Week Three: American TV – may cause drowsiness

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Coming from the BBC culture of the UK, it’s easy to forget just how insufferable American television can be, whether it be the overblown news shows, the stomach-churning chat shows or the constant stream of asinine commercials.

“Do you have genital herpes? Ask your doctor for ‘Itch-ditch’. Contains acropolyurinothaloethylene. May cause drowsiness or amnesia.”

I’ve sadly been watching a lot of box lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that what I am really watching are commercials with bits of show added in every so often. Channel hopping is impossible in this climate. I’ll be flicking through like a gunslinger from the Old West, and still find nothing but wall to wall adverts. A half hour show such as Seinfeld or South Park will have between three to four commercial breaks, inserted at the most random moments.

“Why am I happy? I just saved money on my car insurance with E-Z-Sure! More money for me to spend on burgers.”
“In theaters this Friday – from the director of ‘The Cop’ – He was a Cop, on the Edge, and he was Back, for More: ‘The Cop II’ – rated N for Not Sure”

It begins as soon as the opening credits are in – break one. A couple more leap unannounced into the show, and then a final one just before the final credits roll in. Adversely, there will very often not be one between shows – gee whizz, folks, that would be overkill. So why are there so many advert breaks? It surely can’t be so people can check what’s being advertised on the other side. So it’s tilme to check the TV listings in the paper. Americans all have cable, so they all have about seven thousand channels, rather than the standard five most Brits have to choose between (or three if you don’t count ITV and Channel Five, which are shite). So what’s on? A mind-numbing stream of comedy repeats, both American and British (including a worrying double-bill of ‘Are You Being Served?’), bloated ego-centric news anchor shows, dire daytime soap-operas (24 hours a day), serious-browed cop and lawyer shows, over-exposed and under-thought-out reality shows, vacuous talk-shows, the odd multi-channel publicised serial such as ‘Lost’ or ‘Desperate Housewives’ – oh, and the US edition of ‘How Clean is Your House’. You cannot escape Kim and Aggie, even here.

“New at Taco Bell, huge stuffed meat beef chicken lamb and bacon burrito with jack cheese, stringly lettuce and too much rice, chili, cheese, chipotle, chihauhauas and chewing gum (ask your doctor about side effects)”
“America’s most trusted urine remover – Urine-Gone (TM) – rids your carpet of any yellow stains – gets your floor so clean you can wipe your bum with it – call this 0800 URINE-GONE now – not available in shops”

And then the movies – Americans watch a lot of films, throughout the day. Now unlike Britain, which seems to air it’s best films after about 11.45 at night, they are shown all day here. And I love how they rate them in the listings – The Godfather, for example, is rated ‘R – contains violence, adult situations, nudity, language.’ Language? What, Italian? The interesting thing is that this exact same description is used for Jerry Maguire, not a film known for its gangland murder scenes. And ‘adult situations’? Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone is listed as containing ‘adult situations’, as does Back To the Future II. Which situations would those be? When Marty flies off on a hovering skateboard? Yet in the same listings appear Platoon, Hamburger Hill and Braddock: Missing In Action III, none of which have any rating. No language, no violence, not a sniff of an adult situation – what sort of soppy friendly war was Vietnam?

“The new Monster SUV – guzzles more gas than the entire population of Bratislava – for when you absoultely positively have to go off road – protect America, buy the new Monster SUV (may cause dizziness)”

At least, after all of this, they still have The Late Show with David Letterman. Half an hour with Dave and you know it’s all been worth it…

 

Originally posted on 10/18/2005

Week Two: No Crony Left Behind

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Santa Rosa must have the most intelligent homeles people in the world. I’ve just joined the local Sonoma County library, and it is full of grizzled, unwashed hobos, shuffling around the journals, poring through encyclopedias, lost in thought and pungent odours. They are there every day, like mumbling monks, preparing either for an overthrow of the regularly-washed capitalist regime, or a special tramp version of University Challenge (better watch out, Paxman). Their greying pony-tails and Haight-Ashbury beards betray them as old Northern California liberal hippies, more LSD than LSE. These are not, absolutely not, the people who voted in Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governer of California.

