It’s now later, and this is one such post.

David Foster Wallace (pictured above) was a brilliant and gifted young novelist, journalist, mathematician, teacher and theorist who committed suicide last month. The following is a quote from the New York Times:

“His father said Sunday that Mr. Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years and that it had allowed his son to be productive. It was something the writer didn’t discuss, though in interviews he gave a hint of his haunting angst. In response to a question about what being an American was like for him at the end of the 20th century, he told the online magazine Salon in 1996 that there was something sad about it, but not as a reaction to the news or current events. “It’s more like a stomach-level sadness,” he said. “I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness.” James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor’s suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said.

“He was being very heavily medicated,” he said. “He’d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.” (New York Times, By BRUCE WEBER Published: September 14, 2008)

I was a little surprised by how shocked and upset I was when I heard about David’s death (and, no, I didn’t know him, but I use his christian name for reasons which I hope will become obvious). On relaying the sad news to my friends and workmates, I was surprised again to find out that none of them had heard of him or his work.

He was a writer of uncommon perception and talent, and his great work, the 1079 page Infinite Jest,has had the words “great american novel” attached to it in just about every review since its release. Time magazine included it in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It is a dazzling achievement, at once a virtuosic amalgam of inventive and postmodern narrative structures and stylistic flourishes, and an insightful and moving story about real human people and the things that they feel. It’s a book that demands a hugecommitment of attention from the reader, employing a large cast of characters, and indulging itself with seemingly endless amounts of information about everything. There are 388 footnotes in it, and some of them are pages long. Unlike the attempts of other writers to come to grips with a post-Nabokovian, postmodern literature, however, Infinite Jest’s seeming excesses serve its objectives and conform to a satisfying wholeness. Although obviously influenced by DeLillo and Pynchon, Wallace’s book has an authentic humanity that the venerable old masters could never quite seem to reconcile within their similar attempts to render a psychically heightened contemporary reality.

When I first read this book, I was understandably excited and moved, having searched for a modern writer who could give me the same intellectual satisfaction that I enjoyed reading Vladimir Nabokov, and having so far discovered only Bret Easton Ellis (another dear faviourite- I intend to review Lunar Parkhere soon). David Foster Wallace spearheaded a kind of mini-renaissance in American literature, bringing with him new discoveries for me: Dave Eggers (a heartbreaking work of staggering genius), and Chuck (Fight Club) Palahniuk, among others. Infinite Jestseemed new and inspired to me, but the real reason I enjoyed it so much was the fact that, in large part, the novel was about depression, and was written from inside the experience of it. As someone who has suffered from various forms of this malaise from time to time, it was with a shock of recognition that I identified all the familiar colours of the states of mind Wallace so beautifully painted, and admired the sheer determination that must have accompanied his painful self-examination. The book is not about wallowing in depression, but is instead a multi-faceted and perversely optimistic discussion of a thing undiscussable. This egotistical, hyperactive speed-freak of a writer had described parts of me. I felt as if I understood the quest within his art to identify and name every nuance of feeling contained within the broad and rich manic spectrum. It is by naming things that we understand them.

I quickly devoured all of David’s other books (except for Everything and more: a compact history of infinity, which is a nonfiction book largely written in higher mathematics, a language I am not equipped to understand), and began a long internet vigil waiting for a new book from him. That book never came because in September Mr Wallace stopped seeing all of the beautiful colours he showed us.

Suicide is a terrible and lonely thing, a last seizing of control by a cornered and desperate soul. It leaves all who survive feeling so alone, because our dear beloved is no longer there to explain why. Was he tired? Angry? Sad? Why did he not tell us?

A few years ago, my own best friend chose to take his own life. He wrote a suicide note, but I never got the chance to read it. It went to his family, and they did not share it. When I heard about David Foster Wallace’s death, I cried because he, too, didn’t write me anything to explain.

My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

Here is a link to a very short Wallace story: Incarnations of burned children

O.k, so on monday my friend called to inform me she had tickets to a screening of Rusty Nails’ documentary (still a work-in-progress), Dead On:. The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero at the Melbourne international film festival, and that I should get my ass on a tram a.s.a.p. Old George is one of my idols for life, purely on the strength of his incredible Dawn of the dead, which, as you know, is the quintessentially definitive zombie film, and the high-water mark by which all others shall be judged.

