We were just beginning to think about getting ready to go to see in the new year at Cantalini's, the ultra-traditional Italian restaurant at Playa del Rey, a little seaside resort on the coast between Marina del Rey and LAX. Lynne was belatedly bringing the post in from the box when I noticed over her shoulder an on-off red light that didn't somehow seem to belong to New Year festivities.
'What's that behind you?' I asked. She turned round and poked her head outside. 'It looks like fire engines,' she said.
I walked down my garden path and onto the sidewalk, to where there was a small group of spectators. It turned out that a wire in the microwave had short-circuited, sparking flames and clouds of smoke. The firemen were worried that the fire might have climbed into the attic, so they were taking ladders to the back of the house. This was one reason for the apparently overkill of fire engines: if the attic caught fire the next danger would be the trees lining the street. And there are an awful lot of those: it would just race from tree to tree, setting the whole street alight.
The sense of panic briefly returned when we reached Cantalini's. To our surprise we were seated half an hour early and a few minutes before 10 o'clock the place was near-deserted. This did not bode well for a new year's party.
'It's OK, they're fully booked,' Ian Whitcomb assured us during a break in his band's marathon five-hour session there. And, sure enough, almost as if someone had blown a whistle the place filled to the brim by five past ten.
It turned out to be a great evening, some great number's by Ian's band and a couple of energetic guest numbers from Michael, the San Francisco diva, who danced around the restaurant as if she was plugged into the mains. Terrific. Just before midnight Ian got the crowd roaring with his special number, Have A Martini, and suddenly we were all on our feet toasting the new year in a free glass of champagne. For $100 all up, it was wonderful value and as we were thinking about leaving a volley of thunderclaps signalled a dazzling firework display which seemed to be taking place over Marina del Rey.
Getting home proved to be a different kind of adventure. We had used a GPS navigator to guide us to Cantalini's via the freeways - it took just over half an hour to go 30 miles - so we thought we'd give it a slightly tougher task: get us back without going on a freeway.
All was fine until we turned onto Santa Monica Boulevard and told the gadget we wanted to go home. 'Go East, it instructed, and make your next turning in 18 miles.' That seemed OK, because LA roads often go on for ever, and Santa Monica Boulevard seamlessly changed into Sunset Boulevard and then Cesar Chavez Boulevard. By now we were going through the northern end of downtown, but the GPS was saying it was still eight miles to the turnoff north for Pasadena.
We blindly carried on until Cesar Chavez became Riggitt Street, which became smaller and narrower - and finished in a dead end. I had wondered if our computer robot was paying attention, because Santa Monica Boulevard winds north and then south, so only makes sense if you are heading north before you get near downtown, and we didn't. In the end I overrode the robot and used a good old-fashioned map to get back to Garfield Avenue, one of the main roads north, and then across Huntington Boulevard by Twohey's diner to Los Robles Avenue and then to Pasadena. It took us two and a quarter hours, but I'd have reckoned on a good hour and a half to two hours anyway - and I learned a hell of a lot about the LA road system!
Home at 2.45 and collapse into instant sleep. When we woke the Rose Parade was nearly over. Thank goodness we hadn't repeated last year's decision to buy tickets!
Monday, December 31, 2007
new year Pasadena style by Bill Kay
"Don't forget to tune in on New Year's Eve, folks, for our fuck special!" That got my attention, watching breakfast TV over the weekend. But it was Fox TV and I had merely misheard the Californian broadcast accent and they were in fact puffing the station's NY Eve Fox Special, but it seemed fitting somehow: they get excited about 31 Dec in these parts.
You are particularly aware of the New Year phenomenon if you live in Pasadena. Driving down the town's main drag, Colorado Boulevard, early afternoon on NY Eve was a jaw-dropping experience just to see the sheer number of people camped out for the huge Tournament of Roses Parade which is held every NY Day morning. I had been told that people often claimed their spaces overnight, possibly coming on from a boozy party, but that doesn't begin to do it justice. The hundreds of people in place had clearly been there since some time over the weekend. Folding chairs were neatly laid out as far as the eye could see. Families played, adults read or played cards, meals were cooked, some slept. Not sure where they went for washing and going to the loo, probably the nearest Jack-in-the-Box or Burger King, but everyone was very relaxed so it clearly wasn't a problem.
These placid scenes were in stark contrast to last week's news, of a drug-driven shooting in the main shopping segment of that same Colorado Boulevard, in what is rather prissily known as Old Pasadena, an area that used to be a rundown slum dominated by thugs and hobos. They have long gone, replaced by throngs of twentysomethings with nothing more sinister in mind than getting drunk on a Saturday night. So it came as something of shock to discover that a carload of drug-users had driven down from nearby Altadena and a row between two of them had led to a gun being drawn at 7.30 on Wednesday evening, when the streets were crowded with shoppers. Four shots were fired. One went into the victim's back, but at least one went across the street into a shop window, incredibly without hitting anyone on the way.
That prompted soothing words from Bill Bogaard, Pasadena's pollyanna-ish mayor, to the effect that it was a one-off and not the start of a trend. It had better not be, or some of America's biggest store chains will suffer an even bigger downturn in business than already faces them in 2008 from the subprime mortgage meltdown. However, unlike Los Angeles, gun crime and murders are on the increase in Pasadena, particularly the north-west corner where the blacks and Latinos are in the sort of toe-to-toe turf wars that have blighted such LA suburbs as Compton, Fullerton and Long Beach in recent years. It may be catch-up time.
All this has overshadowed Christmas, which seems to have been squeezed between Thanksgiving and New Year. Christmas is still a public holiday, the banks and public services are shut, and so are quite a few retailers and restaurants. But there is the ever-sensitive religious/racial problem that Christmas is a Christian festival and there are no mandatory holidays for other religions. So it has been generally diluted to Happy Holidays, a phrase which can be and often is stretched to cover everything from Halloween to New Year, take it to mean whatever you want it to mean.
There is also a degree of exhaustion by the time the US gets to Christmas. Celebrations, and the accompanying consumer advertising blitz, have been in full flow for at least three months by then, and of course everyone is conscious of the need to keep something in reserve for the big New Year push.
Last year, our first Christmas in the US since we came here to live, was pretty quiet as we didn't get involved in our friends' gatherings. This year we went to two parties, both for adults who either didn't have families or wanted to escape families. They were both very relaxed, informal, convivial affairs that marked Christmas without it becoming an emotional and logistical boot camp. Perfect.
Now we are off to Cantalini's, an atmospheric, traditional Italian restaurant at Playa del Rey, a small beachside holiday village near LAX that seems to have been frozen in time since the 1950s.
Ironically, one of our friends in London has been effectively imprisoned in her home for New Year because a friend's family had to make a hasty exit from their home to escape an armed gangland revenge attack. So California had no monopoly on violent crime in 2007, and I suspect that will be all the truer in 2008.
You are particularly aware of the New Year phenomenon if you live in Pasadena. Driving down the town's main drag, Colorado Boulevard, early afternoon on NY Eve was a jaw-dropping experience just to see the sheer number of people camped out for the huge Tournament of Roses Parade which is held every NY Day morning. I had been told that people often claimed their spaces overnight, possibly coming on from a boozy party, but that doesn't begin to do it justice. The hundreds of people in place had clearly been there since some time over the weekend. Folding chairs were neatly laid out as far as the eye could see. Families played, adults read or played cards, meals were cooked, some slept. Not sure where they went for washing and going to the loo, probably the nearest Jack-in-the-Box or Burger King, but everyone was very relaxed so it clearly wasn't a problem.
These placid scenes were in stark contrast to last week's news, of a drug-driven shooting in the main shopping segment of that same Colorado Boulevard, in what is rather prissily known as Old Pasadena, an area that used to be a rundown slum dominated by thugs and hobos. They have long gone, replaced by throngs of twentysomethings with nothing more sinister in mind than getting drunk on a Saturday night. So it came as something of shock to discover that a carload of drug-users had driven down from nearby Altadena and a row between two of them had led to a gun being drawn at 7.30 on Wednesday evening, when the streets were crowded with shoppers. Four shots were fired. One went into the victim's back, but at least one went across the street into a shop window, incredibly without hitting anyone on the way.
That prompted soothing words from Bill Bogaard, Pasadena's pollyanna-ish mayor, to the effect that it was a one-off and not the start of a trend. It had better not be, or some of America's biggest store chains will suffer an even bigger downturn in business than already faces them in 2008 from the subprime mortgage meltdown. However, unlike Los Angeles, gun crime and murders are on the increase in Pasadena, particularly the north-west corner where the blacks and Latinos are in the sort of toe-to-toe turf wars that have blighted such LA suburbs as Compton, Fullerton and Long Beach in recent years. It may be catch-up time.
All this has overshadowed Christmas, which seems to have been squeezed between Thanksgiving and New Year. Christmas is still a public holiday, the banks and public services are shut, and so are quite a few retailers and restaurants. But there is the ever-sensitive religious/racial problem that Christmas is a Christian festival and there are no mandatory holidays for other religions. So it has been generally diluted to Happy Holidays, a phrase which can be and often is stretched to cover everything from Halloween to New Year, take it to mean whatever you want it to mean.
There is also a degree of exhaustion by the time the US gets to Christmas. Celebrations, and the accompanying consumer advertising blitz, have been in full flow for at least three months by then, and of course everyone is conscious of the need to keep something in reserve for the big New Year push.
Last year, our first Christmas in the US since we came here to live, was pretty quiet as we didn't get involved in our friends' gatherings. This year we went to two parties, both for adults who either didn't have families or wanted to escape families. They were both very relaxed, informal, convivial affairs that marked Christmas without it becoming an emotional and logistical boot camp. Perfect.
Now we are off to Cantalini's, an atmospheric, traditional Italian restaurant at Playa del Rey, a small beachside holiday village near LAX that seems to have been frozen in time since the 1950s.
Ironically, one of our friends in London has been effectively imprisoned in her home for New Year because a friend's family had to make a hasty exit from their home to escape an armed gangland revenge attack. So California had no monopoly on violent crime in 2007, and I suspect that will be all the truer in 2008.
Monday, December 17, 2007
I like schmaltz
Christmas is finally here. After the trees, the tinsel, the weaselly cries of 'Happy Holidays', the door-to-door choirs touting for cans of beans (really), I got the equivalent of a Christmas spirit horse pill at the Egyptian this weekend: seven movies in three days for an inflation-busting $28 (plus $8.25 parking) in one of the most comfortable and well-designed cinemas in the universe.
Since American Cinematheque took it over, the Egyptian has effectively gone off-piste apart from the occasional preview like tomorrow night's members-only Charlie Wilson's War. Instead, it runs an eclectic mix of the old and the older, grouped in seasons such as Cinecon in the weekend running up to Labor Day. They give the place a club feel, though you wouldn't want to invite most of the audiences home to meet the family, and the Egyptian very quickly feels like home.
According to Imdb there are more than 500 films with Christmas in the title, and that applied to only three in the Egyptian selection - White Christmas, A Christmas Carol and Christmas in Connecticut. So if you add in seasonal films that duck a Christmas title, such as this weekend's Miracle on 34th Street, plus those with plots that happen to be located around Christmas - The Thin Man was a case in point this weekend - there must be well over 1,000 that could have qualified. The overwhelming majority, sadly, are just potboilers aimed at turning a dollar or two, such as the toecurlingly entitled Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, so maybe American Cinematheque did well to come up with a respectable seven. Even then, last night's selections - The Thin Man and Christmas in Connecticut - which are just period pieces, light, frothy and very forgettable. You could say the same about The Shop Around the Corner and White Christmas, which for me left only three that really said something about the Christmas season as it was celebrated in the 20th century, when sentiment and commercialism fought a fairly equal battle. In the 19th century, when the modern Christmas trappings were invented, sentiment predominated for those who could afford to indulge, and for the past 20 years or more the business side has taken over.
The big three for me are Miracle on 34th Street, It's A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. All rely on a massive suspension of disbelief - which is true of Christmas as a whole - but all point to the goodness which can be drawn out of human beings in the right circumstances. We like to dismiss this as schmaltz (Jewish cynicism has a lot to answer for) or saccharin-laden sentimentality, maybe because we don't like to admit it exists, speaking as it does of a softness that sits uncomfortably with the modern mood, and stamps SAP on our foreheads for the benefit of the thieves, rogues, conmen and other undesirables whose life seems to be dedicated to parting us from our every last penny.
But the stories that have lasted have been those that highlight, discuss and celebrate eternal truths. And, even now, much of our lives is based on trust and an assumption that the next person will treat us decently and with respect. Many don't, which is why we have to be on our guard nearly all the time. But, just as some people retreat to a church to escape the daily struggle and lift their hearts for a while, so a trip to a shrine like the Egyptian can do a similar job at a Christmas weekend. It's worth the modest entry money and more just to come outside feeling good about yourself, having been reminded what can be.
Since American Cinematheque took it over, the Egyptian has effectively gone off-piste apart from the occasional preview like tomorrow night's members-only Charlie Wilson's War. Instead, it runs an eclectic mix of the old and the older, grouped in seasons such as Cinecon in the weekend running up to Labor Day. They give the place a club feel, though you wouldn't want to invite most of the audiences home to meet the family, and the Egyptian very quickly feels like home.
According to Imdb there are more than 500 films with Christmas in the title, and that applied to only three in the Egyptian selection - White Christmas, A Christmas Carol and Christmas in Connecticut. So if you add in seasonal films that duck a Christmas title, such as this weekend's Miracle on 34th Street, plus those with plots that happen to be located around Christmas - The Thin Man was a case in point this weekend - there must be well over 1,000 that could have qualified. The overwhelming majority, sadly, are just potboilers aimed at turning a dollar or two, such as the toecurlingly entitled Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, so maybe American Cinematheque did well to come up with a respectable seven. Even then, last night's selections - The Thin Man and Christmas in Connecticut - which are just period pieces, light, frothy and very forgettable. You could say the same about The Shop Around the Corner and White Christmas, which for me left only three that really said something about the Christmas season as it was celebrated in the 20th century, when sentiment and commercialism fought a fairly equal battle. In the 19th century, when the modern Christmas trappings were invented, sentiment predominated for those who could afford to indulge, and for the past 20 years or more the business side has taken over.
The big three for me are Miracle on 34th Street, It's A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. All rely on a massive suspension of disbelief - which is true of Christmas as a whole - but all point to the goodness which can be drawn out of human beings in the right circumstances. We like to dismiss this as schmaltz (Jewish cynicism has a lot to answer for) or saccharin-laden sentimentality, maybe because we don't like to admit it exists, speaking as it does of a softness that sits uncomfortably with the modern mood, and stamps SAP on our foreheads for the benefit of the thieves, rogues, conmen and other undesirables whose life seems to be dedicated to parting us from our every last penny.
But the stories that have lasted have been those that highlight, discuss and celebrate eternal truths. And, even now, much of our lives is based on trust and an assumption that the next person will treat us decently and with respect. Many don't, which is why we have to be on our guard nearly all the time. But, just as some people retreat to a church to escape the daily struggle and lift their hearts for a while, so a trip to a shrine like the Egyptian can do a similar job at a Christmas weekend. It's worth the modest entry money and more just to come outside feeling good about yourself, having been reminded what can be.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Steve Allen Theater visited - and revisited
Ever since I moved to Pasadena I have heard people - mainly the singer and performer Ian Whitcomb, it must be admitted - talking about the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, but I never bothered making a special journey there, reckoning it would happen soon enough anyway. This week I've been twice in three days, and I shall definitely visit it more often.
SAT, as I shall refer to it throughout, is at the other end of Hollywood Boulevard from the Kodak, Chinese and Egyptian theaters, both physically and culturally. Few tourists even pass it, let alone regard it as a destination and, of those that do, virtually all will be Americans. It just doesn't make it onto the European guide books unless you are a committed rationalist or humanist. Why? Because it is owned by the Center For Inquiry - West, a New York-based not-for-profit educational
organization established to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom
of inquiry in all areas of human endeavour. (Isn't cut-and-paste a wonderful invention?)
The theater was opened four years ago and dedicated to Steve Allen, an eclectic choice on the face of it as he was a comedian who got TV talk shows started in the 1950s. But, off stage, he was a great sceptic and supporter of the center - presumably giving his scepticism a rest whenever this worthy organisation was mentioned. He died after a car accident in 2000, just when the CFI thinking about raising the money for a west-coast base.
I suspect the theater was incorporated into the plan to give the CFI additional income: it also rents out part of the offices on the upper floor to the LA Press Club. The result suggests that cash was not abundant when the center was built: it resembles the minimalist design so beloved of UK local authority equivalents. The 70-seat auditorium is on the ground floor, occupying about half the space. The rest is given over to a book shop and an open area for receptions that doubles as the foyer when the theater is operating. Just below the ceiling is a frieze commemorating famous rationalists from Bertrand Russell to Tom Paine.
My Tuesday visit was inspired by my friend Jim Dawson's wish to research material for his forthcoming book on the word Motherfucker. We started at Salomi, an Indian restaurant on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood as part of the ongoing search for acceptable LA curry houses, and this one qualifies. The onion bahji was again bland, but I think we might be able to repair that defect as the boss spent several years working in Brick Lane, so knows British taste. Brinjal bahji, dal tarka, pilau rice, poppadoms and naan were all good and the menu featured vindaloos and jalfrezis - none vegetarian, but again I think there will be scope for negotiation.
Then it was down the Hollywood Freeway to the SAT, which we found only after going round the block a couple of times as I was expecting a more conventional theater frontage, Instead there is only a modest neon sign advertising the CFI, which I didn't know had anything to do with it. But at least there is plenty of parking at the back and I unwittingly went in the back door thus avoiding the cash desk - it's that sort of place, fairly easygoing, bordering on the slapdash, but I happily parted with the $10 fee (no tickets issued, so no door check).
The show was, like a lot of the SAT content, a regular monthly event called Girly Magazine Party. The idea is that a Hugh Hefner-like character, who publishes a magazine called Jaunt and lives at the Jaunt Chateau, is hosting a live recording of a TV show, creating the vehicle for a series of disconnected stand-up comics linked by the host and a warm-up guy. The mood is realistically set in the foyer by a couple of saucily-clad girls handing out free snacks and champagne, so you can get your $10 worth before you even sit down.
Apart from the comedians, the acts include a grinning dressing-gowned lothario who allegedly appears in Jaunt's porno movies, and a brilliant mime who gradually gets drunk and ends up puking all over the stage. It's that kind of show. The act we had come to see apparently had his time cut very short, so did little more than get his ventriloquist's dummy to say Motherfucker over and over again. A bit disappointing, but the Hefner character was excellent - just the right amount of outdated male chauvinism and philistine ignorance of anything artistic, and he even had a Hefnerish oversized pipe to give him some mock dignity. An anarchic evening, and good fun.
