This must be the place.

On my flight from LAX to London I was lucky enough to sit next to someone who wasn’t mad, incontinent or so insanely fat that they couldn’t operate their table thus requiring me to hold their in-flight meal. Instead I got Magdi, who to my delight was from South Africa. I like South Africans because despite having what is, in my opinion a very funny accent, they struggle to find anything amusing. Magdi, in usual deadpan tones told me many stories, including one about her trip to Amsterdam. After a “pretty crazy” night out, Magdi and friends got a cab home. Magdi recalled turning to her friend in the back seat and noticing “something odd” about said friend, for her head had swelled like a balloon. “I said to her, I said, ‘What the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with your fucking face. It is all swollen.” Her friend replied that nothing was wrong, and her head was normal. “That,” said Magdi, “Was when I realised. I was really fucking high.”

I spent a lot of time while I was in America thinking about England. I wondered whether it would have changed, whether my friends had changed? Would my parents have aged beyond recognition? Would Kerry Katona still have a drug habit? Of course, as I was greeted by my Dad in arrivals on a grey morning in June, I realised that while he was wearing a “Santa Cruz Dad” t-shirt, nothing had changed. Like Magdi, off her face in Amsterdam, I had looked at England from across the pond and decided it looked different, even odd from my Californian perspective. After six weeks however I can safely say that it is still the same place it has always been. There is sill no faith in government, even if two heads are better than one, wine can still be brought for £2.50, despite the “crackdown” on binge drinking and, whatever side of the Atlantic your on, England will always, forever, be shit at football.

Spring Break

A few days before I was due to finish the hell that was Winter Quarter finals and embark on my much-discussed Spring Break I was (as usual) chatting to a friend on Skype who asked me about my plans. After indulging her in a detailed account of what I felt to be an excellently constructed week away (me + fourteen Americans drinking and hiking in Yosemite followed by a glamorous weekend in Los Angeles) she looked a bit disappointed. “But why aren’t you going to Tijuana?”

Up to the point when I actually met real-life Americans in America the term ‘Spring Break’ meant the same thing to me as it does to everyone who doesn’t know about the perils involved in traversing the much discussed U.S-Mexico border. As I signed my life away to EAP back in London I dreamt of how I would spend my ten day break, envisioning myself dancing in some beach bar with Snoop Dogg before taking part in a whipped cream based talent show compered by Jerry Springer. Reality hit upon arrival in Santa Cruz as I was frequently told that, by all means, go and down tequila in TJ but be careful because you MIGHT DIE. This message was only reiterated by the issuing of a travel warning by the Department of State discouraging from ‘unnecessary travel to Mexico’. In my opinion cheap cocktails, MTV hosted dance parties and outlandish shows of promiscuity in front of C-list celebrities are all totally ‘necessary’, but I took the safe bet and headed for the mountains.

I know some people who did fulfil their foreign student requirements and spent Spring Break in Mexico, a place which they described as being ‘a bit quiet’. By no means do I wish to perpetrate the image of Mexico as a country ruled by drug-barons and populated by piñata wielding peasants because too many of these negative images exist as it is. I’m just glad that the worst thing that happened to me on my Spring Break was passing out at a house party in Bel Air and having a cat vomit on my leg.

Good.

Keira may have got promiscuous with mirrors in '07, but Eartha does it better in 1962.

Not So Distant Relatives

http://kzsc.org/schedule/

Welcome To The Shore, Betch.

The shore is Santa Cruz and it’s nothing like the Jersey Shore. The latter is the smash hit MTV show that left me comatose in a chair for up to three hours every evening while I watched a group of perma-tanned, badly dressed, under-sexed Italian-Americans (Who refer to themselves as ‘Guidos’ and ‘Guidettes’) “live the dream” on a beach boardwalk in Jersey. To the untrained reality show viewer this may sound like crash-TV, but that would be to ignore the fact that the programme involves a man with abdominal muscles so big that he refers to himself as “The Situation”. MTV you’ve done it again, you son of a gun.

The former is a place described by the demi-god that is Wikipedia as being known for it’s “alternative community lifestyles and socially liberal leanings”. Translation: Hippie backwater short on funds, but high on tofu. It has taken me the entirety of Winter Quarter to realise that Santa Cruz is a place that may have given my initial welcome cry of “PARTIES’ HERE” a muted response, but can still define FUN without the help of our good friends Merriam & Webster. Several things have indicated to me that I have developed a fondness for the town, not least because I haven’t left for eight weeks and still have not developed cabin fever but also the fact that I have finally reacquainted myself with my good friend Ukulele and have purchased a bicycle. The last buy was triggered by an unseasonably sunny day in early February, when on Sam’s initiative I borrowed a bike and cycled with her to the beach. There were no big hills, no oily chain incidents, just bright sunshine, the promise of a light tan and me singing Miley Cyrus all the way.

In choosing to court that fat toed, faux Chanel -toting slag Sammi “The Sweetheart”, buff Bronx resident and all-round juicehead Ronnie broke a promise to himself. “My number one rule: Never fall in love at The Jersey Shore”. I didn’t establish any such clauses before I came to Santa Cruz, but like Ronnie I had no plans for falling head over heels-especially with a town that has a 24hour donut shop where, if you frequent it at a certain hour, you may see members of staff masturbating in the back room. Fortunately I have a message for Ronnie-“Don’t fall in love? Sorry betch, but I already did.”

The Art Of Collecting

I first discovered that my friend Nell had a tendency for collecting over one of those light-hearted “when we were young” conversations about Beanie Babies. Somebody posed the question, “Oh what was the one that was supposed to be valuable?” to which Nell, with unnecessary vigour screamed, “CELEBRATION BEAR 2000”. Which was why it was with scepticism and dismay that I met her recent announcement that she has successfully completed her United States’ Mint 50 Quarters collection.

Being English in America is in many ways a bit like being a collectible. After it is discovered (usually by the giveaway accent) that you are different, ways are often found by which you can be acquired. This is by no means a complaint on my part, as “playing the English card” has become something that myself and my fellow English companions do on a regular basis in order that we can attend various events, or just have a bit-of-whatever-your-drinking/smoking-thanks-bye. It was through these means that Chris and I were invited to a Christmas party by my roommate, “I mean, I don’t know many people going, and I think that its going to be a small thing, but I told them all you were English.” Thus, invite secured, we enjoyed a lovely evening of ham, games, wine and cross-cultural conversation. It was also through being English that I met Julianne, whose family very kindly allowed us to stay in their amazing beach house north of San Diego, a place that can only be described as the O.C. The beach was teeming with Botox-infused moms adorned in velour tracksuits and enormous visors, worn presumably to stop their lips from melting. Plastic surgery it seems, is a dangerous game, as we found out from a friend of Julianne’s who over an In-N-Out told us about his own mother’s face-lift-gone-wrong. Apparently, washing your freshly stripped face in unfiltered water results in hideous near-permanent scarring that can take two years to heal. “Oh yeah” he added, “We’re suing that surgeon for shit”.

After criticising Nell so heavily, it is with some shame that I admit that I too, have succumbed to the lure of those shiny silver quarters. Only yesterday, while at the BART, an emaciated looking woman approached me begging for money. I reached into my pocket, only to notice the quarter I was about to give her was Wyoming. I hurriedly replaced it, smiled apologetically and walked away. Now if it had been an Arizona, it would have been a different matter. I mean, those things are two a penny. Ironically.

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.