Week Seventeen: How to Have a Nice Day

January 24, 2006June 11, 2010Leave a comment

Last week, in the Post Office, I was mailing a job application when the lady behind the counter told me that I needed to pay 23 cents more for postage than I had thought. I only had enough money for the single stamp, so she told me I would not be able to mail my letter. Suddenly there appeared next to me a man with a handful of small coins, offering to pay for the rest of my postage. “Oh, er, thank you,” I mumbled apologetically. “No problem!” He beamed. “Someone else lent me some money today, so I’m repaying the favor! Have a nice day!” The cashier lady, not to be outdone for kindness, told me that she would even lick the stamp for me. Don’t push it, I thought to myself, but smiled, and went off and actually Had a Nice Day.

Despite all the vitriolic politics, despite the death sentences, despite the crazy right-wing media, you cannot deny that America is a friendly place. When someone says “Have a Nice Day” I think they really mean it. The first time I heard it over here, from an otherwise grumpy old lady in a Seven-Eleven, I thought they were having me on, just as if a Londoner would say “cheerio guv’nor, mind the apples and pears!” But I really don’t think so. I’m sure that the Post Office incident would not happen in London (well, it never happened to me in nearly thirty years, anyhow). People here are generally more openly friendly. I usually notice it in stores like Target, when middle aged women come up to me in the Monopoly section and offer advice on which board games are the best family fun. My mind is saying, Who Asked You? But I find myself actually being nice back. It’s unnerving. I’m from London! People don’t talk to each other there!

The big culture shock of niceness has been on the buses. On one of our first days here, we got onto a bus and the driver actually asked the passengers if the air-conditioning made them too cold, or did they need it turned up at all. I nearly fell off my seat, trying to imagine that happening on a draughty double-decker in London. Here in Davis, I didn’t have the correct change for the bus once, but rather than leave me by the side of the road, they let me on for free, with a smile and a Have a Nice Day to boot. And I have to admit, in the face of Bush’s march towards Unitarian Executive (aka, ‘dictatorship’) and the zealots marching in the streets to ban abortions (presumably so more poor children can grow up without prospects and be sent to die in financial wars), in the face of all this craziness, a friendly gesture really can make the Day a whole lot Nicer.

Week Sixteen: Awards Season

January 17, 2006June 11, 2010Leave a comment

The red carpets, the designer outfits, the insufferable sycophancy, the fake smiles, the asinine and unobtrusive interviews, the vomit-inducing teary speeches – I am not referring to another day at the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings (though I could be). No, something far more important to everyday Americans than who presides over the Supreme Court and holds their very constitutional fates in his hands. Awards Season is upon us.

I have no time for those silly Awards shows. The few times they are ever interesting (Jarvis at the Brits, Michael Moore at the Oscars), the establishment dismisses them for distracting them from the arse-kissing reality of showbiz. The first Awards of the season kicked off last week with the Critic’s Choice, followed by the ‘voted-for-by-the-public’ People’s Choice. To my horror, this huge ffice:smarttags” />Hollywood event was presented by former Scottish ‘comic’ Craig Ferguson, who believe it or not is having a bloody successful career over here, even though he is less funny than he ever was. At one point he apologized to the audience for his accent, saying “all Europeans speak like this”. What, with a Scottish accent?

Last night, my wife sat down to watch the Golden Globes. It’s a bit like the Baftas in that it includes TV shows, and is second in prestige only to the Oscars, which will not be hitting our screens until March. It’s looking like it’ll be a good year for the ‘gay cowboy movie’, aka Brokeback Mountain, which won Best Motion Picture (Drama). Last year, Ricky Gervais grabbed a couple of Globes for The Office; this year, its American remake also picked up awards. It’s like a Parallel Universe; is there another Pete over here, too? Maybe he’s the one taking all the jobs I’m applying for.

Anyway, before the Golden Globes began, we caught the news, and they revealed who had won some of the awards. I was dumbfounded – surely the show was going to be live? It is in California after all, it’s our time zone. No, my wife said; it is broadcast live at eight o’clock to those on the East Coast, but we on the West Coast have to wait three more hours, and watch the recording – just like at New Years, except this time the show is coming from LA! What a cheek! Why do we in California have to be slaves to the viewing habits of the East Coast? Get your won Awards shows! I don’t even like these ridiculous glitzy ceremonies, but come on, this is the one time of year and the one industry where California is the centre of the world, surely we call the shots?

