Not A Fall, But A Decline

The class having to follow up my rock ‘n’ roll course never stood a chance.  It’s like going on a vacation to Disney Land, and the next year you go to a mini-golf course.  It will be fun, but always pail in comparison to the last experience.

Pity my latest course then, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. It’s a really good class focusing on a subject I’m surprised is so interesting (the said decline and fall of the British Empire). It isn’t tough, and the reading sometimes comes across as enjoyable. But the shadow of my last class still looms large, simply because the teacher spent half-an-hour lecturing about David Bowie.

My current teacher couldn’t be more the polar opposite of my last instructor. He’s actually a teacher, whereas my last “professor” had no teaching credentials and decided he could make a couple extra quid by teaching about a subject he knows. My current teacher looks like a cross between Chris Farley and Benny Hill, a weird hybrid that ends up looking a lot like Peter Griffin. He wears ties resembling Christmas candy kids always pass on. His shirts fit way too tightly for a man of his circular-ness.

The teacher also has the strange habit of viewing everyone of his students as representatives of the United States. The study abroad office told us before we left we technically were representing our country, but that was only in reference to drunken chaos and safe sex. My teacher teaches historical facts like we caused them – “thanks to YOU blokes, we lost a lot of money!” Every lessons feels like an inquistion for something I wasn’t aware I had done 50 years ago. He expects us to know obscure British actors – “how could you have not heard of him! He was in Moonraker!” – and have been well-read on Orientalism. He seemed shocked people hadn’t read every book George Orwell ever wrote, though he had a point for the souls who never opened 1984.

The class composes nine other students. Three of these people activley talk and engage the professor throughout the courses two hour running time. The rest of us sit their and pray for no awkward silences. Which, of course come frequently. The professor asks a question – “what did you think of Heart of Darkness> – and meets complete silence for upwards of thirty seconds. He realizes nobody will speak and saves face, offerring his insight on the matter and moving on.

We have two assignments for the entire course – two papers. The British don’t feel the need to tell students what they want or how many sources they should cite, as they’d rather leave these crucial details up to the student’s imaginations. My latest professor is no different – write about imperialsim and Heart of Darkness. And…go!

Again, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire isn’t close to being a bad class, and it’s still a lot more interesting than a fair amount of history classes I’ve had at Northwestern. But it just feels like I’m going to undervalue this course because the last one I took at Sussex rocked so hard.

Well, I still get credit for it, who cares!

The Cool Streets Of Brighton

I’m not one of those people offended by the mass amount of chain stores dotting the world today and apparrently “killing off” local culture. I don’t want every cafe in the world replaced by a Starbucks, but I like a healthy mix of unique local joints and brand recognizable chains filling a city. Call me crazy (or lard-obsessed), but seeing a Burger King in a city makes me feel both comfortable and familiar (all those Evanston BK moments come rushing back, like the time I bought a chicken sandwich at 5 A.M. sober and wondered what had happened to me).

One reason I do loathe massive chain stores, though, is because they play the absolute worst music in the world. Walking through Target exposes one to more than low, low prices – they also face the aural blitzkrieg of Jack Johnson and Will.I.Am (capitalized? I hate him more now). Best Buy assualts listeners with the latest Kid Rock track, while Starbucks softly unleashes the barely-there mumblings of Norah Jones on customers. I heard McDonalds played Broken Social Scene once, and I nearly had an out-of-body experience, since they usually leave the dial turned to the same station Local on the 8’s gets their tunes.

The British don’t have such a big problem as America when it comes to chain in-store music. Yes, they have a lot of crap, but sometimes you hear a treat while walking through the mall. I’ve heard respectable pop songs by Estelle and not-as-great-but-OK song byDizzee Rascal (the latter actually being the number one song in the country right now…weird). “Crazy in Love” at BK? Thanks England! I heard Jamie Lidell blasting at Poundland, the British equivalent of the 99 cents store. Not sure how I feel about that.

Brighton’s a pretty cool story if the chain stores are blasting Fleet Foxes. But it’s the other half of the store-equation, the unique local places, that steal the super hip spotlight. I spent today wanderring The Laines (yes “laines,” British can’t spell), compact streets harboring all sorts of rad restaurants and shops. And boy, were they hip. Especially when it came to in-store soundtracks.

After starting the day off at the no-music-featuring Gourmet Burger Bar (lack of music made up for by delicious pesto and mozzarella burger), I shopped. I wanted a few t-shirts, so I frequented mostly clothes stores, trying to find something visually cool but not terribly stupid, a tough challenge since the current trend in British t-shirts is to have garrish text and nothing but garrish text.

Even when the shirts failed to deliver, the music filling the tiny streets of the Laines made up for it. DJ Shadow’s “Midnight in a Perfect World” creeped out of a corner cafe. Spoon’s “That’s The Way We Get By” played loud enough to hear halfway down the street. A music store played High Places, while a clothes store cancelled out a strange, chlorine smell by playing Iggy and the Stooges and King Khan and His Shrines. It was like my iTunes shuffle hitting all the right moments.

The stores themselves sold pretty cool stuff, even if one shop sold what looked like bootlegged Threadless shirts and another provided tees of Star Wars characters saying stuff in German. My best find came in a store playing a Bonnie “Prince” Billy song and selling such wonderful t-shirts as “Stop: Hammer Time” and the Transformers logo. The winner, for me at least, continued the day’s hip theme: a shirt featuring one of the neatest album covers ever.

I really like how cool Brighton is. Being a snob helps. So does no “I Kissed A Girl” or any other similar nonsense. I can only hope the fine people of Fort Lauderdale can match Brighton’s level of hipness.

How come I doubt it can?

On Cloud Nine

Wow. I thought today couldn’t get any better after discovering those delicious cookies described below. But the Angels decided to make today one of those awesome today, by trading for one of the best First Basemen playing today.

So yeah, this rocks. A lot.

Cookie Day Or I Still Write Pretentious Reviews: English Cookies

I sometimes wonder why I write about food, becasue nobody else I know can actually eat at any of the places I talk about. That’s actually one of the surprising things I really miss from America – being around people who love to eat. Sounds funny (who doesn’t love to eat?), but the dollar-to-pound situation hear snubs out a lot of potential eating out experiences. A lot of people hear settle for classic dorm food like Ramen and white bread, instead of trying new stuff. Curse you, economics.

So there isn’t much point in writing about how I discovered the greatest cookie ever today. Nobody can go to this store (though the official website says they have one U.S. location in Salt Lake City, so if you really want to try it out…), so I have no reason to promote them. Why talk about how delicious these baked goods were if nobody else can ever experience them?

Whelp, I’m going to do it anyway. Sorry.

Next to one of my favorite record stores in Brighton (CDs for £5, a terribly tempting offer) sits Ben’s Cookies, a little stand beneath a red awning on a street better described as a kinda-wide alley. The booth looks about the size of a cookie store inside a mall, the ones you always see next to Wetzel’s Pretzels. I didn’t see any “Ben,” just three middle-aged women and a six-year-old manning the booth.

The businesses sketchy location could be mistaken for a one-shop-stop for narcotics, if it weren’t for the decorative sign hanging off the awning. Most cookie establishments I’ve frequented in the past make a big deal out of looking presentable, something Martha Stewart would be proud of before bitching about it when the cameras stopped rolling. Ben’s Cookies has one row of cookies underneath a glass guard, and that’s it. You can’t even see the menu until you are right next to the cash register, and by then they are ready for your order. Just hope the final total leaves you pence-less in Europe.

The cookie varities run from “chocolate” to “triple chocolate.” They throw in a few fruit variations (“lemon” and the greatest of fruits “orange chocolate”) to appear slightly healthier, though if you plan on ordering anything “triple chocolate,” health isn’t your chief concern. The cookies are pretty cheap. I ordered a lemon cookie and, as someone who cares about his health, restrained myself and went with the double chocolate.

So, I already said these were the best cookies I’ve eaten in my entire life. Why, those not turned-off by a person eating cookies and then writing about it ask? I’m not sure. They just…were. The two cookies I ate were warm, but not too hot. They were fluffy, bordering on cake territory, but retaining enough of a cookie crunch to not enter identity-crisis area. The cookies were the right size – not so small that I would feel ripped off but not too big that I would vomit walking up the hill to the trainstation.

The actual taste of the desserts rocked hardest. I love lemon-flavored things, to the point where I linger around just a little longer in a kitchen if someone starts using lemon-scented dish soap, but said things can’t be too overbearing with the citrus taste, or else it becomes unbearable. Ben’s Cookie’s cookie snuck lemon in subtly, not pushing the lemoney-ness to the forefront but rather leaving it as a pleasant aftertaste. And the double chocolate! There was real, gooey fudge on this thing. I was afraid I was going to ruin my Angels shirt, it was that fresh. My heart weeped with every bite. That’s the sign of a good cookie.