Last night was very different: the Press Club Christmas, sorry Holiday, Party. The mixture of journos could have walked straight out of the London Press Club in its heyday, wearing the whole gamut of outfits from suits and ties to scruffy jeans and torn leather jackets, although the women were generally dressed fairly conventionally. Sandwiches, sushi, cheese-and-biscuits and cookies were served free (the ginger cookies were particularly good).
The main entertainment was a rock band from the LA Times called Blue Cube. It wasn't bad for an amateur band, with one exception - the business editor, John Corrigan, on lead guitar, who was in a different league. He had no showmanship, disdained a mike even for backing vocals, just concentrated on some really terrific finger work - ok, not Eric Clapton, but he wouldn't be put to shame by the great man. He stood to one side of the stage, as if he was hardly part of the band, and let them do their thing, then would come in with some fantastic riff which would make what the other were up to completely irrelevant.
This, however, cut no ice with the rank and file. I don't know what they were expecting from a rock band, but as soon as the gig began the theater emptied. When it finished two hours later the rest of the party were huddled outside in the patio - presumably so they could smoke and hear themselves speak, but it was freezing out there. Only in LA? No, but it seemed somehow in keeping with the mood of the party.
Note to UK readers: as the Steve Allen Theater and the Center for Inquiry incorporate the US spelling of theater and center, I have adopted those forms throughout for the sake of consistency. Unadulterated English English will return in future blogs.
SAT, as I shall refer to it throughout, is at the other end of Hollywood Boulevard from the Kodak, Chinese and Egyptian theaters, both physically and culturally. Few tourists even pass it, let alone regard it as a destination and, of those that do, virtually all will be Americans. It just doesn't make it onto the European guide books unless you are a committed rationalist or humanist. Why? Because it is owned by the Center For Inquiry - West, a New York-based not-for-profit educational
organization established to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom
of inquiry in all areas of human endeavour. (Isn't cut-and-paste a wonderful invention?)
The theater was opened four years ago and dedicated to Steve Allen, an eclectic choice on the face of it as he was a comedian who got TV talk shows started in the 1950s. But, off stage, he was a great sceptic and supporter of the center - presumably giving his scepticism a rest whenever this worthy organisation was mentioned. He died after a car accident in 2000, just when the CFI thinking about raising the money for a west-coast base.
I suspect the theater was incorporated into the plan to give the CFI additional income: it also rents out part of the offices on the upper floor to the LA Press Club. The result suggests that cash was not abundant when the center was built: it resembles the minimalist design so beloved of UK local authority equivalents. The 70-seat auditorium is on the ground floor, occupying about half the space. The rest is given over to a book shop and an open area for receptions that doubles as the foyer when the theater is operating. Just below the ceiling is a frieze commemorating famous rationalists from Bertrand Russell to Tom Paine.
My Tuesday visit was inspired by my friend Jim Dawson's wish to research material for his forthcoming book on the word Motherfucker. We started at Salomi, an Indian restaurant on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood as part of the ongoing search for acceptable LA curry houses, and this one qualifies. The onion bahji was again bland, but I think we might be able to repair that defect as the boss spent several years working in Brick Lane, so knows British taste. Brinjal bahji, dal tarka, pilau rice, poppadoms and naan were all good and the menu featured vindaloos and jalfrezis - none vegetarian, but again I think there will be scope for negotiation.
Then it was down the Hollywood Freeway to the SAT, which we found only after going round the block a couple of times as I was expecting a more conventional theater frontage, Instead there is only a modest neon sign advertising the CFI, which I didn't know had anything to do with it. But at least there is plenty of parking at the back and I unwittingly went in the back door thus avoiding the cash desk - it's that sort of place, fairly easygoing, bordering on the slapdash, but I happily parted with the $10 fee (no tickets issued, so no door check).
The show was, like a lot of the SAT content, a regular monthly event called Girly Magazine Party. The idea is that a Hugh Hefner-like character, who publishes a magazine called Jaunt and lives at the Jaunt Chateau, is hosting a live recording of a TV show, creating the vehicle for a series of disconnected stand-up comics linked by the host and a warm-up guy. The mood is realistically set in the foyer by a couple of saucily-clad girls handing out free snacks and champagne, so you can get your $10 worth before you even sit down.
Apart from the comedians, the acts include a grinning dressing-gowned lothario who allegedly appears in Jaunt's porno movies, and a brilliant mime who gradually gets drunk and ends up puking all over the stage. It's that kind of show. The act we had come to see apparently had his time cut very short, so did little more than get his ventriloquist's dummy to say Motherfucker over and over again. A bit disappointing, but the Hefner character was excellent - just the right amount of outdated male chauvinism and philistine ignorance of anything artistic, and he even had a Hefnerish oversized pipe to give him some mock dignity. An anarchic evening, and good fun.
Last night was very different: the Press Club Christmas, sorry Holiday, Party. The mixture of journos could have walked straight out of the London Press Club in its heyday, wearing the whole gamut of outfits from suits and ties to scruffy jeans and torn leather jackets, although the women were generally dressed fairly conventionally. Sandwiches, sushi, cheese-and-biscuits and cookies were served free (the ginger cookies were particularly good).
The main entertainment was a rock band from the LA Times called Blue Cube. It wasn't bad for an amateur band, with one exception - the business editor, John Corrigan, on lead guitar, who was in a different league. He had no showmanship, disdained a mike even for backing vocals, just concentrated on some really terrific finger work - ok, not Eric Clapton, but he wouldn't be put to shame by the great man. He stood to one side of the stage, as if he was hardly part of the band, and let them do their thing, then would come in with some fantastic riff which would make what the other were up to completely irrelevant.
This, however, cut no ice with the rank and file. I don't know what they were expecting from a rock band, but as soon as the gig began the theater emptied. When it finished two hours later the rest of the party were huddled outside in the patio - presumably so they could smoke and hear themselves speak, but it was freezing out there. Only in LA? No, but it seemed somehow in keeping with the mood of the party.
Note to UK readers: as the Steve Allen Theater and the Center for Inquiry incorporate the US spelling of theater and center, I have adopted those forms throughout for the sake of consistency. Unadulterated English English will return in future blogs.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Kool Kristmas
If there is one thing guaranteed to get hearts pounding around here at this time of year, it's Christmas decorations, from trees in the parlour and wreaths on the front door to Santa Clauses and reindeer electrically depicted as scampering all over the front lawn, to a backdrop of white light bulbs massed in a snow formation. As in Britain, there is some snobbery about white lights versus coloured, but that is a detail: the sheer volume is enough to want to start a lighting shop or an electrical repair service. The scope for sabotage is endless, and it is no coincidence that one of the hit films of last winter was based on a BBC TV play about neighbours vying to put on the best display. It makes driving very distracting, as you can pass whole side streets lit up more than Oxford Street and Regent Street combined: Pasadena Water and Power should be paying a dividend in January. (It's OK, I'm not holding my breath).
Since the start of December I've been to three tree-lighting ceremonies and a wreath auction, and it seems impossible to enter a house or public building without being confronted by yet more tinselled pine. Bah humbug!
The first lighting event was at One Colorado, a little square just off Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena that houses an Italian restaurant, a micro-brew pub, a mock-Japanese restaurant, a branch of the Johnny Rockets 50s diner chain, a cinema and a Crate & Barrel. Quite a lot, really, to surround a small arena, and it has been known to host open-air film shows with the film projected high onto a white wall.
The square was packed on this occasion, I suspect because it was early in the season and Christmas exhaustion hadn't set in. Although Santa Claus was attending to do the actual lighting, the main guest of honour was Tom Lasorda. He means nothing to non-Americans, but he managed the LA Dodgers last time they won the World Series, all of 19 years ago, so his nearest British equivalent might be Kenny Dalglish for getting Blackburn the Premiership title in 1995. That's where the resemblance ends. As far as I know, wee Kenny has kept his trim figure pretty well intact but Lasorda was more Santa Claus than Santa Claus: all he needed was the beard and red coat.
Touchingly, he virtually ignored the huge tree about ten yards in front of where he was standing. Instead he embarked on a eulogy of the perennially underperforming Dodgers (bit like Chelsea pre-Abramovich) and how next season was going to be their year, especially now they had hired the Yankees' manager, Joe Torre. It was quite stirring stuff, so long as you were even vaguely interested in baseball and a Dodgers fan, but I could see a lot of bored faces in the crowd as he ploughed on with his rehearsed speech.
With an eye on taxpayers' money being spent, the Pasadena Town Council laid on a more modest but still pretty impressive tree to grace the tall entrance porch of the Italiante City Hall. As they didn't have One Colorado's incentive to pull in the punters, not much had been spent on advertising the event so consequently we were a fairly exclusive bunch, shivering in the cold as we waited for something to happen.
Eventually some student musicians arrived and started tuning their instruments, and then some Starbucks ladies turned up pushing carts laden with vats of coffee - which were accompanied by the magic words 'Compliments Of' and the Starbucks logo.
The band was pretty good, jazz in style but nothing to do with Christmas, but Starbucks stole the show, triggering a queue that ran diagonally right across the tree space and seemed to get longer and longer as word went round that here was a chance to get something back for all the hundreds of dollars we had each spent on the chain's overpriced brew (OK, it's only half the London price at the current exchange rate, but then wages here are the same in dollars as they are in pounds in Britain).
Finally, once everyone had a coffee, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogarde apologetically shuffled towards the microphone to deliver the tree-lighting speech. He's a most uncharistmatic mayor, as unlike the Simpsons' Kennedy-inspired Springfield mayor as you could imagine. Dressed in his regulation light grey suit and inoffensive blue tie, there was nothing to dislike about him, but he had nothing to say. He spouted some drivel about how the holiday season unified all the religions, wished the Christians a happy Christmas, the Jews a happy hanuka, the Muslims whatever they wished themselves (immolation and 72 virgins, presumably) and stressed that this was an eco-friendly tree, lit by LED lights. That, incredibly, got a round of applause from the assembled mums and social workers who had escaped from the council offices for half an hour.
Tree ceremony number three was held at the appropriately named Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena, in the foothills north of Pasadena, and it certainly had quantity on its side - a whole street flanked by Douglas Firs, which have been lit every Christmas since 1920.
A crowd of about 100 or more endured the usual boring speeches from local community leaders, one of whom even suggested that we could still buy raffle tickets even as the draw was being held! A detachment from the Air Force presented colours and everyone had to stand to attention for the pledge of allegiance. Ditto National Anthem. The local Baptist church sang a few Gospel songs, an ancient biddy calling herself Mrs Altadena insisted she would be officiating for another ten years ('not just another four like that George Bush', seemingly oblivious to the fact he's only got a year to go, and a smug County Supervisor, Mike Antanovich, lit the lights undiplomatically dressed in a red Angels baseball jacket - you may not realise it, Mike, but this is the Dodgers end of town. He'd have been flayed alive for the equivalent crime in England or Scotland. No one else seemed to mind, though, and we all set off walking down the lane behind a school drumming band. I even bought a red Christmas Tree Lane cap, $5 for charity.
By the time that was over, we were running late for the wreath auction being held in a very grand house down past Caltech. But we needn't have worried: by the time we arrived in the transparent tent in the garden, everyone was still tucking into the free food and drink before the actual business began. It was organised by the local estate agents for charity, what charity we never quite found out. They were generally a bit funny about money: when people turned up they were asked for their credit card numbers, before anyone could know whether they were going to bid or not. In fact, as often happens on these occasions, most of the 50 lots went to the same half-dozen people, many of whom had donated the lots in the first place...
The drink flowed generously, but getting everyone tiddly before an auction is a two-edged sword. While it loosens wallets, people also feel less inhibited about talking loudly through the serious stuff, as they did, which made it tough on the two auctioneers.They did well to maintain their sense of humour.
Like the heavily made-up women there, with a few tasteful exceptions all the wreaths were loud, garish and expensive, selling for $200 to $500 (you can buy rather plainer varieties in Trader Joe's for $12). Interspersed between these were an assortment of other items that had been donated - including, yes, two Christmas trees. I wish we'd bid for one, looked good and sold for $450 against the $800 you can pay in local stores. Plane rides, lunches, dinners, winetastings, weekends Carlsbad, weeks in Little Balboa Island and even a chihuahua puppy came under the hammer (metaphorically, I should add). I tried bidding for a dinner for six, but the price soared way over my head. An entertaining way of raising money, though.
Much quieter, far more civilised and much more fun was the Christmas dinner of the local branch of the Oxford University Society at the Atheneum Club on the corner of Caltech.
We all had to negotiate death by decorations, including an enormous tree, but it was worth it: an eclectic group of Brits and Americans and their guests, all of whom had something interesting to say for themselves and about others. A lovely 80-year-old, Bea Hopkinson, organised it as she apparently does every year. The men swapped tables before the pud - it was that sort of evening - the Queen was toasted, but there was enough of an American flavour to the event to stop it being totally expat. Inevitably, the Brits exchanged stories of life away from home, languages, customs and so on, but there was always an Angeleno on hand to keep us in check and mock our xenophobia. The next event is a scotch and chocolate evening, in February, and I'm very tempted to go.
Next up: a comedian whose act is based entirely round the word Motherfucker.
Since the start of December I've been to three tree-lighting ceremonies and a wreath auction, and it seems impossible to enter a house or public building without being confronted by yet more tinselled pine. Bah humbug!
The first lighting event was at One Colorado, a little square just off Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena that houses an Italian restaurant, a micro-brew pub, a mock-Japanese restaurant, a branch of the Johnny Rockets 50s diner chain, a cinema and a Crate & Barrel. Quite a lot, really, to surround a small arena, and it has been known to host open-air film shows with the film projected high onto a white wall.
The square was packed on this occasion, I suspect because it was early in the season and Christmas exhaustion hadn't set in. Although Santa Claus was attending to do the actual lighting, the main guest of honour was Tom Lasorda. He means nothing to non-Americans, but he managed the LA Dodgers last time they won the World Series, all of 19 years ago, so his nearest British equivalent might be Kenny Dalglish for getting Blackburn the Premiership title in 1995. That's where the resemblance ends. As far as I know, wee Kenny has kept his trim figure pretty well intact but Lasorda was more Santa Claus than Santa Claus: all he needed was the beard and red coat.
Touchingly, he virtually ignored the huge tree about ten yards in front of where he was standing. Instead he embarked on a eulogy of the perennially underperforming Dodgers (bit like Chelsea pre-Abramovich) and how next season was going to be their year, especially now they had hired the Yankees' manager, Joe Torre. It was quite stirring stuff, so long as you were even vaguely interested in baseball and a Dodgers fan, but I could see a lot of bored faces in the crowd as he ploughed on with his rehearsed speech.
With an eye on taxpayers' money being spent, the Pasadena Town Council laid on a more modest but still pretty impressive tree to grace the tall entrance porch of the Italiante City Hall. As they didn't have One Colorado's incentive to pull in the punters, not much had been spent on advertising the event so consequently we were a fairly exclusive bunch, shivering in the cold as we waited for something to happen.
Eventually some student musicians arrived and started tuning their instruments, and then some Starbucks ladies turned up pushing carts laden with vats of coffee - which were accompanied by the magic words 'Compliments Of' and the Starbucks logo.
The band was pretty good, jazz in style but nothing to do with Christmas, but Starbucks stole the show, triggering a queue that ran diagonally right across the tree space and seemed to get longer and longer as word went round that here was a chance to get something back for all the hundreds of dollars we had each spent on the chain's overpriced brew (OK, it's only half the London price at the current exchange rate, but then wages here are the same in dollars as they are in pounds in Britain).
Finally, once everyone had a coffee, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogarde apologetically shuffled towards the microphone to deliver the tree-lighting speech. He's a most uncharistmatic mayor, as unlike the Simpsons' Kennedy-inspired Springfield mayor as you could imagine. Dressed in his regulation light grey suit and inoffensive blue tie, there was nothing to dislike about him, but he had nothing to say. He spouted some drivel about how the holiday season unified all the religions, wished the Christians a happy Christmas, the Jews a happy hanuka, the Muslims whatever they wished themselves (immolation and 72 virgins, presumably) and stressed that this was an eco-friendly tree, lit by LED lights. That, incredibly, got a round of applause from the assembled mums and social workers who had escaped from the council offices for half an hour.
Tree ceremony number three was held at the appropriately named Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena, in the foothills north of Pasadena, and it certainly had quantity on its side - a whole street flanked by Douglas Firs, which have been lit every Christmas since 1920.
A crowd of about 100 or more endured the usual boring speeches from local community leaders, one of whom even suggested that we could still buy raffle tickets even as the draw was being held! A detachment from the Air Force presented colours and everyone had to stand to attention for the pledge of allegiance. Ditto National Anthem. The local Baptist church sang a few Gospel songs, an ancient biddy calling herself Mrs Altadena insisted she would be officiating for another ten years ('not just another four like that George Bush', seemingly oblivious to the fact he's only got a year to go, and a smug County Supervisor, Mike Antanovich, lit the lights undiplomatically dressed in a red Angels baseball jacket - you may not realise it, Mike, but this is the Dodgers end of town. He'd have been flayed alive for the equivalent crime in England or Scotland. No one else seemed to mind, though, and we all set off walking down the lane behind a school drumming band. I even bought a red Christmas Tree Lane cap, $5 for charity.
By the time that was over, we were running late for the wreath auction being held in a very grand house down past Caltech. But we needn't have worried: by the time we arrived in the transparent tent in the garden, everyone was still tucking into the free food and drink before the actual business began. It was organised by the local estate agents for charity, what charity we never quite found out. They were generally a bit funny about money: when people turned up they were asked for their credit card numbers, before anyone could know whether they were going to bid or not. In fact, as often happens on these occasions, most of the 50 lots went to the same half-dozen people, many of whom had donated the lots in the first place...
The drink flowed generously, but getting everyone tiddly before an auction is a two-edged sword. While it loosens wallets, people also feel less inhibited about talking loudly through the serious stuff, as they did, which made it tough on the two auctioneers.They did well to maintain their sense of humour.
Like the heavily made-up women there, with a few tasteful exceptions all the wreaths were loud, garish and expensive, selling for $200 to $500 (you can buy rather plainer varieties in Trader Joe's for $12). Interspersed between these were an assortment of other items that had been donated - including, yes, two Christmas trees. I wish we'd bid for one, looked good and sold for $450 against the $800 you can pay in local stores. Plane rides, lunches, dinners, winetastings, weekends Carlsbad, weeks in Little Balboa Island and even a chihuahua puppy came under the hammer (metaphorically, I should add). I tried bidding for a dinner for six, but the price soared way over my head. An entertaining way of raising money, though.
Much quieter, far more civilised and much more fun was the Christmas dinner of the local branch of the Oxford University Society at the Atheneum Club on the corner of Caltech.
We all had to negotiate death by decorations, including an enormous tree, but it was worth it: an eclectic group of Brits and Americans and their guests, all of whom had something interesting to say for themselves and about others. A lovely 80-year-old, Bea Hopkinson, organised it as she apparently does every year. The men swapped tables before the pud - it was that sort of evening - the Queen was toasted, but there was enough of an American flavour to the event to stop it being totally expat. Inevitably, the Brits exchanged stories of life away from home, languages, customs and so on, but there was always an Angeleno on hand to keep us in check and mock our xenophobia. The next event is a scotch and chocolate evening, in February, and I'm very tempted to go.
Next up: a comedian whose act is based entirely round the word Motherfucker.
Friday, December 7, 2007
a hot time
The search for the perfect curry in Los Angeles is never-ending and frequently thankless. Many of the Indian restaurants, it has to be said, get away with murder, either deliberately or because they employ substandard chefs. Many staff the kitchen with Mexicans, who know about peppers and spices but usually have no feel for the subtleties, the nuances, the infinite variety of a skilfully produced curry. The problem is compounded by the fact that the local diners just don't know what they are ordering, much as it must have been in Britain fifty years ago unless you had an ex-Indian soldier or civil servant to guide you and tell the waiters precisely what was required.
So I live on a diet of hope, fed from time to time by friends, contacts, acquaintances, who have what they are convinced is a sure-fire tipoff. You can filter most of these very quickly. First question: is it in West LA, Santa Monica or the Indian enclave of Artesia, forget it. Second question: is the kitchen fully Indian? Third question: does it even pretend to serve onion bahjis? A No to any of these and you can pretty safely forget it.
The latest recommendations have come from Shel Talmy, a now-blind American record producer who has better-than-normal curry credentials because he spent 17 years in London producing the Kinks and Pink Floyd. He suggested Curry Palace, which shares premises with the Coach and Horses a few blocks west of Gardner on Sunset.
The pub is promising, with a long, ill-lit bar on one side, and booths on the other. The Three Stooges used to relax here, which may or may not be in the bar's favor.
Next door, the Curry Palace was less promising. In fact, it was empty. And it had no licence, though you could fetch drinks from next door (a strange arrangement, I thought, as they were effectively one establishment).
Indian-run kitchen? So it seemed? Far enough west? Yes. Onion bahjis? Yes, but of the doughy, leaden variety, with not a lot of flavor. OK though, I felt.
The main dishes were authentically curried, and could have been served in any of several thousand similar places in UK. The tarka dahl in particular was exceptional, thick and garlicky. Naans were the right consistency too, but the saag bahji was, well, a bit mucky. Do you know what I mean? Hard to explain, but it did not encourage me to return there. The service was a bit eccentric too. Altogether not a very welcoming place, but OK in dire emergency. On balance, I decided it was not up to the current benchmark, Mezbaan in Pasadena, which has a Nepali chef if you please. It lacks proper onion bahjis, but is otherwise pretty reliable. However, it falls short of the standard I can't help feeling LA must be capable of producing.
Next stop is Salomi in Lankershim Boulevard, north Hollywood.
I will report back but meanwhile, by way of a foretaste of the area and at the same time a complete change of pace, we drove up in that direction to the extraordinary Joe's Great American Bar & Grill on 4311 West Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank.
Like so many entertainment places in LA, it is a total throwback to the 1950s or earlier. A small version of a Glenn Miller big band tooted 1940s sounds for the benefit of dancers who had clearly spent many hours honing their skills. The food was ropey, the drinks were, well, drinks but people turned up there for the music - which was nominally free but the band regularly rattled a bucket and told anyone who cared to listen that it was not for tips, that was how they got paid. Joe (if he exists) wasn't taking any chances, apparently. I did not see many dollars being dropped into the bucket so, like many in LA showbiz, that highly competent band may have been slaving away for next to nothing, all for the chance to parade their wares in the hope that someone with real money might hear them and offer them a career-making contract, maybe in some period movie. Publishers, bar-owners and radio and TV station franchiseholders make fortunes out of the hope value they dangle before performers. It's a con that has kept LA going for a century and will continue to do so as long as there are enough radio, TV and film studios in the area. But it does mean that there is plenty of live entertainment any night of the week, often for free or next to nothing. It keeps the wheels oiled, and there will always be new hopefuls to replace those who finally give up and return home to mundane lives. But at least they know they give it a shot, probably their best shot.
So I live on a diet of hope, fed from time to time by friends, contacts, acquaintances, who have what they are convinced is a sure-fire tipoff. You can filter most of these very quickly. First question: is it in West LA, Santa Monica or the Indian enclave of Artesia, forget it. Second question: is the kitchen fully Indian? Third question: does it even pretend to serve onion bahjis? A No to any of these and you can pretty safely forget it.
The latest recommendations have come from Shel Talmy, a now-blind American record producer who has better-than-normal curry credentials because he spent 17 years in London producing the Kinks and Pink Floyd. He suggested Curry Palace, which shares premises with the Coach and Horses a few blocks west of Gardner on Sunset.
The pub is promising, with a long, ill-lit bar on one side, and booths on the other. The Three Stooges used to relax here, which may or may not be in the bar's favor.
Next door, the Curry Palace was less promising. In fact, it was empty. And it had no licence, though you could fetch drinks from next door (a strange arrangement, I thought, as they were effectively one establishment).
Indian-run kitchen? So it seemed? Far enough west? Yes. Onion bahjis? Yes, but of the doughy, leaden variety, with not a lot of flavor. OK though, I felt.
The main dishes were authentically curried, and could have been served in any of several thousand similar places in UK. The tarka dahl in particular was exceptional, thick and garlicky. Naans were the right consistency too, but the saag bahji was, well, a bit mucky. Do you know what I mean? Hard to explain, but it did not encourage me to return there. The service was a bit eccentric too. Altogether not a very welcoming place, but OK in dire emergency. On balance, I decided it was not up to the current benchmark, Mezbaan in Pasadena, which has a Nepali chef if you please. It lacks proper onion bahjis, but is otherwise pretty reliable. However, it falls short of the standard I can't help feeling LA must be capable of producing.
Next stop is Salomi in Lankershim Boulevard, north Hollywood.
I will report back but meanwhile, by way of a foretaste of the area and at the same time a complete change of pace, we drove up in that direction to the extraordinary Joe's Great American Bar & Grill on 4311 West Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank.
Like so many entertainment places in LA, it is a total throwback to the 1950s or earlier. A small version of a Glenn Miller big band tooted 1940s sounds for the benefit of dancers who had clearly spent many hours honing their skills. The food was ropey, the drinks were, well, drinks but people turned up there for the music - which was nominally free but the band regularly rattled a bucket and told anyone who cared to listen that it was not for tips, that was how they got paid. Joe (if he exists) wasn't taking any chances, apparently. I did not see many dollars being dropped into the bucket so, like many in LA showbiz, that highly competent band may have been slaving away for next to nothing, all for the chance to parade their wares in the hope that someone with real money might hear them and offer them a career-making contract, maybe in some period movie. Publishers, bar-owners and radio and TV station franchiseholders make fortunes out of the hope value they dangle before performers. It's a con that has kept LA going for a century and will continue to do so as long as there are enough radio, TV and film studios in the area. But it does mean that there is plenty of live entertainment any night of the week, often for free or next to nothing. It keeps the wheels oiled, and there will always be new hopefuls to replace those who finally give up and return home to mundane lives. But at least they know they give it a shot, probably their best shot.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
the lost continent
Tonight I watched a DVD that opened a door on a lost world - the lost world of British comedy of the first half of the 20th century. It was a black-and-white world populated by Rob Wilton, Little Tich, Sid Field, Chesney & Allen, Max Miller, Max Bygraves, Max Wall, Tommy Cooper, Tommy Handley, Norman Wisdom and Monsewer Eddie Gray. It was a world of innocence, relying on funny dancing and funny walks and mental abnormality that became outdated and unacceptable. Audiences in those days seemed easily pleased, but they were seeing these acts for the first time. It was new then, just as Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and The Office were screamingly funny the first time they were shown.
It also opened a door on relations between the sexes. Women were more passive, we were led to believe, while men jumped around trying to impress them like kids in a playground.
Max Miller seemed to be the gatekeeper to a hidden world, a world of smutty and therefore unimaginably sophisticated humor that - on screen at least - he never actually entered, just hinted at.
So humor has moved on, and will continue to move on, which essentially means that society and culture move on, develop. Will we look back on today's comedians with the same wonder that their forebears triggered so much laughter and pleasure? Maybe, but if so it also means that we can look forward to the human race progressing, which it surely must however much we may imagine that we have reached the end of the road. And the picture quality will be better.
Either way, I am immensely grateful to my friend Ian Whitcomb for lending me that DVD. It was worth every second.
It also opened a door on relations between the sexes. Women were more passive, we were led to believe, while men jumped around trying to impress them like kids in a playground.
Max Miller seemed to be the gatekeeper to a hidden world, a world of smutty and therefore unimaginably sophisticated humor that - on screen at least - he never actually entered, just hinted at.
So humor has moved on, and will continue to move on, which essentially means that society and culture move on, develop. Will we look back on today's comedians with the same wonder that their forebears triggered so much laughter and pleasure? Maybe, but if so it also means that we can look forward to the human race progressing, which it surely must however much we may imagine that we have reached the end of the road. And the picture quality will be better.
Either way, I am immensely grateful to my friend Ian Whitcomb for lending me that DVD. It was worth every second.
tesco press trip
I turned the clock back this week. For the first time in years, I went on a company press trip. It was intense, illuminating and exhausting, physically and emotionally. So nothing has changed.
Tesco, the most successful UK supermarket group of the past 20 years,
is trying to break into the notoriously xenophobic US retail market. After several years' preparation, and all of three weeks since its first Fresh and Easy branches opened, the company felt confident enough to parade its achievements.
You can see the results on the websites of the London Times, Telegraph and Guardian - smoothly polished accounts of Tesco's plans, with an assessment of their chances of carving out a niche. But beneath those measured sentiments lay two days of chaos.
At one level, a press trip is one long party. New friendships are made, old friendships renewed. It seems as if it's going to last for ever - then suddenly it's all over and you're in an early-morning taxi on the way to the airport on your own: what was all that about?
At another level, of course, the journalists are there to work, and they are all competing with one another for the best angle, the best quote, the tantalising possibility of a scoop - or the fear that one of the others will get that scoop.
One of this group came with a readymade scoop pedigree. Jonathan Birchall of the Financial Times had run a string of exclusive stories about Tesco's US project with, so the jealous rumor ran, the connivance of Tesco on the grounds that it wanted soft coverage in the British financial world's Village Voice. But to me, Birchall looked a highly competent reporter rather than someone's patsy. He had done his research, deep throat or no deep throat.
Then there was the little matter of the embargo. This may come as a mild shock to American readers, but Tesco made it a condition of coming on the trip that the journalists had to hold off writing about the trip until December 3, three days after it was over. Crucially, December 3 was a Monday so the embargo was designed to keep the Sunday papers at bay for another week. As I was covering the trip for the London Sunday Times, I had a personal interest in this arrangement and had voiced my unhappiness weeks earlier.
As it happened, Tesco itself paved the way for unlocking the embargo by inviting analysts and institutional shareholders to tour the project immediately before the press. At least one, the analyst from Dresdner Kleinwort, published a note about what he had seen while the journalists were still on tour. As that note contained some of the information Tesco was trying to embargo, the embargo was over. I showed the note to Tesco's PR, Greg Sage, who could only agree, as long as none of the Tesco executives' comments were quoted. Naturally, this agreement was not announced or the daily papers would have been able to go public at once. As you can see, it can become a dirty game.
So, after a visit to the Fresh and Easy head office and a visit to one or two branches on the Thursday, I made my excuses and went back to the hotel to write my story. I did truthfully have to rewrite my column for the Sunday Times Money section, but I would also have ample time to file a Tesco story while everyone else was being scared by King Kong and Jaws on the Universal Studios back lot tour.
But my carefully laid scheme fell apart the next day. After a 100-mile coach ride through driving rain, we were taken round Tesco's massive Riverside distribution depot. At one stage I noticed the boss, Tim Mason, calling to one side a co-director, Lucy Neville-Rolfe and the legal counsel, Mary Kasper. Something had to be up, and it was.
We were allowed to plod round, changing in and out and in and out of protective clothing at the ultra-hygenic cooking facility, and munching our Tesco lunch boxes, before scurrying through the rain back to the coach to go to the local airport.
We had hardly got going before Mason took the mike and said that Kasper had something to say about a legal case involving the March Joint Authority, the body responsible for the land on which the depot stood. Basically, the judge found against the authority and Kasper had to admit that - theoretically, of course - that could mean the depot shutting down, which would in turn starve the supermarkets it serves. Potential disaster, although highly unlikely.
But you can't tell that to a bunch of journalists, several of whom were by now up against their London employers' Friday night deadlines. As the coach drew up next to our plane to Las Vegas, several mobile phones were running red hot and I was emailing for all I was worth on my iPhone. But the bottom line was that Saturday morning's papers were full of the law suit and The Sunday Times eventually decided to hang fire. Tesco had got its way, but not in quite the way it wanted.
However, in the process I had had to come clean about having filed the day before, which was met with stunned silence by a couple of my colleagues: journalists are shockable after all. But it was all for nothing.
But by the time we landed at Las Vegas the drama was over and we were being ferried around the drab suburbs of that city, the parts the tourists never see unless they make a wrong turning, for the sake of visiting yet another Fresh and Easy store as well as a truly breathtaking Wal-Mart Supacenter. This is the gamble Tesco is taking: will American consumers choose the dry functionality of Fresh & Easy over the sheer showmanship of Wal-Mart, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Tesco will tweak the Fresh & Easy format until it gets it right. The ones who should be worried are Kroger and Safeway, who between them own Ralphs, Vons and Pavilions - the mid-market supermarkets that stand to be squeezed by the others.
But, for the press contingent, it was a case of checking in to the magnificent Wynn hotel on the Strip, relaxing in a deep bath and strolling downstairs to the classy Daniel Boulud restaurant, ending up with a tour around nighttime Vegas. Then back to the hotel for a chance to gamble. Me, I had to be up at 6 am so the tour ended right there. But never was I glad to see the inside of LAX's Terminal 2, which I had been through so often when flying to and from London. I was home, and the synthetic frenetic of a press trip was no more.
Tesco, the most successful UK supermarket group of the past 20 years,
is trying to break into the notoriously xenophobic US retail market. After several years' preparation, and all of three weeks since its first Fresh and Easy branches opened, the company felt confident enough to parade its achievements.
You can see the results on the websites of the London Times, Telegraph and Guardian - smoothly polished accounts of Tesco's plans, with an assessment of their chances of carving out a niche. But beneath those measured sentiments lay two days of chaos.
At one level, a press trip is one long party. New friendships are made, old friendships renewed. It seems as if it's going to last for ever - then suddenly it's all over and you're in an early-morning taxi on the way to the airport on your own: what was all that about?
At another level, of course, the journalists are there to work, and they are all competing with one another for the best angle, the best quote, the tantalising possibility of a scoop - or the fear that one of the others will get that scoop.
One of this group came with a readymade scoop pedigree. Jonathan Birchall of the Financial Times had run a string of exclusive stories about Tesco's US project with, so the jealous rumor ran, the connivance of Tesco on the grounds that it wanted soft coverage in the British financial world's Village Voice. But to me, Birchall looked a highly competent reporter rather than someone's patsy. He had done his research, deep throat or no deep throat.
Then there was the little matter of the embargo. This may come as a mild shock to American readers, but Tesco made it a condition of coming on the trip that the journalists had to hold off writing about the trip until December 3, three days after it was over. Crucially, December 3 was a Monday so the embargo was designed to keep the Sunday papers at bay for another week. As I was covering the trip for the London Sunday Times, I had a personal interest in this arrangement and had voiced my unhappiness weeks earlier.
As it happened, Tesco itself paved the way for unlocking the embargo by inviting analysts and institutional shareholders to tour the project immediately before the press. At least one, the analyst from Dresdner Kleinwort, published a note about what he had seen while the journalists were still on tour. As that note contained some of the information Tesco was trying to embargo, the embargo was over. I showed the note to Tesco's PR, Greg Sage, who could only agree, as long as none of the Tesco executives' comments were quoted. Naturally, this agreement was not announced or the daily papers would have been able to go public at once. As you can see, it can become a dirty game.
So, after a visit to the Fresh and Easy head office and a visit to one or two branches on the Thursday, I made my excuses and went back to the hotel to write my story. I did truthfully have to rewrite my column for the Sunday Times Money section, but I would also have ample time to file a Tesco story while everyone else was being scared by King Kong and Jaws on the Universal Studios back lot tour.
But my carefully laid scheme fell apart the next day. After a 100-mile coach ride through driving rain, we were taken round Tesco's massive Riverside distribution depot. At one stage I noticed the boss, Tim Mason, calling to one side a co-director, Lucy Neville-Rolfe and the legal counsel, Mary Kasper. Something had to be up, and it was.
We were allowed to plod round, changing in and out and in and out of protective clothing at the ultra-hygenic cooking facility, and munching our Tesco lunch boxes, before scurrying through the rain back to the coach to go to the local airport.
We had hardly got going before Mason took the mike and said that Kasper had something to say about a legal case involving the March Joint Authority, the body responsible for the land on which the depot stood. Basically, the judge found against the authority and Kasper had to admit that - theoretically, of course - that could mean the depot shutting down, which would in turn starve the supermarkets it serves. Potential disaster, although highly unlikely.
But you can't tell that to a bunch of journalists, several of whom were by now up against their London employers' Friday night deadlines. As the coach drew up next to our plane to Las Vegas, several mobile phones were running red hot and I was emailing for all I was worth on my iPhone. But the bottom line was that Saturday morning's papers were full of the law suit and The Sunday Times eventually decided to hang fire. Tesco had got its way, but not in quite the way it wanted.
However, in the process I had had to come clean about having filed the day before, which was met with stunned silence by a couple of my colleagues: journalists are shockable after all. But it was all for nothing.
But by the time we landed at Las Vegas the drama was over and we were being ferried around the drab suburbs of that city, the parts the tourists never see unless they make a wrong turning, for the sake of visiting yet another Fresh and Easy store as well as a truly breathtaking Wal-Mart Supacenter. This is the gamble Tesco is taking: will American consumers choose the dry functionality of Fresh & Easy over the sheer showmanship of Wal-Mart, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Tesco will tweak the Fresh & Easy format until it gets it right. The ones who should be worried are Kroger and Safeway, who between them own Ralphs, Vons and Pavilions - the mid-market supermarkets that stand to be squeezed by the others.
