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On the drive to work this morning I was thinking about things I bought ‘recently’ that so far have turned out to be a waste of money. Off the top of my head I came up with:

• the mandolin
• final cut express
• book on how to use final cut express

I’m sure there’s more but I’m definitely disappointed that those things have yet to deliver me anything.

Since Feb 2008 I’ve uploaded 29 videos to YouTube. Most get 40-60 views, a few have over 100, one has over 400 but really I’m just a pimple on the buttocks of the video giant.

So imagine my surprise today when I got an email saying someone had uploaded a video response to one of my videos. And not a recent one, one from May of this year in fact. Some of you may remember my sad puppet tale of H1N1 in the house – some of you will have taken therapy or drugs to erase the memory.

But somehow, some way, somebody found my video and decided to waste 30 seconds of their life making a retort. Friends, I have arrived.

The original video:

The response:

Can a Best Director be far away??

Another year, another great Cattle Call weekend. There will be pictures from the Parade and the Rodeo on flickr at some point during the week but for now, here’s a little video montage I put together.

Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo 2009 from Paul Sanders on Vimeo.

My cousin Louise seemed to really enjoy herself, I think we made her a rodeo fan. Cowgirl up.

Every year during the Cattle Call weekend out here in Brawley I am reminded of a fact that I would believe if I did not witness it with my own eyes: given enough time, and sufficient bladder capability, it IS possible to get sh*t-faced on Budweiser and Bud Light.

From time to time I come across people who have spent some significant time in the British Isles (ok, Southern England, not met many people who lived in the Hebrides) and claim great knowledge of the place. Also from time to time I come across people who were there for a short space of time and think the same.

I lived in NYC for almost a year but never would I claim to know more about the place than a native, and yet these people want to tell me what I don’t know about the place.

“There are no Citroën 2CVs in England”. Um, there are, I saw ’em, rode in them. “Well when I was there I didn’t see a single one”. How long were you there? “6 months”. Maybe you needed to be there a bit longer, like 30-something years? Just sayin’.

So I do this kgb_ text answering thing as most of you know and starting this weekend we’ll be answering questions from the UK equivalent service, 118 118. The chat room is abuzz, many people are worried but a lot are excited. “I’m going to do so well as I’ve been there!” or “My brother lived there for a year, I so know English information”. And then last night someone claimed to know every post code in the country “because I lived there 3 years”. I was tempted to cry bullshit but satisfied myself with a smile instead; I can’t even remember my Dad’s or my sister’s postcodes let alone the one for Chard or Piddington.

Been a while, and this is, well, a little too obvious but what the heck. Muse, “Uprising”.

So tonight I’ve been watching a concert celebrating 25 years of the legendary writer/producer Trevor Horn, and it’s clear to me that if there is one band that defines my early adult years it is Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Awesome vocals, fantastic production: relax, don’t do it.

Are companies just not trying any more? Recently I bought a GPS from Amazon and now I keep getting emails about gps deals – isn’t it unlikely I’m in the market for another?

And Hotwire, booked a Hawaii hotel with them and keep getting “great” offers from them for another. Not only is their email pointless, it’s also usually rubbish – the “from” rate is never available.

Come on guys try a little.

I doubt there’s anyone who reads this who did not know that Teri and I went to Hawaii at the end of August. The lure of $10 roundtrip air fare and a free condo stay were hard to resist, especially compared with the other option we were considering: the dark wet Highlands of Scotland.

We flew to the Big Island where we spent a week touring around the island, spending most of the time in Teri’s parents’ Kailua cond but also with one night in Hilo so that we could check out the volcano at our leisure. After that we took an inter-island plane to Maui where we spent four days in a hotel exploring the area around Lahaina.

We did way too much to list it all here but some highlights:

• awesome sunsets
• delicious Mai Tai’s
• gorgeous beaches
• Kilauea
• Maui Ocen Centre
• standing at the southern most point of the USA
• and of course spending time with my sweet wife

There are a lot of photos to look at but all the ones I took are in my Hawaii 2009 Collection on Flickr. Teri has been uploading hers to Flickr also but she is not complete yet, I will post her link when she is done.

Mahalo.

I’m usually pretty slick when it comes to making travel bookings, I love sniffing out the best deals, playing websites against each other, trying out all the possibilities. But I’ve made a small boo boo for our trip to Hawaii in a couple of weeks.

I was looking for a car rental for the week we are on the Big Island and found a good deal with Enterprise for a convertible but their office is not open when we arrive from LA. So I figured we’d pick it up next day but at the last minute thought about checking Hotwire to see if I could get a better price. I put in the times and it came up with an even better rate for the Convertible so I booked it – score!

But it wasn’t with Enterprise like I was expecting, it is with Alamo which is absolutely fine except that their office is open until midnight. I could have booked the car pickup for when we arrive – no need to cab it to our condo and then back to the airport. For an extra $35 we could have had it from hour 0.

Grrr… I hate it when I screw up.