Ben’s Cookies is the first foodstuff I’ve found in Brighton that actually manages to stand out as the best in my mind. I’ve had better fish ‘n’ chips in Seattle. I’ve eaten better pasta in Rome. I’ve eaten better chips at McDonalds. I’ve consumed better McDonalds at a Wal-Mart. I’ve had better nachos at a gas station (England, putting Doritos in a microwave doesn’t constitute nachos). I’m glad I finally found a culinary item, even if it’s one as simple as the cookie, that Brighton does best. And thank goodness there is a Ben’s Cookies in Salt Lake City.

Girls Aloud

Part One: Drama

One aspect of my life I fail to appreciate often enough is just how drama-free it has been. I’ve faced plenty of inner turmoil (who doesn’t?), but have rarely had to deal with any of the outward, person-to-person problems shown so frequently on Gossip Girl. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m not actually living life to the fullest, that I should be caught up in whirlwind debates about who made eyes with who and what decisions I regret 24 hours.

Nights like tonight, though, remind me I am in fact living a much more healthier life by not getting caught up in such drama.

A large chunk of my friends here at Sussex hail from my hallway, and most of them are girls. These girls, about five in total, formed a very close-knit group as our time here progressed, sticking together and going on all sorts of adventures. They are great people to hang out with, a mix of UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbra sophomores who never pass up the chance to live life to the fullest in a Brighton pub, bar or club.

Like all well-tied-together groups of girls, drama is bound to spring up. Last week, during the same pub crawl where I zonked out completely, one girl in the group met a boy from Brighton. The two talked and went off to the bar. Unknown to this girl, another girl in the group had already “called dibs” on this English boy, and the sight of him going off to the bar with her caused the dibbing girl to breakdown in tears and leave the club early. The girl with the guy, who I’ll call Michelle from here on out, didn’t realize anything was wrong. She wouldn’t find out she’d set off a drama bomb until Sunday.

The rest of the story remained a mystery to me, the journalist in me desparate to learn more, the dude in me screaming “don’t get involved!” I didn’t press for more details. I minded my own business and just read Orwell’s Burmese Days.

Tonight, I heard the rest of the story and discovered just how drama-dysfunctional girls can be, as Michelle hung out in my room and told her side of the story.

Of all the girls in this group, Michelle seems the most distant. She’s the oldest, a junior, who studies sociology at UC Santa Barbara. She’s the most reserved of the group, and also the least likely to go crazy drinking. Michelle told me she rarely drinks much back in the States, and is not remotely “boy crazy.” She’s a very nice person, someone who makes a three-hour conversation never feel like a chore.

The two of us are friends, but haven’t been extremely close during the program. We talk plenty, but before tonight our longest conversation lasted about 20 minutes and revolved mostly around the fact she needed to get rid of a cake she had. I soon realized the reason Michelle was here tonight was because she had no other friends to rely on at the moment – she spends most of her time with this girl group – and she needed to talk to somebody, anybody about her state.

So I listened.

After closing my window and blasting Joni Mitchell’s Blue to hide our conversation (Michelle was paranoid, and also a Joni Mitchell fan), she confirmed all the details from the pub crawl I knew. She went on to reveal the other girls had gone out of town for two days without telling her. They were, she said, still fuming over what had happened Thursday, though she had no idea they were angry. Michelle tries getting in contact with them, but only gets glib Facebook messages in response.

Sunday rolls around, and Michelle finds out they aren’t very happy with her for what she didn’t know she had did Thursday. She simply had started talking to the boy in question (about badminton, nonetheless), and had no idea another girl in the group had “called dibs” on him. The rest of the girls in the group didn’t buy her side of the story, especially the dibbing girl, who exploded at Michelle, telling her how “deceitful, malicious, calculated” and so forth her move was. Michelle denied it being on purpose. The others didn’t nudge. The argument had nowhere else to go from there. Tears flowed. Michelle hadn’t told anyone else this until now.

I could only listen, and couldn’t really offer any good advice on what Michelle should do. Listening to her story, my only thought was “this is stupid beyond belief.” Michelle, based on what I heard, simply didn’t hear about this “dibs” put on the guy she talked to. There was no malicious intent, based on what I heard. The others, though, blew the situation up to Greek drama levels of betrayal and tradgedy. All over a boy, nonetheless. This sounded all too much like a bad FOX drama, and in my mind people just need to chill out.

