Jackmaster Mastermix 2013

If you're an aspiring DJ, then the man to beat is undoubtedly Jackmaster. He's king of the genre splice, effortlessly able to jive between techno to r'n'b in an almost fluid motion. His label Numbers have recently marked their tenth birthday and to celebrate the man himself has done this fucking amazing mix. It's amazing and you need it in your lives...

Someone's on the phone - it's a fresh start and they're calling for you

How has it been rolling? High octane business up inside N16. Well watching (and weeping like big babies) at GoggleBox, a TV show allowing the viewer to watch other people watching telly. It takes you through the onion, out the other side and back into the onion again. Serious. We've also been watching Educating Yorkshire and lurching through the working week carrying the weight of additional hangovers and pining for the weekends. Throw in a new found love for Steely Dan, a t-shirt from renowned US cult band Jazz June and learning some tips from the The Great British Bake Off's Mary Berry and that's October and November right thurr. These are some the 'moments' below...

Sweet, sweet relish

The dafty offa X Factor

Mooching in the woods

Crumpets and cheese

Mary Berry impersonator for hire

Can't buy a thrill, say Steely Dan - I say 'yes, yes you can'

Dead body in  a bagel

My ID - you asking?

Reet breakfast

Cock cakes

Just a little place...

Metres of pizza - the only way to survive an evening in Clapham

Easter island

Jazz June!

Viking drinking horn

Boo!

Just one more question...

We find you gregg. Again...

Ambient rabbit

What my heart probably looks like

Jazz June sent us a parcel. Thank you jazz june

This car is full of seafood

A small amount of brie next to a small amount of pea

Arctic Monkeys @Earl's Court

Arctic Monkeys have come a long way in 2013. And an even further distance from when we used to watch them play to their school mates in the basements of pubs in Sheffield. Now they're proper, LA- dwelling rock stars who sell out venues as big as Earl's Court, headline Glastonbury of a Friday evening and have celebrity ex-girlfriends.

Their October shows in London were hot tickets fo' sure with even work collagues offering quivering dollops of dosh for a way in. But we stood firm and ensured we were down in south west London at a suitable time. Arena gigs these days open their doors at the horrifically early hour of 6.30pm so there's not a moment for din dins - just get on the pints and cigs asap as soon as you're oot the office. The crowd was predictably blokey so by the time the Monkeys came on and started pummelling their way through Do I Wanna Know? the floors were drowning in piss. Our feet were covered in piss. Men were pissing everywhere and anywhere. Never was their so much piss.

While the piss stacked up, the Monkeys sounded lean, fit, sexy and mean. Recent triumph AM sounds as if front dude Alex Turner has finally got his mojo back after a run of slightly less colourful efforts. This record is top conkers - it struts and wiggles in tight jeans with the shiny quiff which now adorns his bonce. But the whole band sound tough and wirey (drummer Helders looks like one mean, thick-necked mother) and they fired through the best bits of their new album and back catalogue with a fine mixture of aural style and muscle. By the time they wound the show up in a shower of confetti, it's been a masterclass in big gig gymnastics. Hats off to the Monkeysssss...

Run for your lives

In Stephen King's the Running Man, Ben Richards has to escape his hunters. He can go anywhere in the world and in the film, Arnie Schwarzenegger plays the protagonist romping through a storyfull of high camp, drama and sexplosions. Running the Birmingham half marathan was almost nothing like it.

Indeed there were no explosions and little in the way of high camp but Brum is undoubtedly a total vibe due to the proper normality of everything and the lack of gentrified pubs stuffed with idiots wearing silly hats (like London). We landed in the city far too early, had to get changed in an icy car park and then spent 15 minutes tooing and froing between toilets before huffing and puffing our way around the city for the 13.1 miles. The pint at the finish line was one of the tastiest of the year thus far. Life-affirming stuff in the west midlands...

Caterpillar - first of the season

Bumbag crew - not balearic

At the finishhhh

Deep filled brunch pie

You know your mouth is in for a good time when you put the words 'deep filled suet enriched pastry brunch pie' together. Thank the lord then for Marks and Sparks who have only gone and done just that. This culinary experience ain't cheap at £3.49 but when you delve inside and find a runny yolk in amongt a fat mound of beans and meat, it all becomes more well worth it.

It's totally glorious. I take my hat off to whoever invented this. And to Marks and Sparks for coming up with the science to keep that egg runny. Oof. 

Brunch pie - stand up!

How do they keep the egg runny?

Wahhhhh

America - part trois

It's pretty self indulgent to go through this jaunt in three parts. It's hardly Lord of the Rings is it? So this'll be snappy.

After Cambria we roared off on the last leg of the journey towards Los Angeles. Everyone had said it was big before we got there but 'big' doesn't do it justice. This place is fucking humongous and hard, very hard to get one's head around when you arrive.

Our route took us up via Malibu and the Santa Monica boulevard which led us into a massive traffic jam for almost three hours. We became confused, tired, emotional and deeply lost in and around west Hollywood searching for a hostel which wasn't actually there. It had moved. Oh dear. After reluctantly turning on data roaming and locating the mother, we parked up and decamped to the pub only to be slapped with a ticket the next morning. The LAPD were on to us!

