Making friends in a new country is hard. Or rather, making friends here is hard; I’ve no idea about other countries. In all honesty, London is probably a harder place to meet people on account of the average Londoner’s uptight-quotient. Still, we’ve been doing surprisingly satisfactorily. Last week we were invited to our first dinner party. This week we were invited to see a Philly band play a well-known local music venue in Manayunk. We were both quite excited about it; not only had we been invited out, but it also sounded pretty good! Woohoo! Maybe we could tick the “social-life” box. At the last minute the venue was switched…somewhere nearer to our current abode. As it was very, very, cold and as the local weather forecasters were threatening snow, this sounded like good news. All the local places we have noticed appear to be quite hospitable and normal, apart from one place, so we were quite excited to be trying a new venue. By the way, the dodgy bar is just along from the local Sally Army AA place and a couple of other dodgy spots so we have regularly joked about going there for a nice quiet drink – it looks like the sort of place you’d go to on getting our of prison so that you could meet up with your old friends.
Can you guess where the band ended up playing ?
The first thing that struck us about the place, apart from the Hammer-studio decor, was the smoke. Philadelphia has a blanket ban on smoking in bars, but this place was inexplicably exempt. We went over to the bar, which was populated by either coke-heads, aged winos, or generic weirdos, and tried to order a drink. Obviously I went for a Yeungling, but Michele had a few problems. The lack of Irish Whisky (despite having cardboard shamrocks and hideous, bloated, leprechauns all over the shop), and no red wine led her to follow my example and get a beer. “Good choice” remarked a gentleman punter standing next to us. We made a swift exit to “the back” where the band were setting up. Apart from the band there was a pile of old shite, a little bar with no obvious signs of beer on sale, and a bunch of semi-circular, waist-height booths that had apparently been rescued from 1980; one of which was occupied by a pissed-up homeless-looking guy who had fallen asleep and was gently secreting a line of drool onto his trousers. By now Michele and I were enjoying the atmosphere because it reminded us of being in our early 20’s – either in New York or London.
Earlier that day I had been at work and, as we had some cunt from Megacorp coming in, jeans were banned. This is because jeans are made from denim, which “business professionals” are so allergic to that even being in the same room as them can cause perspiration. Or something. Going to this bar in pin-striped trousers caused a few conflicting feelings. Which path should I be on ? Sensible trousers, tofu, and stuffed vegetables, or buffalo wings, pissed-up, beery, comedy punk bands in rough dives throughout the world. We had a bloody great evening there to be honest so now I’m even more confused 🙂 What would Mark Steel do ?

Maybe the confusion is related to our proximity to a huge parallel universe split that is about to occur. Either:

• We get final approval for the mortgage – which means we have a new house, new parrots and a US life ahead of us for a while…or
• We get turned down for the mortgage and have to seriously reconsider our options.

In all honesty I think that both universes offer a lot of decent possibilities. That’s probably why I’m not currently crapping my pants.
Good night.

Since Humphrey’s death I haven’t had a self-indulgent blog about her, mainly because I understand how little she meant to anyone who wasn’t me or Michele. Even the people that liked her and appreciated her company couldn’t understand how important she was to us. We learned a lot from her during her short time with us and I know that she’ll be one of the lives I think about on my deathbed. Michele and I both regularly feel dread rushes of pain when, during our daily lives, we are reminded of her.
Tonight Michele took me to a parrot rescue just south of Philly. We went there because Michele and the owner of the rescue had covertly planned that I should fall in love with a Princess of Wales parakeet that they were looking after. Her name is Princess Leia…obviously. And obviously I loved her. If our house comes together, which is looking more and more like a “when”, then she together with a beautiful couple of eclectuses will be joining us there.
In my sad little dream world we will have a housewarming party that would involve my parents, my sister, Marshall, everyone in the UK fatherland that we know (you’re all invited), together with everyone over here that we know. That would make me very happy indeed…even if you couldn’t make it for reasons of common sense.

Michele’s dad has been a keen explorer of the Internet since Verizon managed to get their shit together and get his DSL working. Imagine his joy when he discovered that he already has a starring role within Google Street View! Washing his car, naturally.

