Bombay & Elaine

Rockin' in the free world

2011-09-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

I bought myself a rocking chair. A big, beautiful thing weaved out of wicker. I chanced upon it at a vintage store a few minutes before closing time and fell in love right there. They told me the price and I winced. I gritted my teeth and nodded and the woman with a blue rinse behind the counter slapped a yellow 'sold' sticker on its back. I couldn't afford it but I needed it. You know how these things go.

I knew exactly where to put it. It sits on the front porch, next to a big, ugly armchair covered in faded roses. The armchair is by far the more comfortable option but it doesn't stand a chance. Between the two there is a glass topped table, average but useful in the obvious sense. The rocking chair looks better with a cushion placed upon it but after the first sitting, I removed it. It is not a particularly effective rocking chair in terms of its name. It rocks a little, so long as I keep both feel on the ground, otherwise the weight disperses unevenly and I slide gently off onto the concrete. Of course, there would be no such problems with its plushy neighbor but this is not the way things are done. A wicker rocking chair adds something that an armchair doesn't. Perhaps it is in the same vein that a person of a creative disposition favours hand rolled cigarettes over tailored ones, a fountain pen over a biro. There is something to be said for aesthetic, and in the same way, there is a quiet fear of comfort, of the easy way out. People who claim to be artists will listen to music exclusively on vinyl if they think it proves something.

Sitting in the rocking chair has become something of a ritual already. It faces out over Hodgkinson Street, a pretty if rather bland piece of suburb which is lovely for people watching if you don't mind the odd group of patrons in tracksuits. It is here I sit most mornings and evenings, staring out over the street between pages of whatever pretentious novel I am currently devouring. The garden at the front is a mess but has potential. I smoke too many cigarettes and drink pot after pot of tea, feeling mostly at peace with the world, except when I am not.

Art seems constantly to mirror life in this strange space. Yesterday afternoon, a domestic dispute was clearly audible in the brick bungalow across the street. A woman screamed hoarsely about something I couldn't make out and a deeper voice reacted with equal viciousness. I was reading Rock Springs; a collection of short stories by Richard Ford about desperate people living too close to the bottle in dismal American towns. Several pages later, I heard something smash within the brick walls. Bleak fiction is wonderful as long as you aren't feeling bleak yourself. I finished my cigarette and went inside to clean the kitchen. Today, I rocked myself slowly through the opening chapter of Robert Drewe's The Shark Net; a memoir about a string of murders in the sun baked suburbs of Perth. The weather was perfect.

The rib is almost healed, other things take longer.

Rib Angst

2011-08-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

I have a cracked rib. It sits like a shard of glass in my chest, brittle and painful and invisible to the human eye. The story is less exciting than it sounds. I fell off my bike in the middle of the night, more sober than anyone will believe. I flew over my handlebars and smacked into tram tracks. It hurt. A week later, it hurt even more. I have been staggering around the house moaning and groaning like an old man, breathing in sharply through my teeth and then instantly regretting it. People I talk to give me sympathetic smiles and tell me that I must be more careful on my bicycle in the future. It annoys me.

I sat in the doctor's waiting room for 40 minutes, attempting to read an Ernest Hemingway book while a pair of obese English twins sat across from me and talked about how one of them had crabs. The girl was taking large swigs from a bottle of Pepsi and the boy, whose hair was dyed platinum blonde and stood straight up like a half built house, played with his nose ring. Both had slittly eyes and wore identical Houndstooth wristbands. Neither of them could fit properly on the row of waiting room chairs. In the corner, a harried mother was having a clipped phone conversation about swimming lessons while her two year old ripped the pages out of a magazine.

The doctor wasn't much help. He told me to be more careful riding my bike in the future and that there was nothing really to worry about except the possibility of puncturing a lung. He wrote me out a prescription for some high voltage painkillers which would make me constipated but also help me sleep. The tiny, angry woman at the chemist gave me a shifty look when I handed over the prescription and told me that this was strong stuff and that it would make me constipated. I told her about my broken rib. She told me that I should be more careful riding my bike in the future.

Painkillers are kicking in. Elaine out.

Parks and Prisons

2011-08-07T02:21:00.000-07:00

A new dwelling, a new lease, a new lease on life. Old friends and ex-lovers have helped me move out of the nuthouse and into a terraced cottage in the delightful suburb of Clifton Hill. There are no words that can express my gratitude towards theses wonderful people, no words to describe my relief at the tranquility and sanity of my new abode, especially compared to the one previous. There is plush carpet on the floor and sometimes when no one is looking, I roll around on it like an excited pup.

There is no hill in Clifton Hill. At best, the gradient would amount to a 'gentle slope'; something you probably wouldn't notice unless you were riding a bicycle up it and even then, shifting gears in optional. It's close to everything, or at least everything that matters. The Fitzroy pool, with its dippy staff and lanes of Goodbodies swimming back and fourth, is a convenient ten minute stroll to the West. There are ample, tree filled parks in every direction and at least one has a decent swing set. Funky Fitzroy is close and seedy Collingwood is even closer. There is a 24 hour McDonalds a little down the way but that doesn't impress anyone.

On my way back to Melbourne, I spent a delightful seven hours at Auckland airport. It was night and everything was closed and at the end of the bench I was sitting on perched a tiny, ancient Chinese woman clutching an AM radio. Some talk back station droned in and out of static and the the tiny woman nodded along to it, a huge smile on her face throughout. Eventually, she fell asleep and an equally tiny but much younger Chinese woman sitting on the other side of the bench gently pulled the radio out of her hands and switched it off.

I started a lengthy discussion with the woman sitting opposite me; a prison warden called Heather who was leaving New Zealand for the first time to visit her dying Grandmother in England. Heather told me about her job at the prison; about how she had no qualms about telling certain inmates that they deserved the death penalty and that although she had a good tuck in at the prison breakfast, she never touched the sandwiches at lunchtime. She told me how she always carried a truncheon but had only used it once, when a gang of Black Power members tried to stab a rival gang member to death. She said that this was an intense experience and that afterwards she had to sit down for a cigarette and a mug of coffee with three heaped spoonfuls of Nescafe in it. She said that I'd be surprised at how nice some of the serial rapists were when you sat down and talked to them about it.

Heather told me about how she had wanted to name her first son Axl as she was a massive Gunners fan. It would have been particularly perfect because her last name is Odes, which, as she pointed out in gruelling detail, is very similar to Rose. Unfortunately, her husband Doug had decided to veto this carefully thought out plan and names their first son Doug, after himself. The silver lining was that Doug Senior did let name the next child, a girl, whom was christened Sunday Rose (Odes). Heather picked this name because she thought it was pretty but also because it sounded a bit like her favourite meal, a Sunday roast. Their third child was named Josh.

Heather was appalled by the actions of Ander Breivik and had a few disciplinary suggestions to dish out. She said she was thinking of writing a letter. However, she told me in hushed tones (presumably not to wake the tiny sleeping Chinese woman) that she did see where he was coming from and that she did think something had to be done about the Muslim invasion. I smiled and nodded and wondered how I was going to get out of this. She ranted on and on about how some races just shouldn't mix and how most people just weren't smart enough to figure this out. It was about 1am at this point and Heather's phone rang and six year old Josh screamed down the phone that he missed her and that she shouldn't fly because she might crash. It was kind of sweet really. She told me after she hung up and that she and Doug Senior had given up telling him to go to bed but had decided to limit him to five hours of PlayStation a night.

She left for her flight at two, I stayed till seven and watched a bunch of West Wing episodes which is not a good idea when you're slipping in and out of consciousness. President Bartlett said some inspiring things and I think I missed most of them. But I will think of Heather Odes every time I hear Welcome to the Jungle for a long, long time.

And back in Clifton Gentle Slope, I drink tea and eat crumpets. I try not to smoke too many cigarettes and lap up the sunshine. Life is good. Time to roll around on the carpet again.

Baby's got Grey Eyes

2011-07-20T23:56:00.000-07:00

An almost compulsory part of the newly single lifestyle is that, foolish as it may seem (and it does seem foolish, I am aware) a rebound fling in well in order. It doesn't really matter who it is, as long they don't give you crabs and you don't get too attached. The second criteria is more important than the first.

And so, with this hovering somewhere in the back of mind, somewhere between worrying about my thesis and my housemates, I bike the long and winding road to the University of Melbourne. It's windy and rainy but kind of beautiful, especially when my scarf unravels just the right amount and trails behind me like some kind of faux-Burberry flag. People are walking their dogs and look happy, others are smoking cigarettes and look annoyed. The dogs themselves don't really have expressions, they just sniff at things.

My university office, perched on the sixth floor of the crumbling arts building, is empty. I share it with two other PhD students, neither of whom has been in for at least a week. One studies travel writing; the other, Paradise Lost. Ironically, the travel writing student is absent because he is having a difficult month and the Paradise Lost student is absent due to travelling. On one of the bookshelves stands a collection of impressive looking gin bottles. All of them are empty; I have checked many times. Above my desk, I have blue tacked black and white pictures of my favourite playwrights; Chekov, O'Neil, Albee. I have not read as many of their plays as I should, but I like to claim that they inspire me. Also, they cover up the cracks in the paint.

The morning takes a jagged turn when I realise that I am supposed to be attending an Induction Meeting for first time tutors; something which I have written and underlined in my diary but clearly forgot to check the night before. I repack all my worldly possessions and swear a little bit and then scuttle run to the big, flash building off campus with a revolving door where the induction in question takes place. I arrive in one of the rooms puffed and slightly sweaty, interrupting a group of earnest looking students with name tags stuck on each of them. As I am late, I don't get a name tag. Instead, I sit quietly and try to appear interested in what the (clearly impressive) mature student with glasses and a Houndstooth blouse is telling the students about the importance of a clear lesson plan.

Two seats down from is a guy who looks as bored as I feel. He taps his pen on the table and rolls his neck. He has tight black jeans, large biceps and incredible grey eyes. He sports a relatively thick (although carefully maintained) beard and a nose piercing; an extremely rare combination even amongst the most indie of independent scensters. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

The induction continued. We split into groups and discussed the what makes a good tutorial and a bad tutorial. There was a lot of fierce nodding and writing of notes and I attempted a series of subtle glances at the grey eyed boy at the other end of the table. Every now and then I felt like he was glancing back towards me, but its ever so hard to tell whats what this early in the piece. But I think that's half the fun.

Trying to spot a homosexual is much like trying to spot a witch. In the Roald Dahl book of the same name, we are told that there are several signs which mean that a woman might be a witch; gloves, large nostrils, flat shoes.. but even with all these signs, it is nearly impossible to tell. The grey eyed boy had a nose piercing; a generous tick on the list of potential gay behaviours. He sat with one leg crossed tightly over the other, another tick. But there are plenty of handsome men in the world with nose studs who are as straight as they come, especially in the Arts faculty of an urban University campus. And then there was the beard.

We broke for morning tea and the Grey Eyed Boy and I got to talking. I asked him what he studied, he asked me what I studied. I complimented his nose stud. He smiled and thanked me, touching it slightly self conscious. We laughed about the mature student with the Houndstooth blouse and praised the complimentary danishes. At lunch time, we ate sandwiches and talked about David Lynch. The conversation flowed deliciously and by the time he slung his leather strap bag around his shoulder (another tick) and strolled to work, I had his number. We agreed to hang out soon. After a few semi-flirtatious texts, he suggested the evening ahead. People move fast when there is potential sex involved. And there it was; a date with a stud with a nose stud.

And so I biked over to the address located on google maps at about 10pm; excited, aftershaved and giddy as a school boy. I dragged my bike awkwardly up three flights of stairs and knocked. The apartment was small, ugly and smelt strongly of bleach. There was a hideous, slightly lopsided, abstract painting on one of the walls and nothing else. The Grey Eyed Boy sat opposite each other in the makeshift lounge and tried to converse. After ten minutes, we more or less gave up. He told me how he hated Seinfeld, how he abhorred smokers and how he spent the majority of his spare time playing video games. I asked him what he was currently reading and he showed me some horrifying fantasy novel, third in a series of eight and around 900 pages in length. Each new fact screamed 'Deal Breaker!' in my ear and as they stacked up, they seemed to fall over upon each other like a row of dominoes.

It became very awkward. It was late. We had run out of conversation. I finished my glass of wine and he did not offer to get me another. That's the problem with the rebound fling; it's never as good as it needs to be. The fun is in the flirting, and then things always seem to go downhill. Perhaps its because I move too fast. I never really learn.

And so I left. I dragged my bicycle down the three flights of steps and he went back to his fantasy novel. I was disappointed in the Grey Eyed Boy and even more disappointed in myself. It was late but I was hungry and I picked up a lamb souvlaki and biked home and ate it in bed watching The West Wing. The souvlaki was very greasy, the show was dry. I drank a pot of tea from a pumpkin shaped teapot and licked the meat juice off my fingers. And somehow, for a brief moment in my tiny, drafty bedroom in the middle of Melbourne at one in the morning, everything seemed at peace.

The next morning as I deleted all the texts from the day before, I suddenly remembered how colour blind I am. In reality, his eyes probably weren't even grey.

Dancing in the streets (if we're lucky)

2011-06-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on the tram, I sat opposite a man who looked as if he'd given up on life. His trackpants were smeared with what looked like marmalade, and he was only wearing one shoe. He stared straight ahead, his mouth half open. Each time the tram stopped, he would let out a monotone 'yay.' This happened at every tram down Brunswick Street and continued into the city. 'yay.' 'yay. 'yay.'

When I got off, he was looking down at his feet and seemed quite stunned to see that his left shoe was missing. His mouth gaped.

There are so many amazing crazy people in Melbourne. It's impossible to walk down Bourke Street without almost tripping over some woman who looks like Janis Joplin. There are so many crazy people that people don't even know who you're talking about when you bring them up. Back in the days when I kicked around in Dunedin, my humble university town of 120,000 people, there were a handful of crazies that everyone knew. Everyone knew 'Clappy', the man with no teeth who busked outside Countdown by slapping his hands

together, usually out of time. Everyone knew 'Speedy', too; a little weaselly man who walked through the Dunedin streets at a constant speedy case and carry two suitcases on wheels. There was especially Joan the Butcher, an alcoholic Susan Boyle lookalike with a moustache who would take her knickers in public and sometimes sit on people.

There are many famous anecdotes about Joan Butcher. Here is one of them.

"Once I was in South Dunedin at the fish and chip shop and I asked for 2 blue cod. 10 minutes later when my order was ready I found instead of two blue cod the guy had given me two "corn on the cobs" (I wondered what he was saying when he was clarifying my order.....)

Anyways, I didn't want this deep fried corn on the cob so I was leaving I saw Joan sitting on the ground, I went up to her and asked if she would like it, as Joan lifted her head up from her bag I realised she had casually vomited in her bag and had vomit all over her face. A bottle of vodka was situated beside her. Joan was very grateful to me and continually shouted out thank you as I walked down the street."

A quick YouTube search in fact reveals numerous videos of Joan, some with thousands of views. That is how famous she is.

But Melbourne's crazy people are too many to list. I remember a man with a grey beard who

came into our local laundrette with two budgies on his shoulders and sang everyone an impromptu version of 'Sweet Caroline.'No one I've ever met has ever seen or heard of him. Perhaps us Melbournites should start talking about our favourite crazy people casually in conversations and eventually we will have our own Joan the Butcher.

I have also decided to start looking up outdated pop culture references in The Golden Girls.

BLANCHE: Well, I don't like you Dorothy.

DOROTHY: Well Blanche, horizontal stripes make you look like Roger Ebert.

This is Roger Ebert.

Here are some facts about Roger Ebert.

1. Roger Ebert is one of America's most prominent film critics. He is the first person to win a Pulitzer prize for 'film journalism.' In other words, his reviews get the best reviews.

2. In the early 70s, he became good friends with Russ 'Faster Pussycat Kill Kill' Meyer and they wrote several screenplays together, including this one.

Ironically, it received terrible reviews.

3. He was an alcoholic but then sobered up and wrote a blog about it. Here is the blog. It's pretty good.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/08/my_name_is_roger_and_im_an_alc.html

4. He once dated Oprah. She later claimed that he was her key to getting on TV and, hence, taking over the world.

5. He told Michael Moore to make THAT Anti-Bush speech at the Oscars (maybe it was because they look very similar).

6. Some of his readers consider that he views horror films with a bourgeois elitism because he usually gives slash movies a low rating.

7. He has his own film festival called Eberfest. The theme is usually 'out of print silent film.'

And now, with Roger Ebert uncovered, the joke is funny. Funnier. I imagine the writers of Friends imagine Phoebe Buffet to be a bit like a young Rose Nyland. It didn't really work.

A whole Agnew world

2011-06-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

The Melbourne weather is chilling; 4 degrees in fact. Today it hailed; one of those not that common occurances that never really seems to excite anyone but someone will always bring up at the dinner table (or around the TV if you don't have dinner table). The cold unifies people in a way. Your cashier will bring it up or the person next to you in the lift and you agree heartily. Even people who hate each other or those of extreme awkward social grace can have a conversation about the weather on a day that cold. It's the best conversation starter you'll ever have.

I have been reading up on Spriro Agnew; The 39th Vice President of the U.S under Nixon. Here are some thoughts and facts:

1. Has there ever been a biographic film about an American Vice President?

2. Spiro Agnew pretty much is a character from The Wire. I would imagine Councilman Tommy Carcetti would be like in another ten years. He even comes from Baltimore.

3. His campaign slogan when he was running for governor was 'Your house is your castle.' What?

4. When he ran for Vice under Nixon, the Democrats hated him so much that they made this commercial:

5. Spiro Agnew spoke out intensely against anti-war protests during Vietnam. He told everyone it was completely Un-American. He was also against any footage of the Vietnam war from being shown to the American people. During this period, he was commonly referred to as 'Nixon's hatchet man.'

6. He and Nixon had a falling out and, for the last three years, Nixon froze him out of all the import White House decisions and would only see him at cabinet meetings.
Apparently Nixon did this because he was jealous of how much the public preferred his Vice to him. During his second term, he kept Agnew on because he was popular was voters, and once said at a press conference that the only reason he had him his Vice was that "No assassin in his right mind would kill me because then they would be stuck with President Agnew." Agnew later claimed in his memoirs that Nixon and his Chief of Staff Andrew Haig were going to have him assassinated if he didn't resign during Watergate and told him "go quietly...or else."

7. Agnew inspired a fashion craze of 'Spiro Agnew watches' which everyone started wearing; Republicans to show their support and Democrats because they thought it was funny. It is pretty funny.

Why did no one make a Sarah Palin one of these??!

8. He served in France and Germany in World War II. That was a casual thing that you could put on your CV back in those days (and blatantly would have). Now John McCain puts Vietnam on his CV. We'll know were old when the oval office has an Iraq veteran running the country. Shudder.

9, He is played by Robert Marshall in Oliver Stone movie, but apparently he is only in for two minutes (out of 192 minutes).

10. In season 3, episode 5 of the TV show Angel, Angel has a conversation with Fred's father in which he says that Spiro Agnew was a demon. Fred's father replies that Agnew couldn't have been anything else.

Second Famous people are much more interesting than famous people. I might do another one tomorrow. Stay tuned, as they say.

During my travels around the Internet, I also came across this delightful piece which comes up as a finance article on the News 7 Daily web page (which even has a weather report) but News Daily 7 quickly turns into a payment form if you click on any of the links to other news sectors.

http://www.news7dailyjobs.com/?t202id=630303&t202kw=cpa

Does anyone else find this really offensive?

Right. Time for tea and then sleep. And then tea.

And this.

2011-04-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

Gumtree at its absolute best.

How do you decide which shade of black to wear?

2011-04-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Flat hunting, or as Australians call it 'House hunting.' I have had more than one irate Australian breath heavily down the phone at me and tell me, in a quiet voice, that 'I think you'll find this is NOT a flat.' It is.

It's a delicate dance, this business. First there is the online application, which involves scouring Gumtree for potential dwellings and dwelling-mates. It's a difficult task, trying to find the gems amongst bovved entries such as 'exhausted guy needs room in cool flat ASAP!!' However, things can be whittled down pretty quickly, once you count out outer suburbs, share rooms, flats with cats, anything south of the river, ads which describe the house as 'damp but cosy' and people who use the wrong 'your' in the opening paragraph. There are also ads that will never be answered by anyone, like this one

Gumtree fail.

Once you've found one that looks suitable in a pinch, there is the delicate task of describing yourself as a potential share houser. Usually its a matter of sounding like you are employed but interesting, independent but part of a team, clean but not anal, enjoys an early night but is also the life of the party, intelligent but non judgemental. What ends up happening is that, in a desperate bit to stay neutral, you end up saying nothing about yourself.

"I Like my music, chilling out, sometimes up for a drink or a party, but saying that not a complete party animal. I'm a pretty easy going sort of person. I likes to sit down and have a cuppa and a chat, but also likes own space."
Sometimes your don't hear back, sometimes you do. And then begins the city hopping trek of meeting and greeting your prospective housemates. In this step, you sit on opposite couches, asking dull questions and laughing politely at each others jokes about the state of the front garden or the abstract painting over the fireplace. Occasionally you are offered a glass of wine but this a rare and privileged exception. Usually, the interviews are kept to a 15 minute maximum after which the next ad replier will be knocking at the front door. Sometimes, the house dwellers will take down notes on in an exercise book as you speak; sometimes they will ask you to leave the room while they discuss your living potential. Usually at this stage, I am sweating like a demon after a 20 minute bike ride and all the questions I want to ask have vanished into the ether. I am left with inane queries such as:

"So, like, what's the general vibe of your guys flat...I mean House?"
"Oh you know, its like, pretty chilled out. We like to hang out together sometimes but we also like our own space."
"Mmmm yeah that sounds great."
What you really need to is to cut the crap and ask the questions that you're actually curious about. Like:

"Are you one of those people who leaves their washing in the machine for days after its finished, because I fucking hate it when people do that."

OR "Would you be annoyed if I brought home a party of friends to listen to funk music at 3am or would you get amongst it?"

OR "Do you boil your mooncup in a pot on the stove?"

At one house, I was forced to sit on the veranda and read from a book of poems. The poems were written by the dizzy head flatmate who told me she inspired a song by the alternative band Beach House. At another house, I sat and talked to the creatures who lived there about their desire to have a 'gangsta party.' Their desire ran so deep, it seemed, that they had already spray painted neon gangsta graffiti over two walls of the kitchen. In one area, the paint had dribbled down and left a neon pool of yellow on the top of the stove. I smiled and went on with the questions, unable to tell them that I would rather fall down a flight of stairs than live in their spare room. As I left, I realised that the stool I had been sitting on was actually a broken, rusty TV.

