PetSugar

Rob on the cover of Vanity Fair Italy + new interview

sharpysunshine — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:16:12 -0700

If humanity is divided between the party of “I wish but I can’t” and the party of “I could but I don’t want”, I propose Robert Pattinson as candidate of the second faction. 23 years old, vampire in spite of himself, unwillingly sexy icon, the boy with the case ( he has three of them, really, like the years that he spent among hotels ), he looks at the world from a porthole and thinks: “Boh?!”. But then he plays a DO, drinks a beer, crunches a Twix and goes on. He admits that he never has had the sacred fire of art, but he was a cute guy, and the acting school of Barnes Theatre Company was the right place to meet girls. One thing leads to another, and so it happens that you find yourself on the set of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Then it happens that you hears they are doing a screen test for Twilight, and then you shoots a video with one of your friends, but this is so disgusting that you not even send it. But since lucky is even more stubborn of you not looking at her, they call you the same, and you gets the protagonist role. If Pattinson had read attentively Twilight before answering yes – or he had made his sister read it – he would have perceive that Edward Cullen ( the intellectual and torn hunk that all women dream ), would have bled him dry first. But he didn’t read it, and the rest is history, if not of the cinema, at least his history: daily chronicle of the prisoner of luxury suites, forced of room service, incredulous witness of collective hysteria phenomenon by fans. Trying to separate Edward Cullen’s canines from his neck, between one episode and another of the saga by Stephenie Meyer, he shoot Remember Me, a romantic drama movie directed by Allen Coulter and place in New York, where he plays Tyler, student from a rich and devastated family, who despises icy dad’s money ( Pierce Brosnan ) and lives in a revolting apartment with a idiotic roommate. But Ally ( Emilie De Ravin ), even her with a baggage of troubles, comes putting in order his heart and his kitchen. The two of them fall in love, save each others, loose each others and then who knows: the ending leaves the audience still and silent, so we can’t tell it. But since movies go faster than life, when I met him, in London, he has already the features of his new character Georges Duroy ( “one which hates everybody. He was needed after all this romantic stuff. Being always good is annoying” he tells me ), the Bel Amy of Maupassant: polished moustaches and beard, under them his t-shirt with shapeless neck makes a strange effect. Just a warning about the interview for all those people who can’t sleep at night asking if Robert is still ( still? Has he ever been? ) or not with Bella / Kristen Stewart: yes, I wanted to ask him about this, no, I couldn’t. “No pics, autographs and questions about private life, or the interview will end”, they threatened us. We have to stick to the official statement: “ we are just friends”. It is certain that there is ( or there was?) feeling between the two of them, “many and complex feelings” said Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. In their private life they are such as in the movie: between them there is an intense attraction that you can’t realize. In fact, during the shooting, Kristen was ( officially) with her historic boyfriend, actor Michael Angarano. So, I wish but I can’t. Perhaps. Biographic notes that accompanies every movie of yours, describes you like a good and humble person, but it is really possible not getting big –headed when you are perpetually surrounded by screaming girls? “Yes, even because the effect of all of this is more terrifying. Success is a thing in which I literally fall into. Probably, if I have worked hard to achieve it, I would see things in a different way, but since I didn’t do anything, I am, how can I say, perpetually surprised.” Интервюто и останалите сканове след прочетете повече… It doesn’t seem such a great sensation. Did you ever think: give my previous life back? “No, thinking like this would be absurd. I regret some things: meeting people who don’t know who I am, being able to go in a shop, do not asking to myself if people is acting in a certain way with me because I’m famous. While I was shooting Remember Me, it happened that there were 40 people around the corner, ready to take a picture of me, or asking me an autograph. Well, this all is weird.” Where and how are you able to find a little peace? “There are a couple of friends who are close to me. And the presence of my sister Lizzie also ( a singer of discreet success ), helps me to maintain things the most normal as I can. Having some targets give me peace, I must always know what I’m doing, otherwise I get stressed.” Tyler, your character in Remember Me, is so different from Edward. How has it been returning human? “Even Tyler is not such a normal person. It’s strange, but I never performed an ordinary person. Also because the roles of ordinary people are rather boring. Tyler is simple, but not too much simple. I liked the idea of being not a vampire, but at the same time non a banal one.” Was it difficult? “Yes, from a certain point of view, but also not, because I could follow my instinct more. With Edward you can’t improvise. But I allowed myself to give Tyler little things of mine: I thought about how I was at 21, totally at the mercy of my emotions.” Were you one person willing to beat life, too? “Of course, and I’m still so. I know well that anger without any specific object” And how do you get over this? “Splitting everything.” When you go out with a woman for the first time, what do you tell about you first, to make splash? “I don’t talk about me, at the beginning. I think that it is always better listening than talking.” Now that you are famous, is it easier or more difficult to seduce a woman? “I think it’s more difficult, for different reasons. First, I can’t go where I want without someone being able to recognize me, and many of the women approaching me are doing this for exhibitionism. People don’t understand, but I’m not interested in this kind of conquests. So, at the end, all becomes really stressful: distinguishing who is authentic and who is not, fearing to hurt who is really kind. It’s all different from before, when nobody noticed me.” How do you distinguish the good ones from the bad ones? “The good ones call the day after…” Remember Me tells us that love can save a life. Do you believe in this, or is it a romantic thing? “I believe that is a really beautiful and important idea. I think that even seriously ill people can heal, literally, thanks to love all around them. Love gives you purposes. Tyler hadn’t any of them, but he met Ally and his perspective changes. She is like a pair of glasses, and you can see things through them. All begins easier when she arrives.” The movie also tells the things can end in an instant. There are people who spent all their life agonizing over this. And you: would you be ready to loose everything, happy about what you have received? “All movie turns around happiness and being able to see it. Having, here and there in life, moments of consciousness about our happiness makes life deign of being lived.” Do you recognize those moments? Yes, I think so. They last a little, e and I am always ready to ask myself: and now how much time will pass before I will regret or worry about something else? But between a trouble and another, there is peace.” Could you tell me one of those moments? “Little odd things: seeing how my little dog behaved in her last two days of life, how she was proud. I realize that it is a such a depressing thing to be told as happy moment.” What do you do to make the many hotel rooms you attend like home? The presence of my guitar makes much home, to me. And even going to Skype. Last year I practically didn’t talk to anyone and only when I returned to London, I realized that my social life has been completely collapsed. Now I put it again on its feet, and I cultivate it in the distance. Then, luckily, there are people in flesh and bones, the colleagues. Emilie De Ravin, beside that fragile aspect, is a tough person. One evening she drunk 25 beers in succession without feeling the blow. I need two weeks to recover myself and I stopped before her.” Sorry, but what do they mean the words SB on your hat? “I believe Santa Barbara. But I bought it in Tokyo. At least it seems to me….”

50 Cheap Date Ideas

PinkNC — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:17:05 -0800

Discount Dating

A lighter wallet is no excuse to turn date night into a luxury. Get out of your sweatpants, put down the cold pizza, and check out these 51 budget-friendly date ideas that will get you off the couch and into each other's pants.

Get on thin ice. Depending on the weather, head to an indoor or outdoor ice-skating rink - it's the perfect excuse to hold hands, "accidentally" fall on top of each other, and grab a cup of hot chocolate and cozy up to each other to keep warm.

Skip the pricey wine bar and grab a few beers at your local dive bar. Make sure you pick a place with a pool table or dartboard set up, and challenge him to a few games. Loser owes the winner a song on the jukebox.

He may hate to shop, but he'll end up thanking you if you drag him to a flea market. There's something for everyone and plenty of things you never knew existed - you might even discover he has a hobby or weird collection you didn't know about!

Settle in for a night of pampering: No pricey spa required. Use your empty wallets as an excuse to stay in - and up - all night. Run a bubble bath and then treat each other to full-body massages. Sleep in the next day.

Get an adrenaline rush at the roller-skating rink. As long as you don't mind being the oldest people there who aren't chaperoning their children, it's a great way to have fun and let loose with each other. Top it off with a bowl of ice cream when you get home.

Play house: Dress up in your most serious grownup outfit and leave your tiny apartment to visit some open houses. Spend the day arguing over where you would put the love seat, discussing the difference between eggshell and ecru paint, and giggling over strangers' hideous decorating choices.

Does he drive you up a wall sometimes? He probably feels the same way about you, so put on your sneakers and head to an indoor rock-climbing gym. Challenge him to a race to the top and relieve sore muscles with a hot shower together afterward. Just try not to gloat too much about beating him.

Celebrate the first snow of winter with a day of sledding. Pick a hilly spot in your town and use garbage can lids as makeshift sleds. Wear a bike helmet to up the dorky fun factor, and celebrate living through the experience with a cup of hot cocoa.

Spend the day picking fruit at a local farm, either one-on-one or with a few couples you know - the more the merrier. Once you've picked all the apples you can carry back to the car, get creative in the kitchen and think up some recipes with the fruit you picked. Judge each other's creations, Top Chef style.

Plan a trip. You might need to save up for awhile, but that doesn't mean you can't daydream. Plan your dream vacation with each other - it might be the incentive you need to start putting your loose change in the piggy bank.

Challenge your guy to a little friendly competition and surprise him by taking him to a rifle range. After each round, compare your targets - loser buys the next round of bullets; winner gets gloating privileges.

Spice up your movie-night routine by finding a drive-in movie theater. Stop at the supermarket on your way to load up on your favorite snacks, and bring blankets and pillows to make the car extra cozy. Let him pick the movie - you'll get points for being easygoing, even though you know you'll probably miss most of the movie.

The easiest way to booze it up on the cheap? Take a tour of a winery or brewery, and pick up some wine facts for your next dinner party while getting tipsy.

Dying to see a musical or play but can't afford the tickets? Call around to see if you can buy tickets to the dress rehearsal instead - you'll pay a fraction of the price for the same experience.

Wherever you live, chances are there are local bands dying for an audience. Check out MySpace for bands in your area and go to a show. Alternate with your guy on who gets to pick the band so that you both get a chance to enjoy your favorite music genres, and save cash on booze by bringing a flask.

Head to the bookstore and walk through the aisles together, showing each other your favorite books, bonding over the books you both hated, and flipping through a Kama Sutra book for ideas for later.

Bowl him over at the bowling alley. Psych him out by reminding him of how many gross people wore his shoes before him, and don't forget to program his sugary-sweet nickname ("Muffin Face") onto the computerized scoreboard instead of his real name.

Show him your rugged side and build something together. Ask him to help you build something like a coffee table or dresser for your place - he'll be psyched that you asked him, just as long as you can bite your tongue when the table he puts together falls apart the moment you set your cup of coffee down.

Appeal to his inner child (it shouldn't be too hard to tap into) and buy tickets for a carnival. Embrace the cheesiness - share cotton candy, let him try to win you a prize, and ride the Ferris wheel until you get nauseous. It's a great way to get to know each other if you've just started dating and will serve as a reminder of how much fun you can have together if you've been dating for awhile.

Keep up on the specials. For a break on your dinner bill, check out sites like Restaurant.com for the restaurant deals in your area. And check out the websites of your favorite bars - they might have drink specials on certain nights, like a free pizza with every drink.

Ask him about his fantasy cars and he'll probably talk your ear off. Head over to a local car dealership and test-drive the most expensive car they'll let you take out of the parking lot. Take turns at the wheel but resist the urge to nitpick each other's driving skills.

Indulge your sweet tooth with your sweetie - visit a chocolate or cookie factory. Do a quick Google search to see if there are any in your area and give one a call to see if it does tours. If it only does group tours, make it a group date and invite a few other couples.

Get spooked at a haunted house. Check out Hauntedhouse.com for listings in your state. Start off the night by watching a scary movie before you go, and then try not to laugh when he launches a foot into the air at every corner.

Get out those matching aprons and fire up the skillet for a night of cooking - for both of you. Learn how to cook each other's favorite meal and then do it together. Whether you end up with a delicious steak and tuna casserole for two or speed-dialing for Chinese takeout, you're guaranteed to enjoy the process.

