All good things must come to an end. But so do all bad things. Today Barack Obama becomes the first man with initials B.O. to take up the presidency of the United States and I become the first man to stop writing this blog. As I leave my post he assumes his. I hope that, like me, he does not get shot.
So because I'm eager to get this over with let's crack on with the "liveblogging" of the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America. BBC coverage all the way baby.
16:00 Huw Edwards looking severe. Old. I'm not sure I'm happy being represented on the world stage by a Welshman. Some footage of George W Bush slinking out of the White House for the last time flanked by a black guy. Huw tells us how cold it is in D.C. while Adam Brooks, the BBC Washington correspondent says the whole thing is "just breathtaking".
16:10 Huw introduces Obama's tort lecturer from Harvard and another academic. Are these our pundits? At least the lecturer looks like a film noir hero. There have been five references to JFK so far by the way. Matt Frei makes the patently untrue observation that although Obama is a gifted speaker no one can remember individual lines he's said in the past. I can reel off at least five. There was that one about hope and... uh, how we have to hope for stuff and shit. Then there was that one where he called Jeremiah Wright a bitch, I think. And loads more. I'm in the middle of something here. Ask me later.
16:15 The BBC is using a truly hideous background design that we are shown every time they cut to two cameras simultaneously. It looks like someone spat blood all over the screen.
16:20 Like everyone else watching I've just remarked on how old George Bush Snr looks. Look. Barbara Bush is having to wait for him to catch up with her. Suddenly we join Guardian columnist Hannah Pool who has been asked to explain what Obama's victory means to black people in Britain. No one ever asks me to speak on behalf of the black race.
16:25 Impressive crowd shot showing the reported nine billion people in attendance. Hooray, a man named Jon Sobel called the crowd "a sea of humanity". That old chestnut. Oh, George W Bush's face just appeared on the Jumbotron. And people are booing! Ha. Deep breath George. They can't hurt you now.
16:30 The Obamettes enter. They look just lovely. A "friend of the Obamas" tells us that the kids are "going to do just great" over the next four years. That's the kind of insight I tune in to the BBC for. Adam Brooks then tells us that "things are just about to kick off". By my calculations things don't "kick off" for another hour and a half Adam.
16:35 Michelle Obama dressed in... gold? No. I suppose that's lemon. Looking great as always. I like how she always looks respectful yet derisive.
16:36 Bush is approaching the sea of humanity! That's got to be a terrifying feeling for him. And understandably he looks anxious. Is it going to be like that scene in Gladiator where Maximus steps out from the dark, stone corridor into the glaring light of the Colliseum? We need a Ridley Scott 360 degree tracking shot of Bush blinking and looking up into the light as thousands of spectators boo and throw their shoes at him.
16:38 Dick Cheney looks somehow more sinister in a wheelchair. Michelle Obama basically stands eye-to-eye with Bill Clinton by the way. I wonder how Bubba feels about that? An announcer who's apparently borrowed his voice from the local NASCAR stadium introduces Bush and Cheney to the crowd and the president enters to Hail To The Chief for the last time. Am I only person who thinks that's an absurd piece of music. I mean, it kind of sounds comedic.
16:41 Our first glimpse of the man, the myth himself, now on the premisis. Obama is in the building. Looking focused. Looking intense. Looking... a bit like he's about to be sick? Is it my imagination or is he thinner than usual? Is it my imagination or have I just remarked on a minor fluctuation in the weight of a politician? But before Obama there must be Biden.
16:45 "Regular Joe" Biden. What a guy. As long as he keeps squinting and grinning everything will be alright. And then suddenly Barack Obama appears on the stage! We are treated with the first shot of a black person in the audience crying. The applause is deafening. Huw Edwards gets poetic. Evokes MLK. Diane Feinstein busts loose with some fierce rhetoric. The sole of someone's shoe hovers for a good five seconds above her right shoulder.
16:50 Pastor Rick Warren does his religious bit and, I think, does a good job. He pronounces Sasha Obama's name in the weirdest way possible though. SaSHA!
17:00 Aretha Franklin does her singing bit. Huw Edwards tells us she is the Queen of Soul in that same tone of voice BBC commentators use during Olympic opening ceremonies. "And now... we see dancers representing the twin elements of fire and water... and they look... simply remarkable." Oh, Biden's in everybody. Biden's in! So at this very moment do we have a Republican president and a Democratic vice-president? Somebody get back to me on this. Look at Biden. He needs a top hat and a cane.
17:07 Yo Yo Ma enjoying himself a little too much up there. Calm down Yo Yo.
17:08 Obama gets up to recite the oath. I feel nervous about him flubbing his lines. And then he flubbs his lines. To his credit it was apparently Chief Justice Roberts' fault for reciting the words in the wrong order. Still that didn't look great did it? Conspiracy theorists can now begin claiming that Obama never officially became president as he never officially took the oath. Do you see? DO YOU SEE? In any case Obama is now the new big cheese in world affairs.
17:10 The big speech begins.
17:30 Well I liked it. I was a bit underwhelmed at the halfway point. I thought he was pushing the stoic, no-time-for-smiles bit too far. However the moment the focus shifted away from "our challenges" and towards a more intangible, almost mystical patriotism I was gripped. The strongest segments to me were the passages addressing America's relationship with other countries. His message was one that Americans are desperate to hear: Let's show everyone what being an American is really about. Let's not beat people up unless it's absolutely necessary. Let's defend our culture against criticism, but at the same time let's hone and perfect it.
People are going to rave, if anything, about how somber the speech was and how it should be admired for its parity and restraint. I think these are the qualities to be taken for granted. What I believe made it a great speech was the sophistication of its message. Although the words themselves were rarely overtly poetic the actual picture being painted was a subtle and rewarding one. Where imagery was used it was used sparingly and with great effect. The line that sticks most in my mind was the one about offering an open hand if America's enemies were prepared to unclench their fists.
Did it deliver the one golden line historians were clamouring for? A line comparable to Kennedy's bit about doing stuff for your country, or FDR's assertion that fear was the only thing worth fearing? I don't know. Probably not. But I imagine Obama could have pulled out a line like that if he had wanted to. I think the idea of having one catchy slogan in the middle of the speech he ended up giving would have cheapened the product. At a push the line about "childish things" might be the one which ends up defining his inauguration. Or maybe the one about leaders being respected for what they build rather than what they destroy. Ultimately however this was a precise, firm declaration of national purpose, not a poetic flourish appended to his campaign.
There were at least three distinct kicks to George Bush's balls. The first was the statement about "restoring" science to its rightful place. I imagine this brought a tear to the eye of stem-cell research lab workers across the country. The second was the extremely eloquent comment about not sacrificing American ideals for homeland security. Thirdly he said, referring to America's relationship with other countries, that "power does not entitle us to do as we please". He may have been looking right at George Bush while wagging his finger as he said the last one.
If I had to sum up his speech I would say it revolved around the twin themes of hardship and reconciliation. A statement of anti-hubris. What made it doubly affecting was the antidote that Obama proposed was plainly one of love over hate - something which sounds unbelievably drippy when written down like this.
17:40 Adam Brooks makes superficial observations about how "grim" and "resolved" the speech was. We'll forgive him though. He's only had a couple of minutes to think what to say.
17:55 Dick Cheney is thrown into the back of a car. Goodbye you snarling, cold-hearted psychopath. The cold, impersonal limosine is an apt vehicle to drive him out of our lives.
17:58 Chris Hitchens' voice is suddenly in my ears. What's going on? Is he drunk? Hard to tell. His first comment is about the fear of Obama being assassinated. Thanks for bumming out all the BBC's viewers Chris. Hitchens then exposes himself as an Obama groupie by gushing about how "presidential" he looked giving his speech. That's pundit-ese for "hot" I believe. They obviously got Hitchens in to play devil's advocate and piss on everyone's parade but he's refusing to do so. Good for you Chris. Join the love cult.
18:00 This is the point at which I cease being interested. Someone is reading out the worst poem I've ever heard. It's distinctly less poetic than the speech that came before it. Well done event organisers, you've ensured the next generation of Americans will hate poetry.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
November 16
Today is my last day in America. Tomorrow I will enjoy myself by wandering around three different airports. Each stop-over is perfectly timed so that I'm never given quite enough hours to leave the airport, although the hours are sufficient to allow the onset of boredom. In truth I don't mind just hanging around departure lounges. Bearded men roaming round airports by themselves give security guards something to focus on.
As it is my last day I should do a great deal of reflecting. On the country and so forth. But I don't want to. I just want to leave this hell hole for good and authorise some kind of fire bombing so the gormless blobs that live here can ignite and cook in their own BBQ sauce. Just joking! America is great. When British people talk about America they are unreasonable. They tend to accuse them of being one thing just to create the illusion that Britain is the opposite. So Americans are unnuanced and tasteless, while we have irony, sarcasm and a wide selection of cheeses in our supermarkets. Americans are unhealthy and wasteful, therefore British people do regular excercie, eat our five-a-day and recycle compulsively. We even have the cheek to criticise American film and music - often using the prefix "American" to denote something big, noisy and vapid.
To make matters worse we also enjoy comparing the worst of American culture to the best of British. Let's imagine the opposite were true and Americans did the same thing to us:
"Yeah, American comedy is the best," they'd say. "We've got Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development. You guys have Coupling."
British people must accept that they are not Stephen Fry or Howard Moon. They are Benny Hill, guffawing at men in drag. Clapping as women's clothes fall off to musical cues.
And stop comparing London to everything, British people. London isn't England. Ipswich is England. So is Slough, I've heard. Next time you're about to say how Nasville is great but London has better nightlife, at least reach for an analogy that exists in the same weight class. Like Bradford.
I'm not besotted by American mainstream culture. If I see Along Came Polly again in this lifetime it will be too soon. But American culture is subject to Clooney's Law. For every three Oceans movies, a Syriana will be born. I like this set up. If American TV executives find it impossible to produce the Wire without first inflicting King of Queens on the world so be it. The last time I looked behind my sofa there was not an American CIA operative forcing me to watch an Adam Sandler film every time I want to put on the Aristocrats.
And people the world over will always want to watch or listen to crap. Bunging up America's crap spewers will only result in crap-deprived world civilians going elsewhere for their crap fix. I don't know about you but I'm happy these people get to watch big-budget, vaguely-clever American crap instead of dodgy Italian or Russian crap. Banning Nickleback, although satisfying, would not result in Nickleback fans developing taste.
George W Bush's eight years in power provided British people with what seemed like the ultimate excuse to be snotty. Hanging chads or no, Americans elected a shifty gimp into the highest office in the land twice. This is surely conclusive proof that America is an idiot nation. No, it's proof that America is trusting nation. Bush did what Nixon did, and like Nixon he did it twice. They both charmed their way into power. Not charm in the traditional sense. Nixon looked like a squinty warthog and Bush can barely talk coherently. However Nixon's campaign said to the public "look, this guy may not be pretty but he's got moral fibre and he'll get America out of Vietnam". Neither of these things were true and he succeeded in this twice. Bush told Americans that he was a down-home sort of guy who didn't know much about fancy matters. He was a do-er. A guy that could get America out of a pickle by talking, and shooting, straight.
Just like with Nixon it was a sleight-of-hand trick of epic proportions. The man that people thought they had voted for eventually revealed his true form. There are of course plenty of die-hard W fans. People who like him simply because everyone else hates him. But Bush's White House bid in 2000 (in 2004 the war made it more complicated) relied on the sort of people who now hate his guts. These are normal Americans and they were tricked by clever politics.
These voters turned out for Barack Obama in 2008. I suspect pulling the lever on November 4 was an exquisite kind of deliverance for many of them. People in America would often apologise for Bush to me, people that had voted for him. It often felt awkward but Americans' propensity to admit their own mistakes is one of the qualities which endears the country to me personally.
As it is my last day I should do a great deal of reflecting. On the country and so forth. But I don't want to. I just want to leave this hell hole for good and authorise some kind of fire bombing so the gormless blobs that live here can ignite and cook in their own BBQ sauce. Just joking! America is great. When British people talk about America they are unreasonable. They tend to accuse them of being one thing just to create the illusion that Britain is the opposite. So Americans are unnuanced and tasteless, while we have irony, sarcasm and a wide selection of cheeses in our supermarkets. Americans are unhealthy and wasteful, therefore British people do regular excercie, eat our five-a-day and recycle compulsively. We even have the cheek to criticise American film and music - often using the prefix "American" to denote something big, noisy and vapid.
To make matters worse we also enjoy comparing the worst of American culture to the best of British. Let's imagine the opposite were true and Americans did the same thing to us:
"Yeah, American comedy is the best," they'd say. "We've got Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development. You guys have Coupling."
British people must accept that they are not Stephen Fry or Howard Moon. They are Benny Hill, guffawing at men in drag. Clapping as women's clothes fall off to musical cues.
And stop comparing London to everything, British people. London isn't England. Ipswich is England. So is Slough, I've heard. Next time you're about to say how Nasville is great but London has better nightlife, at least reach for an analogy that exists in the same weight class. Like Bradford.
I'm not besotted by American mainstream culture. If I see Along Came Polly again in this lifetime it will be too soon. But American culture is subject to Clooney's Law. For every three Oceans movies, a Syriana will be born. I like this set up. If American TV executives find it impossible to produce the Wire without first inflicting King of Queens on the world so be it. The last time I looked behind my sofa there was not an American CIA operative forcing me to watch an Adam Sandler film every time I want to put on the Aristocrats.
And people the world over will always want to watch or listen to crap. Bunging up America's crap spewers will only result in crap-deprived world civilians going elsewhere for their crap fix. I don't know about you but I'm happy these people get to watch big-budget, vaguely-clever American crap instead of dodgy Italian or Russian crap. Banning Nickleback, although satisfying, would not result in Nickleback fans developing taste.
George W Bush's eight years in power provided British people with what seemed like the ultimate excuse to be snotty. Hanging chads or no, Americans elected a shifty gimp into the highest office in the land twice. This is surely conclusive proof that America is an idiot nation. No, it's proof that America is trusting nation. Bush did what Nixon did, and like Nixon he did it twice. They both charmed their way into power. Not charm in the traditional sense. Nixon looked like a squinty warthog and Bush can barely talk coherently. However Nixon's campaign said to the public "look, this guy may not be pretty but he's got moral fibre and he'll get America out of Vietnam". Neither of these things were true and he succeeded in this twice. Bush told Americans that he was a down-home sort of guy who didn't know much about fancy matters. He was a do-er. A guy that could get America out of a pickle by talking, and shooting, straight.
Just like with Nixon it was a sleight-of-hand trick of epic proportions. The man that people thought they had voted for eventually revealed his true form. There are of course plenty of die-hard W fans. People who like him simply because everyone else hates him. But Bush's White House bid in 2000 (in 2004 the war made it more complicated) relied on the sort of people who now hate his guts. These are normal Americans and they were tricked by clever politics.
These voters turned out for Barack Obama in 2008. I suspect pulling the lever on November 4 was an exquisite kind of deliverance for many of them. People in America would often apologise for Bush to me, people that had voted for him. It often felt awkward but Americans' propensity to admit their own mistakes is one of the qualities which endears the country to me personally.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
November 15
I love the fact that Texas - arguably the most conservative state in America - is governed from Austin. Austin is the South's most liberal city. Not only that but the State Capitol building is situated slap bang in the middle of the university district. So Jeb Bush, or whoever the governor is at the moment, has to do all of his governing in plain sight of the barbarians who are, quite literally, at the gate. Maybe this set up makes it easier to do all the things Texan governors are known for. Approving record numbers of state executions, raging against early, mid and late-term abortions and of course demanding all illegal immigrants are expelled while passing no actual legislation that makes the expelling of said immigrants any easier. Yes, if this horrible to-do list were my own I would certainly want to work on it in plain sight of a campus of pot-addled slackers. At least then I would feel less like a heinous pol and more like Mr Burns or Count Dracula.
