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.

Telly Me Something I Don’t Know (or Pt.2 TV)

First of all, the answer to last week’s mystery question was “Mary Martin.”  She played the male role of Peter Pan!  All the contestants had answered Julie Andrews for some reason.  I guess they weren’t as old as I; this was the first theater production I had ever been to and I remember trying to fly after the show by jumping on my brother’s back  Anyway…

Many, many years ago, someone once said to me, ‘If you want to know Britain you must listen to its radio.’  And I did.  Even now, when I see the clock hit 12.57pm, I’m ready to turn on Radio Four and listen to the weather report prior to the mid-day news and an afternoon’s listening.  Dinner preparation has never been quite the same since leaving the U.K.; now I am dependent on my iPod for company and at other times, Telly rules.   OK?  American television isn’t quite so bad as Italian where a mother was recently told on live TV that her daughter had been murdered.  In America, we only have to deal with a certain lack of intelligence.  So, back to my viewing diary from last week when I left ‘Jeopardy” which was followed by “Wheel of Fortune.”  To this I said ‘no thank you,’ and moved on to:

“1,000 Ways to Die’:  this might possibly be the funniest programme on television.  It is preceded by the warning, “Do not attempt to try any of the actions depicted…”  This programme is exactly what it purports to be:  a compendium of weird and wonderful ways people have died in these United  States.  First up is a guy on the lam in Montana who’s been robbing banks in an attempt to get the money together to open a meths lab.  Wanting a high and out of booze, he siphons off the gasoline from his Harley believing the ethanol will give him his alcoholic high.  Subsequently he pukes into his camp fire and---guess what? 

Next on this programme is a Japanese couple who, after 7 years of wedded non-bliss have still been unable to consummate their marriage.  The husband comes home plastered one evening and gets his wife to join him in his drunken stupor leading to…  At that climactic moment, they both die of heart attacks.

And then there is the woman who wants to lose weight.  Guess what she does?  She buys a whole load of tape worm larvae from Venezuela… which might not be such a good strategy.  The longest worm they eventually found in her body was 20 ft……..

Joy Behar:  the comedienne, whom I know from catching “The View” in the mornings at the gym, is today interviewing one Jenny McCarthy.  I’ve never heard of this person previously but she is describing to Behar, in graphic detail, a most intimate relationship she had with a stuffed bear called ‘Tubby.’

Swamp People: This is on the History Channel.  Apparently there is not enough history to occupy the channel full-time so we have this series about people with accents so thick we need the provided subtitles to understand anything they are saying.  It would also help if someone explained why they do the job they do---which is hunting snakes and alligators so that the rest of us can look at lovely shoes, belts and fabulous handbags we cannot possibly afford.  Unfortunately, one guy still doesn’t know the difference between venomous and non-venomous snakes which is something of a liability in his line of work.  I leave them frying frog fritters…

American Pickers:  This is about a firm called ‘Antique Archaeology’ who go around the country looking in barns, sheds, run down houses, fields and other unlikely venues where junk that could possibly be sold as antiques might be found.  This week they find a pinball machine with cowgirls on it and we are told that in 1942 Mayor LaGuardia banned and destroyed pinballs as games of luck---or gambling.  History on the History Channel at last!  The men also find the ‘Alien’ dummies used in a film about Roswell.  It’s pointed out that a UFO sighting is reported somewhere on the planet every 3 minutes!  As they load the dummies into their van, one man asks the other, “Do you believe in Aliens?”  His reply?  “I gotta believe there’s gotta be something smarter than us…”

And last but certainly not least:

Better Off Dead:  When I hit the ‘Info’ button on my remote control, it says, “Follow Mark Lilly, Social Worker at the Dept. of Integration, as he helps new citizens…adapt to hectic life in the Big Apple.”  BETTER OFF DEAD????

 Are they trying to tell me something?

T.V. or Not T.V., that IS the Question

One night during the summer I was dining over at my brother’s home when the conversation came round to television.  “So what do you watch?” I was asked.  After a momentary silence and a procrastinating sip of wine I had to tell the assembled guests that, in actual fact, I didn’t watch American television very much at all.   On neither side of the pond have I ever been a great one for the Box; I simply cannot sit and do nothing while staring at a screen.  Since I started living on my own, my television watching predominantly consists of a half hour over lunch and a further half hour or so over dinner.  Sure, I catch the news and turn the damn thing on while dressing in the mornings or getting ready for bed, but actually sit down and watch?  I used to exercise in front of it which added an hour or so to my viewing time but, since I took up gym attendance, that too has gone by the board.

In the UK I used to record programmes and films and watch them over a period of time.  Most of my watching consisted of documentaries, historical dramas and the odd human interest programme such as “Who Do You Think You Are?” which traces the ancestry of various celebrities.  I did watch a few episodes of the American version (did you know Sarah Jessica Parker is descended from a Salem witch??!) but unfortunately circumstances eventually overtook me on that.  I tried watching a few programmes my brother recommended; “Monk,” about a detective with OCD, was my firm favourite but I got there just in time for its last season.  I tried “House” for a while as I used to love Hugh Laurie when he was teamed with Stephen Fry, but after a few episodes I realized how very formulaic this series was and gave up. My nephew recommended “Glee” saying he was certain I would love it; next time don’t be so sure of yourself!  “The Closer” I can happily watch and “Project Runway” I’ve been watching for years as I rather enjoy the cut and thrust of the competition, not to mention the weird fashion---but in a country where I could have some 900 channels from which to choose, this is all slim pickings indeed.

