Thought it would be nice so went and saw Buzz Aldrin promoting his book at the Royal Festival Hall yesterday.
It was pretty intense.
People were maybe bonkers.
Buzz is dead serious about space exploration.
Totally earnest, and so unselfconscious.
He was talking about how we should be setting up a launch base on Phobos, so we can put settlers on Mars.
People chuckled, in maybe a friendly way, but Buzz just carried on.
(You know how a crowd is desperate to laugh at this sort of event.
There was one point where Buzz was talking about a sci-fi story he had written that he was trying to get turned into a film.
There was a sort of bubbling of laughter but Buzz kept talking for another few seconds and you could see it really hadn't been a punchline.)
It was peculiar.
I had pretty much the only empty seat in the house to my left, and two blonde Germans to my right who absolutely refused to clap at any point and left immediately at the end.
The guy who wrote this book (which I felt strongly positive about) was there also.
And the guy who wrote this book also, which sounded 'kind of fucking neat'.
Here's some things that I learned:
Helium-3.
This is the stuff they're talking about 'harvesting' on the moon.
I didn't know the name of it or anything about it until yesterday.
It would only take 8 years to walk to the moon. That's not so long at all. I wrote it down and felt like that would be a decent way to spend 8 years.
The moon's gravitational pull not only controls the tides, it controls the Earth's obliquity, its 'wobble'. If the moon wasn't there we'd be wobbling and obliquing all over the place, swinging in and out of ice ages, screwing ourselves RIGHT up.
When he was asked the obvious question, Buzz said something about having worked his whole life for that moment, and that he just wanted to work, and do it right. He was evasive, seemed tired of talking about it. He said it wasn't pride, but maybe it wasn't anything else. And he said you're up there and you just do what you have to and "it's gonna unfold" and I felt like that was something important that just happened.
So anyway I got a ticket because I used to work for the bookshop that was supplying all the books there.
Pretty much the last time I visited there, I was given a bunch of grapes that Toni Morrison had been unable to finish (fact - viewable here).
This time I came away with Buzz Aldrin's signature on a sticker.
Pretty nice.
At one point in the interview they talked about this:
(Another Funny or Die blitzkrieg = this
Will Arnett's euphemisms have sex with my body with their penis)
The Buzz/Snoop video above features Soulja Boy.
Coincidence!!
I wrote this story about Soulja Boy on Friday night:
Soulja Boy is looking down out of his apartment window, feeling gloomy.
He’s got him some Bathing Apes.
Soulja Boy needs to buy washing powder.
He thinks he will clean his sheets this afternoon.
He is walking down the road in the rain.
He has an umbrella.
People are pointing at him and saying,
“It’s the rubberband man!”
Soulja Boy wants it to be summer.
Soulja Boy’s got a new dance for y’all.
It’s called ‘Bandy Legs’.
Originally it was going to be a 'remix' for Michael Hessel-Mial's sexoid project here.
I thought a hip-hop remix would be 'funny'
Idea kind of flopped a bit.
In thinking of something else to remix, I absolutely found myself at Kanye West's blog.
It's pretty OK over there actually at points.
Found this:
