Good morrow Ladies and Gs. Hold tight the lucky few (ha!) who were around to witness our wee rehearsal this afternoon, when I decided for no good reason to switch a webcam on. I figured you’d find it interesting. And I was trying to record it with one of my HD Webcams, and couldn’t think of any way other than Ustream. Problem is, Ustream makes everything crappy qulaity and shaves the edge off the picture. Foolishness! Still, I hope it was an enlightening/amusing/interesting experience for those of you that caught it. Let me know if you’d like me to do it again. Oh, and follow my ass on Twitter so you get informed of such goings on it REALTIME, OK?

Anyway, onward onward onward. I am downloading a demo of a game called Left for Dead 2, which my brother tells me is amazing for playing in groups online. The idea is me and him and my old man and our wives all hook up on it kill zombies or something. Sounds good to me! Where I will find the time I do not know, but I am told that relaxation and family are important, so I shall do my durndest. I wanna game where I can use my lil’ Xbox avatar, anyway. My girl made him for me. Isn’t he dope? He’s making me consider getting a face tattoo. It’s not like I ever want a job or anything. Ho ho.

So, Joey and I recorded the first track for ATD25 yesterday. Work will get intense on that next week, when I will also be recording Littles’ new tape. There’s ANOTHER rather exciting mixtape project coming up in August too, with an old friend and collaborator of mine. A fabulous No Prize goes to the clever sausage who can guess who it is based on this single clue:

Divorce Papers.

Man, that’s too easy. You won’t guess the musical direction of the project though, so don’t even bother!

Anyway, right now I need to decide whether to flee or not. An Art Festival has descended upon my homestead. They’re swarming off the train like ants and they’ve started vomiting outside my house already. Someone has been making gut-wrenchingly shrill American Indian Wolf Yelps for the past 13 minutes. This is going on all weekend! I am considering throwing in the proverbial dishrag and decamping to my brother’s house. Of course, I will be unable to work there. Not that I’ll be able to work much here with the terrible cacophony of vomiting arty types echoing around the place. Not that human beings are supposed to work on the weekend anyway. Perhaps I should go and wander amongst them and see what the dilly is. It’s either that or play these incredible ***** songs **** just sent me really loud and carry on regardless.

Sweet fuck. They’re all sat in the middle of road making a big communal wolf yelp noises now. Where’s my Super Soaker?

— Friday, July 30th, 2010

Damn, that sweet Scouse sod hasn’t just been sat on his arse playing with his little son mashing the Playstation for the past year! He really has been writing goregous pop songs, just like he said! I shall have to go and eat a hat now, or something.

Damn, do I wanna do things to that incredible instrumental.

— By Akira The Don on Thursday, July 29th, 2010

As if I didn’t have enough to do, for some reason tonight on a total whim I decided to strat doing this thing on Twitter that I have dubbed, “#dondoodles”. The deal is, you send me a description of something you’d like me to draw, and tag it with #dondoodles. I drew three tonight,  @nickshearon‘s  ”A penguin Fighting the pope“, @dipod‘s “chuck norris riding a unicorn with mr t + the shake and vac lady waving at them“, and the one you can see above which was for @annamadeline who asked (with encouragingly politeness), “can I have a robot that hasn’t got a mouth please?”

The first two I did in Photoshop, just cos I had it open, and I am experimenting with the new brushes in CS5, but that was a bit annoying so I went back to Manga Studio for Anna’s robot, which was a much more enjoyable experience.

So, yeah. #dondoodles. Keep those coming in – I have a column in Tweetdeck tracking them – and you NEVER KNOW WHICH I MIGHT PICK TO BLESS WITH MY PLASTIC PEN!