But its all worth it in the end, all the dull interviews and the hectic bike rides and the flowery poetry. There's always another door to knock on.

And this is why I love Shallow Grave.

Trams

2011-04-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

One of the girl singers from ABBA has put out a solo album. It's called 'My colouring Book' and listening to it is like staring at a colouring book where everything has been coloured in with manic highlighters, both inside and outside the lines. It's quite lovely but I have to have at least one strong, black coffee to get me through it. 'My Colouring Book' works as a nice contrast to The Shaggs, a no-talent prepubescent girl band from the Sixties who were overweight, acne scarred and sang tuneless songs about Halloween and their lost cat, 'Foot Foot.' It's rather a cruel name for the band given that none of them are even remotely shag-able.

Yesterday on the tram, I was reading a play called 'Wiping my Mother's Ass.' It is exactly as it sounds and is not a very good play. A woman with a pinched nose sitting across from me give me a dirty look when she saw what I was reading. She was reading some kind of Vodafone pamphlet. The man next to her didn't have anything to read but seemed quite intent on examining his fingernails. He was weedy and wore a suit that was slightly too big for him. From time to time, he tried to read bits of the Vodafone pamphlet over the woman's shoulder. After a few minutes of this, the pinched face woman closed the pamphlet and shoved it deep into her handbag. She gave the weedy man a sharp, angry glance and turned her neck to stare furiously out the window. The weedy man got off at the next stop and the pinched face woman reached into her handbag and went back to her Vodafone pamphlet. I went back to Wiping my Mother's ass. It wasn't that great.

Playing pool

2011-04-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Monday is a good day for the Fitzroy community pool. I swam a bunch of laps and watched people. There are no aqua joggers but a lot of people seem to have taken to wearing flippers in the lanes. They swim very fast but you'd expect them to. It's the fast swimmers without the flippers that really impress the rest of us. The ones in speedos with Adonis figures. There seems to be a congregation of them at the start of the week, flexing and talking about their girlfriends at the start of the fast lane. They don't swim that much but I guess they don't have to with bodies like that. Sometimes, when they get tired of standing around in waist-high water they lie down on the bleachers, arms behind their heads with their arm pit hair exposed. I find it pretty sexy despite myself.

All this I witness through quick glimpses, occasionally taking extra long between breathes and take every chance to de-mist my goggles. In the medium and slow lanes, less attractive people swim with less impressive strokes. They stop more often than I do but with less pervy intentions. The life guards amble around the sides of the pool not doing much. They are also unattractive but might be less so without the wrap around sunglasses and yellow polo shirts.

I sat with two of the Adonises in the sauna. Their conversation was dull but their aesthetics pleased me. One had a loud voice and a smattering of chest hair, the other--James according to his mate--was soft spoken with serious pectorals. I sipped from my water bottle and pretended to stare into space. It was an excellent seven minutes and then I reluctantly had to exit before the temperature made me pass out. I tried the steam room but was sorely disappointed by the lack of Goodbodies on display, only a small Asian woman in a brown bikini. We smiled quietly at each other and after a few minutes, went on our separate ways.

The woman at the front desk is called Annie. She is a rather dull looking woman with a mess of hoop earings in her ears and she wears sweat pants. She works behind the desk every day of the week or so it seems. I wonder if she goes swimming in the pool. I wonder if she pervs at the Goodbodies. I would get probably not given that she has extremely thick spectacles and is probably legally blind if she takes them off. But you never know.

India and that

2011-01-18T01:16:00.000-08:00

Well, Hamish and I are now in Jaipur, Rajistan. Can honestly say it is not our favourite town; there is rotting filth everywhere and children covered in flies go through the rubbish bins which smell so bad that we have to hold our breath when we walk past them.

There are many animals scurrying about, mainly cows and goats but in Jaipur there are also a lot of massive pigs which roll around in the rubbish and squeal with delight. There is an excess of mangy dogs; we saw one that looked like its skin was falling off and it was blind in both eyes and had a limp. As I took a photo of it, the wretched thing scurried into a pile of refuse and picked up a chickens foot in its teeth.

We were also almost victim to a jewel scam; a long story but it involved us having a little too much faith that the little Indian man with a scar on his face who stopped us in the street and asked us why foreigners avoid Indian people seemed genuinely interested in us as people and was quite happy to sit and talk about cultural divides with us. He was an artist and tried to sell us his hand drawn Karma Sutra pictures, but apart from this he was nice enough. He told us that he once had a New Zealand girlfriend, 'Stacey,' who was a truck driver from Wellington and had too 'big an ego inside' to make a long term relationship really work. He also told us about his other New Zealand friend, who was prison guard in Auckland. He then made everyone a bhang lassi and asked us how many wives we had.

Several hours later, we went for a beer with the uncle of our new found friend who ended up disappearing and leaving us with the toad-like Brahman uncle and some sort of sleazy nephew in a cheap suit who gave us a packet of cigarettes. Stoned, we half listened them boast about how many million ruppees they made on a weekly basis and that lying was ok if it was done 'for the greater good.' And then the convesation came to its inevitabe conclusion, What about if the two us were to make a quick buck by smuggling some precious jewels back into Australia with us? They talked about loop holes, we looked nervously towards the door and lit another cigarette. No strings attached apparently, except casual tax evasion. The whole situation was made more ridiculous by the fact that we had just spend the day before reading an article in the Lonely Planet (our second copy after our first one was stolen by a man with no teeth on the train to Agra) about how so many stupid tourists still fall for the 'gem scheme.' Hamish had then guffawed but after the incident at hand (which grew quite nasty with raised voices and slamming of hands on the table), he hung his head; we both did. we bought a bottle of whiskey on the way back to our guesthouse.

Tomorrow we head to Pushkar; an apparently beautiful holy place with a holy lake at its centre. Jaipur is rather a fail city; gem scam aside. My bowels are getting edgy with vegetable curry twice a day which is a pity given that it is the best curry I have ever had in my life (and costs virtually nothing). Our hotel, the Red Tomato Hotel Palace is a grand, 'Shining'-esque building, complete with a man throwing up (loudly) at 1am and then again at 6am. I am reading A Fine Balance and Hamish is reading Midnight's Children, token travellers that we are. Still, we sat across from an even more offensive pair of English girls at dinner last night who were both reading John Grisham (The Rainmaker and A Time to Kill respectively) and who sent their malia kofta back to the kitchen in a rage because it was too spicy. Bovved.

Zac who?

2010-10-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Joseph-Gordon Levitt, the hottest man on the planet, lies sprawled on my desktop and all over my heart. Celebrity crushes, delightful and destructive, have for a long time eluded me. Not since I caught my first glimpse of Seth Cohen in the candy coloured world of Orange County, have I been so head over converse chucks in love with someone on the other side of the screen.

But Seth wasn’t real and, as the seasons of The O.C. persisted, he began to deteriorate into a character fail. The show, suddenly devoid of plot, followers and Mischa Barton, stripped their remaining characters of character and left them all high, dry and washed up beyond belief. Seth’s demise was especially painful to watch. His nerdiness lost its cuteness, his hair lost its curls, and his quips were no longer witty and eventually, no longer even quips. It didn’t help that the actor who played him, Adam Broody, was a tool of the highest order, dating his onscreen co-star and starred in emotionally heavy films in which he cried onscreen and made out with Meg Ryan.

MEG RYAN.

In contrast, Joseph-Gordon Levitt kicks some serious ass. For a start, he’s got a better name. He smokes pot and wears sharp suits, although not often at the same time. He’s Jewish and lives in New York. He’s got the face of an angel but that wouldn’t stop him laying some serious shit down if the going gets tough. He’s a stud in (500) Days of Summer even though the movie is a bit of a dud and he’s amazing in Mysterious Skin.And can thrash out an acoustic version of ‘Bad Romance’ that would make even the greenest sceptic go Gaga. Babe; certifiable.

My flatmate (twenty-six today and radiant) is currently gaga over a different lady; One Joan Hollway, the curvaceous figurehead of TV’s pastel coloured masterpiece, Mad Men. We are respectively obsessed, sitting side by side on the couch trawling Google images for hours with grins on our faces. The other flatmates go to the gym and give us looks of disgust. They come back and we are in the same exact positions, but with a glass of wine. We watch really bad movies just to see our beloved do a five minute scene with Sally Field. This must be the reason so many gazillion people saw Twilight.

It’s a good age for the celebrity crush. Google has made stalking into an art form. And in today’s indie scene-themed day and age, a celebrity crush is mandatory. It’s like a familiar. Joan is very popular. So is Don Draper (and fair enough). Hoards jump on the Jimmy McNulty bandwagon and others on flock to Eric Northman’s Scandinavian aesthetic. Johnny Depp is still acceptable but only if you specify ‘early nineties Johnny Depp’ and mention John Waters. Julian Casablancas will do in a pinch. Tom Cruise will not.

And so I develop my obsession with Joseph. I drop him name in every social gathering and let people that I am (or think I am) the go-to authority on this particular hottie. Because people judge you.

A boy at work recently told me that his biggest celebrity crush was Jennifer Aniston and that she was ‘the most beautiful person in the world.’ I excused myself politely and picked up a copy of some glossy magazine, the front cover graced by a rather sultry looking Penelope Cruz. He shook his head and muttered that he’s rather “bone Rachel any day.” I sighed and nodded and smiled acerbically. I don’t doubt that a lack of judgement of would make the world a better place sometimes. But let’s be honest here; in the worlds of Sinead O’Connor, ‘he’s a fool.’

Manage your Manila

2010-08-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

The other day, I sold a woman over a hundred dollars worth of books on how to save money. She handed me her Amex card with a wincing,, a blush of relief spreading over her features when it came up ‘Approved’.

Outside on the pavement, a busker man sat cross-legged on an upside down bread crate. He played an acoustic, not very good rendition of ‘The Entertainer’ over and over again all afternoon. It was relaxing, bordering on torturous. People dropped money in his hat but not very much. I stood at the counter and de-bugged the DVD security tags, humming along when I didn’t feel like throttling him.

The corporate bookstore, with its tangled web of sales targets and conversion rates, chews through managers like rats chew through muesli bars. Someone is appointed to take charge of the chain in question, given a bumped up salary, a pokey office and a bunch of cheap flowers and told to increase sales by X per cent by the end of the fortnight. They think they can do it, and they usually do. They wipe off their damp forehead, congratulate the apathetic floor staff and head home to their loved one or cat and open a bottle of something cold and bubbly.

And then, the next week. The corporate wigs, hair full of slimy product and usually sporting cheap, well pressed suits appear in the pokey office again, another sales target in the manila folder. Sales are good but they CAN be better and, as manager, that is their responsibility. And so, our heroine of sorts (although keep in mind that she is dull, power hungry and too dumb to realise she will never earn the respect of anyone) widens her eyes and devises some elaborate scheme involving a free pen for anyone who spends over a hundred bucks or a Twilight-themed day in which every customer who knows the magic answer to some trite, semi-literate piece of trivia goes into the draw to win a free New Moon DVD. The staff groan and co-operate, mainly because they are also promised a piece of the meagre prize pie; a free cinema pass if the sales threshold is reached by the end of the day. You see, the manager also has to manage her staff in order to meet the target, otherwise she’s in hot water (and we’re not talking about those dreary instant coffees she’s beginning to knock back with her eyes closed every morning after a night of restless sleep).

And so it goes on. Week after week. Sales targets; conversion rates. Men with round faces holding manila folders invading much needed personal space. Instant coffee scooped out of the jar with shaky hands. Coupons. Staff with twisted, resentful faces. Morning meeting speeches involving phrases – ‘We all need to pull together guys’ and ‘Only five more sales each per day’ – that don’t have the desire effect. Sleepless nights. Resignations. Personal vendettas. Cold sweats. No time for reading. Fractured dreams about Reaching Target.

Eventually, the manager snaps. Her eyes are wide with something other than excitement and she meets her corporate oppressors with snappy, bitter remarks and shrugs of her tense shoulders. The time for jokes has long passed. They try to rope her into a seemingly fail safe promotion involving Lonely Planet travel guides but she shakes her head and demands a holiday. They sigh and send her off and know that she won’t return; the nerves in her brain too frayed to stay focused on line graphs. The rest of the staff are kept in the dark about this, thinking only that their leader has abandoned them in a time of need and are not so secretly relieved to hear that she will not be returning to rule with an iron (although very well manicured) fist.

The corporate heads gather, hover less than gracefully over the morning meeting and pick apart what is left of the staff. There have been a handful of resignations (or ‘quitting’ as it is known in the retail world), most likely caused by the anxiety waves radiating down the management ladder. Their manager, they are told, has ‘moved on.’ She has left the high life to open her own cafe in a town much too small to even mention, feeling the sudden need to leave the high heels and budgeting book behind in favour of a baker’s oven and a cupboard full of scone mix. Nothing is mentioned about the breakdown, the headaches. The claw marks on her office walls are sanded down and the whole place repainted a nonthreatening shade of peach.

‘And this,’ the head-est of the head honchos exclaims somewhat grandly 'is the new manager.'She stands before them beaming. She begins to spout some sweet sounding words about her love of books and the good times that will fall upon everyone involved in the coming weeks and months. There are a few scattered claps and the day begins. Our second heroine of the piece feels a sense of achievement and picks up the manila folder in front of her.

And all around this, all through this and before and after and during, people buy books that make them happy. They read dramatic plots of heroes and villains and people falling through the cracks of life and leave the shop clutching plastic bags full of stories, oblivious to the real life stress and heartache dusting their covers.

Stress in the Afternoon

2010-07-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a fat, bald man in a mustard yellow turtleneck sauntered up to the counter with a pile of six Last of the Summer Wine DVDs and a copy of Model Airplane Monthly. He licked his lips incessantly and asked for two copies of his receipt. For the rest of the afternoon, he wandered around the shop, bringing small bargain buys to the register and repeating the procedure over and over again. A book about the Pyramids. A packet of pens. A bookmark with a Celtic pattern on it. Rinse and receipt, rinse and receipt.

The customers are the key to any retail job. It is their cameos that separate one hour from the next; their smiles and outbursts that turn that frown upside down or leave you with a severe case of the afternoon doldrums. The staff are there for better or worse; Vinyl Bitch and Riot Wmmmn, unglamorous as they are. But you never who which spacey patron is going to amble into your life and blow your book-themed mind right off its shoulders.

Take, for example, Harried Mother at One Fifteen. She wheeled her pram up to the counter; one of those cumbersome vehicles with wheels the size of tyres and probably a small engine hidden under the seat. The younger child sat inside, a blonde bubby of about two with snot dripping down both nostrils. He wore a dinosaur outfit and seemed unhappy about it. Beside the pram stood the older child; a girl with a beaming smile and the kind of wide eyed jubilation who might just tie you up and read you Little Women until you passed out. Harried Mother dropped an armful of books onto the counter just as baby bink started to cry.

“Mama, can I give Baby Jason a suck from my lollipop?” The Cherub Girl asked, pulling the orange Chuppa Chup out of her mouth and offering it, Misery-style to the screaming dinosaur baby. HM grabbed the offending candy and handed it back to Cherub, resulting in the dinosaur baby to intensify his screaming level to “everyone in the shop turn around and look” level. He reached out desperately for the forbidden confectionary, clawing with his little arms and straining to yank himself out of his pram straps. His sister took a passive step away from the pram and stuck the offending article smugly back in her mouth. Two old ladies were already queuing up behind this motel crew, pretending to look politely at birthday cards and averting their mortified eyes.

Baby Jason let out another embittered howl and HM, juggling credit card and a vibrating iPhone whipped around and hissed at her daughter “See what you’ve done now, Elizabeth? Stupid.” She then pulled a Julia Donaldson book out of the pile and, with a final venomous look towards the poor girl, told me in clipped tones that “I don’t think we’ll be needing this one today, thank you.”

Elizabeth’s face froze and then, somewhat predictably, burst into tears. She threw the orange Chuppa Chup on the tiled floor where it smashed into a few sad little pieces.

“Mama is the F word! The F word!” she screamed and ran out of the shop. The two old ladies stared after her with their mouths open. Baby Jason howled even louder and strained towards the orange remnants on the tiles below. Somehow, the wretched woman and I had managed to complete the transaction and I tried to give her one of those empathetic “what’s a mother to do?” smiles. As if in response, she reached into her bag and pulled out a packed of Benson & Hedges.

“You never think it’s going to be like this and then it is.” She sighed. “Thank god for these, eh? Oh, love your cardie.” She winked at me and wheeled the screaming child away. The two old women sidled up to the counter, stepping gingerly around the Chuppa fragments.

“Mums can’t be doing it these days,” one of them explained. “It’s all too soft, that big woman on the TV and her naughty stool. Sometimes they just need a good smack on the bum.” Behind them, Mustard Yellow stood quietly, another bargain book in his hand. He licked his lips expectantly.

Two days later, I ruined the very same cardigan by putting it through drier cycles at the local laundrette. It shrunk to half its size.

On the way home, I bought a packet of Benson & Hedges.

Broken Record

2010-06-30T01:51:00.000-07:00

My new favourite staff member at my corporate bookshop is a delightful creature who I have nicknamed ‘Vinyl Bitch.’ She is a tall, awkward looking girl with a sour face; the kind of girl who makes any mother’s heart sink a little when her son arrives with her, arm in arm, at the family Christmas dinner. I imagine she would sit sulkily in the corner, texting and picking resentfully at her roast potatoes.

On my first day, I smiled as widely as I could and introduced myself. She managed a grumpy “hi” and then stalked off to stack the travel section. It wasn’t until about 5’o clock that I managed to crack her into her zeal. Stranded at registers, we were rescued by a customer purchasing a CD of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars. VB scanned it and stared the customer—a small balding man in a cheap suit—triumphantly in the eye.

“I’ve got this on vinyl,” she stated, almost smiling, and then went back to being a bitch.

For the rest of the day, whenever I was within her auditory sphere, I name-dropped a list of classic albums, each one concluded with VB turning, sneering and affirming “Yeah well, I’ve got that on vinyl.” The only exception seemed to be with the mention of several obscure albums which prompted the reaction “Yeah, I really want to get that on vinyl.” Sometimes when we stand together at the registers, I hum ‘You Spin Me Right Round (Like a Record)’ under my breath. She pretends not to hear me.

VB’s work attire consists of tight jeans, tall boots and an endless parade of dull, grey cardigans adorned with indie rock badges. These badges are the one thing that seems to signal VB’s daily weather report: If she’s in a boring daily sour mood, the badges tend towards the sunny sixties pop of The Beatles or acoustic Bob Dylan. On a rainy Wednesday, when shop morale and sales are at their lowest, Joy Division and Nirvana can be spotted on the grey lapels. On Friday, things seem to pick up again; The Clash often makes an appearance, Led Zeppelin, The Pixies. The Sex Pistols pop up from time to time, Jimi Hendrix is also a regular. VB declines the weekly offer of a beer with the rest of the staff but instead mutters something about seeing her friend’s band, The Joan Crawfords, at a basement bar in Collingwood. No one is invited to join her. She stalks out the store, arms hanging by her side, headphones in her ears, ‘Comfortably Numb’ blaring out for anyone to hear.

VB has a boyfriend called Brendan: an aspiring writer who works at a stationary warehouse. She is constantly on the phone to him in the lunch room, staring furiously at any other staff member whose voice is raised above the appropriate level. Their conversations tend toward the lacklustre end of the spectrum, with phrases like “yeah well, whatever” and “I’ve seen it; it’s lame” peppered throughout. Once, he was sighted at the front entrance, a good looking guy with a chubby face and a leather satchel. He was halfway through a conversation with Jenny, the well toned merchandise manager, when the VB marched to the front of the shop, red faced. She gave Jenny a look that would wither a patch of daffodils and dragged Brendan away, hissing “come ON.” The next day, Patti Smith and Pearl Jam glowered out from the grey Cardigan.

The other day, I asked VB if she would consider getting a badge featuring the late 90s pop sensations ‘The Cardigans’ and consequently have Cardigans on her cardigan. She glared at me contemptuously for a good 30 seconds and then told me that you probably couldn’t even get The Cardigans on vinyl; “that’s how shit they are.”

I think I kind of love her.

Black Books

2010-06-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

I needed a job; I found one. A book shop or at least a sort of a bookshop. This time a week ago, I was drinking merlot and feeling jaded about being unemployed. Tonight, I drink Riesling and feel somewhat jaded about the 40 hour week ahead. The irony is delicious, the wine is more so.

The book shop in question shall remain nameless, a sprawling mass of a thing attached to a shopping arcade. It’s a corporate chain affair, with plenty of books but mostly written by Eckhart Tolle and Jodi Picoult. There is a large self help section and lots of 20% off stickers hurriedly slapped on piles of Popular Penguins. So far, a uniform is not compulsory but I have heard disturbing rumours of bright red polo shirts. The widescreen TV halfway through the store plays Avatar on loop. No one in it is hot.

As I said, I needed a job.

The week started off with as something of a challenge, with my hours starting at seven ‘o’clock in the AM. Doey eyed, I scrambled around the store stacking shelves and chewing on bits of rolled up paper so as not to collapse in a pile of golden slumbers. Everywhere I turn, Robert Pattinson’s bored eyes stare back at me from books, posters and jigsaw puzzles. It is impossible to avoid the Twilight Corporation; even the magazine stands have abtastic CHILF of the Moment Taylor Launder’s sex stories all over it. I try not to get turned on but it’s hard not to when his glistening six packs eclipse everything else. Pun, get it?

One of my fellow employees is an overweight woman who has worn the same Twilight T-shirt for the past five days. On Wednesday, she turned up with purple hair and the staff told her she looked ‘modern.’ She met her husband on an Internet dating website and seems happy. We wear lanyards with our ‘passion’ on them. Mine in Seinfeld. Hers is ‘Riot Grrrl.’ Watch this space.

The day starts with a bevy of manic managers initiate “GO-O-O-O-O-O TEAM!” warm up exercises, complete with daily budget requirements and lessons on how to use ‘open ended questions’ when selling to customers. The rest of the staff smile and nod and sip away at their Almond Honey non fat vanilla lattes. I stand at the back of the meeting and half expect Alec Baldwin to come storming in and yell “You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch.”