Later my friend and I dropped in on an improv-comedy event, held in an art gallery. I'll stick my neck out right now and say the art was bad. Not entertaining bad, or even Turner Prize-winning bad, just your standard-issue bad art.
The comedy show would have been less funny had it not been for the free wine being handed out in the lobby. My friend and I weathered filthy looks from the event's organisers as we helped ourselves to refills ad infinitum but to these people I say: "No! Did you not advertise unlimited, free wine? Well this is United States of America pal, and if you prefix anything with the words "free" and "unlimited" you can bet your bottom dollar some shameless pig is going to take advantage of your offer. This evening I was that pig, but he lives on in the hearts of every decent, functioning American.
The show was a half-baked parody of teen slasher flicks. Its best feature was a "more is more" approach to gore which saw absurd amounts of corn syrup, sausages and cow hearts flung about the stage with gay abandon. However the show also featured the worst individual performance I have ever seen on a stage, professional or otherwise. The offending actor in question was a middle-aged blonde woman who delivered every one of her lines in a high-pitch staccato scream while staring unblinkingly at the audience. Because we were in the front row this was doubly unpleasant. When her final scene rolled around it was a relief and I've rarely been happier to watch a woman being eviscerated right in front of me.
Later my friend and I dropped in on an improv-comedy event, held in an art gallery. I'll stick my neck out right now and say the art was bad. Not entertaining bad, or even Turner Prize-winning bad, just your standard-issue bad art.
The comedy show would have been less funny had it not been for the free wine being handed out in the lobby. My friend and I weathered filthy looks from the event's organisers as we helped ourselves to refills ad infinitum but to these people I say: "No! Did you not advertise unlimited, free wine? Well this is United States of America pal, and if you prefix anything with the words "free" and "unlimited" you can bet your bottom dollar some shameless pig is going to take advantage of your offer. This evening I was that pig, but he lives on in the hearts of every decent, functioning American.
The show was a half-baked parody of teen slasher flicks. Its best feature was a "more is more" approach to gore which saw absurd amounts of corn syrup, sausages and cow hearts flung about the stage with gay abandon. However the show also featured the worst individual performance I have ever seen on a stage, professional or otherwise. The offending actor in question was a middle-aged blonde woman who delivered every one of her lines in a high-pitch staccato scream while staring unblinkingly at the audience. Because we were in the front row this was doubly unpleasant. When her final scene rolled around it was a relief and I've rarely been happier to watch a woman being eviscerated right in front of me.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
November 14
My time in America is running low. While I've been here I've done and said some amazing things. I think I am leaving the country in a better state than when I found it. Change has come to America. But now he is going home. Mr Obama, you are welcome.
Some guy showed my friend and I a book which tells you what your personality is like according to what your date of birth is. This is usually the part where the narrator says how cynical he felt, but then he looked up his own date of birth and was astonished at how on the money it was. Well that's exactly what happened. The only difference is that I wasn't that astonished because it wasn't really on the money. It was okay on some things and wildly wrong on others. For instance it said that, as somebody born on May 26, I am "proud of my status as the voice of the working class". The makers of the book were really sticking their necks out with that one. Who could that possibly apply to? Martin Luther King? Radio 5's John Gaunt?
The only part of the book's reading of me I liked was in the "faults" section, where it said I was "escapist and guilt-ridden". That's fantastic. I'm like Ronnie Biggs or Josef Mengele living in a Latin American timeshare. Why do my ghosts still torment me?
One more point about these books. These books are stupid. When they're assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a person they follow a formula: People born on this date tend to be x. But be careful as they are prone to x20. So, for example, if you're "fun loving", watch it because you are also potentially a hedonist, probably binge-smoking opium in Trump Towers right now. If you're "creative" you may also be obscure and introverted , prone to drifting off into your own private Twilight Zone for days. If you "enjoy the good things in life" you're liable to overindulge, if you're "organised" you're pushy and if you're "tall" they'll probably say you're impossibly gangly at times, freaking people out with your vine-like limbs.
That evening in a bar we met a group of people who travel around the country, painting and decorating aquariums and marine mammal enclosures in zoos. They always have work because at any given time, on any given day, there is always, somewhere in America, a penguin pit in dire need of a fresh lick of paint. They get to roll in and create a bunch of crazy, psychadelic designs all over the walls. I'm finding it hard at this moment to think of a better job. Even their van had enormous paintings of oceans and fish all over it. When Albert Camus stroked his chin and asked "what is happiness?" someone should have pointed to that van and shouted "That! That van right there!"
Some guy showed my friend and I a book which tells you what your personality is like according to what your date of birth is. This is usually the part where the narrator says how cynical he felt, but then he looked up his own date of birth and was astonished at how on the money it was. Well that's exactly what happened. The only difference is that I wasn't that astonished because it wasn't really on the money. It was okay on some things and wildly wrong on others. For instance it said that, as somebody born on May 26, I am "proud of my status as the voice of the working class". The makers of the book were really sticking their necks out with that one. Who could that possibly apply to? Martin Luther King? Radio 5's John Gaunt?
The only part of the book's reading of me I liked was in the "faults" section, where it said I was "escapist and guilt-ridden". That's fantastic. I'm like Ronnie Biggs or Josef Mengele living in a Latin American timeshare. Why do my ghosts still torment me?
One more point about these books. These books are stupid. When they're assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a person they follow a formula: People born on this date tend to be x. But be careful as they are prone to x20. So, for example, if you're "fun loving", watch it because you are also potentially a hedonist, probably binge-smoking opium in Trump Towers right now. If you're "creative" you may also be obscure and introverted , prone to drifting off into your own private Twilight Zone for days. If you "enjoy the good things in life" you're liable to overindulge, if you're "organised" you're pushy and if you're "tall" they'll probably say you're impossibly gangly at times, freaking people out with your vine-like limbs.
That evening in a bar we met a group of people who travel around the country, painting and decorating aquariums and marine mammal enclosures in zoos. They always have work because at any given time, on any given day, there is always, somewhere in America, a penguin pit in dire need of a fresh lick of paint. They get to roll in and create a bunch of crazy, psychadelic designs all over the walls. I'm finding it hard at this moment to think of a better job. Even their van had enormous paintings of oceans and fish all over it. When Albert Camus stroked his chin and asked "what is happiness?" someone should have pointed to that van and shouted "That! That van right there!"
November 13
Went down to the university district - a big area built up around a single, long road. It's chock-a-bloc with young, wholesome students, all parading around in their University of Texas hooded sweatshirts. What worries me is that directly opposite the campus' main entrance is the regional Church of Scientology headquarters. It's so close to the university that if you were leaving class in a hurry and were to trip on the front steps you might very well fall and tumble into the open arms of a Level 8 Thetan.
Up and down the strip there are lots of grungy, scabby kids called "drag rats" by the locals. They are different from the normal kids. Drag rats sit around, ask people for change or cigarettes and cultivate a kind of brown mist around themselves. Something about them bothers me. It's not the fact they gather in large groups, effectively blocking entire pavements with their swirling vanguard of stray dogs. Drag rats wear tattered dungarees and have random clumps of dreadlock attached to their heads, but that doesn't bother me too much either. No, what bothers me is their smirking. They'll sit around and just smirk at people. I know what that smirk says and I'll tell you. That smirk says:
My celebrity is growing like the bloodied, half-formed carcass of Uncle Frank in Hellraiser. Only today I was asked to appear in a documentary about rock music in Austin. It looked like a fairly small production crew so I can only assume it will get a worldwide cinematic release and some kind of limited, collector's edition DVD tie-in. I basically sat in a seat and explained clearly and fluently how I knew nothing about rock music in Austin. The director's face became quite sad as the full blast of my ignorance was unleashed. But hey. When you book me you do it for name value. Not because I'm going to add anything of intellectual merit to your project. I'm the Christopher Walken of Austin music documentaries. No matter how bad they are, I can just turn up half way through and make them better just by being there. Talking. And moving my eyes.
Up and down the strip there are lots of grungy, scabby kids called "drag rats" by the locals. They are different from the normal kids. Drag rats sit around, ask people for change or cigarettes and cultivate a kind of brown mist around themselves. Something about them bothers me. It's not the fact they gather in large groups, effectively blocking entire pavements with their swirling vanguard of stray dogs. Drag rats wear tattered dungarees and have random clumps of dreadlock attached to their heads, but that doesn't bother me too much either. No, what bothers me is their smirking. They'll sit around and just smirk at people. I know what that smirk says and I'll tell you. That smirk says:
Look at me. I'm an outlaw. I don't conform to your corrupt societal norms and neither do my friends. We're one big happy family here. We ride together and die together. But you could never understand you rat, ratting it up in the rat race. Peace out you square.Well I've devised my own smirk to shoot straight back at them if needs be. And if someone were to analyse my smirk they'll find that it says:
Get away. There isn't a single aspect of your life which I find admirable or enviable. As a group you disgust me. You are revolting and lazy. I hope that dog - the one which you've fussed over ever since it had the rotten luck to bump into you in a skip - bites you in the face while you sleep.Drag rats are not to be confused with gutter punks, the very similar breed of semi-homeless bohemian waster found elsewhere in America. I'm not sure about the difference. I think it's academic. Like drag rats listen to grindcore and gabba techno while adhering to vegetarianism and anarcho-punk ideals, while gutter punks listen to industrial-crust techno and darkwave trance exclusively. If America descends into civil war - gutter punk pitted against drag rat - I'd be at a loss to choose a side.
My celebrity is growing like the bloodied, half-formed carcass of Uncle Frank in Hellraiser. Only today I was asked to appear in a documentary about rock music in Austin. It looked like a fairly small production crew so I can only assume it will get a worldwide cinematic release and some kind of limited, collector's edition DVD tie-in. I basically sat in a seat and explained clearly and fluently how I knew nothing about rock music in Austin. The director's face became quite sad as the full blast of my ignorance was unleashed. But hey. When you book me you do it for name value. Not because I'm going to add anything of intellectual merit to your project. I'm the Christopher Walken of Austin music documentaries. No matter how bad they are, I can just turn up half way through and make them better just by being there. Talking. And moving my eyes.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
November 12
This is really living. I'm sat by myself in a Mexican laundromat and grocery store. I'm eating one of Homer Simpson's doughnuts and drinking a can of "Energy Coffee Double Shot with Vitamins". Outside the window is the freeway, and I haven't got a car.
Here are a few things in my drink: Pamax. Phosphates. Cyanocobalium. And good old-fashioned L-Carnitine. It's really making me feel on edge, this drink. Like all these Mexicans know I'm not Mexican at all. If I wore a Viva Zapata t-shirt would they think I'm being ironic? I like how indifferent all these Mexicans look. Without a care in the world. Am I being racist? Oh God, I hope I'm not being racist. Relax. This is just the Pamax talking.
I could happily spend a long time in this Mexican laundromat. The guy behind the counter seems cool. He has long hair. When I ask him if I can leave my stuff in the dryer for a while he says "Yeah!" like I've asked if I can buy him a beer. Everyone else is just doing their laundry like a Mexican in a laundromat. That sounds like the punchline to a joke. "A Mexican in a laundromat!" I'll award a prize to anyone that can write a set-up.
You know what franchise someone should rip off and bring to London? The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. There's a few of them scattered around town here. The tickets are cheap and they show all kinds of films but the best part - the selling point in my mind - is that you get fried pickles, beer and pizza brought to you during the film. They're all staffed by hip kids (I love hip kids!) and every evening they have special events like "Jiggy Krunk's 90's Pop Rap Singalong", zombie movie marathons and stand up comedy gigs where the comedian stands in front of a classic film and mocks it throughout. They even had an evening of Vietnamese spy films recently. Beat that Prince Charles! (The Soho cinema, not the heir to the throne).
The evening was the best kind of white-water, joy-ride of a night. We had originally planned to see a heavily-recommended rock band called Two Car Garage but it didn't work out like that. At the venue I'd spoken to a punter, asking them about the band, for about 10 minutes, before I realised said punter was in fact their singer-guitarist. It wasn't my fault - he was preturnaturally modest. Me: "What do they sound like?" Him: "Pretty normal I guess." Me: "Are they any good?" Him "They're ok."
To kill time before they started we went to a bar full of people watching television. Why would anyone do that? And they were watching a DVD of a film called Beerfest - a movie reviewers have called "chaotic and lame", and "aggressively, rampantly tedious". Why would any adult go to a bar and subject themself to this film? It's two hours long!
My mind was grappling with this question and others like it when a couple sat down in front of my friend and I. They were doing vodka shots and were very vocal about us coming back to their house to see their hot tub. Now I'm a reasonable man, but I've been around the block enough times to know that their invitation meant two possible things. Either we would be unwittingly initiated into the seedy world of some kind of Austin swingers cult, or we would be raped then killed. It could even be both. A debauched, masquerade ball in the Texan suburbs, culminating in a blood sacrifice.
Seth and Caren were actually very nice. They were young, married and had good taste in music. They did seem to be suffering slightly from that kind of anxiety people succumb to when they get married young. You know, when they become paranoid that their social lives are melting away. Next thing you know, your wife is up dancing on the bar, going "Whoo!" and telling random people "Oh, that's my husband, but we're cool like this". Are they cool like that? Or is everything turning to shit?
Anyway, they were lovely people and we did end up in their hot tub drinking whiskey. And it was all kosher, nothing horrible or sexy happened. I was only half expecting to go to the kitchen for ice, only to open the fridge door to see a decapitated head with an onion in its mouth looking back at me.
It was nice also to hear a waitress at Denny's (at 2am) say to us that she wanted to feed her two kids "healthy stuff". I'd hope there were more people like her out there because a lot of kids here have a diet that makes Jamie Oliver's dreaded Turkey Twizzlers look like a macrobiotic health-feast. One in nine American families can't afford to feed themselves properly and yet up to 25 per cent of children belonging to low-income families are obese or overweight nationwide. How is that even possible?
Here are a few things in my drink: Pamax. Phosphates. Cyanocobalium. And good old-fashioned L-Carnitine. It's really making me feel on edge, this drink. Like all these Mexicans know I'm not Mexican at all. If I wore a Viva Zapata t-shirt would they think I'm being ironic? I like how indifferent all these Mexicans look. Without a care in the world. Am I being racist? Oh God, I hope I'm not being racist. Relax. This is just the Pamax talking.
I could happily spend a long time in this Mexican laundromat. The guy behind the counter seems cool. He has long hair. When I ask him if I can leave my stuff in the dryer for a while he says "Yeah!" like I've asked if I can buy him a beer. Everyone else is just doing their laundry like a Mexican in a laundromat. That sounds like the punchline to a joke. "A Mexican in a laundromat!" I'll award a prize to anyone that can write a set-up.
You know what franchise someone should rip off and bring to London? The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. There's a few of them scattered around town here. The tickets are cheap and they show all kinds of films but the best part - the selling point in my mind - is that you get fried pickles, beer and pizza brought to you during the film. They're all staffed by hip kids (I love hip kids!) and every evening they have special events like "Jiggy Krunk's 90's Pop Rap Singalong", zombie movie marathons and stand up comedy gigs where the comedian stands in front of a classic film and mocks it throughout. They even had an evening of Vietnamese spy films recently. Beat that Prince Charles! (The Soho cinema, not the heir to the throne).
The evening was the best kind of white-water, joy-ride of a night. We had originally planned to see a heavily-recommended rock band called Two Car Garage but it didn't work out like that. At the venue I'd spoken to a punter, asking them about the band, for about 10 minutes, before I realised said punter was in fact their singer-guitarist. It wasn't my fault - he was preturnaturally modest. Me: "What do they sound like?" Him: "Pretty normal I guess." Me: "Are they any good?" Him "They're ok."