But, for the press contingent, it was a case of checking in to the magnificent Wynn hotel on the Strip, relaxing in a deep bath and strolling downstairs to the classy Daniel Boulud restaurant, ending up with a tour around nighttime Vegas. Then back to the hotel for a chance to gamble. Me, I had to be up at 6 am so the tour ended right there. But never was I glad to see the inside of LAX's Terminal 2, which I had been through so often when flying to and from London. I was home, and the synthetic frenetic of a press trip was no more.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
peerless piers
If you tell most people, even lifelong Angelenos, that you have spent a day in Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice, a readymade set of images will spring to mind: long, golden, sundrenched beaches, the laidback glitzy set in Malibu, shopping on the 3rd Street Mall and drinking at the British pub in Santa Monica, people rollerskating along the boardwalk past all the trinket and t-shirt shops on Venice Beach.
I have had exactly those experiences in those places on other days, but this day was nothing like any of that. I was with two of my friends, Maggie and Mike who, as a result of living near Deal pier on the Kent coast in south-east England, have become pier connoisseurs. And, on a misty November Monday, we were going to see the Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice piers.
We started by dropping down from the 101 freeway through the Malibu canyons to the coast which, without any fires to worry about, was pretty spectacular. Then we encountered the all-pervasive Malibu private security armies.
A gateway announced the entrance to the Malibu Lagoon State Beach, complete with opening hours (which we were well within). But we found ourselves in a private driveway policed by a couple of ersatz cop lookalikes who politely told us this was private land, not open to the public. So naturally we u-turned and continued on our way, but it sounds like a tax dodge to me.
Happily, the pier was only a few hundred yards down the road. It was like a quiet version of a British pier, with a few mainly Latino fishermen either at the sea end or dropping lines over the side surprisingly near to the beach. We had to assume they knew what they were doing. One caught a smallish fish, detached it from the hook and left it to die, wriggling, on the ground, almost delighting in ignoring it despite the loud noise its desperate flapping made in its death throes. Another pair were picking over the catch in a net, which didn't seem too promising.
Originally, like Malibu itself, the pier was privately owned but is now one of the National Parks properties. The pier had been built for the yacht owned by Frederick and Rhoda Rindge, who had owned Malibu since 1891 and after her husband died Rhoda fought a fierce battle to prevent public roads being run through the property - a battle that ended in defeat in the courts in 1929, when the State of California won the right to build the Pacific Coast Highway there.
The pier has recently been refurbished, with newly painted buildings that look ready to be turned into restaurants and shops. I hope that doesn't change the character of what, on the day we were there, was a delightfully tranquil spot on a misty, tranquil sea.
The Santa Monica pier is easily the biggest and best-known in the area, complete with a fun fair attached. On weekends it can get very crowded, and the main part of the pier is thronged with souvenir sellers. But, on this Monday, it was much more subdued - most vendors probably take the day off, deciding there isn't enough passing trade to make it worthwhile turning up. That's to the visitor's advantage, even though it does mean missing the weekly Sunday creation of the Arlington West tribute to GIs killed in Iraq.
By now it was lunchtime, and Santa Monica is probably the best of the three stops for a bite. We went to the Greek restaurant on 3rd Street - but beware, if you like wine or beer with your meal, you have to go round the corner to Wild Oats to get it: the restaurant is unlicensed.
Then it was back to the car for the short trip down to Venice pier. This is the most spartan of the three, and maybe the best one to visit when the sun is beginning to go down. It has no structures on it, other than the lookout. It is a straight concrete runway with wooden railings and no hawkers - just walkers, seagulls and a few hardy fishermen. It seems a world away from the bustle of nearby Culver City with its Sony film studios - the former MGM lot that made Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and many other movie classics.
I have had exactly those experiences in those places on other days, but this day was nothing like any of that. I was with two of my friends, Maggie and Mike who, as a result of living near Deal pier on the Kent coast in south-east England, have become pier connoisseurs. And, on a misty November Monday, we were going to see the Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice piers.
We started by dropping down from the 101 freeway through the Malibu canyons to the coast which, without any fires to worry about, was pretty spectacular. Then we encountered the all-pervasive Malibu private security armies.
A gateway announced the entrance to the Malibu Lagoon State Beach, complete with opening hours (which we were well within). But we found ourselves in a private driveway policed by a couple of ersatz cop lookalikes who politely told us this was private land, not open to the public. So naturally we u-turned and continued on our way, but it sounds like a tax dodge to me.
Happily, the pier was only a few hundred yards down the road. It was like a quiet version of a British pier, with a few mainly Latino fishermen either at the sea end or dropping lines over the side surprisingly near to the beach. We had to assume they knew what they were doing. One caught a smallish fish, detached it from the hook and left it to die, wriggling, on the ground, almost delighting in ignoring it despite the loud noise its desperate flapping made in its death throes. Another pair were picking over the catch in a net, which didn't seem too promising.
Originally, like Malibu itself, the pier was privately owned but is now one of the National Parks properties. The pier had been built for the yacht owned by Frederick and Rhoda Rindge, who had owned Malibu since 1891 and after her husband died Rhoda fought a fierce battle to prevent public roads being run through the property - a battle that ended in defeat in the courts in 1929, when the State of California won the right to build the Pacific Coast Highway there.
The pier has recently been refurbished, with newly painted buildings that look ready to be turned into restaurants and shops. I hope that doesn't change the character of what, on the day we were there, was a delightfully tranquil spot on a misty, tranquil sea.
The Santa Monica pier is easily the biggest and best-known in the area, complete with a fun fair attached. On weekends it can get very crowded, and the main part of the pier is thronged with souvenir sellers. But, on this Monday, it was much more subdued - most vendors probably take the day off, deciding there isn't enough passing trade to make it worthwhile turning up. That's to the visitor's advantage, even though it does mean missing the weekly Sunday creation of the Arlington West tribute to GIs killed in Iraq.
By now it was lunchtime, and Santa Monica is probably the best of the three stops for a bite. We went to the Greek restaurant on 3rd Street - but beware, if you like wine or beer with your meal, you have to go round the corner to Wild Oats to get it: the restaurant is unlicensed.
Then it was back to the car for the short trip down to Venice pier. This is the most spartan of the three, and maybe the best one to visit when the sun is beginning to go down. It has no structures on it, other than the lookout. It is a straight concrete runway with wooden railings and no hawkers - just walkers, seagulls and a few hardy fishermen. It seems a world away from the bustle of nearby Culver City with its Sony film studios - the former MGM lot that made Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and many other movie classics.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
spit it out
At All Souls College, Oxford, as part of the interview process there is a legendary test of resourcefulness when the nervous candidate is invited to dinner. The meal is almost guaranteed to contain a challenge in terms of etiquette and not offending the surrounding highly intellectual and highly demanding dons. The timebomb is usually planted in the dessert, by which time the examiners reckon the candidate will have relaxed, maybe had a glass or two of wine and may be starting to think the ordeal is virtually over.
The classic trap is cherry pie - with the stones left in the cherries, naturally. As I never set foot in All Souls, let alone dined there, my knowledge is limited to Oxford student pub gossip, but apparently the correct technique is to remove the flesh from the cherry stone, put the stone in your spoon, and place the stone on the edge of the dessert plate. Or something like that. At any rate, most observers would agree that spitting it out is not a good idea.
Tell that, though, to Ann Marie Sabath who, according to the business section of the LA Times, is an accomplished "etiquette maven", defined in my online dictionary as "someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field".
This lady was in California recently, imparting her table manners to the students of UC Irvine before they undergo the gruelling process of job interviews - and lunches, it seems.
Faced with olives amongst a salad, Ms Sabath's advice is apparently to spit the stone quickly onto the plate, "making sure the little guy doesn't richochet off the crockery toward the prospective boss". Quite how the pupil is supposed to ensure this happy outcome, once the pit has been propelled towards the plate from a distance of two or three feet, Ms Sabath does not explain.
Clearly, the poor lady has an uphill task. She was called in because an Asian student, confronted with a burrito, started spooning the contents out of the wrapping straight into his mouth as if it was in a bowl.
This another demonstration of the way in which southern California is a melting pot of cultures, religion and races. Somehow they all have to co-exist and co-ordinate, if not co-operate, and the dominant culture is still wasp. Hnce the etiquetee classes.
But please, Ms Sabath, don't encourage them to spit out food. All Souls may be a bit out of touch in many ways, but putting pits, stones and other unwanted material onto your spoon or fork, to transfer to the side of the plate, is far more acceptable simply because it is less risky and less liable to cause offense. Even better is to remove the pits etc while the food is still on your plate. That may be a bit fiddly, but you don't have to scrape off every last morsel of flesh, and the route from plate to mouth should ideally be a one-way street.
The classic trap is cherry pie - with the stones left in the cherries, naturally. As I never set foot in All Souls, let alone dined there, my knowledge is limited to Oxford student pub gossip, but apparently the correct technique is to remove the flesh from the cherry stone, put the stone in your spoon, and place the stone on the edge of the dessert plate. Or something like that. At any rate, most observers would agree that spitting it out is not a good idea.
Tell that, though, to Ann Marie Sabath who, according to the business section of the LA Times, is an accomplished "etiquette maven", defined in my online dictionary as "someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field".
This lady was in California recently, imparting her table manners to the students of UC Irvine before they undergo the gruelling process of job interviews - and lunches, it seems.
Faced with olives amongst a salad, Ms Sabath's advice is apparently to spit the stone quickly onto the plate, "making sure the little guy doesn't richochet off the crockery toward the prospective boss". Quite how the pupil is supposed to ensure this happy outcome, once the pit has been propelled towards the plate from a distance of two or three feet, Ms Sabath does not explain.
Clearly, the poor lady has an uphill task. She was called in because an Asian student, confronted with a burrito, started spooning the contents out of the wrapping straight into his mouth as if it was in a bowl.
This another demonstration of the way in which southern California is a melting pot of cultures, religion and races. Somehow they all have to co-exist and co-ordinate, if not co-operate, and the dominant culture is still wasp. Hnce the etiquetee classes.
But please, Ms Sabath, don't encourage them to spit out food. All Souls may be a bit out of touch in many ways, but putting pits, stones and other unwanted material onto your spoon or fork, to transfer to the side of the plate, is far more acceptable simply because it is less risky and less liable to cause offense. Even better is to remove the pits etc while the food is still on your plate. That may be a bit fiddly, but you don't have to scrape off every last morsel of flesh, and the route from plate to mouth should ideally be a one-way street.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
why it's better to fly west than east
I think I have solved one of the major mysteries of modern life - why it takes longer to get over jet lag if you fly east than if you fly west. Please, if you are one of that minority who suffer the converse problem, don't bother writing: you are freaks, should be in the zoo, and are lucky that you haven't been rounded up and shot as you are clearly a danger to society.
For the rest of us, going east is a pain. Even if we sleep on the plane, we almost certainly won't sleep the first night we land, and we will be liable to fall asleep at the most inconvenient moments for the next several days, depending on how far we have travelled.
The reason, I believe, is to do with our dream patterns. Under normal circumstances we fall asleep partly through tiredness and the need to rest our muscles, including our brain function. But, as part of the latter, we clearly need to dream. No one, including me, is sure why we dream, but it seems to have something to do with making sense of our most recent or most concerning experiences, even if it is expressed in the form of the bizarre fantasties played out in the dreams we become conscious of. Deprived of sleep and therefore dream time for a long period, we go crazy, making it an ideal non-violent punishment and/or torture.
Clearly we have the ability to postpone sleep/dream, either because our brain tells us to stay awake to meet a deadline or survive serious physical threats, or because we're enjoying ourselves at a social occasion.
What we find much harder to do, and this is where eastward jet lag comes in, is to make ourselves sleep/dream prematurely. We don't seem to be able to sleep if we are not tired, and we can't dream if our brain doesn't have enough material to work on since the last session. And we seem to need a fairly regular pattern: despite the occasional delayed sleep, we need to sleep at regular intervals and jet lag of more than four hours is enough to disrupt that, especially going east because our bodies seem to say that, even if we have managed to sleep on the plane, it still won't sanction the next sleep/dream 16 hours later, as normal. It seems to register that we have slipped in an early sleep and wants to revert to the pre-travel pattern. That is why it is better to stay awake through the first day after travelling, but that is much harder to do that than to stay awake a few hours after a westbound trip.
It would be nice to end this analysis with a logical conclusion in the form of a pat remedy, but I don't have one - at the moment. Maybe the answer lies in trying to sleep earlier and earlier before we take off for the eastbound journey, to build up at least some sleep debt. It seems to be a case where credit is bad for you.
Anyone got any better ideas?
For the rest of us, going east is a pain. Even if we sleep on the plane, we almost certainly won't sleep the first night we land, and we will be liable to fall asleep at the most inconvenient moments for the next several days, depending on how far we have travelled.
The reason, I believe, is to do with our dream patterns. Under normal circumstances we fall asleep partly through tiredness and the need to rest our muscles, including our brain function. But, as part of the latter, we clearly need to dream. No one, including me, is sure why we dream, but it seems to have something to do with making sense of our most recent or most concerning experiences, even if it is expressed in the form of the bizarre fantasties played out in the dreams we become conscious of. Deprived of sleep and therefore dream time for a long period, we go crazy, making it an ideal non-violent punishment and/or torture.
Clearly we have the ability to postpone sleep/dream, either because our brain tells us to stay awake to meet a deadline or survive serious physical threats, or because we're enjoying ourselves at a social occasion.
What we find much harder to do, and this is where eastward jet lag comes in, is to make ourselves sleep/dream prematurely. We don't seem to be able to sleep if we are not tired, and we can't dream if our brain doesn't have enough material to work on since the last session. And we seem to need a fairly regular pattern: despite the occasional delayed sleep, we need to sleep at regular intervals and jet lag of more than four hours is enough to disrupt that, especially going east because our bodies seem to say that, even if we have managed to sleep on the plane, it still won't sanction the next sleep/dream 16 hours later, as normal. It seems to register that we have slipped in an early sleep and wants to revert to the pre-travel pattern. That is why it is better to stay awake through the first day after travelling, but that is much harder to do that than to stay awake a few hours after a westbound trip.
It would be nice to end this analysis with a logical conclusion in the form of a pat remedy, but I don't have one - at the moment. Maybe the answer lies in trying to sleep earlier and earlier before we take off for the eastbound journey, to build up at least some sleep debt. It seems to be a case where credit is bad for you.
Anyone got any better ideas?
it's a flea country
Where does all that stuff come from? And where does it all go?
Those were the two questions I couldn't get out of my mind as I made my first visit for about a year to the giant flea market that surrounds the Pasadena Rose Bowl on the second Sunday of every month.
For those who haven't been, or don't remember the 1994 soccer World Cup Final, the Rose Bowl is a massive stadium holding 100,000 seated, so to circle it with stalls selling everything from pickled olives to attic junk is quite an achievement. But the flea market does that with ease: in addition there is a massive overspill into an adjoining car park (sorry, US friends, parking lot).
So, like most things American, the flea market is on a grand scale and goes to the extremes. And it is, naturally, a big moneyspinner for the organisers, who charge everyone at least $8 admission - more if you turn up before 9am to snap up the early-bird bargains - on top of what the stallholders pay.
As with most flea markets, it is hard to see how a lot of the stallholders make money. Some are straightforwardly commercial, selling stuff they have bought wholesale like the pickled olives, or calenders, knick-knacks or even toy bicycles. Most of that sort of thing will be on sale or return, so the stallholders probably won't have to pay for the goods until they sell them and their only risk is the time they spend.
But, by numbers of stalls, the overwhelming majority of the goods are second-hand, hence the premium for early entry. Many of the stalls clearly offer the contents of attics, garages, garden sheds, basements or long-neglected cupboards, though plenty are organised neatly enough to indicate that they have been taken off the original owners by traders. Everything from moose heads to ancient clockwork alarm clocks, umpteen decorated mirrors, decorations that have survived too many Christmases before being retired - it's all there and must eventually find a home I suppose.
The overspill area is almost entirely second-hand clothes: dresses, jeans, coats, jackets and row after row after row of shoes and boots, as far as the eye can see and beyond. It must take hours to lay out, and there was very little sign of any of the contents of this great junk yard being bought. And the stallholders didn't seem bothered, possibly because they were just hired hands paid a straight fee for being there for the day. At one zone - stall is too modest a word for it - four girls were sitting on the ground, happily riffling through a huge pile of scarves going for $1 a time to the accompaniment of a pop radio program.
There were a few hucksters. One stand had punters with their shoes off with their feet in some sludgy, orange-brown liquid that was supposed to draw the toxins out of their body at a mere $35 a go, allegedly reduced from $50 or $100 depending on their gullibility. Sue and Lynne made some sceptical inquiries and in return were given a free 10-second treatment for their aches and pains. This amounted to being poked with a mild electric shock, which did Sue some good, but it was hard to see what the shock treatment had to do with putting your feet into a bucket of sludge.
For most visitors, though, the $8 was a fee to peer into other people's lives, see what sort of thing they owned before it ended on this gigantic scrap heap and was deemed saleable by stallholders willing to get up in the middle of the night to claim their spot and lay out their wares. It suggests there is more to all this than meets the eye, but they clearly fee it is worthwhile, and the rest of us are mildly entertained until our feet tell us it is time to return to the car and the real world.
Those were the two questions I couldn't get out of my mind as I made my first visit for about a year to the giant flea market that surrounds the Pasadena Rose Bowl on the second Sunday of every month.
For those who haven't been, or don't remember the 1994 soccer World Cup Final, the Rose Bowl is a massive stadium holding 100,000 seated, so to circle it with stalls selling everything from pickled olives to attic junk is quite an achievement. But the flea market does that with ease: in addition there is a massive overspill into an adjoining car park (sorry, US friends, parking lot).
So, like most things American, the flea market is on a grand scale and goes to the extremes. And it is, naturally, a big moneyspinner for the organisers, who charge everyone at least $8 admission - more if you turn up before 9am to snap up the early-bird bargains - on top of what the stallholders pay.
As with most flea markets, it is hard to see how a lot of the stallholders make money. Some are straightforwardly commercial, selling stuff they have bought wholesale like the pickled olives, or calenders, knick-knacks or even toy bicycles. Most of that sort of thing will be on sale or return, so the stallholders probably won't have to pay for the goods until they sell them and their only risk is the time they spend.
But, by numbers of stalls, the overwhelming majority of the goods are second-hand, hence the premium for early entry. Many of the stalls clearly offer the contents of attics, garages, garden sheds, basements or long-neglected cupboards, though plenty are organised neatly enough to indicate that they have been taken off the original owners by traders. Everything from moose heads to ancient clockwork alarm clocks, umpteen decorated mirrors, decorations that have survived too many Christmases before being retired - it's all there and must eventually find a home I suppose.