Los Angeles from the Getty Centre

Other than being big, LA has got plenty of left, cosmic vibes. Hollywood seems like a Leicester Square, full of tack and tourists with a sizeable dollop of loonies smeared all over it. We saw one chap in a wheel chair dressed up as tiger speeding about the place wolf whistling at girls. There was an impromptu patrol of cop cars dating back to the twenties with a classic batmobile thrown in. In amongst the bonkers bits was Musso Frank's bar and grill, which is where the likes of Chaplin, Niven and Chandler called their local. So they'd come, like we all do, and get pissed, swear and shout at each other. The vibe in there is classic, golden years where the waiter looks a bit like Marlon Brando and you can drink an old fashioned which makes your mind spin. We did. It was mint.

An old fashioned in Musso and Frank's bar and grill

What else? Almost too much to reel off. We saw the Capitol Records Building, drove through Beverly Hills (catching the end of the road Steve Martin supposedly calls home - it looked a bit boasty for us), walked down Rodeo Drive (out of Pretty Woman) and visited the Getty Centre for an injection of architecture and ideas and that.

Muscle beach - kiss the fist

Our final afternoon was spent on Venice Beach - it's a weird little mile and a half stretch where you can get yourself prescribed weed and strut your stuff on Muscle Beach along with some saggy looking old fellas. We went for a mooch and ended up purchasing a grilled cheese doughnut. It was a meal which summed up us, our holiday and America in one fell swoop. Thanks for having us USA!

Grilled cheese doughnut

If you're not utterly bored by this travel diary, then you can check out the first two parts both hither and thither.

America part deux

San Francisco is gay with a capital G, A and Y. We arrived on Folsom to be faced by hordes of hairy bears roaming around and hollering at each other, all trussed up in leather chaps. Many chaps in chaps.

These furry buttocks greeted us after navigating the mountainous hills of San Fran and nearly taking out a drug upped crazy on a zebra crossing. Not only are the chaps much chappier, but the crazies of San Fran are fucked up in every way possible. Off their nuts, shouting, twitching, covered in piss and properly deranged. The poor misfortunate lady I almost took out didn't even blink when I screeched to a stop just in front of her toes. Uh uh.

Once you've seen past the insanity and climbed up the steep, huge, hills, SF has bucket loads of vibe for you to climb inside and rub your face in. After we'd handed over our hire car to a slightly dodgy looking car park attendant for our two days, we went for a big ol' snoop around the city. We spent a few hours straight moochin' round the tourist death trap of Fisherman's Wharf. This place is where tat and clams (in chowder) goes to die. You can even buy burger-shaped fridge magnets.

So good you could eat them

Day two started at a bus stop awaiting our carriage to the Golden Gate Bridge. Two dudes at the stop were sitting down rapping and blazing the sort of joint that didn't scream 'it's ten am on a Monday morning'. More like 'I ain't got shit to do other than get the monster munch out'. After passively inhaling their boogaloo, getting to the Golden Gate was even more of a proper, paranoid jaw drop. It's huge and, even in the morning fog which enveloped it we when arrived, it's still mint. We walked across it and ignored the death drive asking whether we wanted to jump off.

Our afternoon saw us roaming around the Golden Gate Bridge before taking on the hippies of Haight Ashbury. This is the part of the US where people first started smoking bongs and the hippy movement kicked off. In the most stoned way possible. There are now loads of organic eateries as well as Amoeba Records, the biggest record shop ever. We picked up a copy of Madonna's Immaculate Collection and a salmon bagel. Ken Kesey and his original acid crew would be delighted at the progress of their movement.

Amoeba Music

After navigating the disorientating tram system, we found Grace Cathedral and saw the Keith Haring AIDs memorial. Then we jumped a tram on one of the steeper hills for another thrill. Oof. The hills are sheer. Our final morning had us up early doors in a queue for the Alcatraz tour. However, due to the government running out of money, all the federal parks had been shut down including (would you believe it), everyone's favourite state jail. Our dreams of recreating the best bits of the Rock were thwarted.

SF

We collected the car headed back out on the road and continued heading on south. We found the Big Sur where all the hippies dreamt of a perfect, blissful world and Jack Kerouac wrote a whole book about the vibe. It is proper hemp bro. We ate a burger at the cliff hugging Nepenthe restaurant and took in the views before bombing it back down the Sur. In the pitch black this route is right scary so to combat the lack of lights and the sheer drop next to us I switched into pensioner mode.  Sweaty, drooling, craning the neck over the wheel and at the kinds of speeds grannies search for their lost false teeth at.

Arriving somewhere in the dark is character building but when they're having a scarecrow festival even more so. Cambria is this kind of place. The crows varied from the nice to the sick, from Mary Poppins dangling from a tree to a dead cyclist, killed by a texter. The clowns in gardens were eerie (and reminiscent of It) while cyclists on bikes which actually moved were bizarre enough to deserve admiration. Hats off to the scarecrow crew. We stayed at a delightful hostel and drank ales at the Cambria Inn, making chums with some local types in the process. They insisted on meeting up the next morning with hangovers and awkward chats and gave us a tour of the small town including Captain Nitwit's Lodge. We left them looking for their chum who had gone AWOL with a girl from our hostel (into her bedroom)...