To kill time before they started we went to a bar full of people watching television. Why would anyone do that? And they were watching a DVD of a film called Beerfest - a movie reviewers have called "chaotic and lame", and "aggressively, rampantly tedious". Why would any adult go to a bar and subject themself to this film? It's two hours long!
My mind was grappling with this question and others like it when a couple sat down in front of my friend and I. They were doing vodka shots and were very vocal about us coming back to their house to see their hot tub. Now I'm a reasonable man, but I've been around the block enough times to know that their invitation meant two possible things. Either we would be unwittingly initiated into the seedy world of some kind of Austin swingers cult, or we would be raped then killed. It could even be both. A debauched, masquerade ball in the Texan suburbs, culminating in a blood sacrifice.
Seth and Caren were actually very nice. They were young, married and had good taste in music. They did seem to be suffering slightly from that kind of anxiety people succumb to when they get married young. You know, when they become paranoid that their social lives are melting away. Next thing you know, your wife is up dancing on the bar, going "Whoo!" and telling random people "Oh, that's my husband, but we're cool like this". Are they cool like that? Or is everything turning to shit?
Anyway, they were lovely people and we did end up in their hot tub drinking whiskey. And it was all kosher, nothing horrible or sexy happened. I was only half expecting to go to the kitchen for ice, only to open the fridge door to see a decapitated head with an onion in its mouth looking back at me.
It was nice also to hear a waitress at Denny's (at 2am) say to us that she wanted to feed her two kids "healthy stuff". I'd hope there were more people like her out there because a lot of kids here have a diet that makes Jamie Oliver's dreaded Turkey Twizzlers look like a macrobiotic health-feast. One in nine American families can't afford to feed themselves properly and yet up to 25 per cent of children belonging to low-income families are obese or overweight nationwide. How is that even possible?
November 11
Austin is music-obsessed. Probably the single most music-obsessed place I've ever been. Usually when you arrive in a place and ask the locals what there is to do around town they'll give you a couple of bars, restaurants and cafes. In Austin they'll tell you what bands are playing tonight, tomorrow and the day after. If you press them further and ask about places that don't necessarily have live music people will give you a confused look suggesting you've missed the point of Austin entirely.
Like most of the places I've grown to like and love in America, Austin kind of looks like a piece of crap. Everything is spread out and even the artsy, bohemian neighbourhoods contain shops that have to put up with eight lanes of traffic right outside the window. But put up they do, and Austin boasts some of the best vintage stores and record shops I've ever seen. In fact being here makes me nostalgic for second-hand record stores. I realise there are a few left in London but they're not quite right. Quite right is the know-it-all but pleasant guy behind the counter. Quite right is a spacious interior laid out according to the personal preferences of the staff. Quite right is a large wall of independent releases on vinyl and CD, accompanied by hand-written descriptions so you know what you're in for.
This isn't a record store. This is a Marks & Spencer's record store.
A cold front moved into Austin today. Let me tell you about an Austin cold front. It's not cold. And if I have one more Texan say "Britain huh? I bet you're loving this cold front!" I'm going to have to bust out the denim cut-offs to demonstrate how not-cold it is here. Yes Texas, your food is tastier and more plentiful, your people are friendlier and your cars are bigger. But your cold has nothing on our cold. So don't pretend you know what it's like to wake up in July and be greeted by a grey, rainy sky, because you have no idea.
Having said that, it is getting nippy in the evenings here.
Like most of the places I've grown to like and love in America, Austin kind of looks like a piece of crap. Everything is spread out and even the artsy, bohemian neighbourhoods contain shops that have to put up with eight lanes of traffic right outside the window. But put up they do, and Austin boasts some of the best vintage stores and record shops I've ever seen. In fact being here makes me nostalgic for second-hand record stores. I realise there are a few left in London but they're not quite right. Quite right is the know-it-all but pleasant guy behind the counter. Quite right is a spacious interior laid out according to the personal preferences of the staff. Quite right is a large wall of independent releases on vinyl and CD, accompanied by hand-written descriptions so you know what you're in for.
This isn't a record store. This is a Marks & Spencer's record store.
A cold front moved into Austin today. Let me tell you about an Austin cold front. It's not cold. And if I have one more Texan say "Britain huh? I bet you're loving this cold front!" I'm going to have to bust out the denim cut-offs to demonstrate how not-cold it is here. Yes Texas, your food is tastier and more plentiful, your people are friendlier and your cars are bigger. But your cold has nothing on our cold. So don't pretend you know what it's like to wake up in July and be greeted by a grey, rainy sky, because you have no idea.
Having said that, it is getting nippy in the evenings here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
November 10
Smell you later San Antonio. Smell you later forever.
The Greyhound ride from San Antonio to Austin was a short one but it was memorable thanks to one Jonathan Pena. Jonathan was a pleasant, clean-cut Mexican kid who just happened to have been released from a juvenile prison after serving a year-long sentence for drugs and firearm offenses. Both Jonathan and I didn't like San Antonio, but I had the feeling he might have had a worse time of it than me.
He had been bounced from Austin, to Houston and then finally to San Antonio over the course of a year, because he was unable to peacefully co-exist with other inmates. He explained to me how if you were small you had to "beat the shit out of people" so they knew you weren't a pushover. Jonathan was 18, but had been in and out of correctional facilities since 15.
He wasn't bashful about showing me the accoutrement of life behind bars. He had a laminated OFFENDER card with his name, prisoner ID, and a terrifying photograph of him, shaven-headed, glaring into the camera. His most proud possession however, was a printout of the report which ended up putting him in solitary confinement for six weeks. In the section labeled "reason for confinement" a prison officer had written"inmate got into a fight with Rodriguez Benigno; said fight resulted in injuries to Rodriguez too serious for first aid".
"But Jonathan," I said. "You seem so nice."
Jonathan explained that he hadn't been at fault. This Benigno character had jumped him in the rec yard, clocking him in the face with a paper-weight inside a sock. True to character Jonathan then had to "beat the shit out of him".
The subsequent six weeks with no visitors, no recreation time and even worse meals than usual hadn't been pleasant but Jonathan believed that had he not made an example out of Benigno he would have been picked on again and again. So in some ways I think we all have a lot to learn from Jonathan Pena. At the office, on the train, or even at the supermarket, it's time that we, as a people, stop letting everyone else make our lives difficult. It's time to start beating the shit out of people.
There was also a young girl on the bus who told me that her friend, aged 17, had already given birth to five kids. That's amazing. Even the perma-pregnant teens of Caledonian Road would be impressed at that kind of rapid-fire spawning. She was also keen to talk about how tough it was financially, for a single-mother to raise that many children.
I was reminded of something Johnny Trask had said in New Orleans. A lot of the girls in the poor neighbourhoods, he said, couldn't see the point in getting a job when it was possible to get paid more in welfare cheques after having a baby. "These are some ignorant peoples", he said. Harsh, but coming from a former drug-dealer in New Orleans, oddly fair.
So, how hard is this single-parent malarkey? This 17-year-old mum with five kids. Let's assume she belongs to the 37 million people living in poverty in the United States. Apparently that means, in a household containing six people (five of which are infants), she has to bring in less than $27,000 anually. If she falls short of that hurdle, she technically classifies as living below the poverty line - as it is defined by the US Census Bureau in 2007.
The average income defecit for a family living in poverty in America is about $8000. If we apply this to the 17-year-old with five kids it means she is $8000 short of the $27,000 needed to not be poor in the eyes of the government.
However in America, or at least I think so, a lot of welfare benefits are not counted as part of your income. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, low-income energy assistance, and many more, none of it is cash so none of it gets added to your income when the people at the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme work out just how needy you are. Theoretically, you could make up a lot of that $8000 in social security benefits but not have it register on anyone's radar.
On top of that if our girl has a job that pays at least $15,000 (much less than the McDonald's median wage), she can receieve an additional $4,700 in tax credit because of her kids.
Now obviously it's not an easy life. I can't assume that single mothers are having a big old laugh at the taxpayer's expense in Texas - where it's harder than elsewhere to qualify for cash assistance of any kind. But then if it's so hard and unpleasant why are so many girls in Texas rushing to get pregnant? A national report in 2007 found the state has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
The Greyhound ride from San Antonio to Austin was a short one but it was memorable thanks to one Jonathan Pena. Jonathan was a pleasant, clean-cut Mexican kid who just happened to have been released from a juvenile prison after serving a year-long sentence for drugs and firearm offenses. Both Jonathan and I didn't like San Antonio, but I had the feeling he might have had a worse time of it than me.
He had been bounced from Austin, to Houston and then finally to San Antonio over the course of a year, because he was unable to peacefully co-exist with other inmates. He explained to me how if you were small you had to "beat the shit out of people" so they knew you weren't a pushover. Jonathan was 18, but had been in and out of correctional facilities since 15.
He wasn't bashful about showing me the accoutrement of life behind bars. He had a laminated OFFENDER card with his name, prisoner ID, and a terrifying photograph of him, shaven-headed, glaring into the camera. His most proud possession however, was a printout of the report which ended up putting him in solitary confinement for six weeks. In the section labeled "reason for confinement" a prison officer had written"inmate got into a fight with Rodriguez Benigno; said fight resulted in injuries to Rodriguez too serious for first aid".
"But Jonathan," I said. "You seem so nice."
Jonathan explained that he hadn't been at fault. This Benigno character had jumped him in the rec yard, clocking him in the face with a paper-weight inside a sock. True to character Jonathan then had to "beat the shit out of him".
The subsequent six weeks with no visitors, no recreation time and even worse meals than usual hadn't been pleasant but Jonathan believed that had he not made an example out of Benigno he would have been picked on again and again. So in some ways I think we all have a lot to learn from Jonathan Pena. At the office, on the train, or even at the supermarket, it's time that we, as a people, stop letting everyone else make our lives difficult. It's time to start beating the shit out of people.
There was also a young girl on the bus who told me that her friend, aged 17, had already given birth to five kids. That's amazing. Even the perma-pregnant teens of Caledonian Road would be impressed at that kind of rapid-fire spawning. She was also keen to talk about how tough it was financially, for a single-mother to raise that many children.
I was reminded of something Johnny Trask had said in New Orleans. A lot of the girls in the poor neighbourhoods, he said, couldn't see the point in getting a job when it was possible to get paid more in welfare cheques after having a baby. "These are some ignorant peoples", he said. Harsh, but coming from a former drug-dealer in New Orleans, oddly fair.
So, how hard is this single-parent malarkey? This 17-year-old mum with five kids. Let's assume she belongs to the 37 million people living in poverty in the United States. Apparently that means, in a household containing six people (five of which are infants), she has to bring in less than $27,000 anually. If she falls short of that hurdle, she technically classifies as living below the poverty line - as it is defined by the US Census Bureau in 2007.
The average income defecit for a family living in poverty in America is about $8000. If we apply this to the 17-year-old with five kids it means she is $8000 short of the $27,000 needed to not be poor in the eyes of the government.
However in America, or at least I think so, a lot of welfare benefits are not counted as part of your income. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, low-income energy assistance, and many more, none of it is cash so none of it gets added to your income when the people at the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme work out just how needy you are. Theoretically, you could make up a lot of that $8000 in social security benefits but not have it register on anyone's radar.
On top of that if our girl has a job that pays at least $15,000 (much less than the McDonald's median wage), she can receieve an additional $4,700 in tax credit because of her kids.
Now obviously it's not an easy life. I can't assume that single mothers are having a big old laugh at the taxpayer's expense in Texas - where it's harder than elsewhere to qualify for cash assistance of any kind. But then if it's so hard and unpleasant why are so many girls in Texas rushing to get pregnant? A national report in 2007 found the state has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
November 9
THERE'S SHIT ALL TO DO IN SAN ANTONIO PART II
I'd like to protest the state of American convenience-culture for a moment. How much convenience does one nation need?
There are things in society that I erroneously believed were already convenient enough. The American convenience-experts frowned at these things and went to work on them - determined to make them easier to use or eat. For example: the convenience store. It's name would have you believe that it was convenient enough already. That would be wrong. Let's be honest we all love a convenience store but it can be tiring to walk from aisle to aisle, using our heads to look left and right at the items we want to buy. Then once we've decided what things to purchase, we then have to carry them out to our car. What bullshit. I wanted convenience, and here I am, on my feet, using my arms and hands like a farmer. Luckily the convenience-experts of America invented the drive-thru convenience store. Now I can sit in my car, shout "Beef! Toothpaste! A blue hat!" into a metal box and some peon will run around the store, collecting my items for me. Onwards and upwards America!
The convenience experts have also applied the same zero-tolerance approach to inconvenience in other areas; burgers for instance. I love a burger but like you I hate that period after I put a burger in my mouth and before it gets to my stomach. How can I eliminate those tiresome seconds spent chewing?
Turns out it's easy. The White Castle fast-food chain have created little burgers actually called Sliders. I don't have to explain how disgusting the concept of a Slider is because the name is doing it for me right now. But hold on one minute. Sliders are small and Americans are hungry. How the fuck is this going to work?
At that moment the convenience-experts whip out the "Crave Case". For a worryingly low price you can buy a blue and white case containing 30 Sliders. Think how much better your life would be if you had access to a Crave Case. You'd be the talk of the office for sure. And you'd certainly be a big hit on the Tube, guzzling tiny burgers out of a greasy, plastic suitcase.
The only logical next step has already been mapped out by The Onion.
I'd like to protest the state of American convenience-culture for a moment. How much convenience does one nation need?
There are things in society that I erroneously believed were already convenient enough. The American convenience-experts frowned at these things and went to work on them - determined to make them easier to use or eat. For example: the convenience store. It's name would have you believe that it was convenient enough already. That would be wrong. Let's be honest we all love a convenience store but it can be tiring to walk from aisle to aisle, using our heads to look left and right at the items we want to buy. Then once we've decided what things to purchase, we then have to carry them out to our car. What bullshit. I wanted convenience, and here I am, on my feet, using my arms and hands like a farmer. Luckily the convenience-experts of America invented the drive-thru convenience store. Now I can sit in my car, shout "Beef! Toothpaste! A blue hat!" into a metal box and some peon will run around the store, collecting my items for me. Onwards and upwards America!
The convenience experts have also applied the same zero-tolerance approach to inconvenience in other areas; burgers for instance. I love a burger but like you I hate that period after I put a burger in my mouth and before it gets to my stomach. How can I eliminate those tiresome seconds spent chewing?
Turns out it's easy. The White Castle fast-food chain have created little burgers actually called Sliders. I don't have to explain how disgusting the concept of a Slider is because the name is doing it for me right now. But hold on one minute. Sliders are small and Americans are hungry. How the fuck is this going to work?
At that moment the convenience-experts whip out the "Crave Case". For a worryingly low price you can buy a blue and white case containing 30 Sliders. Think how much better your life would be if you had access to a Crave Case. You'd be the talk of the office for sure. And you'd certainly be a big hit on the Tube, guzzling tiny burgers out of a greasy, plastic suitcase.
The only logical next step has already been mapped out by The Onion.
November 8
THERE'S SHIT ALL TO DO IN SAN ANTONIO PART I
I don't mean to "rag" on a particular city. It's not my intention to black-ball a place so that you never go there. But let me put it this way: following New Orleans with San Antonio is like tearing yourself away from a never-ending jazz party held in a crystal bubble orbiting the Earth, to jump on the Circle Line to Snaresbrook. And not the good bit of Snaresbrook either.
So in lieu of anything interesting to say about the place in which I find myself, I present you with:
FIVE GREAT PLACES TO EAT THE NEXT TIME YOU QUIT YOUR JOB AND GO TO THE AMERICAN SOUTH
1) Blue Plate Cafe, Store St, Memphis. Do you want to get big and fat? Come here! Even if you don't order pancakes, biscuits and waffles you'll get them anyway. It's the perfect American breakfast. Added bonus: Menus which look like newspapers. What a gas!