I didn’t know that there was a Romero retrospective as part of the festival (actually I didn’t even know there was a festival on at all, having only been in Melbourne for, like, five minutes), and looking out at the darkened, unfamiliar suburbs gliding silently by the tram, I excitedly (and drunkenly) imagined shambling hordes of the flesh-hungry undead dragging themselves through the streets. Sitting down in the cinema, we were informed that Tina Romero, daughter of George was in attendance, and would be presenting her student short film, Rainbowarrior. As a New Zealander, the name Rainbow Warrior has a particular resonance, given that it is the name of the greenpeace protest vessel that was bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour in the eighties by the French government, a peculiar incident of state-sponsored international terrorism that killed one of the ship’s crewmembers. The incident is described rather entertainingly on the New zealand Police’s official website here, and rather dryly on wikipaedia here.

On taking the stage (the admittedly cute) Tina, seemingly oblivious of her title’s relevance, informed us that her film was named after a Cocorosie song (bleargh), and that it contained no zombies. She warned us that it was in an unfinished state. And it was. Tina’s film was bad by student film standards, and I’ve seen a lot of student films. Every aspect of the editing and sound was unpolished, the framing was apalling, the acting terrible, transitions cut to loooong black and the script seemed to describe the pseudo-lesbian psychic liberation of unattractive girls at a totalitarian girls school through an interpretive dance which makes the flowers grow throgh the snow outside. Woah. Fuck it was so bad, it was all I could do not to laugh during it. Sorry Tina, I’m sure you’ll do better in the future, but an international film festival was no place for that effort, especially with no sound dubbing or music cues.

Then Rusty Nails took the stage to introduce his documentary, warn us that it was in an unfinished state, and tell us that he wanted us to tear it to pieces in the q and a that was to follow.

And what a fantastic and entertaining piece of work it is! Tracing George’s film career right from the start (the early beer commercials are brilliant), and sewn together from film clips, hugely extensive interviews with George, and other related figures (most enjoyably John Waters, who should be a standup comedian, Stephen King, Tom Savini, Dennis Hopper, Dario Argento, Wim Wenders, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and many other relevant and irreverent people). George drinks beer and smokes endless camels throughout the film, which deals with each of his features in a chronological chapter arrangement.

smokin’ George

In the interviews Romero comes across as a candidly irascible, politically motivated nonconformist, who’s only measure of his work’s success is whether or not he likes the finished product personally. He is very cynical with regard to the american film industry (owing in part to his terrible treatment following the unexpected success of Dawn of the dead), and offers some pithy and critical observations about american life in general (drawing scattered applause from the audience at several junctures). The documentary maintains a respectful disinterest in his personal life, which suits his cautiously private, slightly suspicious demeanour. All in all though, under Rusty’s loving scrutiny (he told us that “the whole film is me hugging George”), Mr Romero is a fascinating and righteous dude, with some great stories.

The film, at this stage by no means a finished and polished product, is an affectionate homage to Romero’s life and work, seeking to redress a deficit of serious critical attention in his filmmaking, and install him in the canon of the auteurs. That his patchy career has denied him this is one of the main lessons of the film, as we observe how George’s humble disinterest in self-aggrandization has all but sabotaged his success in the cannibalistic hollywood environment.

The editing is tight and logical, the interviews well-paced, and the somewhere-over-two-hour running time seems to fly past. The one thing about the film I felt was lacking was a portrait of Romero’s wife, who, while tantalizingly mentioned in passing, is never discussed, despite the fact that she has always been intimately involved with his filmmaking, and was by his side through some really tough times. I wanted to raise this point in the q-and-a that followed, but Rusty was such an enjoyable raconteur with his stories of the three year plus journey of making his film that I forgot about it. I am sure it’s probably an editorial decision, recognising the Romero’s intense privacy, because let’s face it, how many how many death metal fans must have crawled out of their mother’s basements, donned zombie makeup and harassed Mr and Mrs Romero over the years?

