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Week Five: Scary Monsters, Super Treats A couple of weeks ago an announcer on the Weather Channel enthusiastically noted: "the London version of Hallowe'en is called Guy Fawkes Day, and they actually burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on top of bonfires; I think our own Hallowe'en is much more civilized." Naturally I forgive her of her ignorance of British culture (and the history of Hallowe'en), and I certainly wouldn't expect her to add that this year is the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, but calling American Hallowe'ens civilized? Now that is really taking the candy. Since I arrived here I have been overwhelmed by the amount of costume superstores that spring up magically around every city and town. They sell everything from sexy nurse outifts to Jar-Jar Binks masks, even costumes for your pet dog. People go all out here. Houses are decked with all manner of cobwebs, skeletons, and jack o'lanterns, while gardens are filled with comical tombstones. Grocery stores prepare way in advance for the panic-buying of candy. The TV shows endless repeats of hammy old horror movies for a fortnight beforehand. Hallowe'en is truly one of the big American celebrations: commercial, overblown and utterly saccharine. And I got right into the spirit, eagerly carving my pumpkin and displaying it on the doorstep. I was rather nervous about the impending onslaught of trick-or-treaters, though. Hallowe'en in an American town is spooky enough to anybody who grew up watching Michael Myers hack his way through doors, but I was worried about what would happen to us if we ran out of candy. Would we fall foul of 'tricks'? Now we aren't talking about card tricks here. I had heard that the night before Hallowe'en is sometimes known here as Devil's Night, when youths would routinely smash windows and set fire to things (in my native Burnt Oak that is known simply as Saturday night). The TV spoke of the possibility of having flaming dog-poo left on the doorstep, or being toliet-papered, that is, having your tree or house covered in rolls of Andrex (soft, strong, and very very wrong). What sort of society is this that has bred such an atmosphere of retribution? The whole notion of 'trick-or-treat' is basically extortion - give us sweets, or the porch gets it. I took no chances. We stocked up on candy - little packs of M&Ms, 'fun-size' Snickers bars, that sort of thing (by the way, there's nothing 'fun' about a chocolate bar the size of your big toe). You cannot give them home-made treats such as cookies or apple pie here, nor even fruit. A few years back, there were a few cases of apples being poisoned (surely in the spirit of Snow White?), and razor-blades being inserted into candy. To this day, hospitals all over America offer a free x-ray service on Hallowe'en to check sweets for razors - they really have taken the fun out of the fear factor here, haven't they. Anyway, the trick-or-treaters started knocking as soon as the Sun went down, pint-sized candy-addicts in badly thought-out costumes, most of them Mexican, all of them sugar-crazed. One girl had made no effort at all, dressing in her pyjamas and putting colored glitter on her cheeks. Does that deserve a candy? She had a pillow-case with her, expecting to fill it; to be honest, she looked like she usually did fill it, and empty it just as quickly. But on the whole the children were far more imaginative than the 'bin-liner cloak' witches costumes of my own and many other Brits' childhoods. Thankfully, however, we suffered no 'tricks' (that I know of...), and I still have a few sweets to nibble on. The night of fear is over. Yet there are some, apparently, who feel that it would be better to pretend that Hallowe'en does not exist at all. I don't mean those who turn out the lights, close the blinds and wait for the doorbell to stop ringing. I have been told that there are now many schools which refuse to acknowledge Hallowe'en at all, and have cancelled the costume-wearing traditions seen by many American schoolchildren as a rite of passage. It is now celebrated as 'Harvest Day', and all of the ghosts and scary stories have been removed. Now that is what I call uncivilized. |
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1.11.05 09:36 |
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A Bird in the Hand is Worth Flu in the Bush All we hear about these days is Bird Flu. Ok, it's not all we hear about at all, mostly we hear about yet another bad nomination by Bush, but it's up there. It's the latest disease apparently stamped 'Made In China' that is making Western lips quiver at the word 'pandemic'. 'Epidemic' is no longer sufficient to scare people, it has to be a 'pandemic' or nobody would listen. there is talk of militarily imposing quarantines on affected regions (which means the poor, black or hispanic areas, no doubt). Sixty people dead in Asia, the news says alarmingly. Sixty out of how many billion? It's not like it happened last week or something. More people are dying of AIDS, cholera, flipping just being poor, but we haven't been panicking. Nobody talks about a pandemic of 'poverty'. But we love to blame the Chinese for giving us a scare, don't we. Remember SARS? Wasn't that going to mutate and wipe out humanity? We're still here, with our tanks and our guns and our SUVs, doing a great job of it on our own thank you. So, Bird flu - we have a problem, but I have come up with a solution. Everyone's going to get flu, right? and millions of chickens will have to be slaughtered, right? So let's make a huge stockpile of CHICKEN SOUP! Never mind hoarding millions of dollars worth of medicine which may or may not work. Just follow the old Jewish housewives' example. Nothing better than chicken soup when you've got the flu. I made a big pot last week, just to be on the safe side. And if the pandemic strikes, and looters loot, then I'll be ready with my ladel and my pepper-pots. |
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4.11.05 19:42 |
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Davis So we have moved to Davis...getting online is a bit hard, so my week six entry of 'From the US of Eh' is on hold until tomorrow, or the day after...
