A new singing idol has been anointed. I realise I'm going off my usual beat - whatever that is - in getting involved in the pecking order among the 20 remaining contestants in the current American Idol, but one is so obviously on a different plane from the others that I feel I am doing no more than point out a matter of fact.
Tonight the last ten men sang, and I don't think it was any accident that 17-year-old David Archuleta was left until last. He sang John Lennon's Imagine and actually gave it a completely different meaning, completely different from Lennon's acid sarcasm, and invited the listener to take it at face value. And, such was the quality and clarity of Archuleta's singing, that nothing seemed more natural. He was effortlessly in command of his material and the audience: you could have heard a pin drop. Yet, as Randy Jackson remarked, he had maturity beyond his years. I'll leave further analysis to the experts, and I recognise that there is many a slip: the voting could go haywire, his career could go haywire, anything could happen. But I still reckon we will be hearing a lot more from and about David Archuleta.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Bill Kay tells the sad, sad story of Oscar
What was all that about? For weeks beforehand, nothing but Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. Now, it's as if it never happened. The caravan has moved on or, like the floats in the Pasadena Rose Parade, it has been put away in its garage until next January.
OK, this wasn't a vintage Oscar year, whatever the boosters may try to tell us. What's worrying is that the US live TV audience was an all-time low of 32 million in a year when there were no distractions or other excuses apart from the fact that the films were no better than OK.
I think it's more serious than that. For years there has been a disconnect between the people who go to the cinemas - mainly 15 to 25-year-olds - and those who watch TV - mainly over 40s. I suspect that while today's young parents may not be able to get to the cinema as often as they did, they just don't buy the Oscars ballyhoo. And that disconnect is growing into a secular generational gap that TV advertisers can no longer ignore.
Ignore? Just compare the ads during the Oscars with those during Superbowl three weeks earlier, which raked in a record 97.5 million viewers, third successive year of over 90 million. And American Idol can reckon on more than 70 million for its finale.
These are today's big players. The Oscars had to make do with Superbowl hand-me-down ads, like the Godfather-inspired car grille in the bed.
The fact is that the kids want to get out of the house and be with their pals, and a cinema is as good a place as any, especially if they are watching on a new movie's first weekend, and even more so if that movie is hot. Sitting at home for hour after house with parents, grandparents and dysfunctional Aunt Jemimah just doesn't compete. It's no good that some of their heroes will be getting awards: they won't be playing their favourite characters acting out enthralling drama. Instead they'll be dehumanised in tuxedo or designer dress, reading autocues or waving the statuette and saying for the umpteenth time how this is for the whole team, not just for them - not in the least bit convincingly. There will be the odd clip of movies that were hot six months ago but are therefore already so last year that they might as well be coated in aspic. Even the MC, Jon Stewart, is dad's age for most filmgoers - and that's without that permanent smug grin that is crying out to be swatted with a paving stone.
So it's a night out for the industry, another freebie in a year of freebies for the Hollywood crowd and their hangers-on. But the formula is tired, dating back at best to Bob Hope and the Rat Pack.
I could say it needs freshening up, maybe have Johnny Depp or Matt Damon present the show in a year when they are not nominated (book yourself in for the Lifetime Achievement Award in about 2040, Johnny), but I admit there are no easy fixes that would not just be the old formula refried. It has got to be more radical than that.
Once the Academy of Motion Pictures had been formed, it was natural to have an annual prize-giving, and it used to be a handy way to give the best pictures another publicity push. That doesn't work any more, in the sense that it doesn't boost sales, another sign that the filmgoing and Oscar-watching audiences are separate entities.
Every industry in pretty well every country has annual awards. Everyone eventually craves recognition, especially once they have been in a career for 20 years or more and the mid-life crisis is kicking in. It is a way of saying that making films, writing books or newspaper stories or even being the best share tipster means more than selling cans of beans - and you can bet the beanmakers have their own awards bash.
Just as bean-eaters rarely attend the annual beanfeast, so there is no reason why filmgoers should pay any attention to the Oscars. The bizarre difference is that film-makers pretend that their orgy of self-congratulation is the most glamorous on the planet, which is why Elton John admitted he spent the next two weeks walking around with a stupid grin on his face after he was Oscarred. Maybe the beanmaker of the year does too, but I doubt it.
In the end, like beanmaking, showbiz is a business and it is one that hates to be snubbed. If the TV audience keeps shrinking there will come a time when more and more of the stars find excuses not to attend, just as they did with the Hollywood Christmas Parade which is being so desperately revived this year. Certainly, if the studios tell them to attend, or going to the Oscars is inserted in their contract when they sign to appear in a film, they will attend. But it will become more and more obvious that that is what is going on: there are no secrets in Hollywood. And the event will gradually fall into disrepair, a bit like Charlie Chaplin's braces. Time to move on, guys.
In the LA Times of February 27, Patrick Goldstein constructs an elaborate argument for reforming the Oscars, with internet coverage, behind-the-scenes glimpses, segments from not-the-Oscars prize-giving and a whole lot of other stuff that must have sounded fine off the top of Goldstein's head but is never going to happen.
In the end this is a television decision. Without the TV audience there is no show, and the TV stations will bid for it as long as there is enough audience to sell to advertisers. Once that stops happening it's game over and the Oscars becomes just another industry bash like a lot of the Academy's other events. We may see a desperate attempt at a facelift, although that will meet stern resistance within the Academy's deeply conservative ranks.
The only glimmer of light is that the Academy depends financially on the Oscars. If the TV check starts shrinking, then the Academy governors might have to reconsider. By then, though, it will probably be too late.
OK, this wasn't a vintage Oscar year, whatever the boosters may try to tell us. What's worrying is that the US live TV audience was an all-time low of 32 million in a year when there were no distractions or other excuses apart from the fact that the films were no better than OK.
I think it's more serious than that. For years there has been a disconnect between the people who go to the cinemas - mainly 15 to 25-year-olds - and those who watch TV - mainly over 40s. I suspect that while today's young parents may not be able to get to the cinema as often as they did, they just don't buy the Oscars ballyhoo. And that disconnect is growing into a secular generational gap that TV advertisers can no longer ignore.
Ignore? Just compare the ads during the Oscars with those during Superbowl three weeks earlier, which raked in a record 97.5 million viewers, third successive year of over 90 million. And American Idol can reckon on more than 70 million for its finale.
These are today's big players. The Oscars had to make do with Superbowl hand-me-down ads, like the Godfather-inspired car grille in the bed.
The fact is that the kids want to get out of the house and be with their pals, and a cinema is as good a place as any, especially if they are watching on a new movie's first weekend, and even more so if that movie is hot. Sitting at home for hour after house with parents, grandparents and dysfunctional Aunt Jemimah just doesn't compete. It's no good that some of their heroes will be getting awards: they won't be playing their favourite characters acting out enthralling drama. Instead they'll be dehumanised in tuxedo or designer dress, reading autocues or waving the statuette and saying for the umpteenth time how this is for the whole team, not just for them - not in the least bit convincingly. There will be the odd clip of movies that were hot six months ago but are therefore already so last year that they might as well be coated in aspic. Even the MC, Jon Stewart, is dad's age for most filmgoers - and that's without that permanent smug grin that is crying out to be swatted with a paving stone.
So it's a night out for the industry, another freebie in a year of freebies for the Hollywood crowd and their hangers-on. But the formula is tired, dating back at best to Bob Hope and the Rat Pack.
I could say it needs freshening up, maybe have Johnny Depp or Matt Damon present the show in a year when they are not nominated (book yourself in for the Lifetime Achievement Award in about 2040, Johnny), but I admit there are no easy fixes that would not just be the old formula refried. It has got to be more radical than that.
Once the Academy of Motion Pictures had been formed, it was natural to have an annual prize-giving, and it used to be a handy way to give the best pictures another publicity push. That doesn't work any more, in the sense that it doesn't boost sales, another sign that the filmgoing and Oscar-watching audiences are separate entities.
Every industry in pretty well every country has annual awards. Everyone eventually craves recognition, especially once they have been in a career for 20 years or more and the mid-life crisis is kicking in. It is a way of saying that making films, writing books or newspaper stories or even being the best share tipster means more than selling cans of beans - and you can bet the beanmakers have their own awards bash.
Just as bean-eaters rarely attend the annual beanfeast, so there is no reason why filmgoers should pay any attention to the Oscars. The bizarre difference is that film-makers pretend that their orgy of self-congratulation is the most glamorous on the planet, which is why Elton John admitted he spent the next two weeks walking around with a stupid grin on his face after he was Oscarred. Maybe the beanmaker of the year does too, but I doubt it.
In the end, like beanmaking, showbiz is a business and it is one that hates to be snubbed. If the TV audience keeps shrinking there will come a time when more and more of the stars find excuses not to attend, just as they did with the Hollywood Christmas Parade which is being so desperately revived this year. Certainly, if the studios tell them to attend, or going to the Oscars is inserted in their contract when they sign to appear in a film, they will attend. But it will become more and more obvious that that is what is going on: there are no secrets in Hollywood. And the event will gradually fall into disrepair, a bit like Charlie Chaplin's braces. Time to move on, guys.
In the LA Times of February 27, Patrick Goldstein constructs an elaborate argument for reforming the Oscars, with internet coverage, behind-the-scenes glimpses, segments from not-the-Oscars prize-giving and a whole lot of other stuff that must have sounded fine off the top of Goldstein's head but is never going to happen.
In the end this is a television decision. Without the TV audience there is no show, and the TV stations will bid for it as long as there is enough audience to sell to advertisers. Once that stops happening it's game over and the Oscars becomes just another industry bash like a lot of the Academy's other events. We may see a desperate attempt at a facelift, although that will meet stern resistance within the Academy's deeply conservative ranks.
The only glimmer of light is that the Academy depends financially on the Oscars. If the TV check starts shrinking, then the Academy governors might have to reconsider. By then, though, it will probably be too late.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Bill Kay predicts the end of al quai'da
Lunch and dinner meetings are much underestimated as sources of information and ideas largely, I suspect, because of the damage done to their reputation by the 20th century British and European tradition of the long (ie booze-soaked) business lunch. It is, I have to admit, my biggest loss in moving to America. Not that I don't do lunch or dinner, of course I do. But when I was in London as Money Editor of the Sunday Times I had at least three lunches and maybe a couple of dinners a week with people in the money business and that produced a steady flow of stories and column ideas from the hours of discussion and free flow of thoughts.
This is a preamble to an idea that struck me with particular force at dinner last night, at home with a friend of ours, Mary Mallory. Out of nowhere we were talking about how China might, as it rises to become a world power, become a bulwark against Islamic terror. But the contrary thought occurred to me: that Islamic terror will fade as the current crop of terrorist leaders ages and dies, but that China will turn into the country that poses the greatest threat to world peace.
This, I confess, attracts me because it chimes with my long-held belief that Chinese economic growth will eventually lead to a demand for political power which could easily find expression in military expansion. Happily China is a long way from feeling the pinch of overcrowding. But, as Germany proved under Hitler, overcrowding is not the only motive for expansion; nor, as Britain has shown, does overcrowding necessarily lead to military aggression. Brits just get used to jostling with one another without deciding that it would be a good idea to invade France by force.
No, I think it will be a badge of Chinese machismo to find a pretext for war, possibly against an Asian neighbour to begin with but maybe later on the big contest: a military superbowl against the US fought across the Pacific.
This naturally concerns Washington already. Its intelligence services have created files on every aspect of China, and the military threat is one of them; they wouldn't be doing their slightly paranoic job if they did not at least run through that scenario. I am sure their Beijing counterparts are doing the same thing.
Whether one side or the other decides that the balance of probabilities and the gains versus the losses add up to a decision to go to war is hard to say at this stage. But, just as 9/11 has not led to the global conflict that was feared in the weeks following that outrage, so I think the Islamic terror campaign will blow itself out. Too many Muslims are too intelligent to let themselves be consumed by hatred and jealousy towards the west, and they will kennel their stupid dogs of war, especially the suicide bombers with their ludicrously childish fantasy of meeting 71 (or is it 72?) virgins in heaven.
However, China faces a much more serious generational transition, in virtually the opposite direction, from peacefulness to bellicosity. We may be lucky. China may manage its growth rationally and calmly, without throwing up a Napoleon, a Hitler or a Stalin - or, for that matter, a Mao Zedong. But that country will at some stage have to throw off the constraints of communism, which have been shown everywhere else in the world to be tolerable only in the adolescent phase. I do not suffer from the delusion that democracy is inevitable. It suits western culture, but is by no means a universal solution. But whatever form greater freedom takes, it opens the door to a wider range of leaders, some of whom will attempt to subvert whatever system of government holds sway.
This is a preamble to an idea that struck me with particular force at dinner last night, at home with a friend of ours, Mary Mallory. Out of nowhere we were talking about how China might, as it rises to become a world power, become a bulwark against Islamic terror. But the contrary thought occurred to me: that Islamic terror will fade as the current crop of terrorist leaders ages and dies, but that China will turn into the country that poses the greatest threat to world peace.
This, I confess, attracts me because it chimes with my long-held belief that Chinese economic growth will eventually lead to a demand for political power which could easily find expression in military expansion. Happily China is a long way from feeling the pinch of overcrowding. But, as Germany proved under Hitler, overcrowding is not the only motive for expansion; nor, as Britain has shown, does overcrowding necessarily lead to military aggression. Brits just get used to jostling with one another without deciding that it would be a good idea to invade France by force.
No, I think it will be a badge of Chinese machismo to find a pretext for war, possibly against an Asian neighbour to begin with but maybe later on the big contest: a military superbowl against the US fought across the Pacific.
This naturally concerns Washington already. Its intelligence services have created files on every aspect of China, and the military threat is one of them; they wouldn't be doing their slightly paranoic job if they did not at least run through that scenario. I am sure their Beijing counterparts are doing the same thing.
Whether one side or the other decides that the balance of probabilities and the gains versus the losses add up to a decision to go to war is hard to say at this stage. But, just as 9/11 has not led to the global conflict that was feared in the weeks following that outrage, so I think the Islamic terror campaign will blow itself out. Too many Muslims are too intelligent to let themselves be consumed by hatred and jealousy towards the west, and they will kennel their stupid dogs of war, especially the suicide bombers with their ludicrously childish fantasy of meeting 71 (or is it 72?) virgins in heaven.
However, China faces a much more serious generational transition, in virtually the opposite direction, from peacefulness to bellicosity. We may be lucky. China may manage its growth rationally and calmly, without throwing up a Napoleon, a Hitler or a Stalin - or, for that matter, a Mao Zedong. But that country will at some stage have to throw off the constraints of communism, which have been shown everywhere else in the world to be tolerable only in the adolescent phase. I do not suffer from the delusion that democracy is inevitable. It suits western culture, but is by no means a universal solution. But whatever form greater freedom takes, it opens the door to a wider range of leaders, some of whom will attempt to subvert whatever system of government holds sway.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Oscars: the short and the short of it by Bill Kay
First real taste of the Oscars last night. Although I went to a screening in the Academy of Motion Pictures' Samuel Goldwyn theatre last year, that was well after the Oscars frenzy was over. Here we were, right in the run-up to it, to see the ten films nominated in the two shorts categories - animated and live action.
I'd been invited by an Academy member, Will Ryan, so we got the VIP treatment. I by-passed the line in Wilshire Boulevard to politely jostle towards the desk to collect an anonymous-looking green card which said that it would admit me to reserved seating for the show. But nearly as important was walking into the pre-show party featuring drinks and a decent buffet: huge dishes of hummous and fried pitta, olives, eggplant, rice as well as skewers of chicken and beef followed by nice stickies - dried mango coated in plain chocolate was my favourite. Nice bunch of people, too, bearing in mind that a lot of them (at least the middle-aged males) were that mysterious group who actually voted on the Oscars. I had had an image of very serious men in dark suits, but these were directors, producers, special effects people, actors - all very human, in fact.
The cinema is very comfortable, up a flight of stairs past a couple of overlifesized Oscar statuettes, which are there all year round but seem particularly there for effect at this time of year. You enter the cinema from the rear, and by the time they had drawn back the partition dividing the stairs from the party, all the public were seated. That meant we came down the aisles past them to the vacant seats at the front. Some were reserved for those involved with the nominated films, but otherwise you could sit anywhere - we ended up in the middle of row 6, couldn't do much better than that. The theatre was packed, and the organiser, Jon Bloom, said that the seats had sold out as soon as they went on sale.
The format of the evening was slightly odd, starting with the five animated films, then a discussion of those by their producers and directors, intermission, straight into the chat from the directors of the live action films and finishing with those five films. Symmetrical, but illogical, it seemed to me. It was also a long evening, lasting from 7pm to 12.15 am (the part started at 6pm).
But it was highly enjoyable: ten high-quality films with some intelligent and revealing remarks by the makers.
It all started with a flashback of the past 75 years of shorts Oscars, from Wallace and Gromit to Bugs Bunny, all at high speed, bit like the old London to Brighton train journey speeded up from an hour to a minute.
The two best animations, for me, were a British-Polish version of Peter and the Wolf and a French film, Even Pigeons go to Heaven, both stop-action.
P&W had taken five years to make. No prizes for that, of course, but you could see how much effort had gone into it - highly talented, productive effort at that. The director, Suzie Templeton, has also done a film called The Dog, which should be worth seeing and she should do a lot more. On stage she seemed slightly disdainful of the producer who had hired her, Hugh Welchman, who did seem to be claiming an awful lot of credit for the finished product.
Pigeons seemed to border cheating as an animation, as the characters had been modelled from real life, but I'm sure it conformed to all the Academy rules. It was whimsical, as animated shorts often are, but funnyu.
