lucky arse Rayner is going to LAS VEGAS BABY!
But there’s more, way more. Fast Car magazine has been bought and sold. I now am doing business with the new outfit and am to first write up the Irn Bru car that Irn Bru would not play ball with. I think they saw this lad as a not-on-message thing and I was terribly sad. I also spent four times the hours pleading fruitlessly than I shall spend doing the fun bit of writing it up, nagging Barrs in an effort to get my show offy shoot. But it’s shot and I have seen it and am to explain its existence. Plus, if the snappery from my new EOS 7D is better than the bridge SX10is I have used for years, then I get to sell him a Las Vegas CES feature, too. But the real cherry and a wicked throb of real delight for me, is that I am to do a FOUR PAGE INTERVIEW WITH STEVE MEADE!
And then, we will send our USA snapper freelance, who like me, came along-with, like gold taps in the bathroom (we IS posh fixtures & fittings, innit?) to photograph his Tahoe. Working title for me is, ‘The World’s Most Famous Car Audio Install, Ever.’ As I think it is. Anyone know better?
And last of all, when Girish Janday went from Pioneer UK to Pioneer Europe, relocating to Belgium ( I think!) he cleared out all the stuff they had as promotional and incentive items. I swagged out the lot and there are videos on YouTube of the items being given to others. But if I link, it inserts a column-busting video pane in the editorial column this occupies for the first week of publication.
It’s an Italian bonded leather briefcase of 17 sections and gorgeous brushed stainless steel furniture and strap buckles. Presented in a cloth bag, they have to be three figures. I kept one back from the giveaway as there was no one more fitting than he to have it. But politics said no just then. Now, however, I reckon his colleagues will agree with me that he was righteous and a full two years later, it is right this is his, new and mint-in-the-bag!
I posted it to his family home out East of here. I have blithered too long and will properly upset the OCD edge on my publisher, as if you have read this in the side bar, this bit will be hanging like a ladder under a cage in that bit in Time Bandits.
Singing off, hardly over-excited at all.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor