Left Of The Middle

I have a middle name, but with the exception of my passport, birth cetificate, CV and one time marriage certificate it never really appears anywhere. It is Joseph, which actually is a considerably better name than Darren, but it was the 70s and we had black circles on our purple wallpaper so it could have been worse.

Over here however people have a fascination with their middle names. Specifically the first letter of their middle name. Some local examples..

I go swimming at the Bruce D. Walter pool, attached to the Thomas A. Edison school, built by the mayor Brian P. Stack, in the state of New Jersey governed by John S. Corzine, in a country run by George W. Bush. Harry S Truman was another one, though he had an excuse as in his case his middle name was actually ‘S’. My favourite is this sound guy who appeared on TV the other day – Chris P. Bacon.

Sometimes they like to move the initial around a bit, the US equivalent of Alan Titchmarsh is known as P. Allen Smith, not forgetting C. Thomas Howell and L. Ron Hubbard. This is peculiar behavior.

However, beyond the initials there are some terrific names here. A couple of favourites include local news anchor man Maurice DuBois (pronounced mooreeese, Adrian de la Touche anyone ?), NBC anchor Stone Phillips (Rock Hudon’s cousin?) who I’m sure is every bit as masculine as he wants you to think. However, its the habit of giving surnames as first names that I like the best, it makes you sound tough. Here’s some examples of the TV:

Anderson Cooper
Blake Lewis
Carson Daly
Blair Underwood
Cameron Daddo
Tucker Carlson

Grr. Those are real blokes names. In much the same way that first pet / mothers maiden name gives you your porn star name (in my case, Chewy Daly) I think if you just switch your first and surnames around you end up with your CBS Nightly News with.. anchor name.

Irish Blood, English Heart

I’d noticed the other Saturday, when we had company over – and I had done the honorable thing by leaving them and getting a cab to the boozer to go and watch England “play” Ireland in the Six Nations – that there seem to be a lot more Irish over here than there are English. Not that I was sitting in a pub in Hell’s Kitchen or some other big Irish area where it’d make sense, but a local in Hoboken. The pub was jammed, there was the odd white shirt and a good number of English accents but by far the majority were going for the paddies.

This included a a fair few of the people with English accents, some yanks (who seemed to believe that a goatee, messy hair and going ahhh after every sip of Guinness makes them Irish) as well as a couple of honest-to-goodness-couldn’t-get-work-back-home-havent-washed-me-hair-in-a-week-dental-curiosities Irishmen. But most were just putting it on.

With the game going horribly wrong and me having had four pints of wifebeater for breakfast I started taking offence, especially at this bizarre habit of faking an Irish accent. A couple of conversations later I realised that having a grandma from Ireland must affect the way you speak, that England are still world champions but people don’t like that endlessly repeated as often as possible before september, that your average american plastic paddy is significantly larger than me, and that I should shut up.

I moved over to the quiet part of the pub, populated with white shirts, bad teeth, put upon women and only people who are actually from England. According to my scientific pub survey it would seem that being English in the US is nothing to be proud of, so when it comes to picking a grandmother on which to base your allegience, dress sense and accent you go for the one who isn’t English (or you go back till you find someone who wasn’t). This explains why, if you look at the demographics of New York that there are more people claiming Haitian descent than there are English.

As for why I’m not sure. It’s true we made the tea too expensive for a little while a couple of hundred years ago, and it’s true that very expensive tea would piss me off but to still be so bitter ?

A week later and we were wandering through town. It was Saturday, March 3rd and somewhat oddly the people of Hoboken had pronounced it St Patrick’s Day a couple of weeks prematurely. Quite why they decided to do this is beyond me (next year it’s on March 1st) but the turn out was huge. There is a parade, featuring bagpipes, kilts (?), and unicycling flute players followed by speeches and muzac (have a look at the official photos here, the man has an eye for the ladies) but basically the day is an excuse for the locals to get completely trollied as early as possible.