The two Canadians who made Madame Tutli-Putli, about a woman on a long-distance night train journey, seemed as pretentious as the film, talking about the subliminal dialogue between images and how the film was 'more caring of an atmosphere than a plot'. Apparently the National Film Board of Canada demands 'something innovative' before it will cough up the money - anything innovative, but the look of this one. Up your arse, chaps.
There was also a very self-conscious, arty but cliched Russian film called My Love. Happily its makers couldn't be there.
It was only afterwards that I heard that the likeliest winner of the Oscar was I met the Walrus, a five-minute cartoon set against a 1969 tape recording of a teenage boy's interview with John Lennon. Happily Lennon spoke in vivid images, so all the film does is put a picture to Lennon's every phrase, in the style of Monty Python or Yellow Submarine. Very unoriginal.
The live-action film directors were much more like what I have seen of big-time directors, whose ranks they clearly want to join. Again, for me the best two were British and French, which the French possibly edging it with an excellent comedy about a young boy latching onto two small-time Paris pickpockets and showing them how to do it.
The British film, Tonto Woman, was a mini-Western based on an Elmer Leonard story about a woman who is isolated by her husband after being kidnapped by an Indian tribe for 11 years, an how the husband stops an admirer from getting near her. The director, Daniel Barber, is an award-winning TV commercials director and I think the Hollywood studios will have a good look at him.
The most absorbing of the live-action films was At Night, a Danish production about three female cancer patients. Doesn't sound promising but in 40 minutes it certainly got the viewer involved in the last weeks of the three women and their interaction. Maybe not flash enough to win (famous last words).
The wierdest was The Substitute, an Italian comedy which must have confused most of the Academy audience as one of the characters, a fat boy, kept asking for the return of his toy soccer ball 'autographed by Del Piero'. I suppose you could guess, as Will Ryan did, that Del Piero is a soccer player but it hardly conveyed the man's god-like status in the game. Irrelevant to a pretty silly film, though, even sillier than a Belgian film about an office worker trying to learn the Tango. Don't ask.
Thankfully the roads were pretty clear after midnight, so I was home by one o'clock for five hours' sleep before getting up to agree and write my column. A highly enjoyable evening.
I'd been invited by an Academy member, Will Ryan, so we got the VIP treatment. I by-passed the line in Wilshire Boulevard to politely jostle towards the desk to collect an anonymous-looking green card which said that it would admit me to reserved seating for the show. But nearly as important was walking into the pre-show party featuring drinks and a decent buffet: huge dishes of hummous and fried pitta, olives, eggplant, rice as well as skewers of chicken and beef followed by nice stickies - dried mango coated in plain chocolate was my favourite. Nice bunch of people, too, bearing in mind that a lot of them (at least the middle-aged males) were that mysterious group who actually voted on the Oscars. I had had an image of very serious men in dark suits, but these were directors, producers, special effects people, actors - all very human, in fact.
The cinema is very comfortable, up a flight of stairs past a couple of overlifesized Oscar statuettes, which are there all year round but seem particularly there for effect at this time of year. You enter the cinema from the rear, and by the time they had drawn back the partition dividing the stairs from the party, all the public were seated. That meant we came down the aisles past them to the vacant seats at the front. Some were reserved for those involved with the nominated films, but otherwise you could sit anywhere - we ended up in the middle of row 6, couldn't do much better than that. The theatre was packed, and the organiser, Jon Bloom, said that the seats had sold out as soon as they went on sale.
The format of the evening was slightly odd, starting with the five animated films, then a discussion of those by their producers and directors, intermission, straight into the chat from the directors of the live action films and finishing with those five films. Symmetrical, but illogical, it seemed to me. It was also a long evening, lasting from 7pm to 12.15 am (the part started at 6pm).
But it was highly enjoyable: ten high-quality films with some intelligent and revealing remarks by the makers.
It all started with a flashback of the past 75 years of shorts Oscars, from Wallace and Gromit to Bugs Bunny, all at high speed, bit like the old London to Brighton train journey speeded up from an hour to a minute.
The two best animations, for me, were a British-Polish version of Peter and the Wolf and a French film, Even Pigeons go to Heaven, both stop-action.
P&W had taken five years to make. No prizes for that, of course, but you could see how much effort had gone into it - highly talented, productive effort at that. The director, Suzie Templeton, has also done a film called The Dog, which should be worth seeing and she should do a lot more. On stage she seemed slightly disdainful of the producer who had hired her, Hugh Welchman, who did seem to be claiming an awful lot of credit for the finished product.
Pigeons seemed to border cheating as an animation, as the characters had been modelled from real life, but I'm sure it conformed to all the Academy rules. It was whimsical, as animated shorts often are, but funnyu.
The two Canadians who made Madame Tutli-Putli, about a woman on a long-distance night train journey, seemed as pretentious as the film, talking about the subliminal dialogue between images and how the film was 'more caring of an atmosphere than a plot'. Apparently the National Film Board of Canada demands 'something innovative' before it will cough up the money - anything innovative, but the look of this one. Up your arse, chaps.
There was also a very self-conscious, arty but cliched Russian film called My Love. Happily its makers couldn't be there.
It was only afterwards that I heard that the likeliest winner of the Oscar was I met the Walrus, a five-minute cartoon set against a 1969 tape recording of a teenage boy's interview with John Lennon. Happily Lennon spoke in vivid images, so all the film does is put a picture to Lennon's every phrase, in the style of Monty Python or Yellow Submarine. Very unoriginal.
The live-action film directors were much more like what I have seen of big-time directors, whose ranks they clearly want to join. Again, for me the best two were British and French, which the French possibly edging it with an excellent comedy about a young boy latching onto two small-time Paris pickpockets and showing them how to do it.
The British film, Tonto Woman, was a mini-Western based on an Elmer Leonard story about a woman who is isolated by her husband after being kidnapped by an Indian tribe for 11 years, an how the husband stops an admirer from getting near her. The director, Daniel Barber, is an award-winning TV commercials director and I think the Hollywood studios will have a good look at him.