All this only fuels my dream of an independent California, where we get our own New Years and the Oscars and such are shown when we want them to be. I guess they just do things differently here. Of course, I don’t really care that much – I’m more concerned with the time-difference problem I’ll face over the summer, with the World Cup. After all, that’s the only Golden Globe I really care about.

Week Fifteen: Trolley 1, Pete 0

January 10, 2006June 11, 2010Leave a comment

They have a name for everything here. Every time I turn on the TV medical commercials inform me that the reason I keep fidgeting my legs while watching the news is because I have ‘Restless Legs Syndrome’, and that only their medicine can help prevent it (side effects include things way worse than restless legs, let me tell you). You see, I thought it was because I was itching to kick the screen across the living room; obviously not. This pioneer-spirit of naming everything in sight is not exclusive to money-grabbing pharmaceutical companies, however, as I was reminded at the weekend when the wife and I took a trip down to Emeryville, to the Emerald City of home furnishing. Yes, they have IKEA over here too.

They are useful, though, the funny little Swedish names given to everything from sofas (such as EKTORP) to coat-hangers (known in IKEA-world as HEMLIS). I mean, when you go to collect your flat-pack furniture and you are looking for that little black coffee-table, it’s far easier to find if it’s called GRANÅS than just ‘black coffee table’. I imagine the naming ceremonies, two long-chinned pale blond Swedes wearing Sven-Goran frameless glasses sitting in a sauna dishing out names like POÄNG, KRAMFORS and ÅRSTID (arse-what?); perhaps they are the names of all the women they’ve ever slept with, a theory destroyed by the fact there are no futons called ULRIKA and ALAM.

I do like IKEA – or at the least the idea of IKEA – but my own as-yet-unnamed condition reared its ugly mug (or TROFÉ) while drifting around the downstairs ‘market-hall’. You know how IKEA is arranged, it’s the same everywhere: showroom upstairs, with grown adults lounging on beds as if they haven’t seen beds before, market-hall downstairs, crammed with cheap wine-glasses, dish-racks and hungry shoppers with trolleys. I cannot handle the trolley. The trolley is my enemy. Sure, over here they call it the ‘shopping cart’, but it’s still as difficult for me to handle as a bucking bronco. I always seem to be in somebody’s way. I watch helplessly as the trolley-guy marches huge great big lines of them obediently across the store like a cowboy on the plains. With a cold sweat forming, I tell my wife that I have endured enough, that our trip to IKEA world must soon end, or I could lose my mind and be cursed to wandering the crowded Nordic labyrinth for the rest of my days. She smiles, we ditch the wire-caged wheeled demon and go and have some grilled chicken.

But the naming of the world continues. I am sure that my trolley-related illness will eventually show up with a fancy Latin or Greek name, along with a wonder-drug whose side-effects may include an inability to use arms and legs or operate heavy machinery (and you’ll still be able to push a shopping cart?). Here’s a fun game for you – this Friday 13th, call the doctor and ask if he or she has anything to treat ‘paraskevidekatriophobia’. If he does, you might want to consider switching health insurance.

Week Fourteen: Wringing in the New Year

January 3, 2006June 11, 2010Leave a comment

Well, a hard rain fell. California is mopping up after a week of storms that brought floods, mudslides, power-outages and evacuations. Governor Arnie yesterday declared a state of emergency in seven counties, and even finally admitted that the levee system, which has suffered a few breaches in the recent storms, are in desperate need of repair. Both my TV and radio yesterday evening were interrupted by a peculiar (and incomprehensible) announcement warning of flash floods in Modesto and areas around Dry Creek. However, while many have been made homeless, everyone appears ready to admit that under the circumstances we got off pretty lightly. One weatherman said “we dodged the bullet – it could have been far worse.”

That wasn’t the only bullet that needed dodging over the New Year, however. The LAPD, among other police departments, issued a warning to people who follow the tradition of shooting a gun into the air at the stroke of midnight, saying they could face up to a year in prison. Shooting guns into the air! Can you believe this? Apparently it’s quite common in some areas. Have they not heard of ‘party poppers’?