It seems that the blokes get up around 9, brush their teeth with Baileys, rinse with Jameson, sink a Sheridan’s (anyone ever try that ? euch), puts on a comedy green hat and goes out looking for birds and booze. Saturday in Newcastle then. They all go to the pub and get mangled, trouble is there are more people than pubs and there’s no drinking on the streets here (dear God why ?) so they end up half cut, desperate for a piss and a pint and stood in the street waiting in a queue. This leads inevitably to fights. It got me quite homesick, Steph tells me that this is nothing but a warm up and the New York paddy’s day (which they will celebrate somewhat strangely on March 17th) will be worse. So, in no way being hypocritical (my grandmother was Irish you know), I’ve bought tickets to the Pogues for that day, will don a Galway shirt, step dance my way around Manhattan, drink green beer, say top of the morning to ye, sing the Fields of Athenry and give Steph the odd slap to keep her in check.

Money For Nothing

Less of a blog post and more of a public service announcement, I just thought I’d share some news on the bank charges back in England. It seems that charging £15 for a letter, £25 for borrowing £1 more than you are supposed to (despite the fact that it was the bank that allowed the borrowing) and £30 for not paying a direct debit for you is perhaps a little high.

So my brother got a list of his charges, added them up and wrote a letter asking for them back. And he got the past six years worth back without any fuss.

Early indications are that my charges total about £3500 over the six years, so if anyone else has run their affairs like an idiot and wants some money back then it really does work. Everything you need to do is on this BBC guide.

The Wii is fantastic. As well as getting you to swing your arms around like Mad Lizzie, it has a Weather Channel, the best TV web browser I’ve ever seen, and fairly groovy news channel with a spinning globe thing giving you headlines and photos from around the world. It seems the BBC World Service agrees as they appear to have dumped the whole correspondent based news gathering malarky and gone for the far more trusted reliable method of basing stories on the output of a video game console. (For the non-wiid that is the news channel in the background)

Lastly there is a man who does the film reviews on the Today show in the morning. He basically dislikes everything he watches. His name is Gene Shalit and this is what he looks like.

The Vampires Of New York

Warning: This post contains far too many facts and could be considered extraordinarily dull.

The largest man made er, thing in the world is not the Great Wall of China, not Honk Kong Airport, not the new W12 shopping centre nor is it Oprah Winfreys ego. Nope it’s right here in New York and its a landfill.

I was watching the news the other day when they announced that the mayor had plans to turn this landfill in to a park with trees, creeks and open spaces, so if I was to see this monument to garbage it had better be soon.

New York is a big city with a population of twenty million about three times the size of London and they’ve been throwing all their crap in to a hole in the ground for 50 years so that’d be a big hole. The dump was shut in 2001, but still managed to fill 3000 acres with about 3 billion cubic metres of stuff. Its difficult to get a sense of scale but according to a couple of searches thats about 1200 great pyramids worth (I couldn’t find anything using the more scientific units of measurement such as the double decker bus or football pitches).

So, having done no real research I got some warm clothes on, charged the ipod and tried to go find this place using only public transport and the knowledge that it was somewhere on Staten Island. Oddly they don’t publicise it too well and it certainly isn’t on maps I could get hold of.

First step then, getting to Staten Island. Taking the Bergen Light Rail from our house down to Hoboken, I suspected that the best way to get to the Staten Island Ferry was to take a ferry over to Manhattan so I bought a ticket on the little boat from New Jersey over to the modestly named ‘World Financial Center’ in the south east of Manhattan. Asking the man selling the tickets how to get to Staten Island set the tone for the customer service I was to get all day:

“Excuse me my good man, could you please help me, I’m hoping to get to your Staten Island. I wonder if you could advise on the best possible route?” I may or may not have said. He looked up from his sandwich and said
“No. Dunno. No.”

So I headed in to Hoboken terminal – which in some parts looks like this:

and jumped on the boat anyway.

The man in charge of opening doors on the boat (something he was extremely professional at) was much more helpful, pointing out where I had to go to get the ferry, showing me Staten Island off in the distance and pointing out the mysterious Scooby Do style Governor’s Island as we passed it.
“Can’t get there” he told me “Government people only, no way to get on that.”
I’m assuming thats where they do alien autopsies, film moon landings and draw faces on Mars or something so next week will endeavour to get there one way or another.
I tried the subtle approach of walking directly in to the attractive looking Governors Island Ferry Terminal, but inadvertantly set off a metal detector and was quickly asked for ID (which I never carry). So this is a pic of the building, and the completely obvious ‘you can’t come here’ sign.

Now I’m definitely going.