Therefore, in the interests of Investigative Journalism (i.e., this blog), I decided to subject myself to arbitrary television viewing over several days.  In fact, my first inclination was to try to watch for 12 hours of prime time viewing but I’m afraid I soon ditched that idea in the interests of my own sanity.  I set myself certain parameters for this experiment:  I would not watch any of the programmes previously watched as cited above; there would be no films and  no news or current affairs to which I would have normally gravitated; furthermore, there would be no British imports so Masterpiece Theatre was out--- no masterpieces for me!  Finally, there would be nothing with the words ‘Real Housewives of…’ in the title (nothing real about these women since they are 90% plastic and 10% hair extensions), simply in the interests of saving me from regurgitation.   So, here, this week and next, is my viewing diary:

6.30pm: “Flipping Out” is about a gay guy with OCD who does remodeling and home re-designs on a very grand scale.  He seems to have major management issues, particularly with his maid, Zola.  In this episode, his biggest problem was dealing with a 90 year old woman who wanted door handles designed as nude figures throughout the house and he had to explain that this might not be in the very best taste.

7PM:  “Jeopardy”:  this long-running game show basically entails contestants being given the answer to questions and they have to come up with the question; therefore, their replies must always start with who, what, where, or when.  So, the M.C. says, ‘the mortar between tiles’ and the contestant replies “What is grout?”  Or, “A condition in polar regions where snow makes visibility poor.”  Answer:  “What is a ‘white out’?”  But really, if someone asked you, “What is jumping?” would you truly reply, “Miriam Rothschild discovered that a substance in the hind legs of fleas gave them this amazing ability????”  Or if someone demanded, “What is Murder on the Orient Express?” would your answer really be, “Hercule makes a bust on a choo-choo out of Istanbul?”

By the way, the major-grossing question for the night was “In 1955 she became the first and only female star to win a Tony in a male part.”  Out of the 4 contestants and me, I was the only one to know the answer.  Anyone who replies with the correct answer below in ‘Comment’ will get $1 from me.  If you can prove you didn’t Google it, of course.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…..

STREET SCENES

Summer is over and I’ve come to realize, once and for all, how very different the streets of New York are from the streets of London.  I don’t just mean the very obvious differences, such as the grid system that characterizes NYC, or the lack of ancient buildings.  The whole experience of walking is totally different.

     When I first brought my daughter over to New York for a visit many years ago, I carefully explained the numbered streets going north and south and the avenues going east to west.  I devised “Men Pay Less” so she could remember Madison, Park, Lex, and CAB for Columbus/Amsterdam/Broadway.  Now she knows her way around even those areas my generation once feared to tread:  the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, Hell’s Kitchen are nothing to Kit. And I never get asked for directions here.  In London between May and October I might as well have opened a booth on the Brompton Rd. for all the directions I was handing out.   The winding streets, the leafy squares (many more trees in London!), the haphazard connection between what were once an assortment of villages are nothing like the calculated and deliberately planned street system of the Big Apple.

     New Yorkers walk differently too.  Maybe it’s the broader pavements/sidewalks but there’s definitely a difference in walking the walk.  Londoners tend to play a never-ending game of chicken with one another.  You head directly for the on-coming person and see which one of you will step out of the way first, generally at the last moment.  New Yorkers can’t be bothered with that; they have no time for such games and want to get on, diving in and out of the oncoming population like a mountain climber looking for the next foothold.

     Since some form of English is the native tongue of both cities, one would expect to hear that language on the streets.  But how times have changed!  In NYC you are likely to hear almost equal parts Spanish and English with a smattering of other languages. Since Britain entered the EU, you are most likely to hear almost any language in London other than English.  OK, so a few people still speak it but only just. 

     But it’s the actual people on the streets who are so very different.  First of all, Londoners just do not eat while out and about.  I’m not talking sidewalk cafes here; I’m talking hot dogs, pretzels, and the myriad of ethnic foods available from street carts in New York.  In London you might possibly see someone surreptitiously licking an ice cream cone or taking a gulp of their Starbucks on the way back to the office but that’s about as far as it goes.  Londoners are just not that big on that touch of carcinogenic ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ in their food.

     Finally:  men in Bermuda shorts?!?  Alright, I admit London hardly has the weather for it, but even when it does you just don’t see this.  And what I want to know is this:  where are these men going in NYC wearing their Bermuda shorts?  Are they going to the office dressed like that?  Maybe it’s because New York has easier access to beaches than London and therefore the men get tanned more readily that they feel they can go out and about wearing shorts while their London brothers would die of embarrassment before showing pale white knobby knees.  I pointed out the Bermuda short factor to Kit once and she replied that in London men who went to Ibiza wore shorts.  Obviously, they were tan!

     But here’s the thing:  the Brits actually invented them!!!  Once, many years ago, I was staying at Reid’s Hotel in Madeira with my parents.  It was then a very grand hotel, a sort of last outpost of the uncrowned heads of European dynasties and was exceedingly formal with 5 course lunches and 7 course dinners for which one naturally “dressed.”  My parents and I were waiting for the lift (elevator for you Yanks) when the door opened and there before us was a gentleman in his evening attire:  dress shirt and dinner jacket (tuxedo jacket) and DRESS Bermuda shorts with knee socks and dress shoes.  Even Wikipedia describes this:  

   “Bermuda Shorts, also known as walking shorts or dress shorts, are a particular type of short trousers, now widely worn as semi-casual attire by both men and women…. They are so-named because of their popularity in Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, where they are considered appropriate business attire for men when made of suit-like material and worn with knee-length socks, a dress shirt, tie, and blazer.”

     We couldn’t stop laughing as soon as we were out.  Maybe that’s why Londoners don’t wear shorts on the streets?