The overspill area is almost entirely second-hand clothes: dresses, jeans, coats, jackets and row after row after row of shoes and boots, as far as the eye can see and beyond. It must take hours to lay out, and there was very little sign of any of the contents of this great junk yard being bought. And the stallholders didn't seem bothered, possibly because they were just hired hands paid a straight fee for being there for the day. At one zone - stall is too modest a word for it - four girls were sitting on the ground, happily riffling through a huge pile of scarves going for $1 a time to the accompaniment of a pop radio program.
There were a few hucksters. One stand had punters with their shoes off with their feet in some sludgy, orange-brown liquid that was supposed to draw the toxins out of their body at a mere $35 a go, allegedly reduced from $50 or $100 depending on their gullibility. Sue and Lynne made some sceptical inquiries and in return were given a free 10-second treatment for their aches and pains. This amounted to being poked with a mild electric shock, which did Sue some good, but it was hard to see what the shock treatment had to do with putting your feet into a bucket of sludge.
For most visitors, though, the $8 was a fee to peer into other people's lives, see what sort of thing they owned before it ended on this gigantic scrap heap and was deemed saleable by stallholders willing to get up in the middle of the night to claim their spot and lay out their wares. It suggests there is more to all this than meets the eye, but they clearly fee it is worthwhile, and the rest of us are mildly entertained until our feet tell us it is time to return to the car and the real world.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Accent on accents
What is it with Americans and English accents? No Brit can be in the US for more than a few days before one of the natives will burst out with the declaration that they "love your accent". Usually women, which may have something to do with the female urge for self-improvement, or flattery.
But it is completely wrong-headed. Because there are also plenty of Americans - usually, but not exclusively, men - who take just as much delight in mocking Brits for their accent. Their idea of wit is to go as posh as they can and produce their idea of a cartoon English upper-class twit. So any American who really got their wish and acquired an English accent would soon find themselves on the receiving end of this ribaldry.
So which is it to be? Is an English accent a good or a bad thing?
My current riposte to any US jokers is to point out that they too have an English accent, it's just that it's the one people used to have in Britain 200 or 300 years ago. We Brits have moved on, I tell 'em, but Americans are stuck in the 17th or 18th centry, accent-wise.
And it's true. If Shakespeare were to return to earth, he would find the American accent far more congenial than the strangulated, back of the throat tones that middle-class southern Brits spout.
Maybe it's time for American's to develop their own accent, not one borrowed from their former colonial masters, whom they pretend to despise.
But it is completely wrong-headed. Because there are also plenty of Americans - usually, but not exclusively, men - who take just as much delight in mocking Brits for their accent. Their idea of wit is to go as posh as they can and produce their idea of a cartoon English upper-class twit. So any American who really got their wish and acquired an English accent would soon find themselves on the receiving end of this ribaldry.
So which is it to be? Is an English accent a good or a bad thing?
My current riposte to any US jokers is to point out that they too have an English accent, it's just that it's the one people used to have in Britain 200 or 300 years ago. We Brits have moved on, I tell 'em, but Americans are stuck in the 17th or 18th centry, accent-wise.
And it's true. If Shakespeare were to return to earth, he would find the American accent far more congenial than the strangulated, back of the throat tones that middle-class southern Brits spout.
Maybe it's time for American's to develop their own accent, not one borrowed from their former colonial masters, whom they pretend to despise.
Ruud awakening
So Ruud Gullit is coming to LA! (Hooray, stylish chap, nice wife, will add to the glamor of the place) But he is coming to manage the Galaxy soccer team! (Boo, great player, not a bad coach but crap at dealing with internal politics, got booted out of Chelsea and Newcastle because he got up the noses of the people who mattered. Still, as he's on $10m over three years, maybe he'll be able to say what he likes).
The great news for Galaxy fans, most of whom don't know one end of a penalty spot from the other, is that the club will have another person with high-level European experience. Gullit's predecessor, Frank Yallop, who amazingly was lured away to San Diego last week despite being complete rubbish, had played for Ipswich, but he is hardly fit to tie the shoelaces of Gullit or Beckham. And there is also the enigmatic but experienced Abel Xavier (Portugues national team, ex-Middlesborough, but we won't hold that against him).
Imagine the first chat between Gullit and Beckham, though:
RG: Good to be working with you, David. What do you see as the main problems facing Galaxy on the pitch?
DB: The other teams, Ruud.
RG: Ha, Ha, David, the LA sunshine has clearly done your sense of humor a world of good. Seriously, though?
DB: Seriously, though, the big problem is the other teams. They're better than us, Ruud.
RG: OK, I take your point. What do you suggest we do about that?
DB: Try, and I do mean try, to teach our lot the basics of playing football.
RG: The basics, David? But they're all professionals, surely they know the basics?
DB: They get paid money, Ruud, in that sense they are professionals, but in most cases it stops there. And I hear some of them are only paid $500.
RG: An hour, right?
DB: A week, Ruud.
RG: Not like us, eh, David!
DB: No, not like us, Ruud, and you'll soon see why. The defence is fairly well organised, with Abel's help, but midfield and attack are woeful. They've got no idea of keeping possession, no idea of keeping the ball on the ground, it's Route One all the time, kick it up the field and hope for the best. And when they haven't got the ball, they don't have the first idea of trying to cut out the other side's options or anticipate what they might do.
RG: That's quite a long list, David.
DB: I could go on.
RG: Thanks but no thanks.
DB: There is one bit of hope.
RG: What's that?
DB: The other teams aren't much better. Welcome to LA, Ruud.
The great news for Galaxy fans, most of whom don't know one end of a penalty spot from the other, is that the club will have another person with high-level European experience. Gullit's predecessor, Frank Yallop, who amazingly was lured away to San Diego last week despite being complete rubbish, had played for Ipswich, but he is hardly fit to tie the shoelaces of Gullit or Beckham. And there is also the enigmatic but experienced Abel Xavier (Portugues national team, ex-Middlesborough, but we won't hold that against him).
Imagine the first chat between Gullit and Beckham, though:
RG: Good to be working with you, David. What do you see as the main problems facing Galaxy on the pitch?
DB: The other teams, Ruud.
RG: Ha, Ha, David, the LA sunshine has clearly done your sense of humor a world of good. Seriously, though?
DB: Seriously, though, the big problem is the other teams. They're better than us, Ruud.
RG: OK, I take your point. What do you suggest we do about that?
DB: Try, and I do mean try, to teach our lot the basics of playing football.
RG: The basics, David? But they're all professionals, surely they know the basics?
DB: They get paid money, Ruud, in that sense they are professionals, but in most cases it stops there. And I hear some of them are only paid $500.
RG: An hour, right?
DB: A week, Ruud.
RG: Not like us, eh, David!
DB: No, not like us, Ruud, and you'll soon see why. The defence is fairly well organised, with Abel's help, but midfield and attack are woeful. They've got no idea of keeping possession, no idea of keeping the ball on the ground, it's Route One all the time, kick it up the field and hope for the best. And when they haven't got the ball, they don't have the first idea of trying to cut out the other side's options or anticipate what they might do.
RG: That's quite a long list, David.
DB: I could go on.
RG: Thanks but no thanks.
DB: There is one bit of hope.
RG: What's that?
DB: The other teams aren't much better. Welcome to LA, Ruud.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Nigel and the Fog
Yesterday started in heavy fog and ended in a blizzard of American Idol stories from Nigel Lythgoe - he of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance?
Now, I know the Fox breakfast show helicopter has been grounded for several days thanks to the fog, but I had to see it to believe it. The freeway heading east at about 8 am was in thick fog, at times with visibility of less than 100 yards. It was a weird experience in what is supposed to be the land of perpetual sunshine. It duly burned off, but for a while it was like being on the M6 on a bad day.
Lynne and I were driving out to Hemet in the San Jaquino valley to see the first branch of Fresh & Easy, the new chain by Tesco, Britain's No 1 supermarketeer. It has outgrown the UK, eastern Europe, Asia and so is now trying its luck in the US - traditionally a graveyard for Brit retailers.
Rather than buy a ready-made chain, with all its built-in faults and bad habits, Tesco is starting from scratch, taking over vacant sites and converting them to the Fresh & Easy format, backed by its own distribution system that in turn relies on many of its trusted UK suppliers. It's effectively launching a whole mini-industry.
Despite the advance claims, there's nothing new about Fresh & Easy. It's another supermarket.
It's smaller than usual - 10,000 sq ft, about a fifth the size of normal US grocers - has a spartan decor with neon lighting to make the point that no money is being wasted. It has a pretty wide range, but you might be hard put to do your whole weekly food and household shop there. It doesn't really compete with Vons or Ralphs or Albertsons.
Advance publicity emphasised fresh, organic, own-label food, giving many people the impression that it would be another Trader Joe's. It is - without the humor. Fresh food is in fact pretty minimal, lots of canned and packaged goods, and an echo of TJs in the Our Kitchen feature offering samples and recipes. Checkout is DIY.
It'll take its place in the retail range, but it won't cause competitors too many sleepless nights, confirming my suspicion that this is just a trial run for when Tesco does the big box version, going head to head with Vons etc. But that's a few years off yet.
Back home in time to file the copy to the London Daily Telegraph, then into glad rags for a party given in LA by the British American Business Council LA (BABCLA) in honor of Lythgoe.
After an hour the great man turned up and gave a lively account of the history of American Idol, especially how difficult it was to sell to the US sponsors and TV networks, even though the format had already been a success in UK as Pop Idol. It's basically the old-fashioned talent show that has been going for more than 50 years on TV. The difference lies in the razmatazz and the way it's done, with mass auditions and three judges with clearly defined personalities - Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul - chosen for their chemistry.
After about half an hour Lythgoe introduced a video that he has clearly been showing to selected audiences for quite a while, featuring the Randy Jackson fart in one of the preliminary rounds, while Cowell was pontificating (hardly a coincidence).
Lythgoe, a multi-millionaire and huge success at this narrow area of reality TV, was as he admitted nervous and has an irritating habit of following any joke or point with what he hopes is an appropriate facial expression, just in case we'd missed it.
An entertaining hour, which left me full of admiration for the way the Idol format has been thought out, and wanting to know more. There must be a book in it somewhere. Maybe I'll write it.
Now, I know the Fox breakfast show helicopter has been grounded for several days thanks to the fog, but I had to see it to believe it. The freeway heading east at about 8 am was in thick fog, at times with visibility of less than 100 yards. It was a weird experience in what is supposed to be the land of perpetual sunshine. It duly burned off, but for a while it was like being on the M6 on a bad day.
Lynne and I were driving out to Hemet in the San Jaquino valley to see the first branch of Fresh & Easy, the new chain by Tesco, Britain's No 1 supermarketeer. It has outgrown the UK, eastern Europe, Asia and so is now trying its luck in the US - traditionally a graveyard for Brit retailers.
Rather than buy a ready-made chain, with all its built-in faults and bad habits, Tesco is starting from scratch, taking over vacant sites and converting them to the Fresh & Easy format, backed by its own distribution system that in turn relies on many of its trusted UK suppliers. It's effectively launching a whole mini-industry.
Despite the advance claims, there's nothing new about Fresh & Easy. It's another supermarket.
It's smaller than usual - 10,000 sq ft, about a fifth the size of normal US grocers - has a spartan decor with neon lighting to make the point that no money is being wasted. It has a pretty wide range, but you might be hard put to do your whole weekly food and household shop there. It doesn't really compete with Vons or Ralphs or Albertsons.
Advance publicity emphasised fresh, organic, own-label food, giving many people the impression that it would be another Trader Joe's. It is - without the humor. Fresh food is in fact pretty minimal, lots of canned and packaged goods, and an echo of TJs in the Our Kitchen feature offering samples and recipes. Checkout is DIY.
It'll take its place in the retail range, but it won't cause competitors too many sleepless nights, confirming my suspicion that this is just a trial run for when Tesco does the big box version, going head to head with Vons etc. But that's a few years off yet.
Back home in time to file the copy to the London Daily Telegraph, then into glad rags for a party given in LA by the British American Business Council LA (BABCLA) in honor of Lythgoe.
After an hour the great man turned up and gave a lively account of the history of American Idol, especially how difficult it was to sell to the US sponsors and TV networks, even though the format had already been a success in UK as Pop Idol. It's basically the old-fashioned talent show that has been going for more than 50 years on TV. The difference lies in the razmatazz and the way it's done, with mass auditions and three judges with clearly defined personalities - Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul - chosen for their chemistry.
After about half an hour Lythgoe introduced a video that he has clearly been showing to selected audiences for quite a while, featuring the Randy Jackson fart in one of the preliminary rounds, while Cowell was pontificating (hardly a coincidence).
Lythgoe, a multi-millionaire and huge success at this narrow area of reality TV, was as he admitted nervous and has an irritating habit of following any joke or point with what he hopes is an appropriate facial expression, just in case we'd missed it.
An entertaining hour, which left me full of admiration for the way the Idol format has been thought out, and wanting to know more. There must be a book in it somewhere. Maybe I'll write it.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
rolling the pink, fluffy dice in Vegas
Yes, I'm on a roll now - and so is Las Vegas. Maybe its hoteliers (how inadequate a term that sounds for the garish, monstrous monuments that line the strip) have grown tired of pulling everything down and rebuilding it, and pulling it down and rebuiling it, or maybe they have had a severe attack of the PCs, or possibly reading too much of a commie rag like the LA Times - or perhaps they have spotted a new way to shake the shekels out of the world's pockets. Yes, I'll go for the last one.
Anyway, the clue lies in a couple of playing cards, both depicting Jacks (or knaves, but that has ever so slight pejorative connotations in this context). However, one of the cards is empty and the two Jacks are getting to know one another by cuddling up to one another in the window of the other card.
Yes, Vegas is going gay. There have long been gay bars, of course, but tucked away off the strip where no wholesome middle American families might bump into them. Also, the gays are less likely to get beaten up by drunken stag parties thrown out of one of the aforementioned monstrosities.
But all that is so last year. As part of their strategic move away from gambling, the hotels are making an all-out attempt to attract the gay market. Discreetly, of course - what do you think this town is, crass or something?
It's nice that Vegas is suddenly being so inclusive. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that surveys show gays spend 30% a head more than straights when they go on vacation. Pink pound rules, after all.
Anyway, the clue lies in a couple of playing cards, both depicting Jacks (or knaves, but that has ever so slight pejorative connotations in this context). However, one of the cards is empty and the two Jacks are getting to know one another by cuddling up to one another in the window of the other card.
Yes, Vegas is going gay. There have long been gay bars, of course, but tucked away off the strip where no wholesome middle American families might bump into them. Also, the gays are less likely to get beaten up by drunken stag parties thrown out of one of the aforementioned monstrosities.
But all that is so last year. As part of their strategic move away from gambling, the hotels are making an all-out attempt to attract the gay market. Discreetly, of course - what do you think this town is, crass or something?
It's nice that Vegas is suddenly being so inclusive. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that surveys show gays spend 30% a head more than straights when they go on vacation. Pink pound rules, after all.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
boulevardiers
Apologies to my many fans for not blogging for a few weeks - I promise to get back in the saddle on a regular basis in future, having read strong medical opinion that it does you good to be regular.
And there is so much going on. Last night I was at Boulevard Music, a guitar shop in a fairly run-down part of Culver City - though I do recommend Tanner's Coffee further down the road if you ever have an hour to kill.
Boulevard turned itself into a mini-auditorium for the evening, to host a show by Noel Harrison, ever doomed to suffer the soubriquet "son of Rex", and the irrepressible Ian Whitcomb, whose love affair with the microphone makes Napoleon and Josephine look like George Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Despite his claim to an Oscar-winning classic song, the diffident-seeming Harrison accepted the role of warm-up act for Whitcomb, and on the night that was about right: Harrison the virtuoso and Whitcomb the showman.
Like any true monolingual Brit, I was dazzled by Harrison's command of French, not only in his rendition of a string of Jacques Brel songs but also to deal with a French-speaking heckler demanding more Brel and less Harrison. Nevertheless, the highlight of his half was Windmills of Your Mind, the Oscar-winning theme song by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand for the 1968 version of the Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Steve McQueen and Fay Dunaway. Harrison has been singing it ever since, so he has got it pretty well sorted out by now, but it still evokes memories of that extraordinary movie.
The contrast with the second half of the show was total. We had Ian Whitcomb singing with and without the wonderfully dulcet tones of his lovely wife Regina, with and without his ukelele, his accordion and his piano, playing an instrumental and even an over-the-top piece of Vicotrian declamatory monologue that would have left Donald Wolfit blushing. Oh, and a delightful guest singing appearance by a lady called Michael, in a long ivory dress with a bubble of brown hair on top, who brought the house down with a real hoochie-mamma song.
It will be very hard to explain to future generations what Ian's performances were like, just as it is to recapture the mood of any artiste from the past unless they are captured on film or video. Even then, they are of their time and cannot easily be seen in context by those who see them years later. But on a night like last night Ian was in his pomp, in command of the stage and the whole room, exuding personality and keeping the audience enthralled with his asides and his ability to recover from occasionally forgetting words and even whole songs. It didn't matter: I really believe that Ian could pick up a phone book and entertain a crowd with it, and that is why he will always be remembered by those lucky enough to see him. And if you want to catch the flavor without stirring from your armchair, I am sure he would want me to tell you that on Wednesday, November 7, he is starting a radio show going out at 10pm LA Time on luxuriamusic.com, an internet station. But don't worry if you miss it, because I'll probably blog it!
And there is so much going on. Last night I was at Boulevard Music, a guitar shop in a fairly run-down part of Culver City - though I do recommend Tanner's Coffee further down the road if you ever have an hour to kill.
Boulevard turned itself into a mini-auditorium for the evening, to host a show by Noel Harrison, ever doomed to suffer the soubriquet "son of Rex", and the irrepressible Ian Whitcomb, whose love affair with the microphone makes Napoleon and Josephine look like George Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Despite his claim to an Oscar-winning classic song, the diffident-seeming Harrison accepted the role of warm-up act for Whitcomb, and on the night that was about right: Harrison the virtuoso and Whitcomb the showman.
Like any true monolingual Brit, I was dazzled by Harrison's command of French, not only in his rendition of a string of Jacques Brel songs but also to deal with a French-speaking heckler demanding more Brel and less Harrison. Nevertheless, the highlight of his half was Windmills of Your Mind, the Oscar-winning theme song by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand for the 1968 version of the Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Steve McQueen and Fay Dunaway. Harrison has been singing it ever since, so he has got it pretty well sorted out by now, but it still evokes memories of that extraordinary movie.
The contrast with the second half of the show was total. We had Ian Whitcomb singing with and without the wonderfully dulcet tones of his lovely wife Regina, with and without his ukelele, his accordion and his piano, playing an instrumental and even an over-the-top piece of Vicotrian declamatory monologue that would have left Donald Wolfit blushing. Oh, and a delightful guest singing appearance by a lady called Michael, in a long ivory dress with a bubble of brown hair on top, who brought the house down with a real hoochie-mamma song.