We have walkie talkies and say things followed by the word “Roger.” It’s awkward and rather a change from the independent book trade in which you talked loudly across the store and people knew who Alan Hollinghirst and were. Here, the main words used are “percent off” and “discount club.” The soundtrack consists of a cluster of CDs chose from head office. These include Norah Jones and Craig David sings Motown. Tears dribble down my interior as the latter’s version of 'I heard it through the Grapevine' pervades my ears for the fifth time in eight hours. At 4pm, I try to smuggle the Rolling Stone’s revised edition of Exile on Main Street into the stereo but was stopped by the assistant regional manager, a large man with a beard who told me in a hushed tone that it might be a little “too edgy” for the customers. It was release in 1971, before Watergate. I die a little inside and head back to the counter where I sell a small, excited woman three copies of Paulo Cohello’s The Alchemist and somehow manage to keep a straight face.

The hours and days slide by and a pay check appears and I take it with a grateful, exhausted smile. Across the road, the city’s top independent bookshop smiles kindly at me, its front window filled with Chekov biographies and Hertzog box sets. I stare longingly and then, realising that I am still wearing my corporate bookshop t-shirt of whoredom, pull my coat tightly around me and head home. I’ve got one hand in my pocket and the other one’s holding a cigarette. Life, as they say is good. And so is nicotine.

Melbourne, in & around my mouth.

2010-05-26T01:02:00.000-07:00

Once again, Elaine picks up her corporate heels and settles in a new country. She stops at duty free for a couple of bottles of Bombay and a couple of shuttles and trams later, reaches the stylish stomping grounds of Melbourne, Australia. It’s a cool place, Elaine thinks. Wellington on Steroids with a sprinkle of Victorian class. There aren’t many beaches but there is a river; a great, greasy thing called The Yarra which winds its way through the CBD. Tourists dutifully snap photos of but will probably delete them a few hours later. The weather is fantastic.

There are more bars here than any alcoholic could ever stumble in and out of; more restaurants and bistros that can ever be counted. Horse drawn carriages clip-clop up and down Swanston Street, carrying fat, bored families of tourists in akubras. No one in this arrangement looks pleased to be here, particularly the horses, whose dignity is lost somewhere between their elaborate tassels and the enormous shit bags swinging beneath their tails. If they could cry, I’m sure they would. The drivers wear their top hats grudgingly, waiting out the half hour of till they can tuck into their packet of Lucky Strikes and fart loudly.

Our flat is a wee brick villa, located in the uber-chic suburb of Fitzroy (north). Brunswick Street is filled with ethnic delights, not least the faction of souvlaki cafes, which serve up mouth watering pita breads filled with grilled lamb at all hours of the day or night. After a year in the Asian Royston Vasey town where the only shop closed at 7pm, the joys of 24 eateries cannot be expressed. Let’s just say if I was a Blondie song right now, it would doubtless be ‘Rapture.’ Up the road is a Soup Kitchen, which dishes out dreamy Moroccan from a spoken menu. The trick is to be polite to the harried waitresses or you might get thrown out into the chilly Melbourne evening, sans soup. The whole thing is so Seinfeld, I almost can’t handle it. We went to see Vampire Weekend on a week night. Ironic?

In Lygon Street, Italian restaurants are packed wall to wall. They quietly terrify me. Walking past in the evening, seedy matradees try to coax you in with a beckoning finger, offering you a free bottle of cheap wine if only you’ll come in and try their mouth-watering linguine. Out the back sit the owners, ex-Soprano henchmen with hands clenched into fists and blood smeared aprons. It’s a good time to have a vegan boyfriend by your side, shaking your head at the creamy, meaty delights on offer and escaping to the Thai place down the block. The owners eyes follow you down the street and light another cigar. I swear this is reality and not an HBO cliche. Hamish and I eat our Thai with shaky hands, sweat dripping into our red curry.

Last week, we watched the YouTube video of Oprah interviewing a woman who had her face and hands torn off by a chimp. It was a cultural experience.

On Saturday, we trekked to hideous outer suburb Reservoir to attend a Roller Derby. It was perhaps the most Gummo moment of my life. The crowd was an interesting mix of lesbians, bogans and art school kids trying to be ironic. The music consisted mainly of Marilyn Manson and Slipknot which seemed appropriate as two teams of girls in hot pants and roller-skates raced around a rink and try and push each other over. The roller derby girls had amazing names such as ‘Skate Bush’ and ‘Kitty Von Krusher.’ At one point, our ringside view was blocked by an obese man with a ponytail until his friend brought him over three hot dogs and he had to go and sit down so he could hold all of them. At half time, a gimp man in a neon blue dog suit and wraparound sunglasses serenaded the crowd with an air guitar rendition of the ‘Danger zone’ song off Top Gun. People cheered and threw their empty beer cups at him. Out in the freezing night, we smoked cigarettes because everyone else was.

Melbourne is a place of treats. There are things to do, eat and gawk at in every crevice of the city. Whether you’re looking for a good Ethiopian restaurant or a Friday night sex party and you’re bound to find one that exceeds your expectations. Fun times are many. Elaine approves. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

Sweet Fancy Moses (and some others)

2010-02-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

Elaine Benes: dancer extraordinaire and muse of many. When my life expires and I swap one land of long white clouds for another, Elaine will be there. Somewhere up there in the eternal paradise the good Christians promised us, between the Tuscan villas and the bouncy castles, there will be a huge, shimmering dance club. It will be called Post-Puddy and will pump out funk music all hours of the day and night. It is here that we will meet Elaine, grooving and grinding all over the dance floor with her eyes closed and a big, wasted smile on her face. The walls are stacked with chilled bottles of Bombay Sapphire and an elaborate lemon tree sprouts majestically in the corner. Beautiful people lie underneath it and make out.

An immaculately dressed barman, reminiscent of a young Jack Nicholson, smiles seductively and hands me a stiff gin & tonic. Elaine grabs my hand and pulls me in for a close one. ‘Brick House’ starts pumping over the club speakers. Ms. Benes shakes her ass and throws in a few ‘little kicks’ for good measure. The crowd cheers. ‘Single Ladies’ is on next.

The amalgamation of Bombay Sapphire and Elaine Benes is, of course, the inspiration for this blog and my life in general. Alcohol clearly brings out the best in her; I can think of almost no one else in the fictional universe with whom I would rather get my wasted face on. However, my mind cannot help but wander to the rest of the Seinfeld characters and the intoxicant it would be most fun to consume with each of them.

For Jerry, it would most definitely be cocaine. Blow would match his sneakers for one thing. There could be jokes made about nostril sizes and the Jewish faith which I’m sure he would find amusing. And Jerry’s already manic speed talking would go into overdrive after a few lines. He would pace around his apartment in a frenzy, muttering things like ‘if you want a joke, try some coke’ and scribbling them furiously down on a pad. He won’t stop talking for hours, his words getting closer together, especially when he discovers that the high he’s experiencing is known as the ‘superman syndrome.’ And eventually, he will put on some 80’s techno and start cleaning his apartment at double speed.

Taking an acid trip with Kramer would a mind-blowing experience. “Listen buddy” he’d whisper to you a couple of hours in, “don’t talk to loud but there are bugs running up the wall. They’re spies from the top, I know they are.” He’d swallow nervously and wipe the sweat from his brow. “THEY’RE FREAKING ME OUT!!!” He’d yell suddenly before rushing to the front door to spy on the invisible ninja robots through the peep hole. By the end of the day, you’d be pulling up the floorboards to make a protective moat around the living room, and filling it with bottles of ginger ale.

The thought of getting blazed with Newman is both hilarious and disturbing. The incoherent stories about the postal service would be a dream come true. We would tear open envelopes, cackling hysterically at the love letters and Christmas cards between puffs of smoke. And then, our stomachs rumbling with serious munchies, Newman would order twelve pizzas, all with extra cheese, and we would gobble them down, stopping only to praise the person who invented double crust with our mouths full of half chewed dough.

And then we get to George Costanza, and my mind goes uncomfortably blank. Getting drunk with George would be a depressing experience, reminiscent of the worst kind of Tom Waits song. The addition of weed into the equation would simply heighten the uncomfortable paranoia and low self-esteem that George lives his life by even at his soberest. And baby, let’s not even get started on the hallucinogens. There is little that scares me more than entering a warped, unstable parallel universe with George and his neuroses and plaid shirts. The only thing that could top it would be the inclusion of Frank and Estelle Costanza, yelling at each other like demons and sucking everyone around them into a black hole. All the orange juice in the world couldn’t get rid of that nightmare. With all this in mind, I guess George’s drug of choice would have to be Prozac. He seems long overdue for a serious dose. And perhaps get his parents on some as well.

And I’m sure that somewhere in the American Midwest, there is a balding, acne-scarred Mark Chapman-wannabe hunched over a computer in some basement. A photograph of his ex-girlfriend lies ripped to pieces on the linoleum floor. He stuffs another handful of Cheetos into his mouth, wiping the orange powder on his track pants. His sweat drips onto his keyboard as he types the final sentences of his morbid thoughts into a little blog titled Prozac & Costanza.

He is Bizzaro Telford.

What Nina said.

2010-02-04T20:12:00.000-08:00

As of the last post, your humble narrator was conquering North America and being smug about it.

He even had the audacity to use the word 'conquering' when the verb should really be something closer to 'inspecting.' Or perhaps it was North America which was inspecting him. There was sex, drugs and a whole lot of Greyhound buses filled with crackheads and the occasional saint. There was Jews and stuffed crust pizzas and seemingly endless art galleries which your humble narrator stumbled through, feeling overwhelmed and mostly dumb and wishing all the while that his Art History-themed friends were there to slap him around a bit.

And then, after three plane rides and all the duty free alcohol my tired arms could carry, I collapsed back in my beloved New Zealand. A faction of the Mills clan met me at the airport; their smiles too wide to be taken sincerely. They kept up the facade all afternoon; the younger siblings clawing for presents, the older ones eyeing up the Duty Free. Exhausted, I caved in at about 9 o'clock and with one last bout of thank yous, they clutched their precious treasures to their chests and went about their various strands of their busy lives: school, sport, op shopping, breakups, Facebook.

And so your narrator, more humble than ever, found himself back to pre-Japan square one. And in typical square one style, he again began working at Unity Books; Wellington's premium independent bookshop and employ of Liberal Arts graduates. It is a wonderful, gleaming place. Like a gay bar, it's almost impossible to get anything done. But oh, if only gay bars were as full of rich pickings. "Pick me" the books whisper one by one as I begin my early morning rounds. "I'll keep you up all night and give you a good go again in the morning..." The fiction wall is particularly awful, especially during long, hot afternoons around the A to F section. The Faulkners and the Easton Ellises pant heavily, shelves apart. "ohhh, just the first paragraph" they moan. "We were maaaade for each other...." I swallow heavily and swing back into the Film & Music table which is an even bigger mistake. Big, glossy encyclopedias pledge life commitments, happy to sit submissively in my bookcase for decades, so long as I promise to pull them out for a bit of fun on the occasional rainy day. Most days, I leave the store exhausted, with my brow sweaty and my pants half undone.

At Unity, it is important to 'fit in.' This means having a favourite David Bowie album, and unless it's Low, it doesn't count. This means preferring cheap red wine to expensive white and using the phrase "Coetzee-esque" without batting an eyelid. It means reading The Lovely Bones ironically and rolling your eyes at anyone who buys Eckart Tolle. Being in a band helps, being an aspiring poet helps more. It's wonderful but frequently difficult to keep up; whether The Smiths are a valid band changes on an almost weekly basis. As a group, the Unity Staff with their quirks and passion for soap-opera-indie-kid lifestyles fall somewhere between Black Books and Empire Records. They wish.

Then there are the customers. Last week, an old man stamped his foot in a rage after discovering we didn't have any books about crop circles, furiously crying "what kind of book shop are you?" There was the frustrated housewife who couldn't find any kids books for her two year old with an extended reading level because none of the smart ones were 'pop up-ey enough'. It took all my all of strength not to yell at her "Margaret! Margaret!" I doubt she would have understood. My favourite customers are the Narnians. These are the middle aged men (in the closet, another literary pun, geddit?)with red faces who spend a good half an hour browsing the biography section, easing closer and closer to the Gay & Lesbian table as if by accident. Once finding themselves here, they glace quicky around and whip a paperback edition of erotic man tales (usually Up the Back Passage or Daddies) off the table before darting back to biography. They turn up at the counter ten minutes later, eyes averted, the offending text momentarily hidden under a small stack of Evelyn Waughs. I smile and flush everything quickly into a brown paper bag, forcefully mentioning the weather and watching the relief spill over their face. The other end of the scale is the nineteen year old boys in singlets and dyed blonde locks. They take a few fertive glances at the queer table and might even pick up a book or two, but they never make it to the counter, never able to meet the eyes of the knowing bookseller who stand behind it. Worry not my readers, they'll be back.

The sun sets across the bay, a glass of chardonnay sits beside me. Nick Lowe, Junior Boys and Lady Gaga crank it on the itunes. Life is good. The future is bright and the tepid wasteland of Urakawa is far behind. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little alarm bell rings the word "future" over and over again. But that's for next week.

San Francisco; good for your joints

2009-10-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

San Francisco: famous for hippies, Vertigo, Full House, that Judy Garland song, that Rufus-Wainwright-covering-Judy-Garland song, cable cars, Mrs. Doubtfire and the massive bridge. Basically, it is a legend of a city and I was happy to be immersed in its colourful, liberal-themed waters.

San Francisco seemed to have aspect of city that a twenty-three year old wannabe hipster like me could possibly desire. As I began to know the neighborhoods, I planned out my daily life if I was lucky enough to be an American citizen. It would begin with early morning lectures at Berkeley, scribbling notes about muck racking American literature and ranting about saving the planet over a steaming espresso in a biodegradable cup. After several hours of this and feeling sufficiently ready to take on the real world, I would hope on the subway to the Haight; stoner capital of the city, for some Grade-A grass smoked out of a bong that looked like a post-modern vase (especially after a few hits). This would be followed up by a dazed stroll in the Golden Gate park, where hippies and homeless people lie sprawled in the sunshine, too happy or blazed to care about anything.

When the munchies began to set in, I would take a trolley car down the hill to the Mission district, and gorge myself on a Pacho Villa burrito, savouring every bite and assuring myself one again that this was the food of the gods. And then, feeling fulfilled and ready for some fun, it would be a quick stroll up to the Castro, where the men hold hands and rainbow flags blow in the wind. If you can't find someone to pick up here, you're way too straight.

And that isn't even everything. San Francisco also has City Lights; the bookstore that began the Beat generation and a wet dream for any English major worth his rock salt. Here, I forced myself to buy yet another book (the fifth in a week; I have no idea if slash how I will be able to keep this up) from the 'mmmm yeah I like it' recommendations shelf. The thin, grey eyed man behind the counter said nothing but gave me one of those 'good choice' hand gestures by making his thumb and first finger into a circle and pursing his lips. I nodded. We understood each other.

Unable to resist, I also made a reluctant tourist couple take a photo me grinning manically standing in Jack Kerouac alley with my copy of On the Road. I was amused and really, that is all that counts. Chinatown, also brilliant, spills over a few blocks away. It is always crowded, usually with withered old ladies buying sacks of breadfruit and the odd American husband-and-wife-tourist team, looking decidedly out of their comfort zone and trying to find the way out.

The homeless people of San Francisco are much more entertaining that in Los Angeles. Here, they love you even if you don't give you money, and if you do, they might even reward you for it. I threw a few quarters at a smelly woman in the Mission district and she was so stoked that she jumped up and began a kind of wasted tap dance. The best part was that she wasn't wearing any shoes. Everyone in San Francisco has a favourite homeless person story. My personal favourite

is the man with crazy eyes who we spotted on the subway. He had a boom box above his head which was playing Kid A at full volume and he was yelling the lyrics to everyone in the carriage as they tried politely (terrified) to ignore him. The thing was, the words he were singing didn't make any sense, but were instead some sort of nonsense language he had made up. It took me a while to figure this out though. I guess that's Kid A for you.

Perhaps my favourite part of the city though has to be Dolares park. It is here, on a Friday afternoon, that all the hipsters come to drink red wine and talk politics. You can hear them arguing several blocks away, but by the time the sun sets, everyone has mellowed down and even the anarchists have started playing Frisbee. My favourite part was when a blonde girl stripped down to her bra and knickers and went careening down the hill in a wheelchair (I have no idea where she got the wheelchair from, perhaps some kind paraplegic swapped it with her for a case of wine) . At the bottom of the hill, it hit a bump and she went sprawling onto the grass. For a few seconds, I thought the evening might have been over, but then she stumbled back up, unstrapped her bra and, with a wasted smile on her face, began pushing the wheelchair, topless, back up the hill. No one else seemed particularly impressed or surprised and I even heard some snarky hippy girl remark "She's not as good as that naked mime that was here last week."

People, we have come a long way from Japan. And thank god for that.

More Greyhound adventures

2009-09-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

The trip from Vegas to San Fran was a long and painful one, beginning at 3am when the Larry David-lookalike (complete with slacks) sitting next to me began bombarding me with 'fun facts' about California. Please imagine if Larry David was slightly autistic and smiled constantly without looking at you. This was my fifteen hour gambit between states and another example of the freaks that Greyhound has to offer.

Across fifteen hours, I learnt many painful, ridiculous things about California from Autistic Larry (who's name actually was David). After each fact, I would feign interest (with less and less conviction as the trip went on) with a "Oh, really?" to which he would bluntly respond "yes" and then stare out the window, grinning from ear to ear like a happy dog. After this, I would re-attach my ipod and get On the Road back on track and just when I'd gotten to the paragraph where Dean shows up again (or whatever), I'd feel a tap on my shoulder and a small part of me would die inside.

At some stage in California, I realized that this man was clearly insane. He hadn't slept AT ALL for the fifteen hour trip and would break into sporadic coughing fits several times an hour. When we stopped in the middle of nowhere for a lunch break, he ordered a Fish O' Fillet from McDonald's (the only place to get food, as usual). He then proceeded to eat the fish fillet bit but not before licking off all the tartare sauce and spitting it delicately onto the ground. After this, he crumbled the burger bun into little crumbs and putting it into his top pocket for "a wee snack." For the last three hours, my sanity was tested to the brink. Every few minutes I would hear him unzipping his top pocket and pulling out a tiny, rolled up crumb of bread. These he would chew carefully, one by one, with his eyes closed, never letting his smile fade. Then he would zip the pocket up again, carefully, and tell me at length about his favourite state.

Insane Larry: "Did you know that Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge contains the largest winter population of bald eagles in the continental United States?"

"Did you know that Inyo National Forest is home to the bristle cone pine, the oldest living species in America? Did you know that some of the gnarled trees and thought to be over 4,600 years old?"

"Did you know that when I was travelling through San Diego in 1978, I had a seafood buffet for $3.25. I went back six years later and they had the same buffet but it was $5.55. I refused to pay it."

SHUT UP!!!!!!

He got off at San Jose and I managed to rest my poor, fast food filled, sunburn-destroyed body for an hour before we arrived at our destination. I began the long, fruitless search for an internet cafe. To cut a long story short, there are none. The people of San Francisco are so trendy and 'up with it' that it is a city of wi fi. Your humble narrator was, however, unaware of this and so spend a long, painful afternoon walking around the downtown area with my travellers pack destroying my sunburnt shoulders with every step. At some point, I decided that ridicule was better than pain and so began to drag it behind me down the street. This did not prove to be a good idea. A homeless man with no teeth applauded me as I turned onto his corner and tried to give me a high five. I winced with pain and reattached the pack. My eyes watered for hours.

Eventually, a kindly Chinese woman allowed me to use her Internet when I went in to buy a pork bun. Somehow I made it to the gallery opening where I met up with Trey, and slumped into the corner with a plastic cup of wine. Over the next few hours, I would meet at least four people who wanted to (and probably would) save the world. I would drink a lot more and I would come across more crazy people who would scare the shit out of me. Thankfully, most of them were homeless and thus our interactions were short and relatively sweet.

San Francisco, I can feel my heart pulling away already. Damn you and your catchy cliches.

Adventures in the desert

2009-09-09T17:14:00.000-07:00

After three days in L.A., I was screaming to leave. To be fair, it has a few treats which the New Zealander in me was somewhat partial to. For one thing, the museums are epic palaces, where the curators chuck a few Picassos in a corner gallery on the fourth floor and smirk as the tourists climb over each other to snap photos of them. My favourite exhibition involved three basketballs floating in a tank of dishwashing liquid. There was no explanation. I considered asking the Chinese woman on gallery duty, but she gave me a weary look as if to say: "Don't even think about it." Still, she surely got the better end of the deal than the woman who had to guard the bottom gallery, which featured a large red lump of copper and nothing else. This piece was labelled 'Untitled'. I walked out in disgust.

The other highpoint of L.A. is the beaches. Santa Monica and Venice are both expanses of golden sand and crystal blue water which can make you fall to your knees after a year in small town Japan. Santa Monica has one of the piers featuring carnival rides and chilli cheese dogs and screaming kids in every direction. I lay on the sand and inadvertently burnt myself to a crisp, making the next week of my trip somewhat or a scarlet nightmare. Venice Beach is much more chilled out; hippies and hipsters rule the roost and medical marijuana shops nestle between tattoo parlours and t-shirt boutiques. There are psychics and and 60 year old men with dreadlocks crowding around ghetto blasters smoking joints the size of whiteboard markers. For ten dollars, you can have your face painted onto a grain of rice or buy a custom made magic wand. I am not kidding. A little further down, marathon men lift babels and do pilates, showing off their killer bods against the palm trees. Once again, the tourist stop and snap photos. The men flex and love it.

Post-Venice, I decided that L.A. was no longer the city for me. San Francisco beckoned and the thought of food that wasn't deep fried or served between two piece of white bread was too tempting to ignore. And then, Greyhound ticket in hand, I had a revelation. Vegas! Why not? San Fran could wait a day and so I hopped on the bus at the other end of the station and off we set into the desert. The woman sitting off me was probably 70 but looked about 150 and spend the first three hours telling me about all the Broadway shows she visited in New York. Her favourite phrase was 'Oh you have to go, you HAVE to go!' in a Jewish voice that haunted me for days to come. Her second favourite phrase was 'Whaaatt?' which she screeched out every time I asked her anything, screwing up her little face and pointed to her hearing aid. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to give up. Unfortunately, she wasn't.