The most absorbing of the live-action films was At Night, a Danish production about three female cancer patients. Doesn't sound promising but in 40 minutes it certainly got the viewer involved in the last weeks of the three women and their interaction. Maybe not flash enough to win (famous last words).
The wierdest was The Substitute, an Italian comedy which must have confused most of the Academy audience as one of the characters, a fat boy, kept asking for the return of his toy soccer ball 'autographed by Del Piero'. I suppose you could guess, as Will Ryan did, that Del Piero is a soccer player but it hardly conveyed the man's god-like status in the game. Irrelevant to a pretty silly film, though, even sillier than a Belgian film about an office worker trying to learn the Tango. Don't ask.
Thankfully the roads were pretty clear after midnight, so I was home by one o'clock for five hours' sleep before getting up to agree and write my column. A highly enjoyable evening.
Monday, February 11, 2008
colonoscopy: Bill Kay tells the truth, the hole truth and nothing but the truth
Since yesterday morning I have been starving - literally. It's for medical reasons, ahead of a colonoscopy tomorrow morning, but I am enjoying the experience in a strange sort of way and I think I may repeat it on a regular basis.
Some diet experts say you should fast every week or month, as a way of cleansing the system and of course shedding weight. If you starve two days a week that's 40% fewer calories consumed!
I am not being as strict as that, as I am allowed broth - basically a stock cube in hot water - and apple juice (250 calories a pint) as well as the calorie-laden cola and lots of other non-calory drinks from water to coffee. No alcohol, but I've been on the wagon since late last October, so that is no hardship.
My stomach is rumbling a fair bit, but I can't claim to be going without food of any sort and there is enough variety in that lot to keep going for a reasonable amount of time. It's certainly a big change from my days as a Business or Personal Finance Editor in London, when the meals and drinks come at you like the now-proverbial tsunami (I wonder how many people could even spell that word before the Asian tsunami a couple of years ago?).
The big difference is the lack of solid food, and it has made my realise how important solids are to our daily lives, not just for pure nutrition but as punctuations in the day for mealtimes, snacks to accompany reading, watching TV or going to the cinema, comfort food when we are feeling cold or depressed. Take solids out of the equation and you are left with hot drinks, cold drinks, sweet or savoury - much more limited.
The toughest moment, and OK it wasn't that tough, was going to an art exhibition at a local restaurant, Gale's, yesterday and confronting a table of snacks - nuts, cheese, dried apricot, the sort of stuff I would hoover up. That was a blow, but you'll be glad to know I got over it. Otherwise I have kept away from food, other than raiding the fridge for apple juice or water.
I imagine one of the attractions of fasting to ascetics is not so much the lack of calories as the denial to your mouth of a whole range of tastes and textures which, to be honest, we take for granted and feed ourselves unthinkingly. Mild addictions such as chocolate or sweets or curries are perhaps an extreme version, but chips (US fries) can be just as habit-forming.
Food is something I greatly enjoy, particularly since I am not drinking, but I think carefully about what it is doing to me. I restrict my intake of stodge, although there are times when there is nothing more satisfying than hot bread or fat steakhouse chips. I am now vegetarian, which I find simplifies food choice and cuts out a lot of rubbish that is served up in restaurants: it is just harder to mess around with vegetables, although that did not stop me succumbing to a pretty awful case of food poisoning from eating tofu in a Chinese restaurant a few weeks ago. There is, in the end, not much you can do about a cook with dirty hands or food that is left lying around.
However, all this is within the context of a normal eating framework. Confining yourself to liquids is completely outside that framework and feels like being in a different dimension. I am not thinking just about the feeling of lightheadedness, which I have not experienced much in the past 36 hours. I have felt tired and sluggish, but a few shots of coffee corrects that. I am typing fine, no more mistakes than normal, so my reactions are OK. I drove yesterday and I reckon I'll be fine driving today - we'll see if I can get myself to the clinic tomorrow morning without falling asleep at the wheel! No last-minute shots of coffee allowed, as nil by mouth from midnight tonight: I might give myself a jag just before I go to bed.
I'd like to do this again, though. It's a new experience and feels as if it clarifies your thinking. I've just taken an IQ test on facebook and scored 130, which is about right for me.
I met a former Playboy Playmate who is now a dietician and fasts most of the time. She said that you don't need food, it's just a habit. I don't think I could give it up entirely - I am certainly looking forward to a tasty lunch tomorrow - but I think she had a point. We are conditioned into eating, whether it is one or five meals a day, and sometimes it is good to just say no. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway, and the experience hasn't been unpleasant.
It's now 3pm, and I have just started taking phospho soda, a saline solution to empty the bowels so the colon camera gets a clear view tomorrow. Apparently everyone reacts differently to this part of the preparation, so I'll just have to see how I get on.
4.45pm Not bad so far. The visits to the loo have started, feel like Kings Cross station (London version) with the amount of traffic going through me, don't worry I'll spare you the details gory and otherwise. It's not the best day I've ever spent, can think of more pleasant ways of passing the time, but it's not the worst. OK, can't resist it, I thought the bottom was going to fall out of my world but instead it feels like the world is falling out of my bottom...
Went to meet our regular bunch of friends at Conrad's diner on Monday night - I stuck to 7Up and coffee, and had several trips to the loo throughout the evening. Got home at 9, in time for my second and last dose of Phosph-soda. This time it really took hold and I couldn't get to sleep until 1 am.
Tuesday: Woke at 5.15 feeling like a limp rag.
Managed to push a few emails around before going back to bed. Got up feeling slightly better at 7 am, drove off at 7.40 and walked into the clinic at 8.
I was punished for turning up early, because after a few minutes I was called and prepped by 8.35. I then spent 85 minutes staring at the clock opposite until I was wheeled in.
That was the only glitch, though. Dr Isaac Bartley, a genial black doctor I was given a mixture of pentathol (correct me if I've got that wrong) and what the nurse described as a hypnotism drug. They knocked me out - no question of watching the TV - and I came round an hour later without feeling a thing and no discomfort. Quite amazing. I wouldn't believe they had stuck anything up me without being given photos - and they could have been faked! And no, I'm not posting them on youtube...