But at the same time, the female mind seems to function vastly different from the male’s. I’m not saying men and women come from different planets, like one bad line of books does, but it seems like the sexes tend to view these sorts of issues very differently. I’ve never seen a fellow dude generate so much drama over an incident like this – why is that? I truly don’t have the proper mindset to offer advice on how to make good with a group of girls. A manly handshake and invite to watch the game at my house wouldn’t work with the fairer sex.

I really wanted to help Michelle more. To offer up a great solution, to find a way to mend these relationships. But…I couldn’t. Michelle would tell them she didn’t know about any of this, while they would claim she did. Until someone broke from those stands, no progress would be made. With only three weeks left here, Michelle seemed resigned to just falling out with them. To just watching the past five weeks count for nothing.

I did all I could by simply listening. Sometimes, all you can really do is pay attention and play “Little Green” really loud.

——-

At this point, I feel it’s fair to hit on how I’m feeling at the moment. I’m feeling fine. Things have been slightly slower here recently – I haven’t had class since last Thursday. I seem to be sitting around a lot these days. Not bad, but I sometimes feel like I’m squandering my remaining time here. But I’m good.

The one urking issue on my mind at the moment is also one of the few things I can’t even really sum up in words (even if I was the only person who saw this, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t write down what’s been on my mind). It’s dumb, but something that has been on my mind since high school. Vague, I know, but I just want to write down that this thought is bugging me, even if I can’t summarize it.

Plus, after you read the next bit, you’ll cut me some slack.

————

Part Two: Drunkeness

After Michelle left my room, I got a call from a friend. Apparrently, one of my other female friends had consumed a few too many alcoholic beverages tonight. She had locked herself into a bathroom. I went off to help.

I don’t have much experience helping drunk people. I’m not very good at it. The most I can do is make sure the intoxicated party doesn’t die, which is a fine enough service. But otherwise, I’m pretty Bush League at caring for the sloppy drunk.

My friend in the bathroom seemed to be running into the wall in the restroom, begging us to help her even though the door was locked. We begged our case, pointing out the door needed to be unlocked if she wanted any help. After a few more minutes of cries and slams, the door opened up. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Nor was it a pretty sound, the noise of vomit forcing its way out of the mouth.

Everything my sober friend told me, coupled with a few drunken bursts of explanation from the boozed-up one, indicated she had gotten wasted because boys kept telling her to drink more. This happens a lot here – boy convinces girl to drink, even if she’s had roughly a bathtubs worht of liquor already. Works even better if an accent is involved. It’s a weird phenomenon, bodily urges crashing with bodily limits.

The next hour-and-a-half is a nightmare. The hallway sounds like a sick ward. Hurling noises combined with loud shouts of “I’m fucking not feeling good.” Lots of people coming out of their rooms to see what the commotion is all about. I tell them “we got this under control.” I hope I’m right.

Eventually, we decide we need to move her to her room. We pick her up as best we can, and quickly try to get her to her dorm. We collapse midway there, and spend 15 minutes in the middle of the hall, trying to control more fits of sickness. People come out of their rooms once again, this time not to help but to complain about how loud we are. We try again…and get her to her room.

After about another half-hour of getting her settled (she falls off her bed three times during this period), she passes out. It is at this point where I decide if a dramatic life equals this, I’ll stick with my boring old lifestyle, thank you very much. I go off to wash vomit off my t-shirt.

Foreign Bodies

It struck me today, while typing “happy birthday” on my Ukranian friends Facebook wall, I’ve interacted with more non-British people than British people in England. And I’m not talking about fellow American students on campus. I mean in Brighton and London.

Along with the proliferation of Rhianna music videos and Chuck Norris t-shirts, England has also adopted the tired-and-true American pasttime of welcoming in lots of outsiders, who end up working at the jobs nobody from the host country wants to work at, and then the natives go ahead and hate on them for it. It seem strangely appropriate I see this happen the most at McDonalds.

I haven’t really gone out of my way to make British friends, mostly because I don’t know what in the world we would talk about. All conversations I’ve had with British people thus far seem to focus on the fact I’m an American and they are English, and once that well of talk goes dry, there isn’t much for us to talk about.

Thus, the majority of my daily interactions come at stores or eateries. The university employs mostly English people, but going into Brighton changes everything. A lot of employees I end up interacting with are most definitely not English. They are German. They are Eastern European. They are Chinese. They are Brazilian. They are a few nonsensical words away from being The Swedish Chef.

