Does America Care?

Barack Obama on the hustings.

The answer to the title, in my opinion is. . ..

Well let me put it to you: after all these years of having no national health care the United States have a very intelligent President who is trying to form a National Health Service and at every turning he is stopped.

Maybe he is going about it the wrong way and maybe he should get the actual states to start their own NHS and oversee the whole process but he has tried another way.

He wants to make it mandatory for everybody to have health insurance. Now that is a different kettle of fish. I can't remember all of the details but I believe if you can't afford it the government will subsidise you. 

Obviously this would have to be means tested but that's a whole other discussion.

The opposition say this is unconstitutional and is rather like making the population eat broccoli. Well they have to eat broccoli when they drive a car by buying car insurance, they have to eat broccoli when they go to work as they have to be deducted at source a load of taxes and insurance so if they are existing in the country they have to be available for treatment if they collapse in the street or if they are involved and injured in a road accident.

Last week Obamacare went before the Supreme Court and the court found in favour of Obama and you would think people would be celebrating – but no.

Some are, of course; he has his supporters, but many are chanting 'NO!' in the streets.

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for President, has said that 'when' he becomes president he will reverse the law, people are being interviewed in the street and saying they will not vote for Obama because of this, and I ask the question does America care?

Romney, by the way, was the Governor of Massachusetts and introduced a kind of National Health Service – a State Health Service – in 2006 to the state and now he is kind of keeping quiet about it; he is finding it hard to attack Obama on this particular subject.

There are over forty five million people in America without insurance; if they are injured in a bad road accident they could be $45,000 in debt and will probably have to go bankrupt; appendicitis $15,000 - $20,000. Medical bankruptcy is at an all time high in America.

I knew an old lady who died about eight years ago owing Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills over $95,000. 

Up to the time of her death she was called many times a day by debt collectors demanding she pay up; asking her if she had any relations she could get the money from and things like that. 

When she died, her daughter was harassed by the same debt collectors and she became ill and needed treatment; her husband was a stroke victim and needed treatment from time to time. Every time the ambulance took him to hospital he was billed for the ambulance ride and then the treatment.

I used to take him to hospital some of the times if I was available but the hospital bills mounted and he eventually died. This didn't stop the calls.

The daughter eventually reached an age when she qualified for Medicare; this was like a national health service for hospital treatment for senior citizens but she had to pay around $110 per month to cover her for the lowest of the low care from a doctor. She had a pain in her chest and went to the doctor; he gave her pain killers, recommended aspirin and sent her away.

I used to call the doctors and was given prescriptions over the phone; the doctor didn't have the time to see me.

My friend went to the doctors many times with the pain in the chest and was sent away each time with pain killer recommendations but she badgered the doctor and eventually after a year he sent her for an x-ray. It was found she had a big mass on her lung so she was sent off for a bronchoscopy; lung cancer was diagnosed and she was given months to live and has since died.

All my friends in Los Angeles were caring empathetic people; they all want a national health service, even though a lot of them don't even know what it is; so who are these people who don't care?

The ignorant!

I have heard people say they don't need another tax – you pay more tax in the USA than here, by the way; not necessarily income tax – and those people seem to think they're going to live forever.

When I came back to London last week I got to the immigration desk; I was in the queue and could see the little notice 'please stand behind the line until you are called.'

When the person in front of me was finished I just sauntered up and showed them my passport.

Going into the USA is different: there are people putting you in to various lines and when the girl who was putting us into one of the three lines available went off somewhere the first person in the queue – the line as they say there – wouldn't move forward and waited till the woman came back before walking forward. And the little notice there said 'wait behind the yellow line until you are summoned by an officer.' Summoned by an officer!!!! No please or thank you, kiss my arse - nothing. Then the said officer summonses you to him with two flicks of his fingers; two flicks, not one or three, but two.

Yes all my friends in Los Angeles are caring but America as a country; does it care?

It gives aid to other countries – it used to be to stop communism spreading so what do they do it now for? Are they that charitable?

I think it was H.L. Menkin who said 'never overestimate the intelligence of the American Public' and it's true in a way.

If they vote Obama out of office in November they will get the president they deserve so let's hope they don't.

I found this little tit-bit from the last election on the Internet from the early stages of the last presidential election which about sums things up:

Likely Republican voters were asked how familiar they were the healthcare plans of all their candidates, even including non-candidate Fred Thompson. The results? In Nevada 29 percent said they were familiar with Thompson’s healthcare plan. In New Hampshire it was 15 percent, in Iowa 18 percent, in Florida it was 22 percent and in South Carolina had 24 percent with some idea about his plan.

Huh?

Thompson makes no reference to healthcare in his short stump speeches and has yet to even enter the race much less offer a healthcare plan. Nonetheless voters in these states told the pollsters at Woelfel Research, Inc that they were more familiar with Fred Thompson’s healthcare plan than they were of Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback.

My 43 hour stay in Los Angeles.

Carneys on the Sunset Strip.

I had to go to Los Angeles on pressing business over the weekend; it was all arranged at the last minute so I didn't have time to contact any of my friends there but I left London Heathrow at noon on Friday and returned here at noon yesterday (Monday). So I was out of the country for exactly three days – wow!! 10,000 odd miles and all air miles.