Upon getting to Vegas, I was accosted by the bus driver. He told me his name was Jim and that he wondered if I could tell him about New Zealand over dinner. His shout. I was somewhat speechless but being adventurous and on a budget, I accepted. I guess in retrospect this might have been a mistake; he did look slightly like a serial killer (dyed blonde hair, semi-pot belly and large glasses), but he did have a soothing narration voice.

Before dinner, Jim wanted to show me something on the top story of of his hotel. It was at this point that I had my first moment of freak out, slipping a Biro into my pocket and wiping the sweat off my forehead and trying not to think about 'it rubs the lotion on its skin.' It turned out that Jim, a tour guide first and foremost, simply wanted to show me a view of the Vegas skyline at sunset. It was sweet, really. I took a couple of snaps and tried to make my stomach rumble on cue. We had an awkward slash enjoyable meal at the oldest casino in Vegas, in which the waitress asked if we were father and son. I ordered a country fried steak which involves a piece of crumbed meat covered in white sauce. Jim had the triple cheese burger and asked me about The Lord of the Rings in between bites. He told me has was a republican and made a semi-racist remark about Obama. I ordered dessert.

After Jim waved me off on the downtown bus, I had nine hours to explore before getting back on the Greyhound. Vegas lay spread out before me, like some kind of hooker with her knickers down. What I love about it is how if you take away the fancy (ridiculous) casino outer cases, the whole place is the same. In every building, people sit around blackjack tables in their cargo pants, nervously drumming their fingers on the table with one hand and sucking down a cigarette with the other. There are ATMs in the casinos, usually proceeded by lines of people with their credit cards out. There is bound to be more people looking sad than happy and there is always one person quietly sobbing by the door. You can even get your food delivered to your slot machine so you don't have to stop your losing streak to nourish your body with french fries.

There are limos everywhere in Vegas. They seem to be full of twenty-something boys on stag nights. They spill out onto the main street, yelling about strippers and 'winning big.' No one is very impressed. Every now and then, a truly glamorous couple can be spotting; a silver haired gentlemen in a tuxedo steering his diamond studded wife through the throng of rabble outside Cesar's Palace. They have clearly seen too many Rat Pack movies and will spend their next vacation in the Bahamas.

Inside all the big casinos lie the shows. Video screens show you what campy delights you are missing out on as you trek from one dire room to another. Cher's up there, somehow still belting out 'If I could turn back time' amidst a shower of glitter and screaming fans. At the Bellagio, you can see Bill Cosby, back from the entertainment dead with another wacky stand up show about 'those darned kids.' Worse still is Better Midler. Her concert, 'The Showgirl must go on," Is the sensation of Vegas, and you can't turn your head without seeing it flashing around somewhere. In the show, Bette (Sixty-three), runs around in her bra and knickers, dancing with a pink feather boa as a bunch of men in G-strings chase her with a massive butterfly net. The song she is singing is called "Big knockers."

By 3am, I was ready to leave Vegas forever. People were up way past their bedtime and all the 'all you can eat seafood' buffets were closed. As I boarded the bus, A tiny man with a grey beard danced almost perfectly to Creedance's 'Bad Moon Rising.' I watched him from the window and once again snapped my camera. Vegas was lucky to have him; he was about the only real thing I'd seen all night.

Living the dream (or the song at least)

2009-09-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

America.

The song "American Boy" by Estelle is destined to be the (somewhat cliched) soundtrack of the next ten weeks. Amid the tourist spots, Greyhound buses and endless slices of pizza, I try to find a 5.7 boy that's just my type; preferably Jewish, gorgeous and a social smoker. I've kept eyes open but as of yet he has alluded me. Still there have been variants of the American hero so far, B-Grade versions though they may be.

In L.A., exhausted from the lack of sleep on my twelve hour flight, I met a boy named Dwight on the train out to Hollywood Boulevard. He was a skinny guy with a lazy eye and appeared to be gay despite having just come from church. Terrified of the homeless man that sat rocking back and fourth behind me, I clung to Dwight like a life raft. I made pathetic 'wow America' remarks and made my eyes go as wide as possible and it seemed to work. He helped me find a hostel on Hollywood Blvd., a hideous place where a fat woman in sweat pants took my US $25 and took me to a tiny sweat bunk bed room, which smelled like vomit (which made sense after I looked at the floor in the bathroom). At the end of the corridor sat a black dwarf on a stool. He appeared to hate everyone.

Dwight, getting more confident by the minute, took me to a Mexican restaurant down the street and watched as I ravenously ate the smallest taco I'd ever seen. The conversation began to lull as he talked about Jesus and his lazy eye jumped around excitedly. He also slipped into the conversation that he lived in a Gay & Lesbian Co-op with three other roommates, but that he had only slept with one of them. With each sentence, I recoiled slightly, eventually making some excuse about jet lag and stumbling back to the hostel.

Hollywood Blvd. is filled with homeless people and tourists and it is hard to know which are the more repellent. The poor (literally) homeless people push trolleys down the sidewalk, desperately grabbing at empty bottles from the recycle bin and snarling at people who are waiting, terrified, for the lights to change. The quieter one sits sedated on the pavement, holding out a cup for change that never gets filled or even used. Some of them have tiny, malnourished cats that roam the three feet of sidewalk their string leash will allow them. These cats are an attempt to cull the tourists into sympathy donations, but it doesn't seem to work. Often, the cats are even more nose wrinkling than their owners. I almost stood on one of the cats as I ambled down the Boulevard. It's owner yelled at me through his mouth of broken teeth and I apologised and dropped a small america coin into his coca cola cup. He smiled at me in graitude and then spat forcefully onto the pavement.

The tourists appear in clumps; large women from the Midwest and sweaty men with Loafers herding a bunch of screaming kids towards the Disney museum. Hundreds of them stand outside the Chinese theatre, posing for photos with Jack Sparrow and the cast of Looney Toons; all of whom have disturbingly thick Mexican accents. The only food that is available on the Hollywood strip is fast food; an endless parade of pizza, burgers and chili cheese dogs. No one wants anything else. Men who know the score seduce the tourist with maps of celebrity cribs, and they head off in open top buses, their necks craned like meerkats.

The most bizarre spot on the Blvd. was Michael Jackson's Hollywood star. Two months after his demise, a gaggle of tourists could be seen stroking it and snapping teary photos. One even got down on the filthy pavement and curled herself around it like a cat. She was crying quietly and the rest of the tour stood round awkwardly, unsure of how such a crisis should be resolved.

Later on, Dwight turned up at the hostel, wondering if I wanted to take a stroll down the strip to see his favourite church. I politely declined and told him I would catch up with him tomorrow. He nodded hopefully and trundled away. It occured to me that he might have been one of the dullest people I have ever met. He was an American boy alright, but no one would ever sing a song about him.

I curled up in my bunk bed and tried to sleep. The two French boys in the bunk over proceeded to get drunk and walk around in their underwear, drowning themselves in cologne. Somewhere amid this, I drifted off, waking to sunshine and the sound of car horns. L.A. was still there, big and beautiful in a sleazy kind of way. I was in America. Finally.

Fuck Yeah.

Ms. Benes moves West

2009-08-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

Wellington.

Winter in the capital and the sun shines bright. In the past two weeks, I have soaked up vitamin D than my entire year of glacial Hokkaido. As I write this, I wear sunglasses to shelter my eyes from the much appreciated glare and stop every few minutes to eat a piece of camembert with my eyes closed. To my right sits the converted plastic cuisine I brought back from the Far East, shimmering on the coffee table amongst my mother’s trendy ornaments.

They are the only things in plain sight that I have to remind me of Japan and that suits me just fine.

I have settled back into the Western World with disturbing ease. Over the last two weeks, I have formulated the answer to the inevitable ‘How was Japan’ question—asked politely by friends and parents friends who don’t care but pretend to—down to a sharp, three sentence response. “Oh yes, it was great” I begin, my eyes wearily lighting up. I follow up the probing questions with an intoxicated roll of the eyes and something like: “I don’t even know how to describe Japan, its such a whack place!” At this point, my voice develops a warning tone, fending off follow up questions with a tight smile. If pushed, I have a few anecdotes up my sleeve (‘Black Obama’, Run crippled boy run, Fat Teacher on Ice) and I must admit, the gaping faces of disbelief do please me somewhat. But after this, it all closes down rather firmly with concluding crap about ‘good life experience’ and some serious nodding. In and out in three minutes and no mention of those soggy Suntory marathons.

Aside from these asides, my world has become flooded by the pleasures that the East could not provide. Blue vein and olives; merlot and Shortland Street; driving and sunbathing; gay people, bagels, beaches, skinny jeans and Malaysian restaurants. The ocean is not obscured by wartime blockades, and is in fact a place to be enjoyed, even in the so called winter. There is no J-Pop to be heard and even the dub music sounds sweet by comparison. Cliché after cliché and I’m sure you’ve heard them all before. I am even tempted to quote our gay ally Judy Garland and say that there is no place like home, but that would suggest a sense of tackiness that Bombay & Elaine does not encourage. Let’s just say that I feel like I have finally broken up with a boyfriend that I always hated, and the wave of relief is awesome.

I have begun dating a boy five years my junior; a bright wee design student with the kind of perfect cheekbones and big brown eyes that I spent hours dreaming about in my Gummo town. I laugh off the ‘cradle snatcher’ jokes and walk down the street with him arm in arm. Homosexuality is relatively acceptable here, at least on Cuba Street. We smoke cigarettes as we walk and try to avoid the pigeons. Gutter birds they may be, but after a year of crows, I could almost kiss their gnarled little feet. We throw our cigarette buts on the street and don’t get arrested.

The design student took me for a night out at The Ivy; the new (and only) gay bar in the city. The first floor is a garden bar where balding men in sports jackets sip vodka tonics in the corners, their pinkie fingers raised at 90° angles so that even the most intoxicated patrons get the message. They make half hearted fuck eyes as the young boys in tight jeans who bounce around at the bar and wisely ignore them. The tight jeans bounce back upstairs, drinks in hand to the dance floor.

The top floor is a spectacularly sweaty meat market with young bucks embracing in every direction. In the centre, a wasted girl grinds away blissfully surrounded by a circle of adoring males. From time to time, one or another will peel off to try their luck with a lonely looking solo dancer, usually returning to their queen bee and trying to hide their bruised ego. The speakers blared out Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, which I took to be some kind of 90s themed novelty night. Later, the design boy told me that this was in fact the only music that they ever played at The Ivy. He told me of a now legendary blonde jock who would break into a mad interpretative dance every time ‘Mambo No 5’ came on (which was disturbingly often).

The middle aged men don’t venture up to this level. Their shiny domes are cruelly illuminated under the wandering spotlights. They know that eventually their time will come, usually in the shape of a teary 22 year old, dejected after failing to find tenderness from the sweaty throng a floor above. A few drinks and a firm hand around the shoulder and the two will leave together, under the disgusted eyes of the bouncer.

Gay bars aside, Wellington is of course, no more than a stopping point between journeys. As the days go by, the novelty fades somewhat and my feet begin to itch with the promise of travel and adventure. New Zealand is a beautiful place but a tiny one. In two weeks, I will be sipping Budweiser in the Californian sun. I can almost taste the Twinkies now.

In Urakawa, things go on as usual. Sato Sensei cancels his weekend away with his increasingly estranged fiancé when his volley ball team wins their tournament. The music tyrant schedules overtime for his terrorized brass band as the school’s opening ceremony approaches. Yukki sheds a tear and practises her phrasal verbs. And though she feels like she’s in a play, she is anyway. Or a blog at least.

It may not resonate in my ears and in my eyes with a McCartney- refrain, but it’s there somewhere, nestled between various organs like an appendix. I guess that counts for something.

Insert Lionel Ritchie lyrics here

2009-07-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the dinner was a wrong move. Poor Yukki, already besotted with the town’s suspiciously flamboyant Westerner, almost used up the entire supply of Skype smiley faces when I accepted her invitation to dine with the family. And why not, I thought. After a year of making the same five meals over and over again, your humble narrator would have crawled across a muddy field to get a home cooked meal. Also, with the days of my contract running out, I have become suddenly desperate to cram in as many ‘Japanese experiences’ as is wholly possible. And of course, there was the underlying flattery that after eleven and a half months in Royston Vasey, someone finally thinks that I am worthy of a dinner invitation.

What can I say, dear readers; I was touched.

I was picked up at the train station by a hyperventilating Yukki and her aunt ‘Honey’ who was by far the coolest person in the entire town. She had blonde spikey hair and a chin piercing and elaborates tattoos swirling down both her arms. She wore a T-shirt with picture of a skull and crossbones and underneath, the words ‘CREAM SODA.’ She drove a pimped out four wheel drive with gothic satin cushions in the back seat and those flat screen-TVs-in-the-seats that don’t exist outside the world of music videos and the world of people who make music videos.
As I hoisted myself in, she stubbed her cigarette in gothic skull ashtray on the dashboard and heartily shook my hand. Her grip was ridiculously strong. I winced but managed to turn it into a crooked little smile. Yukki giggled.

The rest of the family turned out to be much more status quo and after meeting Grandmother, Sister and two cousins, the seven of us sat down for the much anticipated dinner. The feast in question was nabe; a traditional Hokkaido dish of meat, vegetables and tofu that are cooked in a pot of boiling stock in the centre of the table. The whole thing would be far more delicious if each item didn’t have to be dipped in raw egg before eating it.

Half way through, possibly realizing that my meagre scraps of Japanese vocabulary had been used up, I foolishly got out my camera to take a few quick snaps of the sumptuous food. This caused a commotion as Yukki squealed and whipped out her bejewelled cellphone. For the next twenty minutes, the meal was forgotten as the entire family began an elaborate photo shoot which involved four cameras, sixteen different combinations of people and more peace signs than San Francisco in the 60’s. Aunt 'Honey' did the metallica sign. I loved every moment of it.

After dinner, Yukki took me of a tour of her house. She introduced me to her three cats and her collection of handmade dolls. She showed me her bedroom and wouldn’t let anyone else come in. I sat awkwardly in the corner wearing a pair of panda earmuffs as Yuki yelled at her sister in Japanese through the crack in the door. I showed her YouTube videos of M.I.A. and Justice and she freaked out. I guess there’s not much call for Srilankan rappers in rural Japan.

As I left, Yukki slipped me a small present, telling me to open it when I got home. After I had bowed and thanked everyone and made it back to my apartment, I opened it to discover a sparkly letter ‘Y’ dangling on a silver chain.

Yesterday was my last day at Yukki’s school. As usual, she accosted me on the train and proudly showed me that addition of ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ on her iPod nano. I smiled and nodded and pretended to be very tired. She didn’t buy it. The crunch came in third period; the last ever class and an emotional occasion even for me. In the final ten minutes, I was presented with a leaving card with messages from the entire English class, all of which were in Japanese. The exception was Yukki’s, which read in shaky English; ‘I was so happy until now.’

As the bell rang and the students began to shuffle off the gym, Yukki who had been looking ashen face for the whole hour suddenly burst into tears. She started sobbing and had to be led away down the corridor by her best friend; a tall plain looking girl with glasses who was clearly the Monica to her Rachel. Unfortunately, this was the only exit and so the English teacher and I had to follow them all the way back, keeping a good ten feet behind like a funeral procession.

We had almost made it when a group of sweaty, post-basketball Jocks burst in from the gym. At the sight of a crying girl, they started pointing and laughing and Yukki gave a high pitched wail and was veered off to the side by Monica. She disappeared down the hall but I could still hear her sobbing for a good few minutes.

At least she has Justice. That song could brighten up the Apocalypse.

Yet another Brick in the wall

2009-07-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

With four weeks to go, I can’t help but wonder if Bombay & Elaine will survive outside of fair Japan. The odd music rant aside, B & E has developed a distinctly Asian flavour; sticky with soy sauce and steeped in the scent of cherry blossoms. How will he fare in the Western world, amidst the clatter of pronged cutlery? People say it takes a while to adapt to a new culture, especially at a young age. The poor thing is hardly walking.

My hope is that B & E will evolve as he grows, adopting to his surroundings and making new acquaintances wherever the windy world of the web takes him.

To put it in hipster’s terms, B & E is like The Wire. It relocates and picks up in a new sector as the seasons pass. The theme song changes and yet remains the same. You miss the towers but you get the docks; you keep watching it.

(I realise the audacity of comparing my humble word journal with what might well be the greatest television show of all-time, but it’s serves merely as a change to drop another pop culture reference into my already jam packed cyber-basket. Pathetic I know, but I’ve always wanted to be one of the cool kids.)

In short, it prevails.

At present, the staffroom is all a flutter for the school festival next weekend. Twenty foot long banners line most the corridors. Students cluster around them, furiously applying brush strokes to dizzying murals of trees, flowers and smiling suns. In one of these murals, someone had painted me; a little white smiley face with Harry Potter glasses the words ‘I love kiwi!!’ written above in green capitals. I was touched.

Sobs echoed down the first floor this afternoon amid the heartbreaking sound of ripping paper. Somewhere within the vast expanse of painted landscape, a teacher had spotted two stick figures (one with pigtails, one without) locking acrylic lips, while a stream of tiny love hearts rose up between them. He then proceeded to give the terrified 15 year old girls a rousing lecture about family values and the presence of small children at a family event before deeming their mural ‘unsuitable’ for the festival and tearing it up.

The girls appeared at the staffroom an hour later, still in tears and begging for forgiveness. Eventually after a long silence, he relented and allowed them to attend the festival as long as they stayed afterwards to help clean up. They accepted, teary but grateful.

The teacher in question is one of the school’s totalitarians. He has slicked back hair and watery blue eyes and suffers from intense headaches. He conducts the school band and can hear a flat note over a row of perfectly tuned violins. His practises last four hours a day and he has been known to knock it up to six for special occasions. He can be heard screaming at the brass section the whole week before they play ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ for the school graduation ceremony. To be fair, their performance was perfect.

If his head starts aching in the middle of a practise, he doesn’t stop but instead continues conducting the instruments in front of him. The more he conducts, the worse it gets and it is then that his temper really begins to rage. My students have told me that they dread the days when the vein on his forehead starts to throb. He begins to single out terrified students with his baton and scream insults at them, telling them they have no talent as they play their required solo over and over again with trembling fingers. Once, after a particularly trying five hours of ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ he stormed out of the music room in a rage and slammed the door. The band members were too scared to move and sat petrified in their seats until he came slinking back fifteen minutes later, reeking of cigarettes.

To get an idea of how unhinged this man is, we must turn back our stopwatches to the night of last year’s school dance. The moon is full and a line of smartly dressed boys and girls in shimmery dresses snakes politely around the gymnasium. Teachers stand by the door, checking tickets and reiterating the ‘no kissing’ rule. One of these is the Music Tyrant.

Things appear to be moving smoothly. Inside the gym, the boys and girls blush and whisper to each other and some even begin to dance awkwardly under the steely supervision of the vice principal. There is a big bowl of red punch; the students are allowed to help themselves to one paper cup’s worth. Doling this out is Fat Cake Bitch; another teacher who I will flesh out at a later date. For now, imagine the mother of that friend you had in primary school who grudgingly let you play at her house after school but scowled the whole time.

Suddenly, there is a commotion at the door. The swaying couples turn around, using the opportunity to put their little arms tentatively around each other as the chaperones rush to the entrance. Cake Bitch is already there, waving her ladle.

One of the third year girls had turned up with highlights in her hair. They look sweet, if a little Blossom-esque. She clutches her tiny handbag, terrified, as the Music Tyrant towers over her, yelling and pointing with his big finger. Eventually resigned to her fate and tears ruining her carefully applied mascara, she is ushered into a corner. the Music Tyrant pulls out roll of brown paper and wraps it around her neck, her hair splayed out over the top. And then, like something out of Carrie, out comes the can of black spray paint.

There were no more school dances after that. The girl was allowed to attend the rest of the dance but her dress was covered in black stains and her hair hung limp and dead. She smelt like a fumigated house. Her confidence, I would assume, was somewhat ruffled. On Monday, her hair was back to its natural black, the same as every other student in the school.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not living in a Roald Dahl book. But then I look around and realise that none of the kids are ever going to break the rules and slip a newt in their teacher’s water jug. They’d probably be deported.

And it’s not The Wire either. You can empathise with the bad guys on that.

Next week, Cake Bitch.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Sato

2009-06-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

Mr M.’s replacement, Sato Sensei, represents for me the stereotypical put-upon Japanese male. In the four months since his arrival, we have up struck up the closest thing I have to a real Japanese friendship. He’s a nice guy; friendly and soft spoken with a perfectly pressed suit and his hair gelled into an awkward fringe. The system has not yet beaten him down, but I predict that it is only a matter of time. Also me to spin for you the traumatsing tale of the everyman from Japan.

Sato Sensei didn’t want to teach in my small town. He is in fact from Sapporo; the largest city and, by my reckoning, the only bearable place in Hokkaido (the second largest, Asahikawa, is a sprawling ugly wasteland of a place with the coldest temperature in Japan). He worked hard during his school years and went straight to teachers college. Here, he was unable to partake in the (semi) boisterous life of the Japanese student as he lived with his parents who forebode his from drinking even at age 21. Post-graduation, Sato not-yet-Sensei asked to stay in Sapporo with his family and friends. More fool him. As with all teachers in Japan, choosing a teaching location in not allowed. Ever. You can make requests, sure, but you won’t get them. Instead, our protagonist was shunted to a small town, a sobering five hours drive from everything he ever knew.

(Readers may, at this point, as why Sato Sensei was not in favour of a more exciting placement than Hokkaido’s frozen terrain. Apparently, a Hokkaido teaching degree does not translate the other islands of Japan. If a teacher has a sudden urge for the bright lights of Tokyo, he must spend another two years completing a diploma which permits him to teach outside of Hokkaido. This makes no sense given that the teaching curriculum is exactly the same throughout Japan. For a country so obsessed with ‘Black’ Obama, change is disturbingly low on the list of priorities.)

And so, unable to travel afar and unable to stay put, Sato Sensei was placed in a non-descript small town which I believe was famous for growing turnips. Here he stayed for two years, coached the basketball club, making a few teaching buddies and finally began to feel like he was part of the turnip-themed community. Then, as with all teachers, he was relocated to ANOTHER Gummo-esque town three hours north. This one was bigger but colder and here he coached the archery club because he had to. Still, things started looking up when he began courting the school’s demure, tracksuit wearing P.E. teacher. She was the only female teacher not married and they had romantic dates at the town’s local yakiniku bar and held hands under the desk at the teachers’ meeting. He even sang her a shaky version of The Carpenters’ ‘Close to you’ at the end of year karaoke party, after which the other male teachers slapped him on the back and told him that he was now ‘a real man.’