Forget eating dinner parked in front of a Mad Men marathon until you and your boyfriend are tired of looking at each other. Invite another couple over that you don't know well for a potluck dinner. Ask them to bring the appetizer and dessert, and work on the main course with your guy. At least one of the dishes should come out edible, and you can bond with your new friends over your shared culinary failure.

Tap into your animal instincts by visiting a petting zoo. Bring some bread to feed the animals and spend a few hours debating him on why getting a pet monkey is a bad idea. When you get home, jump in the shower with him to scrub off the zoo smell.

Play 20 Questions. Whether you've been together for three weeks or three years, there are probably things you don't know about each other. Each of you should write down 20 questions about the other - make sure they're open-ended so you don't get boring one-word answers - and fire away. Take turns answering the questions and get to know each other a little better than you already do.

Take a pottery class together and decorate your apartment in misshapen vases and funky-looking coffee mugs. Resist the urge to make your guy recreate the scene from Ghost every time you walk into class.

Have pretentious conversations about art at a local show. You'll find them going on all year at community centers, schools, and libraries - you might even find a great piece of art to add to your home.

Take a hike. Spend the day hiking and taking pictures together. When you're ready to recover, add some extra romance to the evening - lie across the hood of the car and look at the stars.

If you're tired of a quiet dinner at home disintegrating into chips and dip on the couch with no conversation between the two of you except for requests to change the channel, grab a blanket and some food and have an indoor picnic. The best part of staying inside? No ants in your food - plus, you're free to get busy right then and there.

Take a class together. Sign up to learn something neither of you knows how to do. Community schools generally offer a lot of options for classes you can take in eight-week sessions, from cooking to karate.

Put on your walking shoes and head to the museum. Almost all museums have one day a week where you can get in for free or for a small suggested donation. Pick the exhibits you each want to see beforehand, and spend some time at each of them together.

Celebrate something special with a trip to a bed and breakfast. A one-night stay in the colder months won't break the bank, so you can put that extra cash toward a room with a hot tub or breakfast in bed. If you're in for a long car ride, grab a book on tape from the local library.

Look into the future: Go together for a psychic reading. Practice your poker faces and spend the rest of the night talking about how funny - or eerily accurate - the reading was.

Score major points and head to a baseball game with your guy. Tickets can be as cheap as $5 a person, but bring extra cash for some beer, hot dogs, and a giant foam finger.

Check the theater offerings at local colleges and high schools. Schools usually have a spring and a fall show, and it's a great way to see a version of your favorite plays and musicals for a fraction of the cost.

One man's junk is another couple's treasure. Grab your guy and see what you can dig up at local garage sales. Up your chances of scoring something great by going to the ritziest neighborhood in your area.

Rent bikes - a tandem one, if you're adventurous - and go for a long ride through the park. Pack a few sandwiches and plenty of water for a picnic, or just grab hot dogs from a stand when you're ready for a break.

See the stars without braving the cold by getting tickets to the planetarium. Sneak in a thin blanket and cozy up. For extra privacy, go during off-peak times - call ahead to see when those are.

Bummed that you can't afford a weeklong vacation with your man? Put things in perspective and volunteer together for a cause you both care about. TiVo Gossip Girl and sign up to work at a soup kitchen once a week, or cuddle up with lovable cats and dogs at your local animal shelter.

Want some quiet time? Exercise your creative talents by drawing each other. All you need are two pieces of paper, some art supplies, and a bottle of wine for a quiet, romantic night in. Go as artistic or as fun as you wish.

Get physical. Get free day passes to a gym whose membership you could never afford and have him spot you. Challenge him to a fitness competition, bribe him into taking a spin class with you, and take advantage of the gym's sauna or pool, if it has one.

You can knit holiday sweaters like nobody's business. Your man is a Guitar Hero rock star. It's great to have separate hobbies, but it's also fun to share. Pick a weekend to teach each other your hobbies, and serenade him with a guitar solo while he knits you a pair of mittens.

While you're waiting for your Netflix delivery, stop at your local library and rent a few old movies. Toss a coin to see whose pick you'll watch first, and promise not to interrupt with bored sighs, eye-rolling, or snoring sound effects during each other's choices.

Travel back in time and reminisce. If you or your guy still live close to where you grew up, give each other a tour of your childhoods. Grab a camera and take pictures of your all-grown-up selves as you visit each landmark.

Can't get away for a vacation? Sightsee in your own city. If you've lived in your area for a long time, chances are you never got around to seeing a lot of the tourist attractions. So grab your guy and pretend to be tourists for a weekend. Stop at a used bookstore or look online for travel guides for your city, put together an itinerary, and don't forget to take pictures!

Grab a cup of coffee and check out a local coffee shop's open mic night. You might luck out with a great show, or you may find a mixed bag of angsty guitar solos and bad poetry - either way, you'll have something to talk (or laugh) about on the way home.

You probably live within driving distance of a college or university. Log on to the school's website and check out the scheduled events - often, schools will open large events, like lectures and panels, to the public. Check back often - your guy's favorite movie director might be appearing at a screening at the school's drama department, or you might find a panel of your favorite authors speaking to the English majors.

Share a few laughs at a comedy club amateur night. Admission usually costs two drinks per person, and you're in for a hilarious night - whether you're laughing with the comedian or at him.
.
.
.

Rob's Details Interview

athena4rob — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:34:10 -0800

COFFEEIt's the unseasonably cold November of 2008 when I go to New York's Bowery Hotel. There's a young man sitting in the garden, wrapped in about nine black sweaters and wearing a wool hat, smoking cigarettes, sipping a latte the size of his head, and furiously making notes on a script in the bitter cold. I have read about teenage girls lighting themselves on fire in front of his hotel, but at the moment Robert Pattinson is warming his hands on a coffee cup.
Hello, I'm Jenny. I think I'm here so you can check me out."Okay. I'm Rob. Um . . . would you like some fries? With gravy?"
Allen Coulter, the director of Hollywoodland and a creative force behind The Sopranos, has sent me. He was thinking about doing this movie-it wasn't quite there yet, but I should "come meet Rob."
Rob. When he came to the United States, he slept on his agent's sofa and then got a small part in a movie called Harry Potter and the Something of Something, which grossed nearly $900 million worldwide. And then he made another one, called Twilight, which grossed $385 million in theaters and almost another $200 million in U.S. DVD sales. Box-office riches, like so much of the female population of this planet, follow him from continent to continent, nursing a raging crush.
Coulter suggested I do some rewrite work on Remember Me (for the record, there is only one credited writer, Will Fetters), the first American release in which Rob will portray a mortal, nonmagical, carbon-based life form of the earthly realm-Salvador Dalí, whom he played in Little Ashes, surely doesn't qualify. As Rob scribbles away on the script's pages, it's clear he is starting his own revision process.
Rob's face is constantly busy-especially his kaleidoscopic eyes, which are continually rolling and dilating, because he is always thinking. Over the course of that latte, he contemplates Jimi Hendrix, French fries, girls, art, beer, his cousin the philosopher, girls, truth, God, his dog, girls, and whether this week's stalker has followed him from L.A. I don't think he could turn his brain off if he wanted to.
Despite the legion of fans trailing him from hotel to hotel, laying siege to each like the Roman army, he is neither fearful nor cocky-he's hungry, curious, forever reaching intellectually. That may not sound like a big deal, but think of the context: Complete strangers want to f*ck you, shoot you, be you, buy you, sell you, run their fingers through your hair, watch you have sex, hear you pee, eat chips with you, and kidnap you and stuff you in the trunk of their car. And you? You must know more, more, more about exotic tropical diseases.
Rob and I discover we share a mutual fascination with afflictions that maim and disfigure and disgust: He brings up cancrum oris, in which bacteria eat away at your face until you get kind of a window in the side of your head and the entire world sees your teeth; I mention cyclic vomiting syndrome, a condition in which you puke literally all the goddamn time; he delights in lymphatic filariasis, where parasitic worms burrow into your lymph nodes and can make your balls swell to the size of watermelons, forcing you to tote them around in a wheelbarrow.
We come up with a blockbuster hit movie, entitled Candiru Infestation, about a tiny fish that swims up your urethra and into your urinary tract and lodges in your cock with backward-facing umbrella spikes it shoots from its spine.

"f*cking brilliant! It could be like Finding Nemo!" says Rob. "And the little candiru is lost in the balls! Think of the soundtrack!"

BEER NO. 1Fourteen months later we're in London. New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight saga, has set box-office records for largest midnight opening and biggest opening-day gross. Remember Me, Rob's young-man-in-crisis drama, has wrapped. He has 24 hours before he has to start rehearsals for Bel Ami, based on the Guy de Maupassant novel, in which he plays a bed-hopping social climber.
He is waiting to pick me up in the bar of my hotel. He has ordered himself a pint of beer and, remembering my beverage of choice, a Diet Coke for me. He has the lovely manners of the good son of a good mum.
He says he wants to take me to a particular restaurant nearby, "just a little out-of-the-way place." So out of the way, it turns out, that after wandering around nearly all of Covent Garden, we can't find it. He doesn't seem too surprised, really. Of late he's been getting lost a lot in his own hometown. But then it's been a couple of years since he's actually lived here, and London is confusing as hell anyway.
Considering alternatives, we peek into a crowded café full of the young and beautiful, but he recoils. A few minutes later, when we come to a tiny Mexican place, his hackles go up a bit. Hmm. I ask him whether, at this point, he's able to sniff out crazed fans lurking under the tables.
"Yes. Sure. But last time I was here, the guacamole was bad."
Rob has made no sartorial concessions to Britain's ugliest winter weather in 30 years. A button-down, light Carhartt-like jacket, no gloves. He does have a hat, perhaps the same one he wore in New York. I'm swaddled like the Michelin Man and I'm f*cking freezing. He's cheery, unfazed, giggling away. It occurs to me that London seems to afford him a freedom he doesn't have in New York or Los Angeles. And a London night with deserted, snow-piled streets, after an epic storm that paralyzed Heathrow and shut down the Eurostar trains, is like an unbridled romp while going commando.
Without trying, we arrive back where we started, in front of the Covent Garden Hotel. Across the street there's a high-end sex-toy-and-bondage shop called Coco de Mer. I mention that I popped in there earlier (before the National Gallery, thank you), and I tell him about this insane S&M body-harness contraption they have that allows you to dress up like a horse and have a long tail.
"That's so English. I want to do this entire interview wearing it, from an equine point of view," he says, stomping the sidewalk with make-believe hooves. "Seriously. As an experiment in public perceptions. Is the place still open?"
BEER NO. 2We're inside, at a warm corner of the hotel's Brasserie Max, and Rob is having another beer. We're talking about how he copes. "When I was 17 until, I don't know, 20, I had this massive, baseless confidence. This very clear idea of myself and how I would achieve success, which involved making decisions. I saw myself picking up the phone and saying 'Absolutely not' or 'Definitely yes.' Having control. Except you have to figure out whether the way you think at 19 or 20 has any value. And eventually I understood, with all that control, which was probably illusory, I wasn't progressing. So now I'm relinquishing a bit. I'll be a tiny bit naked. Except tonight I won't, because it's f*cking freezing and my balls will shrivel up."