Anyways, next stop the Staten Island Ferry. These are really big orange boats that take about 30 minutes to cross the Hudson and charge you absolutely nothing for the privelege. They have clean toilets and serve terrible coffee. You get some nice views of New York and I managed to get the closest I’ve been so far to the Statue Of Liberty, which ironically was built by the French and is made of Russian steel obtained from work camps in Siberia (so I was told quite proudly by my guide in Yeketerinburg, Siberia a few years back). The statue really is quite something, though the light in the torch just makes it a little bit gay.

As you can see, the ferry has that sort of ‘hosed down at night’ interior also popular on the New York Subway.

But back to the dump, which in parts is taller than the Statue of Liberty, it has this great name. Rather unfortunately it is called the Fresh Kills Landfill. Steph’s dad worked there on occasion and he found a body. Jimmy Hoffa (the union bloke) is thought to be in there somewhere, and it was pretty popular with the mob amongst others. After the World Trade Center collapsed all the rubble was dumped in there too, body parts included (they took some dogs over later and found 100 bits of people in 14 hours).

Getting off the boat at Staten Island I headed to the information desk to ask about the dump but without success, so I figured maybe a map might help.
“Aint got no maps” said the lady sat at the travel information desk in a travel terminal, who coincidentally was also very interested in her sandwich. Sensing a conspiracy I went to look at the bus route map on the wall and noted a large blank space with no roads, towns or buses in it. That’d be it. Taking a packed bus in that vague direction I looked out the window for an hour since the other passengers couldn’t help me find the place, and some like the fellar below were reluctant to have their pictures taken.

Long after all the other white people had left the bus and been replaced by men in pyjamas I spotted several giant man made hills, that had to be it. Getting off the bus I knew I was right. The little town of Travis smelled like Sherpherd’s Bush on a Sunday morning. Sort of how I imagined Jon Pertwee / Worzel Gummidge smelled. To get to the actual dump I had to walk through this little cul-de-sac where at least two residents were watching me the whole way. Somewhat ironically there were all these signs just before the landfill:

I’ve been to Travis so you don’t have to. Here you go:

I figure after 50 years, bolting horses and stable doors springs to mind. After the houses there was a muddy field (I hope it was mud) and then a frozen river before the fenced off dumphills. Sadly these hills have overgrown with grass so there was no chance of getting particularly nasty photos. Deciding against crossing the river to dig a little, and seeing as it’d taken four hours to get here and that this was probably a really stupid idea in the first place I figured that was probably taking this far enough and besides it really did smell now. So I chose to be proud of myself, took some photos and went to wait for the bus (watched again by residents who were understandably curious).

The journey back was somewhat uneventful, though the ferry did get pretty close to the Governors Island / Area 52 and I got to look at some odd buildings, there was a large victorian mansion, what appeared to be barracks, a prison and row of quite pleasant detached two up, two downs.

Tomorrows plan is to get to Ellis Island. I have a great grandfather who ditched his wife and family and scooted over to America, I’m curious if he shows up there, and if he did then did he go on and make a fortune, and if he did, introduce myself to my relatives.

Ice Ice Baby

Breakfast in bed at the latest possible time, followed by a return to a bar we’d gotten familiar with the day before started off a pretty much perfect day back in Providence. The bar being McCormick & Scmhicks where we’d had the clams and a massage the day before, this was a reasonable place to start the day though with a name like that they were entitled to a confused identity. For example they proudly announced their St Patricks Day celebrations with Italian flags. Mr Schmick runs the promotions I suppose.

After a couple of sharpeners it was off to the ice rink. This was an outdoor rink in the centre of town (I’m guessing that was geographical since the eerie quiet meant there was no other way of knowing), where for just $10 you could blacken your backside with bruises, lose a few fingers and it was full of children. Children who could skate very well thankyou. Some of us are unstable on our feet at the best of times, so the idea of strapping thin bits of metal to your feet and launching yourself in to an arena with nothing to cling to but strangers was not too popular with Steph. I however was feeling the benefit of two pints of Sam Adams (beer) and pretty confident.

