when you're feeling homesick or lonely there's not much better a remedy than pulling out some good music and rocking out.

now, maybe i have a particularly close relationship with my music, but i bet a lot of you out there feel the same way about your music, too, whether it's vinyl, disc, tape or mp3.  there's a lot to be said for jumping around the kitchen by yourself to the beat of Weezer's "Keep Fishin'" or doing the bump down the hallway to Rose Royce's "Car Wash."  i know this because i did both of those things today. 

being a "party of one" all day can be tiring, and the temptation is certainly there to lie on the couch, un-showered, watching back-to-back episodes of The Simple Life and Antiques Roadshow.  but i've found something better to do with my time.  i have the opportunity to crank up the speakers and sing at the top of my lungs and have no one hear me -- much the way a lot of you do in your cars, sitting in traffic and such.  at least that's what i did when i lived in L.A. and drove everywhere...

anyway, since i got to London i have no need for a car (and even if i had one i wouldn't know how to drive it here), but i've got a new place to let it all out:  in my flat, in the middle of the day, sunlight streaming in, with no one to hear me over the noise of the A4 outside.  it's pretty excellent.

being the fish out of water that i am right now, every little bit helps.  if listening to a string of Weezer songs makes me bounce around with a smile on my face, well, GREAT.  and if it inspires me to write a little blog?  even better.

if you're having a crap day, or maybe feeling down in the dumps, i urge you to turn on some music you really dig.  whether you pick something depressing that allows you to properly wallow in your darkness, or play something that makes you feel like you're 21 again, play SOMEthing. 

music is a cool thing -- it stays with you no matter how long you keep it silenced, and it's always right there waiting when you're ready to turn it on again.  it makes you feel good.

And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.


 

 

I would consider this a sort of juxtaposition.  The British would just take a picture of it and laugh.


guess what, America:  the British don't like you.

in the six weeks that i have lived in England i have been presented with anti-American sentiment on England's news, sport commentary, online stories and, subtly, in daily life.  in fact, just this morning a news/talk show referred to Americans as "sycophantic."  what i'm constantly learning is that British people don't like America or Americans.  and the worst part isn't that i am an American -- it's the knowledge that Americans don't sit around England-bashing the way British people do to Americans. 

this makes me wonder, if America is so laughable and ridiculous, why do British people spend their hard-earned (?) money traveling there for their family vacations?  why do so many British people visit and sometimes work in America if they dislike it so much?  surely there are OTHER cheap countries they could go to that would not offend their sensibilities as America does?

i recall that while browsing the digital photos of one of my British wedding guests i saw a long string of pictures he had taken to document unusual things he saw in America.  nothing wrong with that.  he had walked around collecting photos of things he thought mostly silly, and planned to make a calendar out of it.  it wasn't nature or sunsets or architecture, it was old-fashioned mocking photos of local color.  i was pretty insulted by this for a while, but this person is a loved member of my family now, and i have to change my level of sensitivity to the situation.

iit's a real shock to oneself when you spend your whole life thinking other countries are interesting -- spend years hoping you'll get to visit and see other places -- then you GET to one of those places and find that the entire country of people dismiss you because you're American.  and wait -- they don't just dismiss you, they mock you and laugh at you behind your back.  or in front of you -- they don't bother to wait until your back is turned here.

two nights ago i attended an event where i met one half of a couple.  the half i met was Canadian (but had been in England for many years).  the spouse (whom i did not meet) was British.  i entered the meeting with a quiet hope that this couple might become a social outlet in the future -- perhaps friends or whatever.  but as soon as the man referred to his wife as fiercely English, i erased that hope entirely.  the man proceeded to say that his wife had been to America (Orlando, Florida, no less) and that she found it "a good laugh" and "quite funny."

and "funny" isn't exactly a flattering choice of words.  i mean, who measures a whole country by one city -- especially a city everyone knows was founded on the attraction of a child's cartoon mouse?  that would be like me reducing England to double-decker buses and furry-hatted palace guards.  i'm not rejecting the entire United Kingdom just because London's been ugly.