I am yet to meet a californian who thought giving Arnie their top job – the ‘one man with one veto’ (and he aint afraid to use it) – was a good idea. Most people here are saying his days are numbered (a phrase I’ve never understood – surely all days are numbered, isn;t that what calendars are for?), but even the Governator isn’t losing support like the President is. Yes, the legendary (read mythical) ‘approval rating’ has never been lower for George W Bush, particularly after his slow response to Hurricane Katrina (he thought it was a female boxer). One of the big political stories to fall from the Katrina fiasco was the resignation of Michael Brown, the Bush-appointed head of FEMA whose only qualifications for running large scale relief operations amounted to cleaning shit from paddock floors at the horse-shows he used to run. Now, the politcial storm is Hurrican Harriet: Bush is insisting on appointing his White House legal adviser (and long-time Texan friend) Harriet Miers to the highest legal position in America, Supreme Court Justice.

Her qualifications for being the nation’s most prominent judge do not include ever having been a judge, nor ever having shown any inclination of wanting to be one. Her own judgement, in fact, is fairly dubious, having once said (to David Frum) that the President was the ‘most brilliant man she knows’, according to the SF Press Democrat. That such a Dubya-acolyte is being rewaded with a position so clearly above her station has naturally angered Democrats, but the real backlash has been from right-wing Republicans – even they abhor the obvious cronyism. On the internet, in the newspapers, on the radio and on TV, Bush is losing the support of his own supporters.

Yet surely he is just showing Americans another version of the American Dream? That you can become important and powerful even if you don’t have any qualifications or experience – in short, ignorance, stupidity and a lack of education pays off. Those homeless guys in the library are clearly wasting their time – or will one of them be the next Secretary of State?

Originally published 10/11/2005

Week One: Pete Tosses A Pumpkin

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My first week living in America, and I have tossed my first pumpkin.

It happened on Saturday, at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair, a gathering of wine-sipping apple-farming hicks which, a bit of a culture shock to a boy from Burnt Oak. Having tasted prize-winning Zinfandels and Chardonnays from all over the County, and chuckled at the hilarity that is the Wolrd Championship Grape Stomp, we put our names down to see who could chuck pumpkins the furthest. My wife chose a fairly small one, and managed to throw it an admirable ten feet; my one, on the other hand was huge. Now people had their methods – some threw it like an American Football, some held the tip and launched it, while one Chinese fellow tried to swing around and shot-put it and failed, managing a measly half a foot. I wanted to performs a footy-style throw in, but when my time came, I cannot even remember what I did. I did get a few claps though: I managed a very respectable eighteen and a half feet. Not bad for a beginner. I got a ribbon – next year I’m going for the trophy.

And so, we are finally back in the land of the huge car, the wide road, and the beating sun. After all of my emotional goodbyes, this first week has been one of conflicting feelings, a swim in a choppy cultural sea that has left me in need of a snorkel, or at least driving lessons. It is impossible to do anything here without a car. You have to get a car to go and get a car. There are freeways in even the smallest of towns because people do not like driving through the town, they would prefer to sit in traffic on a freeway than face a couple of stop signs. Fast food is everywhere – when you can’t be bothered going to the supermarket, it is a hugely easy option – nobody really wonders why everybody is fat here. I am living on doughnuts (or ‘donuts’, rather – they love to contract their words here, to leave more room for their Big Gulps), burritos and massive sodas. And uber-patriotism – only last night there was a country and western song on the radio that glorified invading other countries (particularly non-Christain ones) and raining hell-fire down upon them (“I’ll put mah boot in yaw ass”) so that we can be ‘free’, like we wouldn’t be free anyway (in fact, I wish we weren’t free to invade other countries willy-nilly sometimes, then they wouldn’t hate us so much).

Ah, it’s all an adjustment to a new way of life. People here are politically charged, be it uber-right or uber-left. If there were any more polarization they’d be throwing snowballs at each other. I’m going to sit back, listen, try not to start fights, and report it all here. This blog will now be my own ‘Letter from America’, and I’ll try to update every week.

Y’all come back now, y’hear?!

 

Originally published 10/4/2005