He may keep his balls covered in winter, but Allen Coulter says that during the shooting of Remember Me, Rob did bare himself: "It was about control, for him, in the beginning. But he wanted forward motion more than he wanted to protect himself. Really brave-especially for a young guy with a big target on his back."
Rob does seem eager to shed some clothing, to give up the reins.
"Shall we go see about that harness? Seriously, you eventually realize you can't make every single decision. I was always building, always protecting something. At the same time, I seemed to be losing the ability to move. I'd protected myself into checkmate. Even mentally." In that moment, he has a realization: "I can barely remember the last two years. Not like a haze of partying or anything like that. Just . . . it's been crazy."
There's been surreal stuff. Like the time at a charity event in Cannes when two attendees bid nearly $60,000 combined to have Rob give their daughters a kiss on the cheek. There's been scary stuff, though the idea he might truly be at risk strikes him as absurd: "I find it really funny-if I got shot, I would literally be in hysterics. I would be like, 'Are you serious? Jesus Christ, get Zac Efron! He's got more social relevance than I do.'" He's pretty sure there was some good stuff, too. "There was this one time with some elephants on a golf course in Barcelona . . ."
He drifts into a reverie. He gets amazed easily, and at the moment he's fixated on the mysterious green bar snacks. They're sort of like wasabi peas, but not. They're covered in chili powder and look like tiny tumors. He's eating every single one.
"f*ck, these are good. What are they? I want to snort them-they'd clear up my sinuses."
BEER NO. 3Rob's hunger is more than merely metaphorical. He orders two entrees-the mini beef burgers with tomato-and-onion relish and the mini chicken burgers with mango chutney-along with another pint. "I eat so much, I'm like a compulsive eater. I've been eating room service, and I'm always really worried about it, so I choose like six things on the menu and eat them all."
He doesn't want to miss anything, which implies a hint of regret. He didn't always want to be an actor. He modeled. He's a talented guitarist and keyboard player who has toyed with following his older sister Lizzy into pop music. But he's a serious type, and his most serious aspirations involved political speech writing. "It's fascinating. You'd have two or three minutes to affect someone. Make them hear you. Get the message out and maybe it will echo. I quite enjoyed doing press for the first Twilight, because there was a similarity. But after a bit I was ladling it out. If you want people to listen to you, you'd better have something to say. I felt a responsibility to be fascinating. You're bargaining with the audience. Is this enough for them? And that affects the way you look at art."
Art. It's illogical to think he's not allowed to have ideas about it merely because he has helped a lot of people make a lot of money.
"Before, I felt like I couldn't break through anything, including myself. And now it feels a bit as though I've climbed along the side of my brain and am at least looking in. But I know it will take me at least another 10 years before I'm remotely satisfied with anything I do. But with acting you keep trying in the hopes you might be . . . great. But then I think, does wanting to be good or even great, or even just wanting to make art, cheapen the experience?"

I worry his head is going to explode. He answers questions with questions. Doors open onto more doors. This sometimes leads to trouble with scripts: Since he sees every character's point of view, he often needs some sort of distillation. The catch is that unless the distillation somehow encompasses every character's essence, it only causes his imagination to fire more wildly. It's the kaleidoscope-vision thing.
Some people can have the ocean in front of them and just put their big toe in. Rob wants to swim until he drowns, and he's going to try to drink it all up before he goes under. His striving is a source of worry because he can't really tell anybody he wants more: "Please don't make this about me complaining. Please. I'm the luckiest bastard on the planet." He worries he might be selfish. He worries maybe he's a nonhumanist-separatist-weirdo because his most profound moments have been with his dog. And he worries about whether he can be an actor who can reach the masses and still ask for anything.
"If it exists out there-this invisible-creative-spirit-idea thing-then you're the medium through which it travels so everybody can touch it. But . . . what gives you the right to be the medium? What gives you the right to claim it? And then get an agent and say I want $20 million and a fruit basket to be the medium, thank you very much.
"As an actor, you can elevate the human condition or cheapen it. I would assume it's the same with anything you do-you try to elevate and maybe someday you will." An actor may indeed have the ability to raise us, but Rob unconsciously starts speaking sotto voce each time he utters the word actor or any variation of it.
Rob, did you know that every time you say actor or acting you lower your voice to a whisper?He's genuinely startled. "I do?"Yes, so quietly it's like you're saying Negro.He laughs, lightens up. "What if we were 'acting' like 'Negroes'? Then we'd be f*cked-we couldn't hear anything. . . ."
BEER NO. 4Rob asks the waiter for another beer. He's talking about an uncle who worked in a steel mill in the Yorkshire town his dad grew up in. Rob's father and his other uncles moved away as soon as they were old enough, but the eldest brother stayed there his whole life.
"They're bulldozing houses, whole streets of houses. And my dad asked him, 'Why stay?' He said, 'Who's going to look after our mom?' And I was just thinking, Jesus f*cking Christ, there might be something wrong with my emotional sight, because I'm not sure if I could make that kind of sacrifice. The only emotional connection of relevance is with my dog. My relationship with my dog, it's ridiculous.
"I think you need to be able to break through what you think about yourself to try to make any sort of art. I used to play music all the time, and the most amazing part was the freedom that came with kicking myself in the ass, letting go, and surprising myself."
He tried to let go a little bit with the photo shoot accompanying this interview-it wasn't easy.
"I really hate vaginas. I'm allergic to vagina. But I can't say I had no idea, because it was a 12-hour shoot, so you kind of get the picture that these women are going to stay naked after, like, five or six hours. But I wasn't exactly prepared. I had no idea what to say to these girls. Thank God I was hungover."

Is your mom going to have something to say about it?"Oh, God." He puts his head in his hands, shrugs. "Well, she quite enjoyed when I got her cable." It's not that Rob's mother now spends all night watching Skinemax in her London home. "No, no! God, no! It's just that there's nakedness all over the place now. But this shoot, it's kind of eighties nakedness, you know? If you look at porn in, like, the eighties, there was something kind of quaint about it, quite sweet-like this little naked community. The people who made it liked it, they had respect for it. Not remotely like the porn that's available now. No community in it at all. It's just everything, everywhere."
CANDYIn the U.K., Smarties are made of chocolate and are kind of like M&M's in weird colors like mauve and teal but somehow more delicious. Rob's not really a dessert guy, yet he's rapidly hoovering my last packet of Smarties. "Amazing. I've eaten like 5,000 of these already. See what you have to deal with?"
In Remember Me he plays a guy whose issues are eerily like his own. Tyler is a young man who has retreated into himself, but then he meets a woman, becomes conflicted, and has to choose whether to remain in lockdown or step into life and the world.
"Tyler is so aware of his actions. But he has no idea whether they're of any value at all. Can you be a person if you live in the bubble? He's stuck in the middle. At the same time, he's lucky to have the choice. Conflict is innate in a lucky person."
What attracted you to the role?"I'm a lucky person. Thank God. And I'm conflicted. Thank God."
He tells me about a book he read called Eat the Rich, by P.J. O'Rourke (full disclosure: P.J. was married briefly to my sister, though Rob had no idea). He was drawn to a part that says something like: One man's wealth does not mean another man's poverty-and vice versa. Rob's slightly embarrassed to voice this idea.
He is unsure whether to feel guilty, to bask in it all, or both. Thing is, there aren't any rules for a life as extraordinary as his is right now. He tells me an elephant story. Not the one about Barcelona elephants-one about some he'd met recently in California.
"Did you know elephants purr? It's completely scary if you don't know what it is. They purr like cats, but their heads are so deep they sound like velociraptors. You feel it in the ground under your feet. So this big female started sniffing my foot-big female elephant, that is. She sniffed it so hard it came up off the pavement like her trunk was a vacuum cleaner. Then she took my entire body in her mouth. I was holding on to her head, and as I slowly let go she tightened her grip really carefully until I'm just upside down in her mouth and she's going through my pockets with her trunk, looking for peppermints. It was the best day of my life."
So you gave up control to an elephant, got groped, mugged, had your candy tugged at-and it was glorious? "Yeah. So beautiful you can't imagine. And the baby elephant was so excited that it sprinted out and did its routine in five seconds and then curtsied to everybody. It was actually laughing. Brilliant. Did you know they can also do imitations of other animals? A horse, a chicken, a monkey-these elephants could, anyway. They were movie elephants. One had written a screenplay, and one really wants to direct."

He laughs. He was in Los Angeles, in discussions to star with Sean Penn in Water for Elephants, an adaptation of Sara Gruen's novel. The elephants are actors like him, and he wonders if he might, on some cosmic level, be a bit like them.
"Do you know how they die? The elephant guy told me their molars get ground down from eating wood but regenerate like six times. And after that they slowly starve to death. Which is poignant, but that must also be what gives them time to get to the elephant graveyard. They're incredibly designed creatures. I mean, people hang on way too f*cking long. If I knew that when my teeth fell out, that was it . . . Wow. The best day of my life. Beautiful, beautiful day."
A few moments later, Rob announces he's going to get a cab home and excuses himself.
Can I walk you? I don't like you going out there all by yourself."I'll be okay."

10 beauty crimes against women

Monique Marie — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:21:35 -0800

10. Lip "Plumpers" Somehow, humanitarian/sexpot/kung fu princess/supermom Angelina Jolie's mojo seems to reside in her impossibly perky pecker. I don't know what it is, but men and women alike are practically hypnotized by the sensuality, power and strength of the woman. Her whole persona seems embodied in her lips. The sudden appearance on the market and rabid popularity of lip-plumping products exactly coincides with Angie's supersonic rocket-launch to fame. But do they work? Well, if a violent tingling/burning sensation and a blotchy red appearance = plump lips, then yes. Personally, I'd rather slap myself in the mouth, lick my lips for some of the chapped-up shine plumpers deliver and save myself the $10 to $50. (Or spend on something that matters, like gin).

9. Self-"tanner" Okay, okay. Self-tanners have improved since that memorable day in middle school when I applied the dubious serum for the first time and rendered my entire face and body (and bath towels, PJs and sheets) a shade of orange so hideous it sent my dog howling for cover after one traumatized glance. But the completely incongruous fact remains: if you're butt-white like me, self-tanners will (eventually--sometimes it takes a few weeks) render your ivory bod coral, which is only marginally less ghastly than the scarlet singe you'd receive from the sun sans SPF. People who can use self-tanners? The already golden-hued; their olive complexions will be delightfully burnished.

8. Anti-wrinkle creamsWithout some sort of moisturizing cream, my face would prune up like raisin. Prune-face not being a look I aspire to, I dutifully drench my mug in Oil of Olay at least twice a day. But what about anti-wrinkle creams? Despite the redonkulous and spooky claims made by various and sundry cosmetic co.'s (regeneration of dead skin cells, face-lift like hoisting of saggy jowls/brows/furrows, reduction of skin movements that cause wrinkles, 50-90 percent reduction in visible appearance of fine lines, etc. etc.), Consumer Reports has found that, even the best-performing creams reduced wrinkled by less than 10 percent. That's nothing to spit at, but a face-lift it ain't. FYI: according the CR's study, $18 Olay Regenerist was the most effective wrinkle zapper, while the $335 per ounce La Prairie Cellular was the worst.

7. Cellulite zappers The shame-inducing, infantilizing language used in ads for the sticky stuff is bad enough to merit inclusion on this list ("getting rid of your cellulite has never been easier"; "in a few weeks, you could be wearing those sexy dresses and skirts without feeling self-conscious"; "you are a dynamic beautiful person, so don't let the cellulite hold you back!"; "after three applications, the skin is noticeably toned and smoother"). "Bottom" (haw!) line: even with retinol and caffeine, the two latest ingredients that have set the cottage-cheese busting industry on fire, these creams will not get rid of cellulite, doctors and reputable studies of the potions have found. They will empty your wallet, however, making your right butt-cheek look notably perkier.
6. Photoshopping HellWe've all heard about Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba and Madonna's photoshopping FAILS. But how many of the ads and mag photos with which we are bombarded with on a daily basis are retouched? All of them. Some of them, up to 30 times, according to a professional retoucher in this terrifying video on The New York Times' site. That's right, gorgeous models aren't pretty enough for the cosmetics companies. Let's just sit down, breathe into a brown paper bag and gather our scattered thoughts. Ever wonder why you, a confident, brazen, fun-loving Doll occasionally feels the need to run out and buy that $27 brown funny bunny lip gloss, convinced it will revolutionize your sex life, career, thigh circumference and bizarre affinity for Little House on the Prairie reruns? Wonder no more, my pets.