do British people fly all the way to America for a LAUGH?  is the exchange rate SO good for them that they go across the Atlantic Ocean to make FUN of other people and places?  i mean, REALLY.

i have never been the war-loving, gun-toting, flag-waving person that the British seem to think all Americans are, but the longer i watch and listen to what's around me as a resident of London, the more i love where i came from.  it seems the more you make fun of a person, the more they don't want to be around you.  gee, what a revelation.

say what you will about this blog.  it's only my response to what i see and hear in my new home.  i'm not anti-England.  i married a Brit, just for the record.  but that doesn't make things any easier for me.

i wonder:  who in America hurt British nationalism so badly that the British now collectively shit on Americans and American culture as part of their daily life?

it must be hard for the British to breathe with their noses held so high up in the atmosphere.

 

on my first full day alone in London i was nervous, but excited.  having just moved into a brand new flat, i did not yet have internet access, so i stuck my laptop in my bag and set off to walk to the nearest place with a wi-fi zone.  i walked for about 15 minutes and found a Starbucks with "T-Mobile HotSpot" painted on the window.  i bought a lemonade and sat down at a small table to check my email.

well, first of all, in London the wireless internet is not free at Starbucks the way it is in most U.S. states.  you have to enter all of your credit card info and pay for the internet access.  this means you have to pull out your credit card and type your most personal financial information into your computer in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, which isn't the greatest.  but needing to check email, i did this.  and as soon as T-Mobile took my money and billed my credit card, my email page opened.  then about 30 seconds later my entire laptop (a Macbook) shut-down.  i hadn't done anything or clicked anything -- it just shut down.  so i tried to turn it on again, and it would not even power up.  after many failed attempts, i grew increasingly worried.

while i was having trouble with my Mac something happened in Starbucks (i still don't know what) and suddenly there was a crazy woman in her late 40s or 50s ranting and raving at the top of her lungs in front of me.  being in the middle of a city i assumed it was a homeless woman who had wandered into the shop.  but i quickly realized she was just a regular customer who had just had a negative experience at the counter.  she was screaming and cursing at everyone in the place, me being one of those nearest to her, and eventually she stomped out the door. 

i was a little surprised at this.  you might expect that kind of thing in Manhattan or L.A., but i didn't expect it in Hammersmith, England.  however, my attention quickly reverted to my non-working laptop, which had been in perfect working order prior to using the T-Mobile HotSpot service.  the laptop would not even turn on, so i packed it into my bag and headed off to find the grocery store.

as i was walking through the hallway leading up to the grocery store entrance (Sainsbury's in the King Street Mall) i came across another uncomfortable situation.  as i approached the doorway i was face-to-face with two security guards who were dragging a man out of the grocery store on the ground by his arms.  the man was, again, in his late 40s or 50s, and was violently jerking himself all over the ground, shouting at everyone around and cursing and -- wait for it -- SPITTING on anyone he could reach.  i stood there in disbelief watching the spit hit the ground.  this basically normal-looking man writhing on the floor, being dragged bodily from the grocery store, spewing curse words and spitting on people.

welcome to London.

despite the cold welcome, i went into the grocery store where i encountered my first confusing shopping trip.  on my walk back home, broken laptop in tow, i passed two police officers giving a ticket to another man on the sidewalk, presumably for public drunken-ness.  the man was filthy and had a grimy backpack which was unzipped and revealing a collection of over-sized empty beer cans.  very nice neighborhood, i thought, considering this was all happening in the middle of the afternoon a few minutes from my flat.

about a week later i was sick and found myself in the pharmacy waiting for a prescription.  while strolling the aisles i heard a hard, loud crunch and looked to my left.  two men had just crashed to the floor in a fist fight and a third man was diving into the brawl.  i quickly realized that one of the men was a security guard and the other two men were criminals of some kind.  a fourth man jumped in (another store employee) and even a female customer landed on the ground to assist the security guards.  from a few feet away i watched this attack in disbelief again.  the fight went on for what seemed like a very long time as people screamed for police and rushed around the store (a Boots drugstore, for the record).