A year went blissfully by and the happy couple got engaged. This was not altogether unexpected. Japanese teachers nearly always marry other Japanese teachers, for the simple reason that most of them never have the chance to meet anyone else. This is especially true in deathly small towns, where men and women never go to the same pub.

Unfortunately, this declaration of love meant nothing to the Hokkaido School Board. Being the Iago in our Shakespearean tragedy, the Board completely ignored the pleading requests for the two to continue their journeys through life side by side. Instead, the new engaged couple was split up and placed six hours apart at opposite ends of the island. There were tears and the exchanging of personalized coffee mugs and then they parted ways; she for a town of 12,000 to the north and he for a small town in the south known primarily for its seaweed.

It is here where your humble narrator came across the poor fellow, two desks down from his own and struggling to unpack a box of tattered English textbooks. He gave me a weary smile and after we began to converse in fractured English, I could see that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Upon his arrival, Sato Sensei was instructed to coach the tennis club, which involved standing huddled in a corner of the freezing tennis courts for four hours every afternoon from Monday to Saturday. If there is a tournament on Sundays, he has to organize rides for all the team members; weekend plans be damned. As a result, he is only able to undertake the six hour journey to visit his fiancé about once a month. He told me this on one of our cigarette breaks (which happen often, him being addicted and me being bored), showing me a tiny photo of the women in question and telling me in a sad, tiny voice that he might only spend ten nights with her in one year. He told me that he hated tennis and tears welled up in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat and took another long drag of my Lucky Strike. It’s times like this that smoking is not only acceptable but pretty goddamn mandatory.

Sato Sensei is stuck here for at least three years and from there is it wherever the Hokkaido School Board chooses. He stares wistfully at my travel plans, knowing that he will probably never get a chance to see the wide world. Teachers in Japan get maybe one week’s break after club activities are all set and done and these are mostly spent visiting their parents or their parents’ graves. Some do attempt to fit overseas travel into their limited vacation time like Mochi Sensei; the teacher at my school who flew to Europe for a three day 'holiday of a lifetime' in between softball tournaments.

Sato Sensei hopes to one day settle down with his tracksuit-covered beloved and raise a family. Still, on the likelihood of this, he is unsure. The Hokkaido Board is no more accommodating to a married couple than an engaged one. It may be ten years before the two can be together again.

And yet, I have saved the most heartbreaking part of the story for last. Sad and lonely, a stranger in town no one would ever want to call home, Sato Sensei decided to get himself a pet. A cat, a dog, a hamster...anything so long as it would be glad to see him when he returned after his six hours of teaching and four hours of tennis. Upon finding this out, the Hokkaido School Board contacted him and informed him that pets were not allowed in the house he was required to live in. Not even a goldfish.

In five weeks, I will leave my small town forever and breathe a sigh of long anticipated relief. I hope Sato Sensei will be ok. I have promised to send him a postcard from the magical world of America and may even attempt a Skype conversation at some point. As I write this, he is frantically trying to prepare his fifth lesson for the day, his brows furrowed with concentration. Sometimes when I walk past him, I give him an affectionate pat on the back. He turns round, startled and confused, and smiles weakly.

Does he dare disturb the universe?

Exploring the Novelty Pash

2009-06-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Yukki told me last week that she is planning to follow me to New Zealand when I leave. I would have been more amused if I was sure she was joking. I told her it was six weeks and she shook her head and said “Shocking ....oh, shocking! Shocking!” She has also begun the passive aggressive threats of a clingy girlfriend during our Skype conversations. The number of crying faces in one message has reached double digits. Last night, I accidently got drunk on sake and danced around my apartment playing ‘Little Bird’ by Annie Lennox on repeat while cooking dinner. On learning this, mainly through the little dancing black man symbol available on Skype, Yukki sent me a beating love heart and this video delight, accompanied by the phrase: “Please...it dances!!!”

I danced alright.

Cryptic messages are perhaps the best part about being adrift in the sea of Japanese speakers. The boy in the tattered grunge jeans whom I ‘novelty pashed’ in Odori Park last week has begun getting in touch. At first, his messages were all in hiragana. When we exchanged numbers, he asked me if “Japanese message ok?” and, being drunk and not really caring, I nodded which was a blatant lie. I can’t read any Japanese at all, except for the kanji for ‘male’ and ‘female’ and useful food things like ‘ramen.’ It’s really all you need.

I ignored the first three kanji messages he sent me and as they continued and the number of exclamation marks grew, I sighed and emailed back a message entirely in English and a kissing face. I think this offended him as he sent me a reply which read: “If it is a kiss it does even times too many” and a picture of what looked like an exloding mushroom cloud. It didn’t seem like a good sign.
However, an hour later, I received another cryptic message. “Do you have wanting do something ???” Confused more than anything else, I chucked him a reply about being in Sapporo for the weekend.

There was no way I could make sense of any of this. Japanese boys are notoriously cautious about treading in the gay pool. The manly baseball players hold hands as they walk to school. The straight ones carry handbags and paint their nails. And this boy, dressed like a Pearl Jam groupie complete with Timberlands, had told us that despite the five second pash we shared, he liked girls. I had tried my best to sway him, blowing my cigarette smoke out in a seductive stream while he awkwardly coughed and grudgingly complimenting his Timberlands. I even told him (through Moraya, my fellow ALT and the only one who could speak bridge the language gap) in a bout of drunken desperation that I back in New Zealand, I was the crown prince and that I had my own castle. His eyes widened but then Moraya, bored with playing the amenable translator, added that my last girlfriend in New Zealand had been a sheep.

And so, were these messages more in the direction on a ‘whats up homie’ or a booty call? Did I even care? Even after being stranded for almost a year in a sexual desert, I just couldn’t see him in the box marked ‘option.’ His teeth were just too wretched to be taken seriously. And yet I kept replying. He kept offering me quotes from The Silence of the Lambs: “If it is a kiss, it does a lot.” “One knows a thing that some should sometimes quiet.” And my personal favourite, which I assume was some attempt at a dinner invitation: “The meal also puts the feedbag on.”

I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot more to the ‘novelty pash’ than people realize. It is the desire to lock lips with someone which, although awkward, embarrassing and frequently regrettable, will leave you with a good story to tell. The ‘novelty pash’ can be ethnic based, religious based, or height based. It can include puppeteers, celebrities, people who look like celebrities, people who work at your local cafe, people you secretly hate, goths, drag queens, break-dancers and angry feminists. You may be repulsed and disgusted, but you force yourself on just so that you can come stumbling into your flat at 3am and scream: “Oh my god I just hooked up with that guy from the library whose head looks like a mop!”

The trouble comes when you try and move your novelty pash to the next level. All too often people attempt to move into onto a ‘novelty date’ stage so as to keep the novelty value alive. Sadly this never works, as the novelty factor dies almost instantly. I believe I have fallen into the novelty pash trap with Mr. Pearl Jam. I have to be strong and tell him that I cannot put my feedbag on and accompany him to dinner. I should really just tick off the ‘straight Asian boy who speaks no English’ box on my pash list and move onto something else.

Sexually confused rabbi perhaps?

We thank you for your co-operation

2009-06-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

There are two supermarkets in my town. One, the local (Baby Co-op), is the size of mid-level Four Square and a minute’s walk from my apartment. The other (Mamma Co-op) is exactly the same but four times the size and, with my inability to acquire a Japanese driver’s license, a frustrating hour’s walk away. Sometimes, on those long Polanski-esque weekends of solitude, I arm myself with my walking stick and a packet of camels and brave the three kilometre trek there; a distance which seems much longer on the way back, with a bag of groceries dangling from each arm.

Mama Co-op is somewhat overwhelming. Supermarket staff stands in every corner handing out free samples on toothpicks and yelling in high pitched Japanese. Mothers cram their trolleys full of frozen chickens. There is an entire refrigerated section devoted purely to tofu. There is a whole aisle just for soy sauce. I am not joking.

Throughout all this, the store’s theme tune plays at a dangerously high volume. Mama Co-Op plays the same 30 second jingle over and over again through every speaker in the store. It cannot be brought to justice through words, but if you see me in person and buy me a stiff drink, I might sing it for you. The lyrics go something like this:

“Ju bye, ju bye...who wants a ju bye?”

Then, after an elaborate synthesiser chord, it resumes:

“Nana bye, nana bye...who wants a Nana bye?”

The lyrics in question are sung in a baby voice, either by a small child or a playschool-themed female performance artist. This is followed by a jolly man with a belly laugh who thunders out "hey, juuuuu bye" and what I assume is the Japanese for “Our shop is the best! We have many things you can buy! Look at all our soy sauce!” It ends with a double drum kick and, all things considered, makes for a pretty good little ditty. The trouble is that two seconds after the concluding drum kick, the whole thing starts all over again, baby voice and all.

After walking an hour to get to the magical land of red onions and other things not available at Baby Co-op, I am determined to take my sweet time about it. I like a casual stroll through the produce section, a wander down soy sauce lane and a chance to sift through the store’s array of elaborate bento boxes. And so, after a thirty six minute shopping excursion, my ears have delivered me the ‘ju bye’ jingle SEVENTY TWO times. By this time, my fingers have begun gripping the edge of the trolley and the left side of my face has developed a nervous twitch. I try to smile at the cashier but it comes out as more of a leer and I think about how this nice girl’s ‘ju bye’ intake must be in the thousands and I die a little inside. It is at this point that I remember why I bought the camels.

Baby Co-op provides a much more soothing auditory experience. The preference here is for mainstream pop hits played out on analog synth. Sometimes these are matter of fact clichés that you’d hear in any elevator worth its salt: ‘Super Trooper,’ ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strangers in the Night’ set the bar and you’d think things would stay there. Not so.

Amid these tired classics, Baby co-op offers a selection of hip tracks that should never be played through the guise of easy listening. The first time I heard ‘Bullet with Butterfly wings’ muzak-style, I thought that I’d hit the jackpot. But over the next ten months, I was also privileged to hear the likes of ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘You Outta Know’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’ ‘Love will tear us apart’, ‘Don’t cha’ and ‘Killing in the name of’ all beautifully presented through the medium of the moog. My personal favourite is still the bizarre inclusion of a funked up version of the theme from Jaws. As I remember, I was standing by the fish section when it played and I snickered and tossed a tray of salmon fillets into my basket.

For the 8.45pm to 9.00pm every night, Baby Co-op switches to ‘closing music.’ Put simply, this consists of fifteen minutes of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ It both soothes me and confuses me as I gather my basket of snacks for the evening ahead: What the hell do they do at New Years? Do the staff play it during Baby Co-op's closing time on New Year’s Eve and then, at midnight, drunkenly embrace and sing along to the ‘ju bye’ jingle? Perhaps they get a couple of self-assured party goers to act out the baby voice part and the jolly man part. Perhaps there is a ‘ju bye’ drinking game. I imagine it would involve a bottle of tequila and a loss of will to live.

The twitch is back. Camel me up, baby.

Forgive me for prattling away and making everything all oogy.

2009-06-04T01:21:00.000-07:00

I have my very own number one fan. I ever have it in writing: “I am a fan of Telford!” In some respects, she reminds me a little of Kathy Bates in Misery, except psychically, where she is the complete opposite.

It all started last year. Over a casual bowl of ramen, my neighbouring ALT mentioned that he had a student who had seen me out and about and had apparently fallen into crush mode. I slurped my ramen and laughed. Crushes. Surely a mandatory part of any teaching job. He told me her name and I nodded and then forgot it, as I forget everyone’s name in this country.
Later (a number of weeks if I remember correctly), a drunken Friday night and my neighbour persuaded me to send the said student an ‘I love you’ text from his phone. He told me it would make her freak out ‘in a good way.’ I shrugged and OKed it and he sent the message off and we got kept drinking and soon moved onto more mature topics like camping and rim jobs.

Months passed. Seasons changed. The White house got a little blacker and Susan Boyle made hundreds of hard working music students take to the bottle. The school year ended and a new one began, ushering in a tide of tiny, tidy, immaculately dressed fifteen year olds, with epic fringes and novelty charms dangling from every piece of stationary. I was at my monthly visit to the high school one town over, when I heard a high pitched squeal from the back of the classroom. I ignored it and continued dictating the list of sports-themed verbs.

The second the class ended, a pair of feet pattered up to the front of the classroom. I turned around and looked down. In front of me was the tiniest girl I had ever seen. She had huge eyes and ridiculously long hair that was done up in pigtails and made her look ever shorter. She started babbling at me in Japanese, her eyes getting wider and wider as it became clear I had no idea who she was or what she was talking to. She suddenly thrust her Hello Kitty-themed cellphone at me and said ‘I lub you I lub you I lub you!’ and tried to find the said message with shaky hands. I clicked.

It is at this point where the phrase ‘just nod and smile’ really comes into its own. I nodded and smiled. She squealed and hopped around and covered her mouth with her hands. I have never used the word swoon before, but I think she fulfilled the definition. She actually swayed from one side to the other like she might tip over, but somehow managed to stay vertical. Eventually, I managed to pry myself away and head to staffroom, as she followed my down the corridor waving manically and screaming out ‘kawaii’ (The Japanese favourite word meaning 'cute') as I secured myself inside.

A week later, she added me on skype. I accepted her because I had no idea what her name was and that ‘Yukki’ must have been the name of someone eligible fellow I met in my one and only gay night in Sapporo. This happens a lot; the forgetting names, not the eligible gay Skype buddies. As a result, our first conversation was a terrifying experience as I tried to figure out who the hell I was talking to through my fractured Japanese. It didn’t help that the profile picture was an anime warrior holding a gleaming sword.

I finally figured who was on the other end when Yukki asked when I was coming back to ‘the school.’ I told her I would be there in three weeks which brought on a tirade of giggling smiley faces and the phrase: “OK!!!!!!The enjoyment!!!!”

Throughout the next few weeks, I found out many things about Yukki as she guilt tripped me into numerous Skype conversations. If I didn’t respond, she would play the ‘sad face’ card which works much better on Skype where the sad face actually cries tears over and over again. I discovered that her hobbies were ‘movie watching & music appreciation’ and her favourite food was chocolate with twelve exclamation marks. I told her I liked running and she suggested in capital letters that we run together. I grimaced and told her ‘lol’ but she sent back the confused face that meant she didn’t understand so I gave up and just said ‘NO.’

She approached me on the train on Tuesday and handed me a cellophane bag filled with chocolate treats. I walked to school with her and her friends (who were instructed to stay several steps behind us) and she told me that I was ‘very very very cool’ and that I had beautiful eyes. The friends giggled and I blushed. I let it slip that I was leaving the land of Japan the next month and Yukki stopped dead. She looked up at me and shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears and she yelled at me: “No! No! You stay here! Stay in Japan. New Zealand no! I lub you!” I told her I would think about it.

Eventually she cheered up and asked if we could still talk on Skype if I went back home. ‘Sure’ I said and I meant it. She’s sweet and really means no harm to anyone. Plus, she’s tiny so if she ever tried any Kathy Bates shit, I could blatantly take her.

"I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate, I've got it all!"

2009-05-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

Working at a meaningless job is a like having motor neurons disease.

When you arrive, you are a normal, functioning human being, dressed immaculately and carrying a packed lunch. You greet everyone in the office (as best you can through the language barrier) with a beaming smile and hand out small treats to your co-workers. You make daily plans for what you aim to accomplish and include highlighted windows to learn the language so as to better find out the office gossip.

As the days press on, you begin to realize that all those lesson planning seminars you sat through were a waste of hours. Your schedule is to help teach two classes a week, and this involves standing behind the teacher and reading a list of selected verbs out of a textbook. On a good day, you will be able to engage in impromptu conversation with your students; on a bad day, you will sit quietly at your desk for eight hours. Bliss, you say. Try it for a year.

And so, things start to shut down. That immaculate suit which you made sure you had dry cleaned once a week is left crumpled on your bedroom floor. You think about hanging up your jacket and decided it against it. On a good morning, you will wipe off the chalky patches with a damp cloth. Usually, you just shrug. The shirts, which you used to iron with a Bree Van de Kamp-efficiency, are now stuffed into a draw and pulled out one crumpled mess at a time. One day, you forget to wear a tie. As with the shirt and the chalk patches, no one says anything. From then on, you go open collar.

Your shaving ritual collapses. You drag a razor across your chin once a week and spend the next five days letting the stubble grow longer and uglier. Instead of getting up an hour before school to shine yourself up in front on the mirror, you roll out of bed with twenty minutes to spare and arrive at school late, your hair hanging limp and sodden from the shower you just jumped in and out of. Some days, you wake up even later and don’t even bother with the shower. You flick the sleep out of your eye and attempt to subtlety pat down your cowlicks with a salivated hand, Bristol Palin style.

Your appearance is not the only thing that disintegrates. After weeks of having your chipper ‘is there anything for me to do today’ plea responded to with the solemn shake of the head, your work ethic finally dies on the respirator. You give up studying Japanese, and suddenly find you can’t concentrate on anything. You spend hours staring at the computer screen, clicking on links on Wikipedia and pouncing on anyone fool enough to sign into Gmail chat. Soon, even this doesn’t satisfy. You find your attention span has completely disappeared. Replying to emails is too much hard work. So is reading books. Sometimes you make yourself a cup of coffee just to see how many sips it takes to drink it.

Your morale destroyed, you also give up caring what anyone thinks of you. You give up the fake polite smiles when you realize no one has talked to you in days. You start turning up late, leaving early, taking naps on your desk. You play your ipod too loud and silently bop along to ‘Raspberry Beret.’

Throughout all this, no one says anything. And you realize, if your existence is a joke to them, then you might as well treat it like one. And now that your spirit is broken, the delightfully awful question arises: just how far can you push these people?

You begin watching TV shows on your laptop, starting with a half hour during lunch and eventually you are having Weeds marathons twice a week. You laugh at the jokes; even the ones that you don’t think are funny. You SLURP your coffee. You yawn loudly. On the morning they have an important meeting about swine flu, you cough and blow your nose loudly and specifically buy pork for lunch. It’s almost fun.

Ten months on, the fresh faced idealist has been replaced with a lazy, sloppy, bitter, nervous wreck of a person, who doesn’t even have enough discipline to wash out his coffee mug before using it to make tea. His functions have all shut down. He traipses the two minute walk from his house to his school at 7.59am and returns the opposite way at 4.01pm. He realizes that everyone in the office despises him but he no longer cares. He no longer cares about making a difference because no one allows him to do any real teaching. This is what happens when you are given a job that could be done by a nine year old. You start acting like one.

In an ironic, blog-themed twist, I have turned into George Constanza. God help us all.

Next time, use your fingers

2009-05-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Yet another faux par on my part. My, how they do add up.

Our scene is set at lunchtime, or at least the when I choose to eat it. The hour between eleven and midday and hunger pains in my belly from the lack of breakfast I should have filled it with four hours earlier.

Breakfast in Japan is a rather dreary prospect at the best of times. With the lack of any kind of bread that isn’t sliced and bleached to within an inch of its life, and two kinds of cereal flakes, both of which taste like cardboard chips, the only real option is the Japanese version of rice, miso soup and natto. Call me westerner but the thought of rice as the start to my just doesn’t gel, especially when it is frequently the staple of the day’s other two meals. And natto, a revolting product made of fermented soy beans is possibly the most revolting substance ever to pass my lips. The beans are held together with sticky strands that remind me of seamen but smell like chemicals. I one discovered a packet of the stuff I’d left at the back of the fridge for several months and on opening it, it looked and smelt exactly the same. All of the good ALTs persevered with it until it gelled with their taste buds. I gave up after a week. It makes me oddly nostalgic for brunches and boyfriends.

And so lunchtime arrives early and greedily. On this day of blunders, I had homemade udon bento box in front of me, A cup of black, hideous coffee sat steaming to one side and a Frasier episode sat ready and waiting on my laptop (I am pretty sure that watching sitcoms at work is overtly frowned upon, but now that my work week consists of a single of hour of teaching over five days, I have given up trying to look busy. I have no idea what I am expected to do for the other 39 hours...sit in composed silence perhaps?). Suddenly I realized that I was sans chopsticks. A wave of panic rushed over me; the coffee, the noodles, Daphne...was the highlight of my dismal day to be cruelly taken from me?

Suddenly, I spied the container of chopsticks on my supervisor’s desk. They were the disposable kind, the kind that we westerners tap on the edge of the table before we break them in the hope that they will split evenly (this does NOT work). Please consider the following points before you judge me on my decision:

1) There were at least sixty pairs of chopsticks in the container.

2) These chopsticks can be bought in bulk for a few yen at any supermarket in Japan and are available for free at every convenience store in the country.

3) In all the months I have watched my supervisor eat his lunch, he has never once snapped apart a pair of these disposables. He instead employs a trendy black pair which matches the lunchbox set that his wife fills with delicious Japanese treats.

4) There was no one in the staffroom.

5) Daphne.

And so, I reached across and eased out a pair of the dratted things and, breathing a sigh of relief, settled down with udon and the Crane boys.

The next day, I could tell something was up. My supervisor hadn’t spoken to me since I arrived at 8am, but then this wasn’t particularly unusual (When I got back from my trip to Tokyo, no one spoke to me for two days. Apparently they are all just really busy). It was only when I snuck a peek at his desk that I saw the pathetic jig was up.

Each pair of chopsticks in the container had been accounted for. The closest pair had a tiny ‘1’ written on the left hand chopstick in black vivid and a tiny ‘2’ on the right hand one; the next pair had ‘3’ and ‘4’ and so on. The numbers reached into three digits; rather impressive given that this called for six numerals crammed together on a single pair of chopsticks. It may well be the most extraordinary example of passive aggression I have ever witnessed. Even the great Gareth Keenan would have trouble keeping up.

Today, I bit the bullet and offered my supervisor a pair of the same disposable chopsticks, apologizing for my actions and telling him it wouldn’t happen again. He gave me a tight smile and went back to his report without saying a word. I have a feeling this could drag on for the rest of my tenure.

And people wonder why I hate my job.