It's a long way for such a short stay; I was there forty three hours.

The flight over there was via Chicago where I had to change planes and I watched a couple of movies on the way.

One was called Man on a Ledge; it's about a cop who has been framed and to prove his innocence stages a mock suicide attempt on a high building to divert attention from something that is happening across the street – somebody trying to prove the cop's innocence. I think the film was okay but it gave me strange sensations.

It looked very real with the cop standing on the ledge of a Manhattan high rise about two or three hundred feet from the ground and me being actually 38,000 feet from it.

Each time he got near to the edge I felt a kind of vertigo; I had to convince myself that it wasn't real. As I looked to my left I was travelling over clouds and in front of me the movie.

I couldn't get a direct flight, which would have been about eleven hours, so changing at Chicago made the whole journey door to door a twenty three hour jaunt – that is door to door counting the three hour stay at each airport.

But Los Angeles was the same as usual; I left there on June 30^th last year and as soon as I got out into the street on Saturday it was as if I'd never been away. I know every nook and cranny, every stained piece of paving stone and bump in the sidewalk, where the tree routes push through, and I was welcomed at around six on Saturday morning by a familiar sound; a low flying helicopter. The police hovering above the ground looking after their city or a TV chopper checking traffic. Not a sound I find attractive, I have to say.

The sun hit me as I got out of my pal's car on Sunset Blvd and headed north on La Brea; people walking holding paper in front of their faces to hide the sun; others waiting at bus stops with the post from the stop between their face and the sun. It's a local habit but most people wear hats.

Half way up La Brea between Sunset and Hollywood Blvd a woman who was 'out of it' came walking the other way; I'd forgotten about that side of things – maybe Christal Meth?

A bit further up almost at Hollywood Blvd was a young man fast asleep on the footpath. He had some kind of blanket over him so only his head was in view. He seemed to be fairly good looking but out for the count. Maybe he came here to make his fortune and fell at one of the steps – that's the tragedy. People killing themselves trying to make a killing in movies.

There are usually lots of Goths on Hollywood Blvd but I don't think I saw any and when I passed Grauman's Chinese theatre the footpath was blocked off so I had to cross the street.

They usually block the sidewalk off if it's a star having their hands dipped in cement or a premiere; but the premieres are usually in the evening and it wasn't a cement ceremony.

As I passed it on the other side of the street a woman was taking photos of the place and I asked her what was going on: I don't know, she said and carried on taking photos.

A little later I went to one of my favourite eating places – Carneys on the Sunset Strip. You get the best chili dog in Los Angeles and that's what I got.

I like to go to Chili Johns in Burbank too but that's usually for the craic.

Anybody who reads this will know where I went next! Yes The Farmers' Market. It hadn't changed a bit and the Latino girls at Bob's Doughnuts and Patsy's Pizza were just as pretty.

I had hoped to call friends but with the lack of a cell phone and the scarcity of quarters for the pay phone it was a pain.

But I was looked after by my very good friend till I came back to London.

On the way back I had a better choice of movie – The Godfather and Doctor Strangelove – two classics which brought me back to the smoke.

Ulysses indeed!

When you go to another country you pick up a lot of the lingo; little words creep into your vocabulary. In America, I guess, it's I guess. Lots of other words too for example I never heard the word oxymoron used till I got there.

In Ireland there is a phrase “It's allowed.” You might say to someone “I'm going to the pub tomorrow” and they'll say “it's allowed.”

I remember years ago meeting my cousins in Sussex and every time I said I wanted to do something they would say “It's not allowed.”

One word, or expression I have picked up here since our return is the word indeed. “Is that your car?”

“Indeed!”

“Do you plan to go to work tomorrow?”

“Indeed.”

Now why is that?

Before we went away people were saying basically. Basically this and basically that. In fact it got to be a terrible habit to be honest – oh that's another one to be honest; know what I mean?

Of course when I write I try not to use any of these phrases unless it's in dialogue and even then it can be a bore – can you understand why, for instance, the Americans spell that without an 'e' on the end?

One word I try to avoid in my writing is suddenly. I don't know why but it just doesn't mean anything and that's another funny word – just. Paul McCartney said that if there was one thing he learned from John Lennon it was to never to use the word just.

It's true that some words are not poetic.

The other thing I have noticed is that most of the dialogue on British TV is in iambic pentameter – for example that last line: it's true that some words are not poetic.

So when you read Shakespeare don't be put off by the iambic pentameter it's only natural speech; I nearly said it's just natural speech but I resisted the temptation.

We have recently had a tribute on the radio here to James Joyce's famous novel Ulysses. It is one of the best selling novels of the 20^th Century and the least read.

There was a piece in The Guardian about it on Friday and on Saturday the whole of Ulysses was broadcast on the radio with all the 'f' words and 'c' words. Good old BBC; anything goes.

The fact that it is the least read best seller is strange; there are a quarter of a million words in the novel so one read is no good I'm afraid; you really need a few reads. What happens in the plot is not important; it's the style – or styles.

The novel is loosely based on The Odyssey only instead of wandering around the Greek Islands, Bloom wanders around Dublin; there are no chapter titles but the episodes are well known to Joyce scholars. Joyce, himself, put lots of symbols, innuendos and hidden clues to keep college professors busy for centuries; his words, by the way.