But the diversity doesn’t end at the Border’s front desk. Thanks in large part to England’s complete lack of a culinary scene (simply putting a lot of butter on bread does not equal unique cuisine, England), foreign food shops dot every street in Brighton. Kebab stores are the dominant fixture around town, with glass windows usually featuring Arabic writing. Everyone raves about how good the Indian food in England is, and there seems to be more than enough places in Brighton to sample it. Chinese food places, along with the Chinese language itslef, are slowly-but-surely enveloping the city. Even all the Italian places here seem to have honest-to-God Italians working in them.

Brighton’s tourist appeal leads to a lot of nationalities flooding the streets at all hours of the day. The day seems dominated by French and Eastern Asian visitors snapping photos of just about everything, like they are in Disneyland, but all the attractions have been replacesd with crisp stores and Vodafone shopes. Italian and Spanish tourists take over the nightshift, and replace picture-taking with loud talking and standing still in an intersection for upwards of five minutes.

This mass diversity isn’t all that eye-opening to me – I am from the United States, where Los Angeles, Chicago and New York top anywhere I’ve seen in Europe so far in the “melting pot” game (not to mention in the welcoming department – there seems to be an occassional tension between the English and those not from the island). If anything, it’s just weird having a sampling of most of Europe (and beyond) all around me. I expected to only deal with English people, but my experience has morphed into a very global experience. Which turned out to be a very welcome surprise.

No Australians yet, though. Give it time.

In Transit…Or Not?

It’s a testament to how good my life is right now that the biggest question in need of answering right now in my life is whether I should travel anymore during my now down-to-three-weeks European stay. In a world where a man opens fire during a church play and hospitals are being blown up, my only big problem right now sounds almost as vain as wondering where I should vacation this year or whether to add another yacht to my armada.

But hey, a questions still a question even if it’s usually asked by the caviar-munching crowd, and deserves an answer.

I don’t have much time left in Brighton, even if 21 days seems a lot longer in my head than it actually is, and I suppose I need to make the most of my remaining time. Since I’ve explored every nook, cranny and American eatry in town, that means getting out and exploring Europe a tiny bit more. As a lot of people tell me, I may not come back here for a long time, so I need to squeeze in as many sights as I can.

But at the same time, staying pat in Sussex might not be a bad choice. Though I’m not nearly to the point where I need to sell my organs to avoid bankrupt, having some money left over from this trip for the rest of the year wouldn’t hurt. I may have seen most of Brighton, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough to do in this place over the next three weeks. Plus, as great as traveling is, it always leaves me needing a day of sleep to fully recover. I can never fall asleep on busses.

The list of places I could travel has also become drastically shorter. Airplane tickets become unreasonable, even on the cheapy airplanes where they fix most on-board problems with duct tape, if you don’t book a month in advance. Plane tickets to once attractive vistas like Barcelona or Lisbon or anywhere outside of Britain now cost as much as a minor medical procedure.

The locales left all sound appealling enough. I could try to find a ticket to go onto the school-sponsored trip to Brussels, home of waffles and, now, Budweiser. I could buy a rail ticket and explore Scotland, cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow (though I’ve always confused the former for Edmonton and feel I know enough about the latter from Belle and Sebastian albums). I could purchase a still sorta-cheap plane ticket to Dublin, a very attractive option. Or I could book a ticket, as most of my program-mates are, to Amsterdam. Though everything I’ve heard about Amsterdam indicates the only pasttime is buying and smoking weed legally, a scene I’m not remotely a fan of. And I need to take a drug test when I get back to the States.

The only thing stopping me from going anywhere is money, and that’s only because I’m going to need all the cash I can muster in the state when I go back to living an automobile-centric life. I’ve already visited two amazing cities outside of England, but those experiences have only made me want to travel more, to see even more of the world. The thought of staying still terrifies me – I’m thankful that I have not only had this opportunity, but will also get the chance to be thrown into the great unknown that is Florida and explore that place too.

By now, it looks pretty clear that I’ve convinced myself I should put together one last trip while here. But one other thought crosses my mind when analyzing this situation. Am I, perhaps, rushing this? Though I am, am I being a bit too touristy at the moment? Not in visiting places, but rather with my pace. It’s tough to truly appreciate a place when you are running from Metro to Metro.

A lot of people tell me to milk as much as I can out of this trip, because I may never have a chance like this again. Fair enough point…but why not? I’m most likely still too young and naive to see how grounding adult life will be (or maybe I’m just resistant to the inevitable), but I don’t believe just becasue I’m about to become a “grown-up” that I have to pack away all my ambitions with a mortgage and a middling reporting job. It’s probably dumb optimism on my part, but I’m not willing to subscribe to the idea I need to frontload my life with memorable moments, coast along for a few decades and then maybe get some last kicks in before I check out.

