Having never seen the vastly popular BBC television car programme Top Gear, I have no idea if what follows is standard behaviour, but Zef just sent me through a recap of last night’s episode, and my Lord, if it isn’t very racist and unfunny and just plain creepy. Or, as Zef has it, “weirdly relentless and calculated”.

The set up was a picture of an orange car, apparently Mexican in origin, which was introduced as “the tortilla,” to a braying laughter from the all-white studio audience.

“Why would you want a Mexican car?” demands co-presenter Richard Hammond. “Cars reflect national characteristics don’t they, so German cars are very well built and ruthlessly efficient, Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick. A Mexican car’s just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent [they've mixed the laughter very loud over this bit so it's uncertain, but it sounds like he says "overdose tw*t"]… leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle of it as a coat.”

“Ha ha ha!” says everybody present.

They then go on to insult Mexico’s national cuisine, referring to it as “refried sick with cheese on it,” to more teary-eyed braying from the studio audience.

“I’m sorry but just imagine waking up and remembering you’re Mexican,” drones Hammond a little later.

“It would be brilliant,” pipes in Jeremy Clarkson, cheerily, “because you could just go straight back to sleep again! That’s why we’re not going to get any complaints about this, ‘cos the Mexican Embassy, the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control like this [pretends to be asleep]. They wont complain.”

Predictably enough, it transpires that Jeremy Clarkson has a well documented hatred of Mexicans. In a blog on the Top Gear site published in 2009, he blames the world economic crisis on “some Mexican bloke [who] woke up one morning and thought, “Shit. I can’t afford my mortgage any more.””

“Thanks to the bone-idle Mexican who borrowed half a mill to buy a stupid prefab house, the whole world has had it,” he writes. “The only solution, so far as I can see is to bomb, immediately and extensively, the whole of Mexico.”

EDIT: According to Reuters,

“Mexico’s ambassador in London has written a furious letter to BBC bosses to complain about “offensive and xenophobic” comments made by presenters of the popular TV motoring show “Top Gear”.

Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora was infuriated by “insults” made by presenters Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May during Sunday’s episode of the cult show, which has been sold to television channels around the world.

“Why would you want a Mexican car? Because cars reflect national characteristics don’t they?,” said Hammond as they discussed the Mexican sports car, the Mastretta.

“Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.”

The trio then described Mexican food as “refried sick” before suggesting Mexicans spent all day asleep.

“That’s why we won’t get any complaints about this because at the Mexican embassy the ambassador’s going to be sitting there with a remote control like this,” said Clarkson, pretending to slump in a chair, snoring.”

— By Akira The Don on Monday, January 31st, 2011

Happy Tuesday! It’s 00:40 am here in hot-ass Londinium, and I have just finished drawing a MIND MAP, which was an interesting, if initially deeply frustrating exercise. I was pretty much banging my big ole Polish Heed against the proverbial brick wall for the first few hours, but in the last few I fell into my groove, a thing of beauty was born. I am afraid you cannot see it as it was for a corporate client. And no I am not telling you who either. I need my mystique!

Rest assured, however, they paid me, and that money will be going toward The Budget for The Life Equation. We’re shooting the first video in three weeks. It was supposed to be this weekend but our D.O.P. got a job in L.A. or something, and its raining. So I guess I’ll be in town for Hackney Wicked. Either that or we’ll avoid it again and go to Wales. There’s gonna be 50,000 people in my hood for a flipping art festival all weekend, and art festival goers are noisy fuckers.

I am also a little hurt that no one has asked me to play or anything, to be honest. Fuck these ingrates! A legend lives in their midsts, and do they pay tribute? Do they fuck! Perhaps they snub me because I smile at them all on my way to the Post Office/Gym/shop to buy gas. Some of these skinny-trousered fuckers visiby wince at smiles. Trendy fucktards. Fie on them and their garotted ballsacks! I don’t need them anyway. I have you dear reader, and that is plenty for me.