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9.11.05 01:14 |
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Week Six: Show Me The Levees Yesterday was California's 'Special Election Day'. Voters went to the polls not to elect a new President or oust an old Governor, but to vote on eight 'Propositions', changes to the state law. Popular referenda are more commonplace here than in the UK, but the advertising campaigns that accompany them are vitriolic to say the least, usually sponsored by special interest groups such as 'parents against Prop 73', with slogans like 'another bad idea from the Governor'. As it turns out, the public turned down all eight measures, leaving Arnie in a bit of a sticky situation. But the problem that is really worrying Sacramento right now is not the seismic events at the ballot box, but the threat of a catastrophic flood caused by unrepaired levees in the wake of the ineviteble Big Earthquake. We have all, after New Orleans, heard about levees. We all know what happens if governments ignore their state of disrepair. Last weekend we moved to Davis, in the greater Sacramento area. Reading the Sunday newspapers, I have discovered that not only is the Sacramento Delta considered one of the most likely places in the US to suffer a massive flood, but that governments do not want to face the problem, the 'big, dark secret that no one wants to talk about' (as a UC Davis geologist has put it). The levees protecting the Delta dams need updating, and fast. Everybody knows that California has long been expecting the 'Big One'. It suffers tiny quakes every single day, but the state is splitting apart, geologically speaking. The Central Valley will eventually become a huge Bay (probably forcing the prices of houses up rather than down). If a large earthquake strikes - it could strike tomorrow, for all we know - it is likely that the levees will fail and FEMA will once more be pulling people from rooftops. And it may not even need to be a quake that triggers it - the Sacramento Bee is equally concerned with the threat of a 'Pineapple Express' storm, presumably from the south. But worse than that, such a catastrophe would destroy the water supply for two-thirds of California's population for anything up to a year. We'd need more than Arnie to get us out of that. So when we moved into our flat (sorry, 'apartment'), I made sure that we were placed on the second floor. When that Big Quake comes, and the floodwaters invade, the roof will be ours! I've already started making my sign; it reads, 'Food, Water and Football Results Urgently Needed!' |
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10.11.05 01:14 |
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Blowin' into the Bay Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla have been visiting the Bay Area. they went up to a little farmers' market at the tiny coastal town of Point Reyes (I've been there) to promote local organic farming. While Northern Californians are pretty left-wing and liberal, they have been going ga-ga over the Royal visit - they 'eat that shit up over here', as my wife would put it. President Bush for one has never visited San Francisco since taking office; he'd hardly be welcomed with open arms. But to his credit he has pledged to assist survivors of Camilla any way he can; apparently he thinks she's a Hurricane. |
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10.11.05 01:21 |
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Week Seven: Murder is Meat When I lived in France there was a restaurant chain called 'Flunch'. I always thought it was a bit dangerous naming your eatery after the noise made by vomit hitting the bottom of a bucket, but then I remembered that the 'Happy Eater' restaurants, which once graced many a dual carriageway roadside across Britain, chose an icon of somebody putting their fingers down their throat as their corporate image. It was a kind of disclaimer, or so they told me as a child when I spilled my insides all over the slide in the play-area. America seems to have also taken the name game seriously. In California there is a chain of fast-food restaurants called 'In-n-out Burger'. As they only serve burgers, I do not go in there, but it's probably just as well. However, my new favourite place in Davis is the little 50's style diner known to locals as 'Murder Burger'. Their tagline reads 'So Good, They're To Die For', and they really are. I had an ostrich burger (while staff made possibly real noises of slaughtering an ostrich in the kitchen) and a huge, ultra-thick peanut-butter milkshake. It was an overwhelming experience. Their title dish is a massive 1lb burger called 'Annihilation', that if I ate red meat I would try, but it would probably kill me. Their sign no longer reads 'Murder Burger', but goes by the moniker 'Redrum Burger'. When they opened a second branch about eight years ago in a different town (one less liberal than Davis), some locals complained about the name, so they held a poll among their faithful customers to change the name. The winner, by a mile, was actually 'Murder Burger', but they went with the runner-up. Of course, nobody in Davis ever calls it 'Redrum'; that would be so, like, not cool. In a world of Taco Bells (read: ambulance sirens) and Burger Kings (read: throne up), Murder Burger sits comfortably, even if the clientele doesn't.