He has used many writing styles, first person narrative and third person narrative sometimes on the same page. Betimes it's great to hear it being read out loud but lots of other times the readings are very dreary; it's supposed to be a very lively novel.

The Stephen Dedalus character on Saturday's broadcast sounded strange; when I looked him up it was played by a very good actor. In fact he was very good in the TV series Sherlock but played Stephen Dedalus the same – so maybe that's him. The same with Mark Rylance (the greatest actor in the world!!); I saw him in Los Angeles in Measure for Measure and I thought it was the greatest Shakespearian performance I had ever seen but when I saw him in Jerusalem there were elements of the Measure for Measure performance in that.

But back to Ulysses; one of the episodes of Ulysses takes place in a maternity hospital; that episode is called Oxen of the Sun and in that episode Joyce writes in forty different writing styles. He traces the English Language from it's beginnings to the present day, parodying most of the famous authors through the various periods: he starts with the Latinate prose, and then alliterative Anglo-Saxon taking in medieval prose, Elizabethan prose, the eighteenth-century style of Oliver Goldsmith and so on and as it is set in a maternity hospital the number of styles he uses is forty - for the forty weeks confinement of a pregnant woman.

It really is a joy to read, talk about and observe – maybe the word joy is short for Joyce?

So read it if you get the chance and if it doesn't go to well read it out loud even if you can't do an Irish accent.

This year marks the year when the works of James Joyce go into the public domain; the first year when his grandson Stephen Joyce doesn't have his hands on them. There will be a lot of squabbling and fighting as to who owns what but at least we can see how the great man formulated his choice of words.

“The National Library of Ireland is marking the occasion by launching free online high-resolution versions of a huge range of Joyce's manuscripts, from letters and notebooks to a draft of Ulysses revealing Joyce's first thoughts about the novel's famous ending.

In the published version of the novel Molly's soliloquy ends the book: "yes I said yes I will Yes". But Joyce originally wrote "would" rather than "will".

In 2004 The Guardian asked readers to come up with a 'modern' Molly and they published what I wrote – and it's still on their web site with more punctuation than I have put in here.

No no no here he is coming in now expecting me to be awake and waiting for him at this hour of the morning after he watched the bleedin football at some bleedin kip it wasn't enough to watch Greece he had to watch the Russians as well well im not going to be ready for him why does he always come home excited after watching bleedin football and drinking the night away with his pals and their women why amnt i allowed to go but not all of his pals were with him tonight he was one pal short one pal that looked for a different kind of sport tonight than the bleedin euro championships that theyre all glued to like bluebottles on a butchers bench its not as if Ireland is in it so why would they want to watch the real sport took place in here tonight and i can still smell his manliness on my sheets can still feel his thrust and strength in me thats left me here flat and relaxed and satisfied and not ready for the gobshite that i can now hear trying to mount the bleedin stairs he will know as soon as he gets in that that will be the only thing he will be mounting tonight here he is now through the door as if it was a hole him bouncing of each side of it come in you shite the bed is here but i am not oh jasus feel him setting his heavy arse onto the side of the bed which would wake me if i wasnt already awake now he cant untie his bleedin laces so i have to pretend to be asleep a bit longer as im not having him on top of me tonight theyre off thanks be to God so now hell struggle with his trousers ah the shite has them off well and good and look i can see a stain on his knicks hes been using that somewhere today more than likely his favourite self inflicted right hand girl friend that he always uses id give everything to know who he fantasises about not me im sure but i dont need him now now that i have had his pal inside my bed and inside me and giving me the satisfaction that this galloot never gave me with his bleedin football and horses and jawing in Maddigans with his cronies whilst im here saying yes to your man and yes if he wants to come again and yes if he wants me to go anywhere but this gobshite has shot his bolt with me so when comes again for me he can use his favourite self inflicted right hand girlfriend again as he has used today and he can watch the football and the like and the next time he comes at me and looks at me with those eyes he will see in my eyes no and he will ask me again and i will say no i will say no he will not have my mountain flower and no i will not put my arms around him again and i wont draw him down to me again and he will never feel my breasts again and he will never smell my perfume again and i dont care how much he gets excited and pants or how mad he goes i will say no and will say no i will No.
Chris Sullivan

Indeed!!

Read my novel, if you get the chance; it's called Alfredo Hunter: the Man With the Pen.

It has a connection to James Joyce and it's on Amazon.

The One Man Show.

A Bit Of Irish.

 The last time I did it on March 17 this year (St Patrick's Night).

