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SO LONG AND FAREWELL---FOR NOW

Writing a blog has been quite an eye-opener.  From the Statistics on my Dashboard I know I have many more readers than those that have been kind enough to bother to sign up as Followers. I’ve received personal emails of encouragement which has been great, even if there hasn’t been a lot in the Comment boxes. I also know I have readers in Canada, Switzerland, India and Russia (!) who I’ve never met (Hello out there!) and I know, with some fascination, that some people follow me on their Blackberry.  All of this is very flattering and encouraging.

Sadly, however, time moves on and with a body stuffed with turkey and a holiday to Guatemala fast approaching, not to mention a desire to spend more time on other projects, I’ve decided to give up the blog on a regular basis.  The other side of this is, of course, that I am fast becoming acclimatized to dealing with the vagaries of living in NYC and the USA.  Well, most of the time…  I’m not particularly happy that grocery shopping here seems to be a contact sport, nor that tipping entails carrying around a load of One Dollar bills and a calculator.  I’m certainly not happy about having to tell taxi drivers to get the hell off the phone nor that Customer Service is anything but:  I have days with the phone on ‘speakerphone’ as I wait for a human being to replace inane music.

However, here are five things that absolutely scare the hell out of me about living in these United States:

1)    That the result of “Dancing with the Stars” is considered important enough to be included on the 11p.m. news;

2)   That some idiot calling himself ‘The Situation’ with a girlfriend called ‘Snookie’ can become an overnight multi-millionaire because there are enough other idiots out there wanting to see what they get up to on “Jersey Shore;”

3)   That medical care is so convoluted and so expensive that many seniors can no longer afford the medications or procedures they need once they go on Medicare (though hopefully Obama has sorted some of that out) ;

4)   That the infrastructure of the U.S., and NYC in particular, has been so lacking in investment that we are just basically waiting for bridges and tunnels to collapse or a major subway accident; compared to the Underground system in almost any major city in Europe we are on a par here with the Third World;

5)   That someone whose total government experience is 6 years as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, followed by 3 years of the governorship of Alaska—which she resigned to make money!—can even vaguely be considered a presidential runner.  Sometimes I wonder what John McCain thinks of the Pandora’s box he opened up. 

You’ll no doubt now want to know what I do like about living here.  So:

1)    It’s much more a 24/7 society than London and that availability of virtually anything you want at anytime is strangely comforting;

2)   The variety of foods available is fascinating; you name it, New York has it;

3)   New Yorkers have to pick up after their dogs with pooper scoopers so, while there may not be the many street sweepers we have in London, you are less likely to step into a dog mess;

4)   There’s always something going on near you, be it a street fair or market, an outdoor concert or a parade;

5)   And finally, yes, I have to admit it, the people are pretty damn wonderful.  They’re friendly and open----even if a little bit crazy.

For now, adieu.  But if you like, you can follow me on Twitter @andidowning.  I’m limited to short spurts so it’ll take less time from your day J And thank you for reading!

A SEINFELD DAY

A few weeks ago I had an appointment with my ophthamologist to discuss the possibility of having an operation---my third---to correct a lazy muscle in my right eye.  Since the last operation had been some 23 years ago I sort of hoped that opthalmology had improved to the extent that a better job could now be done and maybe, just maybe, before I pass on to the next world, I might be able to have a photograph of myself where I don’t look drunk.  The ophthamologist listened to my plaintive story and scribbled the names of two doctors for me to consider approaching.  I, in turn, had to discover if either of the two would be covered by my insurance.

One was.  I duly googled her without putting the M.D. after her name and what came up so amazed me that I sat staring at the screen for some time before feeling impelled to share my amazement with someone, namely my brother.  Yes!  It was all true.  He recognized the name immediately as has everyone else of a certain age who was resident in the U.S. in the 70s, unlike myself.  Yes!  This doctor had had a sex change operation.  She had been a he.  And not only that, but a famous “he,” a star tennis champion.  Oy ve.    However, let me say immediately that she is also a brilliant opthamologist, a well respected eye surgeon who had been the Director of several opthamology departments and is the non plus ultra in this particular area of expertise.  What the hell should I do?

Well, reader, I went to see her. 