2) Clover Grill, Bourbon St, New Orleans. It's open 24 hours a day, and they'll cook your enormous burger in a god damned hubcap. Added bonus: Milkshakes so thick you'll puncture a lung. Plus there's a world-hating, Nietzsche teenager who works in there who sounds and looks like the spotty-faced teen from the Simpsons.
3) Stack 'em High, The Outer Banks, North Carolina. A great breakfast place with all the usuals, plus an effective, surfery vibe. Added bonus: The owner looks like Will Ferrell and he'll come and talk to you.
2) Mother's Restaurant, Poydras St, New Orleans. Rough and ready Cajun fare like jambalaya, endouillie and gumbo. All of it's spicy and delicious and the staff are like a live-action sitcom, performing for your in-meal entertainment. Added bonus: LL Cool J eats here! You also get the local police department dropping in to chat with the staff and help themselves to food. Plus, the staff remember your name after one visit and say "Hey Joseph!" in a highly suggestive way when you walk in.
1) Gus's, Memphis. I don't know where it is because we were taken there in a car at night time but it is the best fried chicken I've ever eaten. It's so tiny in there that from the outside it barely registers as a restaurant. Added bonus: none needed. Best chicken ever.
I don't mean to "rag" on a particular city. It's not my intention to black-ball a place so that you never go there. But let me put it this way: following New Orleans with San Antonio is like tearing yourself away from a never-ending jazz party held in a crystal bubble orbiting the Earth, to jump on the Circle Line to Snaresbrook. And not the good bit of Snaresbrook either.
So in lieu of anything interesting to say about the place in which I find myself, I present you with:
FIVE GREAT PLACES TO EAT THE NEXT TIME YOU QUIT YOUR JOB AND GO TO THE AMERICAN SOUTH
1) Blue Plate Cafe, Store St, Memphis. Do you want to get big and fat? Come here! Even if you don't order pancakes, biscuits and waffles you'll get them anyway. It's the perfect American breakfast. Added bonus: Menus which look like newspapers. What a gas!
2) Clover Grill, Bourbon St, New Orleans. It's open 24 hours a day, and they'll cook your enormous burger in a god damned hubcap. Added bonus: Milkshakes so thick you'll puncture a lung. Plus there's a world-hating, Nietzsche teenager who works in there who sounds and looks like the spotty-faced teen from the Simpsons.
3) Stack 'em High, The Outer Banks, North Carolina. A great breakfast place with all the usuals, plus an effective, surfery vibe. Added bonus: The owner looks like Will Ferrell and he'll come and talk to you.
2) Mother's Restaurant, Poydras St, New Orleans. Rough and ready Cajun fare like jambalaya, endouillie and gumbo. All of it's spicy and delicious and the staff are like a live-action sitcom, performing for your in-meal entertainment. Added bonus: LL Cool J eats here! You also get the local police department dropping in to chat with the staff and help themselves to food. Plus, the staff remember your name after one visit and say "Hey Joseph!" in a highly suggestive way when you walk in.
1) Gus's, Memphis. I don't know where it is because we were taken there in a car at night time but it is the best fried chicken I've ever eaten. It's so tiny in there that from the outside it barely registers as a restaurant. Added bonus: none needed. Best chicken ever.
November 7
And on to San Antonio, Texas. We took the train for a change. It was an impressive, shiny train but unfortunately it was the slowest vehicle I've ever crossed a country in. A journey that takes between eight and nine hours by car took more than 15 hours on this train. The driver was obviously guilt-stricken at quite how long his train took to go anywhere as he decided to treat his passengers to a running commentary, designed to educate us in the ways of rural America, throughout the day. It wasn't a great commentary. At one point told us that:
"After the rice has been harvested [long pause] the farmers harvest the rice".
We arrived in San Antonio at 3am and it's deserted. Lucky for us the cheap motel we've booked is right around the corner. Right? I mean, they wouldn't flagrantly lie to us and locate their motel on the map at least 15 blocks from its actual location, leaving us no option but to trek through deserted neighborhoods in the dead of night, laden with enough money cameras and credit cards to make a Japanese coach tour blush? Oh wait, they would? How lucky for us! And look, dangling from those telephone lines, aren't those sneakers - very likely indicating this is where someone was recently shot? Why yes. And there's another pair! What an authentic experience we're having.
An hour later we arrived at the motel - which was so far north of its advertised location we may have actually crossed into Oklahoma. Ill, with no voice and not happy with the suspiciously crusty blanket on my bed I told myself that tomorrow would be better. San Antonio is a fun place. Right?
"After the rice has been harvested [long pause] the farmers harvest the rice".
We arrived in San Antonio at 3am and it's deserted. Lucky for us the cheap motel we've booked is right around the corner. Right? I mean, they wouldn't flagrantly lie to us and locate their motel on the map at least 15 blocks from its actual location, leaving us no option but to trek through deserted neighborhoods in the dead of night, laden with enough money cameras and credit cards to make a Japanese coach tour blush? Oh wait, they would? How lucky for us! And look, dangling from those telephone lines, aren't those sneakers - very likely indicating this is where someone was recently shot? Why yes. And there's another pair! What an authentic experience we're having.
An hour later we arrived at the motel - which was so far north of its advertised location we may have actually crossed into Oklahoma. Ill, with no voice and not happy with the suspiciously crusty blanket on my bed I told myself that tomorrow would be better. San Antonio is a fun place. Right?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
November 6
After all the screaming and shouting on election night I've succumbed to a dreadful disease. If this is the price I have to maintain my local celebrity (I'd guess that I'm approaching state-wide levels of recognition now) then so be it.
A guy called Johnny Trask, who I originally started talking to about reggae, decided that he would drive my friend and I around the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans today. That was the part of the city which was wiped out entirely by Katrina four years ago. He took us to the neighborhood where he grew up and the house in which his family had lived for generations. There is absolutely nothing there now. It's just long grass for block after block after block. I took a whole bunch of notes while he was explaining the entire catastrophe so in the interests of brevity I'll save writing it up for another time.
By the way, do you know what I'm most envious of when it comes to America? Free speech? No. We have that at Hyde Park Corner and I'm happy to quarantine all those people right there. Is it the right to bear arms? Well, there are a lot of people in London I'd like to shoot, but the right to bear arms only extends so far when it comes to building you personal arsenal. That's no good if I want some kind of assault rifle or, at a stretch, the "Old Faithful" gattling-gun from Predator. No what I really covet in America is their cafes.
What? The cafes? In America? Yes. Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans are blessed with some of the coolest cafes I've ever had the pleasure to waste time in. They're huge places, filled with kids on laptops and friends playing chequers after work. Seriously, America has no business cultivating such bohemian hubs of art and creativity. I demand the Federal Reserve pour money into a scheme to get the American youth back into the burger bars, diners and pizzerias. Stop embarassing Europe with your tastefully appointed, spacious and (crucially) liquor-licensed culture-havens.
Everything that makes a city pleasant is present and correct in New Orleans. Trams - beautiful wooden trams - run all over the place. Ceiling fans. Ceiling fans everywhere! Even outside, attached to wooden shop fronts which overhang the pavement. And lastly there are big, hand painted signs written onto brick walls everywhere. All cities should have these things.
New Orleans even has Hell's Angels. Well, one. This particular Hell's Angel, a short, muscular dude with a buzz-cut and a long, point beard in his sixties, was also the owner of New Orleans' most elaborate Halloween display. Taking up every inch of his porch, Brad had put together an "Undead Wedding" diorama featuring two hooded skeleton guards, a skeleton riding a real motorbike, a zombie bride and groom which actually moved up and down the aisle, and of course a zombie priest. Brad talked about his diorama in a serious way, like a stern father discussing his son's progress through college.
"Yeah, it turned out pretty good this year," he said. "I was real happy with the bride. Her neck sprays blood everywhere."
I was impressed by the benefits attached to being a Hell's Angel. It seems that any time you are in trouble you can call upon your "bros" who will ride into town and beat up whoever you want . There was a rogue painter-decorator in New Orleans who was ripping off old people - tricking them into handing over their savings before leaving whatever job they'd been paid to do unfinished. Brad was going to call up his bros on this guy. They were going to put him in "a world of pain".
I'm sure Brad and his friends did plan to batter the handyman with several feet of lead piping but I had a feeling that when it came down to it Brad wouldn't actually hurt anyone these days. He was a nice old guy. Sure, he's probably given his fair share of chain-fisted beatings over the years but him talking sounded liek an old boxer boasting to his family about getting into the ring one more time. An old Hell's Angel is basically just a vaguely-tough motorbike enthusiast.
A guy called Johnny Trask, who I originally started talking to about reggae, decided that he would drive my friend and I around the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans today. That was the part of the city which was wiped out entirely by Katrina four years ago. He took us to the neighborhood where he grew up and the house in which his family had lived for generations. There is absolutely nothing there now. It's just long grass for block after block after block. I took a whole bunch of notes while he was explaining the entire catastrophe so in the interests of brevity I'll save writing it up for another time.
By the way, do you know what I'm most envious of when it comes to America? Free speech? No. We have that at Hyde Park Corner and I'm happy to quarantine all those people right there. Is it the right to bear arms? Well, there are a lot of people in London I'd like to shoot, but the right to bear arms only extends so far when it comes to building you personal arsenal. That's no good if I want some kind of assault rifle or, at a stretch, the "Old Faithful" gattling-gun from Predator. No what I really covet in America is their cafes.
What? The cafes? In America? Yes. Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans are blessed with some of the coolest cafes I've ever had the pleasure to waste time in. They're huge places, filled with kids on laptops and friends playing chequers after work. Seriously, America has no business cultivating such bohemian hubs of art and creativity. I demand the Federal Reserve pour money into a scheme to get the American youth back into the burger bars, diners and pizzerias. Stop embarassing Europe with your tastefully appointed, spacious and (crucially) liquor-licensed culture-havens.
Everything that makes a city pleasant is present and correct in New Orleans. Trams - beautiful wooden trams - run all over the place. Ceiling fans. Ceiling fans everywhere! Even outside, attached to wooden shop fronts which overhang the pavement. And lastly there are big, hand painted signs written onto brick walls everywhere. All cities should have these things.
New Orleans even has Hell's Angels. Well, one. This particular Hell's Angel, a short, muscular dude with a buzz-cut and a long, point beard in his sixties, was also the owner of New Orleans' most elaborate Halloween display. Taking up every inch of his porch, Brad had put together an "Undead Wedding" diorama featuring two hooded skeleton guards, a skeleton riding a real motorbike, a zombie bride and groom which actually moved up and down the aisle, and of course a zombie priest. Brad talked about his diorama in a serious way, like a stern father discussing his son's progress through college.
"Yeah, it turned out pretty good this year," he said. "I was real happy with the bride. Her neck sprays blood everywhere."
I was impressed by the benefits attached to being a Hell's Angel. It seems that any time you are in trouble you can call upon your "bros" who will ride into town and beat up whoever you want . There was a rogue painter-decorator in New Orleans who was ripping off old people - tricking them into handing over their savings before leaving whatever job they'd been paid to do unfinished. Brad was going to call up his bros on this guy. They were going to put him in "a world of pain".
I'm sure Brad and his friends did plan to batter the handyman with several feet of lead piping but I had a feeling that when it came down to it Brad wouldn't actually hurt anyone these days. He was a nice old guy. Sure, he's probably given his fair share of chain-fisted beatings over the years but him talking sounded liek an old boxer boasting to his family about getting into the ring one more time. An old Hell's Angel is basically just a vaguely-tough motorbike enthusiast.
November 5
Well stuff kind of looks the same. No change yet.
That's not strictly true. There's definitely a strange (technical political term coming up) buzzy atmosphere in the streets. You hear snippets of fidgety, disbelieving conversations. Homeboys are driving around playing My President by Young Jeezy at full volume with their windows down. It feels like everyone under 30 is especially loved-up right now. Usually I might instinctively kick against all this positivity but like Scrooge before the window at Bob Cratchit's Christmas I have suffered a collapse of reason and of judgement.
Do you know why it's hard for me to remember how significant and how important the Obama victory is? The American media. The American media is a garish trash-compactor which will open its maw to anything that can be commodified. Regardless of how interesting or edifying the subject was originally, it all ends up as sugary garbage. It is an effort to retain a sense of how historic this moment is when the television, radio and magazine industries are so intent on battering their audiences with a shitstorm of banality - a shitstorm which right now has Barack Obama's huge face at its eye. I'm used to rejecting someone or something if the media is intent on pushing them or it into my face. Sienna Miller. Banksy. The pop and rock music of the kids today. Now Barack Obama is entering into the same orbit. Fight it Joe. Remember this.
By the by we've met some interesting characters while in New Orleans. Here are a few:
Papa Boogie: an old man sat outside a seafood restaurant on Oak Street. He's lectured "all over the world" on the subjects of metaphysics and mysticism. He also makes elaborate wood carvings.
Papa Lino: a skeletal, barely ambulatory East African-looking guy in dark shades, a fedora, a sharp suit and lots of gold jewellery. Everyone knows him and seems to love him. He says he's a drummer. Hard to imagine.
Doc Brown: a trumpet player who asks "gospel, blues, jazz or soul?" to random passers-by. Claims to have been James Brown's bandleader for two decades. Told me that he understands funk music on a different level to all other humans.
That's not strictly true. There's definitely a strange (technical political term coming up) buzzy atmosphere in the streets. You hear snippets of fidgety, disbelieving conversations. Homeboys are driving around playing My President by Young Jeezy at full volume with their windows down. It feels like everyone under 30 is especially loved-up right now. Usually I might instinctively kick against all this positivity but like Scrooge before the window at Bob Cratchit's Christmas I have suffered a collapse of reason and of judgement.
Do you know why it's hard for me to remember how significant and how important the Obama victory is? The American media. The American media is a garish trash-compactor which will open its maw to anything that can be commodified. Regardless of how interesting or edifying the subject was originally, it all ends up as sugary garbage. It is an effort to retain a sense of how historic this moment is when the television, radio and magazine industries are so intent on battering their audiences with a shitstorm of banality - a shitstorm which right now has Barack Obama's huge face at its eye. I'm used to rejecting someone or something if the media is intent on pushing them or it into my face. Sienna Miller. Banksy. The pop and rock music of the kids today. Now Barack Obama is entering into the same orbit. Fight it Joe. Remember this.
By the by we've met some interesting characters while in New Orleans. Here are a few:
Papa Boogie: an old man sat outside a seafood restaurant on Oak Street. He's lectured "all over the world" on the subjects of metaphysics and mysticism. He also makes elaborate wood carvings.
Papa Lino: a skeletal, barely ambulatory East African-looking guy in dark shades, a fedora, a sharp suit and lots of gold jewellery. Everyone knows him and seems to love him. He says he's a drummer. Hard to imagine.
Doc Brown: a trumpet player who asks "gospel, blues, jazz or soul?" to random passers-by. Claims to have been James Brown's bandleader for two decades. Told me that he understands funk music on a different level to all other humans.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
November 4
Dereck Balama is in! He did it. What's the opposite of an Uncle Tom? I want to be one! Hooray for Bork Bandera! Change we can! Change we can! I for one welcome our new negro overlord.
I began the day without a plan. I was going to watch wall-to-wall election coverage - that was a given - but I had no idea where. Luckily while I was sat on my ass reading the New York Times, sipping cafe au lait and eating beignets like an effete, European prince my friend was out and about. She spotted a poster for an Obama party at bar. They had an Obama cake and were promising "live, uninterrupted TV coverage until Obama wins". Although I thought this was a significant commitment (if he loses do we sit by the bar watching CNN until he stands again in 2012?) we decided to risk it.