it took the police an AMAZINGLY long time to respond.  in the time it took i learned that the two men had shoplifted (in fact, i watched one man shake about 12 containers of Bare Minerals makeup out of his pant leg) and then they had attacked the security guard in their attempt to exit the store.  when the "police" arrived they were just two people in plain clothes with handcuffs and walkie-talkies on their belts.  no uniforms, no weapons.  i later learned that this is because handguns are illegal in England, and not even city police carry guns.  i'd never seen such a thing as police with no weapons.  how the hell are they supposed to handle criminals if they have nothing but their bare hands and a set of handcuffs?

this was all new to me, coming from Los Angeles.  but i am not going to get into a political discussion about handgun control here.  i just wanted to point out that "keeping the peace" in London must be incredibly hard without weapons in the hands of law enforcement.  it's almost laughable. 

in the meantime, the big story on the news that week was about the end of a trial involving a "goth" couple who had been randomly attacked, the male having been kicked in the head repeatedly until he was in a coma, and the girlfriend, who, trying to come to his aid, had been killed by being kicked to death on the ground.  the criminals convicted?  two 15- and 16-year-old white boys with no motive except that they didn't like the clothes and hair on the innocent couple passing by.

there seems to be a lot of no-motive youth violence in England.  in fact, knife crime is an almost daily topic of news reports in England because once you ban handguns, the next weapon of choice is a knife.  and this is very scary to me because i think that even a coward can fire a handgun, but it takes a truly violent being to physically stab another human to death.  and stabbings are a fixture on London's evening news.

every city has it's flaws.  i know this very well.  you can't live anywhere in 2008 and expect it to be free of crime.  but i've never lived anywhere that reports the volume of random crime that London does.

and i don't know what's worse:  the high number of crimes and crazy people blanketing my neighborhood, or the public's total indifference to the madness.

it makes me scared to go buy milk in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

and that's not good for anyone.

 

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Opposition Leader David Cameron during PMQ.


in England there isn't a President -- there is a Prime Minister.  and the current Prime Minister (much to many people's chagrin) is Gordon Brown (just so you know).

since i got to England one thing i've noticed is the smaller distance between "the people" and their elected officials, at least compared to America, and i think this is a good thing.

when i watch the news in England the newscasters are frequently reporting a few yards from the actual door of 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister's residence, like The White House in the States).  in America, the best a reporter can do when reporting on the President or politics is stand on the sidewalk outside a tall cast-iron fence, through which you get a view of a giant, green lawn and a blurry bit of the North portico, or South facade, perhaps.  unless of course it's a White House press conference, which is different.  anyway, this kind of proximity to the Prime Minister's front door struck me as pretty amazing.

yesterday i watched my first "Prime Minister's Questions" (aka "PMQ").  once a week the MPs (Members of Parliament, which are kinda like Congress back in the States) gather in the Houses of Parliament with the Prime Minister for a televised, 30-minute session of non-scripted, highly-charged question and answer.  MPs are allowed to ask one direct "question" each to the Prime Minister (with the MPs getting their turn to ask by random selection).  they stand up, say their piece and Gordon Brown has to respond on the spot.  and not in a bull-shitty politician way, either.  in England, if a politician starts bull-shitting, the rest of the room starts booing and groaning quite audibly.  in fact, for an American it's very amusing to see and hear it.  the whole process impresses me because i'm not so sure that today's American politicians could hack that kind of pressure to be well-informed on a wealth of topics and speak so directly off the cuff.

Gordon Brown may not be popular, but the man does answer some questions.  conversely, David Cameron, the stellar leader of the Opposition, knows how to ask them.  nowhere in American politics does the general public get the opportunity to watch such a political ass-kicking contest on TV as the English enjoy with PMQ.

how accessible and accountable British politicians are (even the Prime Minister) compared to the way American politicians are sheltered from the public is something to be considered. 

in America, a member of the general public is almost never given the chance to speak to or ask a direct question of their local politician.  in Britain this opportunity exists almost daily.  politicians do not mince words and they can't hide behind bullshit evasion tactics because here they are put on stage with an audience of constituents who are actually allowed to ask them questions that are not pre-screened or pre-approved (or scripted).  British politicians don't talk bologna generalities because the public will not accept it here. 

there's very little pomp in British politics, it seems (the Royal Family excluded) because unlike America, the politicians seem to stay closely tied to the general public.  i don't know how to properly phrase this whole thing, but once a week i watch local British politicians debate and discuss and field questions from "regular" people on shows called Daily Politics and Question Time -- and this seems infinitely more healthy than the elitist nature of American politicians with their speeches and special security. 

