I get no esteem...no regard either

Jim and Michelle came into London this week, much to my happiness. Both are in fine fettle, and ready to live the tourist high life in this wonderful city. Still, I can't help but think I put a bit of a damper on their first day or so out in London, when we ventured out for some dinner a bit of sight-seeing around the central city area. The problem is that I often forget just how much I walk out here to do things, so everything seems really close together for me when, of course, it is actually a pretty good stretch apart. Case in point: after dinner I took Michelle and Jim down Oxford street, and told them that Picadilly Circus was just around the corner, which it was.

Sort of.

I think the problem hadn't reached epic proportions yet, but it soon did, thanks to my insistence that the next famous sight in London was just down the road a piece. Of course it was; this is London, something famous is always just going to be around the next building or corner. By the end of the night we were quite far away from their hotel, and so they ended up getting treated to a magnificent walk down a busy roadway, inhaling all manner of fumes, before I finally got them back. I can only imagine that they soaked their feat in epsom salt for a good while and cursed my lamentable name to the high heavens.

After leaving them to nurse their barking dogs, I saw two friends, Felix and Max, of mine getting money from the cash point down the block from our dorms. Because the weather was touch foul, I was wearing my rain jacket, and sensing an opportunity to rob my German friends of their Deutschemarks, I slid the hood low over my face to conceal my identity and grabbed Felix just as he was waiting for his cash, jabbing him in the ribs with one knuckle while demanding his money.

His respose was revealing. Rather than evincing even a moment of fear or doubt, he just said, "Ah, hello Andy." I find it sort of off-putting that people think so little of me that when they are getting mugged, their natural inclination is to assume that it is me. I guess I'm suspect numero uno for all muggings in central London these days.

Free Festival Fun!

It's festival season out here in Europe, and London had a big one this week at Hyde Park, culminating tonight with Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode. Tickets were a bit pricey for us poor students, and I've been zapped on concerts before, usually getting horrible seats. Many is the time that I've gone to a show only to be so far removed from the action that I scarcely would have been able to tell the difference if Darth Vader and Chewbacca had been onstage instead of my favourite stars. But because the festival was in such a massive, sprawling space, it was enough to simply sit outside the main wall and listen in to a live performance, with surprisingly good audio quality for the price we paid (hint: nothing).

I'm not sure how familiar Goldfrapp is to people in the US, but she is enormously popular in Europe, especially in her native England. From what I hear, her most recent album has started to hit big in the US, and she really looks like Madonna minus thirty years; she's got a very unique sense of style and a magnetic presence. If you haven't seen much of her, and even if you have, actually, have a flick through her website for some of her audio and video clips. It's a bit wonky navigating through there, but it's absolutely worth it.

But I'm guessing most people here have heard of Depeche Mode. (Side note: My friend, who has dual citizenship in Lebanon and Sierra Leone, has never heard of DM, but listens to Celine Dion and Savage Garden. Ugh. And when I mean he has never heard of them, I mean that literally, not in the sense that he has never heard their music. He really has never heard the words Depeche Mode in his life. Jesus.) This being a festival, I was expecting a fairly truncated set from them, especially given that Goldfrapp only put in about 45 minutes on stage. I was pleasantly surprised to see (or rather, hear) that they went on for almost two hours, putting on a full concert-length show. They played a mixture of some of the best songs off their latest album along with some of their greatest hits from the past. The highlight was probably a piano only version of Martin Gore singing "Shake the Disease." Superb.

Get off my goddamn lawn!!

I'm getting old, sad as it is for me to admit that. A few months back I read about store owners putting up loudspeakers emitting fantastically high-pitched noises that only people younger than their mid-20s can hear, presumably to drive away teens who would otherwise loiter. This same phenomenon has been transported to the realm of cellphones, apparently, as youngings are now using it to hear when their phone rings in class, all the time avoiding detection by their elder teachers.

