How to pour Guinness, eating in LA and that pesky Arizona law.

This is a follow up to the post I put up last time; written in 2010 so the dates and views are from then; I wonder, on this day September 28th 2024, if Los Angeles is the same paradise as Ieft.

Well the medics, Remote Area Medical, have left Los Angeles after treating over 6,000 patients and after a couple of other states they are heading for Haiti – and more power to their elbows.
One or two people have asked me how we manage to eat out so often – well let me tell you it is very cheap to live here and very cheap to eat out. Petrol is about £2 a gallon – in the UK the last time I was there it was that much per 2 litres.
Last night we went out to eat at a French Restaurant at the Farmer's Market and it cost, for two of us, about £25. We both had boef bourguignon and a posh bottle of water so it would have cost more if we'd ordered a bottle of wine, I suppose, but you can see how cheap it is.
On Sunday we had a curry and it cost around £23 but there I had a few pints of Guinness.
The Indian food is not great here but we have found a few places – the Guinness is not that good and it's better to have canned Guinness and pour it properly.
The Guinness I drank on Sunday was from the pub next door to the Curry Palace on Sunset Boulevard where they open the can and dump it into the glass upside down.

If anybody came here straight from Dublin they would kill the bartender for doing that.

It makes the Guinness look like slops and it doesn't settle at all properly.
Guinness won an award for the design of the can and the widget inside to make the Guinness taste and look as close to draft Guinness as possible. The draft Guinness in the pubs here leaves a lot to be desired and to be honest nobody here has ever tasted a real pint of Guinness. They may be used to what they drink, and if they ever visit Dublin or even London they might not like the real stuff – a bit like people who are only used to eating processed food not liking the real stuff.
It's the same with the cheese – it's all processed – and there is no real dairy industry as the milk and cream have to be processed more than I am used to.
The milk – when I was there – in the British Isles is pasteurised and here it is homogenised; in Britain it was possible to save the cream from the top of the milk over many days and churn it into butter; if you tried that with the milk here you would end up with cramp and no butter.
Anyway, apart from the dairy and the Guinness, the food here is great. They haven't quite cracked English food and their version of Irish food with actual lumps in the mashed potatoes would cause another potato famine if it was introduced in Ireland.
I haven't drunk wine for a few years, by the way, which was the best decision I ever made – just whiskey and beer and the beer is usually Guinness. So none of those red wine headaches any more and I also object to drinking beer straight from the bottle so if that's the only choice I don't drink.
The area we live in is very nice; we overlook Runyon Canyon and see plenty of palm trees, humming birds and a lot of greenery.

In this shot you can see the welcome you get when you get to the gate of the canyon which might frighten people who are scared of snakes away but I have been over the canyon hundreds of times and I've only seen two or three snakes. I've seen plenty of other things there though like a woodpecker. I have heard them all my life but here I actually saw one.
There are also loads of butterflies and a morning yoga class just as you walk through the gate.

The other photo is on the way down the canyon and you can just see the roof of our building – right at the part where the canyon disappears; the flat roof.
All the talk here at the moment is about the new immigration law in Arizona where cops will be able to stop people, who they suspect is an illegal immigrant (what they call illegals or illegal aliens) and ask for papers. The chances of them asking me is quite remote so they will have to racially profile people with brown skin – the Latino.
The Latino does a lot of the work here by the way, and the Latina; they sweep the streets, do the gardening and do a lot of the manual work the Americans won't do and if they don't do that you can see them selling oranges on street corners. Of course I have heard that the gangs rip them off for, what can only be called, protection money.
What you don't see the Latino doing is begging; there are lots of beggars here after spare change; they are not called beggars they are called pan handlers – is that the politically correct way I wonder?
Santa Monica, I would say, have the most beggars around here; nearly as many as San Francisco, and you see all races begging except for the Latino. Some people just come up to you in the street with their regular decent clothes on and ask for money. Sometimes it comes as a shock, if they're well dressed, and another place you find beggars is at the traffic lights.
At the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard people are dressed as Jack Sparrow, Superman, Batman (he gets into fights) and other movie characters and they have photos taken with tourists who tip them – so they're begging too; in the richest country in the world.
The Los Angeles police are reluctant to get involved in immigration issues; they don't want undocumented immigrants being too scared to report crimes – I've always equated undocumented immigrants with sperms; the strongest come here and survive.
The Arizona law – which comes into force in a few months – signed April on 23rd by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, is similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.
Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
This was pointed out to me by someone who supports the Arizona law but I don't agree with any of it; just because someone else does it doesn't mean we have to.
If the border between Mexico and the USA was open or easy to pass through like it is between the UK and the rest of Europe there wouldn't be an influx of Mexicans to the USA; they would come here to work in the richest country in the world and go home at night or weekends or whatever. People don't really want to leave their own country; they want to stay with their friends and extended families; sometimes they want to, like me, but that is another matter.
So what do people really have against immigrants – maybe the way they look?

Looting toothpaste and flour in Haiti

Do you know what I heard on NPR the other day from one of the reporters 'in the field' in Haiti? Now I listen to NPR as it's the closest radio station to BBC Radio 4 so I expect fair non-bias reporting; the reporter said there was 'looting' in Haiti. Looting????


What kind of things were they 'looting?” The answer is flour.


That to me is not looting or even stealing – that is survival.


What did the reporter think that the so called looters were going to do with the flour – put it into packets and sell it as cocaine??


Shame on you NPR.


On that part of the island bodies are piled high and the stink of those bodies is unbearable so one of the other things that is being taken is toothpaste which they smear under their noses to prevent them from smelling the flesh of the decaying bodies.


Looting???