The day hadn’t started well.  My housekeeper had shown up late and then stated somewhat coldly, when I asked her not to knot the blind pulls in the living room, that perhaps she couldn’t work for me anymore because I didn’t like her work.  I managed to ease that over and went on my merry way only to get on the bus and discover that I had lost one Metro card and was left with a second with no money on it.  Gleaning enough change from my purse to pay my fare, and wondering what else could go wrong, I finally made my way down Madison Avenue and got to my appointment.  After an initial consultation with the smiliest, happiest, friendliest assistant one could imagine, I sat reading a magazine in the waiting area when I suddenly heard my name called and found myself looking directly into the crotch of an incredibly tall PERSON of no discernable gender.  The good doctor seemed to be wearing man’s pants and a white coat, as doctors often do:  male doctors.  She had hands the size of dinner plates and a voice that I can only say reminded me of Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” or maybe it was closer to Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire”. I’m not going to discuss the face and hair because, well, we’re all getting on in years and some of us will always be a bit better looking than others no matter which sex we are.  But the total lack of femininity was not what bothered me.  What did bother me as I tried to hang on to my fast vanishing sanity was that there was absolutely no glimmer, not a hint, not a spark, not a nano-dot of humour or personality.  It was as if the removal of her manhood had taken with it her ability to interact with humankind.  And that bothered me.  I spoke, she listened.  I jested, she was like a stone wall (no pun intended.  Well, maybe just a little….)  When I got tired of my monologue, and suffering with the light due to those dreaded eye drops, I waited for the prognosis.  “This is operable,” she said before handing me on to her Operations Coordinator.  And that, as they say, was that.

When I recounted all of this to my dear friend over dinner that evening, she said to me that it was “soooooo Seinfeld!”  And, indeed, it was, if by ‘Seinfeld’ we mean that New York kind of day when the weird and wonderful are interspersed with things going wrong that turn out right.  So even if the good doctor doesn’t have a sense of humour, I hope I do.  And I’m hoping to go ahead with the op and hopefully have the last laugh.

Carriers of Values

There’s been a lot in the news about the new body scanners the TSA has brought in over here.  Strangely enough, for Americans who value their freedom but value their lives even more, there have been an awful lot of complaints about these things…mostly from men.  The pilots are calling the scanners “dick sticks” or “dick measuring devices” because of the clear view the personnel get of your body outline.  Now, I have to say I’ve looked online at some of the photos generated and I actually mistook a female for a man. That surely must make the men look pretty good?  But no, on the men’s photos you couldn’t tell what the hell was between their legs unless it was a gun stuck up there.  Personally, I don’t like the fact that the rolls of fat are clearly outlined which will no doubt show my saggy tush.  But if the damn things are going to turn up bombs wired to men’s packets, I guess I’ll just be a little less vain.

ON the homefront, there was a two-day training program recently in Baltimore for exorcists in the Catholic Church.  More than 50 Bishops and 60 priests attended as there is apparently a great shortage of exorcists over here!!  On the news, they seemed to treat this increase in the need for exorcists with some astonishment.  Are they kidding?  Has anyone counted up the number of progammes currently on telly over here that deal with the paranormal/superhuman/extraterrestrial?  You put some nut in front of one these programmes and of course they are eventually going to think they are possessed.  My daughter told me the vampire Twilight books were originally created for teens to have love stories without sex in them.  Once again I ask, what happened to Westerns?  Maybe the problem actually is that Americans can’t deal with life as we know it anymore; they have to day- dream of something that empowers them.  No longer the World’s foremost Super Power, people are taking refuge in vampires, witches and aliens…in fact, anything except the daily grind.

FINALLY, my daughter is currently studying for her M.A.  at NYU.  One of the articles she was recently given to read was so appallingly written, it needed line by line translation.  We discovered that the professor is a German currently employed at prestigious Chicago University.  It would appear that he is using an 18^th Century dictionary (no not 19^th Century, I did mean 18^th!) for looking up words he cannot translate from his native tongue.  Here is a quote Kit sent me:  “"Rather, from its very origin athwart the African riverine highways along which knowledge about the law-giving voice of the leopard was sold from one slave-trading local unit to the other, ekpe’s success had been pegged to its nature as a sacred commodity circulating against other carriers of values. "

The question is, what American editor sat there, read the paper (presumably) and decided to publish it?  If anyone can translate, please put it in the comment box.  I’m going athwart the riverine highway of Columbus Avenue to get some aspirin after that.