After a brief recovery spell I was told to put my clothes on and I was being led out to the car park by Lynne and our friends Pat and Elaine, who drove us off to Chandra, our favourite Thai restaurant, for a celebratory lunch. I am of course not allowed to drive until tomorrow. It's nearly 5pm and I am suffering no ill-effects whatsoever, no soreness, no internal pains. All that remains are the results, but nothing was removed so no polyps to worry about, just some haemorrhoids - those friendly blobs that tell you you are over 50.
Some diet experts say you should fast every week or month, as a way of cleansing the system and of course shedding weight. If you starve two days a week that's 40% fewer calories consumed!
I am not being as strict as that, as I am allowed broth - basically a stock cube in hot water - and apple juice (250 calories a pint) as well as the calorie-laden cola and lots of other non-calory drinks from water to coffee. No alcohol, but I've been on the wagon since late last October, so that is no hardship.
My stomach is rumbling a fair bit, but I can't claim to be going without food of any sort and there is enough variety in that lot to keep going for a reasonable amount of time. It's certainly a big change from my days as a Business or Personal Finance Editor in London, when the meals and drinks come at you like the now-proverbial tsunami (I wonder how many people could even spell that word before the Asian tsunami a couple of years ago?).
The big difference is the lack of solid food, and it has made my realise how important solids are to our daily lives, not just for pure nutrition but as punctuations in the day for mealtimes, snacks to accompany reading, watching TV or going to the cinema, comfort food when we are feeling cold or depressed. Take solids out of the equation and you are left with hot drinks, cold drinks, sweet or savoury - much more limited.
The toughest moment, and OK it wasn't that tough, was going to an art exhibition at a local restaurant, Gale's, yesterday and confronting a table of snacks - nuts, cheese, dried apricot, the sort of stuff I would hoover up. That was a blow, but you'll be glad to know I got over it. Otherwise I have kept away from food, other than raiding the fridge for apple juice or water.
I imagine one of the attractions of fasting to ascetics is not so much the lack of calories as the denial to your mouth of a whole range of tastes and textures which, to be honest, we take for granted and feed ourselves unthinkingly. Mild addictions such as chocolate or sweets or curries are perhaps an extreme version, but chips (US fries) can be just as habit-forming.
Food is something I greatly enjoy, particularly since I am not drinking, but I think carefully about what it is doing to me. I restrict my intake of stodge, although there are times when there is nothing more satisfying than hot bread or fat steakhouse chips. I am now vegetarian, which I find simplifies food choice and cuts out a lot of rubbish that is served up in restaurants: it is just harder to mess around with vegetables, although that did not stop me succumbing to a pretty awful case of food poisoning from eating tofu in a Chinese restaurant a few weeks ago. There is, in the end, not much you can do about a cook with dirty hands or food that is left lying around.
However, all this is within the context of a normal eating framework. Confining yourself to liquids is completely outside that framework and feels like being in a different dimension. I am not thinking just about the feeling of lightheadedness, which I have not experienced much in the past 36 hours. I have felt tired and sluggish, but a few shots of coffee corrects that. I am typing fine, no more mistakes than normal, so my reactions are OK. I drove yesterday and I reckon I'll be fine driving today - we'll see if I can get myself to the clinic tomorrow morning without falling asleep at the wheel! No last-minute shots of coffee allowed, as nil by mouth from midnight tonight: I might give myself a jag just before I go to bed.
I'd like to do this again, though. It's a new experience and feels as if it clarifies your thinking. I've just taken an IQ test on facebook and scored 130, which is about right for me.
I met a former Playboy Playmate who is now a dietician and fasts most of the time. She said that you don't need food, it's just a habit. I don't think I could give it up entirely - I am certainly looking forward to a tasty lunch tomorrow - but I think she had a point. We are conditioned into eating, whether it is one or five meals a day, and sometimes it is good to just say no. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway, and the experience hasn't been unpleasant.
It's now 3pm, and I have just started taking phospho soda, a saline solution to empty the bowels so the colon camera gets a clear view tomorrow. Apparently everyone reacts differently to this part of the preparation, so I'll just have to see how I get on.
4.45pm Not bad so far. The visits to the loo have started, feel like Kings Cross station (London version) with the amount of traffic going through me, don't worry I'll spare you the details gory and otherwise. It's not the best day I've ever spent, can think of more pleasant ways of passing the time, but it's not the worst. OK, can't resist it, I thought the bottom was going to fall out of my world but instead it feels like the world is falling out of my bottom...
Went to meet our regular bunch of friends at Conrad's diner on Monday night - I stuck to 7Up and coffee, and had several trips to the loo throughout the evening. Got home at 9, in time for my second and last dose of Phosph-soda. This time it really took hold and I couldn't get to sleep until 1 am.
Tuesday: Woke at 5.15 feeling like a limp rag.
Managed to push a few emails around before going back to bed. Got up feeling slightly better at 7 am, drove off at 7.40 and walked into the clinic at 8.
I was punished for turning up early, because after a few minutes I was called and prepped by 8.35. I then spent 85 minutes staring at the clock opposite until I was wheeled in.
That was the only glitch, though. Dr Isaac Bartley, a genial black doctor I was given a mixture of pentathol (correct me if I've got that wrong) and what the nurse described as a hypnotism drug. They knocked me out - no question of watching the TV - and I came round an hour later without feeling a thing and no discomfort. Quite amazing. I wouldn't believe they had stuck anything up me without being given photos - and they could have been faked! And no, I'm not posting them on youtube...