An attack of ennui combined with a new found hatred of cube farms has prevented me writing much recently…or doing anything constructive at all. But to get the blog rolling, here is an update to the football/muggy-bonehead guide.
Football:

• Little Red Riding Hood, And The Monsters.
• V for Vendetta.
• Pont L’Eveque, seared Tuna and other delicacies available from Ardmore Farmers market.
• Three men in a boat.
• Freshly made smoothies for breakfast.
• The News Quiz and its US counterpart.
• 4L of surprisingly good red wine for $11.99.
• Decent grimey stuff.
• Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Muggy Bonehead

• Cube farms. So for 40 hours a week I have to sit in a small beige cube, illuminated by strip lights. Can’t I just do community service instead ?
• Cars and driving. Not to disrespect dear Walter, who has indeed been very useful, but nowadays my indifference to cars, SUVs, and their drivers has mutated into plain hatred.
• Kanye West, P Diddy and all of the other platinum hip-hop twats. Did you see Kanye west at the grammys ? Calling him a talentless egocentric tosser would be an insult to Michael Winner and Jim Davidson.
• The average holiday entitlement given to workers in the USA.
• Salt and Sugar in every bloody thing.

There’s a lot of snow on the ground which is keeping things cool and pretty.

Last Saturday we had a dip in the waters of unfiltered Americana with a trip to see some proper Philly sport: Ice Hockey. Over here they just call it “hockey” but they also call budgies “parakeets” so what do they know. Anyway, to the average baseball-cap-wearing, cheese-steak eating Philadelphian, sport is very important. Much like football to the English. As an Englishman, and a neo-Philadelphian, I’m atypical because I think sport is a bunch of brainless shite that exists solely to keep peoples’ minds off of real politics; but that’s a tough one to argue these days.
Every bar I have ventured into over here, with literally only one or two exceptions, has had American Football on TV. They call it “football”, but also they call Sellotape “scotch tape” so what do they know. If you’ve never seen American Football, imagine 3 hours of muscular men in very tight lycra pants, or fat blokes in nylon jackets and radio headsets, spitting all over the place. That’s pretty much it. Only more boring. I never thought I’d miss proper football; over here they call it “soccer” but they also call Miller Lite “beer” so what do they know.
But, if you find a bar showing “hockey” you see something very different. You see fighting basically. Hockey is like Rollerball on ice, but more violent. They really do have fights, with fists and blood and everything and the refs only break it up when the crowd starts to seem bored. It’s probably the closest the human race has come to Gladiators since the Romans. But dull it’s not.

We got given a couple of very expensive tickets to see the Philadelphia Flyers(AKA the Broad Street Bullies) play “the ducks” or some such bollocks and thought we’d give it a go. It was probably the most American experience and also the most Philly experience we could have hoped for. We got there early so we could look around. There are a couple of bars on the ground level, and one even had a band doing very loud rock covers. There is also no shortage of places to ingest and egest unhealthy food. Here’s a picture of us enjoying a cheese-steak, some crab fries and some beer, in a bar, listening to a mediocre rock band, before the game.

The best bit is that you can take food and drink into the arena while your watching the action. This is not only a nice addition to the proceedings but pretty essential. You need to drink to provide your mind with enough cushioning to survive the outrageous amount of advertising you’re bombarded with. In common with all other American TV sports, hockey has pauses in play every 30 seconds or so, and that’s clearly so that the time can be stuffed full with ways of prising cash out of the punters. All around the arena are animated digital displays bombarding everyone with commercials the whole time. Every time play stops you get told about great ways to spend your money until play resumes.

It sounds like I’m being very negative about the experience but, quite honestly, we both thoroughly enjoyed the evening. We were quite pissed by the end though 🙂

Loads more to talk about…but another night.

Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation with a bunch of co-workers, I’ll suddenly become aware that the group of people I’m talking to all have a different accent to me. It’s happening less frequently now, but when it does occur it feels like being forcibly detached from the situation and looking in from the outside. In many ways it’s quite pleasant because it feels like a little achievement that we’re in this position. The other time that it occurs is on entering the office in the morning. Hearing even one voice say “morning Martin!” or “hey Martin!” in an American accent is still an odd, but flattering feeling; how do these people know my name ?
Apart from that, work is bollocks. Not my work especially, just work in general. Being forced to sit in a hot, fluorescent-lit cube for 40 hours a week is a pretty depressing waste of a life. It’s been getting me down quite a lot recently but I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only temporary. So, while I’m feeling good, here is a list of reasons I should stop bloody moaning:

• Barak Obama is doing quite well, and the Republican candidates are all obviously so mental that it’s unlikely we’ll end up with another George W Gump in the Whitehouse. Hmm, the triumph of optimism over experience perhaps…
• Last week the banking arm of my company came in, armed with bagels and doughnuts, and tried to persuade us to open bank accounts with them. OK, that sounds pretty bollocks, and for course it is. But they also had a raffle in which I won an iPod shuffle, much to my colleagues annoyance. They also gave me two small, plastic, fat, pig MegaBank keyrings. These are as cheap and crappy as they are appropriate; banks using fat pigs as mascots ?
• There are some exceptionally cool people at work.
• We may now own a house.
• Good food and drink – in large portions.
• No sirens driving past every two minutes of the day and night.