THE COSMIC SCALE

Last night as I was leafing through a magazine in an attempt to induce somnolence I was jolted back to awareness by a full page colour advert for---CAN IT BE?--- cigarettes.  Since I was under the impression that cigarette advertising had been banned, as it certainly has in the U.K., I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at.  “Natural American Spirit” sounds so innocuous, with their ‘sandals and oats’ packets showing an Indian smoking the peace pipe, that I couldn’t quite comprehend that this was an actual tobacco product.  But there it is in huge letters:  “100% U.S. Grown Tobacco,” obviously something to be proud of.  “Share the love,” it says, “100% additive free natural tobacco.”  In my hazy state I read it as “addictive-free” before reading it again.  Natural tobacco?  Is there any other kind?  I didn’t even know tobacco came from other countries; I sort of thought that down there in Raleigh/Durham and Salem and places they were growing enough of the stuff for the current market.  NO?

Not only are they offering $20 in gift certificates (surely that can’t be legal?) they go on to tell us, “On the Cosmic Scale it may be a small thing, but then, to the many farmers we support it’s actually a pretty big deal.”  And not only that, but it means “….safeguarding the environment through encouraging sustainable agriculture, by shipping across shorter distances, and by reducing fuel use and emissions.  It means we can improve the big picture by focusing on the details.  IT’S WHAT WE DO!”  Wow!  It seems that if you smoke these things you’re positively helping the American economy----indeed, helping the Universe! Isn’t that sustainable agriculture similar to the US trying to get all those coca farmers down in Colombia to grow pineapples instead?  Heck, hang the consequences:  let’s all band together and smoke ourselves silly sharing the love!

Oh, but then come the warnings:  “No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette,” and “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and may complicate Pregnancy.”  Well, surely since they’ve just written two pages about sharing the love and helping farmers, the gamble is worth it?

On television there is no cigarette advertising but there is advertising for pharmaceuticals, something which the U.K. also does not have.  I often wonder what doctors think of this:  are we supposed to be going in to our doctors well-informed when they tell us they are going to put us on ABC or are the drug companies just hoping that we go into the doctors demanding to be put on ABC?  I have a cardiologist at the moment who is about half my age.  He rather looks as if he just stepped off his surf board and came in from the beach, but, my gosh, does this guy know his stuff.  It would be a cold day in hell before I went in and demanded to be put on something I saw advertised on television.  And why would I?  The drug companies, just like the cigarette companies, have to give you all sorts of warnings.  After the happy little scenario encouraging you to want the particular medication they are selling, someone goes on to give you a list of possible side effects that make cigarette smoking look positively healthy and life-enhancing.

So, on the Cosmic Scale where does this put us?  We’ve got cigarette companies asking us to share the love but warning about heart disease while happy couples headed off to the bedroom on Viagra or Cialis are warning about four hour erections.

 Hmmm. I guess I know on whose side the cosmic scale is balanced…

NO IT’S NOT ME

     Today is Hallowe’en---at last.  It seems to have been going on since Labor Day at the beginning of Sept.  Preparations started with decorations for sale in the shops, quickly followed by the appearance of pumpkins anywhere a pumpkin can appear.  Then came the costumes, and how New Yorkers love their costumes!  Hallowe’en used to be about kids going out and ringing doorbells for candy.  Now it’s about everyone dressing up to mimic their favourite television personalities.  And I have to ask myself :  why?

Throughout the year New Yorkers dress up in costume.  The list of parades for this city is longer than my monthly shopping list.  Starting in January there is the Three Kings Parade in Spanish Harlem and the parade for Chinese New Year which may run into February along with the parade for Lunar New Year in case you missed the fact that Chinese New Year starts on the Lunar New Year.  February also sees the President’s Day Parade.  March of course sees the St. Patrick’s Day parade but if that isn’t enough for Irish Americans there is also the Irish American Parade followed by the Greek Independence Day parade and the Phagwha Parade celebrating the triumph of good over evil.  Phew! April has the Easter Parade, bonnets and all, along with the Sikh Cultural Society Parade with headdress of their own and of course there has to be an April Fool’s Parade so New Yorkers can dress like their favourite fool.  Then with better weather coming along we get into the thick of it:  multiple Memorial Day Parades in May are followed  by  Cuban Day, Bronx Latinos Unidos, Dance March, Global Marijuana March, Turkish-American Parade, Haitian Flag Day, Norwegian-American 17th of May, Martin Luther King Jr./369th Regiment Parade, Haitian-American Day Parade and Greater NY Good Neighbor Parade.  Are you beginning to get the hang of this?  June is the month for Gay Pride parades but also for Hare Krishna, Puerto Rican Day, Children’s Evengelical, the Bronx and Mermaids in Coney Island.