In other news, I had a really good bike ride to the gym today. I wrote some ace raps in my HEAD, like Jay-Z, but not about not being a mason, and I named my company. Finally! The correct name has been evading for like, a year, to my constant dismay. Then today, when I wasn’t even thinking about it, with the wind rushing through my hair as I bounced along the tarmac, the thing just presented itself to me. I am really excited about it. My company is going to put out music – mine, and other peoples’ – its gonna make clothes, films, videos, cartoons, toys, books, all sorts of dope shit. It is the start of a new and beautiful chapter. I might talk a little about it on the Doncast later. Or I might not. You never can tell with me cos I am a MAVERICK. Well, that’s what they wrote on my school report when I was 8. And they were CORRECT! I am taking that word back from John McCain right now. MAVERICK! MAVERICK!

Actually, it’s not that good a word. Brillopad is better. Shout out Adam Ice Rink in the C-Section. That’s an ill-ass name right there dude, I have to congratulate you. Or, I should have said, that name is brillopad.

A ha ha ha!

Oh, and shout out Paul Heaton, who kicked off his excellent and funny BBC 6Music show yesterday with Oh! (What A Glorious Thing). Serious! Paul Heaton from The Beautiful South and The Housemartins kicked off his radio show with MY SONG! What a MASSIVE HONOUR! I have been a great big fan of that man and his musics ever since I was 12 and I had a Now! That’s What I Call Musictape with that one they did about a tongue so sharp it burst the bubble on it. When I used to live with Blake Fielder-Civil (actually he was crashing on my sofa and not paying any rent, and he didn’t have surname back then either) in this flat on Camden Road in 2000 we used to put The Beautiful South on the stereo as loud as it would go when we were smearing our hair with Dax and deciding what cowboy hats to wear out and what indie disco to go to. Actually, I put Liars Bar on The Steven Wells Mixtape didn’t I? Damn. I am going to have to track him down and see if he wants to make a song with me. THAT WOULD BE SO ILL.

You know who else I wanna do a song with? Babybird. I fucking love Babybird. And Prince.  Prince is the man. And Leonard Cohen. He’s not dead yet is he? No he isn’t. I bet he lives forever.

Any other amazing ideas?

— Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Charles Hamilton Music Meeting @ Digiwaxx (Part 1 of 3) from Digiwaxx TV on Vimeo.

Charles Hamilton Music Meeting @ Digiwaxx (Part 2 of 3) from Digiwaxx TV on Vimeo.

Charles Hamilton Music Meeting @ Digiwaxx (Part 3 of 3) from Digiwaxx TV on Vimeo.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I learned to make music in my teens, rather than my early twenties. If I’d met Jimmy Iovine at 20 rather than 24. And I realise that something like this would have happened. Actually, it would have been worse. 20 year old me was a WAY bigger dick than 20 year old Charles Hamilton. Big up yourself dude. We’re all proud of you over here. You’re doing great.

— By Akira The Don on Friday, May 14th, 2010

The US has completely withdrawn from the Human Rights Council.

Makes sense. Seems to be a bit silly being on any “‘Uman Rights Counil” when you spend so much time torturing people on boats and such like.

In other news, the people I get my Internet off are into some dark shit.

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to consumers, branding it as “b****cks”.

Berkett’s cable operator ranks as the second largest internet service provider in the UK with approximately 3.6m customers.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, Berkett said that “this net neutrality thing is a load of b****cks”, and revealed that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others.

Feeding into the debate between internet service providers and the BBC over iPlayer, Berkett even warned that public service broadcasters who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin’s subscriber base would end up in “bus lanes”, effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed.

Elsewhere, I am still weirded out by this Obama thing. I’m kind of expecting for him to be outed as a trannie or something, though all that business with the pound makes me think something weird is gonna pop off regarding his wife.

Maybe I’m just a paranoid dude.

Elsewhere in Hilarityville, that dude they’ve been torturing for five years who’s just decided to say it was him who did 911 has appeared in court, where he told the judge he had been “looking to be martyr from long time.”

“The government case,” the article notes, “is largely designed to obtain death sentences against them”, which, as Ioz notes, is a bit like punishing a bank robber by giving him keys to the vault.

New video later! Whoo!

— Monday, June 9th, 2008