Buddhist shrines & puppet freakshows

2009-05-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

Twelve days around Japan and a large chunk of token Japanese tourism can now be satisfactory crossed off. Tokyo’s futuristic architecture and acid trip teenagers have been sought out, drooled over and snapped with a digital lens. We strolled dreamily through the most beautiful gardens in Japan (located in the captivating city of Kanazawa; my first choice for my teaching placement), stood captivated beneath the breadth and beauty of a snow covered Mt. Fuji and sipping green tea in a traditional Geisha district. We even sat front row at a sumo wrestling tournament, watching hour after hour of morbidly obese men in G-strings try and wrestle each other to the ground. I’m sure there is a lot of tradition in it, but most of the westerners around us spend the whole time whispering things like “Oh my god look how fat that one is!”

The highlight of the trip was a trip to the local town of Takayama, famous for its traditional Japanese craft shops and locals wares. We stayed in a Buddhist shrine run by a bald American called Woody. He wore massive baggy jeans and stunk of cigarettes (later on, we saw him smoking in the temple). He claimed to have lived in Japan for eleven years and had run the Buddhist hostel for five. He told us he was a ‘Buddhist apprentice’ in a voice that made it clear that we would never understand his inner Zen.

The shrine itself was a rundown affair; the hot water was turned on for approximately four hours a day and the floors creaked. It appeared that Woody was the only person who lived in the temple; he informed us that the head monk was in Tokyo for a conference (??) and there were no other monks to be seen. The temple itself was off to the side, in a dusty room with the lights off and the curtains closed. Woody informed us that we could use the room for our own private meditations if we wished. We did not wish.

The walls to our room were actually made of paper, and as a result we could hear Woody’s swishing baggy jeans from the other end of the corridor. He spent most of the time in his office, smoking and watching his flat screen TV. He told us he meditated a lot, but I would have guessed something else.

The markets at Takayama consisted mainly of precious things and pickled vegetables. My hopes for a Japanese Scarborough fair faded away in a medley of wooden dolls and small gherkins on toothpicks. Dispersed throughout these delights were variants on the town mascot; a hideous, faceless rag doll thing, reminiscent of Tubbs off The League of Gentlemen.

In typical Japanese style, it was available in every colour and variant from key rings to jelly moulds. I freaked out and had to go out onto the street to escape from it. Still, it is not much better than Sapporo’s mascot, which is a small bald green man with a bulging erection.

We finally managed to find the museum Shi-shi Kaikan; a supposed must see in Takayama for having over 500 lion masks on display. Inside, we instead found ourselves at a bizarre puppet show, in which magnetised emperors hacked each other to death with samurai swords. A small child ran around the stage and showed the audience how all the tricks were done; the whole thing was in Japanese so I had no idea what was going on. The highlight came at the end, when another emperor changed from a human to a lion and fought a duel with a meddlesome pumpkin. I managed to record it through spasms of laughter.

Back at the shrine, Woody told us that there was no hot water for a shower because he forgot to turn it on, he muttered some half-assed apology and walked away scratching his ear.

I stole an umbrella when we left.

Those crazy kids

2009-04-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Being an ALT in Japan is about as close as I will ever get to being Zac Efron.

I assume it is different teaching in a big city, but in a small League of Gentlemen township like mine, the white man really does walk alone, mainly because there are no other white men within a radius of 50 kilometres to walk with him. For many of these young, country schoolgirls, the only westerns they have seen have been separated from them by a TV screen and several time zones. Even these avenues are limited. There is a movie theatre in my town but it is one of those rickety Cinema Paradiso things without the charm. It sits slumped down a backstreet with peeling paint and posters of films features Japanese boys who look like they have had way too much Ecstasy (but ironically will probably never touch the stuff) and girls with pigtails wearing Alice in Wonderland dresses. The cinema has shown three English films in the last nine months; Atonement, P.S. I love you (Hilary Swank doing a romantic comedy about a treasure hunt from her dead boyfriend played by the lead Spartan off 300) and Mamma Mia, which arrives next week, a year after its western release.

The next ‘real’ movie theatre is in Sapporo, several hours drive away. Apparently movie going in Japan isn’t quite the lark it is back home; a fellow ALT went to see Burn After Reading and found that he was the only one who laughed the whole movie while the rest of the audience sat in complete silence. This is rather impressive slash mortifying if you have seen Burn After Reading, which IS hilarious and would surely a laugh from the drabbest individual when Brad Pitt calls John Malkovich a ‘dickwad.’ Also, Japanese people don’t get up and leave when the movie finishes but sit stonily until all the credits have rolled. Then they leave quietly, in an orderly fashion, not speaking until they are well outside the theatre. Even then, I doubt there is much in the way of banter.

Anyway, back to Efron. My arrival in the country prompted a Mexican wave of Japanese wonderment from the girls in my Local town. My two former ALTs were both girls and as far as I could tell, this was the first time most of these schoolgirls had set eyes on a Western male outside of a Harry Potter movie. For months, my route around the school could be traced by the sound of screams, giggles and sharp intakes of breath. Girls would cower into whispering groups in corners, waving to me and then shrieking with delight when I waved back.

Months went by and things didn’t end. I would be spotted by two girls in the local supermarket who would proceed to peek at me from behind the minimal produce section. The next day, I would be informed dryly from one of the teachers that someone in his class had seen my buying a bag of eggplants and now everyone wanted to know if this was true. The first question I was asked in a new class was “Do you have a girlfriend” to which I would smile secretly and shake my head. The group of girls who had plucked up the courage to ask this would then become hysterical and, after another few minutes of feverish whispering, usually follow it up with the slightly more awkward “what kind of Japanese girls do you like?” For this, I would stare out at the eager classroom of 15 year olds use my favourite Japanese word: Himitsu (Secret). This didn’t do much to calm them down.

Believe me, this is not a subtle attempt to blow my own trumpet. I could have rubbed myself raw with a cheese grater and pulled out a row of teeth and I don’t imagine the reaction would be any different. And I tried to feign off the fawning in any way possible; food stains on my shirt, unwashed hair, deep sighs whenever I was waved to in the corridors. For I while I even adopted a limp, but this only resulted in sympathetic glances and kindly smiles from the girls and at the end of the week, a ‘get better’ anime pencil charm turned up on my desk in the staffroom.

Good grief, they were persistent. Once, I received an email from a fifteen year old student from one town over. She insisted we could be ‘good friends’ if we met up sometime (wink face). I have no idea who she was or how she got my email address. She sent me a follow up email a week later when I didn’t reply, which was empty except for a sad face and the phrase ‘I cry now.’ Another girl accosted me in a classroom during cleaning time and showed me a tiny purple condom nestled in her Hello Kitty wallet. I smiled nervously and vowed to stay as far away from her as possible.

I hope that when I leave, my successor will be a women; kind, maternal, preferably late thirties and hair in a bun. There has been enough excitement in Local town for the next few years; Zac Efron has no place trying to steal the preciousl things of the shop. Heck, she could even get a cat.

Cleanup time

2009-04-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

My supervisor, possibly realizing that my school day malaise is largely the result of having absolutely nothing to do, has given me the task of aiding with the daily classroom cleaning of him form class. Every day, from 3pm to 3.30pm, I am summoned to assist class 1A to cleanse their home room on the third floor. This is a school-wide ritual, something I assume was established to slice janitors from the school budget (although there are two little old men in overalls who are part of the staff and whom I often see fixing broken chairs and carting rubbish to the incinerator).

Upon arrival at the said room, the class (42 students in a tightly squeezed desk grid, girls on the left side of the room, boys on the right) bows politely and begins to divvy up the tasks at hand. In the corner of the classroom (and in every classroom in the school) is a cleaning cupboard, stuffed with mops, buckets and squirty things galore. On the classroom wall is a task sheet, made by some administrator with no life in which the class divided up into different ‘task groups’ on a daily basis; window washing one week, mopping the next.

The chart is so confusing that usually Mr. X gives up and lets his students decide on what tasks they want by way of ‘Jung Ken;’ the Japanese version of ‘Rock, paper, scissors.’ The difference is that ‘Jung Ken’ is played in massive groups of ten-twenty people, in which everyone stand in a circle and yells “Jung ken....ho!” and displays their paper/scissors/rock hand manifestation. Of course, this doesn’t work so well with more than two players, and the general rule is that there can be no result unless there is one rock and nineteen pieces of paper. As you can imagine, this can take hours, and I have to stand in the corner and grit my teeth as the students yell out “Jung Ken...ho!” over and over again, completely unperturbed by the fact that they could be trapped in their ridiculous circle for the rest of their afternoon.

Once the tasks are allocated, the cleaning can being in earnest. And I mean that. The cleaning is carried out with the precision of a nuclear bomb scare; the desks are suddenly stacked at the front of the room and a team of moppers begin to sweep across the floor with eyebrows furrowed. A group of girls grab the squirty stuff and begin to deal with the windows; carefully scrutinizing every corner for the fingerprints of some foolish third grader during lunchtime. Another team is put on dust monitoring. They work their way around the room in a chain, checking every sliver of surface for particles and also attacking everything with the squirty stuff. There is a two page print on how to dust off the blackboard. I attempted this seemingly simply task on the first day and had the handout shoved at me by six horrified girls. Apparently the key is to start with vertical strokes and move on to horizontal after that. Good to know.

Because this mission is carried out on a daily basis, the whole cleaning thing becomes redundant. The girls squirt cleaner onto windows which are already spotless. The boys with the mops are unable to find anything to mop up. The dusters haven’t given the dust enough time to settle from their particle scouring 24 hours prior. The inside/outside shoes distinction already takes care of most of it. To be fair, I have never seen a cleaner school in my life, especially compared to my debris-infused high school in the Hutt Valley.

Talking of trash, last night I was fool enough to watch John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. It was a film that made me miss my group of Gummo-adoring friends, as scene after scene of celluloid offensiveness went reeling by me. Especially of note were the heinous Marbles couple (the wife looks like a hideous B-Grade Tilda Swinton) who keep pregnant girls chained up in their basement and sell the babies to lesbian couples. They also give each other orgasms by sucking ravenously on each other’s toes. Across town, the obese drag queen Divine lives in a trailer and puts a steak between her thighs to warm it up for dinner. Her similarly obese, brain damaged mother sits in a play pen and is obsessed with eggs and her son, Crackers, likes to have sex with the chickens. It is a fucking offensive movie and I loved every minute of it. If only cleaning could be this Divine.

Death by horse

2009-04-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

The Rhinestone Cowboy has lived up to his name. An awkward conversation with him in the lunchroom led to the revelation that his arrival at the high school had seen him promoted to the head of the equestrian club. No surprise really I though, given that he has the petite frame and hardened calves of a jockey. However, it turned out that the poor kid was no jockey and had in fact never ridden a horse before in his life. He even admitted that he had a slight trepidation towards the beasts in question, hence the lack of equine skills.

Despite this, and the fact that he had coached basketball for the last three years, it was the horse club where he was placed. No question. The rule for Japanese high schools is that a new teacher must teach the club their predecessor taught, regardless of preference, ability or logic. My supervisor spends four hours a day coaching volleyball, even though he had never played it before in his life. At his last school, he conducted the school band and ran the music department.

Unfortunately, upon his arrival in our Gummo town he was informed that the musical department staff was already allocated, and so he was to coach the girls volleyball. Every day at 3pm, he heaves a mighty sigh and puts on his neon red bib. If a western actor had to play him at this precise moment, it would be Alan Rickman.

The whole situation reminds me of that scene in that Family Guy episode ‘Da Boom’ where the Griffins establish a new town after the world blows up. Every time a new person comes to the town, Peter makes them pick a job out of the ‘job hat’ so that a qualified doctor is given the role of village idiot and the dentist in a horse. In this society, that wouldn’t surprise me anymore.

Also, there are no sip top bottles in Japan. Why? No matter how many convenience stores and supermarkets I traipse through, I am cursed to settle for the runner’s worst enemy; the screw cap. As a result, Japanese treadmilling is a much more perilous experience than back in the west. Trying to get that damn cap unscrewed and then rescrewed takes both hands while your legs are whirling takes skills verging on amateur acrobatics. Oh, how I mourn the humble pump bottle.

Out there on the ice

2009-04-06T01:26:00.000-07:00

The new English teacher has arrived. He is 23 and looks like he is sixteen. When I met him, he was wearing a baby blue tie with diamantes on it (or rhinestones for you Americans). If this was New Zealand, he would be deemed suitable effeminate to have the homosexual checked and double checked by any curious onlooker. But this is Japan and it’s hopeless trying to tell the gays from the straights in a culture where the macho baseball captains hold hands in class and sit casually on each other’s laps. I once spent an entire evening drinking sake and flirting with the Japanese boy next to me at a salsa bar. After a good hour of (by Western standards) rather forward under-the-table signals, I attempted to seal the seemingly done deal and he told me that he actually only liked girls. What a fucking crock.

Seen from this context, my hopes for the Rhinestone Cowboy are slimmer than his tiny Japanese hips. Perhaps I will have to settle for a buddy to drink sake with; it will be nice to have someone in the town who speaks English and is under 45. The Seinfeld thing was always wishful thinking anyway (the Japanese are a nation of Friends worshippers; argh). And of course, he is a far superior crush to the grey haired Moltisanti. Perhaps a better comparison is that of Twin Peaks’ James Hurley; generating a level of allure that is not quite Seth Cohen-obsession worthy, but definitely a few steps up the ladder and has crush-crossover potential to the outside world.

Two excellent Japanese anecdotes then. The first was the discovery that none of the female
teachers at our high school wear high heels. Ever. Curiouser and curioser I thought and questioned my female English co-teacher about this over a cup of instant coffee. The principal has outlawed the said items for the reason that ‘in an emergency, they cannot run fast.’ I guess this makes sense in a Japanese kind of way, but it does ignore the fact that Japanese women in heels can move faster than steroid- infused athletes. As one of my ALT friends put it: “If Japan ever wanted to win any Olympic sprinting race, they just need to have a woman in heels in the line up and put a man with an empty beer glass at the finish line.” This may sound sexist, but trust me, it is incredibly accurate.

I also suggested that in the unlikely event of an emergency, a woman in heels could simply TAKE HER SHOES OFF. I imagine that shoes would be the most likely cause of death in any Japanese emergency, because the indoor/outdoor footwear code still applies. Even in our semi-terrifying earthquake drill last year, the teachers found time to lay out an enormous, elaborate mat between the front entrance and the tennis court so that as they escaped certain death, their shoes remained unsullied. The same lack of logic became apparent at last week’s moving ceremonies; movers would attempted to change from outside to inside shoes even while struggling under the weight of a half ton fridge-freezer. Surprisingly, there were no broken backs.

The second story comes courtesy of another ALT but desperately needs to be mentioned. At another Hokkaido high school, a rather portly female teacher fell over on the ice and broke her leg. The principal called an emergency meeting of all staff and informed them that the newly incapacitated educator had in fact slipped over because she was too fat. He ranted about how irresponsible the teacher was (I believe the phrase ‘how dare she’ was used repeatedly) and instructed that everyone in the school go on an immediate diet to prevent the same thing happening again. This is, perhaps, the perfect example of ‘adding insult to injury’.

I have slipped over on the ice at least five times this winter (not counting a lot of very close calls) and I cannot imagine anyone making it through a Hokkaido winter without doing the same. The island becomes an ice rink for four months and you are constantly one slip away from a broken collarbone. I have taken to shuffling my feet along the ground penguin-style and have shacked up an impressive collection of bruises. People stop drinking altogether because it’s too dangerous to walk home from the pub. Every car in the island has to change its tyres.

All this is my attempt to try and explain how ridiculous and offensive the above anecdote is, but to be honest, it does a pretty good job of that by itself. I can only imagine the poor woman waking up in the hospital to find a get well card and a bunch of celery.

As I type this, I am starting out the window and can see the buds growing on the trees that have been bare for the last four months. The season is finally changing. I cannot wait to see what perplexing anecdotes The Spring has to offer.

LOCAL!!!!

2009-03-31T01:09:00.000-07:00

A new phenomenon has appeared on the rural Japanese horizon.

At present, our high school is in a blissful and short lived period of nonchalance. We are in limbo between school years, between the frantic period of drunken ‘end of year’ enkais and drunken ‘beginning of year’ enkais. I can arrive at school between eight and nine and am free from my despised shackles of suit and tie.

Last week, we had the traditional ‘musical desks’ day, as the teachers who leave clear their workstations and everyone moves to a different desk in the immense staff room. I am one of the lucky ones; I have been upgraded from a desk facing the back wall to one right in front of the windows. I now have a view of the local co op, baseball field and a side view of the hospital. It is bliss to watch the crows swooping and screaming, to see tiny old people creeping to and from the co op; so old that their backs are bent into Quasimodo hunchbacks and they stare permanently at the pavement.

My grey haired Moltisanti crush is leaving, but my hopes are high that the new 23 year old English teacher will be a more than satisfactory replacement. I envisage a young, studious man with good teeth and a killer smile who is fumbling with his forbidden attraction to the better sex. I will take him under my Caucasian wing and teach him the ways of the western world, starting with Seinfeld and we will argue about the greatest character (I will say Elaine; he, of course, will choose Kramer) and then move on to even more uncharted waters. At school, we will blush as we pass each other in the corridor and meet for a secretly romantic lunch of sushi and green tea, using the guise of ‘man to man bonding.’ I will teach him the meaning of ‘clandestine’ and he will laugh and pretend that he that already knew it. It will become his favourite word and he will use it every day, but never quite get the pronunciation right. He will try to teach me more Japanese, but I will tell him I am only be interested in learning the dirty words. He will oblige.

Mr M. is also leaving. He had an English teachers’ lunch for him last Friday, which was a sombre and slightly awkward affair as we toiled over bowls of bland pasta at the town’s mediocre Italian restaurant. I had learnt before lunch that all the other English teachers despise Mr M., and one of them flew into rage and yelled “He is a fool man. He is not a real man. He is joke face.” I was semi speechless and murmured something in agreement. When we returned to school, I informed Mr M. that he had spaghetti sauce on his shirt. He looked down, horrified, and carefully replied:

“I am sorry. Mmmmmmmm......I will now go and cream myself.”

I will miss him inexplicably.

This too-ing and fro-ing of teachers lead to the phenomenon I spoke of; moving day. It turns out that all the teachers must partake in the arrival and departure of all their peers; we have a schedule booked solid throughout the week. First off was the principal; a man with a perfect comb over and steely eyes who has always terrified me, but looked a lot less intimidating in a backwards cap and an anorak tucked into his khaki trousers. The entire teaching staff (a good thirty odd people including the receptionist, the janitor and the school nurse) got amongst it and formed a human chain from the house to moving van, passing along boxes and bubble wrapped armchairs with Amish-worthy precision. Two dozen school students also turned up, for no reason other than that they wanted to help. All the while, the principal’s obedient wife went round bowing and thanking everyone. When we were finished the principal gave us another formal thank you and gave us of as a can of beer and a small bottle of green tea.

This went on all day. Another teacher’s moving session was so emotional that a group of his students started crying. Another one had a bunch of his ex-pupils drive two hours to our town specially to lend a hand with the move. Someone gave a speech and took a photo for the town paper. A small child tried to climb onto the moving van and was pulled off, crying, by his mother. My supervisor explained that the child was sad because the only toy shop in the town had closed down so he wanted to move to Sapporo with the teachers where the toys were. No such luck.

I am expecting another full day of moving ceremonies tomorrow and my only regret is that I cannot take photos to document the bizarre ritual. Unfortunately, my camera is out of action since it fell of a piece of interactive artwork at the top of an Osakan skyscraper. So far, I have ended up with five cans of beer and a lot of green tea. The new crush arrives tomorrow afternoon. I will be sure to shave and wear a tight T-shirt and stand close to the moving truck to keep my eyes peeled for framed photos of Mariah Carey and boxes marked ‘HOT PANTS.’

Coffee, Crushes and Criminals

2009-03-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

On hiatus due to much needed escape slash holiday to Kansai (see Facebook for photo updates), Bombay & Elaine is now back with some sort of coffee-infused vengeance.

It is odd for me, the coffee thing. For the entirety of my life, since my first sip from a Beatrix Potter mug at about age eight, I have been a tea addict. Tea with breakfast, with every snack, after every meal and every drunken purge. It is the perfect hangover cure, the perfect elixir for both first dates and catch ups with Grandmothers. I can go through several pots a day; full pots which I will refill and top endlessly. My bedroom is a mess of mugs with thick brown rings down the inside. I was given the name ‘Tea Wench’ in my favourite university flat because of my consistent meddling with the kettle and the Dilmah. Earl Grey is the king of them all, followed by the Lady Grey and then English Breakfast. Herbal tea can, for the most part, shove it. I am no tea snob however; I like it strong, plentiful and, above all things, hot. Milk is compulsory, sugar is sacrilege.

And now, for the first time in my life, the dreaded beverage of coffee has all but taken over. Coffee has always been there, occasionally delicious and frequently disappointing, but never necessary. And now, at school, I find myself addicted to the god awful stuff. And it IS the god awful stuff; a jar of instant granules which look like they’re been scraped off the factory floor. In addition to this, I add a good heaped teaspoon of BRITE; some sort of hideous milk powder which revolts and obsesses me at the same time. I add it because it’s there and because the thought of drinking the stuff black makes me shudder. The BRITE drains my beverage of any sense of naturalness, turning the liquid a revolting shit brown, like the kind of paint no one would ever choose to colour their walls with.

And down the cups go; four, five, six times a day and I am addicted. Fuck. But you should see typing speed.

I have developed a crush, of sorts, on one of fellow teachers. It has taken me months to figure this out due to the fact that he is, in real life, low on the attraction scale. I think he may even have a bit of grey in his hair, although colour distinction has never been my best subject. Still, it makes me feel old. What makes the crush so interesting to me is the fact that my brain (or other organ) has become so bored and desperate that it has sought to seek out the individual with the most crush-worthy disposition in a staffroom of middle aged crowd fillers. And now, after months of thinking that I was safely off the hook, I have fallen victim to the most ridiculous crush of my life and feel like I am in The Office.

It has taken me all weeks to figure this out; this weird little allure of the Japanese man in track pants. I shall call my theory ‘The Moltisanti appeal’ and therefore lay all future copyrights. It is my belief that, if one spends enough time with a group of individuals—no matter how heinous or dull—they will hone in on the one in the group that is the most attractive, despite the fact that in real life they make ‘ewwwww’ noises and discard them with a flick of their heads. A crush must be established in EVERY collective group in life, no matter how repugnant the group is. Every high school form class, every university hall, every summer job. The situation is completely hopeless and there is nothing that can be done about it.