At least it was dry on New Year’s Eve. The storms gave everybody a window in which to party, so we took the cue and stayed in with a couple of videos. At midnight, we switched to a channel showing the New Year festivities, and I was hoping to see a wonderful firework display in San Francisco, a concert in LA, hell I would have settled for some kids shooting their guns in the air in Sacramento. But what we got was the annual Time Square celebration, thousands of people packed into the neon dungeon, waiting for a large crystal ball to drop (but not break). I was disappointed; you probably think, what a grouch, but the thing is, it happened three hours beforehand, and the TV stations had the cheek to say it was ‘Live’! As if Californians do not realize that New York is on the other side of the country. Now New York is a great city and I wish them no disrespect, but is it too much to ask that we see an actual live event from one of the equally great cities in our time zone.

I resolved to write a letter to the TV stations to complain. “I don’t care how old Dick Clarke is, I don’t care if it is tradition…” I started to imagine myself as a revolutionary, leading the secession of the West away from the Empire States, dumping boxes of party-poppers into the San Francisco Bay in protest. Then sleep overwhelmed me, and when I awoke the storms were back, the flood warnings in place, and I realized I didn’t care that much about New Year’s Eve. “I can’t believe it’s 2006,” I overhear imaginary people saying. Well I can; I’ve had a year to prepare for it after all.

Week Thirteen: A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

December 27, 2005June 11, 2010Leave a comment

My wife gave me a bike for Christmas, and I cannot wait to use it. Davis, being a college town (and flat as a pancake) is a bicycle haven, being the most two-wheel friendly city in the US. The bike lanes are bigger than the car lanes and run all over the place. I think I will have to wait until a little while for the maiden voyage though, because right now it is raining hard, and according to the news there is plenty more to come.

I swear to you, the news here in California is obsessed with the weather. The nightly headlines always open with the weather, promising downpours and showers, and warnings like “if you go outside, please bring an umbrella.” The local Sacramento station has a snazzy machine, the ‘Doppler Three’, a kind of radar which detects the stormclouds rolling in from the Pacific. Colourful images wash across the screen, commentated by excited forecasters on the verge of seizure. It is their favourite toy, and they play with it as much as possible.

A few weeks ago, the temperature actually dropped below freezing for about an hour or so. It happened overnight, but we had plenty of warning, telling us to “cover over plants” and “keeps pets indoors”. Meanwhile, in other parts of the US, ice-storms are ravaging communities and severe blizzards are blocking up roads and bringing down power-lines. Here in California though, it’s a little bit nippy – ooh, better watch out, better wear them gloves! The rest of the country must think Californians, so unused to adverse weather, are such babies.

It is easy to make fun, of course, and forget that the heavy rain is a serious issue in flood-threatened Sacramento valley. A lot of people are out on the roads over the Holiday Season, and the wet freeways can be very, very dangerous. Already this year California has seen more road-deaths over Christmas than last year – twenty-seven in all. But what gets me about the news service’s over-emphasis on the weather is that it provides a nice distraction from the real news. Shootings are reported every night in Sacramento; it’s like shotgun alley down there, but it almost always comes second to the weather. The other night it was briefly mentioned that President Bush managed to extend the heinous Patriot Act, while Dick Cheney was announcing ‘essential’ budget cuts to medicare and student loans. But it was all glossed over very quickly, because we had to get back to our report from Doppler Three, “Hey, where’s that rain?!”

Coming from the UK, I know about precipitation. It’s even in the national anthem (“Long To Rain Over Us…”). Part of me is even jealous of that Doppler machine – I bet Michael Fish wishes he had one of those back in ’87. But when there is real news going on in America, with its President conducting illegal wiretaps and members of his administration facing indictment after indictment, and when the weather in other states is beyond California’s wildest nightmares, I think it might be a good idea to step away from the Doppler. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go and try out my bike. Luckily, my wife bought me a rain jacket too.