American politicians do not speak clearly and definitively about much -- they prefer tweakable generalities that satisfy the broadest percentage of the American public.  England is different.  in America it seems the only way to win is to evade questions, line the pockets of your peers and keep a shit-eating grin on your face, while in England it takes almost the complete opposite.

i'm not sure what my point is -- i just find myself enjoying politics a lot more now that i'm in England.

 

a little while back i wrote a blog entry about (among other things) the unusual selection of potato chips the English sell in the grocery stores -- specifically, the very delicious brand "Walkers" -- which I suspect is the English equivalent of Lays potato chips from America (even the logos are similar...).

anyway, today i was in the grocery store, as i am prone to be quite often nowadays, and i decided to take a quick photo of the chip aisle (which is called the "crisp" aisle here) to prove how different even the junk food is in England.

the photo quality is poor because i had to use my phone camera, but you should appreciate it anyway, because it took a lot of stealthy re-organization of the potato chip bags to get the four flavors i wanted in the shot all next to each other.  i got a few confused glances from the other shoppers, but i pretended i was just a really bad text-messager since i was using a phone camera.

i'm getting used to having people look at me weird lately.  if you want to take pictures of things like the egg section at the local grocery store during regular shopping hours, you have to be prepared to look a little strange.

so here it is:  if you look closely you'll see that the chip flavors on the shelf (left to right) are "Steak and Onion," "Prawn Cocktail," "Marmite" and "Roast Chicken." 

no shit.  prawn cocktail-flavored potato chips. 

the weird thing is, i've tasted them -- and they taste exactly like America's B-B-Q chips.

go figure.

 

This is the non-refrigerated egg section in my local grocery (just in case someone out there didn't believe me)...


do you refrigerate your eggs when you bring them home from the grocery store or market?

well, i don't.  not anymore.  and it's because moving to England has taught me something:  raw eggs do not have to be refrigerated in the grocery store, nor do they need to be kept cold once you get them home.  in England the grocery stores sell their cartons of eggs in dozens and half dozens (just like American markets), but the difference is, the eggs sit on a regular un-refrigerated shelf with the rest of the groceries -- not in a cold dairy section.

Americans have been duped, it seems.

i lived my entire life in America until this year, and for all those years i bought eggs from a refrigerated section of my local grocery store, and i made room for them in my refrigerator at home.  in fact, most fridges even have a little indented shelf made specifically for eggs.

well guess what:  you can stop all that nonsense now. 

the fact of the matter is that eggs do not require that sort of cold, and the cold is not a deterrent to bacteria growth.  in fact, i have read that other than the bacteria issue, the egg shells crack better and the insides mix better when the eggs have been kept at room temperature.

maybe American grocers should save the electrical energy of refrigerating whole sections of eggs and dairy products and put the stuff on regular shelves like Europe does.

oh wait -- you probably didn't know that you don't need to refrigerate your butter, either -- did you?  just get yourself a butter crock, stick your butter in it and set it on the counter or something.  it will stay usable for weeks.  apparently the French have done this for years, but i never knew about it until last month. 

why does America refrigerate things that don't need refrigeration?  i don't know. 

maybe if they stopped doing it they could down-size to the smaller, more energy-efficient refrigerators used in Europe.  even the good ol' boys could save a little money on their electric bills -- or at least have more room for their beer -- which also doesn't need to be refrigerated. 

but beer's a more personal matter. 