Have you ever wondered what it's like to do a one man show? I call it a one man show but some people want to call it a one person show and that to me is just silly. If it's a woman it should be called a one woman show surely.
And don't call me Shirley!
By the way I tried to raise some money one time for a film, from one of the regional arts councils. When I had an interview with one of the officers he gave me a form which said 'name personnel involved in your project for example camera person’ and he also said “you will need to name who is going to be your camera person.”
He was really pushing the word 'person' which has to be one of the most unattractive words ever invented. I asked him what a camera person was and that I didn’t think there was such a position in a professional film crew.
“Well we are an equal opportunities organization” he said.
But I repeated “There is no such position in a professional film crew.”
“We prefer camera person.” he said.
So than I really put the kybosh on my chances of getting any money from them by saying “Which one shall we call the camera person; the Director of Photography, the Camera Operator, the Focus Puller or the Clapper Loader?”
No I didn’t get the money.
But back to the one man show – have you ever wondered what it’s like?
Well for a start it’s a big ego thing and you have to have the audacity to think you can actually do one by really standing in front of an audience and try to command their attention for an hour and a half.
I don’t know why I suddenly started to do a one man show but I suspect it’s one or all of the above. 
I was in Los Angeles, I had worked in a play at a theatre (and won an award, I hasten to add) and I was chatting to the director one day about one man shows and what I would do if I ever did one and he said “why don’t you try one here?”
The idea hit me and the following week I went in with my guitar to see the director, he sat at one side of the room and I sat at the other and I sang Finnegan’s Wake accompanying myself on my twelve string guitar.
“That’s great” he said (it wasn’t) “why don’t you get your show together and we’ll present it on Saint Patrick’s Night?"
Well that was in 2001; it went very well and since then I have done it so many times that I have lost count.
I had two bad shows out of all of those: one was when I got a touch of 'cotton wool mouth' when I did it at the same theatre later and another when I did it for the first time in London. 
I blame the London one on total jet lag and the fact that I had to change some of the show at the last minute due to copyright problems and didn't get a chance for a run in the theatre beforehand. I learned a lot from that experience and one is never go in unprepared and always have a 'run'. 
That doesn't mean I didn't scrape home by the seat of my pants a few times but I have to say - those seat of the pants shows were fun and exciting!!
It seems quite natural to me when I am in the process of rehearsing and rewriting it but in the patches of time when I am not doing it I wonder where I get the audacity from. 
I mean I never think too much about it just before I go on to the stage; I never think that I am going out there for an hour and a half and I have to remember an hour and a half’s worth of stuff and all those poems and songs and all those lines. 
I go through the first song or poem in my head just before going on but then I kind of 'GO'  from one bit to the next editing in my head as I progress.
One of the highlights, I am told, is when I sing The Fields of Athenry because everybody sings along with it. Well the last time I did the show, nearly three months ago, I forgot to sing it. I just skipped passed it and did something else.
The man doing the lighting cues just skipped along with me and half way through another song or a poem I realized I had forgotten it. 
My wife has seen the show so many times she must be sick of it but she always enjoys The Fields of Athenry so I had to figure out where I was going to put it. This I did and nobody noticed apart from the man doing the lighting cues; he was last seen trying to put all the papers of the script back together.
When you are in a play and things go wrong – you forget a line for example – somebody will usually help you out but in a one man show you are on your own. If I forgot something no one would know what comes next - not even the man doing the lighting cues. 
You are also on your own in the dressing room before the show and that is weird.
Usually in a play you share the dressing room with others and you chat, joke with each other or just ‘be’ in each others company.
When you go out of your dressing room you see other people from the play in all states of undress and you are used to seeing that from both sexes.
I have come off the stage for a 'quick change' on occasions and had a girl strip my clothes off me and help me on with other clothes and dashed back on to the stage; I have even shared dressing room space with girls but when you do a one man show, as I say, you are on your own.
As you are the only person in the play there are not many people backstage to look after you. There is maybe one man walking about letting you know what the time is and then he disappears.
Then it’s back to the silence of sitting in a room full of mirrors.
What I usually do it have a cup of tea at the half – the half is the magic time that you have to be in your dressing room and that is 35 minutes before the show goes up; then you get the quarter, the five and then beginners or in America places. 
In Britain you have to be at the side of the stage five minutes (beginners) before the start and you wait there by yourself when you are doing a one man show – it’s five minutes later in America as their shows go up five minutes late.
When I have finished my tea, in the dressing room, I usually have about ten minutes to go so I take off my shirt and put a bit of powder on my fizzog  - I do this as it stops me sweating under the lights. That takes about two minutes and when the five is called I get dressed.
Once I put my trousers on I never sit down – I got this tip from reading about Nat ‘King’ Cole who would sit in his dressing room in his shorts for fear of creasing his trousers as there is nothing worse than seeing badly creased trousers on stage.
By the way, apparently Frank Sinatra would have a really big man lift him up and drop him into his trousers – that is according to David Jacobs.
That's why I wish the weather man on BBC TV would press his!!
So there I am all the time by myself in the dressing room till I am called.
The only places where this hasn’t happened is when I have done the show at a college: – no dressing at all, I just stand around till the teacher has quietened down the students; at the Edinburgh Festival where you have to share the dressing room with everybody: the dressing room is open all day and as there are shows all day I may be sharing with 100 other people of both sexes and all ages and at all other times of the year that dressing room would be the cloakroom and my part of the dressing room is a space on the hanger. 
By the end of the three week run that place stinks - believe me! 
Once I did my show – three times a day – at the Irish Show at Santa Anita Race Track in California and had to get changed in a tent and do the show in another tent; then half way through the show a pipe band would march passed so I had to stop the show and just watch them marching.
Another time I was doing my show in Edinburgh just by the castle and the big guns would go off every evening.
In Bridgenorth in Shropshire I was sitting back stage and heard the music playing which I was supposed to respond to; I had to make a run for the stage and only just made it.
So now I am going to do another one man show - or a one man play this time; the play I did last year is due to play for one night at the Lord Stanley pub in Camden Town;
it’s a kind of show case to see if I can get it on at another theatre here. It’s on July 14^th at 8:30 pm. Come along if you’re free!!