5. Dove's Fake RealOh, you pained me with this one, Dove. You always seemed so innocent ... so virginal ... 99 and 44/100 percent pure! When you put out that whole "Model Evolution With Makeup and Photoshop" video, I did something I reserve only for videos of Kreepy Kats: I forwarded it with reckless, cackling, soaring abandon. The hubris! Your smugly declared "defiance" of industry "standards" for beauty was more cynical than the norms you claimed to oppose. Dove's campaign for "real" beauty was as digitally touched-up and manipulated as all of the other cosmetic company ads out there.

4. Non-honkies need not apply (foundation)
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that most mainstream companies offer a huge variety of foundation color options for women--as long as they're white. All you need is a set of working peepers and access to a drugstore make-up aisle: for skin tones in the palest ivory to barely-umber range, there are zillions of foundations, powders, blushes and eye-shadows to choose from. Barely-umber to ebony, not so much. Most options (the number of choices are skimpy to begin with) are either too peachy or too coral. The best bet for women of color: Bobbi Brown, Cover Girl's Queen Collection and Mac.

3. Skin WhiteningSkin whitening products are not analogous to self-tanners--you can (if you're not butt-white like me) actually become tan naturally. You can't whiten your skin naturally, and the painful socio-political implications of skin whitening go way beyond the (still depressing) baggage involved in the whole "make me look just a bit more like Barbie in one easy step" tanning cream rigmarole. The worst offender: Fair & Flawless, a company that promises to "Lighten with confidence" for "skin that glows with that kiss of color you desire all over your pretty self" ... "imagine ... more sensual skin in as little as five days." Right. Because light skin = sexy.

2. Anal and Vaginal Bleaching
You know, cuz women don't have enough hang-ups as it is. In addition to shaving, waxing, trimming and plucking "down there," now we're being told to bleach our unsightly nether regions. Because they're dirty! Dirty, I tell you, dirty! (Part of me feels like this is just a plot by the religious right to make sure I never have sex again.) Previously relegated to the classy world of porn stars and strippers, now the rest of us can, er, join in the fun with products like South Beach Lightening Gel for Sensitive Areas. Oh. Baby.

1. Toxic Products
And no, I don't just mean "emotionally" or "psychologically" toxic. I mean literally deadly, cancer-causing, IQ-lowering, dangerous-for-pregnant-ladies toxic. Health Care Without Harm found phthalates in more than 70 percent of the products (shampoos, deodorants, hair gels, perfumes) they tested, though phthalates weren't listed in the ingredients label. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found lead in more than 33 of the brand-name lipsticks it tested - lead wasn't on the ingredients list either, natch. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics also recently found that many bath products (61 percent of the ones they tested, some of which are marketed as gentle and natural) for children contain formaldehyde or 1,4 dioxane. Concerned about the makeup you're slathering on your gorgeous mug? Log onto the Cosmetics Database to check out what's in that bottle.

Was it all to much??

Halloween31 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:52:15 -0800

Today was the day!! We got up at 5 in the morning to get ready to head of to Amsterdam for the Winnershow. It takes me some time to get started so when I realized that I had to leave at 6:30 in the morning 5 was the time to set the alarm. Let me tell you I am not a morning person so when I woke up this morning the first thing on my mind was coffee and lots of it. Finally up and running shower and make up and finally getting Lance ready to go and taking all his stuff with me. Car packed, dogs walked and of we went. An hour later we were in Amsterdam and getting pretty excited and I wasn't the only one. Lance was in the car barking like a mad dog, I think to respond to all the barking of the other dogs that were also arriving and getting ready to go. We unpacked the car and started the walk to the exhibition. Getting inside was just as difficult as getting to the venue but finally we were there. I thought it would be a wise idea to put Lance in his bench, but he didn't seem to agree with me. He can howl like a wolf so that was a nice bit of unwanted attention, but when in Rome do as the Romans and just accept it. Tell him off a couple of times and try to explain (yes literally) why he is in there it will just be for a short time. He didn't understand!!
Once inside you go and find the ring you are expected to show your dog. All the other Bedlington's were allready there (wow talk about commitment) some of these people left at 4 or 5 in the morning. Lance's breeder was there as well which helped me a lot with getting him ready. Start combing and getting your starter number and most important of all ..... you guessed it some more coffee!! Once your finally convinced he looks amazing the waiting game starts.
The judge enters the ring and then all the excitement start. Too bad I didn't get a chance to put all that on my camera, but am pretty sure I can update some of my gallery with some help of the other owners. So you will get a chance to see what I am talking about.
After 11 dogs it was finally my turn to enter the ring and my luck for Lance's first big show we had a swedish judge who made the comment of the day for me. He asked my to walk my dog around again, but without the ugly tale...................... That kind of threw me off and to be quite honest I am not a professional handler so did not know what to change in my handling to make it better. Just walked around again and it was bit better he said. He looked and looked and finally sat down for his final review. He graded him a very good which was a bit of downer for me as an excellent was needed so I could go the second round.
On the other hand it was good for Lance. He was clearly not up for the challenge. He was to excited so all the other dogs and people were just to much for him to handle at that moment. We ended up spending the whole day just walking around and looking around and enjoying all the other dogs and toys and so on. This way he got a chance to see all the other dogs and see how it's done. We finally made it out of there at 5:00 pm and having me as the driver didn't help. I so need a navigation system I ended up on the highway heading the wrong way so took me some time to find the right way back . Didn't affect Lance one little bit seeing that he crashed on the seat next to me on his new little bed I bought him today so he was comfy and sleeping. He slept all the way home and arriving home had his dinner and then decided to crash next to me on the couch. I couldn't do another thing tonight then just to sit and vegetate. Just took them for their final walk which was a rainy one so they were finished very quickly, thank goodness.
Today was just not Lance's day. In my book he is still the prettiest dog so no complaining here just need the judges to see what I see. We will start to get ready for December. We have another show in Wychen in the Netherlands for Lance to go to so training starts all over for him to make him stand correctly and now we will have to work on my handling and his gorgeous tail. Hopefully he will get his CAC which means he will be an official Dutch Champion.

Till then!

My dogs

Halloween31 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:17:37 -0800

My first dog was a bedlington terrier named Archibald. i got him for my fourth birthday and after 20 years he passed away. I was blown away. After spending 20 years with a dog he not only becomes your best friend, but also a part of the family. When he died I thought I didn't want another dog for a while, but after 2 years I really really wanted another dog. I looked around and decided to get a fox terrier. I did not know about Cesar Milan back then so I got a high energy dog and was not really prepared for that. Going to pick out Luca was so much fun. Three pups running around in garden and trying to tackle each other when they could. Luca was very calm so when the day came to take him home I though this was going to be easy. The first time I left him alone he broke out of the bench and decided to destroy every shoe he could find. He is a master in getting all the insides out. You do learn to clean up everything this way. Come christmas Luca thought that the gifts under the tree were also meant for him. He wanted to beautify himself and unwrapped the bodylotion. Bit the tube so that all the lotion came out. He smelled great for weeks. He is also a big fan of lipgloss and especially if it's in a little case or tin. He can open up the tin or case and just lick all the gloss out. Luca is very high energy and extremely protective of me which means no other dogs are allowed near me which is quite a challenge when you take him out for walks.
After 4 years I was still in love with the breed of bedlington so started looking around and found a breeder. I was in luck, she was just about to have a litter so I got put on a waiting list. In January she called me and had the litter and another stroke of luck there was a puppy there for me. After the pups were 4 weeks I could come and visit them so that afternoon I was surrounded by 4 beautiful puppy's who were trying to get my attention. I had the choice between two males. I chose Lance, he was the smallest and the names together were just so cute. Now with bedlingtons there is not much difference between them they are almost all the same in temper. Always very happy and calm. They can get over excited, but that usually happens once a day with what I call crazy 5 minutes. He just runs around the house and jumps from couch to couch barks and ends up on the bed just spinning and barking trying to dig his way to china.
Bringing Lance home was a bit of a task. I took Luca for a long walk trying to lower his energy and then introduce him to Lance. In the beginning he thought Lance was toy so he was very confused when he started to see that Lance was doing things on his own. The first months I had to keep an eye on both of them. Luca weighs 12 kilo and Lance back then was just 2 kilo. Next to that Luca can be a bit clumsy and in your face so when he saw Lance he didn't really get that you need to be gentle with a puppy. For a split second i thought it wouldn't work out, but one night i had some people over to come and see the new baby and Lance wasn't having any fun so after a while he made sure to let us know that he didn't wanted to be held anymore. Luca stepped up to the plate. He started checking Lance out to see if he was ok. After that they were perfect together.
Now we're nearly 3 years later now and both are thick as thieves. The only difference is when I go out and have to leave the dogs behind for a couple of hours Luca still goes on the rampage and tries to find things he can destroy and Lance just curls up on his comfy chair and relaxes. He falls asleep and when I come home I have the best of both worlds. Luca jumps up and down behind the door (think doctor doolittle) and Lance takes at least 5 minutes before he comes and looks for you stretching out and still a bit sleepy.
I have my high energy dog and my mellowed out one and both of them together work great!!

Dog Gathers Clues to Find Family

stephley — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:05:53 -0700

Over the last 20 years, the Love Me Tender animal rescue in central Tennessee has rounded up more than 1,000 abandoned dogs. And although most are timid and untrusting, CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports, one Rottweiler named Ella was notably different.

"I could just tell right away she was somebody's baby. She just didn't act like a stray dog to me," said Kathy Wilkes-Myers, who found the dog a few months ago.

Ella was emaciated and drinking from a drainage ditch along an empty stretch of highway. Kathy says it's typical for people to dump unwanted pets in the middle of nowhere - but again, the dog's demeanor convinced her there was more to the story. So she did some detective work, and what she found is a heart-wrenching tale of unending loyalty.

"She was hoping her family could come back. But they couldn't. They couldn't come back. It just breaks your heart," said Kathy.

Kathy found the first clues to this mystery - broken glass and tail lights - right near where she found the dog.

And just down from there, she found a second set of even more intriguing clues: personal items gathered up. By the dog, she assumed.

"It was like she was sleeping with them - or waiting with them," Kathy said.

She took a picture with her cell phone and then gathered the items. They were mostly random, personal things - toothbrush, comb, razor, a candle that said Michelle, but nothing that would explain anything - although now, she did have a hunch.

Kathy remembered two weeks earlier she'd driven by an accident on the same stretch of highway. She remembered because it was such a horrible crash. A single car had flipped over and landed on the side of the road, at just about the same spot where she found the dog.

Based on what she saw that day, Kathy figured there was no way a person could have survived, but what about a dog? So she called the highway patrol.

"She gave me the mom's name and the dad's name and the mom's name was Michelle. And I thought, 'Oh my God, this is their dog," she said.

Thrown from the car, rescue crews never saw the dog. She spent 13 days scavenging for food along the highway - and 13 nights bedding down with whatever she could find that smelled like her lost family.

"That's the last spot she saw her family and she was going to stay there," Kathy said.

Kathy figured it all out. But fortunately, she got one thing very wrong. Someone did survive the crash. In face, all five family members survived.

"I'm lucky to be sitting here with my family," said Joe Kelly, the family's father.

After two weeks believing that their dog, Ella, had died, the family of Joe and Michelle Kelly got the most wonderful, slobbery surprise of their lives.

For the first time since the accident, the Kelly's had a good reason to cry -all thanks to a dog who refused to forget her family - and the stranger who refused to take lost for answer.

Unfortunately, it was a bittersweet reunion because of the accident and the medical expenses, the Kelly family has had to temporarily relocate to a place that doesn't allow dogs.

The good news is, Kathy has promised to hold onto Ella for as long as the Kelleys need to get back on their feet.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/assignment_america/main5347232...

Charlie Bewley Webchat with UK's Sugar Magazine

athena4rob — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:05:29 -0700

EmmaV Hey Charlie !