I found out about this yesterday when a guy next to me in the computer lab asked, out of the blue, "can you hear this?" Uh-uh, I replied. Well, it was that damn ringtone, and the three other people in the lab could hear it, but not me. Lord, I'm a geezer.

I'm also keenly aware of my age-limitations, and also my geographic limitations, when I use the internet to suss out the meaning of some bit of slang I read or hear. Particularly useful is urbandictionary. Yes, that's right, I now have to go online to get the straight word on the latest slang. How hip is that, huh? On the plus side, I finally realized why Jay-Z calls himself Hova. Damn, that's cool.

While writing this post, I realized I had gotten myself caught up in a spiral of supreme uncoolness. My first thought was, hey, it's hip to be square! But then I recalled that Homer Simpson said the same, and had to be put to rights:

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important than being cool.
Bart: (unimpressed) Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: "It's hip to be square".
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it's... cool?
Bart and Lisa: (dismissive) No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: (dismissive) No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool, not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: (dismissive) No.
Marge: (frustrated) Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: (puzzled, uncertain) Well, sure you do.
Lisa: (bewildered) How else would you know?

Oh, and that spiral I talked about? The Simpsons has been pretty crappy for the last few years, so the very fact that I'm quoting mid- to late-1990's tv shows to make a point shows three things:

1) I'm old.
2) I'm lame.
3) I have an abundance of free time.

Edit: After posting this I realized that I had made the title read "Get off my goddamn awn!" I guess the mind really starts slipping when you get old.

From beer to bagels

Oh, Shakespeare. No matter the situation, good old Willy has something striking to say about. Wednesday night saw me attend a production of what is apparently one of his more maligned works Titus Adronicus, at the accurately recreated Shakespearean Globe Theatre along the south bank of the Thames. This piece has been getting rave reviews for being the first production to really manifest itself fully within the unique confines of the ancient layout, inhabiting the space and actualizing itself in a unique manner. Part of the fun of going to shows there is getting some of the £5 standing tickets that put you in the pit hard up against the stage, and Titus is the first play where much of the action takes place in this space. Orators, processions, and hostages are carted through the audience on towers, with guards alternately pushing the contraptions and audience members out of the way to "make way" for people such as the emperor. Those who fall into a pit tumble off the stage into a net hastily assembled in the middle of the recently displaced crowd, and the entire night I had to stay on my toes to keep grabbing my bag and water bottle to scurry out of the way of actors. Excellent fun.

And my evening of Shakespearean fun was preceded by a trip down to Brick Lane to grab some goodies at Beigel Bake, the famous 24 bagel joint in East Central London.

Speaking of the Bard, I've recently had a few passages from Othello stuck in my head. You see, alcohol has been a harsh mistress to me lately, and my drinking experiences have been, to be blunt, flat-out rubbish. And it's not just one thing, either; an entire host of maladies hit me on the rare occasions I tip a few back anymore. One time I'll be too sauced to even understand what people are saying to me, other times I start talking bollocks about some random subject at extreme length. Worst are the times when I find myself in a self-pitying funk, which always makes for a pleasant night out, usually followed up by a morning filled with vague waves of shame or guilt over acting like a fool. Ugh. I've really cursed the very word alcohol to the heavens recently, and have given it a wide birth (more or less). But Othello tidily gets to the point, with Cassio lamentingHere are a few of the more choice lines from this section:

-O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
-I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

This one is my favorite, and the one that really has been ringing in my head often:

-To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.

Amen, padre. A-fucking-men.

In the spirit of avoiding the juice, I made a rare foray out into the public eye with a group of people from the dorms the other night, but decided to go entirely sober. Anyone who has ever been to a big city in Europe, especially during summer, is probably familiar with the sight of a large group of 19-year old Americans still struggling to cope with being able to drink legally while still maintaining some hint of dignity. The group I was sort of with, sadly, failed spectacularly in this task, behaving in the loudest, most boorish behaviour imaginable. I deftly peeled myself away from people and stood a bit clear of everyone as they yelled and swore on the tube, all the while planning to call it a quick night. When "our" stop came I feinted towards the door to seal the illusion of me coming along, then stopped short and took up a spot on the tube as it rolled along, sans my fellow students.