I am tempted to stop there at the half way mark as you no doubt have the idea by now.  Indians, Dominicans, Pakistanis, African Americans, Caribbean families, Brazilians, Mexicans, Poles, Nigerians, Muslims, and Hispanics are all getting their own parades and dressing up accordingly.  Then, in November, will be the biggy of them all, The Thanksgiving Day Parade.  The floats for this are inflated outside my building causing all sorts of havoc in the streets but not as much havoc as the parades themselves cause.

Back in London we had Notting Hill Carnival for the Jamaican and other Caribbean population, the Lord Mayor’s Parade and the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen’s Birthday.  There were probably Chinese New Year goings on and Gay Pride certainly had parades but I really can’t think of anything else.  Reminders welcome in the comment box.

I realize that New York is a melting pot.  But if it is a melting pot why haven’t these people melted into the general population?  The Statue of Liberty is standing out there saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” NOT “give us more reasons for parades every other day of the week.”  Pride in your ancestry is one thing but dressing up in costume and marching down Fifth Ave. ? As someone recently said, my grandparents didn’t get on a boat and come all the way over from Europe just to be faced with a nation of Immigrants!

So I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing at all to do with pride in one’s ancestry but rather the innate desire to be another person, to re-invent oneself and to let go of your persona for that brief moment.  To dress up and be someone else.

Maybe New Yorkers are fed up with being New Yorkers?

Gym-bore-ee

    Going to the gym in London used to be a rather staid affair.   I belonged to a small but, dare I say, select club on the Fulham Road in Chelsea whose members included the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Felicity Kendal.  It was well-kept, its women’s changing rooms included a lovely sit-down make-up area with rows of hairdryers, showers with plenty of shampoo and conditioner, a Jacuzzi, sauna and steam room.  It had the very latest equipment and, even better, a tiny but completely adequate women’s gym on the second floor.   There was a pool and coffee shop; trainers were always around to give one a hand and were always courteous and informative.

The dignified aura might not have suited all.  I, for one, chose this club because it was within a five minute walk of my apartment and, if you need encouragement to go to the gym as I do, having it on your doorstep, so to speak, is a good start.  I even managed to get down there for evening salsa classes which is saying a lot.  About the most controversial thing to happen at this gym was the time they decided to face the Abductor machines towards the wall because certain ladies had complained they didn’t want to be facing the general public while repeatedly opening and closing their legs.

The good ladies of New York have no such qualms.  While I am not a member of a city gym, I do go to one out in Sag Harbor for the six months I am out on the Island.  How different can going to the gym be?  Well, first of all, instead of a five minute walk I am now faced with a six minute drive followed by a ten minute search, in the summer at least, for a parking space.   No pool—really not needed out here anyway, but neither are there the other relaxing bits and pieces.  The gym itself is rather run-down, the changing room grotty and the trainers…well, the trainers I’ll get to in a minute.  The bottom line here is that people mean business:  they work-out, they go home.  There is none of the lazing in the sauna showing off your glorious bod, or quiet chit chat you want everyone in the changing room  to hear about your last fabulous holiday.  You get the same assortment of bulimics mixed with fatties but no one seems to care about either.  What you do get is a trainer with the loudest mouth in the world and the worst case of verbal diarrhea I have ever encountered.

For some reason I always encounter this man with a client when I am there and it is always in the supposedly quiet mat exercise room.  I have never seen him with the same client twice---and no wonder!!!!  They probably cannot stand him any more than I can.  I now know all about his hip replacement (yes, I did say he is a trainer), his double knee replacement surgeries in Colorado, how he got into training for them so he would have a shorter recovery time, how he hated being on Coumadin after his surgeries and how it changed his taste buds, his various escapades on boats, his trip to St. Louis, and a good part of his sex life with his wife Sue.  What I have not learned is any of the exercises in which he is apparently instructing his clients.

Last Monday, however, things rather came to a head--- no pun intended, this is the only way I can express this.   He was telling his male client how he had “accidentally” got into a porn site on the internet and then went on to describe, in some detail, the various things he had found there.  Now I’ve never  been on a porn site but I am on the internet a good part of my day and if I’ve never unexpectedly found myself in a porn site I really can’t understand how this person could.  But the game was up.  “Yeah,” said the other guy, “that’s happened to me too.  But trouble is, once you pay them, even if it’s for the one time, you keep getting notices to renew.” 

Trouble with the gym is, it doesn’t exercise your brain.