One of the things about America is this perpetual dream of upward mobility, of individual potential and endless access. When we are very young our teachers look around the room, at scores of six-year-olds sat cross-legged on the carpet, and they say, 'Any one of you could become president'.
Of course, having had only privileged white male Protestant presidents - and one Catholic who was quickly assassinated - that wasn't really true.
Until now.
Finally, finally, the progression and enlightenment that my generation can promise is beginning to shine through the cracks of a long history of oppression, elitism, and exclusion. The real work will begin soon, and our new president will be tested and criticised and eventually he'll falter, but today we can just be excited. Happy. Optimistic.
And next time let's elect a woman, okay?
soundtrack: Human - The Killers
05 November 2008
15 October 2008
leave the bourbon on the shelf
Tomorrow I have a temp assignment - the first one I've managed to acquire - at a stock music company near Baker Street.
When Catherine Tate was a temp, she met Doctor Who.
Just saying.
soundtrack: Under the Gun - The Killers
When Catherine Tate was a temp, she met Doctor Who.
Just saying.
soundtrack: Under the Gun - The Killers
09 August 2008
practically floored
Writing this dissertation is by far the most challenging academic venture I've ever attempted. With 15,000 words ahead, how do you pick the first one? How do you write the beginning when you're not sure what the end will say? And, many many pages into History of Sexuality, what the hell is Foucault talking about?
There may not be enough Diet Coke in the world, friends.
soundtrack: The Hindu Times - Oasis
There may not be enough Diet Coke in the world, friends.
soundtrack: The Hindu Times - Oasis
11 July 2008
sum of our days
Lots of things have happened. Some very good things, some very bad things, and many in between. And I suppose on this dull, rainy Friday, I thought I would tell you that I'm still here, and I still miss you all.
xx
'Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased.'
- Cormac McCarthy
xx
'Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased.'
- Cormac McCarthy
15 May 2008
they are the lanterns
Yesterday I went to Leicester for a freelance job. And I decided that if this whole publishing/acadaemia/whatever thing doesn't work out, I'll become a train conductor.
St Pancras is as amazing as they say, distant cathedral ceiling, well-dressed women drinking champagne and speaking French, soothing digital displays instead of the old tat-tat-tat ticker boards. In my business attire I tried to adopt the air of someone catching a Eurostar to Paris, a quick but essential meeting, I'll be back tomorrow, it's just they require my expertise, my power.
Illusion fades as I ascend the escalator to the East Midlands area, where an anxious crowd has gathered as the trains to such exotic locations as Sheffield, Derby, and Nottingham move from 'delayed' to 'cancelled'. I read about John Cleese's divorce and the Myanmar junta in The Sun and, thirty minutes late, make it onto a crowded train.
Then it all works out.
My iPod plays all the right songs as the train barrels out of London, racing across great green swathes of countryside, past sheep and dappled grey ponies, through fields spread with yellow flowers. The train glides to a stop beside the ornate, country-cute carved trellises at Wellingborough, then resumes its northbound roll. Something about the speed, the view, the baby blue sky, the sight of a distant church spire piercing a low, lazy cloud, is so invigorating, so redeeming.
As an American it can be easy to write off Britain, to decide not to take it seriously. It's too small, too homogenous, too old-fashioned, the police don't even carry guns. But that's about as ethnocentric as eating McDonald's in China. England is Albion, ancient, crowded, a bit fraught, a bit worried, but always looking forward. Always looking up.
soundtrack: Antichrist Television Blues - Arcade Fire
St Pancras is as amazing as they say, distant cathedral ceiling, well-dressed women drinking champagne and speaking French, soothing digital displays instead of the old tat-tat-tat ticker boards. In my business attire I tried to adopt the air of someone catching a Eurostar to Paris, a quick but essential meeting, I'll be back tomorrow, it's just they require my expertise, my power.
Illusion fades as I ascend the escalator to the East Midlands area, where an anxious crowd has gathered as the trains to such exotic locations as Sheffield, Derby, and Nottingham move from 'delayed' to 'cancelled'. I read about John Cleese's divorce and the Myanmar junta in The Sun and, thirty minutes late, make it onto a crowded train.
Then it all works out.
My iPod plays all the right songs as the train barrels out of London, racing across great green swathes of countryside, past sheep and dappled grey ponies, through fields spread with yellow flowers. The train glides to a stop beside the ornate, country-cute carved trellises at Wellingborough, then resumes its northbound roll. Something about the speed, the view, the baby blue sky, the sight of a distant church spire piercing a low, lazy cloud, is so invigorating, so redeeming.