I don't know, maybe if I was drunk too it wouldn't be bad at all, but when you are the lone sober guy with a bunch of people teetered on the verge of being wholly out of control, it is no fun at all. And, to bring this story full circle, I took the tube near Brick Lane, ending up again at the Beigel Bake for some bread and sweets late at night. I had never actually been there at night, and realized for the first time that it gets spectacularly busy at night, and there were some 20-odd people in line in front of me. I was not alone in succumbing to the soft seductions of bread and pastries, it would seem.

Life in Hell

Summer has hit London, and the old cliche is spot on: it's not so much the heat as it is the humidity. It's probably about 85 on any given day out here, but there is little air movement and it's quite muggy, making life on the top floor of my building nigh unbearable. My attic room only has one window, and it is on the southern edge of the buiding so I get sun all day long on my roof.

To help alleviate the deathly heat, our school saw fit to buy everyone on the top floor fans. The only problem is that they only gave us 7 inch fans, meaning that I get a cone of relief scarcely bigger than my fist, meaning when I have it pointed at my face I get to cool either one cheek or the other, but no more. I wish I knew the Flash. If I did, I would call him and try to hang out with Captain Cold a bit more to see if he could help me out.

I, Prostitute

I've long made hay of my status as an international multi-media sensation. I began as a local media star when I had to put on a gorilla suit to play the mascot for my old high-school job at Jones Sew and Vac (Company theme/jingle lyrics: "Jones sew and vac a gorilly (go-really) good store! Oooh oooh, aahh aahh!!), and I appeared in both television commercials and at corporate trade shows. I first officially achieved the vaunted title of "international media-star" as a male model for a double-page, full color advert for Helsinki Energy that appeared in main section of the Sunday edition of Finland's biggest paper, Helsingin Sanomat (english edition available here). At other points in my life I've been been interviewed by BBC, the Camden Gazette, appeared on the local news, the newspaper, and, in my greatest dramatic stretch, portrayed Walter, the good and hard-working radio station employee in Ross Moran's epic film, "Walter Cleans Up". It was a difficult role to get myself into, considering I'm the same person who is currently serving a lifetime ban from the Great American Video franchise for my consistent displays of skulduggery during my stint working there.

About a week ago another shot at appearing in the media presented itself to me, this time in the form of a chance to be in a commerical hyping up an American reality TV show. The premise is that a group of people live in a home where traditional roles and power dynamics are inverted, with minorities such as ethnic groups and women have more power and opportunity than caucasians. But here's the thing: the show hasn't even begun production yet. It hasn't been cast, hasn't been shot, and doesn't even have a firm filming location yet. Yet for some reason the production compnay was out in London, and they needed to find some Americans to pretend they were randomly stopped on the streets of the USA and asked their honest opinions of this vaporous program. And given that we have quite a few Americans in our building, we were the perfect rubes for this deception, especially when these Succubi lured us in with their siren's song by promising five pounds (ten dollars) for everyone who would testify to the fabulousness of their show on camera.

They say every man has his price. Mine is apparently just a shade under ten dollars .

The sole redeeming part of this entire dodgy affair was the fact that I could pick out my own lines from the script, and I immediately jumped at the chance to say the following lines with as much vigor as I could muster:

"There's so much sexual tension in there, you can cut it with a knife!"

"There's so much sexual tension, it's gonna explode!!"

And so it was with much theatricality that I am set to appear on American television sometime in the next year opining about how much sexual tension is involved in this show. I really, really hope I get to see myself on national tv at some point. Next stop, Hollywood!

Sour grapes

I love this picture. That is all.

Trading card madness!

I used to collect baseball cards, and one of the most famous brands was Topps. But baseball cards aren' t the only thing Topps is famous for, as they are also well known for producing movie cards which have some, uh, dubious aspects to them. Case in point, a card from the upcoming Superman Returns film.I love the look of surprise and embarassment, like he just got caught, er, coming out of the "broom" closet. Apparently broom=gay. I'm so behind on my slang. And to show this isn't an isolated incident, here is the infamous Star Wars C-3PO weiner card from way back.