I am forever indebted to my friend for spotting that poster because it turned out to be the alpha and omega of election parties. The politics nerd in me was scared that I would arrive and find the "live TV coverage" to be a single television above the bar showing the news with the volume off. I would be the angry killjoy, bent over a novelty cocktail (Obamamanhattan?) straining to lipread as Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer announce McCain the winner.
By the way: Wolf Blitzer - great name in journalism or greatest name in journalism? I don't mean his career and legacy. I just mean his name.
As is usually the case my hyperactive pessimism was uncalled for. For a start the party was in a small concert venue at the back of the bar. It held a massive projection screen showing CNN at full volume. The turnout was huge too - the place was filled to capacity by about 7.30, with between 500 and 700 people crammed in. During commercials the DJ - Soul Sista - played records and psyched up an audience who didn't need much psyching up. Excitement stemmed partly from the dawning of a new age of American politics and partly from the half-price drinks offer for anyone wearing an Obama t-shirt. Everyone was wearing an Obama t-shirt.
The mood was surprisingly serious initially. Most people really were there to watch the election - beer gripped in white-knuckled hand, cheering whenever CNN gave Obama an early projected lead in a close-run state.
What sticks with me after that was the feeling of momentum. Virginia? Take it. Pennsylvania? Yes please. Florida? Why not. Ohio? Keep them coming. Colorado? Well, I really am full but... go on then! It seemed to get louder and louder, faster and faster until that moment where it suddenly became mathematically inevitable and an enormous, screaming cheer went up in the bar, outside the bar, in the street and in all the houses in New Orleans as Obama's face flashed up on the screen. CNN Projection: Barack Obama elected President of the United States of America.
Interesting aside: on the same evening Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America, Michigan legalised medical marijuana. Coincidence, or early warning sign of Mr Obama's imminent "reefer agenda"?
McCain's concession speech was received politely, until the moment when he thanked Sarah Palin, at which point the crowd booed loudly. Despite the next day's papers which wrote admiringly of the Arizonan senator's speech I found it brittle - even by the standards of a loser's speech. And I like John McCain (a lot of people will be saying that now). Ok, true, he had just been crushed like a mummified scarab beetle under the caterpillar tread of some kind of allegorical tank which I can't quite make a metaphor out of at the moment. But come on. At least feign interest John. Had you won you would be forever known as the man who cock-blocked America's youth.
Barack made a great speech, but these things are his stock in trade. He's got a good rhythm to them: list things in threes, wait for applause, utter something profound and stare into the distance with a sense of grim purpose, smile winningly, repeat until palm of hand is crowded by audience.
What a fantastic first family. The Clintons and the Bushes are just dynasties - political brand names that just hang aound Capitol Hill even when they're not actually occupying the White House. Clintons and Bushes are to the White House what crack heads are to Super 8 Motels. Just hanging around there. The Obama household is one that you'd want to be invited to if you were at school with their kids. It's crazy that these guys are going into the White House. Good crazy! I'm not racist!
The evening got louder and madder as it got later and I remember at one point saying "I bet I can get on stage". Five minutes later I was actually up on stage giving what felt like a barnstorming speech, calling for a new dawn on Anglo-American relation. My drunken ego was reassured by the loud cheers from the audience whenever I left a "meaningful" pause. I was electric. Move over old man Obama - it's time for real change.
Sadly, unfortunately, my friend videotaped the whole thing and what you'll see if you watch it (and if you ask me I will show it to you - I'm that vain) is a semi-incoherent wino ranting nonsense with an unlit cigarette in his hand. At one point I just start shouting the names of European countries. Randomly. Worst of all I end by saying "God bless you, and God bless America... goodnight New Orleans!" as if I can't decide whether I want to be a politician or the singer of an 80s arena rock band.
And as for the cheering audience, well they were cheering so that must count for something, right? No. Consider I was the first person onstage after Obama's acceptance speech, broadcast live from Chicago. The audience were emotional, delusional and probably as happy as they'd ever been in their lives. I could have come onstage dressed as Robert Mugabe and read out the names of children killed by the Nazis during World War II and I still would have been received like Cicero addressing the masses at the Temple of Jupiter.
The rest of the night was a suitably epic melange of dancing, shouting and oath-swearing. After my historic speech I was something of a celebrity in that corner of the French Quarter and people would come up and pat me on the back saying "great speech!" or "we did it!" For some reason I thought it was funny to look them straight in the eye and calmly say "No, I did it."
One odd thing that struck me was this: Pretty much everyone in that room was wearing something with Obama's name or face on. There's that iconic Shepard Fairey HOPE one, a Geuxbama t-shirt which somone gave me, stickers with his name on in the style of the New Orleans water meters, a t-shirt with an illustrated Obama ripping open his shirt to reveal a Superman costume, and a huge number of personalised garments. Before Obama made his acceptance speech all these people (myself included), were rooting for an outsider, a part-counter-culture, part-mainstream figure that was being willed to succeed because people love him. And judging by some of the dancing a few of the girls there were doing with the life-size Obama cardboard cutout, they really love him. After he made that speech however he's the president-elect, and you have a room full of people dancing around, cheering and chanting the name of their actual leader. The only other country where this happens is North Korea. Not even the Chinese pretend to be that enamoured with their government.
But hey, who gives a rat's ass? I haven't even tried to hide my Obamaniacal tendencies over the past few months. It's nice to be part of something so big and so positive for a change. It's nice to be part of this big, weird group made up of young people, poor people and ethnic-minorities. Most of all it's nice that the first song they played once Obama finished his speech was Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk) by Parliament. Because isn't that what we all want? The funk? When George Clinton and his pals demanded: "We want the funk, Give up the funk, Ow, we need the funk, We gotta have that funk!" weren't they really saying ""We want universal healthcare, Give up the reputable foreign policy, Ow, we need the termination of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, We gotta have that end to the infingements to constitutional rights in the name of homeland security and small government!"
Actually Barack is really missing a trick by not scrapping whatever he's using now as his entrance theme and using instead another Parliament track: Chocolate City. I don't know if those still-smarting McCain supporters would get as big a kick out of it as I would though:
And look there's Jesse Jackson crying his eyes out in the crowd. Didn't he want to cut Obama's balls off a few weeks ago? Maybe he's crying because he's out of a job. Cantankerous Civil Rights leader made redundant by sexy black president shocker!
Good night New Orleans!
Barack made a great speech, but these things are his stock in trade. He's got a good rhythm to them: list things in threes, wait for applause, utter something profound and stare into the distance with a sense of grim purpose, smile winningly, repeat until palm of hand is crowded by audience.
What a fantastic first family. The Clintons and the Bushes are just dynasties - political brand names that just hang aound Capitol Hill even when they're not actually occupying the White House. Clintons and Bushes are to the White House what crack heads are to Super 8 Motels. Just hanging around there. The Obama household is one that you'd want to be invited to if you were at school with their kids. It's crazy that these guys are going into the White House. Good crazy! I'm not racist!
The evening got louder and madder as it got later and I remember at one point saying "I bet I can get on stage". Five minutes later I was actually up on stage giving what felt like a barnstorming speech, calling for a new dawn on Anglo-American relation. My drunken ego was reassured by the loud cheers from the audience whenever I left a "meaningful" pause. I was electric. Move over old man Obama - it's time for real change.
Sadly, unfortunately, my friend videotaped the whole thing and what you'll see if you watch it (and if you ask me I will show it to you - I'm that vain) is a semi-incoherent wino ranting nonsense with an unlit cigarette in his hand. At one point I just start shouting the names of European countries. Randomly. Worst of all I end by saying "God bless you, and God bless America... goodnight New Orleans!" as if I can't decide whether I want to be a politician or the singer of an 80s arena rock band.
And as for the cheering audience, well they were cheering so that must count for something, right? No. Consider I was the first person onstage after Obama's acceptance speech, broadcast live from Chicago. The audience were emotional, delusional and probably as happy as they'd ever been in their lives. I could have come onstage dressed as Robert Mugabe and read out the names of children killed by the Nazis during World War II and I still would have been received like Cicero addressing the masses at the Temple of Jupiter.
The rest of the night was a suitably epic melange of dancing, shouting and oath-swearing. After my historic speech I was something of a celebrity in that corner of the French Quarter and people would come up and pat me on the back saying "great speech!" or "we did it!" For some reason I thought it was funny to look them straight in the eye and calmly say "No, I did it."
One odd thing that struck me was this: Pretty much everyone in that room was wearing something with Obama's name or face on. There's that iconic Shepard Fairey HOPE one, a Geuxbama t-shirt which somone gave me, stickers with his name on in the style of the New Orleans water meters, a t-shirt with an illustrated Obama ripping open his shirt to reveal a Superman costume, and a huge number of personalised garments. Before Obama made his acceptance speech all these people (myself included), were rooting for an outsider, a part-counter-culture, part-mainstream figure that was being willed to succeed because people love him. And judging by some of the dancing a few of the girls there were doing with the life-size Obama cardboard cutout, they really love him. After he made that speech however he's the president-elect, and you have a room full of people dancing around, cheering and chanting the name of their actual leader. The only other country where this happens is North Korea. Not even the Chinese pretend to be that enamoured with their government.
But hey, who gives a rat's ass? I haven't even tried to hide my Obamaniacal tendencies over the past few months. It's nice to be part of something so big and so positive for a change. It's nice to be part of this big, weird group made up of young people, poor people and ethnic-minorities. Most of all it's nice that the first song they played once Obama finished his speech was Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk) by Parliament. Because isn't that what we all want? The funk? When George Clinton and his pals demanded: "We want the funk, Give up the funk, Ow, we need the funk, We gotta have that funk!" weren't they really saying ""We want universal healthcare, Give up the reputable foreign policy, Ow, we need the termination of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, We gotta have that end to the infingements to constitutional rights in the name of homeland security and small government!"
Actually Barack is really missing a trick by not scrapping whatever he's using now as his entrance theme and using instead another Parliament track: Chocolate City. I don't know if those still-smarting McCain supporters would get as big a kick out of it as I would though:
They still call it the White HouseOr how about Blackened by Metallica? Ha!
But that's a temporary condition, too.
Can you dig it?
Tell 'em to make sure they got their James Brown pass
And don't be surprised if Ali is in the White House
Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure
Richard Pryor, Minister of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady
A chocolate city is no dream
And look there's Jesse Jackson crying his eyes out in the crowd. Didn't he want to cut Obama's balls off a few weeks ago? Maybe he's crying because he's out of a job. Cantankerous Civil Rights leader made redundant by sexy black president shocker!
Good night New Orleans!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
November 3
Sorry non-southern Americans but I forgot how much better the accents are down here than up there. I was eatin' ma' usual southern breakfast of eggs, biscuits, gravy n' grits (ok, not grits, I don't like grits) and there was a group close by who were from California - or one of them other fancy places. I'd forgotten how nice the folks down here sound. My ears have been spoiled. It took the grating, nasal tones of the "y'know", "like" and "totally awesome" crowd to make me remember. So thank you Yankee, Unionist scum, thanks for that. The New Orleans accent is a real winner by the way, but apparently it's on the wane.
It's quite touching how everyone you meet here in New Orleans genuinely wants to know whether you like the city. When they find out you do (and there really is no other appropriate reaction) they tell you to go back home and tell everyone you know so that they come. All the city's people, from old musicians to cab drivers to hip kids, all seem desperate to put New Orleans back on the map as a post-Katrina tourist destination. Tourism isn't a dirty word here. People are thirsting for it. So come yea Europeans and Asians! Come to wonderful New Orleans! You probably won't die!
I saw some exceptional, face-shredding free-jazz tonight in a bar that was just about dilapidated enough to do justice to the uncompromising, blasting noise being created on and around the stage. The band was made up of a white drummer, a (splendidly afro'd) Jewish double-bassist and two black horn players. This bodes well for Barack Obama tomorrow night. All races working together to create atonal non-music! Yes we can deconstruct conventional performance and composition art theory!
It's quite touching how everyone you meet here in New Orleans genuinely wants to know whether you like the city. When they find out you do (and there really is no other appropriate reaction) they tell you to go back home and tell everyone you know so that they come. All the city's people, from old musicians to cab drivers to hip kids, all seem desperate to put New Orleans back on the map as a post-Katrina tourist destination. Tourism isn't a dirty word here. People are thirsting for it. So come yea Europeans and Asians! Come to wonderful New Orleans! You probably won't die!
I saw some exceptional, face-shredding free-jazz tonight in a bar that was just about dilapidated enough to do justice to the uncompromising, blasting noise being created on and around the stage. The band was made up of a white drummer, a (splendidly afro'd) Jewish double-bassist and two black horn players. This bodes well for Barack Obama tomorrow night. All races working together to create atonal non-music! Yes we can deconstruct conventional performance and composition art theory!
November 2
New Orleans is not like the rest of America. And by "America" I mean a gross, oversimplification based on the four per cent that I've seen. If the other 96 per cent is like New Orleans however I would be surprised. Nawleans is kind of a country all of its own. A few people I've met who live here say it's like living inside a surreal, blissful dream. The weather is beautiful, the streets are somewhere between Montpelier and Havana, the food is consistently great and the people are a laid-back, happy-go-lucky bunch. It's so nice here, so spookily pleasant, that part of your brain tells you that it's all an illusion and the whole fragile charade is liable to come crashing down at any moment. Which of course it is. We're below sea level here. All God has to do is fart in the bath and New Orleans is finished. The city's motto is laissez les bon temps roulez. This could be construed as a plea. No one knows how much time this place has left in general. Can they at least be good times?
People are unstoppably friendly here. You can't help but meet people. Even if you were a pathalogically unsociable mouth breather who had a perpetually running nose and a full neck beard you would still find friendship in New Orleans.
We went to a perfect jazz and blues club that night. It was the kind of smokey dive that as a jazz and blues fan you pray you will one day run into. If jazz and blues clubs were porridge this one was just right. I met a 70-something guy in a smoking jacket (said he wanted to "bring them back"), who owned a popular blues club in New York for 20 years. He had been good friends with Lightning Hopkins - a blues hero of mine. Apparently Lightning never owned a telephone so if you wanted to contact him you had to call on his barber who would go off to find him. That Lightning!
I also had someone offer to buy me a drink in what can only be described as an incredibly hostile fashion. Chance, a be-Stetsoned man from Texas, moseyed up to the bar and said he'd buy me and my friend whatever we wanted. Being English and therefore preturnaturally polite I think I asked him "are you sure?" one too many times (twice). "Boy," he growled. "If you ask me that one more time I'm gonna knock you the fuck out." Chance was many things but he wasn't a fabricator so I accepted my drink quietly.
Incidentally New Orleans is the only place I've been where the bums and tramps shamble up and sing jazz standards to you for money. They sing them pretty well too.
People are unstoppably friendly here. You can't help but meet people. Even if you were a pathalogically unsociable mouth breather who had a perpetually running nose and a full neck beard you would still find friendship in New Orleans.
We went to a perfect jazz and blues club that night. It was the kind of smokey dive that as a jazz and blues fan you pray you will one day run into. If jazz and blues clubs were porridge this one was just right. I met a 70-something guy in a smoking jacket (said he wanted to "bring them back"), who owned a popular blues club in New York for 20 years. He had been good friends with Lightning Hopkins - a blues hero of mine. Apparently Lightning never owned a telephone so if you wanted to contact him you had to call on his barber who would go off to find him. That Lightning!
I also had someone offer to buy me a drink in what can only be described as an incredibly hostile fashion. Chance, a be-Stetsoned man from Texas, moseyed up to the bar and said he'd buy me and my friend whatever we wanted. Being English and therefore preturnaturally polite I think I asked him "are you sure?" one too many times (twice). "Boy," he growled. "If you ask me that one more time I'm gonna knock you the fuck out." Chance was many things but he wasn't a fabricator so I accepted my drink quietly.