It will be very hard to explain to future generations what Ian's performances were like, just as it is to recapture the mood of any artiste from the past unless they are captured on film or video. Even then, they are of their time and cannot easily be seen in context by those who see them years later. But on a night like last night Ian was in his pomp, in command of the stage and the whole room, exuding personality and keeping the audience enthralled with his asides and his ability to recover from occasionally forgetting words and even whole songs. It didn't matter: I really believe that Ian could pick up a phone book and entertain a crowd with it, and that is why he will always be remembered by those lucky enough to see him. And if you want to catch the flavor without stirring from your armchair, I am sure he would want me to tell you that on Wednesday, November 7, he is starting a radio show going out at 10pm LA Time on luxuriamusic.com, an internet station. But don't worry if you miss it, because I'll probably blog it!
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Well, who would have predicted that?
I'm at Angel Moments Gift Shop in Altadena. It's 8pm last night, Sep 22, the lights have been turned down and eight of us are sitting round, silently watching Cesar, a plump, Latino-looking man who looks in his 30s with a neatly trimmed black beard, as he goes into a trance to act as a channel for Zachary, said to be a long-dead spirit from before recorded time who we are assured will try to answer any question we put to him. Win or lose, this is going to be interesting.
We are in the shop, a long, thin room lined with shelves full of spirtualist books, stones, candles, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, almost anything a believer could want to buy to take home and get them in the mood. There are no out-and-out sceptics in the audience, but all look fairly matter-of-fact - no kaftans, no playacting.
Along with three or four others in the group, I take notes. Mine begin: 'Cesar meditates, seems to receive a spirit, "becomes" Zachary. Quite different from the jolly, outgoing person he was before the session.' He looks defiant at times, speaks slowly, even ponderously, uses words like 'attempt' instead of 'try', tells people 'Continue' when they ask if they can ask him something. He rolls his eyes up into his head from time to time, and occasionally lets out a slow, exaggerated, almost contemptuous laugh as he throws his head back. It could of course all be a huge act, but Cesar keeps it up for 90 minutes and gives every impression, before, during and after, of believing in what he is doing.
Some of the pronouncements are no than routine. Lynne asks him if Princess Diana was killed deliberately and whether she was pregnant when she died. Cesar/Zachary answers a definite no to both questions, adding that a conspiracy followed her death. He also repeated the oft-made prediction that Prince Charles would never become king. It was all stuff anyone could have picked up from any of a thousand newspapers, magazines, websites or TV or radio shows, but it dealt straightforwardly with the question as put.
Another public-interest question was would Hillary Clinton become US President? C/Z hedged a little, saying that was uncertain but next year would be the year of the women - 'It is time for the female energy to rise, yes'. This naturally met with general approval. Few rednecks attend seances.
C/Z was asked several personal questions, on the lines of should I move house, am I in the right job, where will I be in a year's time? Some were answered with a straight yes or no, others more ambiguously with encouraging phrases such as 'you will fulfil your purpose on this earth', which could mean anything. Much closing of eyes, falling silent, then glassy stares into the middle distance.
One lady asked if her daughter would get funding for a university course to study music. C\Z came back at his most Delphic: 'She must perform music in an ensemble, and the world will respond'. Whether the world would respond with the required cash or a big fat raspberry was left open.
Curious to see if C\Z could come up with verifiable facts, I asked if he could contact my dead father. He said my father wanted me to continue with my writing (Cesar had established before the session that I was a journalist, so that was no more than a standard piece of reassurance). I asked what my father's work had been and C\Z said he saw ledgers - fair enough, he had been in the UK Inland Revenue for the last 15 years of his career, but not as interesting as if C\Z had latched onto my father's previous 25 years in the London police force. There was some stuff about my father's artistic instincts having been suppressed on earth but how he was now expressing this side of his character - news to me, but possible.
Then C\Z said, unprompted: 'Is there a Benjamin in your life?' Bullseye, that's the name of one of my sons. C\Z reckoned I should go through Ben to to talk to my father, they were in touch. Then, slightly offbeam but still intriguing, C\Z asked if I knew a Mr Jackson. The connection there is that Ben's 18-month-old son is called Jackson, a common last name but an unusual first name.
C\Z added that he kept seeing an elderly man with spectacles and a long beard sitting at my side. We never managed to identify this apparently benign guest, who of course only C\Z could see: unless my clean-shaven, unbespectacled father had found a fancy dress shop on the other side, it didn't sound like him.
After 90 minutes, which I felt was a suspiciously convenient length of time, C\Z lapsed into prayer and Cesar woke up saying 'Oh man, what happened?' He claimed not to recall much of what he had been saying as Zachary, and was keen to know from us -an interesting twist if it was an act, but entirely consistent with his demeanor. It was the right length of time for an audience that had paid $25 a head, so wanted value, but were satisfied by then. But Cesar insisted that if Zachary had disappeared after ten minutes that would have been that.
So nothing conclusively proved but enough tantalising successes to make me think: 'Hmmm, I wonder....' At any rate, I'll be going back in a month's time.
We are in the shop, a long, thin room lined with shelves full of spirtualist books, stones, candles, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, almost anything a believer could want to buy to take home and get them in the mood. There are no out-and-out sceptics in the audience, but all look fairly matter-of-fact - no kaftans, no playacting.
Along with three or four others in the group, I take notes. Mine begin: 'Cesar meditates, seems to receive a spirit, "becomes" Zachary. Quite different from the jolly, outgoing person he was before the session.' He looks defiant at times, speaks slowly, even ponderously, uses words like 'attempt' instead of 'try', tells people 'Continue' when they ask if they can ask him something. He rolls his eyes up into his head from time to time, and occasionally lets out a slow, exaggerated, almost contemptuous laugh as he throws his head back. It could of course all be a huge act, but Cesar keeps it up for 90 minutes and gives every impression, before, during and after, of believing in what he is doing.
Some of the pronouncements are no than routine. Lynne asks him if Princess Diana was killed deliberately and whether she was pregnant when she died. Cesar/Zachary answers a definite no to both questions, adding that a conspiracy followed her death. He also repeated the oft-made prediction that Prince Charles would never become king. It was all stuff anyone could have picked up from any of a thousand newspapers, magazines, websites or TV or radio shows, but it dealt straightforwardly with the question as put.
Another public-interest question was would Hillary Clinton become US President? C/Z hedged a little, saying that was uncertain but next year would be the year of the women - 'It is time for the female energy to rise, yes'. This naturally met with general approval. Few rednecks attend seances.
C/Z was asked several personal questions, on the lines of should I move house, am I in the right job, where will I be in a year's time? Some were answered with a straight yes or no, others more ambiguously with encouraging phrases such as 'you will fulfil your purpose on this earth', which could mean anything. Much closing of eyes, falling silent, then glassy stares into the middle distance.
One lady asked if her daughter would get funding for a university course to study music. C\Z came back at his most Delphic: 'She must perform music in an ensemble, and the world will respond'. Whether the world would respond with the required cash or a big fat raspberry was left open.
Curious to see if C\Z could come up with verifiable facts, I asked if he could contact my dead father. He said my father wanted me to continue with my writing (Cesar had established before the session that I was a journalist, so that was no more than a standard piece of reassurance). I asked what my father's work had been and C\Z said he saw ledgers - fair enough, he had been in the UK Inland Revenue for the last 15 years of his career, but not as interesting as if C\Z had latched onto my father's previous 25 years in the London police force. There was some stuff about my father's artistic instincts having been suppressed on earth but how he was now expressing this side of his character - news to me, but possible.
Then C\Z said, unprompted: 'Is there a Benjamin in your life?' Bullseye, that's the name of one of my sons. C\Z reckoned I should go through Ben to to talk to my father, they were in touch. Then, slightly offbeam but still intriguing, C\Z asked if I knew a Mr Jackson. The connection there is that Ben's 18-month-old son is called Jackson, a common last name but an unusual first name.
C\Z added that he kept seeing an elderly man with spectacles and a long beard sitting at my side. We never managed to identify this apparently benign guest, who of course only C\Z could see: unless my clean-shaven, unbespectacled father had found a fancy dress shop on the other side, it didn't sound like him.
After 90 minutes, which I felt was a suspiciously convenient length of time, C\Z lapsed into prayer and Cesar woke up saying 'Oh man, what happened?' He claimed not to recall much of what he had been saying as Zachary, and was keen to know from us -an interesting twist if it was an act, but entirely consistent with his demeanor. It was the right length of time for an audience that had paid $25 a head, so wanted value, but were satisfied by then. But Cesar insisted that if Zachary had disappeared after ten minutes that would have been that.
So nothing conclusively proved but enough tantalising successes to make me think: 'Hmmm, I wonder....' At any rate, I'll be going back in a month's time.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
halloween party time
Today I have been Superman, Batman, the Mad Hatter, Frankenstein, and Jack Sparrow.
No, I'm not suffering delusions of grandeur, yes it's that dressing-up time of year again, and it's coming round sooner than you think. Although Halloween is October 31, that is a Wednesday - fine for determined partygoers, but as midweek as midweek gets. So the big Halloween party night will be October 27, making it all the more urgent to choose that costume.
Although Britain is picking up on Halloween, pushed by all those shops eager to spark a bit of extra business, it is really confined to kids knocking on doors. They do that in America, of course, but it is also one of the major party times. And it is the biggest for dressing up, which is music to the ears of Pok-A-Dot, a fancy dress shop in Arcadia, near Santa Anita racetrack a few miles east of Pasadena.
It is like walking into the props department of a top film studio. Rows and rows of outfits stretch floor to ceiling as far as the eye can see, with separate sections for hats and shoes. At least three-quarters of the space is taken up by women's costumes, everything from Miss Whiplash to Drive-In Waitress, nearly all of them excuses to wear skirts that are shorter than short. 'Well,' said one customer with a dismissive wave of her hand, 'you get a couple of drinks inside you and who cares?' This one was clearly aiming to get more than a couple of drinks inside her on the night.
'How do I look?' innocently asked a plump girl with breasts the size of basketballs, straining against a rather flimsy Robin Hood outfit. Maid Marion she wasn't.
The ladies who run this shop know the game: be highly indulgent, let the punters' imagination run wild and try on everything they want, because in the end it'll be more likely they'll pluck up the courage to walk out with something they wouldn't have dreamt of wearing when they entered this magic shop.
For that's what it is, a dream store that enables the public to be whoever they want to be, for free until they settle on what they are actually going to buy - or rent. Whether it turns out to be a success on the night doesn't matter, yet. The game's the thing, and the owners are very good at suggesting props and accessories that will probably be discarded within 20 minutes of getting to the party. Walking sticks, death ray runs, eye patches, 60s sunglasses, all look good in the store and you want to get the outfit right. But once everyone has seen the joke, they become a burden and slide into corners or behind cupboards as the evening takes over and the costumes become irrelevant.
But all that is in the future. Pok-A-Dot is a hope factory, and late September is when the hope season begins.
No, I'm not suffering delusions of grandeur, yes it's that dressing-up time of year again, and it's coming round sooner than you think. Although Halloween is October 31, that is a Wednesday - fine for determined partygoers, but as midweek as midweek gets. So the big Halloween party night will be October 27, making it all the more urgent to choose that costume.
Although Britain is picking up on Halloween, pushed by all those shops eager to spark a bit of extra business, it is really confined to kids knocking on doors. They do that in America, of course, but it is also one of the major party times. And it is the biggest for dressing up, which is music to the ears of Pok-A-Dot, a fancy dress shop in Arcadia, near Santa Anita racetrack a few miles east of Pasadena.
It is like walking into the props department of a top film studio. Rows and rows of outfits stretch floor to ceiling as far as the eye can see, with separate sections for hats and shoes. At least three-quarters of the space is taken up by women's costumes, everything from Miss Whiplash to Drive-In Waitress, nearly all of them excuses to wear skirts that are shorter than short. 'Well,' said one customer with a dismissive wave of her hand, 'you get a couple of drinks inside you and who cares?' This one was clearly aiming to get more than a couple of drinks inside her on the night.
'How do I look?' innocently asked a plump girl with breasts the size of basketballs, straining against a rather flimsy Robin Hood outfit. Maid Marion she wasn't.
The ladies who run this shop know the game: be highly indulgent, let the punters' imagination run wild and try on everything they want, because in the end it'll be more likely they'll pluck up the courage to walk out with something they wouldn't have dreamt of wearing when they entered this magic shop.
For that's what it is, a dream store that enables the public to be whoever they want to be, for free until they settle on what they are actually going to buy - or rent. Whether it turns out to be a success on the night doesn't matter, yet. The game's the thing, and the owners are very good at suggesting props and accessories that will probably be discarded within 20 minutes of getting to the party. Walking sticks, death ray runs, eye patches, 60s sunglasses, all look good in the store and you want to get the outfit right. But once everyone has seen the joke, they become a burden and slide into corners or behind cupboards as the evening takes over and the costumes become irrelevant.
But all that is in the future. Pok-A-Dot is a hope factory, and late September is when the hope season begins.
police to meet you
I had my first encounter with the Pasadena constabulary yesterday, and very revealing it was - not so much about our wonderful local police so much as the people that called them, the Apple store in Colorado Boulevard.
No, I was not trying to steal an iPhone or any of their other ludicrously overpriced gadgets for which you might, just might, get a $100 voucher to spend in one of their stores if you happen to catch them gouging in a particularly greedy way.
My son, Andrew, wanted to buy one of the new iPods and went in while I waited outside in the car on a red line. I was staying in the car in case we were moved on, and he said he would be only a couple of minutes. That's all it had taken him when he was last here. But not this time.
The minutes ticked on. And on. And on.
After half an hour and no sign of Andrew, I thought I'd better go in and see if I could help, or at least see if he was anywhere near the head of the line.
There he was, at the cash desk, looking flustered while the assistant talked on the phone to what turned out to be the third credit card center.
'Can I buy it on my card instead?' I offered.
'If you wouldn't mind, Dad. I can't understand why they are declining the cards, I'm way under my spending limits.'
So my card and driving license were passed across the counter, and everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly. Then I noticed a police officer standing at the end of the counter.
'How you doin' sir?' he asked politely.
'Fine,' I replied, not thinking he had anything to do with me. Then two others arrived and it was a case of 'Step outside the store, sir.'
'Why?' I asked as a blue-sleeved hand grasped my arm a little too tightly for comfort.
'We'll explain outside.'
And, out on the sidewalk, we had a pleasant conversation about how this was happening all the time, Apple were particularly nervous because they were afraid of shoplifting, sorry to delay you. Eventually the Apple store manager said he was happy and I was allowed back into the store to make the purchase.
This was a result of Apple trying to have it both ways. They want to leave their products lying around in a relaxed, informal environment to encourage you to pick them up and buy them. But, because they are relatively high-priced and extremely fashionable, they are scared stiff of theft and everything that goes with that.
This all stems back to the supermarkets, who more than 60 years ago started saving on sales staff by simply putting their goods on shelves and leaving it to the customers to serve themselves. Naturally there are precautions in place to deter thieves, but supermarkets generally sell low-priced items and they budget for a certainly amount of stealing (known euphemistically as 'shrinkage') and in any case most of what vanishes does so in employees' pockets.
Next to jump on the bandwagon was bookshops, who also wanted customers to sample the merchandise, even providing armchairs so they could browse that much more comfortably. Slightly dearer goods, but on the whole bulkier than the average can of beans, so it has worked OK.
Retailers of the really expensive stuff either continue to keep it behind glass cases, as with jewellery and watches, or the goods are too bulky to walk away with, like furniture or TVs.
That leaves Apple with the dearest goods that fit in your bag or pocket. Eventually their appeal will fade, once we all have phone and computer implants and the fashionistas will have to move onto something else. But meanwhile they are trying to do the dance of the seven veils with a stiletto in their shoe. It's not a pretty sight.
Nor is the craven behavior of the banks, who were the other villains in this story. Low-cost travel has made it difficult for them to keep track of many of their customers, so they apply some crude assumptions about spending patterns. Anyone that steps outside the pattern can expect to be refused - something the real crooks know only too well and therefore take account of, unless they are complete amateurs. OK, a store like Apple will get more than its share of such amateur con merchants, but it's hardly good customer relations. Best to either pay cash or phone the bank in advance and tell them where you are going shopping. They hate suprises, see, or else they'd have chosen more interesting careers than telling people they can't use their credit cards.
No, I was not trying to steal an iPhone or any of their other ludicrously overpriced gadgets for which you might, just might, get a $100 voucher to spend in one of their stores if you happen to catch them gouging in a particularly greedy way.
My son, Andrew, wanted to buy one of the new iPods and went in while I waited outside in the car on a red line. I was staying in the car in case we were moved on, and he said he would be only a couple of minutes. That's all it had taken him when he was last here. But not this time.
The minutes ticked on. And on. And on.
After half an hour and no sign of Andrew, I thought I'd better go in and see if I could help, or at least see if he was anywhere near the head of the line.
There he was, at the cash desk, looking flustered while the assistant talked on the phone to what turned out to be the third credit card center.
'Can I buy it on my card instead?' I offered.
'If you wouldn't mind, Dad. I can't understand why they are declining the cards, I'm way under my spending limits.'
So my card and driving license were passed across the counter, and everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly. Then I noticed a police officer standing at the end of the counter.
'How you doin' sir?' he asked politely.
'Fine,' I replied, not thinking he had anything to do with me. Then two others arrived and it was a case of 'Step outside the store, sir.'
'Why?' I asked as a blue-sleeved hand grasped my arm a little too tightly for comfort.
'We'll explain outside.'
And, out on the sidewalk, we had a pleasant conversation about how this was happening all the time, Apple were particularly nervous because they were afraid of shoplifting, sorry to delay you. Eventually the Apple store manager said he was happy and I was allowed back into the store to make the purchase.
This was a result of Apple trying to have it both ways. They want to leave their products lying around in a relaxed, informal environment to encourage you to pick them up and buy them. But, because they are relatively high-priced and extremely fashionable, they are scared stiff of theft and everything that goes with that.
This all stems back to the supermarkets, who more than 60 years ago started saving on sales staff by simply putting their goods on shelves and leaving it to the customers to serve themselves. Naturally there are precautions in place to deter thieves, but supermarkets generally sell low-priced items and they budget for a certainly amount of stealing (known euphemistically as 'shrinkage') and in any case most of what vanishes does so in employees' pockets.
Next to jump on the bandwagon was bookshops, who also wanted customers to sample the merchandise, even providing armchairs so they could browse that much more comfortably. Slightly dearer goods, but on the whole bulkier than the average can of beans, so it has worked OK.
Retailers of the really expensive stuff either continue to keep it behind glass cases, as with jewellery and watches, or the goods are too bulky to walk away with, like furniture or TVs.