30 seconds later and we were both stuck to the sides of the rink like lichen. I don’t know why I was surprised that ice was slippery but it wasn’t long before we both ended up on our arses much to the amusement of various 8 year olds who were doing their best to knock us over. Fast forward a couple of hours though and we were skating like Gods, 13 stone of (literally) unstoppable me flying around the rink soon wiped the smiles of the 8 year olds as they quickly decided to either get out of the way or lose a few fingers. Here Stephanie displays the technique known as ‘Going Forward With a Smile That Says I Can’t Stop’

After the skating it was Stephs turn to choose the activity so we returned to McCormicks for cocktails to prepare for a full body mud wrap in the Red Door Spa. Something about the name Red Door concerned me, something about the receptionist concerned me more. Perhaps I’m not completely in touch with all my feminine sides or something, but when a man standing like a teapot and wearing more makeup than a burns victim is describing how I should be ’skin to the wind’ when I head in to a small dark room in order that I get the best out of a rub down, I get nervous.

As it turned out, it was a lady (curiously named Ryan) who did the deed. Put simply you lay down in the buff with conveniently placed towels whilst she defoliates, refoliates, detoxifies, rehydrates, intoxicates etc. your skin. It’s actually quite nice. Then she gets warm smelly mud (from the moors of Austria apparently) and smears it all over you. In theory this shouldn’t be erotic and in practice it wasn’t. For the most part. I made a comment about the massage parlours in London – this was not the correct thing to say. After about 20 minutes of being wrapped in cling film and smothered in mud for only $150 it was time to try and shower it off. Following that, and 67% more radiant, though still finding mud we headed back to the hotel for a dinner of martinis and seafood. I’ll give Providence that, the food was excellent.

The following day was a quick trip to the tourist spot, a road named Benefit Street (a road I know well recently) where all the buildings are at least 100 years old, and so it’s therefore Historic Benefit Street. It was ok, but nothing special so here’s a couple of random padding photos of Providence.

Notice the lack of people. Also notice the way the buses in Providence are made to look like they’re made of wood and a bit like trams. Isn’t that just crazy ? Hmm. After that it was back home on the train, it was time to get back to civilisation. By the way the trains are pretty comfortable, not too expensive and serve beer. They have this sort of beige carpeted interior with faux leather seats in business class that gives the impression they haven’t been redecorated since 1982. but aside from that no complaints.

Islands In The Stream

Providence, Rhode Island. Hmm. Not entirely sure how to describe it. Imagine a city thats not very pretty, but then again not ugly, its not got much going on, but then its not dead, the people are nice enough but unremarkable. I think Providence is basically Ipswich. Nothing bad to say but then again nothing particularly good either.

Still, we managed to have a good time in the sort of way you do when you have a power cut and have to make your own entertainment. Saturday we took the Amtrak three and a half hours north, we arrived and then walked down Main Street. This is Main Street:

which as you can see has no people. Aside from the occasional car the entire place was deserted, here is a car park in the city centre, on a Saturday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend

In the beginning this was amusing, after 45 minutes it was getting disturbing so we resoved to get in the first pub we could see. This turned out to be Blakes Tavern and it was heaving with singing drunk people, the sort of atmosphere you get when there’s a big game on, or there’s free sauce on the go, except that none of that was the case. These people were presumably simply celebrating seeing other people alive. Settling in for some beer and seafood we discussed the nights upcoming opportunities. Having noticed that there was absolutely nothing to see or do, and that the Temptations were playing that night, we opted for nothing. Nope, we bought tickets to the Temptations at the Providence Playhouse. That gave us a plan at least so next stop was another bar for some more beer and some more seafood, which included Quahog Clams. Given that my only cultural reference to Rhode Island (which, by the way is not an island) is Family Guy I was relieved to have something to get excited about, even if it was just a clam with tobasco on it.

By this point we’d gotten drunk and so headed back to the hotel for an afternoon boozesnooze being woken up 20 minutes before the Temps were due on by people playing basketball in the corridor. A quick shower and we were in a taxi driven by an English sailor named Paul, working for Big Daddy Taxis (who it later turned out ‘owned’ the town).

It turns out that having the Temtations was a pretty big deal in Providence. My first hint came when a very large, quite drunk entirely bald man started telling us how excited he was very close to my face, and then proceeded to give me a neck rub which a very large quite drunk entirely bald man is entitled to do. Our second clue that this was a bit of an event was that the Temps were introduced by the Mayor of the city who then went on to declare February 17th to be Temptations Day in Providence (no, I am not making that up). After all that, what followed was a bit of a let down. It could be that we had the worst seats in the house, it could be that usually you know more songs from a band than you think you do, but in this case it was still only My Girl, or it could be that they were just a little bit shit.

