It’s been a dozen years since I went to a night club for any reason other than to see a live band. Going to the Play Lounge in DC was sort of work-related, in that DC United defender Bobby Boswell -- a handsome up-and-coming US international with a decent amount of personality -- was launching his own personal website there on Tuesday evening.
There were a few of us soccer hacks there, looking awkward and out-of-place, shuffling from foot to foot as young and beautiful women brushed past us, possibly in a parallel world. The men were generally older, possibly because you’d have to be working a few years to afford drinks in a place like this. Everybody’s looking at everybody else while pretending that they’re not.
That’s really all there is to do, conversation being impossible. You wonder how people ever get chatted up in these places. Maybe they don’t. Maybe you just pass a note saying, “If I buy you six drinks, will you fuck me?”
There’s a special supplier of music to clubs like this. Someone goes into a studio, turns on all the instruments, invites a mad and inebriated tramp in off the streets to improvise into the mic, then disappears for a couple of hours to the nearest bar. The music is then packaged, unedited, out to nightspots across the country.
The good thing about night clubs, though, is that you can walk out at any time. They are that rare kind of place that makes you actually feel happy to live in suburbia.
Cabbie Stats
Country: Nigeria
Years in DC area: 4
Soccer interest: Nigeria and any Nigerian players playing abroad. Had heard of Freddy Adu but no other US players.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Traitors Taking A Walk To The Pentagon Car Park
The stay-at-home-dad Popular Anti-War Front took to the streets of DC today to join the march against the ongoing insanity of US and British involvement in Iraq. Not that I was very popular with the kids for dragging them out of a warm house on a sub-zero day with added wind chill just to walk from the Vietnam War Memorial to a Pentagon car park, but the ride on the Metro cheered them up enough to forget where they were going. And one day, just possibly, they might be proud to say that they were there.
There’s something reassuring about the continued existence of various bedraggled bands of leftists and pseudo-anarchists that always show up at these things with their megaphones, inky propaganda sheets and repetitious demands for revolution, NOW! There were some imaginative banners among the predictably po-faced cries for instant justice, everywhere, including, “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.” And there were enough vaguely sane people of all ages not trying to flog you unreadable newspapers to give you the sense that you hadn’t accidentally turned up at an anti-fashion show for third-hand clothes worn by people with a chronic allergy to shampoo.
But most entertaining of all today was the counter-demo. Usually this is a sorry collection of maybe a few dozen short-haired rightwing nutjobs with manic expressions, and toes twitching to perform a goosestep across the police line to kick a hippy in the nuts. This time, though, a whole new breed of unsettling protest-hater had been shipped in from the parts of America populated by thick-set blokes in their 50s and 60s with grizzly beards and leather jackets. Or maybe there just happened to be a reunion of ex-Dead roadies in DC today.
“You’re all Al Qaeda supporters!” yelled one man through a megaphone. “They’re looking at this and smiling.” A banner manned by a few more henchmen in front of Arlington cemetery read “GO TO HELL TRAITORS”. A lot of these men had fought in Vietnam, which has apparently pissed them off that four decades later some people are opposed to a similarly senseless campaign in a part of the world where Allied bombs and bullets have brought untold grief and chaos.
“You won’t be around when I have to deal with this mess!” yelled my oldest daughter at them, unprompted. “Give us a smile, for Christ’s sake!” I called across (I’m not as politically conscious as my ten-year-old). For the counter-demonstration, impressive as it was in size compared with previous efforts, was characterised by its absolute lack of humour. Many of these miserable men looked as though they would love nothing more than to walk over and kill us. Some shook their heads disdainfully, because they just know we’re all naïve idiots playing into the hands of the terrorists. “Stand behind our President” exhorted their posters. Though that’s just a recruitment call, not an actual argument.
In fact it’s hard to discern what the anti-anti-war argument is. I remember when we marched over four years ago before the start of the war, they said that now wasn’t the right time to protest. So if before the war wasn’t the right time, surely four years into a clearly disastrous campaign, with around 60,000 Iraqis and over 3,000 US soldiers dead, is the right time. But no, we’re still terrorist-hugging traitors. If we didn't bomb countries thousands of miles away, we wouldn't have the freedom to protest at all blah blah.
Once we'd passed the last counter-demonstrators, things got boring. The kids were cold, and the march kept stopping and starting. In the Pentagon car park, the shouty rhetoric made for poor entertainment, so we headed for the Pentagon mall, sneaking past a line of baton-wielding riot police in some sort of a standoff with a sit-down protest on the road to the Pentagon. The girls were now beyond freezing, and very hungry too. When we finally made it into Macy’s, my eight-year-old sighed, “Ah, heaven!”
Not quite. In the line for coffee down at the food court, a friendly mall policeman asked two elderly demonstrators to peel off their anti-war stickers. The mall is private property, he said. Political expression is not allowed. God forbid that while they’re shopping for clothes on a Saturday afternoon, Americans might momentarily have to be reminded of the war that 68% of them were in favour of four years ago.