Of course there are criminals who live in Haiti just as there are criminals here and the criminals in the prisons in Haiti have, by some accounts, escaped from the damaged and demolished prisons – a lot of them killed too, I presume.


But why are some people so quick to look for the bad things; people like Rush Limbaugh for example?


Why does an arsehole like Rush Limbaugh say 'We have already contributed to Haiti – it's called US Income Tax'?


Answer me that – anybody! How can he be so evil?


The day after the earthquake people were coming up to reporters and journalists and asking for money because they were hungry; they wanted to join a queue where somebody was selling food.


Selling food in an emergency? Unbelievable.


Lots of people at the moment are leaving Port au Prince by buses as they are fed up of waiting for the rescuers to arrive and it is reported that the buses have doubled the fares - oh dear.


Now I don't want to come across here as mister angry from the comforts of my apartment in Los Angeles, as there is a lot of good being done to rescue people in Haiti, and if I was religious I would call some of the rescues miraculous, but from what I see and hear everything is arriving there too late.


The earthquake was six days ago and there are nurses who volunteered here in Los Angeles to go and the last I heard they were waiting for permission to go to Haiti; there may be a chance that they have to help from a ship in the bay.


That may be the best place for hospitalisation but to actually have to ask permission in the time of an emergency is ridiculous and who is going to get the victims – six days after the emergency and counting – to the ship?


I also detect, as well as in the news coverage, competition between the various countries and aid agencies to help; in fact a spokesman from France has accused the USA of actually occupying Haiti.


Just a short post for today – I'm off to Philippe's for lunch in down town LA – it's raining heavily so it will be an adventure.

News Cameras in Haiti and no aid!

It's seems futile to write anything even vaguely entertaining or even witty here today with the stress and hardship that is happening in Haiti; the news programmes here and the Internet was full of the late night talk shows debacle with NBC frightened to get rid of Conan O'Brien as they would have to pay him forty million dollars and all that news has rightly disappeared; I like to think that but I doubt it.

Now we have the news companies invading Haiti; the head newscaster of ABC, Diana Sawyer, is there; she flew in from Afghanistan to witness it on behalf of us all here in America.

She was dressed like a female Indiana Jones and squirmed her way through the broadcast whilst her underlings in America were left to read the rest of the news.

ABC already had reporters there with cameras and to get Diane Sawyer's flight into Port-o-Prince took a lot of negotiations as there is no tower at the airport and other airlines were in danger of running out of fuel as they had to circle the airport so many times.

Yesterday ABC were there when a baby was found amongst the rubble – they witnessed it but to hear them on TV you would think that they carried out the rescue.

It wouldn't surprise me if ABC has the baby they think they rescued flown back to the USA to make more false kudos out of it.

It beats me why the head of the news has to actually be there when the reporters were already there and it seems to be the same all over.

I flipped over to CBS and there was Katie Couric in Haiti and it must have been the same story there with her aircraft circling the airport and keeping other planes circling; maybe one of them was the one with Diana Sawyer on board or maybe one with urgent supplies.

The one person that should have been dressed like Indiana Jones was Brian Williams of NBC as his face was very sun burned when he was broadcasting from there last night; at least he gave his microphone to someone else who knew more about the situation there.

It's probably the same with every other country with their TV crews taking all the room on the island.

It must be terrible for the poor victims of the earthquake who are looking into the distance for help and they see a group of people coming towards them. They see the people getting closer and closer and the victims hopes build up but when the people get close they are a load of reporters with their cameras to take photographs and ask stupid questions; what a let down; no wonder they are piling bodies and using them as road blocks.

Don't get me wrong I think there should be reporting from Haiti as it informs people what is going on; it encourages us to send money, as that is what they want, and I think it's wonderful that we can just send a text to 90999 using the word Haiti in the message and $10 will be sent to the Red Cross and added to our cell phone bills.

Things like Twitter and Facebook really come into their own at times like these as Haiti, at the moment, is almost out of touch with the rest of the world.


The poor people of Haiti have had to suffer for thirty years or so of dictatorship with Papa Doc and Baby Doc and the USA didn't think it was their business to try and remove them – regime change – as they were not communists.

They were also brainwashed with their belief in voodoo and lately a gang culture and drugs; some of the people interviewed there were saying things like “you know what I'm saying; you know what I'm saying?” Now where did they get that vernacular from?


The buildings in Haiti were built with no building code and look what happened – no regulation means collapse and liken that to anything from the banks to the stock market to anything.

Now we are going to try and rebuild the country when we have rebuilt Iraq and Afghanistan; plenty of work for the banks to raise money for, plenty of aid that we can send them and plenty of conditions for that aid - lovely jubbly, as Del Boy would say; a nice little earner!

I'm not a politician and I can talk as much drivel as the next man but it has been three days since the earthquake and relief from the USA is only getting through today.


This island is not far from the USA so why is it taking so long for medical supplies at least?


The people of the world probably think that Haiti is an island country; well it isn't. It is an island shared with another country The Dominican Republic. I have heard no reporting from there, I don't know if the earthquake affected it and I don't know if they are offering their facilities in this disaster. I find it almost unbelievable that Cuba wouldn't help as they are around fifty miles from Haiti and as they offered help to the USA when Hurricane Katrina blew into Louisiana why aren't we hearing what they are doing? Because, as usual, the good news from Cuba is never reported here.

Are the American TV News Companies not telling us everything? I can't believe that - could you?

It goes without saying the negotiations for Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien will carry on and the banks will fight to give billions of dollars in bonuses to their executives; nut cases will still blog that we should leave Haiti to get on with it and help themselves (I actually read this) and Pat Robertson, a southern Baptist, will come out with more statements saying that Haiti has been cursed by God for past deeds.

All sounds pathetic doesn't it - and it is!