Plus, you know the dollar will eventually match or better the Pound in a few years, that’ll be the best time to go.

Regardless of whether I go anywhere else in Europe this trip or I stay put in Brighton and just head up to London a few more times, this trip sparked a desire in me to see as much as the world I can, a desire that wasn’t really that strong inside me before. That’s one of the most important results of this trip. It doesn’t matter if I go to Glasgow or Amsterdam or Dublin in the next three months. The important thing is that I know I WILL go to those places at some point in my life.

Except maybe Edinburgh, because there are probably better cities in Canada to check out.

I’m Talkin’ Baseball…Well, Actually Rantin’ Baseball

It’s almost one in the morning on a Saturday night. Most sane college students are out drinking or already passed out. But, due to a dodgy Internet connection in my room, I’m sitting in the nearly empty computer lab on the ground level of my dorm. Five other people are in the room, and they could care less about what I’m doing, as one is watching Queen music videos and another is immersed in anime. I’m fixated on the computer screen. I let out a sudden groan.

Juan Rivera just grounded into a double play.

I’ve abandoned a lot of my American traditions since coming to England (seeing all the new movies, eating bags of Sour Patch Kids, waking up early), but one I still hold onto across the Atlantic is following Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (ugghhhhh) baseball. I don’t care that it’s technically early Sunday morning over here and I’m spending it cooped up in a computer lab – I need to watch the Angels play the Baltimore Orioles tonight through the ESPN Gameday box, where the most baseball action I get is an animated baseball flying into the outfield, turing into a dialogue box.

If you love a specific sports team the way I pine for the Halos, you know exactly how painful it is not having the opportunity to see them play is. It’s like the worst unrequited love of all, caring for something so much (in this case, a collection of well-paid men and, I guess the Rally Monkey) but not even having the chance to see them in person. Non-sports loving people, it might be like really being into a musical or something and never getting a chance to see that live. But that’s not nearly as masculine as my love affair with an MLB franchise.

Going to Northwestern has helped me build up my long-distance baseball relationship skills for awhile, thankfully. Angel games, at least the ones happening on the West Coast, usually didn’t start until 9 or 10 in the Midwest, meaning I had to make my nights just a bit longer to catch the results. And since I was usually up until four in the morning anyway, this was never a problem. The only challenge I ever faced came from the hussy franchises of Chicago, who tried to make me unfaithful to my Angels. Thankfully, I avoided the charms of the White Sox (“hey, they won the World Series, everyone root for them!”) and the Cubs (the saddest of franchises, primarily because all the cool fans get obscured by the yuppie douchebags who want to drink a beer and pretend they are Vince Vaughn).

In England, catching most Angel games becomes near impossible. West Coast games start at roughly three in the morning over here, and the only times I’ve caught any parts of those games were when I was drunk. And I missed most of the game because it took eons to properly turn the computer on (turns out I was fiddling with a file cabinet). So, the only real time I get to catch an Angels game is when they are playing an East Coast team (MAYBE a Central Division team, preferably Detroit) or playing an afternoon game, which would start around seven in these parts.

My actual gameday experiences are about as exciting as you think a guy watching a series of numbers on a computer screen buzz by would be. I don’t hoot or holler in the computer lab, because I respect the kid watching Doraemon next to me. I leave the box open, do all sorts of other Internet things and check in appropriately. The next day, I try to find some video highlights. It’s basically the same way I listen to music – I watch YouTube videos. God bless the Internet.

The English sports culture certainly doesn’t help the matter. Soccer (or football, for you “accurate” folks) dominates all coverage here, with papers taking up five pages rambling about C-level teams. No paper in America would devote that much attention to the Lansing Lugnuts. The cruelest tease comes when the papers occassionally run MLB scores in the results jungle next to the fifth West Ham United feature of the day. Why even bother offerring me hope that someone in this country cares about baseball? I mean, outside of everyone here wearing Yankees caps, because no sporting club screams “AMERICA” more than the New York Yankees.