Incidentally New Orleans is the only place I've been where the bums and tramps shamble up and sing jazz standards to you for money. They sing them pretty well too.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
November 1
For most carless visitors to America traveling from state to state is done either by train (bland, expensive) or Greyhound bus (stinking, unreliable). For the journey from Memphis to New Orleans, Louisiana my friend and I took the third, less fashionable option: clapped-out, converted school bus covered in white and purple graffiti. This came about after I'd randomly chatted to a guy called Ryan outside of a cafe. I mentioned in passing that we were heading to New Orleans and before I could say "wait, did you say schoolbus?" he'd offered us a ride.
Ryan had driven with his friend Kristee from Chicago, where they lived, in the crazy bus which they'd bought cheaply in New York. They'd ripped out all the seats on the inside and installed a bed, under which lived an understandably skittish cat. Both in their late-twenties they were fantastically normal for people traveling through the South in what could be described as a spaceship from a hippy's half-remembered LSD-nightmare. Okay, Kristee spoke to me for a while about the cat's insecurities and phobias, but some people really love cats. And sure, Ryan had spent a part of his youth as a "gutter punk", living off crystal meth on the streets of San Diego, but who hasn't?
Ryan had even had a crack at being a rail-car riding hobo, hopping from city to city. Apparently there's a mysterious pamphlet called The Crew Change, written by a legendary hobo who wrote down everything he knew about the hobo life. The book gives you the locations of all the major train yards and the times at which the train crews change, allowing the cunning hobo to sneak aboard. Ryan vividly remembered him and friends freezing at the back of an empty carriage, passing round the whiskey flask. Unfortunately they went 100 miles before realising they were heading in the wrong direction. Obviously the hobo book isn't as clear as it could be as Ryan's navigational skills seemed very good to me.
I could really get used to traveling this way. And it's a real plus that it has next to no suspension as the bumpy journey keeps the driver awake on long stretches of cornerless, Mississippi road, preventing crashing and death.
Ryan had driven with his friend Kristee from Chicago, where they lived, in the crazy bus which they'd bought cheaply in New York. They'd ripped out all the seats on the inside and installed a bed, under which lived an understandably skittish cat. Both in their late-twenties they were fantastically normal for people traveling through the South in what could be described as a spaceship from a hippy's half-remembered LSD-nightmare. Okay, Kristee spoke to me for a while about the cat's insecurities and phobias, but some people really love cats. And sure, Ryan had spent a part of his youth as a "gutter punk", living off crystal meth on the streets of San Diego, but who hasn't?
Ryan had even had a crack at being a rail-car riding hobo, hopping from city to city. Apparently there's a mysterious pamphlet called The Crew Change, written by a legendary hobo who wrote down everything he knew about the hobo life. The book gives you the locations of all the major train yards and the times at which the train crews change, allowing the cunning hobo to sneak aboard. Ryan vividly remembered him and friends freezing at the back of an empty carriage, passing round the whiskey flask. Unfortunately they went 100 miles before realising they were heading in the wrong direction. Obviously the hobo book isn't as clear as it could be as Ryan's navigational skills seemed very good to me.
I could really get used to traveling this way. And it's a real plus that it has next to no suspension as the bumpy journey keeps the driver awake on long stretches of cornerless, Mississippi road, preventing crashing and death.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
October 31
Halloween! Americans love the Halloween and you know what, so do I while I'm here. It makes our Halloween look like a half-assed local community event. In the States it's such a big deal that it spills over into November. People deck out their entire house and then spend days slaving over their costumes. We had the choice of either a house party (on a commune) with six live bands or a night at the Hi-Tone with three live bands and a burlesque show. We chose the latter, but not before catching an NBA game in which the local no-hopers (the Grizzlies) beat Orlando Magic 88-86 with hilariously-named star player Rudy Gay scoring the winning basket with 0.8 seconds left on the clock. Already four gins in on the evening, the excitement was almost too much to bear.
I left myself precious little time to dedicate to a Halloween costume and I settled on "1970s Pink Floyd Fan" out of necessity rather than choice. My friend, who was already wearing a somewhat-nautical looking dress simply bought a $5 sailing hat and became a fairly convincing sailor. Girls are clever like that.
The best costume I saw all night in terms of sheer effort was a guy - an art student predictably - dressed as a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes. I came across at least three Sarah Palin (who if God willing isn't the second most powerful person on the planet by the time you're reading this), the best of which also happened to be a fat, bearded drunk man. He even had a plastic gun. "I love guns nearly as much as I hate abortion," he said.
He was a volatile chap, at one point telling me I was "a fucking asshole", and then adding after a long pause "that was a joke".
The bands were good, especially the guys who played a full 12-minute version of Ina-Gadda-Davi-Da to a rapidly emptying room at 2am. That takes all kinds of balls. It was a burlesque evening however, and the local Memphis Belle-esques (ha!) troupe were as good as a gang of young, tattooed, naked, fire-breathing girls should be. A round of e-applause for the ladies.
I was slightly shocked at how young people in Memphis have really embraced the drink-driving. They stagger out of bars and get straight into their cars. Obviously I condemn drink-driving and would never condone or glamourise it. Operating a vehicle while inebriated is irresponsible. So I probably shouldn't have climbed into the passenger seat of that BMW 3-series with two trainee-lawyers (dressed, incidentally as a nurse and Cleopatra).
Cleopatra turned out to be a local celebrity whose mum dated Elvis. None of this was verified by anyone apart from her and to be honest saying your mum dated Elvis in Memphis is a bit like saying your mum in London went to Asda.
I'd like to add finally that a crack head in the street (who was with his crack-bride) told me I look like Bruce Springsteen. Memphis truly is a great city.
I left myself precious little time to dedicate to a Halloween costume and I settled on "1970s Pink Floyd Fan" out of necessity rather than choice. My friend, who was already wearing a somewhat-nautical looking dress simply bought a $5 sailing hat and became a fairly convincing sailor. Girls are clever like that.
The best costume I saw all night in terms of sheer effort was a guy - an art student predictably - dressed as a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes. I came across at least three Sarah Palin (who if God willing isn't the second most powerful person on the planet by the time you're reading this), the best of which also happened to be a fat, bearded drunk man. He even had a plastic gun. "I love guns nearly as much as I hate abortion," he said.
He was a volatile chap, at one point telling me I was "a fucking asshole", and then adding after a long pause "that was a joke".
The bands were good, especially the guys who played a full 12-minute version of Ina-Gadda-Davi-Da to a rapidly emptying room at 2am. That takes all kinds of balls. It was a burlesque evening however, and the local Memphis Belle-esques (ha!) troupe were as good as a gang of young, tattooed, naked, fire-breathing girls should be. A round of e-applause for the ladies.
I was slightly shocked at how young people in Memphis have really embraced the drink-driving. They stagger out of bars and get straight into their cars. Obviously I condemn drink-driving and would never condone or glamourise it. Operating a vehicle while inebriated is irresponsible. So I probably shouldn't have climbed into the passenger seat of that BMW 3-series with two trainee-lawyers (dressed, incidentally as a nurse and Cleopatra).
Cleopatra turned out to be a local celebrity whose mum dated Elvis. None of this was verified by anyone apart from her and to be honest saying your mum dated Elvis in Memphis is a bit like saying your mum in London went to Asda.
I'd like to add finally that a crack head in the street (who was with his crack-bride) told me I look like Bruce Springsteen. Memphis truly is a great city.
Monday, November 3, 2008
October 30
Went to a different part of Memphis today - the Cooper Young district. Allegedly it's the up and coming, hip neighbourhood but it still has a bit of a way to go. I ended up talking to a group of hairy young refuseniks, a couple of whom worked at the local hostel which operated a bit like a commune. They were pretty down on America as a whole and asked me if London had many vegetarians. At one point a crack head sauntered up, mooching for money and cigarettes.
"You know the election?" he mumbled in his crack head voice. "You voting for that guy?"
"I'm voting for Ralph Nader," said one of the guys whose name was Adam.
"Man," said the crack head. "You are crazy."
Adam told me that Memphis had been the location for America's first African American model neighbourhood in the early 70s: Orange Mound. It was for a short time a perfect example of empowerment, cooperation and all that other good stuff until the 80s when it was ripped apart by crack cocaine. Today it's slowly on the way up but Memphis' mayoral and gubernatorial offices are so corrupt that urban areas like Orange Mound are pretty much left to fester.
Young Avenue Deli. Great place but it was worrying that by 5 o' clock everyone that worked there was drunk. They were so drunk that at one point the entire staff left the bar to race each other, on foot, up and down the middle of the road. Still, it had great music. Could I be any happier drinking local beer while lining up Frank Zappa, Judas Priest and Neil Young on the jukebox? No. No, I couldn't. By the way here are some of the great local beers that I and my friends, both old and new, have drunk in the last two weeks across the South: Yuengling, Dreamweaver, Yazoo Pale, Carolina Blonde, Endless Summer, Pischa Pale, Ghost River, Warsteiner Pilsner.
I like being British here because people open up to you with almost no cajoling or wheedling. Maggie Louise told us about her conservative father being surprisingly accepting of her being gay. She was from Millington. "But there ain't much to do up in Millington," she said.
That evening we went to an open mic night at the local artsy cafe. I was particularly impressed by the performance of Z-Bob, the local hobo.
"Now," said Z-Bob to the audience. "I am nobody. I done nothing. I done wrote a book called The King of Nothing. But the Man stood there and said the poetry for me."
The locals are not so impressed by Z-Bob. I think they've been overexposed to him. One guy, Warren, had been hit by a car three weeks ago and was lying in the road when Z-Bob had wandered over to talk to him about "how people be".
"Jesus Christ Z-Bob," screamed Warren. "Just get me an ambulance!"
Z-Bob played a startlingly dramatic classical piano piece for us that night. I think he'd be a big hit in London. Does anyone want to put out for Z-Bob's air fare?
"You know the election?" he mumbled in his crack head voice. "You voting for that guy?"
"I'm voting for Ralph Nader," said one of the guys whose name was Adam.
"Man," said the crack head. "You are crazy."
Adam told me that Memphis had been the location for America's first African American model neighbourhood in the early 70s: Orange Mound. It was for a short time a perfect example of empowerment, cooperation and all that other good stuff until the 80s when it was ripped apart by crack cocaine. Today it's slowly on the way up but Memphis' mayoral and gubernatorial offices are so corrupt that urban areas like Orange Mound are pretty much left to fester.
Young Avenue Deli. Great place but it was worrying that by 5 o' clock everyone that worked there was drunk. They were so drunk that at one point the entire staff left the bar to race each other, on foot, up and down the middle of the road. Still, it had great music. Could I be any happier drinking local beer while lining up Frank Zappa, Judas Priest and Neil Young on the jukebox? No. No, I couldn't. By the way here are some of the great local beers that I and my friends, both old and new, have drunk in the last two weeks across the South: Yuengling, Dreamweaver, Yazoo Pale, Carolina Blonde, Endless Summer, Pischa Pale, Ghost River, Warsteiner Pilsner.
I like being British here because people open up to you with almost no cajoling or wheedling. Maggie Louise told us about her conservative father being surprisingly accepting of her being gay. She was from Millington. "But there ain't much to do up in Millington," she said.
That evening we went to an open mic night at the local artsy cafe. I was particularly impressed by the performance of Z-Bob, the local hobo.
"Now," said Z-Bob to the audience. "I am nobody. I done nothing. I done wrote a book called The King of Nothing. But the Man stood there and said the poetry for me."
The locals are not so impressed by Z-Bob. I think they've been overexposed to him. One guy, Warren, had been hit by a car three weeks ago and was lying in the road when Z-Bob had wandered over to talk to him about "how people be".
"Jesus Christ Z-Bob," screamed Warren. "Just get me an ambulance!"
Z-Bob played a startlingly dramatic classical piano piece for us that night. I think he'd be a big hit in London. Does anyone want to put out for Z-Bob's air fare?
October 29
Hey this is exciting. Six days to go and the election is absolutely everywhere - even in Tennessee, a state so foregone in its redness that any result other than a crushing victory for McCain-Palin would be shocking. The great thing is that in America the election bewitches the whole media. This general election hath possessed them. In the UK politics has to fight for relevance among indifferent TV schedules, advertising hoardings and magazine articles. This year in America politics is bleeding through every pore on society's greasy face. Every chat show monologue, every ad break, every conversation overheard at a diner, they're all gearing up for November 4's political Armageddon.
A guy called Donny told me that Memphis was the centre for racism in America. I kind of see what he means. Things are still a little segregated. Black people and white people live side by side but they don't seem to be on the same page.
As a final note I'd like to announce that I had my Greatest Ever Toilet Experience today. I went to take a slash at the King's Palace bar on Beale Street and in the corner of the toilet - quite a small, dingy toilet - there was an old man in sunglasses, facing the wall, smoking and playing trumpet. If every toilet had one of these I'm sure there would be no disease, war or poverty in the world.
A guy called Donny told me that Memphis was the centre for racism in America. I kind of see what he means. Things are still a little segregated. Black people and white people live side by side but they don't seem to be on the same page.
As a final note I'd like to announce that I had my Greatest Ever Toilet Experience today. I went to take a slash at the King's Palace bar on Beale Street and in the corner of the toilet - quite a small, dingy toilet - there was an old man in sunglasses, facing the wall, smoking and playing trumpet. If every toilet had one of these I'm sure there would be no disease, war or poverty in the world.
October 28
And now I'm walking in Memphis.
Memphis is great. What a great place. I love it in Memphis. If Nashville is powered by country music and rhinestones then Memphis is the blues and dirt. Admittedly it's harder to get around than Nashville, things are more spread out, and the only people walking in the streets are bums and crazies, but the kids are cooler overall and there's a lot going on.
We dropped in on Sun Studios - the tiny place where rock music was invented in the mid-50s. Considering the building's place in music history you'd expect more of a fanfare but it's a pokey little building standing by itself next to a main road. It's still a functioning recording studio.
Funny anecdote. I was sat in the Sun Studios Diner - a fun place built onto the side of the music studio - when a guy pulls up in a swish, pink Cadillac. This guy looks the business; he's in his late fifties, wearing a tailored grey suit with an expensive looking haircut and Elvis Costello glasses. He's sitting there in a booth drinking a coke float, smoking a cigarette, reading the newspaper and looking for all the world like the spirit of rock n' roll made in the image of man. Who is this guy, thinks I, a Sun Records executive? A legendary guitar player?
Well it turns out he's nobody really. His name is Tad and he drives people around Memphis in his Cadillac giving guided tours. The funny thing is that while I was busy gawping at Tad and positing him as some kind of rock n'roll pioneer I completely missed WS Holland (Johnny Cash's drummer) quietly come in, drink a coffee and leave.
Made friends with one of the Sun Studios guides, Lydia, and she's become our Memphis mentor, driving us about a bit and showing us where's good to go. I'd also like to give an e-shout out to Ms Lisa - an ol' black lady who has worked at Sun for decades. She likes to talk about all the old blues and rock musicians who's come in and flirt with her back in the day. She must have just missed out on having sex with Elvis though - he would have been getting obese in Vegas by the time she arrived at Sun. Ms Lisa had just bought a small house and was worried that she wouldn't have enough money for Christmas presents for her kids, grandkids and, yes, great grandkids.
We went out with Lydia to a battle of the bands contest at the Red Rooster bar that evening. One band had actually dropped out so it was more of a battle of the band. A civil war. I think by now I've already seen more live music (most of which I haven't even mentioned) in Nashville and Memphis than I have in the last couple of years living in London. This band were good. The singer had a nice Gram Parson's thing going on. My friend and I helped load up their van afterwards (a creepy black vehicle appropriately named Uncle Paedophile), and the evening was only slightly spoiled by their young, trendy-looking drummer telling me the sad state of the music industry was the fault of "the Jews". He didn't really say it in a mean way though. Apart from that he was a nice guy.