Rusty comes across as a great guy (he’s one of us), taking off his marvel zombies hoodie to reveal a frickn sweet vintage captain america t-shirt. He talked about wanting to sneak a bit more punk rock into the film (at this stage there’s one Ramones song), and teased us with the identity of a famous indie director who will do the finished voiceover, another area in which the film was ocasionally lacking.

About fifteen minutes into the feature, I was stricken with the urgent need to urinate, owing to the piss-weak Australian beer I had been drinking earlier. I backed slowly up the stairs of the cinema, and then ran down the escalator to the bathroom, which was empty save for one cubicle, from which emanated the sounds of someone taking a piss. Standing at the urinal, I thought to myself how funny it would be if the invisible pisser was George A. Romero himself. When the toilet flushed and the door opened, I couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder, and, lo and behold, there he fuckin was!! I was paralyzed by an immediate upwelling of fanboyish adulation, and tried desperately to think of something cool to say to my idol. Registering my excitement, the look that crossed his face was one of trepidation “oh god, it’s a fan”, so I looked down and studiously examined my stream of urine until he had washed his hands and shuffled out of the bathroom to rejoin his wife in the lobby.

so, I come to at six a.m in a hotel room in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, lying on an enormous bed in the sticky heat, sweating already despite the fact that I’m wearing just my boxers. Sharing the bed with me are my travelling companions John (Pravjot- the Punjab/french Vincent Gallo) and Thomas (the french Jude law). We’re surrounded by the remains of Shahi paneer, butter naan, cigarette butts, and the other detritus of last night’s solemn end-of-trip royal challenge whiskey session. I gulp down half a glass of whiskey in an attempt to assuage my headache, shower and pack, and we stumble down to the restaurant for aloo paratha and banana lassi before we hit the road. For the past week the three of us have been travelling up and down the steep valleys of Uttaranchal’s Himalayan foothills on rented 350cc Royal Enfield road bikes. The little mountain towns are so beautiful, with large Nepalese populations, cool, crystalline mountain air, forests of marijuana growing wild by the side of the road, and staggering, awe-inspiring views of the tallest mountains in the world.

Each of the towns we visited had its own, completely different character. There’s Nainital (at 1938m), arrayed on the terraced hillsides surrounding her small lake, and resembling nothing so much as a classical picture-postcard Swiss hamlet. The surface of what must be the cleanest body of water in India roils with the turbulence from the upwelling rock springs which feed it, and at night reflects the glittering lights of the encircling town like a baby Geneva.  

Then there’s Ranikhet, a military town set in a pine forest with fantastic views. Ranikhet is home to the Kumaon rifles, who occupy what must be one of the world’s only army bases completely surrounded by feral dope plants. It was in Ranikhet that I invented ‘The Green Stag’, the second in my series of indian cocktails. (GREEN STAG : Take a 1-litre bottle of Royal Stag whiskey and drink some, then add to the bottle a decent handful of crushed wild marijuana leaves and tips (not buds!), a decent handful of wild mint, a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Place bottle in backpack for a day and a night, strain through tibetan muslin scarf, and serve in glasses made from drinking water bottles with the tops hacked off. garnish with marijuana leaf.)

Yesterday we were in Almora (1646m), a market town founded in 1560 by the chand dynasty. Occupying the head of a long, winding valley, Almora looks out at the inner Himalayan snows and the peaks of Trishul, Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot. Far below in the valley, sunburnt and dusty, we swam in the clean meltwaters of the Kosi river, which snakes it’s way out of the mountains, and eventually joins the ganges hundreds of miles away. Thomas accidentally made an offering to Shiva of his spectacles, swept away in the swift current, so we sacrificed a rupee coin each from the ghat at the water’s edge to pay for his bad luck.

 Clean water, amazing food from roadside huts, and yesterday, rolling down a forested gorge with the engine turned off, we came across a real, honest-to-goodness himalayan wolf, standing in the road! Brilliant! 

