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.
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