Week Twelve: Santa’s Claws

December 20, 2005October 6, 2025Leave a comment

He has a long white beard, lives in a cave in the North Pole that nobody can find, he has hundreds of splinter cells in major cities around the world, he breaks into people’s houses and leaves unmarked packages about the place, and his elusiveness is causing many to question his very existence. I caught up with the man most Americans know as ‘Santa’ and most Brits call ‘Father Christmas’ recently, and asked him what he thought of the so-called ‘War On Christmas’ raging in the US.

“I’m not very Merry about it,” he grumbled. “For one thing, I’m the one who does all the work every year, sleighing all over the world, going up and down strange chimneys, delivering presents to orphans, but who gets the credit? Jesus! I mean, they don’t call it ‘Claus-mas’, do they?” He went on to complain that not only does America have no National Elf Service, but also has no mince pies. Surprisingly, he also revealed that he hates it when children leave him milk. “Don’t they know I’m lactose intolerant?”

So does he prefer to say ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’? “Holiday? Not for me, mate. Work my woolly hat off, I do.” Santa doesn’t mince his pies. “The whole Holiday Tree thing made me go ‘ho ho ho’, I tell you. Who are they offending? You don’t see Jewish people calling the Menorah a ‘Holiday Candlestick’, do you?” Well, there’s also Kwanzaa, I reminded him. “Oh yeah, Kwanzaa! What is that, exactly? Is it something Madonna’s doing?” Okay Santa, back to bed.

I admitted I wasn’t sure myself, but moved things along, asking him finally what list George W Bush was on this year – ‘naughty’ or ‘nice’. “It’s very close,” he revealed. “I think this one will go right up to Christmas Eve. It could all depend on Ohio.”

Originally posted 12/20/2005

Week Eleven: Revenge of the State

December 13, 2005June 11, 2010Leave a comment

As I write, news is coming out that Stanley Tookie Williams has just been executed at San Quentin prison California. A founding member of a notorious LA street gang, he has been on Death Row for 24 years, but has since become a reformed character, writing books for children urging them away from gang culture and brokering peace deals between warring gangs. As a model for rehabilitation he has nonetheless been a figure of debate, not least for the fact he has always denied committing the murders for which he was convicted. Today it fell to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency and offer Tookie a life rather than death sentence, but he chose to reprise his role as Terminator, and now Tookie Williams is dead, and redemption is rendered meaningless.

Out of the death-penalty states, California is not exactly major-league. Tookie was only the twelfth to receive capital punishment here – compare that with the 355 or so that Texas has killed (source: BBC). The US recently passed its 1000th execution mark – a thousand, that is, since the death penalty was reintroduced back in the seventies (Gary Gilmore was the first, him from that song by the Adverts). President Bush terminated many during his reign as Texas Governor, but of course not nearly as many as he has condemned to death since the invasion of Iraq. This weekend he finally addressed the mind-boggling number of Iraqi citizens who have perished since he ordered the troops in – about thirty thousand. Their ghosts would fill White Hart Lane (and probably make more noise, too). If he has few qualms about those sorts of figures, then sparing the lives of convicted killers is unlikely to keep him up at night. But what gives the State the right to commit what is effectively murder with an official name?

What’s more, it seems to be the Christian right-wing that is the strongest supporter of capital punishment, quoting ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. Surely as Christians they should be focusing more on the New Testament than the Old, on forgiveness rather than vengeance? Murder never solves murder, even for the families of the victims. Sure, the temptation to give in to base hatred is enormous when you have lost loved ones, but as a society aren’t we striving to rise above hate? Besides, if a man were to go out and kill in order to exact revenge, the State would class him as a murderer. Why then is the State not seen as a murderer when it carries out executions?

Because, as the Iraq conflict has shown, the State has no problem with being a murderer, none at all, and therein lies the problem. Why should we be surprised if there are people who want to kill us for the crimes of our State? We call them madmen, but our State is the one encouraging that kind of thinking. As one wise fellow standing outside San Quentin tonight lamented, “‘an eye for an eye…’ makes everyone blind and everyone toothless.” Murder does not appease Hate, it foments it.

Originally posted 12/13/2005

Week Ten: Do They Know It’s Christmas?