Heya everyone - apologies for my tardinesss.... i can be a real tard sometimes

boosh_fan What's you're favourite thing about being part of the Twilight Saga

Ok BOOSH FAN - the best thing about being in Twilight is being part of something so huge... such a phenomenon. New Moon is set to come out on 20.11.09 and the crazy thing is, that it is only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.......

m3lzwahTBI Hi Charlie, what's it like to have ton's of websites online showing you support? And what do you think of this sudden explosion?

I am massively humbled for all the blind faith people are showing towards me given that I haven't been in anything as yet - but i think that those fans who have met me, understand that i am going to bring my own energy and an imitible take on this wonderful Demetri character - and that I have done a great job. Hence the level of support ahead of the New Moon release

pinkpunk83 which is your favorite place you visited?

Montepulciano was a thrill - but New Zealand, Rome, Ibiza and Whistler are my favs so far

Laura_H Was it strange to film New Moon and the Eclipse so close together? Did it make it easier to get back into character?

I really haven't got out of character since I started to shoot... i have huge seperation issues between myself and Demetri - I think i will always be a Demetri.

linamallette What was the weirdest Halloween costume you ever wore?

Achilles.... long story

linamallette Team Edward or Jacob?

Jake

jade how are you liking hollywood?>

I love Hollywood - the energy is just so electric - you realise you are home there.

boosh_fan Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?

vanilla, of course

clare Hey Charlie are you enjoying your time in the UK?

always fun being back - mixed with huge anxiety from seeing 1,000 people in the space of 4 days

EmmaB1995 Hey. You look quite evil as Demitri – how much make-up did you have to wear for filming? Love Emma x V

I look evil, really? hmmm.... i thought i was being rather unevil! I am arrogantly dangerous which comes accross as charming... so WATCHOUT

Emily Do you prefer being a good guy or a bad guy in films?

Bad guy - way more freedom because no one is expecting anything of you apart from being bad.

Tralala Hey Charlie, I can't find your date of birth on google, how old are you?

I can't remember. I think I'm 13.

Saywill Hi Charlie! You're amazing! Do you have any myspace account or you have just a twitter one? Hope you'll return to Italy soon
@alchemission i love italy. love italians

BethMerryweather_-_Bewley_Fan_ hey charlie. i just wanna ask - were the red contacts the volturi had to wear annoying? x x

no i would demand to keep wearing them thru lunch etc because i loved the look so much

boosh_fan Would you ever want to live in scotland?

Emily I love acting, but not sure about taking oon as a career, do you recommend it?

just joking... i'm half scottish (lie) - and i love scottish people and smoked salmon (truth)

bev will you marry me?

sure.

hannaBBDU What do you think about the sudden explosion of support for yourself online? Does it ever worry you at all that the paps will eventually become so invasive that you'll never have privacy again?

not with BBDU on my side - supermassivecrashtackles!!! www.teambewleyinternational.com PLUGGGGGGG!!!!

Danielle Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

mars... i have no idea. anywhere and everywhere

babyfeert ::ninja do you think you are anything like your character in new moon?

demetri is a magnification of my current self

mandymallette Favourite Twilight cast member?

cam bright

DaniG_ Have you always wanted to be an actor? and how did you get into it???

no i only realised that acting was the obvious career in life 4 years ago........ if you wanna find the back door, it's in canada

Amanda Have you seen New Moon yet?

negative ghostrider

Em. Are Rob and Kristin really together?

i don't care

m3lzwahTBI What is the best thing you've been given by a fan?

a marzipan bunny... which i devoured.

BabyBubbles do you prefer British or American girls?

i prefer girls with disproportionately large heads

sarah_81 ::laugh a Volturi stuck in London traffic it's funny!

you laugh....

Kalina_Katerina Hi.Charlie!I'm from Russia, so i'm sorry for my English ))

it's ok.... everyone is from somewhere.

m3lzwahTBI What is your favourite song at the moment? that you can listen to on repeat constantly and not get sick of it??

little boots - tiesto remix of remedy

Oksana Hey Charlie! You're so nice with fans. Are you somtimes bother with them? Hm... with us

i love fans - you can crowd-surf them

Danielle What are some of your favorite Books, Movies and Bands/Artists?

tiesto - music alchemist - book fight club - movie BOOM

Laurenbaybee Do you like being in england

sort of.

Laurenbaybee are you single?!

i am reaaaaally single. so so single.

mandymallette What do you like better, sun or rain?

snow

Hayley_Williams_Fan Who would you hang out with in a break?

myself

linamallette Did you like Twilight before you were hired to be Demetri? (Be Honest!)

yes - i am secretly a goth.

becca_-_london Whats your next project ?

Light Run

jude17 What's your fav book in the Twilight Saga?

liking New Moon - out on 20.11.09 Girls AND boys - you have to see this

Amanda Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

ooo'er

bev whats the most outrageous thing you've ever done?

how long you got?

nessaf Have you always been handsome?

no - 17 yrs of rugby sorted my face out.

BethMerryweather are you aware of how many people fancy you? x

no, how many?

Cammomile Do you love ice-cream?)))))

COWS ice cream ONLY

bev why is your twitter username alchemission?

Alchemist + MIssion

angelgal if you could bring back a moment in the past what would it be and why?

no regrets. ever. would never have ended up in this chatroom if everything hadn't happened when they did....

linamallette How have you handled the insane amount of media and popularity that comes from being in Twilight?

i'm an expert juggler

Shraddha How has being in New Moon changed your life?

i can now life permanently in my dreams.

queensarcasm Have you had any crazy fan experiences yet?

One word - Montepulciano, Italy.

mandymallette If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?

Fliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

shakeitval Have you been working on anything since New Moon?

greasing up my representation infrastructure

bethanwiltshire Who is your best friend?

the other me

Nickichicken81 On a more serious note....... do you have any special talents, or a party trick, that we wouldn't necessarily know about? From Nicki x

i can do a flawless dolphin impression

mandymallette Favourite and least favourite subjects in school?

PE. least.... hymn practise

m3lzwahTBI What is your favourite novel?

Dice Man

LUCY I'm Team Demetri.

Love you work

mandymallette Celebrity crush?

Dan cudmore

sasaa aaaw your anwers are a bit random,, are you tired? xx
no, i'm not drunk either

mandymallette do you believe the world will end in 2012

meh

ericafornara_ I have the flowers that you thrown in montepulciano to fans...you're so sweet!!!!when you'll come back in italy?

nice!!!

bev when was the last time you got starstruck?

heath ledger

Katie_andhearts hey Charlie me and my friend Chelsea met you in September (we were your 'stalkers') just wanna saw your awsome!!! if you had to pick a team of twilight characters to save the world who would you choose?

Sorry, I'm a Spurs fan

NewMoon Are you a dog or cat person?

Cat - an ADD house cat like Demetri

LUCY Do you miss living in London?

i have never lived here

athena Was it hard to bond with the cast as a newcomer?

I would love to be the next James Bond.

missmartyr What was it like to go from shooting more independent films to a big blockbuster like New Moon?

A giant leap for mankind.... Crazyness tbh - it's been so much fun and I can't wait for the movie to come out in 3 weeks... I have to head out into the wonderful London traffic right now to another interview with some Irish guys - back to me roots!!! I'm so excited for the next few weeks. We have a lot in common you and I... T'raar chook. Love Charlie

I was actually really looking forward to this webchat but of course, none of my awesome questions were picked except for one and he didn't even give a coherent response:( Anyways, what do you guys think of Charlie Bewley? I just thought he came across as arrogant and I was really insulted by this, he implied that people who like Twilight are goths?!I don't know, maybe he was just trying really hard to be funny but he really pissed me off

Want to own more than 3 cats? Get a license

starangel82 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:20:18 -0800

How much feline is too much feline in the town of Dudley, Mass.?

The answer: If you have four of the furry four-legged friends without a special license, you've gone too far.

The town made it illegal this week to own more than three cats without getting a $50 residential kennel license. Voters at a town meeting added language to a town bylaw that makes it illegal to own more than three cats without the special license.

The change came in response to a neighborhood feud over the 15 cats owned by Mary Ellen Richards.

The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester reported that one neighbor claimed the cats have ruined his yard. Another neighbor alleged that her 2-year-old daughter contracted Coxsackie virus, also known as hand-foot-and-mouth disease, from a toy or ball that likely came into contact with cat feces.

Richards said all the cats in her care have received veterinary care and are up to date on all their shots. She works with the organization Willy’s Kitty Angels Rescue, which traps feral and stray cats to control the population. Richards takes cats to free clinics to have them spayed or neutered and helps them find foster homes in other towns.

'Worst thing in my life to happen'
The town of Dudley has been fining Richards $100 a day for keeping more than three cats at her home, which she has owned since 1997. She recently put her home up for sale, saying she plans to move to a "more cat-friendly community."

"This is the worst thing in my life to happen, this whole thing," she told the Telegram & Gazette.

On the newspaper's Web site, readers' reactions to the news of the new feline limits ranged from enthusiastic approval to scathing ridicule.

"When will we need licenses to have more than three children?" wrote a reader who identified herself as Cat Mommy. "This is stupid. My cats live inside and don't bother anyone. Hope they can sleep at night knowing that some lovely cats will be put to sleep or left outside in the cold now. Shame."

Another reader who supports the new limits wrote: "I fully agree with them having to get a kennel license to have more then three cats. I currently have more then three dogs and in my town I have to have a kennel license for that so why should cats be any different. Especially when cats are allowed to roam free and dogs have to be leashed."

And a reader dubbed "vinca" had this to say: "Once Mary Ellen Richards leaves your town, I seriously doubt anyone will be picking up where she left off regarding trying to manage the feral cat population. Your town will be come overrun with feral cats, which you will (have) brought down on yourselves!!!"

Source: MSNBC

poted on 4 sites.

Grandpa — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:07:52 -0700

Michael Yon

Online Magazine

Home Michael's Dispatches Precision Voting

Precision Voting

31 August 2009Helmand Province, Afghanistan
The historical Afghan elections scheduled for 20 August were days away. While the west mostly continued to vote for Afghanistan, the big question was, “Will Afghanistan vote for itself?”
The latest media wave splashed into the main voting centers in places like Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Lashkar Gah. The larger cities only account for perhaps 20% of the Afghan population. Whereas the easy and obvious stories are in the cities, a crucial and larger dimension-the other 80%-would unfold in the boonies. Most Afghans would have no chance to vote.

The election was to be run by Afghans. In theory and in practice this would be a recipe for disaster. The strategic thinkers cannot be faulted for this; after nearly eight years of war, if the west were still running the elections, the elections and government would be a failure to begin with. By comparison, the Iraqi elections on 30 January 2005 (less than two years after invasion) were run mostly by Iraqis. In the voting of October and December of that same year, Iraqis had two more runs at the ballots, which were increasingly successful. Afghanistan, however, is different. This would be only the second election in history.
There are no good choices here. Either we run the elections and the central government and in doing so undermine the same central government we are investing in, or we allow that central government to run the elections and probably watch it undermine itself. But who knows?