As an American it can be easy to write off Britain, to decide not to take it seriously. It's too small, too homogenous, too old-fashioned, the police don't even carry guns. But that's about as ethnocentric as eating McDonald's in China. England is Albion, ancient, crowded, a bit fraught, a bit worried, but always looking forward. Always looking up.
soundtrack: Antichrist Television Blues - Arcade Fire
22 April 2008
07 April 2008
safety in numbers
Still vulgar, still the same great taste in footwear.
soundtrack: Bombsite Boys - The Adverts
16 March 2008
choose your own adventure
Okay. You're in London. It's a rainy St. Patrick's Day-ish Saturday night, and in pursuit of cultural authenticity you've spent the evening listening to a seisun and talking to a guy called Eoghan in a pub that's so Irish there are more moon faces than an almanac.
Suddenly you realise that the clock didn't fancy waiting for you to finish singing along to "Dirty Old Town," so you plunge forth into the drizzle and navigate puddled sidewalks to the Wandsworth Town rail station. Your boyfriend may or may not pause on the way to find a non-CCTV-monitored peeing spot.
You run up the stairs to the platform but it's too late - in fact it's way too late - and you've missed the last train by more than ten minutes. So, how to get o'er the river and across the city to your now distant and seemingly inaccessible home in Camden Town?
First you hike to Putney Bridge, scrutinising every bus stop you pass until you find one that goes to Kensal Rise. Not ideal, but it'll work... except it only stops once an hour. Luckily fate smiles, and within five minutes the relevant double-decker pulls up. You clamber on and spend the journey into Fulham scouring the A-Z, trying to figure out whether you should take a chance that the Lancaster Gate bus runs all night or give in and trek to Victoria.
Meanwhile the bus pulls to a halt in Chelsea, and randomly you notice that the stop also serves the 14, which will get you almost all the way home! Back on the sidewalk you realise you're on the wrong side, and when you glance across the street there's a bus already pulled up. "Which is it? What does it say on the front?" "Warren Street! GO!" You shove your boyfriend into oncoming traffic and, thanks to a girl who is rooting through her purse to find her Oyster card, you're safely on the 14.
It's a long ride through vacant South Kensington and around Hyde Park, past dark, imposing embassies and silent shops, and as you approach the eerie flickering neon of Piccadilly Circus an American girl squawks into her phone, "So I was like, you don't even like me a little bit, do you, and he was like, it's not that, but it's like, I just think I'm like, too crazy for him, you know?"
When you stop at Warren Street you sprint for the convoy of two Camden-bound buses immediately in front, and even though they see you running - because you know they see you running - they pull away from the curb, smug and cold. So you wait, trying to forget that the rain has shrunk the canvas in your shoes so you can literally feel the blisters forming, and telling yourself that at least the 29 stops really close to your house, as though that will make up for the fifteen minutes of vomit, fights, and mobile phone music that is more or less guaranteed at this point in the night.
The light changes and you squint down the road, certain that the approaching double-decker will be a totally useless 88. As it draws nearer, however, and you make out the number on the front, you think of Ovid, of Phaeton, of Apollo's golden chariot climbing high into a cloudless blue sky...
...it's the 134.
In fifteen puke- and chav-free minutes you've safely arrived on Kentish Town Road. As you disembark, you hear a Spanish girl note that taking the bus is very scenic. Her English boyfriend replies, "Oh yeah, it's way better than the Tube."
soundtrack: Fat Children - Jarvis Cocker
Suddenly you realise that the clock didn't fancy waiting for you to finish singing along to "Dirty Old Town," so you plunge forth into the drizzle and navigate puddled sidewalks to the Wandsworth Town rail station. Your boyfriend may or may not pause on the way to find a non-CCTV-monitored peeing spot.
You run up the stairs to the platform but it's too late - in fact it's way too late - and you've missed the last train by more than ten minutes. So, how to get o'er the river and across the city to your now distant and seemingly inaccessible home in Camden Town?
First you hike to Putney Bridge, scrutinising every bus stop you pass until you find one that goes to Kensal Rise. Not ideal, but it'll work... except it only stops once an hour. Luckily fate smiles, and within five minutes the relevant double-decker pulls up. You clamber on and spend the journey into Fulham scouring the A-Z, trying to figure out whether you should take a chance that the Lancaster Gate bus runs all night or give in and trek to Victoria.
Meanwhile the bus pulls to a halt in Chelsea, and randomly you notice that the stop also serves the 14, which will get you almost all the way home! Back on the sidewalk you realise you're on the wrong side, and when you glance across the street there's a bus already pulled up. "Which is it? What does it say on the front?" "Warren Street! GO!" You shove your boyfriend into oncoming traffic and, thanks to a girl who is rooting through her purse to find her Oyster card, you're safely on the 14.
It's a long ride through vacant South Kensington and around Hyde Park, past dark, imposing embassies and silent shops, and as you approach the eerie flickering neon of Piccadilly Circus an American girl squawks into her phone, "So I was like, you don't even like me a little bit, do you, and he was like, it's not that, but it's like, I just think I'm like, too crazy for him, you know?"
When you stop at Warren Street you sprint for the convoy of two Camden-bound buses immediately in front, and even though they see you running - because you know they see you running - they pull away from the curb, smug and cold. So you wait, trying to forget that the rain has shrunk the canvas in your shoes so you can literally feel the blisters forming, and telling yourself that at least the 29 stops really close to your house, as though that will make up for the fifteen minutes of vomit, fights, and mobile phone music that is more or less guaranteed at this point in the night.
The light changes and you squint down the road, certain that the approaching double-decker will be a totally useless 88. As it draws nearer, however, and you make out the number on the front, you think of Ovid, of Phaeton, of Apollo's golden chariot climbing high into a cloudless blue sky...
...it's the 134.
In fifteen puke- and chav-free minutes you've safely arrived on Kentish Town Road. As you disembark, you hear a Spanish girl note that taking the bus is very scenic. Her English boyfriend replies, "Oh yeah, it's way better than the Tube."
soundtrack: Fat Children - Jarvis Cocker
06 March 2008
stages i have crashed
February 2003: The D4 at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ
June 2004: Black 47 at Connolly's in New York, NY
June 2007: Brakes at Mercury Lounge in New York, NY
February 2008: Dropkick Murphys at Brixton Academy in London, UK
June 2004: Black 47 at Connolly's in New York, NY
June 2007: Brakes at Mercury Lounge in New York, NY
February 2008: Dropkick Murphys at Brixton Academy in London, UK
soundtrack: Margarita - Brakes
19 February 2008
feel my bones
Older but not, thankfully, necessarily wiser.
soundtrack: Moon Over Asbury - The Bouncing Souls
soundtrack: Moon Over Asbury - The Bouncing Souls
10 February 2008
moo
Apparently I've learnt to add videos to teh blogz0r. Rather than begin with one of the several videos I've taken at various obscure but personally notable concerts, I present you with...
...the Manhattan, KS cattle auction.
...the Manhattan, KS cattle auction.
soundtrack: Sam's Town - The Killers
02 February 2008
descamisada
My manager is a Scottish ex-bouncer who asked me how to say "more beer please" in Spanish. Still terrified of money, actual customers, and my seemingly limitless capacity for error, but feeling optimistic.
soundtrack: Famous for Nothing - Dropkick Murphys
soundtrack: Famous for Nothing - Dropkick Murphys
20 January 2008
here again
Long weekend sans MLK and on the wrong end.
Thursday: homemade chili con carne; proper Irish pints; nearly ceilidh; juggling act.
Friday: O'Neil's in Covent Garden; Becks in Fuel; British boys in boots; "me and the Spider".
Saturday: Green Park meander; Mrs. Windsor at home; Oxonians o'er London Bridge; curry in Brick Lane.
soundtrack: Bitches in Tokyo - Stars
Thursday: homemade chili con carne; proper Irish pints; nearly ceilidh; juggling act.
Friday: O'Neil's in Covent Garden; Becks in Fuel; British boys in boots; "me and the Spider".
Saturday: Green Park meander; Mrs. Windsor at home; Oxonians o'er London Bridge; curry in Brick Lane.
soundtrack: Bitches in Tokyo - Stars
16 January 2008
rockstarspotting
At approximately 11.33 this morning my flatmate passed GC on the sidewalk outside Camden Road Station. Rather than cry, have a fit, and/or say "wtf? where's my GC spotting?" I am taking this as a sign.
GC as beacon: don't give up.
soundtrack: Calendar Girl - Stars
GC as beacon: don't give up.
soundtrack: Calendar Girl - Stars
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