Worst of all is the other sport dominating coverage during this time of year in England – cricket. It looks like baseball, but dear God it is not baseball at all. As someone who has watched NASCAR races and the hot dog eating championships on live television, cricket is near unwatchable. People complain that baseball is boring, and it can be, but cricket is both excruciatingly unexciting and impossible to comprehend. The games go on for like three days at a time. I’ve tried watching it everytime they’ve shown it at the gym, and end up getting confused as to why the one guy tried to touch the wooden things with his bat while the other guy runs around while the ball went someplace else. Cricket teases some of the finer parts of baseball (there is a bat and a ball) but ruins it with a lot of crap (everything else).

But the most frustrating thing about this frustrating situation that is being relayed in a frustrated blog post? I have to “watch” my favorite baseball team in a country that embraces one of the dumbest sports ever imagined (they also show darts on TV…ESPN Classic wouldn’t even do that) all while the Angels are absolutely kicking ass. They have the best record in the league, they have a huge lead in the division and look like they may actually (fingers crossed) have a shot at winning the World Series this year. If they can beat the Red Sox in the playoffs. I want to watch them play excellently, root for them surrounded by other fans, not people who think “baseball” equals a Derek Jeter t-shirt. I want to yell, and shout, and hold my Rally Monkey, and….

Yes! The Gameday box says Howie Kendrick just drove in a run! Update faster text box!

Dispatches From Saturday Night

It’s Saturday night, and I’m opting not to go out into town tonight. I’ve gone out the last two nights (even if one evening was spent watching a movie instead of visiting a pub), and just want to sit in front of the computer and read Heart of Darkness for class. It sounds pathetic, but I think a nice night spent relaxing can’t hurt every once in awhile. And, to compliment this easy night in, I’m just going to jot down a few thoughts I’ve had today. No specific subject, no overarching theme. Just a loose collection of thoughts.

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Today at the train station, I saw something I’ve never seen before; Barack Obama on the front of a newspaper. As I’m sure you’ve heard, he’s wrapping up his tour of the world, and chose to finish it off in London, with a visit to 10 Downing Street. Seeing Obama on the front-page of The Daily Mail was about all the fanfare his visit recieved, though – no hoopla, no speeches, no nothing besides a photo op with Gordon Brown.

The British don’t care at all about the election (which makes sense, seeing as Obama or McCain won’t be President of England), and I’m still sometimes surprised at how little I hear about it. At Northwestern, I couldn’t get away from “Yes we can!” and fist-bump YouTube clips. Now, when I incidentally am starting to get amped up for the election, I’m surrounded by indifferent people more worried about the Chelsea football team than Obama vs. McCain. As far as the British are concerned, Bush will be president for the next two milleniums, and all Americans should be ridiculed for this fact. And, they have a point.

Ah well, some press coverage is better than no Obama-mania. I just wish the other picture on the front page wasn’t a Photoshop of Gordon Brown wearing S&M gear. Yeah.

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I love the weather here. It has been perfect for about a week-and-a-half now. Never have midday walks been so pleasant.

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British drivers seem almost as bad as Midwestern drivers. Except Midwestern drivers at least stop for you when your in the street, instead of honking crazily at you in an effort to get you sprinting.

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Though not as good as the American version, British bacon rocks.

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I’ve been really good at not letting issues get me down while being here in England, but today I buckled a bit over the subject of money. Money is one of those topics that can really shake me up if I let it, and today I did. For the first time while here, I actually felt depressed, for about an hour.

I’m not even doing badly with money at the moment (I’ve actually surprised myself at how little I’ve spent compared to a lot of other people here), but certain financial topics topple me. Mainly, I hate thinking about how I’m draining other people of money (the absolute worst thing in the world to me is being a burden to someone else, that thought kills me). That thought usually doesn’t cross my mind, but when it does, I can get really downtrodden about it.

Part of why these money issues hit me so hard is because I’ve reached the point where I’ve realized I will soon have to support myself completely after college. I’m excited about life after Northwestern, but financing that life terrifies me. This thought leads into a whole new crop of thoughts that I’ll probably write about some other day, but I’m just a bit down right now thinking about money. I hate when it happens, but it still happens.

Why can’t life just be like the “Big Pimpin’” music video?

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Speaking of music, here are my current obsessions: this, this and this oldie.

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British thrift stores stock two types of t-shirts: shirts from random Midwestern colleges (if you need Bowling Green football shirts, hit me up, I can get like twenty) and shirts featuring Homer Simpson doing various things on them. Oh, and Nacho Libre shirts.

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I hate grass stains.

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Some days, I’m super excited about going to the Sun Sentinel and can’t wait to get to Fort Lauderdale. Other days, I’m not so pumped. Other days still, I just hope they have a Chipotle somewhere in state.

