While I was on the fence about Pizzeria Publico after my first visit there, I found it much improved on my 2nd.  Tonight was my 3rd, this time with my gf.  We both had a slice of the sausage pizza and agreed that the crust was superior to Paisano’s.  However she prefers Paisano’s sauce while I think PP’s is vaguely more New York-ish.  We also tried their meatball parmigiana sub and agreed that the meatballs are really nicely done.  PP is loud as fuck inside but if you can score one of the few outdoor tables, it’s a rather pleasant place to sit and let some time go by.

Then the somewhat weird experience of being recognized from the blog – long story that I won’t go into.  The guy did say something along the lines of, tomorrow I’ll probably read about you meeting some weirdo on the street – luckily he wasn’t at all weird, so I figure he deserves a mention here although names have been omitted to protect the innocent.  I then had to explain to my gf why 3 or 4 years ago it was a big deal to me that people shouldn’t be able to connect “Spike” with the real-life me but these days it’s not.  Not only do I have a photo of me over at Spike’s Photos, my About Me page is under my real name and links to both of my blogs.

Later that night, the odd experience of being in Amazonia watching the new band there and the female lead singer was using her iPhone for the song lyrics, so the weird visual of watching a band whose singer was staring at her phone while she was singing.  And not weird in a good way.  Though it was probably the high point of being there.  If you’re not drinking (I was driving) and you’re not chasing after women, Wanchai can be a seriously boring place to be.  I actually ended up sitting in the corner in the back doing stuff on my iPhone though I have to admit there were a couple of times when the view was rather pleasant there.

Part two of my series on shooting the HK skyline is now live on Photohead Online.  Please check it out!

Hey, if you use Chrome as your desktop browser, then you gotta check it out on iOS.  Not only will it sync your bookmarks (and presumably passwords, though I didn’t try anything that required that), it will actually sync with whatever you left open in your desktop browser and it looks like it can also access your recent search history.  For me, this is going to be incredibly useful.  I’ve already pushed the Safari icon to the last screen and put the Chrome icon on the first screen.  I’m that impressed.

My MacBook Pro with Retina Display shipped today.  Presuming that DHL won’t deliver on a Saturday, I should have it Monday, which is the same day we’re seeing Dark Knight Rises. No, I’m not being put off from the film by the coincidence that some lunatic opened fire on a crowd and it happened to be outside a movie house where DKR is playing.  I’m far more put off by this:

So I won’t be buying any imitation Kim Kardashian dresses any time soon.

Tuesday – Stone Roses in Hong Kong.  Been reading the reviews in NME.  Have located audience tapes from the first two shows, sound isn’t great but they sound really good.

Wednesday I’m heading down to Bangkok for some meetings.  This will be my first time in Bangkok in about 4-1/2 years.  I don’t think work will leave me much free time but if it does, I need to track down tattoo great Jimmy Wong (he did most of my ink) though from some searching I’ve done it appears he’s finally retired and in that case I hope to see his daughter Joy (who did one of my tattoos) just to say hello to her and pass greetings back to the family.  Those of you who’ve been with this blog for a long time know that I used to go to Bangkok just about every other month and Jimmy’s shop was like a clubhouse.  He’d turn up for work around 10 or 11 PM, we’d take turns getting beers from the 7-11 next door and then around 2 AM or so when he was ready to call it a day, we’d go to one of the many outdoor quasi-legal all night “My Bar” spots along Sukhumvit and watch night turn into day.

One thing that I’ll definitely be bringing to Bangkok will be my new B&W P3 headphones.  I love the B&W P5′s but they’re just too large to go into my normal “day bag”.  I went up to the B&W showroom the other day (the only place that’s selling them in HK) to try them out and a quick demo in the shop told me they sounded pretty good.  Later, at home, I couldn’t believe just how good they sound.  The ear pieces are at least 1/3rd smaller than on the P5′s, maybe only half as large.  They have some kind of fabric covering rather than the ultra-soft leather on the P5′s and they fold up into a hard plastic carrying case.  I’d read that these are not just smaller P5′s, that they’d been redesigned from the ground up, and I do believe it’s true.  I listened to some Steely Dan, some Miles Davis, some Kraftwerk – they sound amazing across the entire spectrum and far more powerful bass than any can this size has a right to have.  Could it be that the P3 sounds better than the P5?  They got a 5 star review from What HiFi.  But I haven’t done any comparison between the two and over at CNet their reviewer loves the P3 but prefers the P5.  ”… the P5 really is a better, in a more refined-sounding sort of way, headphone. It sounds like a more expensive version of the P3, and that’s what it is. ”  Okay, maybe it’s the P5s for the trip, but the P3s are now my go-to cans for every day use.

Okay, I’m up waaaay too late tonight.  So I’ll just leave you with this amazing photo that I snagged from Dangerous Minds.  Yes, it’s Harpo Marx and Amelia Earhart.