We need more troops. The leadership tells us that the Taliban and associated groups control only small parts of the country. Yet enemy influence is growing, and so far, despite that we have made progress on some fronts, our own influence is diminishing. For example, an excellent British infantry unit that I embedded with in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the “2 Rifles,” is staked out in the “Green Zone” around the Helmand River. HQ for 2 Rifles is at FOB Jackson near the center of the map above. There are several satellite FOBs and Patrol Bases, each of which is essentially cut off from the outside world other than by helicopter or major ground resupply efforts (which only take place about once a month). The latest ground resupply effort from Camp Bastion resulted in much fighting. The troops up at Kajaki Dam are surrounded by the enemy, which has dug itself into actual “FLETs.” FLET is military-speak for “Forward Line of Enemy Troops.” In other words, the enemy is not hiding, but they are in trenches, bunkers and fighting positions that extend into depth. The enemy owns the terrain.
The British are protecting Kajaki Dam but otherwise it’s just a big fight and no progress is being made. The turbine delivery to the dam, which I wrote about last year, was a tremendous success. Efforts to get the turbine online have been an equally tremendous failure. Bottom line: the project to restore the electrical capacity from Kajaki Dam is failing and likely will require multi-national intervention to bring it online and to push back the enemy.
We need more helicopters. Enemy control of the terrain is so complete in the area between Sangin and Kajaki that when my embed was to switch from FOB Jackson to FOB Inkerman-only seven kilometers (about four miles) away-we could not walk or drive from Jackson to Inkerman. Routes are deemed too dangerous. Helicopter lift was required. The helicopter shortage is causing crippling delays in troop movements. It’s common to see a soldier waiting ten days for a simple flight. When my embed was to move the four miles from Jackson to Inkerman, a scheduled helicopter picked me up at Jackson and flew probably eighty miles to places like Lashkar Gah, and finally set down at Camp Bastion. The helicopter journey from Jackson began on 12 August and ended at Inkerman on the 17th. About five days was spent-along with many thousands of dollars in helicopter time-to travel four miles. Even Generals can have difficulty scheduling flights. Interestingly, when I talk with the folks who reserve helicopter space, they say the Generals are generally easy-going about the lack of a seat, but that Colonels often become irate.

A helicopter finally was heading from Camp Bastion to FOB Inkerman, which is cut off from its own headquarters at FOB Jackson only four miles away. The war and fighting can vary dramatically around Afghanistan. In Sangin, the enemy uses mostly fertilizer bombs, which, along with normal leave schedules, has rapidly attrited the battalion to the point that replacements have been sent. Conversely, four miles away at Inkerman, it’s still mostly a gunfight, though the use of bombs is increasing. Inkerman sits on the desert side of “highway” 611 that goes from Highway 1 (the “Ring Road”) to Kajaki. The 611 marks the border between the deadly Green Zone and the desert. The road is almost completely controlled by the enemy. Only tiny patches of the 611 are under serious NATO/ISAF influence. Some will take issue with this statement; if they claim to be in control, they should readily accept the challenge to drive in an unarmored car in those areas they claim to control.

To help avoid being shot down, the helicopter approaches Inkerman from the desert side. (In fact, two days later on the 19th, a similar helicopter was shot down near here.) The Afghan road system is the human equivalent of ant trails. After thousands of years of living here, the Afghans have not cracked the code on road building. Many people will say that geography has been cruel to the Afghans, and that the mountainous, landlocked terrain is the problem. Yet this does not explain away the success of landlocked, mountainous countries such as Austria and Switzerland, nor does access to the sea guarantee anything more than saltwater. The meek have inherited this plot of earth because the strong don’t want it enough to take it.

Where liquid water can be found, so too can Afghans.

Some people point back to the “good-old days” in Afghanistan, when hippies could smoke hash and swim naked in the streams. The good old days in Afghanistan did not leave much evidence of progress in the form of roads, architecture or written history.

The stories of foreign invaders do not explain away the great walls built around nearly every home and every mind. The problem is not the terrain. The problem is not that Americans and others supported the Mujahadin when they fought the Soviets. The problem is not the artificial boundaries penciled in by the British all over Asia and the Middle East. The people are backwards and many want it that way. You can fly over a compound in the desert, miles from the next compound, and still it will have walls. Afghanistan is the land of a million Alamos.

As the pilot brought the helicopter to the yellow pin called FOB Inkerman, an Afghan man had parked his car just near the front of the base on the 611. He took out a shovel and began digging, hidden by his car, he thought, at a spot where a bomb had recently detonated. A British soldier fired a warning shot and the man drove away. An Apache helicopter eventually attacked the car out in the desert. There he was, just within direct view of Inkerman, digging in a bomb. This is typical of the larger situation.

Helicopter landing site at FOB Inkerman.

Two platoons are stationed at Inkerman; meaning only one platoon at a time can leave the base. Using one platoon to cover this area is like trying to water a football pitch with a drop of water. The enemy fights just outside the base, even planting IEDs in view of the guard towers. On my first morning at Inkerman, one of the platoons was outside the wire in the corn. They came across tripwires and other booby traps. The enemy was so close that soldiers could hear the enemies’ own radios crackling nearby in the corn. A firefight ensued. Machine guns and mortars were fired. The white smoke is a screen launched by the mortars to help the infantry platoon break contact. There are too few troops to fix the enemy and prosecute attacks.

Cleaning the mortar tubes after the fire mission.

Restacking unfired mortar bombs.

The platoon comes back to base. Amazingly, despite the dire situation, British morale is high. My respect for the men and women here only grows by the day.

The soldiers keep streaming in from the mission. The Pentagon and British MoD spin lies (though I have found Secretary Gates talks straight), but veins of pure truth can be found right here with these soldiers. The Pentagon and MoD as a whole cannot be trusted because they are the average of their parts. There are individual officers and NCOs among the U.S. and U.K. who have always been blunt and honest with me. Among the higher ranking, Petraeus and Mellinger come to mind, but for day-to-day realities this is where it’s at. Out here. Nothing coming from Kabul, London, or Washington should be trusted.

A recent controversy was stirred in the U.K. by my photos of British soldiers in the GZ (Green Zone) wearing brown uniforms. There is some truth to the controversy, but in fairness to the British MoD, only part of the battles take place in the GZ. Much of the fighting takes place in the deserts. Even individual missions often alternate between the Green Zone and the Brown Zone, and so neither green nor brown is perfect. The British SAS and American special operations forces are using camouflage that is more suitable for both environments. It would cost very little to outfit these soldiers in better camouflage.

These men and women will never get the credit they deserve.

The women are medics, and they brave the combat just like the infantry soldiers. But again, they will never get the credit they deserve, and so we joked that they should just let people think they spent the entire tour at Camp Bastion. Who would believe that they were out there in the thick of it? On this day, an Afghan man showed one of these medics a rash on his arms, but the medic carried no such medicines out into the fighting. When medic Evans said she had no medicine, a young man picked up a big stone and was preparing to hit her. Rhian instantly pointed the rifle at the man who put down the rock.

Still streaming in.

Another day in the war.

Finally they are all in the gate and nobody is shot or blown up this time, and I say a quiet thank you for bringing them back in one piece.

After each mission soldiers drop gear and go immediately into a debriefing to discuss what has occurred. They discuss things that were done well, things that were done not so well, and there is discussion about how to improve before the next fight. They talk about the performance of the enemy and any good moves or bad tactics used by the enemy. They talk about any gear that may have failed or performed well.

The soldiers knew they were doing well and I knew it because they invited me on more missions than I could possibly go on while still being able to write.

Some things could have been done better-always the case even among the most experienced soldiers-so the soldiers talked it through, and after it was over they headed back to re-issue new ammo, clean weapons, recharge batteries for various gear, and prep for combat on a moment’s notice.

About three hours after the firefight, an Afghan man was brought to FOB Inkerman with the note above. The note was signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, who the British said is a doctor for the Taliban. (Not necessarily a “Taliban doctor,” but someone who definitely treats Taliban.) The Brits said that Dr. Baqi gets medical supplies from the ICRC. The referral says the patient was “SHOUTED BY GUN,” and judging by the small bullet hole it might well have been a British gun.
Normally, a correspondent would not be permitted to publish photos of a captured enemy (while embedded with British or U.S. forces), but this guy was not captured and he was not being detained. He was not officially deemed the “enemy,” despite that his hands were soft and he likely was hit during that firefight.

The medical team: Nikole Cunningham, Rhian Evans, Jonathan Richards, Daniel Yeoman, all led by Dr. Gabriel Shaya, going to work on the suspected Taliban. His only real problem seems to be the bullet hole (entry and exit) in the abdomen. Luckily for him, he seems to have been hit by the same bullets used in American and British assault rifles (5.56mm), which lack the power to make the definitive hits caused by more powerful weapons. The man was alert throughout.
Dr. Shaya tries to find a vein, but ends up drilling into the guy’s right tibia to deliver fluids. This is Dr. Shaya’s first combat deployment. On August 2nd the monthly convoy was moving up from Camp Bastion to resupply bases that no longer see fresh apples, fresh milk, or fresh anything. The convoy had been harassed along the way and the enemy already knows the expected convoy routine, so they were busy with ambushes. When the convoy passed by FOB Inkerman, Captain Shaya was on QRF (Quick Reaction Force) duty. A nearby IED strike caused a casualty just near the base. Captain Shaya loaded up with only two other soldiers into the Pinzgauer vehicle. Darkness was falling when the total of three soldiers launched out of Inkerman and Dr. Shaya thought it was exciting to be on his first mission, but he also knew the dangers, having worked for three weeks at the Camp Bastion trauma center. Shaya was sitting in the back and realized that if the Pinzgauer got hit with an IED, he might break his neck on the partial ceiling, so he shifted to sit under the open space. He began to ready his gear to accept the casualty, when about five minutes into his first mission, BOOM!, the front of the vehicle apparently hit a pressure plate.
The explosion did not seem loud to Dr. Shaya. Dust and smoke filled the darkening air as the vehicle came to a stop, and part of the truck fell onto Shaya. His arms and legs were still attached but due to a partition he could not see either man in the front. He shouted to them and they both responded and both were wounded. The easiest, quickest way to the front was to crawl out the back and open the driver and passenger doors, but there might be IEDs because the enemy often plants bombs in clusters. Dr. Shaya did not want to walk on the road until it had been cleared. They were alone in the dark. He didn’t even want to turn on his red flashlight. He could climb over the top but did not want to be an obvious target, so he shouted to the front for them to use the radio to call for help. The truck had no radio.
Dr. Shaya climbed over top to the front, but didn’t want to turn on his light. Soon he saw a dim light approaching from down the road and he felt anxious. As the light grew closer and closer the anxiety increased, and it came closer still until he saw it was the company Sergeant Major and some soldiers. The anxiety evaporated into profound relief. The soldiers opened the doors and Dr. Shaya saw that the driver’s lower right leg was gone, while the dashboard had crushed in on the passenger who was in great pain. The driver was trapped by the steering wheel, and while soldiers tried to pull him out, Dr. Shaya, now between the driver and the passenger, tried to lift up the steering wheel and finally they got him out to a stretcher where Dr. Shaya had to screw into his tibia to administer fluids. Dr. Shaya thought the driver was losing his will, and so he gave a pep talk and tried to keep him in the fight. The other patient was screaming as he was pulled from the vehicle. He was a large man and difficult to move, and continued to scream with pain as he was put onto a stretcher and the IV was inserted. Three morphine doses later he was still in great pain due to a severely fractured femur, and as they drove in another vehicle back to base he screamed on the bumpy road. Dr. Shaya was painfully honest with his recounting, saying that during the stress of his first combat, he had forgotten his weapon and medical bag on the damaged vehicle. He was upset with himself that he could not administer more because of that oversight. “The journey back seemed to take an eternity,” he said. The British MERT helicopter was circling in the darkness overhead and when it landed at Inkerman, he ran off, helping with the stretcher, when he should have been preserving his strength for other casualties.
Dr. Shaya told me that when he returned to the medical tent, “When I got back, I was shattered (exhausted) and shaken.” He began to pack another medical kit in case he had to crash out the gate on his second mission, yet now soldiers were arriving for treatment after the initial blast that wounded the first soldier, and only when all of that was done could Dr. Shaya relax, and begin to feel the pain from his own throbbing, bleeding elbow.
Combat is the cruelest teacher. Dr. Shaya, who makes no pretense of being a combat soldier, had been five minutes into his first mission when suddenly he was alone in the dark with two seriously wounded men.

Dr. Shaya treating the suspected Taliban. Maybe this was the guy who blew up the vehicle.

Soldiers examine the referral note, signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, wherein the suspected doctor of the Taliban describes symptoms.

Backside of the referral note.

Call sign 'Pedro': One of the great untold stories of this war.