The Ruling Class, Chavs and Stagflation.

There we are – a picture from Monty Python's Twit of the Year contest. Now that is what a lot of upper class people aspire to be.  In the sketch they are trying to walk along a straight line; I'm sure the upper class twits in real life have seen this sketch (who hasn't?) and yet they carry in being a twit.

Prince Harry is not an upper class twit in fact he, like his dad, would laugh at the sketch; twits have been a figure of fun on TV here for years and yet upper class twits still exist.

It was very hard to describe to my American friends just what the class system here is; in America there is no real class system and they don't have an upper class. They associate class with money whereas here the upper classes would never be so vulgar.

For example you would never see the upper classes buying furniture – they inherit it.

But the class system here goes right from the top to the bottom – to the under class.

The middle classes definitely look down on the working classes – even these days.

A lot of the working classes have become middle class and some of the middle classes don't like it so they have invented another class – the Chav.

The Chav, a few years ago, was called a casual or a Sharron, if you were a girl, or a Kevin, if you were a boy.

There is a Chav Test, rather like the 'U ' and none 'U' test which tested people to see if they were upper class or not. You could not be upper class if you were in trade or had to actually 'earn' money – that would never do.

The Chav has to drink cold lager, shop at certain shops, wear Burberry, track suits, shell suits, trainers, American baseball hats and – sounds a bit like an American here – maybe wear a hoodie.

The word Chav. I believe, is Romany for Boy – so you can't call a girl Chav a Chav!

The dictionary definition is informal , derogatory  ( Southern English ) “a young working-class person whose tastes, although sometimes expensive, are considered vulgar by some.”
By some!!!

It is just an excuse for snobbery. One part of society looking down on another part. The English are very good at it. Of course there is snobbery in America but it's more get up and go there; if you have the talent they don't care where you're from; as long as you don't live in a trailer park!!

And people here are not all snobs – there is just this 'class' system.

If you turned up at Buckingham Palace in a shell suit to meet the Queen and the Duke I'm sure 'Phil the Greek' would slip out and put a track suit on to make you feel comfortable.

But look at the experts who are running this country – just look at them. Do people have confidence in a Chancellor of the Exchequer who issues a ridiculous budget and then goes back on some of the things he felt so strongly about a few weeks ago?

What kind of confidence does that give people who want to invest here? Not much but money is flowing in to the country from Greece and Spain at the moment so what are the experts doing with it?

Here are the experts by the way, when they were boys and at the same school. Eton, of course, the famous public school:

(1) the Hon. Edward Sebastian Grigg, the heir to Baron Altrincham of Tormarton and current chairman of Credit Suisse (UK); (2) David Cameron, Prime Minister; (3) Ralph Perry Robinson, a former child actor, designer, furniture-maker. (4) Ewen Fergusson, son of the British ambassador to France, Sir Ewen Fergusson and now at City law firm Herbert Smith. (5) Matthew Benson, the heir to the Earldom of Wemyss and March. (6) Sebastian James, the son of Lord Northbourne, a major landowner in Kent.(7) Jonathan Ford, the-then president of the club, a banker with Morgan Grenfell. (8) Boris Johnson, the-then president of the Oxford Union, now Mayor of London. 9) Harry Eastwood, the investment fund consultant.

This one is from 1992, there are eight famous faces:

(1) George Osborne, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer; (2) writer Harry Mount, the heir to the Baronetcy of Wasing and Mr. Cameron’s cousin; (3) Chris Coleridge, the descendant of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the son of Lloyds’ chairman David Coleridge, the brother of Conde Nast managing director Nicholas Coleridge; (4) German aristocrat and managing consultant Baron Lupus von Maltzahn; (5) the late Mark Petre, the heir to the Barony of Petre; (6) Australian millionaire Peter Holmes a Cour;(7) Nat Rothschild, the heir to the Barons Rothschilds and co-founder of a racy student paper with Harry Mount; (8) Jason Gissing, the chairman of Ocado supermarkets.

Gawd help us!!

Now a word about my last post; I had an email about stagflation. I said it was another story.

Stagflation is when high unemployment coincides with high inflation. According to Keynes, if I remember correctly, it can't happen if Keynesian economics are adhered to correctly but when it did happen, in the 70s, under Keynesian policies, they called it stagflation; someone made up the word: a cross between stagnation and inflation.

It seriously damaged the Keynes economic philosophy and turned people back to Adam Smith. 
But Adam Smith was from the 18^th century and he believed that free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies. Did he mean beneficial in terms of profit or beneficial in quality of life. Did he mean it looks after the poor and weak with regards to health care, welfare, education or did he mean it will make a profit for the country and the people making the profit can throw the scraps to the hungry?
I think he meant in the world of profits.
He felt that an invisible hand had a control over markets and I often wonder what his answer to the world economic crisis in 2008 would have been.
But back to stagflation: I remember reading in The Guardian in 1976 (yes I have that kind of memory) that as two million men lost their lives in the first world war there was no baby boom as in 1945.
Sixty years after The Somme, there was no mass retirement in the work force so those millions of vacancies in the job market didn't arise so they had high inflation and high unemployment.
I think the current government here are using Adam Smith's economics and trying to reduce the deficit that way whereas the Americans under Barack Obama are using Keynesian economics and spending their way out of the recession.
And in any case – what's the deficit?
Answers on a postcard to 10 Downing Street.