The small white blobs in this photo are the Temptations, or at least one of them is. The other four being replacements for the dead or dying.

We left, a little dissapointed and trudged home through the empty icy streets get get some beer and seafood and an early night. Sunday should be better..

Movin’ On Up

So I’ve been back a couple of weeks and although we spent last weekend in south Jersey (for some reason they appear to have dropped the ‘New’ from New Jesey, this is no doubt unnerving for the residents of Actual Jersey), I’ve gotten itchy feet. Discounting fungal disease for now, I figured it would be best that we go somewhere. Coming up this weekend we have President’s Day, a day whose name has changed but is basically there to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, this was a man who spent much of his early years shooting, or arranging the shooting of French people. No comment. Simply though Steph gets a day off and we’re going somewhere new.

My dream was to get to Alabama, but distance and cost conspired against me. I’ll get there one day. Taking into account that New York City had a couple of inches of snow which was mildly exciting, and northern New York State had about 12 feet of snow in the past week I figure any major excitement is to be found up there. Specifically we’re going to Providence, Rhode Island.

I’ve definitely heard of Providence, only thing is I can’t think why. Family Guy is based somewhere in Rhode Island, but my only hard knowledge of Rhode Island is that they have their own kind of red chicken, so a quick spot of research revealed that it’s the smallest state in the US, not much bigger than London. In fact it was named Rhode Island because it is about as big as Rhodes (the Greek island). It never bothered with banning booze during prohibition, since presumably there’s not too much else to do (and as such has the oldest pub in the US which is on my list of places of scientific interest) and the world’s largest plastic Termite (50 feet long !!) is on top of the New England Pest Control building. The Rhode Island people did sink the first English ship (it was grounded and had no guns) in the War of Insubordination and so I might have to keep an eye on the upstarts but I’m expecting nothing but the kind of really, really, perhaps a little bit too nice people you only get in the arse end of nowhere.

Valentine’s Day came and went. Over here people send cards to their partners, kids, parents and pets. I saw a card in the store that you could send from your dog. I suspect (hope) there’s something innocent about all this, but having human/canine romantic engagements so commonplace as to deserve its own line of valentines merchandise was a little surprising.

Cleanin’ Out My Closet

It’s been something of a re-arrangement in the apartment, prompted by the arrival of some new furniture and a general sense of boredom with the current layout. So once the living room was painted up we put the new sofa-bed in place and position everything around the new 42 inch (why is it only TVs and penises are still measured in inches ?) HD TV.

Having never actually been too bothered about either High Def TV or my Xbox 360, in true movie style, once these two met it was dynamite. Well ok, Pacman looked quite good. The screen is so big that watching anything makes you feel like you’re at the cinema, in fact anything, even CSI looks good within a 30 foot radius. Unfortunately we don’t have any of the adult channels but that hasn’t stopped me imagining.

As well as being large, because of the HD (and the fact that most major channels are now in HD over here) everything becomes very sharp. This means much to my satisfaction that most people on TV are now massively flawed. I can see all their nose hairs, liver spots, scaley skin and other deformities that were once hidden by the fuzzy furry orange glow of NTSC. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that my nemeses, Martha and Oprah have declined to be broadcast in HD so far.

Anyway, so the new couch arrived, the old couch (so many memories) had to be disposed of. In England this would mean a call to the council arranging a date for pickup and paying them to take it away. In Union City it means putting your stuff out on the street and the chance are that within an hour someone has hauled it off to furnish their crack-den. This week however, the junkies were clearly well heeled as it was still there the next morning when the bin men arrived. They looked at it, picked it up and fed it to the bin lorry. This was a seven foot solid wooden frame sofa. The lorry chewed for about 30 seconds and the sofa was gone. That is a proper lorry.