I'm guessing that is why Threepio hangs out with R2-D2 so often, because he is "just the right height", if you know what I mean. Hopefully on a future release of the original movies they will include the deleted scenes when Han walks in on the two of them "tightening some nuts and bolts" behind one of the Millenium Falcon's bulkheads.

Futbol!!

So the World Cup started this weekend, putting me in the mood for futbol. Over the past month or two I've been playing a little ball, and practicing in the park a bit with another guy, trying to improve a little. This stuff is a lot harder than it looks, but I'm getting a bit better. I think it is only when you start playing ball you realize why it is so popular and so demanding, but for those who have never tried kicking the ball around I can pass on two things I've heard or read in the past that sort of give a sense of the dynamics of football. The first is that it is incredibly tough to play a game requiring skill when the most dextrous part of your body, your hands, are off-limits. Your natural inclination is to use your hands to influence or manipulate an object, but you cannot, so you are required to find new and creative ways to participate and move the ball.

The second observation relates to the first, and that is the game is so fast-paced and difficult that even the best players in the world are constantly struggling to exert any modicum of control over the game. I love that notion, that even world-class players are constantly trying to guide the game, rather than having the game guide them. Everyone is essentially riding a wild horse, and it is in those slivers within a game, brief moments really, where a player overcomes the chaos long enough to put on a show of magic. I like that idea of unpredictability.

Only the rarest players, the once in a generation type players like Ronaldinho, Pele, or Maradona can almost single-handedly win a game or tournament.

Over the last year of living out in England, I've learned a good amount about football, and found out that there is still a bit of debate about who was the better player, Diego Maradona or Pele. I have no idea who was better, but I did find a video that shows Maradona warming up, and it made me realize just how good some people can be on the ball. Watch Maradona here, and be amazed.

And for a contemporary player some are saying is just about to hit the Maradona/Pele level, if not already being there, click here to see 26 year-old Ronaldinho.

Separated at birth

Why do I get these three things confused all the time?

Shawn Bradley, the 7' 6" NBA player:

Peter Crouch, the 6'7" English Premier League player:

A ladder:

The Penthouse Suite

I thought I would share some pics of my wonderful room in London, and you can click on them to see them full size. The room is sort of an L-shaped room, with the door where the bend in the L would be. These pics pan from left to right, and you can kind of see where they overlap a bit at the mirror and such. Now try to hide your shock, but I have actually turned into a bit of a neatness nut living out here, and I keep my room quite clean and organized, and even make my bed first thing each morning. Here you can see my window, the desk, my pile of papers on my floor that I had in various research stacks for my thesis, the foot of my bed, and a few of my utensils sitting on my fridge in the foreground. Oh, and you can also see my milk jug and jam jar that I set aside to take across the street to the recycling center.


Here's the view from my desk over to me bed and nightstand. And yes, that tiny white box is my fridge. I can only get about 36 hours worth of food in there, so I have to do a lot of grocery shopping.

And here is my microwave, sink, and shelves that I use to store most of my soap and stuff on the top shelf, while the bottom has all my spices and herbs that I use in cooking. My closet is just out of view off to the right, around the corner.

Here are all the pots, pans, knives and such that I bought to cook with out here. I also have a baking sheet and a cutting board snuck between the microwave and the fridge.

If you're gonna go, go in style!

About once a week I take a twenty minute walk each direction to the biggest grocery store in my general area, a large Sainsbury's out in Camden town. I go there because they have the best selection of goods in the vicinity, and I can get the spices and ingredients there that I can't get elsewhere around me. Oh, and each item is anywhere from 2 to 7 pence cheaper each than my neighborhood, and because I'm flagrantly cheap, it is totally worth the extra walk to save a little coin each time.