When we lived there (America) unemployment was over 11% and the economy was on its way out – now unemployment has reduced drastically and the economy is growing; so which is the best way austerity or growth?

Baby Boomers.

Elvis Presley.

As John Lennon said 'he started it.'

Yes that's right! Baby Boomers; who are they? Well they seem to be mentioned in America more than over here. In fact the man in the street here wouldn't know what the various generations are called; and why would they.

The Baby Boomers were that generation born after the war – yes the 2^nd world war – up to 1964; so that is between the years 1945 and 1964. The war was over, the troops came home and all those children were born. 

And what did they create? Nothing.

They think they did; they think they're special but you look at the people who actually changed the world. The tremendous amount of people born in 1926 – The Queen, Marilyn Monroe, Mel Brooks, Andy Griffith, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, David Attenborough, Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry, Kenneth Williams, Eric Morecambe, Leonard Rosseter, my pal Aubrey Morris and many more.

Now if you haven't heard of all of them or appreciated their talent you are the one who is 'missing out.'

What ever happened in 1925 or the first few months of 1926 to produce such a unique and talented lot might be worth looking into. 

They were born eight years after a whole generation died in the first world war – two million, in fact, never came back to the UK, from the war to have kids who would create jobs fifteen to twenty years later and leave four to six million vacancies in the jobs market when they retired in the seventies.

That was the real cause of stagflation – but that's another subject!

Now I don't fall into the category of a Baby Boomer – I'm not too young I'm too old. I was a war baby; just like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. They were the ones who followed the pioneers – people like Elvis Presley, Woody Allen, John Cazalle and the subject of one of my posts Jerry Lee Lewis.

Those were the people who started Rock'n'roll as it became. There might have been something else beforehand but Little Richard, Jerry Lee and Elvis are the ones who started it; The Beatles built on to that with the Stones.

Then in the seventies it all went wrong, musically, which we have seen recently with the excellent TV series here in Britain called The Seventies.

People like James Taylor, Crosby Stills and Nash ruined everything with their savourless songs with no beat and very little melody; it's no wonder that in the late seventies punk came along.

The Ramones.

Great band but all dead now.

Punk Rock was originally supposed to have started with garage bands or groups. People have always said it started near where they used to live; well it probably did. They were all influenced by the same people – The Kinks, The Kinsmen and main stream rock 'n' roll – but the people who made it famous – really famous – were The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Punk Rock went back to the three chord basic guitar playing – 'C' 'G' and 'F' – sometimes throwing in an A minor chord for good measure but it was back to basics like the fifties.

These punk rockers were the late Baby Boomers and they disappeared when their time came unlike the early ones.

So now the Baby Boomers will be retiring – the first ones retired here last year (aged sixty five) and over the next twenty years they will be dying.

If you want to invest in the future – go into the funeral business.

Hollywood agents.

The  I. M. Pei Building in Beverly Hills.

 

One or two people have asked me about the agents in Hollywood; the theatrical agents that is. The people that actually run the place.

Yes they are very powerful and one or two can't compare to any agency in London. They are CAA – (Creative Artists Agency); William Morris Endeavor, ICM (International Creative Management) and United Talent Agency.

CAA are the big ones and were the super agents in the 90s. A few agents headed by Michael Ovitz, who actually assumed power, broke away from ICM and started up on their own in 1975. Their first office was rented, they had 2 cars between them, folding card tables for desks and the agents' wives were the receptionists.

They went from humble beginnings to running the world; they had the top stars, the top writers, directors, producers and they put packages together – that is what I mean when I say they ran the world; and still do.