For those of you have watched The Sopranos (which is incomprehensively few of you considering that is a very serious contender for the best TV show ever made), you will understand my title. Christopher Moltisani, the hot headed, insecure younger cousin of Tony Soprano, is NOT an attractive person. He has an oddly shaped nose and the suspicious beginnings of a monobrow. He wears wife beaters (and IS a wife beater or at least a fiance beater; poor Adrianna) and tracksuits and hideous gold jewellery. And yet, through the many, many hours I have spend soaking up the intensity of HBO’s masterpiece; I have been sucked into crushing the little bastard. Why? Have you SEEN the rest of the males on The Sopranos? By comparison, Christopher is a regular (pre-emo band phase) Jared Leto.

I realize the absurdity of having a homosexual crush on a character in a show where the only gay character gets beaten to death. And I must reiterate that it is not a life changing crush; I don’t intend on plastering my walls with pictures of Michael Imperoili or pausing the show on scenes of him sans shirt. In fact, Christopher is perhaps my favourite character on the show (along with Janice) for completely different reasons—because he’s such a complicated, fucked up mess who was doomed from the start—but if I was to invest so many months in The Sopranos universe, I had to find someone to crush on, and thus Moltisanti it was.

And so, with my mandatory eye candy pinned, I can relax. It is simply not natural to spend that much time with a group of people, be they real or imaginary, without singling out the one you would most like to get with if the ridiculous hypothetical ever arose. Because, who knows; maybe one day it will. As I type this, my office Moltisanti has left for lunch. When he arrives back, I will smile secretly and make myself another cup of deathly coffee. Life of sorts, is sweet.

The best video on youtube

2009-03-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

My favourite part is how the gayest band of alltime is getting hard over a bunch of henious chav women. Slash the cop in the leather pants.

Vampire Weekend

2009-03-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

The weather grows warmer; a fraction of a degree at a time. The snow, once a blanket covering every visible surface, has transformed into hard, dirty clumps which nestle stubbornly in driveways and gutters. Exams are over and students are back to breathing normally. The school year is almost complete and one can hear the odd smile and titter amidst the usual empty silence of the staff room.

Having finished my T.C. Boyle book about Mexican immigration (The Tortilla Curtain; a delight. Read it now before the Kevin Costner/Meg Ryan movie comes out next year and ruins everything), I have moved onto Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle; a slick piece of dystopian fantasy about the state of the world if the allies had lost WWII. In Dick’s narrative, America has been divided into a Nazi’s controlled East coast, a Japanese controlled California and a rocky mountain buffer-zone between the two. It’s grizzly and bizarre and totally not the sort of book to be reading in a Japanese high school staffroom. The cover features a blatant amalgamation of the Nazi and Japanese flags. I guess I should start hiding it in my desk when I teach my one class a day.

As the week had been somewhat void of wacky Japanese behaviour, I have resorted to my permanent plan B; films and alcohol. On Monday, I settled down with a cheap bottle of merlot and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. A pretentious and not particularly agreeable combination, especially as the feature wore on and the bottle became empty. My top five favourite scenes, through my wasted, semi-acidic haze were as follows:

1. The man with intense facial leprosy who sits by a cracked window pulling levers and snarling.

2. The woman with massive jowls who was dressed like Baby Jane doing a tap dance and squashing the worm things that kept falling on her.

3. The dinner scene when the main guy tries to cut up the roast chicken but it starts menstruating all over the table causing the mother and daughter to leave the room in a fit of emotion.
4. When the deformed worm-foetus-baby thing gets sick is covered with crusty sores.

5. The random two minute shot of a dog being suckled by about twenty puppies.

It should also be noted that the title is not a cryptic metaphor for the bleakness of society; they actually do make erasers out of someone's head.

Rather a delight all things considered, although David Lynch was clearly wasted the whole time he was making it.

I also watched Deathproof; Tarantinos’ half of the Grindhouse flicks and not nearly as good as Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Basically the whole movie is Kurt Russell as a stuntman with a vendetta against sexy young girls whom he runs down on desert roads with his badass car. The first half is pretty good with an Russell getting a sexy lap dance (and Tarantino getting a boner) and Rose McGowan turning up in a blonde wig. Then in the second half, a heinous New Zealand brown stunt girl turns up and ruins EVERYTHING. Imagine having Shortland Street’s Alice Piper trade quips Pam Grier in Jackie Brown and you’ve got the idea. As she tried to engage in sassy, blaxploitation-themed dialogue with Rosario Dawson, saying things like ‘sweet bro’ and ‘yeah, sister’, I felt like slitting my wrists and decided that I have never hated my country more. Unfortunately, she is one of the ones that doesn’t get run over with Russell’s sweet wheels and ends up being the heroine of the movie. Where the fuck was Uma??!!

Let’s be honest; rather a letdown. McGowan is way sexier in Planet Terror, especially when she gets a machine gun stuck in her amputated leg stump and goes on a zombie killing spree using her sweet stripper moves. Plus, Planet Terror has Rico off Six Feet Under in it, who is still sexy even as a piece of tattooed up white trash. He and McGowan make out. Hot.

Finally, I put the Suntory whiskey bottle within arm's length and watched Let the Right one in; a Swedish vampire love story. All the rage these days with HBO’s True Blood and that awful Twilight thing. This movie was AMAZING; little blonde boy falls in crush with the weird girl next door who only leaves her apartment at night and who’s uncle slaughters homeless people to feed her nightly bloodlust. Stunningly shot and put together and man it really sucks to be a vampire. The best scene is when a newly bitten vampire woman gets attacked by a roomful of cats. Slash there at least three other scenes that are as good as that, especially the last scene in the swimming pool. Good grief. Anyone who has lost faith in films should watch this; it is about a billion times better than Oscar-wankfest dogshit like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire.

The teachers have started changing into their tracksuits which means club activities for them and home time for me. Can I think of a witty sentence to sum up? Nah. Your mum.

You got yr. cherry blossom bomb....

2009-03-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

School has been like Fort Knox during the last week. And I mean that.

Let me go over a few of the exam procedures undertaken by Japanese high schools. First off, during the days in which students are taking their future determining tests, teachers, receptionist and caretakers and not allowed to leave the school grounds. Two intimidating teachers are stationed at the front entrance to keep an eye of the rest of us; heaven forbid we should sneak off to the supermarket across the road to plant answers in the sushi trays.

Needless to say, the rest of the school is also out of bounds. Teachers have to eat their (pre-packaged) lunch at their desks as the lunchroom is somehow off limits. The true level of bizarreness became clear when I was told that for the five days of exams, No one was allowed to use their cell phones or the internet. Exams apparently call for complete and utter isolation from the outside world, even to those people who have no idea what the exams consist of and cannot speak the language.

For the five days I speak of, I sat at my desk from 8am to 5pm, occasionally dipping into my T.C. Boyle book and listening to lots of Grateful Dead. I watched Even Dwarves started small on my lunch breaks which is a highly offensive film about a bunch of German midgets who take over a mental institution. My favourite scene involved two of the midgets getting locked in a bedroom and ordered to copulate. However, they cannot go through with it because the key German midget is too short to get up on the bed. Many of the teachers gave me stricken looks as they walked past, but I remained indifferent and chuckled quietly into my udon noodles.

However, the highlight of the exam period was the bomb scare. A few days before the dreaded lock in commenced, I was joyfully tinkling away at one of the school’s grand pianos in the music room (there are actually TWO grand pianos side by side in the music room, another phenomenon I have not been able to figure out; do they expect two people to practise different pieces at the same time? Anyone who has ever played ANY musical instrument knows that this is completely impossible) when the door flew open and a gaggle of anxious teachers practically dragged me into the corridor.

It turns out that once, a good decade ago, a couple of cheeky high school kids rang their Hokkaido high school (not this one) and in an inane attempt to get out exams, said that they had planted a bomb in one of the classrooms. Obviously the plan worked like a dream. The bomb squad was called to check not only the school that got pranked but in fact EVERY high school in Hokkaido (there are about 250). The boys eventually confessed (and probably got life sentences or deported) but even so, every year during exam period, each Hokkaido school has a series of bomb drills. This involves checking every classroom and evacuating the whole school. Then the police arrive and check every classroom again. This happens for three days in a row.

I wondered quietly as I stood freezing on the tennis court how many years this futile exercise would continue. Surely after a decade of checking for evidence of a glorified practical joke, common sense would kick in. The police would hang up their helmets and students would be given one less thing to worry about during the most stressful part of the year. Things would go back to whatever kind of normal things were beforehand.

And then, I saw the police talking into their intercoms in Die Hard mode and I and I suddenly knew that this charade would never end. This is Japan and common sense comes several notches behind tradition on the cultural hierarchy.

The teacher who sits opposite me wears the same Christmas tie every day. It has reindeer and snow covered Christmas trees on it. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Most days, it makes it makes me want to cry.

Exam-attack!

2009-03-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Panic gripped the student body today. It is exam period at my high school and every teenager who knows what’s good for them is stressed to breaking point. In the depths of winter, girls in round rimmed glasses mop the sweat from their foreheads. Boys develop nervous twitches and teachers have private tutorials booked around the clock. One cannot walk down the corridor without hearing the sound of hyperventilating or quiet sobs. This is how it goes in a culture where one feels that they have shamed their family by playing a wrong note on their clarinet during concert recital. Once, after I failed an inept student on a communication test, she slumped down on the desk and cried for the rest of the lesson. The test was worth 10 % of her final grade.

Amid this whirlpool of pressure, Mr. M once again surfaces in our narration. A gaggle of befuddled school girls cornered him in his office and asked if the English exam would include an ‘either or’ question; the hardest thing we’ve studied this year. Mr. M paused for a moment, and then said “mmmmmmm....” and shook his head. The girls breathed a sigh of relief and ran off to tell the rest of the class. For the next two weeks, they studied all the relevant sections of the English course, calling each other on the phone between cups of coffee and practising their street directions till the early hours in the morning.

As it turned out, Mr. M had got it completely wrong and the ‘either or’ question was the main part of the exam. As a result, only four students passed and a lot of them drifted through the corridor to my office post-exam, too tired and exhausted to cry. When he found about the dire mix up, Mr. Y yelled at Mr. M, who didn’t say anything and pouted quietly in the corner.

There may be no more terrifying moment in life than turning over an exam paper only to find a question you have no clue how to answer. The heart stops beating for approximately ten seconds and then starts moving at triple speed. Things start to blur and you realize that you have three hours to plead your case before you hit the liquor store for that critical bottle of vodka. And so, I pledge you all to have a little sympathy for these kids of mine, who cannot drink and who may well have their futures severely dented by the most useless teacher in Japan.

On another note, Mr. M did tell me I looked like Tom Cruise last week. I smiled shyly and batted my eyelids. To be honest, I am not sure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. I think I will take the former; it would probably the first compliment I’ve ever got in this country.

ATMs and that

2009-02-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

The Japanese don’t like change. They’re terrified of it. You can see it in their eyes when someone suggests a new teaching plan or stops wearing a tie to work (both me). Japan is still running things like they did in the 1950s; a half century of Happy Days reruns without the happy part. The hierarchy of offices is still based around who has worked there the longest, with no attempt to rearrange the pecking order for the young rookie with a headful of new ideas. In order to be the boss, one must simply wait it out, until the superiors have died or retired, and then and ONLY then will you be able to pitch that proposal. And, if it is even the slightest bit radical, it wills probably we rejected anyway.

Gender relations are also firmly cemented in another decade. Japanese offices are extremely male-centric. Women employees get less holiday, don’t get paid for overtime and at the age of 30, receive sizeable pay cut in their salary. This is because of the unwritten fact that women are supposed to be at home making the babies by their third decade, and those at work obviously don’t need to be earning the big bucks to support the family. By contrast, 30 year old men receive a pay rise for the same reason; to keep the wee wife and kids happy. Women were not allowed to vote until 1945; half a century after New Zealand. An Equal Employment Opportunity Law was created in 1985 (twenty years after the rest of the world), but there are still less Japanese women in legislative positions than most Muslim countries.

Apparently most female college graduates stay out of the corporate world, and instead aim for jobs as air stewardesses. Even these are incredibly hard to get, with over 50 applicants applying for each job. This is supposedly the ‘glamorous’ lifestyle for a Japanese woman, much like a model or actress would be in the western world. If Sex & the City was set in Japan, Samantha would be an air stewardess. So would Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte.

The Japanese also refuse to partake in daylight saving. A when they tried to introduce it in the 1950s, the population freaked out and thought that it was some new age scheme to make them work longer hours. As a result, the night descends upon Hokkaido around 3.30pm during the winter, and I die a little inside.

However, my main qualm and issue with the Japanese conservatism (for the moment) is their inability to move beyond a cash based society. If you have a credit card in Japan, it is probably gathering dust. They are not used. Ever. Even worse is the matter of debit cards, or lack thereof. Japan does not believe allowing money to change hands electronically, and thus, any attempt at shopping, fine dining or in fact any good old fashioned consumerism must be done through the medium of cold, hard cash. However, my favourite part about the whole system is the ATMs; the only medium for getting money from the account in the hand. ATMs are scare, and can be found in the occasional convenience store, if you live in a city. Small towns such as mine, have one or two, and they are usually hidden away down a dark alley behind the post office.

Last Saturday, a friend and I were sipping beer and sharing travel tips, gearing up for a fun night out on the town with the other gaijin. Stupidly, we were so involved with our conversation that we lost track of the time, and at 6.30pm, decided to get out some cash for the evening ahead. This is where we learnt our first lesson about Japanese cash flow; ATMs close at 6pm during the weekend and that, as they say, is that. There is no way of getting cash until the next morning through any medium. Any attempt to use a credit card at a bar will result in an ‘are you fucking serious’ expression and a shake of the head. And so, we were forced to scrape together the last of our coins, convince the barman to let us put our drinks on a tab and went home at 9pm with our tails between our legs.

And so begins the obligatory list of hypothetical situations; what if you knock over a wine display at the liquor store on your way to your friend’s birthday, with the shop keeper demanding all the cash in your wallet, which was meant to take care of the present, the subway and of course the alcohol now lying in pieces on the floor? What if it’s your round at the bar and after all your friends have left at 3am, you realize you’re apartment is on the other side of the city and you haven’t got enough taxi money? Or suppose you need an emergency operation on your foot to remove a tumour and have to pay for it with the money for the next morning’s train? The latter is a real life situation which happened to me two weeks ago, and I was only saved by the generosity of my neighbouring JET.

The alternative of course, is to forgo the banks altogether. After all, their 0.5% interest rate, the logical situation seems to be to stuff your money into a hole in your mattress. For the country with the world’s second biggest economy, there’s definitely something missing.

Collecting suicidal skylarks and other Animals

2009-02-19T00:17:00.000-08:00

Here at Bombay & Elaine, we believe in keeping our engine running through hard and tryingly lacklustre times with assorted leaps into the various worlds of high culture.

ON THE IPOD:

SUICIDE—Suicide (1977): The best description of this album is some sort of a cross between The Doors and The Modern Lovers, cross pollinated with Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. However, that doesn’t do it any sense of justice. Minimal synths, "Let Down"-worthy tinkly bits and some of the the most fascinating vocals ever turned in, courtesy of Alan Vega, my new hero. It’s completely different to anything I’ve ever heard and I love it. The opening ‘Ghost Rider’ is a dead ringer for ‘State Trooper’; the best track off Nebraska, and just as chilling. But then amidst all the tales of blue collar tragedy (including the epic ‘Johnny Teardrop’ which is what Jim Morrison was trying to do with ‘The End’ but isn't shit) there’s ‘Cheree’, and it’s so sweet you’d think it was Frankie Valli.

The news is that Suicide are playing Suicide live at All Tomorrow’s Parties in New York in September. Keen for a trip anyone?

ANGELO BADALAMENTI-Music from Twin Peaks (1991): Pure escapism. And about as close as I’ll ever get to a heroin trip. Has there ever been a better musical score for anything?

XTC—Skylarking (1986): I always thought the XTC were one of those new wave bands who were too cool to drinking beer and hated the sun. But this album is some sort of psychedelic summer dreamscape with crickets in the backgrounds and lyrics about sacrificial bonfires and dancing trees. I think it’s one of those ‘Acid Albums’ like The Zombies' incredible Odyssey & Oracle but, you know, from the Eighties. What the fuck? I’m not sure if they’re taking the piss but I think I really like it. Unfortunately, it is cursed with one of the worst album covers of all-time.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE—Merriweather Post Pavillion (2009): Probably the only really good album to come out in a long, long time (and ironically, with one of the best album covers of alltime). I always thought I hated Animal Collective. I used to say that they were ‘stressful’ and that listening to them was like being stuck on a runaway merry-go-round like in Strangers on a Train. But MPP is a beautiful, ridiculously listenable album whose sound gets richer with every listen. And after a few days, you realize that MPP isn’t just good; it isn’t just the best Animal Collective album (I assume) or even just the album of the year. What Animal Collective have done here is to create a sound which no one in musical history has done before, not even them. Perhaps it is the fact that its release sees the end of year which—Fleet Foxes and M83 aside—has been the most barren stretch of musical desert in decades.

I read a review was compared listening to MPP to pressing the light speed button in the Millennium Falcon. Fleet Foxes’ debut and M83’s Saturdays = youth are both outstanding albums, but they both centre around recapturing genres of music long past. MPP is a jump forward; technologically, creatively and musically. It is the most important album since Kid A, and probably the best.

And perhaps it is the Obama phenomenon (cringe) but MPP is a completely optimistic album in every sense. Animal Collective make songs about being happy and loving life and it’s surprisingly refreshing. The age of grim Anit-American albums is over (and there were a LOT on that bandwagon; Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A., Rufus Wainwright and Arcade Fire to name but a few), at least for now. Optimism is in. And it’s about time.

I just marked a student’s journal that included the phrases “I wash pork in the bath” and “I love a small midget.” I don’t really want to know.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. M

2009-02-15T23:58:00.000-08:00

It is time to dedicate some time to my favourite high school teacher, to whom I shall assign the veiled alias of ‘Mr. M.’ In a staffroom filled with bizarre Japanese creations, Mr M. takes the bizzaro rice cake. To picture him, imagine a young man—Japanese of course—maybe 30 (is that young?), with a haircut that closely resembles that of Sebastian Love; the mincing Prime minister’s bitch on Little Britain. Indeed, he employs the same habit of brushing his locks out of his eyes with a flick of his hand and a semi-head toss. He has a pennant for plain ties and nautical tie pins and wears the same suit every day. He never smiles and his expression suggests haughtiness and the fact that he might cry at any moment. His nails are long and elegant, or at least I’m sure he thinks so.

When I first arrived off the plane in Hokkaido wearing a full suit, carrying three bags and half terrified out of my mind, it was Mr. M who had been sent to collect me. You must understand the mindset that I was in at this moment. I had just spend three days in Tokyo, meeting ALTs of all nationalities and discovering a much needed sense of comradery with both ALTs from my home countries as well as ALTs from my future prefecture. I had taken an afternoon off from the seminars to wander around Tokyo in the sweltering heat listening to the Lost in Translation soundtrack. All the Hokkaido ALTs had got wasted at a Nomi Hodi and at least a few tentative friendships had been formed. Things were looking peachy.

And then, as we arrived off the plane at Chitose airport, we all waved our goodbyes and scoured the entrance nervously for our respective town representatives. It was at this moment that I saw Mr. M standing at the back, holding a little A4 piece of paper with ‘Telford Mills’ on it. I took a deep breath and strode over to him, introducing myself and attempted to shake his hand. He was so nervous that he could hardly speak. As he held out his hand, it shook so much that I was afraid I might snap it off. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat twice and told me his name in slow, regulated syllables and then pointed to the car park and walked off. I followed with my bags, sweating like a dog in a Chinese restaurant and utterly bewildered.

It became obvious on our three hour drive back to the place I now call ‘home’, that Mr. M was the most nervous man I have ever met. Despite the fact that he was one of the main English teachers at the High School, he spoke the language as if it might leap back into his mouth and attack him if he didn’t use it correctly. Any attempt at conversation saw him start to tremble and swallow, terrified several times before he answered. Occasionally, a drop of sweat would roll down his face, although he never seemed to notice. It was on this drive that I would also discover his fondness for the robotic-sounding ‘mmmmmmm’ which he employed when thinking for words he didn’t know. A typical example of our road trip conversation is as follows:

(Please imagine that prior to this, there has been 20 minutes of silence and a sinking feeling in my stomach as the landscape around us has slowly dwindled from lush green forests and shopping malls to brown shrubs and run down shacks. In an attempt to make the situation a little less dire, I decide to attempt some small talk.)

Me: So, is this normal weather for summer in Japan?

MR. M: (Startled looks at me terrified, swallows several times) I’m sorry, but ah...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

Me: The weather; is it usually this hot? In summer? The sun is very hot today. (point to the sun)

MR. M: mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....the sun?

Me: Yes, the sun; is it usually this hot in Hokkaido? (ridiculous hand gestures that don’t help anything)

MR M: (starts trembling; a drop of sweat makes its way down his cheek) I think that...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...yes. (Suddenly relieved, as if he’s won a game of Russian roulette)

Silence for another twenty minutes.

Upon arriving at my town, amid the squalid plaster houses and sagging telephone wires, the beach appeared. Not much of a beach, but nonetheless, a combination of sand, gravel, seaweed and saltwater that was quite obviously the only attractive thing in the entire area. I pointed at it, and said, perhaps a little too much ecstatically: “The sea! I love the sea! It’s so beautiful! It must be nice to swim in it in the summer.”

Mr. M turned to me slowly and carefully said: “You cannot swim in there. Ever. because.......mmmmmmmmmmm.....you will die.” He turned back to the road. I undid my top button and knew that my spirit had been at least temporarily crushed.

At school, Mr. M keeps a quiet profile. He sips tea at his desk and hardly ever talks to anyone. He was not invited to join in the traditional exam time basketball match between the other male teachers and myself. He sometimes answers the staffroom phone but it is never for him. He has lived in our small town his entire life, which gives his personality an undercurrent of Norman Bates, although he lacks the tentative good looks.