My daughters were happy, however. They were now eating strips of potato cooked in fat. Hail, the land of the fry!
There’s something reassuring about the continued existence of various bedraggled bands of leftists and pseudo-anarchists that always show up at these things with their megaphones, inky propaganda sheets and repetitious demands for revolution, NOW! There were some imaginative banners among the predictably po-faced cries for instant justice, everywhere, including, “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.” And there were enough vaguely sane people of all ages not trying to flog you unreadable newspapers to give you the sense that you hadn’t accidentally turned up at an anti-fashion show for third-hand clothes worn by people with a chronic allergy to shampoo.
But most entertaining of all today was the counter-demo. Usually this is a sorry collection of maybe a few dozen short-haired rightwing nutjobs with manic expressions, and toes twitching to perform a goosestep across the police line to kick a hippy in the nuts. This time, though, a whole new breed of unsettling protest-hater had been shipped in from the parts of America populated by thick-set blokes in their 50s and 60s with grizzly beards and leather jackets. Or maybe there just happened to be a reunion of ex-Dead roadies in DC today.
“You’re all Al Qaeda supporters!” yelled one man through a megaphone. “They’re looking at this and smiling.” A banner manned by a few more henchmen in front of Arlington cemetery read “GO TO HELL TRAITORS”. A lot of these men had fought in Vietnam, which has apparently pissed them off that four decades later some people are opposed to a similarly senseless campaign in a part of the world where Allied bombs and bullets have brought untold grief and chaos.
“You won’t be around when I have to deal with this mess!” yelled my oldest daughter at them, unprompted. “Give us a smile, for Christ’s sake!” I called across (I’m not as politically conscious as my ten-year-old). For the counter-demonstration, impressive as it was in size compared with previous efforts, was characterised by its absolute lack of humour. Many of these miserable men looked as though they would love nothing more than to walk over and kill us. Some shook their heads disdainfully, because they just know we’re all naïve idiots playing into the hands of the terrorists. “Stand behind our President” exhorted their posters. Though that’s just a recruitment call, not an actual argument.
In fact it’s hard to discern what the anti-anti-war argument is. I remember when we marched over four years ago before the start of the war, they said that now wasn’t the right time to protest. So if before the war wasn’t the right time, surely four years into a clearly disastrous campaign, with around 60,000 Iraqis and over 3,000 US soldiers dead, is the right time. But no, we’re still terrorist-hugging traitors. If we didn't bomb countries thousands of miles away, we wouldn't have the freedom to protest at all blah blah.
Once we'd passed the last counter-demonstrators, things got boring. The kids were cold, and the march kept stopping and starting. In the Pentagon car park, the shouty rhetoric made for poor entertainment, so we headed for the Pentagon mall, sneaking past a line of baton-wielding riot police in some sort of a standoff with a sit-down protest on the road to the Pentagon. The girls were now beyond freezing, and very hungry too. When we finally made it into Macy’s, my eight-year-old sighed, “Ah, heaven!”
Not quite. In the line for coffee down at the food court, a friendly mall policeman asked two elderly demonstrators to peel off their anti-war stickers. The mall is private property, he said. Political expression is not allowed. God forbid that while they’re shopping for clothes on a Saturday afternoon, Americans might momentarily have to be reminded of the war that 68% of them were in favour of four years ago.
My daughters were happy, however. They were now eating strips of potato cooked in fat. Hail, the land of the fry!
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Maria Taylor At The Rock And Roll Hotel
The Rock and Roll Hotel is a relatively new venue stuck out on H Street in the north-east of the city, fifteen blocks walk from the nearest metro stop at Union Station. The club’s website advises you to get a cab from there, either because it thinks you’ll get mugged or that its patrons are archetypal anti-walking Americans, but in fact it’s only about a ten- to fifteen-minute stroll on a balmy spring evening.
The RnR Hotel is ramshackle enough to come across like a 1980s retro British student venue, blighted by a lack of draft beer, but quirky enough to let you forgive its workers for being young and cool and playing The Smiths in the upstairs bar. Just to take me properly back twenty years (it’s a place where my head spends an unhealthy amount of time), I’m with my mate Drew, who I indeed went to college with in England back in the 1980s, and we talk about long forgotten mutual objects of scorn. That was Birmingham, England. (Here comes the segue, tada.) Maria Taylor is from Birmingham, Alabama.
“Last time we were here we played in Arlington to ten people,” she says gratefully to the maybe 100 to 150 people at the RnR Hotel last night. It’s been a difficult tour thanks to blizzards, the flu, and someone raiding her and keyboardist sister Kate’s dressing room. Yet here they are, a band of six (her brother’s in it too), making all this effort to come all this way and play us her astonishing songs. As they crank up the noise I get that four-beer fuzz that makes me think, “I love them all and want to be their friends forever.”
