Thanks Mariah

When I really think about it, there are a lot of things I don’t like about Mariah Carey. Aside from her sickeningly successful career (175 million albums sold worldwide) there was THAT episode of Cribs, her weird marriage to Nick Cannon and her current role in Oprah-Winfrey-brings-Color-Purple-into-the-21^st-century biopic Precious. So it was with some surprise this week that I found Mariah Carey making me miss home.

Having no personal issue with raping, pillaging or murder, I sat down to Thanksgiving dinner last week to show my appreciation to the Lord for allowing those bloodthirsty Pilgrims to survive their first winter in the New World. It was a riotous affair of Don Pérignon, turkey and pecan pie, made all the more exciting by the half English/half Hebrew dinner conversation that became more fraught as the night wore on. The evening was rounded off with a Good Morning America Exclusive- “Rihanna Breaks Her Silence”, a surprisingly boring Diane Sawyer interview in which the serious message about domestic violence was lost on me as I tried to take Rihanna’s Barbados accent seriously. This was made all the more impossible by her poignant advice to young fans at the show’s end- “F Love”- an attitude that Im sure would have been worth its salt in the harsh environment of a 17^th century New England winter. Yes Rihanna, the Pilgrims would have been proud.

Whether for effect or just carelessness I had forgotten to mention that there are two things I really like about Mariah Carey. Her movie Glitter and her popular 1994 Christmas hit All I Want For Christmas Is You (according to The New Yorker, “one of the few worthy additions to the holiday canon”). It was the latter that made me miss home when, as is my tradition, I played it at max volume on December 1^st. Whilst I may have spent most of Thanksgiving in Elaine’s erratically driven car desperately searching for Video Phone on Beyoncé radio I did enjoy some time with her family and for the briefest moment, pined for home comforts. Needless to say, it was a feeling quickly dispelled by a night out in the Castro, a terrible hangover and the purchasing of an imitation rooster in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

home/away from home

The fact that I was most defiantly, certainly abroad and most defiantly, certainly in America finally hit home on Halloween. I say ‘hit home’ as a loose phrase, as I never think that there is much realisation at the time of being drunk, just the horrible day of grief the morning after. Dressed in a blonde wig, over-sized sunglasses and velvet leotard in the style of your favourite pop bitch and mine-Lady GaGa- I found myself surrounded by ten ‘cops’ who proceeded to try and arrest me after I innocently fell asleep on a bus. Now I know what your thinking-this would never happen in England. In England the inebriated individual has access to a range of public offences for which he or she will inevitably be let off with a ‘go home’, or the old-fashioned ‘warning’. I believe it was such a train of thought that ran through my head while my vodka lusted brain tried to make sense of the situation. I believe it was my English stubbornness that caused me to take some offence when I was asked to walk in a straight line. I’m certain it was my English sensibilities that allowed them to frisk me. I also like to think that it was my being English that caused me to tell the SCPD to go fuck themselves.

For some weeks now I have been fighting a private battle in which I try to get Americans to understand what a Mocha is. “M-OK-A” I persistently scream at the gawky coffee shop staff. “M-OAK-A?” they reply. The difference to the untrained ear is subtle, but it can be the deciding factor that determines whether you will receive the asked for coffee or a glass of water. What I am trying to make clear in this rather dull story of cross-cultural-coffee-confusion is that England and America are essentially the same, but with some glaringly obvious differences. Their penchant for Halloween, their insistence on spelling words differently and a lack of reasoning for calling a fringe ‘bangs’. While ‘culture shock’ is not a phrase you’d associate with America, this is certainly how I’d describe the state my parents were in when I met up with them a few weeks ago. Californian roads in an automatic had taken their toll, as had days of ordering chips and receiving crisps and dodging foodstuffs that didn’t contain trans fat (banned in the UK since ’07!). While we waited in line for a much-needed coffee a customer picking up on ‘the accent’ accosted Mum. “Are you English? I mean, my wife and I are practically anglophiles. We LOVE Prime Suspect”. His excitement waned as we all realised that this was another case of lost in translation. Mum had never heard of Prime Suspect.

While I have received alot of appreciation for my Saturday night escapades, what must be reiterated is that what appears to be a story of one small English girl ‘sticking it to the man’ is in fact just a drunken mishap that has led me to realise that yes, by all means, get drunk in America. But not before the eyes of their paranoid law enforcers.

lovefest/hatefest

I believe it was Bob Sinclair who a few years ago penned the words; “Feel the love generation yeah yeah yeah yeah” in his popular hit song, ‘Love Generation’. I begin this entry with these words not because my experiences over the first few weeks of living in America have reminded me of a small blonde boy riding a bicycle, but because since arriving in the U.S. I have felt welcomed. Certainly more so than I would have done in London, where the stranger approaching to ask for directions/the time/ a lighter fills the average Englishman with fear and dread. The minute I set foot in San Francisco, the self-proclaimed ‘city of love’ a girl approached me not, as I immediately thought to rob me or offer me cocaine but to kindly tell me that ‘your dress is riding UP your arse crack’. Aside from feeling humiliated that this event was taking place before crowds of people at the BART station, I also felt a warm sense of gratitude-something rarely experienced ‘back home’.

No more was the love felt than a few weeks ago when I found myself surrounded by hundreds of scantily clad men and women off their tits on a variety of substances all in the name of LOVE. Branded ‘the worlds biggest dance event’ the San Francisco LoveEvolution is now in its sixth year, and thanks to a nice group of Americans that I had met the previous week, I was able to join the party. Born romantics; avert your eyes, LoveEvolution is not the Jane Austen revelry of yesteryear. Indeed, I recall the afternoon in a warm fuzzy haze, but thanks to the vodka that had to be hastily decanted on the sidewalk. Men groping drunk women, naked people falling from floats, ecstasy fuelled snogging and a dance soundtrack that can only be enjoyed if your well and truly slaughtered*. And all this took place by the steps to City Hall.

Unsurprisingly, Sunday began pretty slowly. It continued in the same way with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in a breezy Golden Gate Park. We joined groups of middle-aged folk fans and watched Billy Bragg sing about debt and slag off Arnie. The crowd were needless to say, easy to please. I was too after a misguided chocolate truffle that made everything go very Fear and Loathing-not good when surrounded by turbans, hoops and other hippy paraphernalia. I went to bed and put it down to good experience.

Love continues to abound here on the West Coast but the honeymoon period is over. Just today, while strolling to class I overheard a freshman ask incredulously, “So you’re going to fuck him?” To which she replied, “No im not going to fuck him. I don’t know who im going to fuck. But I’ll fuck somebody.” And that’s why I like Americans. They’re open-minded.

* I think I may be blowing things out of proportion here, but then again it may just be the vodka talking. All I know is THINGS GOT CRAZY.