December 6, 2005June 11, 2010Leave a comment

We bought our Christmas Tree at the weekend, just a little one, very inoffensive – or so I thought. Apparently, some people are offended by the term ‘Christmas’ Tree, preferring to use the general term ‘Holiday’ Tree. It sounds trifling, I know, but this debate is gripping the nation. On one side, the anti-religious lobby and political correctionists argue that ‘Christmas’ offends those who aren’t Christian, despite the utter lack of Christian imagery anywhere in Christmas paraphernalia (were there candy canes and reindeer in Bethlehem? I doubt it). On the other, there are the reactionists, who have decided they will boycott stores who fail to use the term ‘Christmas’. Backlash and counter-backlash, as if Santa hasn’t got enough to deal with just working out who’s been naughty and nice.

I bet they are laughing at this in other countries. For one thing, to call it the ‘Holiday’ season is kind of a misnomer – they don’t even get Boxing Day off here. Most people have to go back to work while still under the influence of turkey, unlike at Thanksgiving. Secondly, if ‘Holiday’ is such a safe alternative, how come nobody has realised that its etymology is ‘holy day’? Isn’t that, you know, religious? While we are on the subject why don’t we change the names of the days of the week? I mean, ‘Thursday’, I don’t want to offend people who don’t worship Thor. The whole ‘separation of church and state’ thing here has become so divisive that it has lost all perspective. I don’t know anybody that would seriously be ‘offended’ if I wished them a ‘Merry Christmas’, and not a ‘Happy Holiday’. If I wanted to offend, I could do a lot worse.

We could just call it ‘Yule’. They still do in Scandinavia (cf. Danish ‘jul’). The French seem happy with ‘Noël’, and the Germans are content with ‘Weihnacht’ (‘holy night’). They, from whom we adopted the tradition, call their trees ‘Tannenbaums’. I find it incredible that in American English the word ‘Christ’ should suddenly cause so much offense at this time of year. But I am not American. I understand that this country does have issues where religion is concerned.

Which leaves us with the whole problem of Jesus’ birthday. Those who advocate ‘Christmas’ over Holidays for reasons of the nativity will argue tooth and nail that as Christ’s birthday, it should be named as such. Now I know that the day was chosen by the Church many years ago because it coincided with the holy day of Mithras, celebrated by the Romans. But I never understood why Christians hold so fast to the belief that Jesus was actually born on the 25th of December, when surely (if all years begin from his birth) it should have been January 1st? I tell you, after all this tiring debate, everyone needs a Holiday.

Originally posted 12/6/2005

Week Nine: Turkey Day

November 29, 2005June 11, 2010Leave a comment

In the UK people complain about Christmas getting earlier every year, to the tune of Wizzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”. In the US, however, Christmas comes when it is told – that is, on the day after Thanksgiving, announced on calendars as ‘The Biggest Shopping Day Of The Year’. Across fifty states, while the turkey, the cranberries and the pumpkin pie are settling down for the night, coupons are carefully cut out of colossal piles of newspaper adverts, while alarms are set for thankless wee hours, all for the pleasure of braving the November elements and the restless lines outside Best Buy. Most people have their Christmas shopping done by about midday, if they survive the crowds fighting over the last half-price laptop. Tensions run so high that in one news report, one Wal-Mart customer said he would be bringing a gun for security next year. There’s no need, you can buy one while you’re there.

The rush to the shops ushers in the green-and-red coloured (green money, red accounts) season, drawing a close to what is surely America’s Favourite Holiday. It is also perhaps its purest, unsurprising given Thanksgiving’s supposedly puritan origins. The pressure of Gift-Giving is utterly absent, as is the boring seasonal complaint about the commercialisation of a religious feast. Unlike at Christmas time, Hollywood churns out no big awful Thanksgiving movies. It is unsullied and simple, yet wholly American – this is one holiday the US feels no need to share with the world (except the Canadians, who hold their own Thanksgiving a month earlier). It is a family feast, and boy is it a feast.