We wonder how they make a living out of this. It only cost ten dollars for the ticket, CDs are the same price, and even their t-shirts go way below the accepted statutory minimum of $20, selling for just twelve. I buy one, because you have to spread the word. Drew buys the two CDs (the new release ‘Lynn Teeter Flower’ is every bit as strong as 2005’s wonderful ‘11:11’) even though he could have been a thief and burned my copies. But as he told me this morning, he wanted to go to sleep with them under his pillow.
Cabby Stats
From: Somalia
In DC: 21 years
Soccer Interest (most DC cab drivers like to talk soccer): Brazil, the English Premier League, and the 2006 German World Cup team. Displayed a Ghana flag after they beat US 2-1 in 2006 WC, and had a native customer refuse to get in.
The RnR Hotel is ramshackle enough to come across like a 1980s retro British student venue, blighted by a lack of draft beer, but quirky enough to let you forgive its workers for being young and cool and playing The Smiths in the upstairs bar. Just to take me properly back twenty years (it’s a place where my head spends an unhealthy amount of time), I’m with my mate Drew, who I indeed went to college with in England back in the 1980s, and we talk about long forgotten mutual objects of scorn. That was Birmingham, England. (Here comes the segue, tada.) Maria Taylor is from Birmingham, Alabama.
“Last time we were here we played in Arlington to ten people,” she says gratefully to the maybe 100 to 150 people at the RnR Hotel last night. It’s been a difficult tour thanks to blizzards, the flu, and someone raiding her and keyboardist sister Kate’s dressing room. Yet here they are, a band of six (her brother’s in it too), making all this effort to come all this way and play us her astonishing songs. As they crank up the noise I get that four-beer fuzz that makes me think, “I love them all and want to be their friends forever.”
We wonder how they make a living out of this. It only cost ten dollars for the ticket, CDs are the same price, and even their t-shirts go way below the accepted statutory minimum of $20, selling for just twelve. I buy one, because you have to spread the word. Drew buys the two CDs (the new release ‘Lynn Teeter Flower’ is every bit as strong as 2005’s wonderful ‘11:11’) even though he could have been a thief and burned my copies. But as he told me this morning, he wanted to go to sleep with them under his pillow.
Cabby Stats
From: Somalia
In DC: 21 years
Soccer Interest (most DC cab drivers like to talk soccer): Brazil, the English Premier League, and the 2006 German World Cup team. Displayed a Ghana flag after they beat US 2-1 in 2006 WC, and had a native customer refuse to get in.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 4 - Asexuality
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| How do you act in the 'burbs: depressed and suppressed, or singing and swinging? |
When I cross the city border into DC, I can feel something change. There are people walking about. There are people walking about who set you to thinking all the blazing, immoral, indecent, sweat, bump, thrust and grind thoughts that we’re helpless to prevent ,so we might as well mentally enjoy until we’re too old to feel the blood happily flooding out of our skulls (the original brain drain) and into the temporarily festive sluice of arousal. All those thoughts that are blanked out in suburbia until, with the doors double-locked, you can enjoy the furtive unspilling of your hardcore imagination.But flaunting yourself in suburbia only invites ostracism. Those rare human beings wanting to display their feathers will sprint in the dark from front door to car and speed off to the fleshpots of Bethesda and Friendship Heights, lest they be seen as homebreakers on the prowl. An attractive soccer mom is only a theoretical concept, because even if you could see through the dark glass of the SUV as it raced down your road, the cellphone-covered, accusatory sour face would have you reeling with guilt, like a Catholic choirboy caught fondling the rosary while inadvertently picturing the Mother Superior’s lips unpursed.
Not that I’m deluding myself the theoretical soccer mom would be in any respect excited at the sight of me unloading the groceries from the back of my car and shuffling up the garden path while scouring the front yard for Chelsea’s Last Crap (see GST, No. 3). The screeching of brakes, an unwound window, a leering wolf-whistle and a yell of, “Excuuuuse me, but you are one fucking hot house-hubbie!” would no doubt be as unnerving to your average ‘burb-imprisoned stay-at-home dad as a 3pm drive-by shooting. Though it would probably take something a little more special than my skinny ass in a thirty-buck pair of jeans to wrench a soccer mom from her cellphone.
At weekends, however, there are drunken swing and swap parties on every street. True, I’ve yet to be invited, but there must be something (or someone) going down when the lights do likewise at 10. New kids are born, and divorce suits get filed. Adultery must be conducted in secret, ultra-padded underground chambers – the same places where people drink alcohol. That’s all fine, though. Just don’t show up on the surface singing at midnight. In suburbia the golden rule is that all your simmering desires and leashed-in human frailties should be kept in a safe place where they won’t disturb the peace.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Land Of Family Fun
I must have done something very bad in a previous life, because I’ve ended up in hell. It’s called the Caesars Brookdale Resort. It is “the land of family fun”.