While there I noticed the sign for the conveyer belt that takes people up and down between the underground car park. It isn't quite an escalator, because it is smooth and without steps, but until today I never realized they are actually called "travelators". At least, that is what the sign next to it said. I like that: "travelator". If I ever own a business or a home with something like that, I think I'm going to call it the "ascendalator" and the "descendalator". Or maybe the "upalator" and the "downalator".

Old fashioned fun

Have any of you seen UHF, the Weird Al movie? I've tried to get other people into this film, with mixed success; it may just be love out of nostalgia from when I fell in love with it as a kid, but I find that movie chortle-inducing. In it is a sequence where they run a commercial for "Spatula City: We sell spatulas, and that's all!" Yesterday I went on a school trip to the Bengali section of East Central London, where Brick Lane, famous for its curry and Bengali restaurants, is. While there we found a large grocery store called "Bengla City", and for the life of me I couldn't saying "Spatula City!!"

They had some of the most wonderful things inside, including a massive 22 lb. bucket of yogurt, and entire bags of spices like paprika and curry powder that were the size of those bags of dirt you buy at the K-Mart gardening centre. I wonder if I can plant some tomatoes in them and get them to end up tasting spicy when I pick them later?

I ended up buying a bag of spicy Bombay Mix (kind of a crunchy, orange-colored snack mix), and some feta and herbs in a jar, which I selected in a narrow decision over a tin of goat's milk cheese from Spain. Tough call. They actually had a lot of really good looking spices and foods, and I'm going to go back when I have a little more money on me. I really like making curry these days, and made a great chicken coconut curry a few days ago and put it over a bed of Basmati rice. I let my Azerbajaini friend Elkhan try some, and he was abosolutely blown away by it, which is a good compliment since this guy cooks even more than I do (although is known to occasionally have something go terribly awry on him, and he ends up with, as he likes to term it, "poison").

The main reason we were in the area was for a school trip for "Religion and Society", and part of our trip was spent in an old builiding that doubles as a Mosque on Brick Lane. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the exit signs in Europe, but they all look like this:

I have to admit that my first day back when I lived in Helsinki, I mistook this for the sign for the bathroom (cuz, you know, he looks like he is in a hurry to get through that door, and I thought he was having a bathroom emergency and was worried that the "hostages were about to be released" in his pants, if you savvy my meaning). The end result of this was that I nearly locked myself into the boiler room of our apartment complex when I kept going through door and door looking for the bathroom down near the laundry room, and almost ended up in a room I didn't have a key to get back out of. But that isn't the point of this; the point of this is that all the exit signs, at least those in the central prayer room, had a piece of paper taped over the image of the guy running. I asked my Morrocan friend what this meant, and she said it was pretty unusual, but was likely a result of an ancient practice that forbids making images of people. Oh, and the head of the mosque asked her why she wasn't wearing a scarf when he found out she was Muslim, something she didn't take kindly to.

After doing a little bit of shopping at Spatu...er BenglaCity, I ended up at this old time candy shop a few blocks away, and the whole time we were walking there I couldn't get my mind of buying some "old timey" candy, as I like to call it. Or maybe it is olde english enough to be "Ye Olde Thymey Candy". Either way, I picked up some licorice and blackcurrant hard sweets, along with a handful of other tasties, and then I looked for a hoop to roll along the ground with a stick, or perhaps a game of either kick the can or stickball to play.

Finally, we stopped at Montezuma's chocolate shop , a place that advertised itself as having award-winning chocolates. Before spending any money in their establishment, I made sure to ask the girl behind the counter exactly which awards they have won, and whether or not they are legitimate bodies capable of ensuring quality. She showed me the awards listed on some bar of chocolate, but I must not have looked wholly reassured because she brought me a sample of one of their truffles. I hemmed and hawed for a minute, and after some toing and froing, I finally settled on a hunk of white chocolate mixed with strawberries out of their jar. So fairly thee be warned, says I, to any business that advertises themselves as award winning. You had better have proof to back that up when I'm in town.