;-)

Categories

All
Pic Of The Week
Some People Theyre The Worst
Pies And Queen
Stick It In The Fridge
Taking A Stab At It
And Some People Theyre The Best
Parkour And The Spidermen
Home Is Where The Football Lies

 

this past weekend i was hanging around the Southbank Centre in London.  for people who don't know it, it's a complex of different Thames River-front buildings with galleries, restaurants and various interesting things to check out dotted here and there.  while eating lunch inside a mostly-glass cafe, i couldn't help but notice a small group of young guys bounding over and jumping on the concrete architecture  outside -- kinda like Spidermen in training.  i told my companion to look over his shoulder and check them out.  he turned around and said, "Yeah, that's parkour."

and i was like, "Park what?  huh?"

i must have been living under a very un-hip rock for a long time to never have seen it before.  pre-teen and teenagers (all guys from what i saw) hanging out in a large public space bouncing off concrete like it was rubber and flying over guard rails and walls like they were circus acrobats.  it was pretty damn awesome.

after lunch i was walking outside along the river and passed a giant concrete cave-like area covered with amazing graffiti.  in fact, there was a graffiti artist set-up there at that moment, creating some legal graffiti over someone else's master work.  and it was cool.  the area was mostly skateboarders and a few trick-bike guys, but there again were the dudes doing the parkour.  i was just amazed.  why i haven't seen it all over the States i don't know.  maybe in the States people get arrested for doing it -- maybe in the States kids are just lame.  maybe i'm just lame -- i don't know.

anyway, if you don't know what parkour is and have never seen it for yourself, here's a good example of it from Youtube.  watch it -- it's cool.  the best thing is, the guys are really doing it -- it's not just clever editing. 

it was fascinating to see for the first time, and i hope to see something that cool every time i venture into central London...

This is the only shot I could get of the guys doing parkour -- they move pretty fast...


 

earlier today i blogged about how unfriendly some people -- and therefore life -- seems to be in my new city (the city of London).  but after i posted it, a problem arose:  i started to feel guilty about what i wrote -- and wondered if maybe i should delete the entry.

well, i'm not going to delete it, because when i started this site i told myself i wouldn't go back and edit or alter my blog entries once i published them.  but i would like to say that i feel bad that i wrote so one-sidedly (if that's a word) about my new home.  i'd also like to go on record as saying that there are a lot of positive and interesting things about London as well.  i just haven't blogged about them yet.

i think for a lot of people -- especially me -- it's very easy to write endlessly about what's wrong or what pisses you off, and less fun to write about the random things that went RIGHT or that you enjoyed during the day -- because you take them for granted.  and to a lesser extent, it's easy to write negatively because other people would rather read about something bad or bizarre than read about your good day.  the paparazzi and international media already know this, and i do too.

attempting to give everything more fair consideration is tough.  the chick at that Heyward Gallery gift shop register is still a cold bitch in my mind, but i won't carry that feeling with me the next time i step up to a counter to buy something in town. 

i'll smile, and start over.

 

it's my goal to be diplomatic in my comments about the differences between America and England (or more precisely, London) in my blog.  but i fear that i will not always sound diplomatic.  i'm finding that it's difficult to write observations on differences without sorta favoring one side or the other.  it's hard for me, and it would be hard for just about everyone else too.  this is especially true when one side is something you identify closely with, and the other is not.  there are wonderful things about almost every place, but there are some things i've noticed that simply are not attractive about my new home -- just as there are many things i'd label unattractive in America.

the thing i'm thinking about right now is how strangers act toward each other, and about how retail and cash register employees act toward customers here.

in the five weeks that i've been in London i've probably made a retail transaction of some type every other day -- if not every single day.  sometimes it's a grocery store, sometimes a card shop, pharmacy, post office or high street department store.  and when i'm out and about i'm generally a friendly shopper.  i say please and thank you and excuse me and when i am being served at a counter, i say hello or how are you and i make a point of smiling at the person checking me out.  however, i can count on one hand the number of store employees who have bothered to reply to me in any way (other than to mumble miserably the amount of money i owe for my purchase). 

and frankly, that is fucking lame. 