It all begins on Wednesday afternoon, aka “One Of The Biggest Travel Days Of The Year” (the other being the Sunday after). TV is pretty much limited to live reports from airports and congested freeways, interspersed with tips on cooking the turkey and stories about the Pilgrims. If anybody actually makes it to the family homestead in time for Thanksgiving morning, they can expect to watch the quite dreadful Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade live from New York. If you have watched any New York-based comedy, you will know that this parade is huge, and consists largely of enormous themed balloons of characters such as Garfield or Ronald McDonald. In those shows something ‘hilarious’ always goes wrong, such as Porky Pig floats away or collapses onto a crowd. This year, for real (as Ali G might put it), one balloon actually did fall down, injuring a small girl. Now I know I always found such events ridiculously corny as a sitcom joke, but in real life I must admit I found it pretty amusing. Much more amusing than the American Football, which is the other Thanksgiving televisual tradition, but by then I was well into the pre-meal snacks.

Now according to the American public broadcasting channel, whose opinion I value over all other US channels (which is not saying very much, really), Thanksgiving was meant to be a fast, until Benjamin Franklin came along with his bag of vowels and said it should be made a feast. An extra point in Scrabble for one thing. I don’t know how true that is, nor do I care, but let me tell you, if it’s done to tradition it’s the biggest dinner you’ll ever eat. The turkey is generally gigantic and takes about a month to cook. Dessert this year consisted of a showdown: pumpkin pie (excellently cooked by my wife) vs apple pie (wonderfully baked by her mom). We aren’t talking Blur vs Oasis here; I had both, and my stomach wasn’t complaining. Where pie is concerned, there is always room at the inn.

I washed it all down with a few glasses of local hefe-weizen beer, and put my feet up to watch the evening movie. Sadly, it was a repeat of the seriously dated Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I knew Santa was already on his way, bringing his bad movie tv with him. While watching the scene of the big mothership with my belly making strange alien noises, a thought occurred to me: I’m glad it isn’t Thanksgiving Every Day. If it were, the average American would be a whole lot fatter – now there’s something to give thanks for.

Originally posted 11/29/2005

Week Eight: Cold Call California

November 22, 2005June 11, 2010Leave a comment

The phone rang yesterday morning, disturbing me from a particularly exciting dream. I was waiting for my warm beer at a work-soiled North London pub, when the entire floor fell away, and all of the pub fell into the Underground. When I told them I didn’t want my beer any more and could I have my money back, they told me I could, but would have to wait while they rebuilt. While I was waiting, the incessant ringing prompted me out of my warm sheets, and I was greeted with a loud and bright southern accent, asking for Mister Scully. I wanted to tell him he was dead and I was his ghost, but he pressed on regardless, claiming to be a ‘courtesy call’ from some Police organization. “Ah jus’ wanna thank y’all for buckling up in your automobiles, sir,” he beamed.

“Do what?” I replied, confused, still half-expecting my warm beer refund to arrive any moment. The southern accent continued. “We are offering you the opportunity to make a donation to us, sir, of only fifteen dollars…” I had to ask him to repeat himself several times (a good enough tactic with cold-callers – try it, it is great fun) for, linguist though I am, I just couldn’t understand. Give me ancient Gothic any day. I told him I didn’t want to give him any money. “Well how about ten dollars then?” he retorted. “How about I poo all over your desk?” I retorted bravely, admittedly after I had hung up.

The cold-caller problem here is ridiculous. I know it can be bad in Britain, but here it is truly incessant. We never sign up for anything that might mean extra junk emails or phone calls, and I always check the little boxes saying ‘bugger off with your adverts’. It does not stop them getting through to me. The other day one called, from an unnamed company, telling me that “somebody in your family entered our competition and you have WON one of our prizes!” I wanted to say, oh well I’ll give you my date of birth, it was yesterday. The prizes? $50K cash, $25K cash, a car, or an unspecified prize (likely to be a loaf of stale bread). How can they lie so blatantly? Maybe because a lot of people actually do believe all this shit. This is America after all, the land of commercials. If they say it in an advert, it must be true. That is why American Presidents act like they are selling washing powder most of the time (as opposed to ethnic cleansing powder, I suppose…).

Nevertheless, I am going to gracefully embrace this culture, and take full advantage. I am going to get a phonebook, and call people randomly, saying “Hiya Mister Aardvark! My name’s Pete calling from Scully Industries and I have selected YOU as our WINNER, all you need to do is send me twenty bucks to go down the pub, no strings attached, once in a lifetime offer!” It’s bound to work at least once, and then I can get that drink. Hopefully the floor will stay where it is this time.

Originally posted 11/22/2005