That leaves Apple with the dearest goods that fit in your bag or pocket. Eventually their appeal will fade, once we all have phone and computer implants and the fashionistas will have to move onto something else. But meanwhile they are trying to do the dance of the seven veils with a stiletto in their shoe. It's not a pretty sight.
Nor is the craven behavior of the banks, who were the other villains in this story. Low-cost travel has made it difficult for them to keep track of many of their customers, so they apply some crude assumptions about spending patterns. Anyone that steps outside the pattern can expect to be refused - something the real crooks know only too well and therefore take account of, unless they are complete amateurs. OK, a store like Apple will get more than its share of such amateur con merchants, but it's hardly good customer relations. Best to either pay cash or phone the bank in advance and tell them where you are going shopping. They hate suprises, see, or else they'd have chosen more interesting careers than telling people they can't use their credit cards.
Friday, August 24, 2007
memorial service for rudolph valentino
Question for today: what determines how big or small a send-off we get when we die, and how long we are remembered after that?
I have been thinking about that since attending the 80th memorial service for Rudolph Valentino, the romantic-looking 1920s movie star who died in New York at the weep-inducingly early age of 31, from peritonitis after having an operation for appendicitis and a perforated ulcer - not the syphilis which his more swooning admirers fondly imagined had caught up with him after a sex life that wasn't quite as active as he let the world believe.
He had two funerals, one in New York and one in Beverly Hills, before he was interred in the Hollywood Memorial Park cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, now called Hollywood Forever. It contains memorials to hundreds of stars, from Douglas Fairbanks and his son to Cecil B. DeMille, Peter Lorre, Jayne Mansfield and Fay Wray, immortalized as the woman snatched up by King Kong in the 1930s version of that film.
The cemetery looks much more like a movie set than the rolling meadow of Forest Lawn, where gravestones are apparently banned. Here, tall trees compete for space with all manner of gravestones, headstones, monuments and mausoleums, amid finely clipped grass so green it might have been spray-painted (well, this is Hollywood after all). It appropriately backs onto the Paramount Studios lot, so film crews have merely to climb the dividing wall to start shooting a remake of Dracula or The Loved Ones.
The uniformed guard in the gate booth stopped his private phone call just long enough to tell us how to get to the Cathedral Mausoleum, where the service was being held: drive to the first intersection, turn left and park on the right, He may have added “at the end of the road”, but if so I didn’t hear him. Anyway, we parked at the end of the first row of cars we came to, which turned out to be a 10-minute walk from the building. But it was a pleasant day for a stroll, so we checked out the many graves, star-spotting as if we were at a ghostly posthumous showbiz party, a kind of afterlife Oscars. Look, there’s Douglas Fairbanks! And didn’t Johnny Ramone die young? Fairbanks, or his dazzling white tomb, has a bit part in the current open-air production in the cemetery grounds of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a slightly different setting from the open-air theater in London’s Regent’s Park.
First surprise when we walked into the Mausoleum: instead of the conventional wooden pews, folding white chairs, in rows of four either side of the center aisle. The chamber was nearly full, but we found three seats behind a couple of camp gays wearing identical black T-shirts proclaiming that they were part of an award-winning lighting crew. They turned out to be showbiz groupies who knew everything about Valentino and every living movie veteran in sight – of whom there were plenty.
No one was in a rush to start the show, for show it was, and so no one bothered to mark the exact time of Valentino’s death: 12.10 pm. The service, once it got started, was as hammy as you might expect in Hollywood, a string of readings and songs with a pause in the middle for a highly professional video recalling the dramatic day of Valentino’s funeral and the history of the memorial services, complete with the mysterious lady in black who turned up year after year to lay a rose on Valentino’s memorial without a word of explanation. It turned out that he had visited her in hospital when she was dying and assured her she would live; but in return if she outlived him she would have to perform the rose ritual. That did much to perpetuate the annual service, which consequently attracted huge publicity for several years after Valentino’s death. He was mourned by thousands lining his coffin’s procession, in a manner that predated the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy and Princess Diana. They all died young, before their feet had a chance to turn to clay. A case of ‘Quit while you’re ahead’.
Most impressive contribution to the service was undoubtedly the two tribute songs – Young Rajah and He Loved, He Danced, He Tangoed - sung by Bob Mitchell, 95 years old but still boasting a rich baritone for the simple reason that he keeps performing. Truly, use it or lose it.
Least impressive: the gabbling, mumbling rendition of the 23rd Psalm by the congregation, led by Stella Grace of the Valentino Memorial Committee. A musical version, sung a capella, would have had far more impact.
But in any case, by now it was gone 1 pm in a land of early lunchers, so attention was beginning to wander. Before leaving, though, a visit to Valentino’s shrine was obligatory, and a line formed to collect Mitchell’s autograph.
Outside in the sunshine, the publisher of a reprinted Valentino book had set up a desk under a red canopy to secure the sales prompted by his shameless promotion of the product during the service (I’m tempted to say again, only in Hollywood, but I would put New Yorkers past a similar stunt).
From there, five of us headed for a late (2pm) lunch at Du Parr’s diner in Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and Beverly. It was a welcome return to something resembling reality,
The problem of sustaining an individual’s memory for 80 consecutive years is the increasing weight of history and therefore expectation that burdens the event. It moves from an outlet for grief to a ritual in which part of the point is to maintain the ritual. To miss a year would be a terrible defeat, and would be seen as an insult to the great man’s gift to posterity. Several times during the service we were reminded that this is one of the longest traditions in Hollywood – “longer than the Oscars, can you imagine?” Well I can, as a matter of fact: not long ago my Oxford college celebrated its 650th anniversary.
There was a smattering of people at the ceremonies who, while not exactly contemporaries of Valentino – real last name Guglielmi – could at least claim their lives overlapped: Mitchell was one and the eagle-like A.C. Lyles, longstanding Paramount Studios spokesman, was another. But as the years go by the event will eventually be supported exclusively by those for whom Valentino is no more than a celluloid image, who will know nothing of his moods, his humor, his wit (if any). His highly forgettable poetry lives on, and his screen acting. We will be worshipping a minor 20th century god, no more and no less significant than dozens of others created by the film industry: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, James Stewart, Judy Garland.
Why Valentino? Because of his mysterious, romantic aura, unsullied by recorded voice, cut off in his prime when knows what he might have achieved – assuming his reputation survived the transition to the talkies beyond the first few years. But even memories of memories fade and when Valentino’s acolytes dwindle to a handful the annual event will die a death much more quietly than the great man did. The same has happened even to major historical figures such as Lincoln, Washington, Nelson, Wellington. It is inevitable.
I admit I was there on Thursday essentially as a tourist. Valentino has always been a marginal figure for me, but I am no cinema buff. I drove over from Pasadena out of curiosity, to witness a phenomenon. I was not disappointed, The thousands who wept at Valentino’s death had been whittled down to 100 or so devotees, including a bizarre black woman in a white veil and silver tiara, carrying a green shopping bag. The lady in black was represented in no more than token form, by Karie Bible, whose main role was to read a couple of Valentino’s undistinguished poems.
So, to answer my opening question, the scale and longevity of our send-off is determined by the impact we have on others’ lives, and the extent to which our death robs the living of a dream of some form of higher existence. Something in the survivors’ lives dies, and memorial services are partly an attempt to deny that by keeping alive the adoration that we feel for famous figures when they are alive. It is one thing to say farewell to a loved one, public or private. It is another to keep the mystique going, like an eternal flame. But in both cases we are deluding ourselves. Whether or not we believe in an after-life, the dead person is gone. By all means record and analyze his or her life, to see what it was about them that attracted such devotion. But we should learn to let go and get on with our lives.
I have been thinking about that since attending the 80th memorial service for Rudolph Valentino, the romantic-looking 1920s movie star who died in New York at the weep-inducingly early age of 31, from peritonitis after having an operation for appendicitis and a perforated ulcer - not the syphilis which his more swooning admirers fondly imagined had caught up with him after a sex life that wasn't quite as active as he let the world believe.
He had two funerals, one in New York and one in Beverly Hills, before he was interred in the Hollywood Memorial Park cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, now called Hollywood Forever. It contains memorials to hundreds of stars, from Douglas Fairbanks and his son to Cecil B. DeMille, Peter Lorre, Jayne Mansfield and Fay Wray, immortalized as the woman snatched up by King Kong in the 1930s version of that film.
The cemetery looks much more like a movie set than the rolling meadow of Forest Lawn, where gravestones are apparently banned. Here, tall trees compete for space with all manner of gravestones, headstones, monuments and mausoleums, amid finely clipped grass so green it might have been spray-painted (well, this is Hollywood after all). It appropriately backs onto the Paramount Studios lot, so film crews have merely to climb the dividing wall to start shooting a remake of Dracula or The Loved Ones.
The uniformed guard in the gate booth stopped his private phone call just long enough to tell us how to get to the Cathedral Mausoleum, where the service was being held: drive to the first intersection, turn left and park on the right, He may have added “at the end of the road”, but if so I didn’t hear him. Anyway, we parked at the end of the first row of cars we came to, which turned out to be a 10-minute walk from the building. But it was a pleasant day for a stroll, so we checked out the many graves, star-spotting as if we were at a ghostly posthumous showbiz party, a kind of afterlife Oscars. Look, there’s Douglas Fairbanks! And didn’t Johnny Ramone die young? Fairbanks, or his dazzling white tomb, has a bit part in the current open-air production in the cemetery grounds of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a slightly different setting from the open-air theater in London’s Regent’s Park.
First surprise when we walked into the Mausoleum: instead of the conventional wooden pews, folding white chairs, in rows of four either side of the center aisle. The chamber was nearly full, but we found three seats behind a couple of camp gays wearing identical black T-shirts proclaiming that they were part of an award-winning lighting crew. They turned out to be showbiz groupies who knew everything about Valentino and every living movie veteran in sight – of whom there were plenty.
No one was in a rush to start the show, for show it was, and so no one bothered to mark the exact time of Valentino’s death: 12.10 pm. The service, once it got started, was as hammy as you might expect in Hollywood, a string of readings and songs with a pause in the middle for a highly professional video recalling the dramatic day of Valentino’s funeral and the history of the memorial services, complete with the mysterious lady in black who turned up year after year to lay a rose on Valentino’s memorial without a word of explanation. It turned out that he had visited her in hospital when she was dying and assured her she would live; but in return if she outlived him she would have to perform the rose ritual. That did much to perpetuate the annual service, which consequently attracted huge publicity for several years after Valentino’s death. He was mourned by thousands lining his coffin’s procession, in a manner that predated the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy and Princess Diana. They all died young, before their feet had a chance to turn to clay. A case of ‘Quit while you’re ahead’.
Most impressive contribution to the service was undoubtedly the two tribute songs – Young Rajah and He Loved, He Danced, He Tangoed - sung by Bob Mitchell, 95 years old but still boasting a rich baritone for the simple reason that he keeps performing. Truly, use it or lose it.
Least impressive: the gabbling, mumbling rendition of the 23rd Psalm by the congregation, led by Stella Grace of the Valentino Memorial Committee. A musical version, sung a capella, would have had far more impact.
But in any case, by now it was gone 1 pm in a land of early lunchers, so attention was beginning to wander. Before leaving, though, a visit to Valentino’s shrine was obligatory, and a line formed to collect Mitchell’s autograph.
Outside in the sunshine, the publisher of a reprinted Valentino book had set up a desk under a red canopy to secure the sales prompted by his shameless promotion of the product during the service (I’m tempted to say again, only in Hollywood, but I would put New Yorkers past a similar stunt).
From there, five of us headed for a late (2pm) lunch at Du Parr’s diner in Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and Beverly. It was a welcome return to something resembling reality,
The problem of sustaining an individual’s memory for 80 consecutive years is the increasing weight of history and therefore expectation that burdens the event. It moves from an outlet for grief to a ritual in which part of the point is to maintain the ritual. To miss a year would be a terrible defeat, and would be seen as an insult to the great man’s gift to posterity. Several times during the service we were reminded that this is one of the longest traditions in Hollywood – “longer than the Oscars, can you imagine?” Well I can, as a matter of fact: not long ago my Oxford college celebrated its 650th anniversary.
There was a smattering of people at the ceremonies who, while not exactly contemporaries of Valentino – real last name Guglielmi – could at least claim their lives overlapped: Mitchell was one and the eagle-like A.C. Lyles, longstanding Paramount Studios spokesman, was another. But as the years go by the event will eventually be supported exclusively by those for whom Valentino is no more than a celluloid image, who will know nothing of his moods, his humor, his wit (if any). His highly forgettable poetry lives on, and his screen acting. We will be worshipping a minor 20th century god, no more and no less significant than dozens of others created by the film industry: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, James Stewart, Judy Garland.
Why Valentino? Because of his mysterious, romantic aura, unsullied by recorded voice, cut off in his prime when knows what he might have achieved – assuming his reputation survived the transition to the talkies beyond the first few years. But even memories of memories fade and when Valentino’s acolytes dwindle to a handful the annual event will die a death much more quietly than the great man did. The same has happened even to major historical figures such as Lincoln, Washington, Nelson, Wellington. It is inevitable.
I admit I was there on Thursday essentially as a tourist. Valentino has always been a marginal figure for me, but I am no cinema buff. I drove over from Pasadena out of curiosity, to witness a phenomenon. I was not disappointed, The thousands who wept at Valentino’s death had been whittled down to 100 or so devotees, including a bizarre black woman in a white veil and silver tiara, carrying a green shopping bag. The lady in black was represented in no more than token form, by Karie Bible, whose main role was to read a couple of Valentino’s undistinguished poems.
So, to answer my opening question, the scale and longevity of our send-off is determined by the impact we have on others’ lives, and the extent to which our death robs the living of a dream of some form of higher existence. Something in the survivors’ lives dies, and memorial services are partly an attempt to deny that by keeping alive the adoration that we feel for famous figures when they are alive. It is one thing to say farewell to a loved one, public or private. It is another to keep the mystique going, like an eternal flame. But in both cases we are deluding ourselves. Whether or not we believe in an after-life, the dead person is gone. By all means record and analyze his or her life, to see what it was about them that attracted such devotion. But we should learn to let go and get on with our lives.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
A Year in the Province, buddy
No, I'm not Peter Mayle and this is not, thankfully, the Dordogne (when WILL they learn to speak English over there?!), but as Mayle described in his books - and probably in common with just about every other emigrant - my first year in the LA area has been full of ups and downs - mainly ups, more than enough to confirm that Lynne and I made the right decision to decamp from London, England.
First the downs.
1. It has been far harder getting work over here than expected, either from local employers or British companies wanting someone they could turn to in California.
2. Health insurance has been a hassle, as expected and now as fully explored in Sicko (although Moore did not spend a lot of time on migrants, probably reckoning that we can take care of ourselves). Our company, Pasadena Media, qualifies as an employer able to offer a group health scheme. PM has begun to take on a life of its own, forcing us to account for income and expenses differently. It seems wierd filing an expenses claim to yourself, mulling it over for all of two seconds and then deciding, yes, this claim is fully justified. I have also had a call from Dun & Bradstreet, no less, to get information so they can rate PM's credit - and, I suspect, to try and sell a copy of their directory. PM may also count as an employer for the purposes of getting more Brits over here on employment visas. So who knows where it will lead - Rupert Murdoch watch out!
3. Taxes have been higher than expected. Not sales tax, which runs out at a tolerable 8.25% compared with 17.5% UK VAT. Income tax is not much different from the UK, with more offsets allowed: the sheer joy of being able to claim for drinks, meals and entertaining (banned these 36 years in Britain). So what, then? The main surprise has been property tax, which is tied to the price you pay for your house. The good news is that it is then fixed for as long as you stay at that address, but then you are piling up a capital gain which - unlike UK - can be taxable. I expect it will settle down, and I'll get used to it, but forget the idea that the US is a low-tax country.
4. Utilities are about as poor as in Britain. Special venom reserved for Charter, a virtual monopoly supplier of phone, cable TV and internet. Call center rubbish, service times awful. Plumbers, electricians, locksmiths etc very hit and miss, some great, some terrible, some disappear and never come back.
And that's about it for the downs, not too many really.
The ups.
1. The weather. Another myth is that southern California is a land of eternal sunshine. Not so. Plenty of wind and rain through the winter, and in high summer (like now) it can get a little too hot for comfort. In between, though, pretty good, especially compared with the floods and gales Britain has been having to put up with.
2. Lifestyle. Very relaxed, with a low cost and high standard of living. You can live very cheaply here without cutting corners. Of course, you can splash out on $100-a-head restaurant meals, but there are plenty of good places at half that or less, and the supermarkets offer a good variety - even before Tesco opens up this autumn.
3. Good social life. We have been very lucky to be introduced to some lovely people, mainly through our great friend Libby. It could have so easily worked out differently, but there are plenty of bars and restaurants in Pasadena where we have bumped into people and made friends - and our estate agent, Mark Ogden, has been a good pal too, so even without our huge slice of luck the local people are generally open to newcomers. English accent doesn't hurt in that respect, along with tales of the Old Country, who is this Gordon Brown, why does David Beckham have such a squeaky voice, etc.
4. Plenty to see and do. I slightly take this for granted, having been over here on holiday for so many years and done most of the trips and sights, but it's a great part of the country for days out, exploring and just getting around - freeways are much underestimated, anti-social as they are. And it will be even better when LA gets a decent transport system. Almost worth a separate point on its own, but a special category of 'see and do' is the whole Hollywood thing. Hollywood Boulevard is on the up and up (frenetic club scene there at night) and the Egyptian is always hosting seasons of specialist films such as noir and horror. The studios seem to be very co-operative with providing excellent prints of old films, and actors from these movies often turn up to do Q and As about what it was like to work with the stars.
5. Stimulating creative environment. They may come to nothing, but I've been writing song lyrics and working on a novel based in Pasadena. There's just a lot to work with here, and I believe that if people aren't handing out work you just have to get up and get on with something yourself.
So that's a narrow-looking 5-4 win, but in my opinion the ups heavily outweigh the downs, most of which are temporary while the ups will endure. I still like visiting London, but two weeks is quite enough and so far I've been relieved to watch London vanishing in the jumbo jet's slipstream. I'll be interested to see how much that has changed a year from now.
First the downs.
1. It has been far harder getting work over here than expected, either from local employers or British companies wanting someone they could turn to in California.
2. Health insurance has been a hassle, as expected and now as fully explored in Sicko (although Moore did not spend a lot of time on migrants, probably reckoning that we can take care of ourselves). Our company, Pasadena Media, qualifies as an employer able to offer a group health scheme. PM has begun to take on a life of its own, forcing us to account for income and expenses differently. It seems wierd filing an expenses claim to yourself, mulling it over for all of two seconds and then deciding, yes, this claim is fully justified. I have also had a call from Dun & Bradstreet, no less, to get information so they can rate PM's credit - and, I suspect, to try and sell a copy of their directory. PM may also count as an employer for the purposes of getting more Brits over here on employment visas. So who knows where it will lead - Rupert Murdoch watch out!