How are you anyway? It feels as if I haven’t asked that for a while. Please tell me, I am genuinely interested. Have you listened to that Teflon Don yet? I swear to you dear brother, dear sister, it is a fucking masterpiece. I have listened to it at least three times every day since last Wednesday. It’s only 11 tracks long, so I let it play on loop. It is especially good music to cycle to. I bomb through the End Of East en route to one of the two gyms me and Jeres frequent, singing and rapping along at the top of my lungs and scaring the living shit out the tight trousered brigade. They must think I think I’m Big Meech by now, but I don’t.

I think I’m Adam Alpha.

Yes indeed brothers and sisters! And it is a brave new day. I just got complete control and ownership of my back catalogue, so you can say bye bye to that shitty re-released version of When We Were Young, and you can say HELLO to a swathe of new shit, super soon. And that will be global, oh my brothers and sisters. I only found out last week my label hadn’t bothered to release my shit globally. I just assumed they had. What spoons! And what a spoon was I, for not checking. No wonder I keep getting emails like this:

from: Chris Masey

to: Akira The Don
subject: Question about iTunes in U.S?

I’ve been trying to get my hands on your albums for the longest time,

Sad news I saw that we only got I am not dead (Yeah!), (Which I did buy, Listen to, And overplay it.)

I kinda feel left high and dry here in US, You think you could pull some albums down here?

I’d do anything for that shit to happen mate.

Daaaaaamn, huh?  Naturally, I sent Chris in the direction of THE SHOP. And lo, he did proceed to fill his basket to the brim, and for that I must applaud him. I applaud you Chris! You are wise and righteous, and your name will live forever, right here, on akirathedon.com, the Home Of Heroes.

Speaking of heroes, Jeres, Jim, Joey and me are gonna be rehearsing for THE FESTIVAL on Wednesday, If you’re lucky they might jusy hang around for The Doncast and we’ll serenade your fine ass. You think I’ve just been sat around playing with my complimentary X-Box for the past week, dontcha? Ha! How wrong you are! I’ve only done, like, 5 missions in The Ballad Of Gay Tony, dammnit! I haven’t even gone online with the thing yet! I have been doing MANY RIGHTEOUS THINGS, like sussing out setlists with my peoples! HELL YEAH! We have a provisional setlist that reads like an A to Z of THE GREATEST SONGS EVER MADE!

(By me. Obviously. I didn’t write all the great songs. I just dreamed I did.)

Speaking of which, you know I saw Inception last weekend, and the place was rammed with loud rude assholes, and ants crawled all over me, and the manager lady gave us complimentary tickets to the Odeon of our choice? Well, we went to the GREAT BIG IMAX ONE in Greenwich on the weekend and watched Toy Story 3. We sat in a nicely air conditioned massive-ass room FULL OF CHILDREN, and it was a pleasure to be in their company. They laughed in the RIGHT PLACES (ie, the funny ones, not the tender moments), and they didn’t laugh too loud either, and they didn’t over-rustle, and they didn’t throw popcorn around the place or make nasty smells, or summon a plague of ants. They were good as gold, actually, and as I so often do, I remembered Our Lord And Saviour Jesus H Christ’s wise words about being like children, and copying them. Obviously this does not extend to shitting your pants or anything, let us not be too literal here. What ol Jeezy meant was school/society is some rotten bullshit that ruins perfectly good humans and turns them into jabbering assholes, and we should all check ourselves on the regular ‘cos we’ve probably started acting like one of them, and not like dear little Timmy who sees joy and wonder wherever he looks. And shits his pants. Obviously.

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, you know all that stuff they’re saying about Inception being this amazing, awe inspiring, existential modern masterpiece? That’s bollocks. It isn’t.

But Toy Story 3 is.

So there.

Anyway. Here’s a question, gentle reader. And it is an important one… What words and phrases do you think of when you think of Akira The Don? Enquiring Minds, need to know. I realise that my vocabulary shifts – or rather, lurches – off on a slight new tangent every fortnight or so, and has done as long as I can remember, so I would be interested to know what has stuck. I know I used to say “RAH!” a lot. Less so now, but still a little. BROCKWILE! That was years ago. I am considering making a Lexicon of Don. Answers in the comments please. A fabulous PRIZE will go to a random entrant, and I shall read it all out and announce it on Ye Mighty Doncast, tomorrow.

— Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Akira The Don – ATD22: Superhero Music

Akira The Don

Damn, that was intense. That got deep back there. But it is done. The wait is over, ladies…

Buy

• Download Mixtape
• CDQ MP3 (320kbps)

WOOOO HOOO!

It is all but done!

I am giving it a once over now, then I’m gonna play it on the Doncast at 5pm GMT!

Then I am gonna do a final master tweak, render it and chop it and tag it and zip it and up it to preorderers. And finish the art. Then up the stream.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!

— Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Oh, that looks pretty swell.

I gre up in the shadown of that bugger, you know. One time me and my brothers climbed it. I pushed one of them over amidst some puppy-like scrap or other, and he fell down an 8 foot snow drift. That place is gully.

— By Akira The Don on Monday, June 15th, 2009

So, I got some (ha!) sleep, and I listened to the noises Birddogg was making up here while I was down in New York, doing whatever it was I was doing in New York. Like, there’s some ill stuff. But one in particular is just tremendous. it is mighty. It fills my heart. And prefectly fits so many of the raps I was writing in New York, tempom flow, everything. So, what I’ve done, is draw various raps, and bits of raps, together, to create this New York song that’s been brewing all the time I’ve been here. It is best I get it out now, before I FORGET.

Annoyingly, the necassary component is missing. So piss.

Bad: All the stuff I bought last week – food, drink, socks, weed – is gone. Mostly. I got a lot of Ritz crackers, peanut butter and macaroni.
Good: There’s a Death’s Head Moth on my window. (See right)
Bad: There is animal shit by my window.
Good: The air outside is fresh and envigorating.
Bad: The air in the top level of the house, in which I am supposed to be dwelling, is thick with the stink of animal and of animal excrement.

I went to turn on the sauna earlier, and nearly trod in cat shit. Or dog shit. It could be both. Whatever. It’s like, wow, sauna! Oh, catshit. Wow! Oh. Wow! Oh.
Etc. So, I wanted to go into town and get a job today, to pay for my ticket back to New York, but waited about for people to come with me rather than just doing it, and the end result is it’s super late now, too late to get a job anywhere, and everyone’s going into town to go out, save me, who must stay at home cos he has no ID (this is a worry), and it’s too far to chance not being allowed in anywhere.

A ha!

So I should write more now. I wrote a bunch earlier. Phil is worrying that Amy has forotten his ass, as she went in her tiny car to take Cecelia and James over an hour ago. But she hasn’t forgotten him. It’s just miles from ShanGayKen to Woodstoock! A HA!

I just asked Spiky if he has a message for the world. He said, “spitroast!” So there you go.

— Saturday, July 24th, 2004

So, there were a bunch of updates and pictures and things, and they got wiped! Oh, the tragedy.

So, a recap. On my last day on Rivington Street I saw a white thug in an open-top Hummer drive by blasting out ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ and nodding along with a serious expression about his face.

Then we went.

Wade and I ended up on the coach, as there was no room in the van, or car. We got there early, and checked out the scene. The scene is small.

We don’t actually live in Woodstock. We live in Shandaken, outside. Well, just outside. Half way up a mountain, hidden away by forest, amongst bears and chipmunks and what have you. In a big old dusty house full of weird porn and broken stuff, with brown water and giant ants. Like, there’s a jacuzzi, but it doesn’t seem to work. There is the biggest TV you’ve ever seen, but it’s got a big black tear across the front and doesn’t tune properly. It’s a two hour walk to the nearest shop, whihc is a petrol station, and does a good line in biscuits. The local girl’s got a lot of guns.

It is very lovely to look at up in Shandaken. Mountains covered in trees, mainly. Streams. Clouds so low you can jump up and punch them.

I miss Wade, who is back in London sorting out affairs. All my stuff is in boxes.

— Tuesday, July 13th, 2004