i know not every person in ANY place is friendly.  far from it.  and i know that not everyone smiles easily or is having a good day, especially if they are at work.  i know this very well because i was raised in a family who owned a retail business, and i've had many jobs where i was required to interact with customers.  and no, i wasn't always in a good mood and i wasn't always Miss Mary Sunshine, but i DID always look at customers, greet them and/or help them -- not to mention exchange pleasantries as i was completing a transaction.

but Londoners are not this way.  not at all.  and before i say more about "Londoners," let me say that oftentimes the people i interact with here are not from London at all -- they live here, but they have very thick foreign accents from France or Pakistan or India or Slavic countries, so it's not that people FROM London are cold and miserable -- it's that London has MADE them cold and miserable.

yesterday i was in the Heyward Gallery gift shop at Southbank Centre and i encountered another of Britain's Most Miserable People.  it was the shop girl who took my money at the register (or "at the till" as people here say).  she wasn't being snobbish -- she was just another cold London bitch.  and this was not a new thing.  everywhere you go around here, when you get to the counter to pay for your stuff, or exchange a fee for service of whatever kind, the person (male or female, regardless of age) is unbelievably cold and hardened.  and despite the fact that i've encountered this kind of person almost every day since i've been in England, it still amazes me each time it happens. 

sometimes my "better half" is with me when it happens, and as we walk away i draw his attention to the person we've just dealt with.  this means that he is also starting to realize just how "not nice" people in London can be.  and actually, i think the reason he notices it is because he recently visited the United States, staying in a small town where everyone says "hello" or "how are you?" or waves as they pass you on the street in their car.  now, he and i both know that that level of courtesy and friendliness was due to being in a quiet town full of helpful locals who enjoy a visitor, but i could also use Los Angeles as a reference point.  i lived in L.A. for over 10 years, and while i was there working in a cut-throat industry full of back stabbers, even then i was surrounded by people who smiled at me and said hi -- or at least responded to me when i said "hey, how are ya" in a social situation.

people might read this and think i'm being too critical or overly sensitive or not "tough" enough in adjusting to life in the large city of London, but why should i be anything different than what i am?  what is wrong with being a thoughtful person who says hello to people in a forced interaction?  what is wrong with cracking a damn smile at someone?  why is it ME who should change to accommodate the less-friendly people in this (or any) city?  after all, New Yorkers are known as rude, aggressive assholes, but living there didn't make me one.

in England there's a TV commercial for Heineken beer in which a British person is about to greet a business man from another nation -- a businessman whose custom it is to give a hug as a greeting.  in this commercial the British man is narrating, saying that he's dreading giving a hug to this jolly man.  the British guy envisions that he is lost at sea and the man who rescues him from a helicopter above is the foreign businessman that is about to hug him.  the image allows the Brit to hug the man warmly.  the joke appears to be that Brits do not like, or want to participate in, "the hug" as a greeting.  this is how i'm learning about English culture.  from beer commercials.  but if it's a fact large enough to be the central joke of a major advertising campaign for Heineken in England, there is obviously some truth there.

having seen that i wonder:  just how much did the British people i met at my wedding despise it when i hugged them hello or goodbye?  how much did they make fun of me when they left my presence?  how much do the few people i've met in England dislike me because of my American "friendly disease?"  and why are they all so amazingly cold when their country's neighbors are Europeans who historically kiss and/or hug every person they greet?  surely this is not an American-in-London problem.  surely this is an English thing.  comment if you'd like.

so, am i supposed to build an invisible wall around myself with a tiny hole in it, through which i MIGHT extend a dainty hand, should i choose to shake hands with a person i've met?  i don't quite get it...  as i write this i'd like to point out that i've met a few English folks who are from towns far outside of London, and they are warm, loving and welcoming people.  they are great.  but as i said, they are not from LONDON.  this is why i have to talk about this as a perceived London problem.

i don't like being in a place where a nice personality is unwanted -- and possibly mocked.  but this is my new home.

the question is, will London make me one of "them?"

i hope not.

for those of you with time on your hands, here's the Heineken "hugging" commercial i was talking about: