BEAT LA! (Oh god, NFL, not like that!)

Its time to say goodbye to baseball season and hello to football ('murican football. The domestic-abuse-y one.) And as much as I want to watch football and enjoy it as much as baseball it just doesn't have the same warm squishy feeling as the ol' ball game. It might be that I've been spoilt by Giants fans who are utterly adorable (the worst the Dodgers got from the orange army was accusations of being 'a bum'. Adorbs. The only swearing was from a drunk Brit a couple of rows back in the bleachers - so proud. On the way out of the ballpark, after a crushing defeat, the Giants fans were chanting 'BEAT LA' into the faces of Dodgers fans, before shaking them by the hand and wishing them a pleasant evening. Astounding), or it might be that baseball resembles the rounders we used to play on the common in our P.E. kit. The violence that has been associated with NFL players certainly doesn't endear me to them, and, as a Brit, I am obliged to mention the fact that Rugby players run around with no padding, whilst the delicate little Football players need padding and helmets, and are now being encouraged to wear concussion monitors to make sure they don't get too bruised. Poor little poppets.

I think its all of those things, plus the class thing. Football appears to be a college sport (and by football I mean American football. And by college, I mean University. **sigh**) meaning that the lads in the NFL are generally either graduates, graduands, students or college drop outs (you had an opportunity and you dropped out to play sport - that is more of an opportunity than many kids get). Baseball players, however, are often drafted from high school, giving the game a more working class feel. And the young lads are often married to wholesome-looking high school sweethearts with a coupla kids. The whole thing feels very family-oriented and inclusive.

And you don't have to be in peak physical condition, apparently - makes me think I've got a future in sport after all.

Living in the freaking dark ages

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Its something that you notice if you stay in hotels - there are rarely any ceiling lights, which is bloody weird and bloody annoying when you are trying to work. Or see. And I'm damn sure I'm not the only person who thinks so.

As with any query I took to the ol' internetz to find out if a) I am the only one who thinks this is weird and b) why. Well, the interwebz didn't disappoint giving me a myriad of reasons why, here's a summary:

• Ceiling lights are more expensive to install - many hotels are built with  poured concrete and whatnot and installing ceiling lights in all the rooms would be more of a ball ache than just putting in enough wall sockets to house lamps later on.
• They are expensive to replace - if you replace a ceiling light, or even a bulb, you need an electrician with a ladder. To replace a lamp you need anyone with a lamp. 
• And if there is a problem with the ceiling light you should cut the electricity to the light, meaning that you might have to cut the electricity to multiple rooms.
• Limiting the amount of stuff you've got in floors and ceilings (i.e. only sprinklers) means fires are less likely to spread vertically, which is a good precaution in a hotel.
• You can't see all the scuzz on the floor, peeling wallpaper and spunk up the walls if the lighting is poor (otherwise translated as: rooms look more appealing with atmospheric lighting).
• Lamps are more customizable than ceiling lights - long cables mean you can place lighting wherever you want (though I have never wanted to do this in a hotel room, I'm glad to know that I can...)
• Its easier to clean lamps than ceiling lights.
• People prefer the homely look of lamps versus the harsh lighting of a ceiling light.

So, I'm guessing that all of these have an element of truth, but its the preference thing that I want to explore. This is because apparently many people in the US prefer NOT TO HAVE CEILING LIGHTS? WTF?? Apparently there is a general consensus that ceiling lights have glare and are not suitable for relaxing/reading a book/watching TV/shagging. This is obviously wrong, and someone somewhere has made a terrible mistake, but it has proliferated across the US and means that most living quarters do not have ceiling lights in the living room or bedroom. 

Lamp #7

Lamp #3

And this is why we have more lamps in our small apartment than we ever had in the three bedroom detached house we had in Oxford. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one downstairs toilet, a utility room, a dining room, a huge hallway and a lounge; five lamps (and one of those was a lava lamp). Two bedroom apartment; seven lamps, although we do have ceiling lights in both closets, and three different sets of lights in each bathroom. In case I need an atmosphere while I poop?


Aside from meaning that we are living in a permanent state of atmospheric-ness (= fucking darkness) the lack of ceiling lighting also means that you need lots of extra wall outlets for lamps. Handy, you might think. However, wall outlets do not have an on/off switch like they do in the UK - that beautiful 'murican electricity is a free as the gosh darned country. Does that mean that you'll have to hunt around in the dark for your lamp switch? Aw hell no! There are light switches next to the doorframe in all the rooms of the apartment, and its a fun game trying to find out which electrical outlet matches the switch. That means you can buy a variety of floor lamps and plug them in wherever you want to 'customize' your living room. As long as you plug them into the sockets linked to the light switch. It also means that if you mix up your PC and lamp plugs then you cut the power to your PC when you turn the frigging light on. I feel like someone at IKEA is mocking us.

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I'd like to think I'm continuing a long tradition of oral history? Or just boring the locals.

I'm a gal who loves a good themed pub, especially one that encourages you to dress up like Bonnie Parker and partake in illicit liquor drinking. So I was all over the trend for speakeasies in London, my favorite being the Evans & Peele Detective agency (I had THE most fun with a cracking bunch of gals who were totally into the vibe). Its all decked out in period clobber, and you have to get your story straight for the Detective before you get invited through. EPIC.

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Being the tedious know-it-all that I am I did have an irritating conversation with a douchebag on the tube on the way back where I had to correct him on a few 'facts'. Finding out that we'd just visited a speakeasy he asked me if it was a 'real' one. What? A 'real' speakeasy? In the UK, where we do not and never have had prohibition? No. No it was not. And while I'm at it - prohibition in the US was 1920-1933, so dressing up like Rita Haworth also shows a distressing lack of historical accuracy (oh yeah - I'm super fun on a night out). Its like dressing up as Ronald Reagan for a Lindy-hop.

I'm not bothered if people don't know or care about this stuff, it just worries me a bit that drinking in a US-themed bar leads Brits to start making up a new history for good ol' blighty. The little stories that are pushed into our peepers from US media sources are such lovely little vivid snapshots we have a tendency to push our own, less brightly-coloured history out of our lug holes.

It can be tough, though.  Watching western movies its hard to get your head round the fact that all the fighting and taking land from the native people is taking place over a period of about 300 years, during which time, in the UK we were putting out a fucking big fire in London, watching plays with Willy Shakespeare, had a shit-ton of wars with the rest of Europe (and the rest of the UK) and said 'howdy' to Beethoven, Queen Victoria, Napoleon and Charles Darwin. Oh yeah, and those cowboys were settlers from Europe and Russia.

US history is intrinsically linked with the rest of the world, but I guess taking these snippets from popular culture, out of a wider context (that American kids are taught, BTW, for the most part), all helps to bolster the unreal, over-narrated picture of the US that most of us have. These perfect little gobbets (its a literary term - look it up) highlight the brave and the bold and distract us from the awkward and the ugly.

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As a young country America has been able to create its own brand based on some strong principles from the founding fathers (or, at least, reportedly from the founding fathers - again, giving their societal principles a strong heritage is all part of brand America), and the brand is held up by solid stories with a linear narrative. There is a hero (who is either handsome, brave, iconic or all three), a clear villain (no shades of grey here), and a moral. Doesn't that make some of these potentially apocryphal stories almost allegorical? I might be wiggling off on a tangent, but I guess it would have been helpful during the early stages of the US to be able to orally pass on why our forefathers came to this land and why we should be grateful/fight on/preserve their ideals at a time when people couldn't read/were living in fucking squalor/were at war? And oral tales of origins are a very Native American thing, so perhaps the early settlers actually borrowed that approach? Maybe?

This waffle has all gone a bit conjectural, but the history behind the standard narrative is very
interesting. For example, getting back to the speakeasies, it has been suggested that the prohibition era was ushered in to destroy the livelihoods of the German immigrant brewers a little way into the first world war. It could be bollocks, but its one of those connections with Europe and the immigrant origins of the US that I think are important. Plus, it makes for a fun discussion on a pissy night with new chums in a REAL speakeasy. Doesn't it?? Sadly, no.