After a brief recovery spell I was told to put my clothes on and I was being led out to the car park by Lynne and our friends Pat and Elaine, who drove us off to Chandra, our favourite Thai restaurant, for a celebratory lunch. I am of course not allowed to drive until tomorrow. It's nearly 5pm and I am suffering no ill-effects whatsoever, no soreness, no internal pains. All that remains are the results, but nothing was removed so no polyps to worry about, just some haemorrhoids - those friendly blobs that tell you you are over 50.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Bill Kay puzzles over Prince Andrew's accent
Marina Del Rey, on the Pacific coast near LAX, was the unlikely setting for my first meeting with royalty since, ooh, let's see now, I was tested by Prince Philip on how to operate a Datastream stock market computer 23 years ago.
This time Prince Andrew was the royal who had the honour of being in the Kay Presence, a prospect daunting enough for him to be flanked by flunkeys and discreetly circled by secret service monkeys with giveaway Foreign Office lapel badges.
The venue was the Ritz Carlton hotel, a sore point since Pasadena only last month lost its own Ritz Carlton. The building and most of the staff are still there, but it was sold to a Hong Kong company which manages its own hotels. That meant bye-bye to Marriott, who had the management contract and own the Ritz Carlton name (not sure about the Ritz name, which appears to be owned by Mohammed Fayed through the Ritz Paris).
The occasion last night was a dinner thrown for Andrew by the British American Business Council Los Angeles, or Babcla, a forum for British businesspeople in the area to get together with Americans interested in doing business in Britain, or just networking. Andrew was there in his marvellous freeloading role as Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, a government front organisation for promoting British business abroad.
I naturally did not get to meet His Royal Highness, as access to him was carefully controlled and he was rightly mainly interested in meeting business people operating in Los Angeles.
Give or take an American accent here and there, the dinner proceeded much as it would have if it had been held at the Savoy or Grosvenor House in London. Drinks were followed by a formal dinner in a large, chilly room with a head table and thirty or forty circular tables holding about ten people each. A simple salad was followed by a choice of tornedos of beef or risotto primavera (my preference, and very good too) and then either creme brulee or tiramisu, washed down with red or white wine. Even the bread rolls and accompanying pat of butter seemed British, except that they were warm and fresh - Grosvenor House doesn't do warm, fresh bread.
When they had finished eating, quite a few of the 300 or so guests slipped away. Possibly they didn't realise that if they had turned their menu over they would have realised that speeches were to follow the meal, rather than precede it, and that Andrew was going to speak last of all. He clearly did not like that running order; he is not a natural public speaker and may not have enjoyed his meal with the prospect of performing still confronting him.
When he did get up, he made not a bad fist of his speech, which was probably written for him and was shot through with mind-numbing statistics and trite sentiments about the greatness of both Britain and America.
The surprise was the most unexpected aspect of Andrew's speech: his accent. Unlike his two brothers, who have the chinless drawl of a Harold Macmillan, Andrew's accent is middle-class grammar school. Odd, as like Charles, he attended Gordonstoun school and his breeding is impeccably aristocratic even if the vile calumny is true and his father is Lord Porchester. (The ten-year gap between him and his sister Anne was bound to foster gossip). Maybe it was his years in the Royal Navy, gunning down Argy battleships, but if you didn't know it was a son of the Queen you would have thought it was a middle-ranking management executive delivering an exhortation to a sales conference. So it went down very well with his audience.
This time Prince Andrew was the royal who had the honour of being in the Kay Presence, a prospect daunting enough for him to be flanked by flunkeys and discreetly circled by secret service monkeys with giveaway Foreign Office lapel badges.
The venue was the Ritz Carlton hotel, a sore point since Pasadena only last month lost its own Ritz Carlton. The building and most of the staff are still there, but it was sold to a Hong Kong company which manages its own hotels. That meant bye-bye to Marriott, who had the management contract and own the Ritz Carlton name (not sure about the Ritz name, which appears to be owned by Mohammed Fayed through the Ritz Paris).
The occasion last night was a dinner thrown for Andrew by the British American Business Council Los Angeles, or Babcla, a forum for British businesspeople in the area to get together with Americans interested in doing business in Britain, or just networking. Andrew was there in his marvellous freeloading role as Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, a government front organisation for promoting British business abroad.
I naturally did not get to meet His Royal Highness, as access to him was carefully controlled and he was rightly mainly interested in meeting business people operating in Los Angeles.
Give or take an American accent here and there, the dinner proceeded much as it would have if it had been held at the Savoy or Grosvenor House in London. Drinks were followed by a formal dinner in a large, chilly room with a head table and thirty or forty circular tables holding about ten people each. A simple salad was followed by a choice of tornedos of beef or risotto primavera (my preference, and very good too) and then either creme brulee or tiramisu, washed down with red or white wine. Even the bread rolls and accompanying pat of butter seemed British, except that they were warm and fresh - Grosvenor House doesn't do warm, fresh bread.
When they had finished eating, quite a few of the 300 or so guests slipped away. Possibly they didn't realise that if they had turned their menu over they would have realised that speeches were to follow the meal, rather than precede it, and that Andrew was going to speak last of all. He clearly did not like that running order; he is not a natural public speaker and may not have enjoyed his meal with the prospect of performing still confronting him.
When he did get up, he made not a bad fist of his speech, which was probably written for him and was shot through with mind-numbing statistics and trite sentiments about the greatness of both Britain and America.
The surprise was the most unexpected aspect of Andrew's speech: his accent. Unlike his two brothers, who have the chinless drawl of a Harold Macmillan, Andrew's accent is middle-class grammar school. Odd, as like Charles, he attended Gordonstoun school and his breeding is impeccably aristocratic even if the vile calumny is true and his father is Lord Porchester. (The ten-year gap between him and his sister Anne was bound to foster gossip). Maybe it was his years in the Royal Navy, gunning down Argy battleships, but if you didn't know it was a son of the Queen you would have thought it was a middle-ranking management executive delivering an exhortation to a sales conference. So it went down very well with his audience.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Why the world snubs American sport by Bill Kay
There are only four rules for a successful game: 1. The basic rules should be easy to understand. 2. It should be easy to learn how to play. 3. Players should always have the feeling that they are continually improving. 4. Spectators should find enough variety in a game to keep coming back to watch it.