The 129th ERQS (Emergency Rescue Squadron), flying a pair of HH-60G Pavehawks, launched from Camp Bastion to retrieve the suspected Taliban who was deemed a “Cat A” casualty. Category A means the patient requires immediate evacuation. Total flight distance (given the route) from Bastion to Inkerman back to Bastion would be about 100 miles.
Among the British combat soldiers in Afghanistan, Pedro is the only thing more popular than mail. When friendly forces are in need, Pedro will come anywhere, anytime, during any weather, and their helicopters have gotten the bulletholes to prove it. The United States Air Force runs the only rescue service that will always be there, no matter what, no matter that there is no moon for flying, or the dust is too heavy for everyone else, or you are in a firefight. American Army helicopters in Afghanistan fly with the red cross on the side. Flying with that symbol makes it illegal for our people to carry weapons. The decision seems ridiculous; the enemy will only use the red cross for an aim point. While the Army flies armed with a red cross, Pedro flies with miniguns. And they bring some of the most highly qualified medics in the entire U.S. military–which is saying a lot. They bring miniguns, and powersaws to cut soldiers out of MRAPs or other twisted hulks, and scuba gear when troops and gear are lost to the water. If our people can manage to get there, Pedro can manage to get them out. Pedro rescues people every single day.

The lead aircraft, Pedro 35, brings two pilots, a gunner, a rescue officer, a flight engineer, and two PJs (elite “rescue specialists”; these men are a story unto themselves).
When Pedro 35 landed at FOB Inkerman, the two PJs along with the rescue officer, Captain Dave Depiazza received the patient while British soldiers brought the suspected Taliban toward Pedro. The PJs like to meet the ground troops outside to make sure the patient is properly categorized, assessed, and loaded. One challenge with some ground troops is that they will rush the helicopter during a “brownout” and start to load the patient feet first (or headfirst), when the PJs might need the patient the other way; the PJs want the head near the lifesaving airway equipment, and since helicopters vary in configuration, the PJs need to take control early to save seconds. They want to spend no more than 30 seconds on a hot landing zone; the aircraft do take hits but they have been lucky so far. (A Pedro from Kandahar Airfield was shot down in July. Luckily all survived and kept doing missions, but the helicopter was ultimately destroyed during a recovery mission that went awry.)

Sometimes Pedro 36 comes in first, but this time Pedro 36 flies top cover while Pedro 35 loads the patient.

Pedro 36 racetracks low watching for ground threats. The door gunners can-and often do-return lethal fire in a couple seconds.

Pedro 36 roars low and then both disappear and head back to Camp Bastion. When the Pedro 35 landed near the Bastion trauma hospital, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman happened to be visiting the hospital as the PJs helped unload the suspected Taliban. (Just the day before, when I had spent some hours with the Pedros before heading back out with British infantry, one of these same PJs said he would clean the operations center for a week if he could meet McCain. I said to him, “Fat chance you’ll get to meet with McCain,” and so imagine the PJ’s surprise when he carried the suspected Taliban into the hospital and accidentally ran into Senators McCain and Lieberman, and shook their hands.)

The war is a busy place and far too much happens out there than can possibly be explained. Llater that night, a platoon launched on a mission to raid several compounds. I was invited on the mission on 18 August but did not go due to the usual writing-crunch and impending elections, and so during breaks I sat in the ops center and listened to the radio calls. The raids unfolded, and after half a night the soldiers brought back six suspects, one of whom had run from the soldiers and urinated on his hands to remove explosives residue. The terrain had been rough and the night was dark and so two soldiers busted their ankles.
Major Ian Moodie, commander of B Coy 2 Rifles, guaranteed me that in the morning there would be a gaggle of locals, including elders, who would arrive to demand release of the prisoners. Major Moodie said this problem is exacerbated by the helicopter shortage; if he could get the prisoners extracted as soon as they were captured, he would be able to say that the prisoners had already been moved and there was nothing he could do, but already in the past he had decided to release prisoners to cool tensions.
Later in the day of 19 August, locals arrived to demand release of the six. All were released except for one, who was finally picked up by a helicopter on the evening of the 19th, the day before the latest historical Afghan elections wherein Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai had reached the showdown to decide who would become the President of one of the most primitive countries on Earth, but one that probably gets more international press and attention than Japan and Germany combined.

As the helicopter lifted off with the prisoner, the JTAC who talked the helicopter in said to me that “Axle” Foley, another JTAC four miles away in Sangin, was about to call in a bomb from a B1. The fighting had begun and it was not even election day. Taliban in the area were threatening people to stay in their compounds and not vote.

On the afternoon of the 19th, before our election-day mission on the 20th, “Snowy” meticulously cleaned every speck of dust off his weapon. He disassembled the magazines, cleaned the springs, and individually cleaned each bullet.

Snowy then counted every last bullet-twice-and I joked that if his weapon failed the next day, cleaning would not be the issue. The weapon was ready, it seemed.... Meanwhile, my BGAN satellite communications gear was malfunctioning on the evening before the election. Hours would be wasted before it was ascertained the satellite gear was officially broken. Murphy’s Law was in effect for all guns and gadgets. I’ve come to a remote base and can report what others are not seeing, and the crucial link was broken at the crucial moment.
At about 2245 a rocket banged and zoomed overhead but missed the base and exploded seconds later somewhere out in the darkness. Orange illumination rounds drifted down nearby and in the far distance, some casting long, flickering shadows. Radio chatter at the ops room said that an SAS (British special forces) helicopter had been shot down north of us and one troop was wounded, and that the enemy was moving toward the crash site which was still occupied by British soldiers. I headed to bed because the mission on election day was likely to include serious fighting. The alarm was set for 0330, but by midnight there had not been time to get a wink. Just after midnight, having seen no less than 10 meteors streak through the darkness above, sleep came. The alarm sounded and I pulled out of the cot, already dressed for the mission, and pulled on the boots in the dark. Sometime around 0400, there was a distant thud as the helicopter that had been shot down was destroyed. (An officer later said that two bombs were used, but I heard only one.)

By 0436, the soldiers were ready to launch on the mission and there was time for a few images on this historic day in the middle of nowhere.

The soldiers had erected a memorial for lost comrades.

Metal detectors and other gear were tested.

It was time.

The mission began.

Suspected bombs were marked along the way. Dozens of them. The metal could be anything from an old bullet to a nail. For years, the enemy has seen us with the metal detectors and so are making bombs with LMC (low metal content).

The soldiers on point with the metal detectors have an incredibly dangerous job. They must watch for all sorts of ambushes, high and low. The enemy uses command wires, pressure pads, trip wires and radio-controlled devices. Some people say the enemy bombs are cowardly, as if we are in a gentlemen’s duel. Others might say IEDs are no more cowardly than our using B-1Bs and A-10s.

Election day begins.

Our mission was to move to an over-watch position to prevent Taliban from harassing voters on their way to Sangin. Most people in Afghanistan would not have a chance to vote even if there were no Taliban. British officers told me that between here and Kajaki, for instance, there were no polling stations.

Fatal funnel: the enemy often plants bombs in walls, or simply throws grenades over top.

Often after ground has been “cleared,” soldiers far down the line get blown to pieces.

Open areas make us less predictable for IED strikes, but now we are extremely vulnerable to machine-gun, RPG fire and other weapons such as B10 rockets. Luckily they are terrible shots with mortars.

If we get ambushed, the only cover is accurate return fire, but the enemy of course tries to hide their firing positions.

Nobody from either side was dead yet. Not here, anyway.

We reached our objective; an occupied compound that British forces had used three times before and this boy was waiting. Afghans often stand with an arm behind their back, or they walk up and down steep mountains in the same fashion.

Nearby compound with a possible IED at the corner.

Several sections occupy different compounds giving us better arcs for mutual fire support.

The opium had already been harvested and the poppy bulbs were hard and dry. How many bulbs does it take to buy one bullet? The drug dealers are getting rich, and so a strong central government is a natural enemy.

As we occupy his home, this Afghan boy plays like he is killing us with a rifle and then wants to see his photo.

The man of the house says he is worried that on our fourth stay, the Taliban will think he is collaborating and will kill him. Asked if he will vote, he says no, and that nobody in this area will vote because the Taliban will kill them.

Climbing around these compounds takes its toll. One can only imagine how many bones are broken. Often, the entrances of the compounds are laced with explosives, so the soldiers blow a “mouse hole” through a wall, or use ladders to scale, and so the enemy now places booby traps atop walls. Again, some people will say it is a “security violation” to say that the enemy places bombs atop walls, as if the enemy doesn’t know that the enemy has placed bombs atop the walls. People will say it’s a security violation to say that we use ladders to climb walls, when every day countless thousands of Afghans see us with ladders. We’ve been fighting this war for nearly eight years. The enemy knows we listen to radios, cell phones, and just about anything else we do. It’s the people at home who do not know. The enemy has learned our tactics and psychology.

Joseph Etchells had been killed nearby almost exactly a month ago, on 19 July. “The Kopp-Etchells Effect” dispatch was written partially in Joe’s memory. Several times, the events of Joseph’s loss were recounted to me, in clear hopes that important details would be told. I said not to worry, it will be told. The missing details were that soldiers had complained about not having enough ladders to scale walls to avoid dangerous compound entrances. During a mission the soldiers needed to get over a wall but were without a ladder, and so Joseph Etchells volunteered to go through the entrance, where he stepped on a pressure plate.

The compound we occupied on election day was littered, partially with batteries. Soldiers do not throw away old batteries, but collect them in boxes because the enemy digs through trash to collect batteries to make bombs, but just as often something like this is benign.

Afghans in this area typically live with their animals.

Many believe that the Pashtun people are one of the lost tribes of Israel. If true, some Taliban might actually be descended from Jews, which would be one of the most severe ironies of humanity. Some branches go off and earn Nobel Prizes and unravel the secrets of the universe while advancing humanity by leaps and bounds, while another turns malignant and doesn’t know how to build a road.

The FST (Fire Support Team) goes into position over-watching a road leading to Sangin. The mission is to prevent any roving bands of Taliban from interrupting voters traveling to Sangin.

The family keeps two myna birds whose wings have been clipped, and the Hazra interpreter tells me the birds can talk. I tell him that birds of similar appearance, also called myna, are sold in America. “What if the bird says, ‘I love Mullah Omar.’” I asked the interpreter. “Then we must shoot it!” he answered.

The heat increases and the soldiers wait.

The first customers arrive. Maybe they are a probe.

The men are searched. If others were planning to come down the road on this day, none do.

A radio call said there was an IED strike nearby, in the area of Patrol Base Wishtan, which would be on or in the area of Pharmacy Road (the subject of the latest dispatch “Bad Medicine.”)
Later we learned that two soldiers were killed at Wishtan: Sergeant Paul McAleese, 29, and Private Jonathan Young, who was 18.
According to the BBC:
They were killed while on a routine foot patrol near the town of Sangin, in Helmand province, on Thursday. Their families have been informed.
Their deaths bring the total number in Afghanistan since 2001 to 206.
Lt Col Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "It is with deep regret that we report the deaths of two soldiers in Helmand Province.
"Our deepest heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to the bereaved family, friends and comrades of these brave soldiers."
The MoD said the deaths were not connected to Thursday's presidential elections in Afghanistan.
Every mission here on the 20th was connected to the elections. The idea that the losses were not connected to the elections seems off, not that it would make a difference to the fallen. Yet the slights and spins, often for no apparent reason (even if not the case here), undermines the messengers.

There would be much fighting around Afghanistan this day.

Men were watching us and roving around at a distance of about 900 meters. Sniper Keiran Jones is told to fire a warning shot.

Fighting was kicking up in the distance, and FOB Inkerman was starting to get attacked. Out in Sangin the fighting would last all day.

Rifleman Keiran Jones keeps his eye on the target while rolling the foam earplugs. The man watching us is wearing a white dishdasha and a white turban.

BAM! Keiran Jones launches a bullet from the .338 rifle, which cracks just a few feet away from the “dicker.” (Watcher.)

