It was way past midnight and we had all thoroughly over-served by the bar-staff at the pre-party for the Traditional Tattoo and World Culture Festival. At this point in our European trip, Marisa and I had gone from tiny airline seat to tiny hotel room to a tinier airline seat to an even tinier hotel room - so we were utterly gobsmacked when we discovered that Matt Black of New Wave Tattoo (London) was staying alone in a three-bedroom suite in our hotel.
It's often said that the United States and the U.K. are "different cultures joined by a common language," but it appears that we share another common element in our trans-Atlantic Venn Diagram: MTV's Cribs.