So it’s good to be back in the bosom of my whanau, as we say around these parts, although the ground still seems to be shifting underneath my feet. Jet lag is a bitch. But what am I complaining about? I was on the press junket to end them all really, along with 59 other journos from around the world. When Rome wants to be on the world stage, it gets on the world stage.
We were really there as promotion for a documentary on the History Channel called Rome: Engineering an Empire and I have Listener stories to write about all this, but apart from staying in a beautiful boutique hotel, being bussed around for several four-course meals, taken for a guided tour of the Coliseum and witnessing the most extraordinary media scrum at the opening of the new Ara Pacis monument, as Russell mentioned, I was serendipitously also in London on the very night the Flaming Lips played the Royal Albert Hall.
I didn’t see Hurley from Lost as the only tickets left were standing-room only in the Gallery – that’s the very top tier of the hall – but it was still one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and now I know how many balloons it takes to fill the Albert Hall. So this is just a quick post to let y’all know that the FLips are the musical guests on Letterman tonight (Thursday). Set your PVRs.