Here are a few things I like about living in America, and a few I don’t.
Rocks:
Turning Right on red
Jamba Juice!
Being English
Craigs list
HBO
Oreo
Trader Joes
Car pool lanes
Sucks:
American newspapers
American coaching techniques
Drivers
How spread out everywhere is
Stop signs. Now and then sure, but every 50 yards? Seriously?
And All-way stops. Fine on a 4 road junction, but on an 8 road junction? Where one of the roads appears in your blind spot? Sort it out, America.
Well I’ve failed that project just three days in. The poem-a-day project was supposed to be an excuse for not having to write long blogs but seeing as I couldn’t even keep up with one measly poem every 24 hours, I thought I owed you a blog.
I’m entering the last five weeks of my programme here which means England beckons. As does my old life, which I came to America to get away from. Well, take a break is probably a better phrase, and it’s fair to say that’s exactly what I have done. My standard of living here could not be more different from home, and it is not neccessarily a good thing.
Before I was living in a tiny, yet cosy, flat in Tunbridge Wells. My lifestyle was modest and my economic approach meak. But I liked that. I lived well withing my means and didn’t need 1,000 commodities clogging up my small room. I lived a simple but ultimately very fun life. All I needed was my awesome flat mate and friends around me and I was happy. What other people had didn’t worry me.
Fast forward six months to Summer 2009 – Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles. For the last month I have been living with a very wealthy family near the beach. I’m staying in their guest house all on my own, which is a few yards from the main house. The house is large, beautifully decorated and filled with TVs, expensive furniture and modern gadets. Most importantly though, it is also filled with an amazing family, who have taken me in as one of their own, and as a result I’ve settled in quicker than my brother in front of a Die Hard DVD.
But I worry that subsconciously I am getting used to this lifestyle and returning home will be a shock to the system. Here my family take me out to dinner, back home I had to make do with what was left in the cupboards. Here my family but my clothes I need, back home I had to save up and then still go to a second-hand store. It’s brilliant living here, but it’s not my life. It’s theirs. I’m just a part of it for a small amount of time.
That said, my family are building a new house around the corner (even closer to the beach) and I popped round to have a look today. I think it is fair enough to call it a mansion. Even that isn’t generous enough. It’s the sort of house you’d expect Usher to be showing you around on MTV Cribs. It has sea views, three floors, 10 plasma TVs, a bar, a theatre complete with confectionary stand, a lift from floor to floor, a pool, a hot tub, massive bedrooms, a bathroom for each room, and so on. I have never been in such a place and I doubt I ever will (unless I visit them next year). And yet they have designed it so well that despite being such a large space, every corner of every room is as homely as my flat in Tunbridge Wells was. Just slightly bigger. And with imported French bricks for the wine cellar.
Anyone who’s heard the Garden State soundtrack knows that Zach Braff has an awesome taste in music. It’s pretty much a given that if he likes a band, they’re going to be half decent.
While my taste in music leaves a lot to be desired, here’s a band I reckon he would like: Elias and the Wizzkids.
From Stockholm, Elias Akesson leads his four-piece band with witty, perky tunes that describe his daily goings-on with melodic realism. Because English isn’t his first language (and this is a quirky, but loveable, trend I’ve noticed with most European bands) the lyrics are a little too literal, and less crytpic than your average singers, but that just makes me love them even more.
Nearly all the songs on “A Little Mess” have become my theme-tunes during the last six months; when I was abit despressed just before Christmas, “The Dance” became my song. The lyrics were all very relevant and familiar, as Elias wrestles with an unknown feeling of gloom. He tries going to the cinema, he tries chocolate, but he can’t get rid of it. Then, one night, he spontaniously breaks into dance in his flat – “But at that moment when I closed the door, my little flat turned into a dance floor”.
As it turns out all his worries disappear after a litle boogie. I haven’t tried it yet, I’m waiting for the disco light to appear from my ceiling.
The song “24″ is about anxiety at getting old, and was all I couldn listen too just before my 24th birthday. For Elias it’s about reluctantly growing up. For me, it was the fear of getting old without being able to grow up.
“The Job” is a great parody of a man in an interview – “You think you are so smart, just tell me when to start, will you sir”.
In short, all the songs are memorable, melodic and very whistle-able. They are very real songs, sung with heart and sarcasm – what a great combination.
Someone trod on my hand during a league match last Tuesday. An X-ray, and an unsympathetic look from a nurse, the next day confirmed it wasn’t broken but it left a healthy looking scar.
That has now turned into a scab which bears an uncanny resemblance to the shape of Australia.
Weird, huh?
Here’s two simple steps to go from Hero to Zero.
1. Score on your Crowborough Athletic debut with a delicious lob of the keeper from outside the box.
2. Three days later play Eastbourne Borough’s striker onside in the last minute for him to nab a winner.
I feel gutted. Gutted we lost (although we were on the back foot for most of the game). Gutted it was my fault we lost. And furious at myself. I feel like I’ve let the whole side down. And only a few days after being the toast of the team – scoring on my debut.