 (However,  the title of this post was ‘my last day in India’, and I have been digressing rather expansively, so, to return to my narrative…) After breakfast, we pay the bill, tip the hotel dudes (this paid off later on), and chalo! (Let’s go! in hindi)  The bikes roar like bengal tigers, and we take our lives in our hands again on the chaotic Indian highways. Now, here I want to describe the very particular thrill of piloting a powerful motorcycle on Indian roads. It’s like elbowing one’s way through the crowd at a concert. There are overcrowded buses, bicycles, cars, auto-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, bullock carts, pedestrians, dogs, livestock, weird mad-max vehicles made from spare parts, scooters, other motorcycles, and of course, Trucks, in their hundreds, all fighting for a place on the road with you. There are no apparent rules, no lanes, road signs, traffic lights, authority figures, or any other concessions to order. The road surface alternates between passable ashphalt, rutted gravel, and slick mud, and is pocked with deep potholes and half-completed roadworks trenches. I have to stop every 20 minutes or so to clean my sunglasses, which become so covered in splattered mud, dust and bugs that I can’t see through them. At an average speed of about 70kph, it is the most demanding, adrenalizing, and ultimately exhausting driving experience I have ever had.

 However, I am riding with Thomas on the back, who, in abject terror, keeps jabbing me in the ribs, forcing me to drive much slower than I would like (which actually feels more dangerous. At lower speeds, other motorists feel more confident about cutting you off). John, helmetless and talking on his mobile, has thundered far ahead, and I have given up on catching him. We are following an overcrowded bus with passengers hanging off the sides and riding on the roof, and I tell Thomas that it would make a good picture. As I match speed with it, thomas searches his bag only to find, with anguish, that he has left his camera in the hotel room.  “We have to go back!” he shouts in my ear. As we have travelled about a hundred kilometres in two and a half hours, and I must get back to Delhi in time to organize a few things and catch my flight, I am understandably reluctant. We find John at a roadside chai-wallah, and we sit in the shade of his hut and rack our brains for the name of the hotel so that we can telephone, but none of us remembers. Suddenly John drags Thomas out into the road, and flags down a passing bus (sardine-standing room only, and a woman is throwing up down the side of it). ‘this is your only chance!’ he yells at Thomas. “If you don’t go back immediately your camera will be stolen!”. Thomas runs alongside the bus and jumps on, and the last I see of him is his miserable, mud-streaked face.

“Dammit!” John yells. “He’s got the whiskey!”

to be concluded…

Mango Alexander (also known as the indian railways stealthy stiffener)

Mix equal parts of mcdowell’s number one brandy (but any other indian brand will do, avoiding , of course, the really cheap ones which cause blindness, ricketts and death) and Slice mango drink (as endorsed by the beautiful Katrina Kaif. Pour into 1.5-litre slice bottle, and serve stealthily.

This morning I watched a dog eat a human foot. It looked like a rather stringy meal, but the dog was emaiciated and diseased, so any feed’s a good feed. Varanasi is the most INDIAN of places- the holy of holies, the city of light, extant in the same form since the sixth century b.c, a place where pilgrims can be completely purified of all sins in the mother Ganga, and just by dying here can attain INSTANT NIRVANA!!! It’s a confluence of untroubling contradictions, where enlightenment and squalor, disease and purity coexist like two sides of the same coin. It’s one of the most fundamental things about this insanely religious country of hindus, moslems, sikhs, buddhists and christians, that contradictory ideas can occupy the same space and time. It seems absurd to watch hindi children seeking ritual purification by diving into the torrent gushing from a large-bore sewage outflow pipe issuing into the ganges, where charred body parts bob in the shallows, where factories disgorge constant streams of mercury and other toxic shit, where men pick through the mud for jewellery left behind by the funeral pyres of the burning ghats, but it is all kind of beautiful, and understandable on the fundamentally human levels that politeness, “standards” and political correctness do not equip us westerners to describe.
Destroyed several times in it’s long history, Varanasi, constantly regenerative, has grown itself into a tangled, maze of unmappable alleyways. Lined by crumbling buildings and temples built atop the ruins of older structures, these streets will not admit cars, and even rickshaws have trouble, so the old city is explored on foot (pressing past cows and water buffalo where necessary), leaving one open to the unwelcome attentions of the touts, souvenir sellers and conmen who have been preying on the healthy tourist industry since the middle ages. We westerners stand out like a sore thumb, and the exchange rate, and general attitude of guileless loved-up credulity that this country seems to inculcate in even the most hardened german backpacker means that we may as well have giant dollar-signs painted on our foreheads when the priests administer the smeared saffron and ganges mud of puja. I have fifteen thousand rupees cash in my wallet for fuck’s sake, and moving amongst people who don’t earn that much in five years means you get to see some pretty elaborate and cynical scams.
Despite the fact that everyone you meet is trying to take your money, the people of varanasi seem able to combine a rapacious business sense with a weird hospitality and friendliness that seems to well from their gentle pace of life and religious security. ALL of the locals will try it on with you, though, and the best response is just to laugh at their outrageous demands and inflated prices, because generally they’ll laugh along with you at the whole fucked-ness of it all.
Although the monsoon has arrived here, and the river is very high, It’s unbelivably stinking hot here, and I pour sweat even lying under the ubiquitous indian ceiling fan (manufactured by bajaj!) in the stained-glass lit haven of our beautiful hotel room, except for two hours every afternoon, when it buckets with incredibly torrential rain. I love this place, and it feels possible to learn stuff about life here, surrounded by all this death. Around the burning ghats, pieces of human bone litter the cobbles underfoot, but it is forbidden, and considered inappropriate for anyone to cry.