They went from rented offices in Century City to hiring the world famous architect. I. M. Pei to design a very striking building on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills; it cost $25 million and that was in 1989.
Things kind of cooled in the 90s when Ovitz went to work for Disney but they are still up there. They represent Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Stephen Spielberg and many more and according to Wikipedia In March 2009 Fast Company named CAA among the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, alongside Apple, Google and others, noting that "in Hollywood, there's CAA and then there's everybody else." Fortune named CAA "the entertainment industry's most influential organization.
If you start to make it in the business they will approach you – no need to contact them.
The other agencies above do packaging too but at the moment CAA have 10 movies in development, 14 in production and 94 past films. But they don't produce them they are the 'sales representatives'.
Apart from the agents mentioned above there are other agents – some good, some not so good and they are known as boutique agencies; those are the ones people like me have to approach to be represented – and it isn't easy.
To get an agent in Hollywood you have to be introduced by someone in the business and that doesn't mean they will take you on.
If you are my age they look at your résumé to see if you have worked with any of the Hollywood casting directors – in other words have you been in ER, Friends, LAPD Blue or even New York casting directors who do Law & Order etc.
If you don't know any of the casting directors through work the agent will not take you on. It doesn't matter if you have been working with the Royal Shakespeare Company or The National Theatre of Britain, they will pass; 'great reel' they say and show you the door.
They don't want anybody my age with no Hollywood credits; if they take you on it means they will have to work.
I did have a few agents over there. The first one I called up asked me to send her a head shot. I did and she took me on on the strength of it. I asked why and she said the casting directors only go on head shots – so she was prepared to work.
She asked me to get some more head shots taken which I did. She wanted to see all the proofs so I sent them to her and she picked one she liked.
No one else liked it. They said it just wasn't 'me.' That was her problem – she had never met me so she didn't really know me.
But she got me my first job on TV – it was the only TV job I did there.
After a few months I decided to leave her and go to a manager – a manager in Hollywood takes 15% - agents are only allowed to take 10%.
Sometimes if you get a job for scale the producers pay your agency commission so it's 'scale + 10%.'
I did one commercial with the management company and then my first agent called me one day and asked how things were going – I said not too good that I'd only worked in one non-union commercial (I wasn't a SAG member then ) and she asked me if I'd like to go back with her.
It was an unusual request so I said yes.
A couple of days later she called and said she had an audition for me in the movie Titanic. She had seen that they were after Irish and English actors which is why she called me and fair play to her for that.
It didn't work out – I got a 'call back' but that was it.
The Hollywood actor usually has 2 agents: a theatrical one and a commercial one.
The theatrical agent, by the way, wouldn't be for jobs in the theatre, like in London, but would be for TV and movies.
After I did a play at Santa Monica Playhouse, my friend, whom I met there, suggested me to his Commercial Agent who took me on that's how I managed to do voice work on movies.
After a few theatrical agents I went my own way and the movies I got in to, which were usually low budget and which I'd got myself, were arranged by my commercial agent; but they wouldn't take any commission. I'll say that again an agent wouldn't take commission.
When I did a commercial through them I went for the audition, got a call back and was then kept waiting for 2 hours. I told them about it and they invoiced the advertising agency who eventually sent me about $400 for being kept waiting – some of that was for late payment – and when I went in to their office (the agents) to give them their 10% they wouldn't take it. They said they were not entitled to it – I actually made them take it and buy lunch.
So agents are not all that bad.
I actually did a movie called Father Joe Blow with my agent – he played father Joe and I played a randy college professor.
One agent I called on the phone for representation told me to come in to see him; this was a boutique agent called Capital Artists on Wilshire Blvd; no big deal.
I arrived and waited in the waiting room; he was a stout young kid of about 30 and his assistant showed me in to see him; he took one look at me and realised I wasn't in the age group he wanted; I was too old. Obviously I sounded younger on the phone.
I sat down in his office and waited for him to finish his phone call. When he did he made another call. We made very little small talk but it became obvious to me what the score was.
When I left the shit bag didn't even shake hands – I asked him if I should call and he said yes.
Of course when I called he wouldn't come to the phone and in fact every agent I went to see who passed on representing me wouldn't come to the phone either; so what does that say about them?
The guy from Capital went on my shit list but you know what – I've forgotten his name.

Our Garden, the Fox and Boris.

There's a little mouse who lives in our garden; it lives under an old dilapidated shed, which has a couple of trees between it and our back door. Each day, I put a few nuts down at the bottom of a little wall, and the mouse comes out of his home, runs along a smaller wall, drops down to the ground and up to where the nuts are; then it takes one and scurries back home to its family.

This takes it about five minutes as it must do something to the nut before making the journey back for more. Sometimes one of the squirrels will take all the nuts in one go and then when the mouse returns it finds that they've disappeared.

Poor old mouse aye?

Some days it manages to take them all before the squirrels have their fill. There are plenty of other nuts for the squirrels and the pigeons but they like to take the ones which aren't theirs because they don't know any better.

The birds, robins, dunnocks and the black birds, have another pile of food we put out: wild bird seed, crumbs and suet, all mixed together, and as soon as I come back inside the robin lands within seconds of me closing the door.

When the little dunnock comes over for some food, the robin flies up to about four inches from the ground and makes itself as big as possible by flapping its wings and the dunnock flies away; but it doesn't starve – it comes back later.

The birds, squirrels and mice live in this wild world where they would starve without using their wits. They wouldn't starve without us and it probably makes us feel a lot better than it does them, but they are living in the world where the stronger survive.

Sometimes all the birds, squirrels and mice disappear and the garden is quiet; we look out and it usually means a cat is crossing the garden. Our cat would look at the goings on through the window just as we do but he never went out. 

 

The cat that crosses the garden is the King, at that point, but once in a while, the fox comes in and that cat is nowhere to be seen.

The fox lives between some trees and bushes nearby and she comes in to the garden every day to see what she can eat.

I have put a little video for you to view at the top; my voice sounds a bit breathy as I had to run up the stairs to use the camera and I have also described her as a male; sorry Foxie!

You should be able to see the little wall where the mouse lives too.

It's nice to look at nature once in a while but these animals and birds are nuisances to a lot of other people so they would probably not be very pleased with me for encouraging them.

But that's me.

I look at those animals and I think of how we would survive; most of us can't do that at all. We have big strong people who tread over weaker ones and take from them what they can.

For those who read my last post, who do not live in the UK, Boris the buffoon won the election and stays on as the mayor of London. I didn't vote for him as he doesn't appear, to me, to know what is going on. He has been elected totally because he is a buffoon. 