Continuing the spirit of shifting stuff around so that you can pretend you live somewhere new we fixed up the bedroom. A part of this was that Steph clean out her (giant, walk-in) cupboard at my insistance. I make no comment on how many clothes/shoes she has but once she was done then these were the clothes to be thrown away (14 sacks of them).. and this many hangers were spare as a result:

Her cupboard is still full. In the interests of fairness I too have an equal sized cupboard, though mine has taken on the duties of spare cable storage and home for the christmas decorations as well as housing my several combinations of jeans and T-Shirts.

All You Need Is Love

Just a short update on my new novel entitled ‘How to Marry An American’, subtitled ‘Paperwork Killed My Libido’.

So first a quick synopsis of the plot:
1) We want to get married
2) She’s a US Citizen
3) I’m not

Now let’s set up the location:
New Jersey, the Garden State. A reclaimed swamp, New Jersey is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Famous for it’s corn and diners, the golf tee and condensed soup were invented here.

And the principle characters:
Darren – a mid thirties, unemployed directionless nomad, the hero of our tale has a past he can’t talk about (computer programmer) and a future he faces with uncertainty (painter and decorator).
Stephanie – Beautiful go-getter with a high profile job in the city and a salary to match, until now Stephanie had a hole in her life only the gossip column and antiquey looking furniture could fill. Perhaps that could change.
Homeland Security – The evil faceless nameless body with the power to sanction the marriage or rip the hearts, souls and visas from our courageous duo. These people have the power to swamp you with paperwork and move with the swiftness of a continental plate.

Chapter 1: The I-129F

It’d been a long day, the day outside the window offered little comfort with winter fighting a constant, driving battle against the air conditioning. Darren sat slumped on the sofa, shoulders hunched, a latop thrummed on his er, lap.

Whilst the living room had been painted, there was still the sense in the back of Darren’s mind that he should order the samples for the dining room. Stephanie would be home soon and he knew she liked things just so, checked off the list at the earliest opportunity. Not that she would be angry, no, she would bide her time and drop it in casually during supper. That was going to be a risk he had to take, since the legalese of the forthcoming marriage just had to be understood. He looked down at the green tinged form, glowing, pulsating on the computer screen like a frog in a microwave:

“This form may be used to obtain a K-3 visa for your alien
spouse. Fill out the form as directed, except assume that
“fiancé” or “fiancé(e)” means “spouse.” Answer Questions
B.17 and B.18 by stating “N/A.” Note that filing this form
is only necessary to facilitate the entry of your spouse as a
nonimmigrant. You must submit the documents required in Questions 3, 4
and 6 of the instructions, but may omit the documents
required in Question 5. In addition, U.S. citizens
petitioning for K-3 visas for their alien spouses must also
include evidence that they have filed Form I-130, Petition
for Alien Relative, on behalf of the alien spouse listed on
this form, and a marriage certificate evidencing the legal
marriage between the citizen and alien.”

Darren sighed. He looked up at the clock, time was his enemy – an hour had passed and he’d still not really understood anything except that it would cost $170 to file this form, and that the paint samples still weren’t ordered. He made his way to the kitchen, trying to shake the melancholy that the men from Homeland Security seemed to instill with such ease. He made some tea. All better.

Paint It Black

After the drama of last night’s sporting sensation, I did a little reading about the franchise nature of American Football (and Wimbledon FC).

It seems that instead of starting a team and working your way up the leagues until you get to the top, the NFL award a ‘franchise’ in much the same way as you’d open a KFC. If you’ve got enough cash and there isn’t one already one in your town you can buy your way in. There’s obviously a limit on the number of teams so rather than relegation, once a team goes bankrupt that franchise is up for grabs. For instance, there was a team called the New York Yankees (a football team, really), but they went bust so a bloke in Texas bought their franchise and started the imaginatively named Dallas Texans. He then presumably was so disappointed by the cultural desert of the deep south that he packed the whole team up and moved to the cosmopolitan metropolis of Kansas City. I’ve no idea where that leaves the people who’d been following the original Yankees all their lives, presumably they still live in New York but like to dress as Dorothy on a weekend.

Anyway, all that was an aside. We’ve decided to redecorate, and being the one without anything formal to do during the day, I’ve tasked myself with the painting. It took two days but finally I have one wall of the living room finished. Actually it looks pretty good. I wil post a photo, but not until the 42 INCH HD TV arrives later in the week and finishes it off. Next job is the dining room which consists of three walls and a window frame. Expect an update in early March.