Back in the stinking hot sprawl of lepers and wristwatch salesmen and delicious street food and horse poo that is the modern metropolis of mumbai. Everyone here wants me to be an extra in a bollywood movie, or sell me coke, or show me where the best nightclubs are. Leopolds is pretty funny (If you’ve read Shantaram, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, don’t), although a round of drinks cost me rps850. At least I got to dance to justin timberlake in the v.i.p room.

I haven’t been able to post for a while, cos down south internet access is patchy at best. Plus the monsoon came, which means everything kinda shuts down. Kerala is exactly like the vietnam of apocalypse now (which was actually the phillippines). Leeches, water everywhere, jungles etc. We hired a scooter and gave it quadrophenia out to a few beaches a lot lusher than brighton. The arabian sea is as warm as bathwater, and it’s hosing with warm monsoon rain, and everything seems hysterically funny. Cochin is overrun with really cute goats, stinks of fish, and features Jewtown, a jewish settlement founded in, like 500a.d. You can find Jewtown by following Jew street. Kerala has the only democratically elected communist government in the world, so there’s all these hammer and sickle flags hanging in the jungle.

A day’s train ride, then the world’s most most precipitous ricketty bus disgorges us in the freezing cold mountainous hill station of Ooty (Udaghamandalam) a little fairytale kingdom of displaced tibetan midgets in the south. Surrounded by verdant tea-fields, and possessing No mod cons, it’s a really cute place and plus it’s funny to see indians wearing beanies and wooly jumpers.

After that was a 35 hour train ride back to mumbai where we couldn’t get beds, so had to sleep on THE FLOOR. By the TOILET. It was ok, actually kina hilarious. we laughed the whole time. I just wanted to bitch about it here. I love the trains. next time I’ll write a whole post about them. Right now I’m off to some tomb in the middle of the ocean. Then pushkar.  Sorry this one wasn’t very funny/interesting. bit pressed for time. love you byeeee!!

 Stumbling off the 19 hr train ride from my beloved mumbai/revolting ahmedabad bleary-eyed after 5-ish hours sleep in second-class (then the last couple of hrs sitting in the doorway of the traincar watching the rajasthani mountains go by in the misty dawn, my jandals dangling in the slipstream above nameless viaducts, smoking my hong-kong duty-free dunhills and drinking endless cups of chai proffered by kids at the trackside whenever we slowed to go through a country station) comma, I am met by an equally bleary (”too much of the beer, and of the whisky last night, sir”) rickshaw driver (a rickshaw being the chief method of transport in india; an ancient Bajaj, or Vespa scooter, with a wide, roofed backseat). UNLIKE every other fkn tout in India, i take one look at Manu with his beedie hangin out of his mouth, badly in need of a shave, and Immediately trust his judgement, and as we get into his vehicle for our madcap, cow-dodging careen through Udaipur’s narrow alleys, he thrusts a book at me, filled with backpacker’s (hisssss) glowing recommendations of his proud self. On finding out I’m from New Zealand, he snatches the book, and hands me a dog-eared copy of our glorious NZ Listener, and points me at some travel writer’s glowing recommendations of his proud self. OK OK OK. I get it, i’m in ‘the most romantic city in India’. We screech to a halt somewhere and sit down on a step for 7am chai and beedis and more chai on Manu’s tab. “relax, relax, you’re in udaipur”, he keeps telling me, and believe me, I am relaxed, after 3 days of Mumbai’s overcrowded glorious hectic insanity.