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Freeeeedom!

If you've spent any time in the US you'll have noticed that freedom is a pretty popular concept round these parts. In the UK its generally followed by the words "of speech" and used to excuse some heinously xenophobic/homophobic/mysogynistic/idiotic poorly-expressed opinion. There are a number of reasons for that, not least the fact that the UK has, for the majority of recent history, been the one doing the oppressing.

Anyway, freedom is for people who can be trusted to make sensible decisions, and we all know that NOONE can be trusted to make sensible decisions. Thats why, in the UK, we generally entrust all our decisions to the government, the doctor, the bank, the dentist (don't get me started), Mystic Meg and the National Lottery. We enjoy being free to do whatever we want in the strict confines of social and legal parameters. 

But in the US one is free to choose the doctor who will perform one's surgery based on their exam results, the bread one feeds one's children based on extensive research into the FDA recommendations and even legislative changes based on proposals submitted by locals that are voted upon in local elections. Its a fundamental principle and it started when a load of people left Europe and sailed to the New World because they were sick of being told who they could worship in their home countries. A few hundred years (and many thousand terrible deaths) later and the US celebrates its noble origins, with freedom at its heart. Freedom, in the early stages, meant that Catholics were able to practice their faith without being killed, and people fought for that freedom to secure a better life for their families for generations to come. That is the freedom that set down a constitutional right for men to take up arms and fight to retain this religious freedom. This is an important concept, and a noble principle on which a republic can be built.

Sad, then, that its with the same frenzied fervor that some locals now claim the freedom to turn right at a red light (unless otherwise directed). (By that logic, is it also freedom that underpins the neglectful signaling on the roads of Northern California?) 

From such solid foundations, is this particular founding principle overused and misconstrued to justify mild to moderate wankish behavior? I fight for the freedom to bear arms and teach my 9 year old daughter to fire an uzi (that then kills a man. Yeah, no, totes legit. Your kid won't be fucked up for the rest of her life, no worries). I fight for the freedom to practice my faith, though I'm not at all a fan of those other religious nutters, so we should probably tell them to fuck off back to where they came from. And (to get a bit darker) freedom is so important I think we should export it to places across the world who aren't as free as us. 

I'm also loathe to mention it, but even these solid foundations are a bit shaky. Its only begrudgingly noted that the tribal people who lived here before the early American settlers were forced to convert to Catholicism and live and work with the missionaries, farming the land. 

I sound scathing, but thats only because I'm British and, having rarely heard this word outside of the BBC news it is suddenly jammed down ones cake hole on a daily basis. In reality this approach is actually pretty smart, and underpinning it is the good nature of most of the people who really believe in it: as long as 'freedom' is the watch word then the plebs will be squabbling about being free to take a gun into an airport (its cool, you can), the government can legitimately go to war in the name of freedom, and commercial entities can over charge for life-saving drugs in the name of freedom (its a free market, you know, and we are all free to choose which insurance company, which medical professional and which branded medication we'll be nailing our colors to).  

I guess as long as the concept of freedom appeals to the well-meaning nature of the masses then its a useful tool of government. Add freedom to Sunday College Football and you've got a very happy and malleable plebeian mass. 

Freedom five.
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And for the Brits? Well, aside from taking freedom for granted, we also acknowledge that you need structures in place to stop stupid people eating themselves to death or ploughing into the back of a bus whilst texting. 

I think I've worked out there are three main reasons the freedom thing has a tendency to piss us off. Firstly, it is often shouted, loudly and inappropriately and we do not approve of such brash displays of emotion (we are repressed oppressors). Secondly, none of us know enough about our own history to be able to argue with the 'oppressive british' epithet, giving us a sense of shame and self-disappointment that we can revel in (we are depressed repressed oppressors). And thirdly, we think we're smart enough to see through all this perceived freedom nonsense - we've been free for a lot longer than you, sonny-jim (we are aggressive repressed oppressors). Now, where's me season ticket - I'm off with the blue army to chant stuff and drink in the street. As long as I can take an open can of lager through Marks & Sparks then I am truly living free (its cool, I can).