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15.11.05 02:04 |
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Avoiding Any Imperial Entanglements It's very warm in the Sacramento region right now. Despite the high winds which have been pummeling our building, it was actually about 77 degrees Fahrenheit today, which is about, um, in the twenties Celsius (je crois). I am all flummoxed by the Fahrenheit/Celsius thing now. It never bothered me before, but for some reason I have it in my head that it fluctuates, like currency rates. It's the same with the Metric/Imperial systems. "How is the Metre doing against the Yard?" Somebody asked today on Wall Street. As for weights, well forget it. In France I never could tell you how many kilos I weighed, knowing only the imperial 'stone' system, yet here they do not give their weights in stones, but in pounds. And I can never remember how many pounds to a stone, or ounces, or whatever. I can tell you one thing though, with all this junk food here, I need more than a calculator to keep up with how much I'm weighing. And it's Thanksgiving next week. |
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16.11.05 04:12 |
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Harry Potter and the Gobful of Filth..? So, we went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on Saturday night, and it was good. And we had to actually wait in the 'line'. We bought our tickets the night before, because the film was already sold out, but the 'line' is not for tickets, but just to get in. We got there an hour before the film began and it was already around the block. It was like something you see in a Star Wars documentary (well, something I'd see in one, anyway), and I thought those days were over. Certainly in Britain you no longer bust the block just to get in, hell, we have assigned seating, our weather is cold. Not so here, in balmy Davis. The people at the front had comfy-looking blankets and cushions, obviously in for the long haul, just to get that elusive 'best seat'. Of course, where this 'best seat' is I am not sure, maybe it's made of gold or something, I don't know. It's a massive flipping screen, you won't miss anything. Anyway, the film - I mean, movie - was very enjoyable, funny and dark, a lot more 'grown-up' than previous Potter films, and perhaps to its detriment. I did enjoy all the Harry-noticing-girls stuff, but noticed that Hogwarts had become far less of a 'magical' castle and far more a British public school (or 'private' school, as they say here). Voldemort was pretty menacing, though. The big moment for me, though, was not the Dark Lord's return, nor the Dragons, nor even the bone-chilling scenes in the maze during the third task. It was when Ron Weasley swore. I felt a ripple of surprise around the American audience when he told Harry to 'piss-off'. I think people forget that magic wands do not automatically make you Mary Whitehouse (thank fuck). Personally I think there should be more swearing in the Hogwarts world. I also think there should be more foul-language in Star Wars. I always insert 'motherfucker' after all of Mace Windu's lines in Sith - try it, it brings out the Samuel L Jackson in him. Speaking of Sith, I felt that when Palpatine told Anakin to cut off Dooku's head he really should have made it more convincing. For example, when Anakin protested that he shouldn't do it, Palpy should have said, 'Yeah, but he called your mum a slag, he said he downloaded videos of her off the holonet.' And later, when Anakin turns to the dark side, it's kind of, well, tame. Palpy should have said, 'look, Anakin/Vader, I didn't want to tell you, but I overheard Yoda and Mace saying they were gonna get popcorn and watch Obi-Wan's hologram of him and Padme behind your back, all the other Jedi have seen it. Mace was just trying to sell me copy just now, but I said no. Do you want to join the Sith?' |
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22.11.05 09:30 |
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Week Eight: Cold Call California The phone rang yesterday morning, disturbing me from a particularly exciting dream. I was waiting for my warm beer at a work-soiled North London pub, when the entire floor fell away, and all of the pub fell into the Underground. When I told them I didn’t want my beer any more and could I have my money back, they told me I could, but would have to wait while they rebuilt. While I was waiting, the incessant ringing prompted me out of my warm sheets, and I was greeted with a loud and bright southern accent, asking for Mister Scully. I wanted to tell him he was dead and I was his ghost, but he pressed on regardless, claiming to be a ‘courtesy call’ from some Police organization. “Ah jus’ wanna thank y’all for buckling up in your automobiles, sir,” he beamed. “Do what?” I replied, confused, still half-expecting my warm beer refund to arrive any moment. The southern accent continued. “We are offering you the opportunity to make a donation to us, sir, of only fifteen dollars…” I had to ask him to repeat himself several times (a good enough tactic with cold-callers - try it, it is great fun) for, linguist though I am, I just couldn’t understand. Give me ancient Gothic any day. I told him I didn’t want to give him any money. “Well how about ten dollars then?” he retorted. “How about I poo all over your desk?” I retorted bravely, admittedly after I had hung up. The cold-caller problem here is ridiculous. I know it can be bad in Britain, but here it is truly incessant. We never sign up for anything that might mean extra junk emails or phone calls, and I always check the little boxes saying ‘bugger off with your adverts’. It does not stop them getting through to me. The other day one called, from an unnamed company, telling me that “somebody in your family entered our competition and you have WON one of our prizes!” I wanted to say, oh well I’ll give you my date of birth, it was yesterday. The prizes? $50K cash, $25K cash, a car, or an unspecified prize (likely to be a loaf of stale bread). How can they lie so blatantly? Maybe because a lot of people actually do believe all this shit. This is America after all, the land of commercials. If they say it in an advert, it must be true. That is why American Presidents act like they are selling washing powder most of the time (as opposed to ethnic cleansing powder, I suppose…). Nevertheless, I am going to gracefully embrace this culture, and take full advantage. I am going to get a phonebook, and call people randomly, saying “Hiya Mister Aardvark! My name’s Pete calling from Scully Industries and I have selected YOU as our WINNER, all you need to do is send me twenty bucks to go down the pub, no strings attached, once in a lifetime offer!” It’s bound to work at least once, and then I can get that drink. Hopefully the floor will stay where it is this time. |
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22.11.05 21:34 |
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light test
light pen, computer; a self-portrayal of my angst concerning the existence of black widow spiders |
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22.11.05 22:37 |
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