But that, as they say, is football. And the refrehing thing about the game is that chance keep coming up to redeem yourself. We have a game in a week’s time and I’m determined already to make up for tonight.
The thing is, I am very paranoid and convinced that the smallest slip-up will see my crucified and out of the team. But the truth is, the manager likes me. He sees something in and and even knowing that gives me a boost.
I just need to repay that faith. Starting next Tuesday…
I went to the dentist the other day for a check up – and found myself £47 out of pocket. While counting the pennies she suggested I tried flossing.
Has she ever even tried it? It’s fucking impossible! Trying to maneuver the dental floss around you mouth in the mirror – backwards – is possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.
She also said I should get an electric toothbrush because they “get to the bits a normal toothbrush doesn’t”. Does she work on the side for Boots or something because I ended up spending a fortune there.
I think I need a new dentist.
No digital camera can do justice to the views I’ve seen. Only the fibre optics of the human eye can take it all in.
The vultures circle, pre-empting our doom as we cling onto unstable rocks but we don’t give them what they want as we struggle to the top, and they disperse.
John says don’t look up but seeing the summit, our goal, gives me hope and spurs me on.
We make it to the top and reward ourselves with a cup of tea and some sandwiches – how British.
A sense of accomplishment accompanies our retreat back down to ground level where Jordi, our faithful chauffeur greets us to drive three weary Englishmen back down to the village of Llessui.
From there it’s home to Taull for a bath, some food and a celebratory beer.
It scares me how quickly a year passes. 365 days sounds like a long time, and it is, but they can fly by in the blink of an eye and can leave you with little or nothing to show for your time.
It was last August that Seb and I flew to Spain and made our way to the Catalonian Pyrenees to spend a week mountain climbing with our uncle John. Now, a year after, we are back and nothing has changed. Seb’s still at uni, I’m still in the same job and John still works too hard for Variety. They only difference is that we’ve all got a year older.
Last year Seb and I flew into Madrid, spent a night at John’s flat before taking the train up to the northern town to Llieda, where we met him. This year we cut out some of the travelling by flying to Barcelona, picking up a hire car and driving to Llieda, a much shorter journey than the three hour train trek we’d undertaken last year.
We arrived in the mountain village of Taull on Sunday afternoon. I was exhausted after driving from Barcelona to Llieda, and then on up into the mountains and collapsed on my bed before taking a three hour siesta.
We were staying in the same apartment as last year; a stereotypical, wooden chalet style flat, rewarding us with spectacular views of the Boi valley.
John is an experienced climber but this year had a serious handicap in the shape of an infected foot. Some punk had run over it in Cannes at the Film Festival (not a movie star, sadly) and the wound had got infected. It meant we weren’t able to have a second crack at Punta Alta, one of the Pyrenees tallest peaks, after successfully negotiating our way halfway up it before walking in the wrong direction for three hours last year.
We had to make do with some smaller mountains this year, but that was fine by Seb and I.
A take away and The Quiet American was enough to see off Sunday and we agreed to wake early on Monday to tackle Monsent, a smaller, but by no means less demanding peak in the accompanying valley of Llessui.
Monday morning came and the alarm shattered the quiet mountain morning air like a sharp jab to the ribs.
We wandered down for breakfast at a café in the village before packing our rucksacks with the essentials (in my case a waterproof jacket, a sandwich and my Ipod) and headed for Llessui.
After negotiating a road that was bendier than Gabby Roslin’s legs and narrower than Oswald Mosely’s views we got to the town of Sort, a few miles short of the mountain.
Jon wasn’t conviced he knew where the start of the mountain was so we stopped on the way in Sort to by a map. “Map of Monsent? Don’t have any,” said the shop assistant.
“But it’s right there, “said John. “It’s the next mountain along from your village.”
As it was we had to make do with some less than convincing directions.
We found the route up to the Coll (where the climb properly starts) but our Seat Leon hired from Barcelona airport struggled with the bumps in the rural track and after the third dip in the road – which were getting bigger as they went on - we decided risking damage to the undercarriage of the car wasn’t worth it.
So I parked it up in a siding and we walked the rest. Two hours later we still weren’t anywhere near the Coll. The dirt track meandered up the mountain and we diligently followed it, in the shadow of Monsent but it failed to get any closer.
We stopped for sandwiches at an abandoned restaurant and sat on the empty ski lift chairs. There was an eerie silence. No cars. No people. Only the lowing of the nearby cows, and even they sounded embarrassed to be making noise.
A group vote was taken and we decided to wander back down into the village and see if we can convince someone to give us a lift up the track to the Coll (bascally as high up as a vehicle would go, so we could give the peak a proper crack another day).
We wandered into a café as we got back down to level ground and the shrivled up old Spanish man agreed to take us up on Wednesday morning. We downed our Cokes, said our thanks to Jordi and agreed to come back.
Tuesday will be for recharging before the big scale on Wednesday.