Another FST member has already recorded coordinates for targets and is ready to start a fire mission using mortars or the 105mm howitzers.

Rifleman Keiran on the scope. The snipers would fire about half a dozen times this day, and not all were warning shots.

Steady…

BAM. Dust fills the air and reflects off the morning sun.

Re-chamber.

Steady…

BAM. More dust.

The snipers are cleared to kill a man, the same one who has been watching us, as he peeks his turbaned head around a corner about 900m away. The shot is difficult because Keiran is in a tough and painful position to shoot from. I joke that they need to do “sniper yoga” and Jones replies with a chuckle, “No sh*t. It’s a stress position.” Both snipers stayed in positions that were agonizing for their legs and backs. There were no good places to get a relaxed shot.

Keiran Jones aimed for the man’s head and BAM! The supersonic bullet that could kill an elephant raced toward the target.

Keiran was very upset, thinking he may have missed, though others thought he might have hit the man. The shot would have been an easy shot if Kerian were prone, but the muscle stress in the growing heat was adding up.

The snipers stayed for hours up in that sun, sometimes taking alternating breaks, but they were in competition to get the enemy.

Like dueling banjos.

I sat in between them for about 20-30 minutes and all three of us were aching from the positions, though my position was far easier and shaded by one of the snipers.

They stayed at it.

Jones, drenched in sweat, takes a micro-break.

Fighting continued in the distance over in Sangin. We saw bombs drop and the mortars and howitzers were firing dozens and dozens of rounds, while the Apaches were hammering away with their cannons, and launching about 30 rockets through the day.

The compound and our soon-to-be ambush spot.

CPT Ed Addington keeps an eye out. We could hear firefights but other than the snipers peeling off some shots, we were not in contact.

We were not trying to hide. The Brits wanted everyone to know we were there.

A jet drops a bomb in the Green Zone.

Down inside the compound, soldiers began to try to compress themselves into any sliver of shade but the shade kept shrinking. Though we had occupied the compound, soldiers respected the house by staying outside.

The dog looked thirsty but when I tried to give him water, he launched out like the Killer Rabbit on Monthy Python. If not for the rope around his neck, there might have been a death match. The dog seemed completely insane, as if he had been attending al Qaeda seminars. The soldiers couldn’t believe that five minutes later, little Cujo was still viciously growling. I slid the water close enough but by several hours later he still never took a sip.

Medic Nikole Cunningham goes into firefights in the middle of bomb-laced country. Nikole said her family thinks she never goes on missions.

The family was long gone, but two boys came back and fed their grandfather (apparently) who was very old and stayed with us.

The plan was to stay all day, but we were told that by late afternoon, only 245 ballots were cast. And so it was decided that we should head back before dark, which would make it easier for us to avoid IEDs, but more difficult to avoid ambushes from machine guns and RPGs. No matter what you do. . . .

Everybody expected an ambush. The enemy had had most of the day to cook up something.

Off we went, down the middle, taking chances with the machine guns, RPGs and other rockets, but avoiding the more likely IEDs for the first leg.

The Taliban is in complete and uncontested control of the nearby power station. We don’t even have enough soldiers to take and hold the power station, and so the enemy controls the on/off switch, and they charge locals for power. While we generate electricity up at Kajaki, the Taliban makes money off it. It’s no wonder why the Taliban laugh at the idea of negotiating.

The thought went through my head, “If I were the enemy, I would ambush us right. . . . ” ZIP, SNAP, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!
Their machine-gun fire was accurate and we all dove to the ground.

ZIPT! SNAP SNAP! Some bullets hit between this soldier and me.

There’s Snowy, who had cleaned his weapon with surgical care. He had wiped down every bullet and every millimeter of the magazines. His weapon was working just fine. For now.

Sapper Cameron Baldry starts to get up, and I think, “Why is he getting up?” Bullets were snapping by.

The soldiers often complain that when they hit the dirt, some of the bulky radio frequency gear they carry gets in the way of their helmets. When soldiers are down in the dirt they cannot aim their weapons because their faces are stuck in the ground. So Baldry rolled into a sitting position to return fire.

Meanwhile behind me, Snowy’s weapon began to malfunction.
I was making video when a soldier fired a Javelin missile which impacted close to the nearest compound.

This is where untrained fighters usually crack and run away in a jumble. British soldiers, however, are well-trained. While some provided covering fire, others peeled off in an organized fashion.

At this point another Javelin was launched and can barely be seen in this photo.

Impact: I’d never seen a Javelin explode like that. Usually they are like gigantic hand grenades, but this one looked like a bomb from a jet.

What in the world did he hit?

A fireball gathered and left a mushroom cloud.

None of us knew what had been hit, but of course there was speculation that the Javelin had found ammunition or bomb-making material. Maybe a tractor, I thought.

We went to a nearby compound that was empty and I stayed low near the front thinking this was the real ambush and that a cluster of bombs was about to kill half of us.

A soldier dropped his pants to see where he had been hit. Apparently a bullet had sent a rock into his thigh. The fire truly was accurate. We truly were lucky that several of us did not get hit. Meanwhile, other soldiers were checking ammo levels and doing redistribution as needed. After every firefight, the Brits (and Americans) check for wounds, redistribute ammo, and check critical gear. Two or three British soldiers asked if I was okay. Meanwhile, leaders would consult maps, develop SA and figure out what they wanted to do next. It cannot be stressed enough to check your buddies for wounds. Soldiers have often died because in the adrenaline rush and cascade of survival juices, or sometimes simply because they are still fighting, troops don’t realize they are badly wounded, and so they bleed out and die.
Being just a writer, it’s not my domain to intrude, but after every drama I closely watch their uniforms and hands for blood. All the soldiers are well trained, but some are still just teenagers and so you start to feel responsible for the younger ones, especially.

'Did you see those bullets hitting between us!?'

Sapper Cameron Baldry, a twenty-three-year-old soldier from 2 Troop, 11 Field SQN of the 38 Engineer Regiment, pointed at me exclaiming something like, “Did you see those bullets hitting between us! They were striking right between us!” I chuckled, saying yes, it was close, and those guys are good shots but we got lucky. Baldry’s antenna had been shot off but he didn’t get shot.

We headed back to FOB Inkerman, avoiding many markers for potential IEDs.

Aircraft could still be heard, and there was fighting in the distance.

Marker.

Marker.

Fighting continues to our left, but it’s in the far distance. To our right about a thousand meters away someone is using a signal mirror, probably tracking our movements.

The heat and the weight cause some soldiers to pause, and finally we are back on base and somehow got away with no fatalities or even injuries.
There is no telling how much ammo was fired by 2 Rifles elements in Sangin, Wishtan and elsewhere, but the soldiers from Inkerman fired at least 1,100 rounds of 5.56 (rifle and link), 800x 7.62mm, 3x Javelin, 133x 81mm mortar, 172x 105mm howitzer. The Apaches fired about 500x 30mm, 28x flechette rockets and a Hellfire. Someone dropped 2x 500lb bombs and a British Tornado strafed, while American A-10s and Belgian F-16s also joined up.
Too much was going on to keep up, and in fact the base had been hit while we’d been gone, destroying someone’s sleeping space. Soldiers on base had identified at least one firing point and kept eyes on, and we got back just about the time I saw John Loughday and Simon Wagstaff trying to kill someone with a Javelin as the enemy occupied a firing position with what soldiers identified as a B10 rocket laucher. The first Javelin failed, and so they grabbed another and launched. With six seconds of flight time to that target, the single enemy saw the messenger coming his way. Instead of praying he made a run and I heard the explosion. The men radioed down from the tower, “Hello Two Zero this is crow’s nest. Good strike one enemy dead.”
The day kept going but a man can only record so much. My sat-gear was broken and so there was no way to file a detailed account of the election day, which in this area was a failure.

The next morning, on the 21st, ten men showed up to the FOB to talk about the generator that he said had been hit by the Javelin missle during the ambush yesterday. The soldiers had previously been to his compound and confirmed that he had a nice generator, which now apparently was the victim of a Javelin missile and had gone out as a fiery mushroom cloud. As a heat source, it would have stood out as a nice target to lock the Javelin onto. As a side note, the man said they had gone to Sangin to vote and had voted for Karzai. Yet we had watched his compound all day and nobody had left it to travel to Sangin. Furthermore, three days later, I was present when the same platoon occupied a compound of the man wearing blue (above). On the 24th, he said he had not voted. We occupied his compound on the 24th because British soldiers thought it was being used by the enemy. Yet here he is on base on the 21st, part of the party asking for money for the blown-up generator. On the 24th he said he didn’t know any Taliban and had only been here for a month. He spontaneously said he knows that Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but when asked, did not know who Michael Jackson was. On the 21st he was on base, while on the 24th I sat with him for about an hour while we waited for the enemy to square off for a fight. (And there came another firefight.)
On the 21st, the elder said the generator cost about 70,000 Afghanis, or about $1,400, but the most that could be paid from this base was $300. The inanity of it all is difficult to fathom in one sitting. We were taking machine-gun fire, apparently from his compound or that area, but he had no information about the Taliban. Probably because he is Taliban. We blew up his generator and now he wanted to get paid.

Later the evening of the 21st, soldiers held a ceremony for recently lost comrades and the next day they were right back out there in combat.
On the 22nd there was business as usual. A patrol was out on the road and a man was driving toward them on a motorcycle. The daylight was fading and a warning shot was fired but the man kept coming so a soldier went lethal and shot to kill, grazing the man’s arm. The man didn’t realize at first that he had been shot, or where it had come from.

Dr. Shaya and crew treat another gunshot wound on FOB Inkerman.

As with young American soldiers, nobody seems to believe that a man cannot hear a warning shot while he’s riding his motorcyle, or that he can’t see soldiers wearing camouflage during the last rays of daylight. Despite being in countless firefights wherein we often have great difficulty identifying firing positions (such as two days earlier when machine guns were nearly hitting us), many young soldiers think that firing a warning shot is enough. We all know that snipers who are in hiding fire only one shot to avoid conveying their firing position. Warning shots mean nothing to an old man who needs glasses, who is riding a motorcyle at twilight in an area where gunshots are more common than frogs. So a small piece of flesh was stripped from his arm and the man got off light.
The world kept turning and on the 24th “Bad Medicine” was published just after midnight Eastern Standard Time, and that morning before sunrise the soldiers were going on a dangerous mission and I went along. The result was a firefight and much mortar and cannon fire using prox fuses, delay and airbursts into the enemy position. Though we had information that the enemy was trying to get us with IEDs, we escaped getting blown to pieces. When I got back to base, there was a message from British MoD that my embed had been canceled (about one month before we had agreed it would end) without warning. The message and timing were clear enough. “Bad Medicine” was published, and I was out. The soldiers at 2 Rifles were astonished. The MoD gave the reason that it was unfair to the journalists who were clamoring for spots, but my sense was that MoD had created a convenient excuse that was kept in the chamber, and now they had pulled the trigger.
I responded to the MoD:
Thank you for the message.
The precipitous decision by the MoD to cancel my embed after today's dispatch is unfortunate.
The sudden reversal after today's dispatch -- apparently a publication that did not sit well with the MoD -- will cause me significant headaches. As you know, there are many balls in the air, and the MoD has effectively shoved me out of the way.
Please forward to Ltc Richardson that the message was received.
Michael----
And so that was it. My last day with the British 2 Rifles had ended the same as it had ended in Iraq. In combat. I’ll miss the British soldiers. They constitute a truly professional force–if dangerously underresourced. It has been my honor to accompany them in combat. In theory I would do so again anytime, but in practice this will be the last time MoD will have a chance to cut me off in mid-flight, wasting much time and resources that should have been devoted to telling the story. Barring a guarantee from a British General Officer that something like this will never happen again, my days of covering British operations are over.
On Sunday morning, 31 August, the United States Air Force “Pedros” took me on three missions. Please stand by. This is very interesting.