Memphis is great. What a great place. I love it in Memphis. If Nashville is powered by country music and rhinestones then Memphis is the blues and dirt. Admittedly it's harder to get around than Nashville, things are more spread out, and the only people walking in the streets are bums and crazies, but the kids are cooler overall and there's a lot going on.
We dropped in on Sun Studios - the tiny place where rock music was invented in the mid-50s. Considering the building's place in music history you'd expect more of a fanfare but it's a pokey little building standing by itself next to a main road. It's still a functioning recording studio.
Funny anecdote. I was sat in the Sun Studios Diner - a fun place built onto the side of the music studio - when a guy pulls up in a swish, pink Cadillac. This guy looks the business; he's in his late fifties, wearing a tailored grey suit with an expensive looking haircut and Elvis Costello glasses. He's sitting there in a booth drinking a coke float, smoking a cigarette, reading the newspaper and looking for all the world like the spirit of rock n' roll made in the image of man. Who is this guy, thinks I, a Sun Records executive? A legendary guitar player?
Well it turns out he's nobody really. His name is Tad and he drives people around Memphis in his Cadillac giving guided tours. The funny thing is that while I was busy gawping at Tad and positing him as some kind of rock n'roll pioneer I completely missed WS Holland (Johnny Cash's drummer) quietly come in, drink a coffee and leave.
Made friends with one of the Sun Studios guides, Lydia, and she's become our Memphis mentor, driving us about a bit and showing us where's good to go. I'd also like to give an e-shout out to Ms Lisa - an ol' black lady who has worked at Sun for decades. She likes to talk about all the old blues and rock musicians who's come in and flirt with her back in the day. She must have just missed out on having sex with Elvis though - he would have been getting obese in Vegas by the time she arrived at Sun. Ms Lisa had just bought a small house and was worried that she wouldn't have enough money for Christmas presents for her kids, grandkids and, yes, great grandkids.
We went out with Lydia to a battle of the bands contest at the Red Rooster bar that evening. One band had actually dropped out so it was more of a battle of the band. A civil war. I think by now I've already seen more live music (most of which I haven't even mentioned) in Nashville and Memphis than I have in the last couple of years living in London. This band were good. The singer had a nice Gram Parson's thing going on. My friend and I helped load up their van afterwards (a creepy black vehicle appropriately named Uncle Paedophile), and the evening was only slightly spoiled by their young, trendy-looking drummer telling me the sad state of the music industry was the fault of "the Jews". He didn't really say it in a mean way though. Apart from that he was a nice guy.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
October 27
We're staying in a hostel a few miles from the centre of town. It's nice. Usually I reject hostels outright because I'm racist against Australians. I wish I wasn't this way, but at least I'm honest about my prejudices. In any case, this hostel we're staying in is good. Full of Australians, but good.
It's run by a haggard woman called Hope who says everything in a world-weary drawl. What made Hope like this? Too much interaction with Australians I'll wager.
Anyway when we first arrived in the hostel Hope gave us a map of Nashville and crossed through a couple of blocks on it with a pen. "That's the ghetto," she said. "Don't go there."
Now I keep staring in the direction of those blocks. Our hostel is in between a nice neighbourhood and a not-so-nice neighbourhood. It's a strange feeling standing on a street corner looking off into the low-rise neighbourhoods which at some blurry point become "the ghetto". The forbidden blocks on Hope's map. It' s like that scene in Predator when the marines are staring into the jungle, looking for some sign of the invisible threat that's out there.
I think from watching the Wire the look of these streets resonates a little bit. You other Wire people know what I mean. The chipped asphalt. The weeds growing up between the paving stones. The deserted corners. It's amazing how dilapidated the city lets these blocks get in contrast to the nicer neighbourhoods which may be literally just around the corner. The irony is that at this exact time John McCain is accusing Barack Obama of being a "socialist" - a dirty word in American politics. Now, I'm anything but a pinko Commie freedom hater but the one Lenin quote still rings true:
"Shame on America for the plight of the negroes!"
Apart from that asshole. He helped kill hip-hop dead here.
It's run by a haggard woman called Hope who says everything in a world-weary drawl. What made Hope like this? Too much interaction with Australians I'll wager.
Anyway when we first arrived in the hostel Hope gave us a map of Nashville and crossed through a couple of blocks on it with a pen. "That's the ghetto," she said. "Don't go there."
Now I keep staring in the direction of those blocks. Our hostel is in between a nice neighbourhood and a not-so-nice neighbourhood. It's a strange feeling standing on a street corner looking off into the low-rise neighbourhoods which at some blurry point become "the ghetto". The forbidden blocks on Hope's map. It' s like that scene in Predator when the marines are staring into the jungle, looking for some sign of the invisible threat that's out there.
I think from watching the Wire the look of these streets resonates a little bit. You other Wire people know what I mean. The chipped asphalt. The weeds growing up between the paving stones. The deserted corners. It's amazing how dilapidated the city lets these blocks get in contrast to the nicer neighbourhoods which may be literally just around the corner. The irony is that at this exact time John McCain is accusing Barack Obama of being a "socialist" - a dirty word in American politics. Now, I'm anything but a pinko Commie freedom hater but the one Lenin quote still rings true:
"Shame on America for the plight of the negroes!"
Apart from that asshole. He helped kill hip-hop dead here.
October 26
American newspapers can be dull. The New York Times on Sunday should be a Sunday fun explosion but it's a black-and-white non-partisan slog. Come on guys, cut loose! You don't have to write such bland crap. It's Sunday. How about some actual opinion and a few pictures of sexy ladies? Newspapers are meant to represent the people that read them. In the UK you can spot a Sun reader. He speaks like the Sun and kind of looks like the Sun. Broad, red at the top and a bit racist at heart. The same goes for the Observer and the Telegraph. I am yet to meet anyone that looks like the New York Times. I guess he would wear a trilby and refer to his friend Bob as "Mr Epstein". When asked to give his opinion on anything he would lean back, squint and begin with: "The consensus among many in the middle-class, including myself, is that..."
October 25
Why have they built a scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville?
Today was game day in the city. There was a football game (NFL), a hockey game (NHL) and a college football game (NCAA-SEC) all happening at the same time, more or less. People are camped out in parks with massive barbecue set ups. For the first time since I've been in America the pavements are full - full! - of people walking. Granted they're walking from their cars to sit for three hours in a stadium, but to the untrained eye they look just like pedestrians. How I miss pedestrians.
Walked through a gen-u-ine American campus. It was like a village of fraternity houses - full of nubile, young 'mericans done up all pretty-like for homecoming. By the way when young Americans do have to dress up all pretty-like the girls really get a bum deal. They get their hair done, apply all the lipgloss they can get their hands on and wear their littlest high heels. The boys just dress like Mormons. Mormon hair, Mormon shirts tucked into Mormon trousers, all rounded off by a nice Mormon tie.
American youths also need pointers on how to drink. The basic technique seems to be "the chug". Standing in a circle the boys (and the odd girl with low self-esteem), will shotgun whole cans of revolting American beer while the others whoop and high-five. They hurtle towards drunkeness with great speed, shrieking and saying "bro!" all the way. We, the British (or I), enjoy alcohol as a useful social lubricant, liberally spreading it around and sharing it until - whoops! - everyone's drunk. Americans drink how they eat - in a frenzy, apparantly terrified of hunger or sobriety's onset.
Fantastic news. I can now hold a convincing conversation about American football. I get it. I get the rules (most of them). So check this out:
By the way people in England might not understand what college football is all about. If you want an approximation of what it's like imagine a university soccer match between Exceter and Leeds. Make it really sunny. Then add between 40-100,000 screaming fans, packed into a specially built stadium on the Exceter campus with the teams' names displayed in 30-foot lettering up and down the pitch. Then add national television crews and huge amounts of merchandise. Mix in an enormous half-time show. Most importantly imagine almost-guaranteed multi-million pound Premier League contracts for the best players on each time. So no, not much like a university soccer game back home. A lot of people actually prefer college football to the pros because a) they love their college and b) it's a little more raw.
It's funny that for such a vehemently heterosexual country American men do enjoy talking about other men's bodies, albeit in a gruff, businesslike way. Wade kept stopping his running commentary to remark on the players. "Check out number 86," he'd say. "He's gotta be 6'2, 6'3 and about 300 lbs. These are big dudes."
That evening my friend and I visited a Hooters. For those of you unfamiliar with the brand, Hooters is a Floridian fast-food chain that specialises in buckets of fried chicken. Not in any way interesting or different. But wait! Did I mention Hooters are serviced entirely by waitresses wearing cleavage-inducing spray-on vests and skin-tight hotpants that ride so far up their asses they're forced to pause every five minutes to adjust their underwear in the middle of the restaurant? I didn't mention that did I? The waitresses can also use the company's pension scheme to pay for boob jobs. The girls working there all have a strange, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers glazed-over facial expression. Sure, they smile if you make eye-contact but it's an horrific smile. It's the smile given by North Korean workers to a UN Weapons Inspectors touring a nuclear facility. If I hadn't been with a friend - a female with a working brain and everything - I would have felt very much the scumbag.
That night we dropped in on the quite famous Blue Bird Cafe. It's a singer-songwritery folk bar and that night we saw a four-piece "folk supergroup" whose songs and onstage banter were exactly - and I mean exactly - like these guys from A Mighty Wind. One of them must have been 6'1, 250 lbs.
Today was game day in the city. There was a football game (NFL), a hockey game (NHL) and a college football game (NCAA-SEC) all happening at the same time, more or less. People are camped out in parks with massive barbecue set ups. For the first time since I've been in America the pavements are full - full! - of people walking. Granted they're walking from their cars to sit for three hours in a stadium, but to the untrained eye they look just like pedestrians. How I miss pedestrians.
Walked through a gen-u-ine American campus. It was like a village of fraternity houses - full of nubile, young 'mericans done up all pretty-like for homecoming. By the way when young Americans do have to dress up all pretty-like the girls really get a bum deal. They get their hair done, apply all the lipgloss they can get their hands on and wear their littlest high heels. The boys just dress like Mormons. Mormon hair, Mormon shirts tucked into Mormon trousers, all rounded off by a nice Mormon tie.
American youths also need pointers on how to drink. The basic technique seems to be "the chug". Standing in a circle the boys (and the odd girl with low self-esteem), will shotgun whole cans of revolting American beer while the others whoop and high-five. They hurtle towards drunkeness with great speed, shrieking and saying "bro!" all the way. We, the British (or I), enjoy alcohol as a useful social lubricant, liberally spreading it around and sharing it until - whoops! - everyone's drunk. Americans drink how they eat - in a frenzy, apparantly terrified of hunger or sobriety's onset.
Fantastic news. I can now hold a convincing conversation about American football. I get it. I get the rules (most of them). So check this out:
That was impressive, you're saying right now I'll bet. What's more it almost all makes sense too. My friend and I went to a college football game and I was lucky enough to sit next to a guy called Steve Wade - a former NFL pro who played for the Colts in the 80s. Mr Steve Wade was very helpful in explaining what was going on on the field, providing a kind of relentless, droning commentary the whole game.
So I saw the 'Dores/Duke game last night. Those Tennessee boys need to change it up on offense. They'd be on third with ten to go in the fourth quarter and they'd still be scared to throw bombs. But that Evans kid can punt, am I right?
By the way people in England might not understand what college football is all about. If you want an approximation of what it's like imagine a university soccer match between Exceter and Leeds. Make it really sunny. Then add between 40-100,000 screaming fans, packed into a specially built stadium on the Exceter campus with the teams' names displayed in 30-foot lettering up and down the pitch. Then add national television crews and huge amounts of merchandise. Mix in an enormous half-time show. Most importantly imagine almost-guaranteed multi-million pound Premier League contracts for the best players on each time. So no, not much like a university soccer game back home. A lot of people actually prefer college football to the pros because a) they love their college and b) it's a little more raw.
It's funny that for such a vehemently heterosexual country American men do enjoy talking about other men's bodies, albeit in a gruff, businesslike way. Wade kept stopping his running commentary to remark on the players. "Check out number 86," he'd say. "He's gotta be 6'2, 6'3 and about 300 lbs. These are big dudes."
That evening my friend and I visited a Hooters. For those of you unfamiliar with the brand, Hooters is a Floridian fast-food chain that specialises in buckets of fried chicken. Not in any way interesting or different. But wait! Did I mention Hooters are serviced entirely by waitresses wearing cleavage-inducing spray-on vests and skin-tight hotpants that ride so far up their asses they're forced to pause every five minutes to adjust their underwear in the middle of the restaurant? I didn't mention that did I? The waitresses can also use the company's pension scheme to pay for boob jobs. The girls working there all have a strange, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers glazed-over facial expression. Sure, they smile if you make eye-contact but it's an horrific smile. It's the smile given by North Korean workers to a UN Weapons Inspectors touring a nuclear facility. If I hadn't been with a friend - a female with a working brain and everything - I would have felt very much the scumbag.
That night we dropped in on the quite famous Blue Bird Cafe. It's a singer-songwritery folk bar and that night we saw a four-piece "folk supergroup" whose songs and onstage banter were exactly - and I mean exactly - like these guys from A Mighty Wind. One of them must have been 6'1, 250 lbs.
Monday, October 27, 2008
October 24
The entire time I've been here in America locals have tried to put me off ever travelling by Greyhound Bus. No one is ever specific. They say "It really isn't the nicest experience" or other times they'll just wrinkle their nose and wince like I'd shown them a photograph of a corpse.
Well today was the day I'd make up my own mind about the notoriously dingy bus service which criss-crosses America like week-old silly string. Myself and one other friend (the Brit) were taking the six hour journey from Asheville to Nashville, Tennessee. The tone was set nicely by an old, old woman at the bus station, wrapped in blankets with two plasters on her face.
"Are you both Russian?" she asked the back of our heads, the emphasis for some reason on "both".
We all piled on and what a motley crew it was. I am often criticised by some friends for assuming that too many people are mentally ill. I can't help it. A lot of people I come across in my daily life do seem to be mentally ill to me. I think I can admit that perhaps, on occasion, I have over-reacted and labelled someone mentally ill who was, on reflection, simply either tedious, lonely or different. However I am certain that everyone on this Greyhound bus was in fact mentally ill.
There was an obese, porcine-featured man with long, stringy red hair whose t-shirt bore the legend "Everyone Loves a fat Guy!" But no, nobody loved this fat guy. He talked incessantly, like a huckster, walking up and down the aisle, bumming cigarettes, batteries and even money off people. I felt a twinge of concern when he went up to the front, leant into the driver's reenforced plastic booth and asked "What do I have to do to get thrown off this bus?" It didn't sound rhetorical.
Sat in front there was a woman with a Texan accent and low cut top. She spent a lot of the journey on the phone, complaining about her "boy's daddy" and what a "fucking asshole" he was for "callin' up ma' boy" and "tryin' to stir shit up".
She was preferable to the man behind. Tall, bald, missing some teeth and with tattoos up the side of his neck, he was also on the phone - talking to his girlfriend or wife. What started off fairly innocently ("Aw hell, ah cain't wait to get bayuck t' yew") soon turned racy ("Yew got yer panties awn?") before becoming disgusting.
There was also a very old and very slow-moving World War II veteran in a wig and two Stetsons. He wore both Stetsons simultaneously. Can someone tell me if this is an ordinary practice? He was sat next to a tall, young guy called Chuck who was travelling up and down America after getting back from Afghanistan on a tour of duty with the marines. He struck me as a decent guy - quiet, respectful and a little humbled by what he's seen abroad. The old guy was talking Chuck's ear off but occasionally Chuck would get a word in about his own misadventures in the military.