On the drive up here yesterday we passed a church somewhere in Pennsylvania with the sign “Act today like you’ll be meeting God tomorrow.” They should add: “Otherwise we’ll make you sit through the Maisie Hills Band at dinner-time.”
Maisie (not her real name) is in her 50s, and while we digested the sub-ordinary stodge that the resort is passing off as nutrition (it’s an ‘all-inclusive deal’, otherwise known as No Escape), we were subjected to her mid-life interpretations of songs old and new, plus banter in between numbers. Come on dad, get up and dance! Oh look, there’s a bloke in the audience looks like Justin Timberlake! As my ten-year-old daughter, who recently discovered The Joys of Sarcasm, would say: Ha. Ha. Ha.
We must be the only family in America insane enough to leave Washington DC on a mild and sunny day, after a month of freezing, ball-biting weather, and consciously drive northwards for four hours, back to the cold and the snow, and all for the pleasure of freezing cross winds, Formica décor, getting elbowed away from the salad buffet by alternatively sized natives, and tortuous small talk with the family from Long Island placed at our table to foster exciting new friendships.
Our apartment was designed with the swinging playboy demographic in mind rather than the suburban family of four. In the master bedroom there’s a jacuzzi, and a ceiling mirror over the bed. The wife and I could stick the kids in front of the tv, close the door, run a bath, crack open the bubbly, put on some James Last, and party like it’s 1972. In theory. In practice we all four lie on the bed and stare up at our reflections, making faces. Would I really like to watch myself fucking? I’ll keep you posted (maybe).
There is an actual reason we’re here, rather than staying at home and burning a pile of hundred dollar notes: the rest of the family is skiing, a sport I reluctantly took up and gave up ten years ago after falling down a Swiss mountainside and ramming my knee into my head during a beginner’s course I’d been coerced into taking.
The wife booked that, as she booked this. When I heard the price we were paying, I imagined a ‘resort’ in the sense of something luxury, where you’re pampered a little, and the quietly devoted waiters bring you complementary cocktails by the side of a vast and peaceful indoor pool. Perhaps a pianist plays Bach in the marbled foyer, and all kids except my own are banned.
If I act today in such a way that I get to meet God tomorrow, I’ll ask him if that’s the kind of set-up you get for good behaviour.
On the drive up here yesterday we passed a church somewhere in Pennsylvania with the sign “Act today like you’ll be meeting God tomorrow.” They should add: “Otherwise we’ll make you sit through the Maisie Hills Band at dinner-time.”
Maisie (not her real name) is in her 50s, and while we digested the sub-ordinary stodge that the resort is passing off as nutrition (it’s an ‘all-inclusive deal’, otherwise known as No Escape), we were subjected to her mid-life interpretations of songs old and new, plus banter in between numbers. Come on dad, get up and dance! Oh look, there’s a bloke in the audience looks like Justin Timberlake! As my ten-year-old daughter, who recently discovered The Joys of Sarcasm, would say: Ha. Ha. Ha.
We must be the only family in America insane enough to leave Washington DC on a mild and sunny day, after a month of freezing, ball-biting weather, and consciously drive northwards for four hours, back to the cold and the snow, and all for the pleasure of freezing cross winds, Formica décor, getting elbowed away from the salad buffet by alternatively sized natives, and tortuous small talk with the family from Long Island placed at our table to foster exciting new friendships.
Our apartment was designed with the swinging playboy demographic in mind rather than the suburban family of four. In the master bedroom there’s a jacuzzi, and a ceiling mirror over the bed. The wife and I could stick the kids in front of the tv, close the door, run a bath, crack open the bubbly, put on some James Last, and party like it’s 1972. In theory. In practice we all four lie on the bed and stare up at our reflections, making faces. Would I really like to watch myself fucking? I’ll keep you posted (maybe).
There is an actual reason we’re here, rather than staying at home and burning a pile of hundred dollar notes: the rest of the family is skiing, a sport I reluctantly took up and gave up ten years ago after falling down a Swiss mountainside and ramming my knee into my head during a beginner’s course I’d been coerced into taking.
The wife booked that, as she booked this. When I heard the price we were paying, I imagined a ‘resort’ in the sense of something luxury, where you’re pampered a little, and the quietly devoted waiters bring you complementary cocktails by the side of a vast and peaceful indoor pool. Perhaps a pianist plays Bach in the marbled foyer, and all kids except my own are banned.
If I act today in such a way that I get to meet God tomorrow, I’ll ask him if that’s the kind of set-up you get for good behaviour.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 3 - Dog Crap
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| Just say No! to Chelsea |
The second kind are the sociopaths who have no fenced-in yard, and who let their dogs roam free to crap wherever they feel like it. After all, it’s a free country for dogs too, right? That would be the dog from two doors down, a spaniel of some sort who’s taken a liking to the smell of our front yard and constantly craps there. Now that the yard smells of nothing but its rear-end waste, she likes it even more.