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I’m slowly realizing Brighton is absolutely loaded with adorable dogs, which makes trips into town that much better.

I Still Write Pretentious Reviews: The British Movie-Going Experience

Thanks to Facebook, I’m constantly being told by status updates how great new movies and, as a result, cursing the fact everything comes out later here in England. Wall-E just came out here, but everyone I know on Facebook already raved via a sentence displayed on the updates page. I’d love to join in the digital revelry, but my only options at the local cinema seem to be Kung-Fu Panda and Hancock.

I finally got my chance to get caught up with American cinema and take in a night at a British theater Friday, as The Dark Knight opened up in England. As far as summer films go, the latest Batman flick is THE definitive blockbuster of the season, what with all the hype around it. I don’t need to explain that. The Dark Knight popped up most frequently in friend’s statuses over the past week, a cruel reminder I had to wait slightly longer to rave about how amazing The Joker was.

Brighton has one movie theater, the massive, blue-hued Odeon. It’s wedged between a nightclub and the Atlantic Ocean. They have a really lame arcade on the first floor, featuring two claw machines and a “crash and bash” race car station. The lobby isn’t exactly the most thrilling place in the south of England.

One of the most pleasant surprises I’ve found in England, besides the low price Borders charges for The New Yorker, is how reasonable ticket prices are. Factoring in a student discount, one ticket to The Dark Knight cost £5, about $10. Not far off from ticket prices at a typical American movie theater, and not nearly as jarring as realizing your £6 Big Mac meal comes close to costing $12.

Speaking of food, the British concession stand looks like the god-damned Willy Wonka factory. Whereas in America you can choose from a few bags of candy, the British stack an entire wall up with plastic bins loaded up with gummy candies and chocolate candies and a ton of other mouth-watering sweetness. They also have rows of shelf space devoted to tubs of cotton candy (or candyfloss, as the Brits label it). There are bins stuffed with all-kinds of crisps. And, of course, they have popcorn (“sweet” and “salted”). The British don’t believe in putting butter on their popcorn, a fact that turned several of my friends off from the concession stand but that genuinely excited me (putting butter on popcorn is akin to eating a stick of lard, in my warped mind). I ordered a medium-sized popcorn, which came in a Meet Dave container. Shame England also has to deal with Eddie Murphy.

There was absolutely no reason to rush at the concession stand in order to get seats. This is because Odeon makes you choose which seats you’ll occupy when you get the tickets, like buying seats at a baseball game but without the opportunity to nab a back-to-school magnet. A few theaters in America do this, but the majority subscribe to a “first come, first sit” mindset that makes getting into the actual theater a lot more hectic than it should be. I liked how relaxed the British theater was – people hung out, talked outside, not stampeding towards the theater just so they could sit in the middle. They didn’t even open the doors to the theater until 10:30, when the movie was set to begin.

The actual interior of the theater wasn’t all that crazy, the only noticeable difference between this theater and the ones in America being lack of “stadium seating.” Otherwise, same design, same screen, same absurd number of commercials playing before the film. Except British commercials are a lot more elaborate than there American counterparts – in the U.S., a beer ad lasts 30-seconds and usually ends with someone getting hit in the groin. In England, the beer ad lasts a minute-and-a-half, barely relates to beer and features much more abstract jokes not involving a man getting punched in the nuts.

During these TV spots and, eventually, the previews, the British audience talked. Loudly. I feared that their loud chatting during the Hellboy II trailer would carry into the actual film, and that the English would be no better than those American film-goers who scream out “NO WAY HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT” whenever something exciting happens. Thankfully, the audience started getting quiet around the time the new James Bond trailer came up (off-topic: what a terrible name for a movie), and remained virtually silent during the entire film.

Unlike a few other European experiences (concert going, clubbing, using public transportation), watching a movie here in Brighton felt exactly like watching a summer blockbuster in America. The crowd clapped when the movie started and when Batman did something particularly badass (read: didn’t talk in a deep voice demanding to know “WHERE ARE YOUR FRIENDS”). They laughed when The Joker did something funny yet creepy, and audibly recoiled when The Joker did something nasty. And they glowed when the credits came up, clapping one last time and then talking about how great the last two-and-a-half hours were (which they were, great film, I highly recommend it). Sure, the concessions stand might have been bigger and if a tall person sat in front of me I would have been screwed, but the actual movie experience remained the same. It was nice to see that good entertainment doesn’t change because of lines on a map, and that people all-over the world can enjoy a film where a murderous clown blows stuff up.