I teach an English class with him several times a week, along with another, more normal teacher (let’s call him Mr. Y). At the end of the class, the three of us stand up the front and farewell the students with things like, “have a good afternoon” or “See you next week” or “Bye bye, everyone.” Mr. M gets so nervous during this ritual that he will often falter halfway through his farewell, ending up with: “see you next...” which the students will repeat in confusion.

I am apprehensive about his English teaching skills in general. Last week, in the class-theme of “what do you like better; A or B, and why?” Mr. M had to give an example of Summer vs Winter. Here is his conclusion:

“ I like winter better than summer because....mmmmmmm....I don’t like skiing. I like to drink hot alcohol.”

No one understood what he was talking about and Mr. M was banished to the back of the class by the Mr. Y, who was a newborn son and no time for crap from anyone. Mr. M flicked back his hair and sat with his legs crossed. He pouted.

My theory on Mr. M is that he an example of a homosexual repressed by Japanese society. This is not only the result of his pouty expression, manicured nails and his Sebastian-themed hair style. During another class of his—this time freed from the supervision of Mr. Y—he attempted to spread the joys of English by getting his students to memorise the lyrics to an Oliva Newton-John song. The song was called ‘Have you Never been Mellow’ and is probably the most atrocious song I have ever heard in my life. Mr. M played seven times in a row from her greatest hits CD. The students eventually gave up work and began watching Mr. M mouth the lyrics quietly to himself with his hands emotionally clenched into fists.

However, my favourite Mr. M story (so far) takes place during my welcome party many months ago. For my benefit, all thirty of the teachers had to stand up and introduce themselves and their subjects, and I assume some witty anecdote; none of which I got because it was all in Japanese. When it was Mr. M’s turn, he nervously stated his name and the Japanese word for ‘English Teacher’ and then turned to me and in dead seriousness, concluded:

“I’ve been to paradise, but.....mmmmmmmmm....... I’ve never been to me.”

Later, when we were all at karaoke, I made him sing it and he pretty much smiled with happiness. Perhaps I will get him a copy of Priscilla Queen of the Desert for his birthday, if he has one.

(ps. I just changed the blog settings so that anyone can leave a comment now, you don't have to be an elite member to be cool. Although it does always help, of course.)

Hey Mr. Ambulance Driver

2009-02-09T01:46:00.000-08:00

This country continues to perplex me.

Last Tuesday, I went to the Death Hospital across the road from apartment to sort out a lump that’s developed on the sole of my foot. I’ve never been into the hospital before, although I have cursed it many a time when an ambulance comes blaring down the street at 3am. The ambulances here don’t just do the siren thing, but a few blocks from the hospital, in a blatant residential area, they will get on the loud (LOUD!) speaker and yell things over and over again in a shrill voice. I have no idea what this achieves.

For one, the siren is piercing enough scatter the cars to the side of the road, and at 3am (actually anytime after 8pm), there ARE no cars on the road. When I first arrived in my town, I was convinced that the loud speakers were an urgent way to alert the doctors that they were arriving with some sort of Grey’s Anatomy-worthy freak case of a guy swallowing an umbrella. But as the nights went one and the loud speakers stayed constant, I began to realize that the patients must fit more into the dull domestic sphere of accidents; broken hips and the like. Surely there is some kind of ambulance intercom or a cellphone they could use instead of waking three apartment blocks of sleeping citizens??

To be fair, with my limited knowledge of Japanese and speaker distortion, I have no idea what they are actually yelling so frantically about for five minutes. I often wonder if it a detailed description of what’s happened to the patient, complete with a passive aggressive warning about cutting down on red meat or not running with scissors.

Either way, this almost nightly ritual has become a nightmare in itself, with my apartment about ten meters from the hospital’s coveted ambulance entrance. One night there was an ambulance influx, with five arriving within a four hour dead-of-night time frame. After the third one, I got up at downed two shots of tequila which knocked me out, until the next one came groaning along at 4 am.

Anyway, the visit inside this building was somewhat of an anticlimax. I expected to see teams of ethnic surgeons rushing around performing miracle surgeries and having hot affairs. Not so. Everyone who is sick (or doesn’t wish to get sick) in Japan must wear a paper surgeon’s mask to prevent germs, and so the hospital waiting rooms looks like a SARs evacuation area. (These masks are also work by teachers at school, which often makes it rather tricky to catch the words at the back of the class. They do have other purposes as well; one of my students pulled down her mask to show me the three lip piercings she’d got secretly over the weekend.)

However, it was the bathrooms that really got me. Of the three that I went into on different floors (the first for emptying my bladder and the following two to make sure I wasn’t imagining things), not one had any kind of hand drying device. Paper towels? Nah. Some kind of hot air? I wish. And so, all these people with colds and flu’s are going around with damp hands, spreading more germs than if they didn’t wash them in the first place. Either way, it’s rather a disconcerting prospect. Perhaps this explains the plethora of ambulances; the masks obviously just aren’t cutting it.

My faith in the Japanese health system been shaky at the best of times. A fellow ALT went to the doctor to get her cold sorted and was given a pap smear. Another was told that his sore throat was a result of tonsillitis, despite the fact that his tonsils were removed several years earlier. After a week on antibiotics, the lump on my foot is still painfully in residence. Clearly ANOTHER visit to the hospital is in order in the next few days; I’ll keep my readers updated. I must admit, the whole thing is very bizarre and makes for a good blogging. But I still can’t walk.

My other discovery of the week was that the inside shoes/outside shoes rule is applicable even to those who can’t walk. The boy with cerebral palsy now uses a wheelchair (perhaps a result of being made to run a ten kilometre race through the hills last year so that he wouldn’t fail P.E.) and when he leaves school, he has to change from his inside wheelchair (which is blue) to his outside wheelchair (which is red). This was in addition to him changing his shoes as well. A few days later at another school, I waited around the entrance to witness the same wheelchair changeover with the paraplegic student, shoes and all.

I don’t really get it. You’d think that if someone can’t walk you could cut them a bit of slack on the shoes front. And how much do wheelchairs cost? But then I guess with all the snow on the ground, it makes some sort of sense. I can no longer fathom the wearing of outdoor shoes inside, especially in the depths of a drizzly winter. That’s the thing about Japan; it gets under your skin. I swear that there’s logic to it all, somewhere.

Are you... local?

2009-02-05T01:27:00.000-08:00

With my tendency towards cynicism, there are moments where I feel that I have been too hard on my small town. True, it has about as much character as a stale piece of toast, and the majority of the buildings are sprawling complexes or run down shacks. The population of the entire coast has been steadily decreasing over the past two decades, as people move to the cities and no one moves in to take their places. One of the schools I teach at only has a fifth of the students it had a decade ago, so most of the classrooms are empty, full of dust and cobwebs. It makes me wonder what my town will be if I come back in twenty years (not that I ever would, life being too short and all that). I am envisaging that town out of What’s Eaten Gilbert Grape; a wee nothing in the middle of nowhere with a couple of Seicomarts and the odd intrepid German tourist. When I came to Japan, I was expecting Lost in Translation; what I got was The League of Gentlemen.

In the summer, things are much better. One can go for a run along the shoreline and if you go at the right time, the sunset in pretty stunning. Still, I can see why the population is draining away. Aside from the aesthetic unpleasantness, there really is nothing to do here. If you want to go out on Saturday night, you can do karaoke, or you can do karaoke.

Take last Saturday for example. My ALT buddy and his girlfriend and I were attending a dinner with some members of the English class we teach and planned to follow this with ‘a night on the town.’ For the first time, the ridiculousness of this phrase occurred to me. People use it to describe getting dressed up and having a blast courtesy of the bars and nightclubs on offer; something which can never actually be achieved IN a town but really only in a city. How I miss the going out on the town in the city. A paradox of amazement.

At dinner, my ALT buddies, being English and Australian, began the inevitable accent taunting. Now, I admit a certain amusement at the accent game. The odd mispronounced vowel can make quite the punch line after a few wines. However, this was something else. For two hours, I was made to perform for the table’s amusement. Oh, the laughs they had. The difference between ‘ten’ and ‘tin’ proved a highlight, as I was made to repeat each word over and over again to see if the bewildered Japanese diners could tell the difference. Any attempt to change the conversation would only result in another gleeful imitation of the New Zealand brogue. By the end of the meal, the table was in hysterics as I stumbled my way through ‘batter, better, bitter, butter’ and tried not to channel Patrick Bateman.

This was followed by a visit to a karaoke box. It was hardly a suprise given that in my town, there is not a single bar without a karaoke machine lurking in the corner. This is all you can do, no matter where you go, and after six months of it, the novelty has long since worn off. My favourite part is when you are lobbed a hefty 400 page encyclopaedia of songs, only to find the English songs buried in a six page appendix at the back.

Still sore at being the party’s court jester, I was made to suffer through the unavoidable set list of brown* anthems, including The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, U2, The Killers and my personal insufferable favourite; Queen’s ‘We are the Champions.’ The key to a good karaoke IS the songs and there are only so many times you can listen to someone singing ‘Mr Brightside’ with their eyes closed before you want to kill yourself. I got so bored that I ended up requesting ‘Que Sera Sera’ (after having watched Heathers the night before) although I don’t think anyone got the joke. At least the Japanese songs were fun.

Still not drunk, we decided to spend a couple of hours getting wasted at another bar, also karaoke-themed. The accent mocking continued, as well as the odd dig at my somewhat eccentric behaviour. We ordered a bevy of different drinks and the only ones that didn’t take were, ironically, the gin and tonics, which my fellow ALTs took a few sips of and then ordered another vodka orange.

Stupidly, whilst on the subject of Australian film, I brought up Bad Boy Bubby, and, after relaying the plot, was given one of those ‘well, I’ll stay well clear of that one’ looks of disgust which I have become used to but am rather sick of. I downed my drink and cried out in my best non-New Zeland accent: "Go on then, take the precious things of the shop! Burn down our home! Rape our dead mouths!" I got the look again, but this time it pleased me.

As the evening progressed, one of the Japanese girls from the English class began some rather unsubtle flirting after I stupidly admitted that I did not have a girlfriend (but didn’t follow it up with why). I felt sorry for the poor girl, who is lovely, but it got a bit awkward in the drive home, when she began seductively playing with my hair and then asked if she could sleep over at my house. I freaked out and made some excuse about needing to be dropped off at a Seicomart to buy some milk and ended up walking the rest of the way home; finally smoking the cigarette I was deprived of all evening with dull lectures on lung cancer.

This is about as exciting as my town gets. I think the smart thing to do would be to sit in next week with a bottle of whiskey and the Luis Bunuel back catalogue and get wasted on obscure cinematic goodness. It seems to be the less traumatic option.

*It must be noted for those who don’t know that ‘Brown’ is not used here in the racial sense. It is a term coined by my university chums to describe people or things of a certain dull and clichéd nature. Although I am frequently told that I cannot describe it accurately, some examples of brown traits include: drinking bourbon and coke; watching Anchorman; quoting Borat; Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of 69’; playing drinking games such as ‘Lock in’ and ‘Hundy Club’; The Da Vinci Code; doing a yard glass at your 21st, Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’; Pirate and Ninjas themed parties; Marc Ellis; taking herbals. I actually paused for a good ten minutes to think of a word to replace it with, but there is none. If anyone has a better, simpler description, I would be most grateful.

Those Dreamhouse Heartaches

2009-02-02T02:43:00.000-08:00

Taking inspiration from the great Kiran, I am inclined to let me obsession with music spill over into this interweb document; thoughts and lists and all the things the separate those who read Pitchfork from those who don’t. Or, as Kiran so articulately puts it, “Bitchdork.”

A word about Pitchfork then. Pitchfork is like smoking. You pick it up in your late teens because it makes you look and because (shhh don’t tell anyone) you find you actually quite like it. Those art-wank reviews of the latest Fiery Furnaces EP? The pop ups for obscure festivals headlines by bands you’ve never heard of? Brilliant,right? Eventually, most indie kids, at least partly weaned on Pitchfork’s diet of Godspeed! your Black Emperor and Pavement (and no doubt acquired some cred and a girlfriend or two in the process) decide to cut the apron strings. This brings up to the inevitable anti-Pitchfork stage, which appears to be mandatory for every Mighty Mighty-inhabiting, stovepipe-wearing so and so. Kids suddenly begin to sneer at the pretentious reviews, the endless Bowie references. They adopt a sudden vengeance against The Arcade Fire ask with a sneer if anyone remembers when they thought The Strokes were cool.

This is where I sigh and try to offer an explanation. These kids, with their ego boosts and their Camel cigarettes have NOT successfully renounced Pitchfork. Instead, they have BECOME Pitchfork, for it is only when one is so drunk on a diet of themselves and overpriced vinyl that they think they can truly believe that their music taste surpasses that everything that has got them there in the first place.

I am not saying that Pitchfork is gospel; far from it. It is unashamedly ostentatious (although, ironically, anyone who uses that word probably is), and you can argue till the gazelles come home whether album X should have been placed a few places higher on the top 50. But the bottom line is this; If one disowns Pitchfork, where are they going for their next musical fix? Not Rolling Stone, stuck in the Seventies and constantly on the lookout for the next AC/DC. Not Q Magazine, who tend to give five stars to the album FOLLOWING a classic and in the last decade, have named both Coldplay and Keane as band of the year, TWICE. And surely not NME, which, once a respectably eclectic publication, has pissed its credible pants in order to keep the spirit of working class British Rock alive, and helped launch the inane careers of The Libertines, The Arctic Monkeys and all those that slid down the pile after them.

Pitchfork needs to be taken with a few tablespoons of salt and god knows I disagree with a lot of their musical de jours. As much as I’ve tried, I hate Pavement. I can’t stand Sonic Youth, Fiery Furnaces, Modest Mouse, or Broken Social Scene and am bored to tears by TV on the Radio. But that won’t stop me trawling through their top 100 albums of the Seventies every few weeks and picking a few to try on. If it wasn’t for Pitchfork, I doubt I would know about Godspeed! your Black Emperor or Panda Bear. People still care about which album Pitchfork puts as number one, because, although it may not be the best, it might just be the most interesting. And most importantly, I think Pitchfork shows you that when their top five singles for a year has Kelly Clarkson and Justin Timberlake rubbing shoulders with Animal Collective and Joanna Newsom, that they really don’t give shit who’s cool or who you think is cool. They have no pretensions. If they think an American Idol contestant has a great tune, they’ll shout about it; fuck the indie kids.

This is my favourite thing about Pitchfork. It taught me not to be ashamed of what I have on my ipod, and that Britney Spears and Gang of Four can happily co-exist in the same hemisphere, if you want them to.

I think more self-confessed musos need to learn that.

So anyway, musical thoughts. Well, at least one.

Roxy Music: For your Pleasure (1973)

Is Bryan Ferry for real? Roxy Music, with their glam-tastic saxophones and Eno's shimmering synths are a lot sexier than any band with two members called Brian (at this point anyway) deserves to be. Listening to For your Pleasure is like having the best sex of your life, and partway through they pull out a gimp mask. It turns you on in all the wrong places. ‘The Bogus Man’ is a gloriously spooky nine minute Zappa-esque prog anthem with pervy lyrics whispered too close to the microphone. ‘Grey Lagoons’ slides effortlessly between a gorgeous gospel piece (and quite clearly the inspiration for entire Antony & the Johnson franchise) and a piece of air guitar-worthy cock’n’roll. ‘Editions of You’ is Franz Ferdinand if they knew how to pout and had more sex.

But it’s ‘In Every Dream home A Heartache’ that keeps me coming back. Somehow, Ferry has a taken an ode to a blow up doll and turned it into a sexy, claustrophobic masterpiece. It must be the most fucked up love song ever written. And yet after three minutes of teasing, when he purrs “I blew up your body...and you blew my mind!” and that guitar comes in, you realize what life is really all about. The only way I can describe it is as a cross between Led Zeppelin and Eyes Wide Shut.

A dream album then, and a perfect antidote to the new ‘sexy’ era U2. Shudder.

OMFG possibly the best 2 mintues and 55 seconds of my life

2009-01-30T22:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlu_QoeJSKw

So, somehow two of my favourite people on Earth have met, collaborated and (let's be honest) probaby pashed. To come across this video was such an delight that I almost spat out my sake with excitment. This is my favourite description of the video:

"Ms, Sevigny plays a "post-apocalyptic go-go dancer set loose in a Dada-ist pastiche of psychedelic imagery and characters. Unfortunately it isn't a Hugo Ball-style Brown Bunny homage."

(Ok, so I didn't know who Hugo Ball was either. According to wikipedia, his is the founder of the Dada movment; which aimed to overthrow the bourgeois ideals of art to create a form of 'anti-art' which would destroy traditional culture and aesthetics and offened everyone. It has been described as "the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man." Obviously, it is right up Ms. Sevigny's alley. You can look at some delightful Dada works on this website: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5191892 Also of interest, this is apparently an example of a post-post modern Dada: http://www.platinumgrit.com/poke.html Perhaps this is the closest we will get to a Dada homage to The Brown Bunny.)

What would be truly amazing is if, when I see Beck in Osaka in March, Chlo Sev will be there, wearing this EXACT oufit and make up, and will perform her dance to this song slash every song in the Beck set. Then perhaps we could hang out after the show, getting out of control in downtown Osaka, WITH Beck, doing tequila shots and ending up at karaoke where she and I would do a romantic slash wasted duet of 'Crying' and maybe 'Nothing Compares 2 U' for good measure.

OK, so I am getting a bit too excited now, but lets be honest; it could happen.

Snow and Self-deprecation

2009-01-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

Today at school, I went through the traumatising task of marking my English class’s diaries. A favourite topic for students is their Club Activity, mainly because it takes up about a third of their life. For those of you who don’t know, Japanese schools like to take the idea of an after school activity and run with it. From what I have gathered in my six months in Japan, each student chooses a Club Activity to supplement their school workload, be it baseball, soccer, archery or tea ceremony club (exactly what it sounds like; the Japanese version of ‘ladies who lunch’). Each student is only allowed to choose ONE Club Activity, and there is no changing Clubs in midstream; if you start playing basketball when you hit puberty, your shooting hoops until you’re a man. Also, art and music are included in this category, so if one is artistic AND athletic, Japan may not be your cup of green tea. It’s like a co-curricular Sophie’s Choice. Art class is primarily a lesson in fruit bowls and vases of customary flowers, and I have heard rumours that the art is thrown away at the end of each year, due to something about the school supplying the materials. Odd.

Anyway, the students must practise their Club Activity for approximately four hours a day and it never seems to get them anywhere. This is where the diaries come in. No matter how hard they practice, how many hours of hard labour they put it, it’s never enough. I have to mark diary like:

‘I practiced the trumpet for four hours this morning. We had a concert practice this afternoon. I played a wrong note by mistake. I have no talent.’

I try and write semi-uplifting comments like ‘I am sure you will do better next time!’ but no matter how many smiley faces I draw enthusiastically in red pen, it still kills me a little inside. Green tea helps of course.

It’s snowing outside again. I wonder if there is a way to have snow without the cold, because cold is the killer.If snow was less chilly, or lukewarm, there would be snowmen everywhere. I might Google it.

A teacher’s cellphone just went off really loudly. The ringtone was ‘Lovefool’ by The Cardigans. Amazing.

...where do I begin? Why of course, with Gin!

2009-01-28T00:32:00.000-08:00

And so, being bored, literate and full of coffee, I have decided to start a blog. I have pondered the name for hours, going over endless combinations of ridiculous things which could have worked but probaby wouldn't (I confess to briefly considering the idea of calling it 'Suicide Brunette'), but when it came down to it, there was only one name which would work; The perfect combination of Bombay Sapphire gin and Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes. As I sit here writing, I have one small wish for the gods to grant; I wish to get a big bottle of gin, some tonic and a bag of lemons (or preferably limes, being a pretentious ex-Cuba Street indie kid) and get wasted with Elaine.

I think gin would suit Elaine. I have always thought that different alcohols served as different kinds of drunk. With white wine, one slides slowly into drunkenness, hardly aware of it as it creeps up on you, suddenly realising that your words are slurring and you need to retain your last few motor skills to work that corkscrew one more time. With red, it’s more or less the same, but with a hefty sense of attitude. Red wine drunk makes people intellectual, or at least think they’re intellectual. Deep seated opinions and ridiculous theories come spilling out because people think that by getting drunk (not just drinking but getting DRUNK) on red wine, they are now members of some cultural elite, even with their stained teeth. Vodka drunk, to me, has always been the most dangerous of the inebriations. This is mainly because it has no taste and therefore no limit. Vodka drunk is always a perilous walk (or stumble) on the edge, frequently ending in tears, or vomit or a blank slate which is painfully filled in the next morning between bouts of hangover.

Tequila is a step further still; the closest the alcohol world has to a hallucinogenic drug. It’s a party in a glass, and a single shot can have you walking into walls. Then there’s beer drunk; arguably the dullest and most laborious kind. With beer, your intellectual level goes down, and there’s always the double bugbear of feeling bloated and having to piss every ten minutes. Beer drunk is both an easy and difficult thing to achieve and good if you don’t want to do anything for the rest of the evening, talk about sex in a basic way and eat fried chicken. It reminds me of my building site days, when somehow you were a pussy if you drank anything over 6 percent.

Whiskey is a mature drunk. Suddenly things make sense in an excellent way and you feel totally grown up. This is because Whiskey is cruel mistress; she’ll treat you mean if you’re underage and its best to have a few bad vodka experiences before tentatively filling your glass with Canadian Club. Things can get heavy on whiskey, but good heavy, like being wrapped in a really thick, cosy duvet.

But for me, Gin drunk takes the crown. It’s got the best bits of all of them: the intellectual stimulation of red wine, the maturity of whiskey and, most importantly, the disguised party nature of tequila. Gin is the true party spirit; the world’s best kept secret. Music sounds better on gin; cigarettes taste better. Conversations become dream things, the stars sparkle. People who disown gin as ‘an old people’s drink’ don’t realize that this is only the case because they got there first. On a good night, with a few friends and some Daft Punk on the stereo, it can change your life.

So, back to Elaine. Gin and Ms. Benes...can anyone think of a better alcohol/TV character combination? Think of the conversations, the anecdotes, the DANCING!!! I am also pretty sure I could convince her join me for a sneaky cigarette or three on the balcony. And then, for the rest of the night, we would have New York to party in, and who, in any possible mindset, could possibly ask for more than that?

And so, that is my dream, my inspiration and my muse for all that follows. My hope is my writing can one day be as good as that; as amazing and as truly awe-inspiring combination of Bombay and Elaine.