I saw today that model-turned-parasite Calum Best is the subject of a new television programme that will see him go 49 nights without sex, despite “temptation traps” laid on by the show’s producers. What a massive cunt. I hope he gives in, contracts syphyilis and dies.
As an aside I saw this on Wikipedia:
“In January 2008, the Daily Star reported that London’s largest homeless charity, St. Mungo’s, was overwhelmed with donations of Best’s signature aftershave, apparently from citizens who received it as an unwanted Christmas gift.”
Probably smelt of shit.
I went to a music festival yesterday. I was my first ever festival experience and at only a day long was a good taster for the three-day End of the Road festival I’ll be jetting off to in September. Well, maybe not a proper taster as the line-ups differ considerably but the experience of being surrounded by thousands of dirty, doped up idiots can’t be learned from any text books.
I met Jacko at Charing Cross and we headed to Victoria Park via Subway for a quick bit of lunch. We met her friends Andy, Ess, Ellie and Matt (to be honest, I’m not sure that’s what they were called, so you’ll just have to go with me on this one). They were more inclined to like dance and drum and base music and as the festival was eclectic as those frequenting it, there was plenty of those sort of sounds to whet their appetites.
I was itching to get off and see some indie stuff and after tagging along with the other five to a dance arena where I felt like a dad at a kids disco for 10 minutes, I finally got to go and hear some decent sounds.
First, I had to stand through a set by Roni Size Reprazents (possibly the worst ever way I’ve seen ‘represents’ spelt, but anyway). Again feeling more out of place than George W Bush at a Mensa meeting, I tried to feign interest which, from looking around me, meant dancing like a twat. Something I’m actually not too bad at.
As it turned out, I quite enjoyed a couple of the songs.
Jacko and I then slipped off to the Clash tent to catch a glimpse of pintsized punksters Operator Please, freshly flown in from their native Australia. We left the others who seemed happy to go off in search of more drum and bass sounds. They were a nice bunch, very friendly and even laughed at a few of my jokes. Bless ‘em.
This would have been the second time I had seen Operator Please had I not decided a few hours before I was due to drive to Wimbledon a few months ago that I couldn’t be bothered. Jacko had never heard of them so I felt a bit like I was introducing two of my friends to each other, hoping they both got on. As it was, Jacko really enjoyed their set and as far as I could tell, they were not unhappy with her being there.
Taylor Henderson - ahh bless.
They were an eclectic bunch – with five heterogeneously dressed youngsters (none of them over 20) all reminding me of something different. Lead singer Amandah Wilkinson looked like a giant purple fruit pastel, keyboardist Chris Holland looked like he sould be wandering aimlessly around an Abercrombie store, patting down t-shirts and pouting, drummer Tim Commandeur looked so young I thought he had bunked off school for the day to come and play and basist Ashley McConnell seemed to have got lost on his way to a Charlie Chaplin fancy dress party.
Star of the show, though, was violinist Taylor Henderson who looked like a fragile china doll, all cuteness and innocence. I wanted to put her in my pocket, take her home and place her delicately on my mantle piece.
All that aside, they sounded fantastic and their collection of 2-minute punk-pop pieces were lapped up by the crowd, who especially enjoyed the Salt N Pepper cover of Push It. But then, who wouldn’t?
We had our afternoon mapped out and planned to catch Ida Maria at the Gaymers tent straight aftwerwards but when we got there the previous band (the Howling Jets, or something) were still playing. I assumed the stage was overrunning so when they departed the stage we wandered up to the front of the stage and waited. And waited. And waited. But no Ida.
I have no idea what happened but it soon got to 7pm and the next act – The Dandy Warholes – appeared. Now here’s a proper redneck, blue collar band. Lead singer in dungarees, drummer with handle-bar tache and massive hair, guitarist donned in 70s attire with a token girl, who seemed to play no instrument chucked in for good measure.
I only knew a few of their songs – yes, the famous ones – but they sounded good. Naturally, Bohemian Rhapsody was greated with the greatest vigour – along with some idiots jumping into people just next to us. What is the point of that? Fair enough everyone likes to have a bit of a jump down at the front, but what can be gained from crashing into people? Is it actually any fun? Looks more like the past-time of a moron. Well done, morons.
By the end of that set I was getting tired and weary. The old joints had taken a battering, but there was only one set left – The Flaming Lips. Again, I had only heard a few of their tracks – despite owning one of their CDs for more than two years, yikes!
Lead singer Wayne Coyne arrived on stage in a giant bubble and, to be honest, I wish he’d stayed inside it. The set was pretty dull, maybe because I didn’t know many of the songs, but I reckon I wasn’t the only one because Coyne spent the entire set begging the crowd to get into it more. “Come on, come on,” he kept saying. Not a good sign.
Jacko enjoys Roni Size. Well, someone had to.
By the end I was yearning for my bed, my back was killing me and my feet felt like somone had been chissling away at them all day. I returned home knackered yet happy with my first festival experience. Jacko was the perfect festival friend, and I am chuffed she liked Operator Please.
Next stop, Devon.