My hotel, the panorama (octopussy screening every day 7pm!) is utterly brilliant, my third-floor corner rooms overlooking the lake, city palace and ghats, looooong warm shower, and enormous bed which I lie on feeling exhausted under the fan for all of about 5 minutes before taking off to get a load of this place. Breakfast at ‘edelwiess german bakery’ (ha!) where I have my first espresso in India (shit), then spend an hour talking to the indian baristaabout his machine and coffee in general, him very keen to learn how to improve his, well, shit coffee.  A ramshackle brass band inexplicably marches by followed by a hundred women in really fancy saris balancing things on their heads. It’s just like octopussy. After shitty tourist shops I wander down to the last ghat on the lowtown lake edge (visible in photo above), and meet this guy Zep who introduces me to his friends; silent no-english guy, and some street dude who proudly tells me he hasn’t taken a shower in 5 years, and looks like it (smells like it too, but everything smells here). We sit in the shade sweating and smoking charras and Zep and I talk for hours, punctuated by him leaving me to talk w/ silent guy while he takes off to get some opium. Zep is from udaipur, but has been living in germany, for a while, so has a german/hindi accent and says ja instead of ha. Monkeys fang around in the trees above us and untouchables dig around for shellfish with their feet in basically what amounts to raw sewage below us (the lake level is very low, owing to a drought) Suddenly! it’s 5, and I have to get back to my hotel to meet ‘the greatest rickshaw driver in all of India’ for our trip up to the mountain palace high above to watch the sun set over the whole of Rajasthan in 360 degree cinemascopic octopussyvision. Yah yah beautiful etc, then I hustle across the (semi) dry part of the lake bed beneath the bridge, trying not to think about what I’m stepping in, on my way to meet Zep again. I’m very late, but silent guy has been posted there to take me on a vespa ride through narrow alleys to a street full of shiva temples and drug dealers. Zep’s there, and he hands me a squishy brown pellet, saying “chew this, its the cocaine cocaines” I watch him eat his, before following suit. We sit on a doorstep and watch the street go by, and the guy who does’t wash appears. He and I perform an impromptu duet, me beatboxing, and him singing and dancing a weird marathi version of jingle bells. I notice that everyone on the street comes up to Zep and greets him or complains at him, in hindi, of course, while he argues with his girlfriend in german on his mobile and continues his philosophical conversation with me in english, all at once. Money is changing hands constantly, I notice. I am genuinely beginning to like this guy. Did I mention octopussy?

 Zep tells me to give this kid some money, who disappears on a vespa, to return with a bottle of whiskey, paneer masala, limea lemon drink and bottled water, whereupon a few of us cross the road to a tall building, enter, and begin climbing stairs to the roof. We’re passing through offices, with computers, and when we stop in one for opium, I ask Zep what the deal is, does he live here? He laughs “No, this is a government building, this is our place. We’re safe here”, before indicating silent guy and himself and proudly telling me “Mafia, we are mafia”.

We sit on the roof of the building with the best view in udaipur, the whole city twinkling below us ocasionally lit up by fireworks celebrating the indian premier league finals at that moment being contested between Rajasthan and Chennai (Rajasthan’s captain? Shane Warne). We drink whiskey and laugh and talk late into the night.  At some point silent guy stretches out against the parapet, indicates udaipur, and says “Mine. This is mine. I am King”.

“you’re the fuckin maharajah”, I say, and seriously he turns and says “No no no no no. I am not Maharajah. I am Don”.

*(p.s. Large sections of the James Bond film Octopussy were filmed in udaipur, and the whole city seems obsessed with this claim to fame. many of the guest houses and restaurants screen it EVERY NIGHT at 7pm)