"I thought it would be a good way to get through college," he said somberly. "I don't think any of us were prepared for how bad it was."
The old guy ignored him and went back to talking about his own platoon and how him and his buddies hold regular reunions.
"I don't think any of my generation want to get back together," mumbled Chuck. "We don't have any happy memories."
There was also a moment which I will dub White Trash Moment of the Year. Picture this: a bus stop in a middle-of-nowhere Tennessee town called Waynseville or something. A gravel car park outside "Bob's Discount Shop". The pouring rain. A battered 1970s car driven by a humongous tattooed man with a terrifying bearded face, humongous, tattooed mongoloid wife squeezed in the back. The car dispatches two passengers, a man and a woman, both drunk, the woman singing - screaming - some country song about America as the rain drenches them both. The driver bids the man farewell through the glassless car window, using the most intense handshake I have ever seen performed. It wasn't rapid. It was just hard, long and angry.
Nashville really is powered by country music. Everwhere you look there are murals of famous musicians, posters advertising used mandolins and tiny, dark bars with bands churning out honky-tonk and boogie-woogy from early afternoon.
And it's TrashGlam. Young, middle-aged and elderly Americans from far-flung corners of the country, dolled up in rhinestones and Stetsons, slow dancing the night away to the Charlie Daniels Band Tribute Band.
We travelled to a couple of places. BB King's bar was one. The best though was Big Bang, an upstairs bar built around a small stage featuring a drummer and two pianists facing each other. For three hours they thrashed out song after song - all requests ranging from Snoop Dogg to AC/DC to the Ghostbusters Theme. And they were funny too, their banter over the music (they didn't pause between songs) was sarcastic and witty. It was pretty much a perfect bar.
Well today was the day I'd make up my own mind about the notoriously dingy bus service which criss-crosses America like week-old silly string. Myself and one other friend (the Brit) were taking the six hour journey from Asheville to Nashville, Tennessee. The tone was set nicely by an old, old woman at the bus station, wrapped in blankets with two plasters on her face.
"Are you both Russian?" she asked the back of our heads, the emphasis for some reason on "both".
We all piled on and what a motley crew it was. I am often criticised by some friends for assuming that too many people are mentally ill. I can't help it. A lot of people I come across in my daily life do seem to be mentally ill to me. I think I can admit that perhaps, on occasion, I have over-reacted and labelled someone mentally ill who was, on reflection, simply either tedious, lonely or different. However I am certain that everyone on this Greyhound bus was in fact mentally ill.
There was an obese, porcine-featured man with long, stringy red hair whose t-shirt bore the legend "Everyone Loves a fat Guy!" But no, nobody loved this fat guy. He talked incessantly, like a huckster, walking up and down the aisle, bumming cigarettes, batteries and even money off people. I felt a twinge of concern when he went up to the front, leant into the driver's reenforced plastic booth and asked "What do I have to do to get thrown off this bus?" It didn't sound rhetorical.
Sat in front there was a woman with a Texan accent and low cut top. She spent a lot of the journey on the phone, complaining about her "boy's daddy" and what a "fucking asshole" he was for "callin' up ma' boy" and "tryin' to stir shit up".
She was preferable to the man behind. Tall, bald, missing some teeth and with tattoos up the side of his neck, he was also on the phone - talking to his girlfriend or wife. What started off fairly innocently ("Aw hell, ah cain't wait to get bayuck t' yew") soon turned racy ("Yew got yer panties awn?") before becoming disgusting.
There was also a very old and very slow-moving World War II veteran in a wig and two Stetsons. He wore both Stetsons simultaneously. Can someone tell me if this is an ordinary practice? He was sat next to a tall, young guy called Chuck who was travelling up and down America after getting back from Afghanistan on a tour of duty with the marines. He struck me as a decent guy - quiet, respectful and a little humbled by what he's seen abroad. The old guy was talking Chuck's ear off but occasionally Chuck would get a word in about his own misadventures in the military.
"I thought it would be a good way to get through college," he said somberly. "I don't think any of us were prepared for how bad it was."
The old guy ignored him and went back to talking about his own platoon and how him and his buddies hold regular reunions.
"I don't think any of my generation want to get back together," mumbled Chuck. "We don't have any happy memories."
There was also a moment which I will dub White Trash Moment of the Year. Picture this: a bus stop in a middle-of-nowhere Tennessee town called Waynseville or something. A gravel car park outside "Bob's Discount Shop". The pouring rain. A battered 1970s car driven by a humongous tattooed man with a terrifying bearded face, humongous, tattooed mongoloid wife squeezed in the back. The car dispatches two passengers, a man and a woman, both drunk, the woman singing - screaming - some country song about America as the rain drenches them both. The driver bids the man farewell through the glassless car window, using the most intense handshake I have ever seen performed. It wasn't rapid. It was just hard, long and angry.
Nashville really is powered by country music. Everwhere you look there are murals of famous musicians, posters advertising used mandolins and tiny, dark bars with bands churning out honky-tonk and boogie-woogy from early afternoon.
And it's TrashGlam. Young, middle-aged and elderly Americans from far-flung corners of the country, dolled up in rhinestones and Stetsons, slow dancing the night away to the Charlie Daniels Band Tribute Band.
We travelled to a couple of places. BB King's bar was one. The best though was Big Bang, an upstairs bar built around a small stage featuring a drummer and two pianists facing each other. For three hours they thrashed out song after song - all requests ranging from Snoop Dogg to AC/DC to the Ghostbusters Theme. And they were funny too, their banter over the music (they didn't pause between songs) was sarcastic and witty. It was pretty much a perfect bar.
October 23
Today we climbed a mountain. One of my friends (the Dane) tripped up 24 times. I only stumbled once. Maybe I'm cut out for the mountain man life. Maybe I should join a Colorado militia and throw my lot in with the rifle-toting shut-ins who buy all their food in tins and think bar codes are the work of Satan.
Everyone in Asheville is stoned. Our favourite restaurant in town is called the Mellow Mushroom. It is owned by a bald man with a long plaited beard who is stoned. His staff all have long beards and they are also stoned. The customers (who are stoned) walk into furniture and giggle a lot. I'd say this place is a lock for Obama but will any of these people make it to a polling station?
Everyone in Asheville is stoned. Our favourite restaurant in town is called the Mellow Mushroom. It is owned by a bald man with a long plaited beard who is stoned. His staff all have long beards and they are also stoned. The customers (who are stoned) walk into furniture and giggle a lot. I'd say this place is a lock for Obama but will any of these people make it to a polling station?
October 22
The first day in Asheville. It's a large town, very pretty, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A lot of the architecture is Art Deco and it's refreshing to finally be somewhere with actual high streets. It's also famous for being something like a West Coast city in the East.
Asheville's small streets are clogged with hairy drop-outs, hippies and people who look like Faith No More groupies circa 1993. There's people busking on every corner and part of me thinks that if I lived here before long I'd be wearing a crew cut and shouting "GET A JOB" a lot.
Asheville's small streets are clogged with hairy drop-outs, hippies and people who look like Faith No More groupies circa 1993. There's people busking on every corner and part of me thinks that if I lived here before long I'd be wearing a crew cut and shouting "GET A JOB" a lot.
Friday, October 24, 2008
October 21
Is America friendly? Yes. Right friendly. But I don't know how to properly describe their friendliness. It's quick, sharp friendliness. Welcoming, helpful and curious.
What gets to me a little bit though is how remote people's lives are - especially away from city centres. There aren't really highstreets. No local shops, bars, pubs or cafes. A lot of people ferry themselves from place to place in their cars - one big supermarket for shopping, a gas station, a waffle house. All seperated by miles of asphalt. People's lives are very private here. It's not possible to share a walk to the shops or bump into someone on the way to work.
Well, we took the wrong ferry from Ocracoke (a deserted island at the bottom of the penninsula where people still talk a weird 17th century version of English) and ended up in Cedar Island. This was quite a long way from where we should have been. There is nothing on Cedar Island. The map - a good map - showed about two-square inches of white. Not wanting to stay in a place that is dubbed "remote" by people who speak 17th century English we drove eight hours to Asheville, a happy-clappy hippy haven in the mountains of west North Carolina. I had the job of keeping my friend awake as we drove at 80mph along empty highways. We had an hour-long conversation about basketball. Neither of us know the first thing about basketball but at 2am it didn't seem to matter. We stopped at Dairy Queen - a fast-food ice cream chain - and purchased armfulls of diabetes-inducing snackfoods. You can buy 64 oz ice cream tubs. Think about that. I couldn't reach the bottom of one of those with my whole arm. Who eats like that? Oh right. They do.
What gets to me a little bit though is how remote people's lives are - especially away from city centres. There aren't really highstreets. No local shops, bars, pubs or cafes. A lot of people ferry themselves from place to place in their cars - one big supermarket for shopping, a gas station, a waffle house. All seperated by miles of asphalt. People's lives are very private here. It's not possible to share a walk to the shops or bump into someone on the way to work.
Well, we took the wrong ferry from Ocracoke (a deserted island at the bottom of the penninsula where people still talk a weird 17th century version of English) and ended up in Cedar Island. This was quite a long way from where we should have been. There is nothing on Cedar Island. The map - a good map - showed about two-square inches of white. Not wanting to stay in a place that is dubbed "remote" by people who speak 17th century English we drove eight hours to Asheville, a happy-clappy hippy haven in the mountains of west North Carolina. I had the job of keeping my friend awake as we drove at 80mph along empty highways. We had an hour-long conversation about basketball. Neither of us know the first thing about basketball but at 2am it didn't seem to matter. We stopped at Dairy Queen - a fast-food ice cream chain - and purchased armfulls of diabetes-inducing snackfoods. You can buy 64 oz ice cream tubs. Think about that. I couldn't reach the bottom of one of those with my whole arm. Who eats like that? Oh right. They do.
October 20
Drove down into Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Stopped at a diner in the middle of nowhere and ate grits.
Kitty Hawk is a long, beachy peninsula which at some points is so narrow that you can see sea at either side of the car. The highlight was certainly getting wasted in the hotel bar - The Peppercorn. The Peppercorn will always occupy a special place in my heart. It was full of elderly people practicing line dancing, pummeling the faded, brown-green carpet with slo-mo shuffles and geriatric two-steps. The bar tender was an ascerbic 40-something writer called Patrick who was visibly thrilled to be waiting on people younger than him. There was also a shifty dropout called John who recited Ginsberg poetry to us and talked for a long while about his life. John and Patrick went back and forth, battling for our souls and talking to us about any old bullshit. They both hated and loved America. It was funny because they're both stuck in Kitty Hawk. Forever.
My friends invented an as-yet-unnamed cocktail. It's one-fifth pepsi or lemonade, four-fifths good whiskey and three cherries. The three cherries are apparently very important.
Kitty Hawk is a long, beachy peninsula which at some points is so narrow that you can see sea at either side of the car. The highlight was certainly getting wasted in the hotel bar - The Peppercorn. The Peppercorn will always occupy a special place in my heart. It was full of elderly people practicing line dancing, pummeling the faded, brown-green carpet with slo-mo shuffles and geriatric two-steps. The bar tender was an ascerbic 40-something writer called Patrick who was visibly thrilled to be waiting on people younger than him. There was also a shifty dropout called John who recited Ginsberg poetry to us and talked for a long while about his life. John and Patrick went back and forth, battling for our souls and talking to us about any old bullshit. They both hated and loved America. It was funny because they're both stuck in Kitty Hawk. Forever.
My friends invented an as-yet-unnamed cocktail. It's one-fifth pepsi or lemonade, four-fifths good whiskey and three cherries. The three cherries are apparently very important.
October 19
Took a day trip to DC on my own. It's odd. America is in the middle of its most vital presidential election in a lifetime and DC - it's capital - is strangely serene. There are no campaign ads on TV and radio because DC is not a state and therefore carries no electoral college votes. That's not to say people don't care. I overheard half a dozen conversations about the election - most of it refreshingly in-depth and enlightened. Eager beaver politicos fill the city's Starbucks, discussing actual issues rather than the gossip and character-politics which fascinate most people the world over.
Everyone's talking about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. Powell has had an axe to grind over his Republican Party for years so I suppose this was his chance to stick it to them good. Bush used to lock him out of meetings apparently. He's widly respected amongst right-wingers so his endorsement carries some real weight.
Someone emailed me asking about the number of McCain signs in Virginia in comparison to the number of Obama signs displayed in people's backyards. In the areas I've been to I'd give the nod to McCain. There seem to be slightly more of them on highways and outside big country houses. However, as someone pointed out to me the other day: all it takes is one decent-sized block of appartments in an urban area (80 per cent of whom will certainly vote Democrat) to cancel out 20 countryside ranches. So signs don't tell you much.
I found a shop in DC selling political memorabilia. It was the size of someone's living room and was piled high with crap. It was empty apart from me, the owner and another customer and as I fought the urge to buy a "Palin Power" t-shirt I listened to their conversation. It was a weird, arch-conservative style talk, at once condescending to "normal people" while simultaneously claiming to somehow speak for them. The customer was instantly recognisable to anyone from England as a "young conservative". Trousers pulled up to armpits, nasal voice accompanied by generous sprays of saliva, comedy nerd glasses. You get the point. He had armfulls of McCain-Palin stuff and he was putting an order in for "All the new Reagan stuff". This non-partisan stuff is getting hard.
I know this is an obvious point but the people walking around DC's more upbeat neighbourhoods like Georgetown are so utterly different from those in the flea market. It's two countries. Two American tribes, split roughly across voting lines. Heartlanders and metropols. They have nothing to say to each other. They can barely tolerate each other. How can a country like this agree on anything at all? In two weeks they will all be united under a new president that 50 per cent of them hate.
Also - great news! My scarified torso is really healing up! You would never know I had been eaten alive by (what I assume were) mutant spiders. I almost look... human. Almost.
Everyone's talking about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. Powell has had an axe to grind over his Republican Party for years so I suppose this was his chance to stick it to them good. Bush used to lock him out of meetings apparently. He's widly respected amongst right-wingers so his endorsement carries some real weight.
Someone emailed me asking about the number of McCain signs in Virginia in comparison to the number of Obama signs displayed in people's backyards. In the areas I've been to I'd give the nod to McCain. There seem to be slightly more of them on highways and outside big country houses. However, as someone pointed out to me the other day: all it takes is one decent-sized block of appartments in an urban area (80 per cent of whom will certainly vote Democrat) to cancel out 20 countryside ranches. So signs don't tell you much.
I found a shop in DC selling political memorabilia. It was the size of someone's living room and was piled high with crap. It was empty apart from me, the owner and another customer and as I fought the urge to buy a "Palin Power" t-shirt I listened to their conversation. It was a weird, arch-conservative style talk, at once condescending to "normal people" while simultaneously claiming to somehow speak for them. The customer was instantly recognisable to anyone from England as a "young conservative". Trousers pulled up to armpits, nasal voice accompanied by generous sprays of saliva, comedy nerd glasses. You get the point. He had armfulls of McCain-Palin stuff and he was putting an order in for "All the new Reagan stuff". This non-partisan stuff is getting hard.
I know this is an obvious point but the people walking around DC's more upbeat neighbourhoods like Georgetown are so utterly different from those in the flea market. It's two countries. Two American tribes, split roughly across voting lines. Heartlanders and metropols. They have nothing to say to each other. They can barely tolerate each other. How can a country like this agree on anything at all? In two weeks they will all be united under a new president that 50 per cent of them hate.
Also - great news! My scarified torso is really healing up! You would never know I had been eaten alive by (what I assume were) mutant spiders. I almost look... human. Almost.
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