These principles apply to all the great games: soccer, cricket, rugby, hockey, athletics, competitive swimming, snooker, darts, golf, volleyball, rounders, American football, baseball and basketball.
But what's different about the last three? They are virtually unknown outside North America - and the reasons go very deep, as is shown by a fascinating feature in last Saturday's Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5e3056a-d131-11dc-953a-0000779fd2ac.html).
Once the author, Simon Kuyper, has got over the fact that he couldn't blag press tickets to see either the New York Yankees or Mets, his thesis is that the spread of games is linked to a country's success as a colonial power. OK, we're talking UK v US here, the two great colonial powers of the past 200 years, while Britain has been pre-eminent at inventing games.
But America has been unable to persuade much of the rest of the world to adopt even its synthetic rip-offs of British games - football (or girl-rugby as it has been astutely called) for rugby, baseball for rounders. Basketball is its very own, but it has the fatal flaw that, while it is cheap to organise, it does not contain enough variation to hold attention on a mass scale. Indded, you can say much the same about baseball and football, though Americans generally find there is too much variety and complexity in cricket for them to comprehend. Maybe they'll catch on now that 20-20 is taking over.
Sorry to be reduced to making cheap shots, but America's lack of success in exporting games is very cultural as well as colonial. Kuyper argues that British colonials were just better at making friends with the natives, and so it was natural to invite them to join in a game they had brought with them. He claims that American forces overseas just don't do this, and that they have been reduced to giving away soccer balls in Afghanistan.
You can theorise endlessly about why all this should be, and it's certainly worth a book because the causes should tell us plenty about the nature of American and British society. Any volunteers?
These principles apply to all the great games: soccer, cricket, rugby, hockey, athletics, competitive swimming, snooker, darts, golf, volleyball, rounders, American football, baseball and basketball.
But what's different about the last three? They are virtually unknown outside North America - and the reasons go very deep, as is shown by a fascinating feature in last Saturday's Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5e3056a-d131-11dc-953a-0000779fd2ac.html).
Once the author, Simon Kuyper, has got over the fact that he couldn't blag press tickets to see either the New York Yankees or Mets, his thesis is that the spread of games is linked to a country's success as a colonial power. OK, we're talking UK v US here, the two great colonial powers of the past 200 years, while Britain has been pre-eminent at inventing games.
But America has been unable to persuade much of the rest of the world to adopt even its synthetic rip-offs of British games - football (or girl-rugby as it has been astutely called) for rugby, baseball for rounders. Basketball is its very own, but it has the fatal flaw that, while it is cheap to organise, it does not contain enough variation to hold attention on a mass scale. Indded, you can say much the same about baseball and football, though Americans generally find there is too much variety and complexity in cricket for them to comprehend. Maybe they'll catch on now that 20-20 is taking over.
Sorry to be reduced to making cheap shots, but America's lack of success in exporting games is very cultural as well as colonial. Kuyper argues that British colonials were just better at making friends with the natives, and so it was natural to invite them to join in a game they had brought with them. He claims that American forces overseas just don't do this, and that they have been reduced to giving away soccer balls in Afghanistan.
You can theorise endlessly about why all this should be, and it's certainly worth a book because the causes should tell us plenty about the nature of American and British society. Any volunteers?
Bill Kay steps back in time to art deco
It's a hackneyed phrase, but last night I came as close as I can ever imagine to stepping back in time. Once I had collected a valet parking ticket for my 21st-century Ford Escape (at a decidedly modern $7 before a tip, and I have never seen anyone count my $3 change so slowly), from the moment I walked through the art deco metal gates into the sheletered Lalique forecourt leading to the double doors where I was greeted by a cloaked, uniformed doorman, I was in the 1920s. This was the Cicada Restaurant on Olive Street in downtown LA, in the historic Oviatt Building, which really was built in 1928.
It's a beautifully room, two storeys and 30 feet high, creating space for a gallery containing tables overlooking the main floor and a spacious bar at one end. The ground floor tables feel as if they on an ocean liner, with high pillars supporting the gallery and a huge main area for diners, dancers and a band - on this occasion the impeccably apt Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys. The whole place is done out in dark brown mahogany and everyone is encouraged to dress in 1920s style. Not everyone does, of course, but the women take advantage of the opportunity to wear their best flapper outfits while I counted at least a dozen pairs of two-tone shoes on the men, led by the owner, Maxwell de Mille, who has the whole rig: trilby, pencil moustache, chalk-stripe suit, black shirt, white tie.
It all added up to the sort of atmosphere that sweeps everyone into its vortex, and for a couple of hours we were all sent back 80 years.
The food is imaginative and well-executed Italian - all overpriced, but in the circumstances it's worth it because it's part of an experience which goes well beyond eating. It's play-acting on a grand scale, and I think it's going to spearhead a revival of downtown as the entertainment centre it used to be before the cinemas decamped to Hollywood and the wealthy quit Bunker Hill for Beverley Hills.
It's a beautifully room, two storeys and 30 feet high, creating space for a gallery containing tables overlooking the main floor and a spacious bar at one end. The ground floor tables feel as if they on an ocean liner, with high pillars supporting the gallery and a huge main area for diners, dancers and a band - on this occasion the impeccably apt Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys. The whole place is done out in dark brown mahogany and everyone is encouraged to dress in 1920s style. Not everyone does, of course, but the women take advantage of the opportunity to wear their best flapper outfits while I counted at least a dozen pairs of two-tone shoes on the men, led by the owner, Maxwell de Mille, who has the whole rig: trilby, pencil moustache, chalk-stripe suit, black shirt, white tie.
It all added up to the sort of atmosphere that sweeps everyone into its vortex, and for a couple of hours we were all sent back 80 years.
The food is imaginative and well-executed Italian - all overpriced, but in the circumstances it's worth it because it's part of an experience which goes well beyond eating. It's play-acting on a grand scale, and I think it's going to spearhead a revival of downtown as the entertainment centre it used to be before the cinemas decamped to Hollywood and the wealthy quit Bunker Hill for Beverley Hills.
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