 

I have seen him in debate and I get the impression that he probably wears big hard brogues and treads over the things he doesn't see and, because he walks and doesn't look down, he does a lot of damage – and that is metaphorically speaking.

When I lived here before, there was no mayor of London and there are no mayors in the rest of the country. There were elections in other cities, the other day, to see if they wanted to have a mayor and only one other city, Bristol, have voted to have one; I'm with the cities who rejected them.

The election in London was a personality contest between two big hitters and a few smaller ones. Boris won by a small majority over Ken Livingstone; Boris is a Conservative and Ken is Labour.

The election of Boris has gone against the national trend as there has been a huge swing to Labour in the local elections.

The Conservatives are making the usual excuses saying that this is a natural thing half way through an administration and in a way they are right. But they are a minority government to start with so where will they end up.

There is also a swing to the left in France and Greece as the people there don't like the austerity policies either. This word austerity is associated with the word asceticism which is a philosophical school of thought which means self-discipline, self-denial, non indulgence. 

Maybe we should start living like monks, growing our own food, and if we can't do that maybe someone will come along and throw us a few nuts and hope that the fox doesn't come along and eat us.

Strange isn't it that in 2008 some top bankers in America were calling home and telling their loved ones to go to the ATM and withdraw as much money as possible as the system was going to break down – this is true as I have heard them say it in interviews; Henry Poulson for one said it.

The problems with the sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and all the other commission at every stage swindles, caused a world financial crisis with the major powers throughout the world and that is what the Conservative Government here have inherited – so it wasn't just the Labour Party's fault.

But the USA have gone from the brink of a total collapse into growth and that is due to spending their way out of the recession just as John Maynard-Keynes advocated and just as the Labour Party would have done if they'd have been re-elected.

And the animals in the garden have no idea of what is going on in the world; neither have the young children who will be denied education because of the austerity measures but do you know something – children cannot wait for their education it has to come at a certain time in their lives so in twenty years time, when those children cannot find jobs and can't pay their taxes, when they are living on welfare it will be this government’s fault; just as Thatcher's children are experiencing now.

News from Britain and Hollywood.

Let me just tell the people of the world what is happening here in Great Britain; the people of the world who read this, of course.
We know what is happening in Hollywood because it's in all the papers. The world famous, and comparatively recently built, Kodak Theatre, the place where they hold The Academy Awards, is to have a name change. I'm afraid Kodak has gone bankrupt and so the sponsorship has been withdrawn and it will be known, for the time being, as The Former Kodak Theatre.
This will go on for a while till the new sponsor, Dolby, has its name added to the illustrious place and then it will be known as The Dolby Theatre.
Of course who is Dolby? Is it Thomas Dolby the rock'n'roller who wrote many a soundtrack to a movie or, to be more precise, had some of his music used in movies.

Thomas Dolby sued the mighty Dolby Corporation and won. What he sued them for is unknown to me – I suppose I could look it up but – as they say here – I can't be arsed!!
Now, before we skip on to things happening here, what do the Dolby Corporation do? And why should they have their logo on the former Kodak Theatre?
Well they, Dolby, specialise in sound; originally it was called Dolby Stereo and they specialised in putting sound on to 35mm film which gets used on movies – even today with films being shown and edited in a digital format.
I can't get technical as I want to move on (and I'm not technical) but here is a shot of a frame of 35mm film print

featuring all four audio formats (or "quad track")- from left to right: SDDS (blue area to the left of the sprocket holes), Dolby Digital (grey area between the sprocket holes labelled with the Dolby "Double-D" logo in the middle), analog optical sound (the two white lines to the right of the sprocket holes), and the DTS Time Code (the dashed line to the far right.) 
Did you get that? Oh! 
So back to Blighty, which is where I started this post – back to Britain.
Today, Thursday May 3^rd, is election day. Not the general election but local authority elections and also the London Mayoral election.

In London there is a Mayor; at the moment it is a buffoon called Boris Johnson – here he is and what a prat he looks:

there is no need to say anything else; the picture tells it all.
London is the only city in Britain that has a mayor. The rest have leaders of the council or the city, or whatever, and have a non-elected Lord Mayor who is only some kind of figurehead. He is the man who meets a VIP visitor to the city or town and opens supermarkets and shopping centres. Here is the picture of a Lord Mayor:

Does he look as silly as Boris with that silly hat? It's debatable. And that chain??
What will be debatable, soon, is whether other towns and cities here should have a proper Mayor and not just a Lord Mayor.
At the moment we just don't know as they have to talk about it.
Oh and another thing: Britain is in a drought and there is a hose pipe ban; people cannot use hosepipes to wash their cars or do the garden and do you know what? It has been the wettest April since records began and still we are in a drought and cannot use the hosepipe.
Apparently it is the wrong kind of rain. That's what the experts have said The Wrong Kind of Rain.
Birmingham, a city in the west midlands, sold some water to a county in the south recently; it took the water, from where it was storing it, put it into a river, and down south the county took that water, when it reached them, from the river and paid the City of Birmingham for it; that's trust isn't it?
And who did I vote for in the Mayoral election? Not Boris. You can't trust people with white hair . . . oops!!