Being a Brit, I’ve never “done” thanksgiving. Well, we used to have a harvest festival thing at school but bringing in a tin of pea and ham soup to donate to a home for the elderly isn’t quite the same as having a HUGE, DELICIOUS MEAL COOKED FOR YOU BY FRIENDS. So massive thanks to Katie & Mark for introducing me to what I’ve been missing all these years. Sweet potatoes with marshmallows: where were you all my life? Pumpkin pie: how did you slip under my radar? Cranberry sauce with chillis: I didn’t know you two were a couple and yet you’re so perfect together!

The evening was so full of great things (great food, great music, great company, great new flat) that it even helped me get over the annoyance of having been called into work on my day off the previous day. It’s not all bad, though, as I’ve found the perfect day to rearrange my leave for: Wii UK launch day! Let’s just hope I don’t get called in again (and that Amazon deliver on time).

So were any other Brits hitting shift-reload on a certain page of amazon.co.uk for 45 minutes this morning when they should have been working?

Roll on December. *grin*

Having never been to a Flaming Lips gig before I knew only the legends, the stories and the myths about the events that would occur. The show was opened by a town crier, the band were joined on stage by a crowd of Father Christmases and aliens in miniskirts (both crowds armed with torches) and Wayne himself appeared in a giant hamsterball which he immediately manoeuvered onto the screaming crowd in front of the stage as the first notes of Race For The Prize played. There were hundreds of balloons, streamer cannons and confetti explosions.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

We were upstairs, so a little removed from the mayhem (though plenty of enormous balloons headed our way), but we still had a great time. The level of enthusiasm and pure joy in the room was palpable; those guys certainly know how to put on a good show and the crowd knew how to respond. They played songs almost exclusively from the most recent three albums (fine by me as those are the ones that I own), deviating only for a rousing version of She Don’t Use Jelly and their finale which was, bizarrely, Bohemian Rhapsody. If I was doing one of those lists of ten bands to see before you die then The Flaming Lips would definitely be in it (but I’m not doing one of those lists).

Using the mega zoom on my camera I managed to take a reasonable photo of Wayne (and lots of blurred ones) before the security guy told me to put it away:

Oh, also. Hello, I’m back. The last few months have been very busy but I’ve come to realise that things aren’t going to get any less busy for a while so I can’t use it as an excuse not to write anything here.