Those of you that know Brodie will be horrified to know he’s currently in Intensive Care after a serious assault. However, his prognosis is good. Please contact me if you need to contact him or his family.

On the front page of MegaCorp’s intranet [now that I’m legally employed there I won’t be dropping their real name too often] is this story:

Capital Levels

MegaCorp will exceed targeted capital levels on a pro forma basis for the 4Q 2007 and has raised or priced nearly $30 billion of capital over the last 2 months.

Now, I haven’t got the faintest arse of an idea what any of that means. I mean what does “priced” mean in that context ? To me, pricing is what they do in a supermarket with sticky labels, is that what they mean ? They just put a sticky label saying “$30 billion” on a big pile of money ? I could do that.

Money works in a different way when you have a lot of it. You can create more just be hyping it. Jobs work differently too. For example if you or I do a bad job, we get fired.
If the CEO of MegaCorp does a such a bad job that the company loses billions and causes a global economic crisis, he too gets fired. But the difference is that he keeps his $1.74 million pension, $94 million stock and $53 million savings.

It is with great sadness that we mourn the death of Abdul Latif, Lord of Harpole. Latif was clearly a few tokens short of a toaster, but loved by Viz readers all over the world. He also invented Curry Hell, and therefore will forever be associated with ring-sting.

He may be a Nutter, but he did a superb cover of Rapper’s Delight at his mayoral inauguration.
Our Mayor!

We are currently under attack from snow. Despite the number of insurance detail exchanges occurring just in the car park of my work, this is quite a mild snowfall for Philadelphia. It’s amusing to think that a couple of feet of snow here is nothing more than a minor inconvenience whereas in London it would be a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. London Transport would close down for a week and car drivers would all be given psychiatric treatment for the trauma. But here, life goes on and people still drive like arseholes.

Traveling 3000 miles changes things in a very peculiar way. Major things like TV, the Internet, and everyday life, don’t change too much, whereas the differences occur in seemingly small ways. Take birds for example. Over here, the birds are all different. The birds we do recognize, like the ubiquitous starlings and house sparrows, are usually here because they were artificially introduced by the eccentric and the reckless. Yesterday morning we managed to escape the bed glue and visit a reasonably nearby nature reserve; they organize regular bird-related events and Michele was very excited by the prospect.

The place was spectacular! It is the equivalent of the wetlands centers in Britain, only much larger and with, seemingly, more volunteers and borderline autistic experts. It was beautiful! We went on a four mile walk around the beautiful lake whilst the experts helped us see things that we would never normally have noticed.
The experts noticed over 35 different species that morning. We didn’t see half of them but we did see the following birds for the first time in our lives:

• american coot
• american goldfinch
• black duck
• carolina wren
• downey woodpecker
• golden crowned kinglet
• great blue heron
• greater black backed gull
• green wing teal
• mocking bird
• northern cardinal
• pintail ducks
• red tail hawk
• ruddy duck
• rusty blackbird
• sharpshin hawk
• shoveller ducks
• song sparrow
• white throat sparrow

If you want to see (or hear) what any of these lovely characters look (or sound) like, then I advise visiting this superb site.
It was possibly my first proper bird watching event, and it was very reassuring to find the usual raft of autistic blokes on hand to explain the intricacies of the hobby. One guy, Richard, who I really would like to permanently have on hand, could identify any of the birds we encountered by their call alone. The group leaders, obviously jealous at his skills, weren’t too friendly with him…until they needed his analysis of a nearby call. He was brilliant! He was pointing out birds to us all over the place, purely because he heard them, and we could then try to track them with our bins. I liked, and envied, Richard. Weatherwise Saturday was absolutely beautiful too! It was a perfect morning.

There were another couple of life affirming experiences we experienced this weekend. One of which was watching The Castle which, apart from being very funny, addressed one of the most serious issues in my life: the connection and differences between a house and a home. Please, please watch that film! It’s really bloody great, and it’s Aussie! OK, they may be a bunch of common, uncouth criminals, but they don’t half make some decent films, especially comedies. In fact this evening our expensive cable subscription afforded us the opportunity to watch Da Kath and Kim Code which was reassuringly entertaining.

Another good experience was watching the Extras Finale which was, in my simple-minded world, another piece of genius. People like Ricky Gervais and David Renwick have no business making ordinary people laugh and cry at the same time, but they have willfully inflicted their wishes on me so many times. On the other hand I do burst into tears a lot and have done since a very young age. But I didn’t feel the need to cry at ET or Titanic…in fact both films had more of an emetic effect on me…

Chris, Frances, Marshall, and Stella: get hold of “The Castle” and watch it! You’ll love it! Non-family-members in London will like it too!

Right, bed time.