3. Taxes have been higher than expected. Not sales tax, which runs out at a tolerable 8.25% compared with 17.5% UK VAT. Income tax is not much different from the UK, with more offsets allowed: the sheer joy of being able to claim for drinks, meals and entertaining (banned these 36 years in Britain). So what, then? The main surprise has been property tax, which is tied to the price you pay for your house. The good news is that it is then fixed for as long as you stay at that address, but then you are piling up a capital gain which - unlike UK - can be taxable. I expect it will settle down, and I'll get used to it, but forget the idea that the US is a low-tax country.
4. Utilities are about as poor as in Britain. Special venom reserved for Charter, a virtual monopoly supplier of phone, cable TV and internet. Call center rubbish, service times awful. Plumbers, electricians, locksmiths etc very hit and miss, some great, some terrible, some disappear and never come back.
And that's about it for the downs, not too many really.
The ups.
1. The weather. Another myth is that southern California is a land of eternal sunshine. Not so. Plenty of wind and rain through the winter, and in high summer (like now) it can get a little too hot for comfort. In between, though, pretty good, especially compared with the floods and gales Britain has been having to put up with.
2. Lifestyle. Very relaxed, with a low cost and high standard of living. You can live very cheaply here without cutting corners. Of course, you can splash out on $100-a-head restaurant meals, but there are plenty of good places at half that or less, and the supermarkets offer a good variety - even before Tesco opens up this autumn.
3. Good social life. We have been very lucky to be introduced to some lovely people, mainly through our great friend Libby. It could have so easily worked out differently, but there are plenty of bars and restaurants in Pasadena where we have bumped into people and made friends - and our estate agent, Mark Ogden, has been a good pal too, so even without our huge slice of luck the local people are generally open to newcomers. English accent doesn't hurt in that respect, along with tales of the Old Country, who is this Gordon Brown, why does David Beckham have such a squeaky voice, etc.
4. Plenty to see and do. I slightly take this for granted, having been over here on holiday for so many years and done most of the trips and sights, but it's a great part of the country for days out, exploring and just getting around - freeways are much underestimated, anti-social as they are. And it will be even better when LA gets a decent transport system. Almost worth a separate point on its own, but a special category of 'see and do' is the whole Hollywood thing. Hollywood Boulevard is on the up and up (frenetic club scene there at night) and the Egyptian is always hosting seasons of specialist films such as noir and horror. The studios seem to be very co-operative with providing excellent prints of old films, and actors from these movies often turn up to do Q and As about what it was like to work with the stars.
5. Stimulating creative environment. They may come to nothing, but I've been writing song lyrics and working on a novel based in Pasadena. There's just a lot to work with here, and I believe that if people aren't handing out work you just have to get up and get on with something yourself.
So that's a narrow-looking 5-4 win, but in my opinion the ups heavily outweigh the downs, most of which are temporary while the ups will endure. I still like visiting London, but two weeks is quite enough and so far I've been relieved to watch London vanishing in the jumbo jet's slipstream. I'll be interested to see how much that has changed a year from now.
Monday, July 30, 2007
retro-fitted
As any Californian will know, if a house ad says the property has been retro-fitted, it means that after it was built anti-earthquake reinforcements were added in the basement - a necessary move for many older houses put up before anti-earthquake technology developed to its present level (how good that is we won't know until it is too late, but that's another story).
This summer, the whole of Southern Californian culture seems to be retro-fitted - not earthquake-proof, but with a distinctly rear-view perspective. Comic-con, a San Diego get-together for addicts of everything from Batman to Star Wars, is attracting thousands. Movie retrospectives are on virtually year-round in Hollywood, culminating in Cinecon at the Egyptian next month. The Delorean car is making such a comeback that there are plans to restart production now John Delorean is conveniently in the great driving seat in the sky, and there will be a Delorean car convention at Universal Studios this week to publicise the fact that the Back to the Future ride is about to close ('Positively your last chance') after, ooh, 25 years of shaking the punters around. And I reckon that movies such as Transformers, Harry Potter and The Simpsons all have a retro feel about them. Potter is set in the 1950s, the Simpsons in the 1980s and Transformers - well, HG Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1896 (but don't tell Tom Cruise - and, oh yes, the WW film has been the excuse for one of the more spectacular new set recreations on the Universal back lot tour, just behind the Psycho house). And that's without the current mania for anything by the Bronte sisters. 'Ee, chook, it's reet nippy up eer in Howarth wi'out the movie royalties to keep us warm. Reckon we was allus born too early and now we're out of copyright, dammit.' 'Hush thy mouth, yoong Charlotte, or I'll 'ave that JK Rowling coom down from Edinburgh and belt you with her bank balance.'
I know that depicting the past is creatively more bankable than trying anything new, and the media seems to be going through one of its cautious phases at the moment, maybe because it is trying to assess the impact of the internet and things like blogs, but this business of looking backwards has been taken a little too far: I mean, even Berries and Cream....
This summer, the whole of Southern Californian culture seems to be retro-fitted - not earthquake-proof, but with a distinctly rear-view perspective. Comic-con, a San Diego get-together for addicts of everything from Batman to Star Wars, is attracting thousands. Movie retrospectives are on virtually year-round in Hollywood, culminating in Cinecon at the Egyptian next month. The Delorean car is making such a comeback that there are plans to restart production now John Delorean is conveniently in the great driving seat in the sky, and there will be a Delorean car convention at Universal Studios this week to publicise the fact that the Back to the Future ride is about to close ('Positively your last chance') after, ooh, 25 years of shaking the punters around. And I reckon that movies such as Transformers, Harry Potter and The Simpsons all have a retro feel about them. Potter is set in the 1950s, the Simpsons in the 1980s and Transformers - well, HG Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1896 (but don't tell Tom Cruise - and, oh yes, the WW film has been the excuse for one of the more spectacular new set recreations on the Universal back lot tour, just behind the Psycho house). And that's without the current mania for anything by the Bronte sisters. 'Ee, chook, it's reet nippy up eer in Howarth wi'out the movie royalties to keep us warm. Reckon we was allus born too early and now we're out of copyright, dammit.' 'Hush thy mouth, yoong Charlotte, or I'll 'ave that JK Rowling coom down from Edinburgh and belt you with her bank balance.'
I know that depicting the past is creatively more bankable than trying anything new, and the media seems to be going through one of its cautious phases at the moment, maybe because it is trying to assess the impact of the internet and things like blogs, but this business of looking backwards has been taken a little too far: I mean, even Berries and Cream....
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
acdc
The most dramatic moment of my last trip to Washington, for the International Monetary Fund meeting of September 1999, was sitting in my hotel room when the TV showed the US Ryder Cup golf team disgracefully dancing all over the last green to celebrate a victory that was still subject to a final putt across that badly damaged turf by the last European player, Jose Maria Olazabal. The US have paid for their hubris by being soundly thrashed ever since.
Last weekend had nothing to match that, unless you count Dick Cheney being President for a couple of hours while Bush was anaesthetized - no jokes, please. Instead, I witnessed two events that respectively gave a glimpse into the future and the past.
I saw the future on a Metro train, the stations of which rival London's new Jubilee Line stations for their striking designs. A young black couple were talking as casually as they could manage, having clearly met only shortly before. As she made to get off at a stop, he called out 'Look me up on Facebook!' It's the new substitute for exchanging vital personal information face-to-face. Instead, an entry on a social networking site, compiled and refined at leisure, becomes the business card for a possible relationship. I get a little out of puff catching up with all the messaging, texting and networking that moves from one new custom to another - I understand that email is now so old-hat that only oldies use it - but they all provide a new range of ways for the unsure majority to communicate and excommunicate. The networking sites leapfrog one another almost daily: friends reunited begat friendster begat flickr begat flirtomatic began faceparty begat facebook - and that's just some of the ones beginning with F.
The step back into the past in Washington was a sneak peek at how segregation must have felt. No longer by edict, that would be intolerable. But just as effective is the sort of economic segregation which put nearly all the white fans at a Washington Nationals v Colorado Rockies baseball game in the lower tiers of the stadium, and nearly all the blacks in the cheap seats up top.
My friend, Richard Adams, and I discovered this by accident. Not being sure about the ticketing system, I asked the booth for 'a couple of good tickets in the shade'. For only $25 apiece, yes that should have set off the alarm bells, we had great seats out of the sun, right behind the plate. Only catch? You couldn't see much beyond second base, and certainly not the scoreboard, so it was a little difficult to follow the game. So, after a few innings, we headed skywards.
The view was terrific, if a little vertigo-inducing. We could have got seats behind the plate again if we had bothered, this time with scoreboards galore. But, as the game went on I slowly realised that we were among the very few white faces on that level, where the ticket prices were $5-$14. I don't have any easy solutions to the de facto segregation, and everyone mixed quite amiably on the way out after the game, but it makes a myth out of any suggestion that American society has made significant strides towards integration - and that still looks a long way off.
Happily, Washington is stuffed full of free attractions, where such dividing lines dissolve in a mutual awe and admiration for the Capitol, White House, and the memorials to Washington, Lincoln and the dead from the Korean, Vietnam and 2nd World Wars. Iraq cannot be far off. I know of no other capital city that has so much for the tourist in such a concentrated area. Paris runs it close, and there is a strong whiff of Paris in Washington's wide boulevards.
Just as pretty well everyone stands to attention for the national anthem, so there was a shared respect inside the massive Lincoln memorial, with its Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses by the great man decorating the side walls. A few yards outside, though, there is one paving stone that many of the black visitors liked to stand around and admire the inscription. It marks the spot where Martin Luther King Jr made his 'I have a dream' speech in front of 200,000 people in August 1963. A dream that lives on.
Last weekend had nothing to match that, unless you count Dick Cheney being President for a couple of hours while Bush was anaesthetized - no jokes, please. Instead, I witnessed two events that respectively gave a glimpse into the future and the past.
I saw the future on a Metro train, the stations of which rival London's new Jubilee Line stations for their striking designs. A young black couple were talking as casually as they could manage, having clearly met only shortly before. As she made to get off at a stop, he called out 'Look me up on Facebook!' It's the new substitute for exchanging vital personal information face-to-face. Instead, an entry on a social networking site, compiled and refined at leisure, becomes the business card for a possible relationship. I get a little out of puff catching up with all the messaging, texting and networking that moves from one new custom to another - I understand that email is now so old-hat that only oldies use it - but they all provide a new range of ways for the unsure majority to communicate and excommunicate. The networking sites leapfrog one another almost daily: friends reunited begat friendster begat flickr begat flirtomatic began faceparty begat facebook - and that's just some of the ones beginning with F.
The step back into the past in Washington was a sneak peek at how segregation must have felt. No longer by edict, that would be intolerable. But just as effective is the sort of economic segregation which put nearly all the white fans at a Washington Nationals v Colorado Rockies baseball game in the lower tiers of the stadium, and nearly all the blacks in the cheap seats up top.
My friend, Richard Adams, and I discovered this by accident. Not being sure about the ticketing system, I asked the booth for 'a couple of good tickets in the shade'. For only $25 apiece, yes that should have set off the alarm bells, we had great seats out of the sun, right behind the plate. Only catch? You couldn't see much beyond second base, and certainly not the scoreboard, so it was a little difficult to follow the game. So, after a few innings, we headed skywards.
The view was terrific, if a little vertigo-inducing. We could have got seats behind the plate again if we had bothered, this time with scoreboards galore. But, as the game went on I slowly realised that we were among the very few white faces on that level, where the ticket prices were $5-$14. I don't have any easy solutions to the de facto segregation, and everyone mixed quite amiably on the way out after the game, but it makes a myth out of any suggestion that American society has made significant strides towards integration - and that still looks a long way off.
Happily, Washington is stuffed full of free attractions, where such dividing lines dissolve in a mutual awe and admiration for the Capitol, White House, and the memorials to Washington, Lincoln and the dead from the Korean, Vietnam and 2nd World Wars. Iraq cannot be far off. I know of no other capital city that has so much for the tourist in such a concentrated area. Paris runs it close, and there is a strong whiff of Paris in Washington's wide boulevards.
Just as pretty well everyone stands to attention for the national anthem, so there was a shared respect inside the massive Lincoln memorial, with its Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses by the great man decorating the side walls. A few yards outside, though, there is one paving stone that many of the black visitors liked to stand around and admire the inscription. It marks the spot where Martin Luther King Jr made his 'I have a dream' speech in front of 200,000 people in August 1963. A dream that lives on.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
anthem
US respect for the flag hit me like a thunderbolt last night. I was at a very run-of-the-mill event, a free hour-long concert given in Pasadena's beautiful Memorial Park by the Pasadena City College orchestra, in the embers of a warm, sunny evening.
The performance was preceded, or perhaps begun, by a performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. I had just got up from my seat to move to the back of the open-air auditorium to take a call on my cell phone. Happily, the call ended just as the orchestra struck up the anthem.
Naturally, everyone stood and stayed stock still throughout. Some, particularly a young lad in shorts, put their hand on their chest.
That much I was prepared for. But, as the music reached its last few bars I began to walk forward, back to my seat. What shocked me was that I was the only one who moved. Everyone else, in a predominantly white but pretty random gathering, stayed still until the music had completely finished before they sat down and resumed conversations.
This is in stark contrast to Britain, where the national anthem is treated very casually, if any attention is paid at all. At sporting events, people routinely talk through it and rarely sing it.
Years ago, British cinemas used to play the national anthem at the end of the evening. By the time I was old enough to stay up that late, the whole audience would normally ignore it in their rush to get out. Once, at the Gaumont in King's Cross, one man, probably in his 30s or 40s and wearing a trench coat, stubbornly stood to attention for the entirety of the anthem while everyone around him filed out. He was making a point, and so was everyone else. Now, as far as I know, no British cinema or theater plays the national anthem. It is regarded as a waste of time. Not in America.
What does this tell us? I think it is linked, though in which direction I'm not sure, with the greater US religious observance and church attendance. In England, the established church is in severe decline: only the Jewish and Roman Catholics have widespread support, along with those of the ethnic minorities.
But churches abound in America, to the extent that the people are derided by Europeans for an 'off-the-shelf' approach to religion, taking whatever suits. But they do adopt a religious belief system of some sort, rather than the none at all which is now normal in Britain. And I think that extends to lack of belief in the national flag and anthem.
Sure, the flag - especially the white-and-red English Cross of St George - is waved proudly at sporting events, but that is in the context of support for the England team and is partly an act of aggression towards opposition supporters. The British Royal family is still regarded with great affection, though it has to be admitted that it has been the butt of sniggers for 20 years or so.
That can be seen as a sign of greater sophistication and maturity, because there is no doubt that pride in Britain is as great as ever, as borne out by support for the armed forces in time of conflict, whether in the Falklands or the middle east. The British, and this goes to some extent for the rest of western Europe, don't feel the same need as Americans to bow to the symbols of that pride - the flag and anthem.
However, the American reverence for these baubles is also a sign, I believe, of a more ordered society. Mocking, ironic humor, of the sort propagated by Monty Python, is still thought rather daring in America, although the success of TV shows such as The Office show the mood is beginning to change. However, the US is still a long way from Britain's destructive reflex to bring down anyone who is too successful, to level out, cut the heads off the tall flowers, that has become such a pervasive pastime on the Atlantic's eastern shore.
All that is a long way from an open-air concert. But when that audience sat back in its seats, I think it did so with a greater sense of comfort and security than you might find in England. However, it may be significant that Scotland still bellows its anthem and salutes the blue Cross of St Andrew with a fervour that would frighten nearly anyone else exposed to it. That, though, is driven by an emotion that is more tribal than national.
The performance was preceded, or perhaps begun, by a performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. I had just got up from my seat to move to the back of the open-air auditorium to take a call on my cell phone. Happily, the call ended just as the orchestra struck up the anthem.
Naturally, everyone stood and stayed stock still throughout. Some, particularly a young lad in shorts, put their hand on their chest.
That much I was prepared for. But, as the music reached its last few bars I began to walk forward, back to my seat. What shocked me was that I was the only one who moved. Everyone else, in a predominantly white but pretty random gathering, stayed still until the music had completely finished before they sat down and resumed conversations.
This is in stark contrast to Britain, where the national anthem is treated very casually, if any attention is paid at all. At sporting events, people routinely talk through it and rarely sing it.
Years ago, British cinemas used to play the national anthem at the end of the evening. By the time I was old enough to stay up that late, the whole audience would normally ignore it in their rush to get out. Once, at the Gaumont in King's Cross, one man, probably in his 30s or 40s and wearing a trench coat, stubbornly stood to attention for the entirety of the anthem while everyone around him filed out. He was making a point, and so was everyone else. Now, as far as I know, no British cinema or theater plays the national anthem. It is regarded as a waste of time. Not in America.
What does this tell us? I think it is linked, though in which direction I'm not sure, with the greater US religious observance and church attendance. In England, the established church is in severe decline: only the Jewish and Roman Catholics have widespread support, along with those of the ethnic minorities.
But churches abound in America, to the extent that the people are derided by Europeans for an 'off-the-shelf' approach to religion, taking whatever suits. But they do adopt a religious belief system of some sort, rather than the none at all which is now normal in Britain. And I think that extends to lack of belief in the national flag and anthem.
Sure, the flag - especially the white-and-red English Cross of St George - is waved proudly at sporting events, but that is in the context of support for the England team and is partly an act of aggression towards opposition supporters. The British Royal family is still regarded with great affection, though it has to be admitted that it has been the butt of sniggers for 20 years or so.
That can be seen as a sign of greater sophistication and maturity, because there is no doubt that pride in Britain is as great as ever, as borne out by support for the armed forces in time of conflict, whether in the Falklands or the middle east. The British, and this goes to some extent for the rest of western Europe, don't feel the same need as Americans to bow to the symbols of that pride - the flag and anthem.
However, the American reverence for these baubles is also a sign, I believe, of a more ordered society. Mocking, ironic humor, of the sort propagated by Monty Python, is still thought rather daring in America, although the success of TV shows such as The Office show the mood is beginning to change. However, the US is still a long way from Britain's destructive reflex to bring down anyone who is too successful, to level out, cut the heads off the tall flowers, that has become such a pervasive pastime on the Atlantic's eastern shore.
All that is a long way from an open-air concert. But when that audience sat back in its seats, I think it did so with a greater sense of comfort and security than you might find in England. However, it may be significant that Scotland still bellows its anthem and salutes the blue Cross of St Andrew with a fervour that would frighten nearly anyone else exposed to it. That, though, is driven by an emotion that is more tribal than national.
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