That this dog is called Chelsea is a further blow. The crap-happy hound started shitting on our grass right around the time Russian billionaire Roman Abramovic took over my least favourite football team in the world, Chelsea FC, and they started winning trophies by virtue of the multi-millions they spent on Europe’s best players. That a dog with such a name would take to dumping on my space just as its namesake football team was buying its way to glory seemed doubly unjust.
I sent a very polite e-mail to its owner saying that I didn’t much enjoy clearing up her dog’s mess, and could she do something about it, please. Much too polite, as it turned out, because she ignored it. She’s employed ‘doing something on Capitol Hill’ (presumably not working on legislation to prosecute violators of environmental laws) and is a very busy woman, it seems. Professional dog walkers come during the day and walk the dog properly. At all other times, the voiding cur has free rein to squat on my turf and let it all out.
What sort of neighbour ignores a polite e-mail? If someone had sent me an e-mail like that, I’d have gone round with flowers, an apology, and an assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. Because, like most people, I’d be kind of embarrassed that my dog was shitting on someone else’s property. I’d see it as my responsibility.
Chelsea still kept calling around to drop off her fecal deposits. Sometimes I’d see her and try to chase her back down the road, but the animal was too dumb to realise I was angry, and would just unapologetically come over to be petted (I’m sure if she could speak she’d have asked me to wipe her arse too). And so I started putting her piles of crap in a plastic bag and leaving them on the neighbour’s doorstep. My other neighbours said I needed to post them through the front door to get the message home, and maybe they were right. One day I got so mad I typed out a firm letter. I threatened, reluctantly, “further action” (though I’d no idea what that would entail). Before I could change my mind I dropped it through the letter box. But the woman who works on Capitol Hill doesn’t work on Capitol Hill for nothing. She ignored it.
The next step was to actually call round. “Could you please clean up the crap your dog’s just left on our verge?” She squinted at me like I was a rogue pedlar. “Verge?” was all she said. Ah damn it, my big moment and I go and choose a British word. “You know, the grass part next to the road.” She cleaned it up, but with bad grace and, again, no apology. It’s amazing how some people have the knack of making you feel like you’re in the wrong for them having a dog that craps in your yard.
Finally, I stooped to her level. Last month I scooped up four piles of Chelsea’s crap in the snow shovel and dumped them right on her front doorstep. It took me over two years to get this far. Our garden’s been clean ever since. I suppose you have to speak the only language these people understand. Crap.
In another positive development, Chelsea FC are not doing so well right now. They’re six points off the lead in the English Premier League, and Abramovic is falling out with the coach Jose Mourinho for having wasted too much of his cash on expensive players who haven’t produced the goods. I like to think I’ve messed with Chelsea’s karma. In fact I think I’ve dumped all over it.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 2 - Neighbourhood Watch
There’s a crime wave sweeping across suburbia. You may not have seen it, or even heard about it. But fear not, Neighbourhood Watch will soon be stamping it out. Yes, North Chevy Chase has declared the War On Crime!
I received an e-mail the other week from a woman I’ve never met, but she lives a few streets away. She’d set up a Neighbourhood Watch on her street and wanted to tell me about some police seminars being offered at the Audubon Society in case I wanted to do the same.
Why in the name of sweet weeping Jesus would I want to do that? Because “my husband and I [oh my God, the Queen of England has moved to my ‘hood] have become concerned about some car thefts, burglaries and robberies in our area,” she wrote. “Some”? How many is “some”? You just know that there’s maybe been one car theft and one burglary in six months, and a robbery two towns away she read about in The Montgomery Gazette.
Crime in suburbia’s not easy. Every car has an alarm, so you’d have to be careless to have one stolen. Likewise every house. We once locked ourselves out and it took a professional locksmith an hour to get us back in. Not that we’ve got much worth nicking. Our TV’s a modern, fat-backed antique at seven years old, and my CD collection is unsaleable - I’m such an elitist that the police would track them down and trace the burglar in hours. (The official police report: “The criminal was apprehended trying to sell a Jackie Leven boxed set to customers at a Burger King in Wheaton. They became suspicious that the cult Scottish soloist’s collected works were some kind of an explosive device and alerted security.”)
True, there was a home invasion (an ‘invasion’ being as few as one or two persons) a couple of months back in the posher part of the neighbourhood, down towards DC. That’s where some of the houses are so big that the invader’s defense will be that he thought he was strolling into the Mormon Temple for some quiet time. If you had enough savvy, you could invade and live in one of the spare rooms there for months, and the only person you’d ever meet would be the cleaning lady.
And an unwelcome ‘invader’ would certainly be cause for a Watch campaign. In suburbia we don’t even like invited guests to be in our house, in case their feet inadvertently brush the carpet pile the wrong way, or their kids leave snot trails on the upholstery. But we put up with them anyway, for a couple of hours a month, if absolutely necessary, provided they send in advance a doctor’s certificate giving them full medical clearance.
But what about all this crime? Until I moved my office to an upstairs room at the back of the house at the end of last year, I spent seven and a half years watching the neighbourhood through a downstairs window from my desk. Believe me, nothing ever happens. There’s no one around to make it happen. If someone walks past the house you jump up. “Christ, what’s that?!” Oh, just a human being. The postgirl, in fact. Don’t worry, she’ll soon be gone.
The only crimes on our street are committed by the dog two doors up that regularly craps on our front lawn (to be the subject of a future ‘Great Suburban Tradition’), and the quarter-witted commuters who speed down our street at 40mph every morning because they can use our neighbourhood to shave 15 seconds off the journey to their doubtless essential jobs.
Other than that, the "concerned" and beady-eyed watchers on patrol are going to be hard pressed to spot much criminal activity around here, unless they stop me late at night walking back from the Ri-Ra bar and demand to see my ID. The chances are that there would be an immediate crime involving aggravated verbal assault.
I received an e-mail the other week from a woman I’ve never met, but she lives a few streets away. She’d set up a Neighbourhood Watch on her street and wanted to tell me about some police seminars being offered at the Audubon Society in case I wanted to do the same.
Why in the name of sweet weeping Jesus would I want to do that? Because “my husband and I [oh my God, the Queen of England has moved to my ‘hood] have become concerned about some car thefts, burglaries and robberies in our area,” she wrote. “Some”? How many is “some”? You just know that there’s maybe been one car theft and one burglary in six months, and a robbery two towns away she read about in The Montgomery Gazette.
Crime in suburbia’s not easy. Every car has an alarm, so you’d have to be careless to have one stolen. Likewise every house. We once locked ourselves out and it took a professional locksmith an hour to get us back in. Not that we’ve got much worth nicking. Our TV’s a modern, fat-backed antique at seven years old, and my CD collection is unsaleable - I’m such an elitist that the police would track them down and trace the burglar in hours. (The official police report: “The criminal was apprehended trying to sell a Jackie Leven boxed set to customers at a Burger King in Wheaton. They became suspicious that the cult Scottish soloist’s collected works were some kind of an explosive device and alerted security.”)
True, there was a home invasion (an ‘invasion’ being as few as one or two persons) a couple of months back in the posher part of the neighbourhood, down towards DC. That’s where some of the houses are so big that the invader’s defense will be that he thought he was strolling into the Mormon Temple for some quiet time. If you had enough savvy, you could invade and live in one of the spare rooms there for months, and the only person you’d ever meet would be the cleaning lady.
And an unwelcome ‘invader’ would certainly be cause for a Watch campaign. In suburbia we don’t even like invited guests to be in our house, in case their feet inadvertently brush the carpet pile the wrong way, or their kids leave snot trails on the upholstery. But we put up with them anyway, for a couple of hours a month, if absolutely necessary, provided they send in advance a doctor’s certificate giving them full medical clearance.
But what about all this crime? Until I moved my office to an upstairs room at the back of the house at the end of last year, I spent seven and a half years watching the neighbourhood through a downstairs window from my desk. Believe me, nothing ever happens. There’s no one around to make it happen. If someone walks past the house you jump up. “Christ, what’s that?!” Oh, just a human being. The postgirl, in fact. Don’t worry, she’ll soon be gone.
The only crimes on our street are committed by the dog two doors up that regularly craps on our front lawn (to be the subject of a future ‘Great Suburban Tradition’), and the quarter-witted commuters who speed down our street at 40mph every morning because they can use our neighbourhood to shave 15 seconds off the journey to their doubtless essential jobs.
Other than that, the "concerned" and beady-eyed watchers on patrol are going to be hard pressed to spot much criminal activity around here, unless they stop me late at night walking back from the Ri-Ra bar and demand to see my ID. The chances are that there would be an immediate crime involving aggravated verbal assault.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Great Suburban Traditions No. 1 - The Piano Recital
All suburban kids take piano lessons at some point in their lives. If they don’t, their parents worry they might turn to drugs, alcohol and under-age sex, and all before the age of ten. Mine are no exception. They’ve been taking lessons for two and a half years now, which is fine by me because which one of us wouldn’t like to be able to play the piano? But no one warned me about the recitals, a ritual whereby parents gather in a suburban living-room and politely pretend to be impressed by the below-average musical skills of kids they don’t know.
At their last piano teacher’s (whom we left because she accused one of our daughters of stealing “knick-knacks” from her – quite what a ten-year-old girl would want with the possessions of a pious, austere woman in her 50s is anybody’s guess, but when, at the end of one lesson, she was ordered to empty her pockets, only to show that there was nothing in her pockets to empty, we decided it was time for a less Victorian-era approach to piano tuition), recitals were stiff occasions, with printed programmes, formal dress and the inevitable pot luck obligation, an important part of modern American culture which decrees that people showing up at someone else’s house without a plastic Tupperware container or a foil-covered casserole dish will be mace-sprayed, gagged, bound and dumped in the basement until the occasion is over. Purely for the sake of sparing them the embarrassment of not having contributed, of course.
Things looked more promising with the new piano teacher, and not just because she’s a very kind and friendly woman. Recitals would be informal, she said, with people milling around and chatting while kids played piano in the background, if they felt like it. Did we need to bring anything? Nothing at all. This looked good. Plus, the new teacher is in our neighbourhood, so perhaps we’d bump into one or two people we knew. Though my wife made the kids promise to play as early as possible to make sure we were home in time for ‘Desperate Housewives’.
We didn’t meet anyone we knew, although this could be related to the fact we don’t actually know many people in the neighbourhood. And though it was all very civilised, the problem with the new recital format soon became clear. The White American Suburban Pop (WASP) has yet to learn the basics of making conversation in any situation where there is no flaming barbeque loaded with burning dead animal parts, a six-pack of beer, or a large screen TV about to show some form of ad-blighted sporting spectacle whose result will be forgotten by tomorrow morning (or, even worse, remembered). There was no opportunity for buddy-popping – an all-male version of body-popping that involves a mutual backslap, the clinking of two bottles and a joke about “the wives” talking a lot, but which is not at all gay - and soon I found myself babbling on to reserved, silent types about piano lessons, and pianos and, erm, the time I played baritone euphonium in the school band over thirty years ago. Receiving little response, I then felt as awkward as they looked and shut up too.
So while kids ran around, ate biscuits and played piano, the buzz of conversation among adults, who looked like they were spending their first evening out for a decade, remained absent. Not that the women were much better, but at least they smiled instead of looking like they’d just landed in purgatory and would rather be off hunting wild boar. My daughters played and we indulged them with praise, though thankfully they were as imperfect as all the other kids. No one wants to look like the smug prodigy’s Dad, eh? Although the night could have been a little more memorable if I’d started grunting primevally at the mute WASPs, pointing at my scrotum and shouting, “Look what this produced – a perfect note rendition of ‘The Merry Farmer’! Ha!”
We left in time to be home for ‘Desperate Housewives’. I was astounded to find out we’d only been there for 45 minutes. And we made no new friends. But it's the taking part that counts.
At their last piano teacher’s (whom we left because she accused one of our daughters of stealing “knick-knacks” from her – quite what a ten-year-old girl would want with the possessions of a pious, austere woman in her 50s is anybody’s guess, but when, at the end of one lesson, she was ordered to empty her pockets, only to show that there was nothing in her pockets to empty, we decided it was time for a less Victorian-era approach to piano tuition), recitals were stiff occasions, with printed programmes, formal dress and the inevitable pot luck obligation, an important part of modern American culture which decrees that people showing up at someone else’s house without a plastic Tupperware container or a foil-covered casserole dish will be mace-sprayed, gagged, bound and dumped in the basement until the occasion is over. Purely for the sake of sparing them the embarrassment of not having contributed, of course.
Things looked more promising with the new piano teacher, and not just because she’s a very kind and friendly woman. Recitals would be informal, she said, with people milling around and chatting while kids played piano in the background, if they felt like it. Did we need to bring anything? Nothing at all. This looked good. Plus, the new teacher is in our neighbourhood, so perhaps we’d bump into one or two people we knew. Though my wife made the kids promise to play as early as possible to make sure we were home in time for ‘Desperate Housewives’.
We didn’t meet anyone we knew, although this could be related to the fact we don’t actually know many people in the neighbourhood. And though it was all very civilised, the problem with the new recital format soon became clear. The White American Suburban Pop (WASP) has yet to learn the basics of making conversation in any situation where there is no flaming barbeque loaded with burning dead animal parts, a six-pack of beer, or a large screen TV about to show some form of ad-blighted sporting spectacle whose result will be forgotten by tomorrow morning (or, even worse, remembered). There was no opportunity for buddy-popping – an all-male version of body-popping that involves a mutual backslap, the clinking of two bottles and a joke about “the wives” talking a lot, but which is not at all gay - and soon I found myself babbling on to reserved, silent types about piano lessons, and pianos and, erm, the time I played baritone euphonium in the school band over thirty years ago. Receiving little response, I then felt as awkward as they looked and shut up too.
So while kids ran around, ate biscuits and played piano, the buzz of conversation among adults, who looked like they were spending their first evening out for a decade, remained absent. Not that the women were much better, but at least they smiled instead of looking like they’d just landed in purgatory and would rather be off hunting wild boar. My daughters played and we indulged them with praise, though thankfully they were as imperfect as all the other kids. No one wants to look like the smug prodigy’s Dad, eh? Although the night could have been a little more memorable if I’d started grunting primevally at the mute WASPs, pointing at my scrotum and shouting, “Look what this produced – a perfect note rendition of ‘The Merry Farmer’! Ha!”
We left in time to be home for ‘Desperate Housewives’. I was astounded to find out we’d only been there for 45 minutes. And we made no new friends. But it's the taking part that counts.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
One Of My Narrators On The Academic's Couch
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| FWTBR - now academically analysed |
I came across the entire thesis while fiddling about with my Googles on the internet. I contacted the author, Sonja Wild, and asked her if it would be okay to translate the chapter on my story and post it on my website, and she was more than happy to consent. As when the book was translated into Czech, it won't make me much money, but it feels at least as though it has been acknowledged by the Brainy Community, just as the Czech edition gave me the comforting, if entirely deceptive, feeling that the book had somehow edged a tiny step closer to the world of Kundera, Klima and Skvorecky.
And strange as it is to see your work encompassed in a sentence like: "The figure of Jacob [the narrator] stands not just for failure in itself, but also for the relationship between self-loathing and professional fulfilment," you realise that not only has the author of the thesis summed it up rather nicely, but she has made some spot-on interpretations you perhaps never intended, or consciously thought of, when you wrote the story in the first place.
I liked this bit, for example: "In Plenderleith’s tragi-comic story a world is evoked in which there are not just winners and losers in the game of football, but in which the weekly humiliation of the mascot stands in stark contrast to the idolisation of the players." Though maybe there are happy and fulfilled mascots out there without a drinking problem, and with a steady girlfriend, who would beg to disagree.
The whole thesis, covering authors such as Nick Hornby, John King and Attila the Stockbroker, can be read, only in German, here.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Hawk Kills Dove
Not a remarkable event, but it happened in my back yard, and it was witnessed by my eight-year-old daughter just as I'm getting her into bird watching.
She's doing a project at school on the goldfinch, so we bought a new hanging feeder containing nyger seed - which attracts the breed especially - to go with the suet holder that brings us woodpeckers, and the green, metal, house-shaped feeder that lures nuthatches, chickadees and titmice, but is usually covered with house-sparrows and flying death-wish squirrels (they can't climb on to it, so they hurl themselves at it from above to dislodge seed on to the ground). This weekend we were watching some low-level garden activity, and when I left her to go to the kitchen, there were just a dark-eyed junco and three mourning doves on the lawn, pecking away in that docile way that makes them possibly the least interesting bird in the world to watch.
A minute later she came running through, distraught and in tears. "A hawk came and ate one of the birds!" My first reaction was "Cool!" and I ran through to the window to see if it was still around. A couple of years ago a sharp-shinned hawk came down and frightened an American Robin into flying against the living room window. When I looked out past the circle of feathers left on the pane, there was the hawk sitting below, its talons in the dead bird, looking around furtively before it flew off.
This time there were just a few feathers where the dove had been, and a grey squirrel peeking out of the log pile where it had scarpered for cover. After a hug and some consoling words, I managed to get my daughter to describe what she had seen. It sounded like a red-tailed hawk. I persuaded her that, for a novice birdwatcher, she'd witnessed something pretty special, and that such deaths were just a part of nature. By the next day she was breezily telling everyone about it. I only wish I'd hung around for another minute and seen it myself.
She's doing a project at school on the goldfinch, so we bought a new hanging feeder containing nyger seed - which attracts the breed especially - to go with the suet holder that brings us woodpeckers, and the green, metal, house-shaped feeder that lures nuthatches, chickadees and titmice, but is usually covered with house-sparrows and flying death-wish squirrels (they can't climb on to it, so they hurl themselves at it from above to dislodge seed on to the ground). This weekend we were watching some low-level garden activity, and when I left her to go to the kitchen, there were just a dark-eyed junco and three mourning doves on the lawn, pecking away in that docile way that makes them possibly the least interesting bird in the world to watch.
A minute later she came running through, distraught and in tears. "A hawk came and ate one of the birds!" My first reaction was "Cool!" and I ran through to the window to see if it was still around. A couple of years ago a sharp-shinned hawk came down and frightened an American Robin into flying against the living room window. When I looked out past the circle of feathers left on the pane, there was the hawk sitting below, its talons in the dead bird, looking around furtively before it flew off.
This time there were just a few feathers where the dove had been, and a grey squirrel peeking out of the log pile where it had scarpered for cover. After a hug and some consoling words, I managed to get my daughter to describe what she had seen. It sounded like a red-tailed hawk. I persuaded her that, for a novice birdwatcher, she'd witnessed something pretty special, and that such deaths were just a part of nature. By the next day she was breezily telling everyone about it. I only wish I'd hung around for another minute and seen it myself.
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