Cuts, Austerity and idiocy!

Pinner Park.

Well there's not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the fact that the British Government are actually selling the post office; can you believe that – they are selling the one stable thing that is beginning to work properly and which is starting to make money!

Not that making money is the main thing the post office is there for, it's supposed to be a service and not necessarily a money making machine.

The British Post Office is maybe the only post office in the world – maybe – that delivers first class mail the day after it's been posted to all parts of the country.

That is impossible in America because of its size but I know you could mail something in Santa Monica on one day, first class, and it might not reach its destination five miles away in the same week. And by the way they have no plans to privatise the American post office and that is the superior capitalist of countries – good or bad that's what it is!

Someone said on TV the other night that the modern post office is out of date – people buy things from Amazon and E Bay, these days, she said, and we can't wait for the post office to open to return them.

Can't wait for it to open???? Return them????

Give me a break!

Oh by the way – they say they are not selling the post office at all – they are selling the Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail is 497 years old and is owned by the government and every time they argue about it on the radio or TV the Conservatives say they are not selling the post office they are selling the Royal Mail – over and over they say this as if the one is nothing to do with the other.

Here's what it says on good old Wikipedia:

Royal Mail is the postal service in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that, as of 2013, is 497 years-old and government-owned Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail (letters) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels). Post Office Ltd (counters) and General Logistics Systems, an international logistics company, are wholly owned subsidiaries of Royal Mail Holdings.

So they're not selling the post office.

If you go to Ealing, for example, in west London, there is no post office at all. It has been closed and put in to the back of the newsagents and stationers WH Smith. In Eastcote the post office is for sale and we – the population – are letting it happen.

Got it? Good!

As I say – not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the austerity policies and all the other government cuts that we don't really understand; let me give you a silly example.

Harrow Council have decided to close the public lavatories in the parks – it saves money. If the loo is closed you don't have to employ people to lock and open them each day; make sense??

Outside the loo, in the park, people take their dogs for walks and to help them keep the place tidy and encourage the owners to make sure the place isn't covered in defecation – shit - (I wanted to put a different word instead of defecation and the word 'shit' came up; made me laugh) – yes to make sure it's tidy the council provided bins. Well now, to save money, they have taken the bins away; it saves paying people to put them there each day, empty them and take them away.

These facilities – the public lavatories and the bins – are in the parks which usually get locked each evening and opened the next day; not any more. To save money Harrow Council are going to leave the parks open to save people having to open them in the mornings and locking them in the evening to save money; they don't think any harm will come to the parks as people would vandalise them whether they're locked or not so they say.

So they say!!

When darkness comes people will go in there; maybe lay around and drink? Smoke a joint? Maybe lay around and fornicate? Maybe lay around and . . . . no lavatories??? No bins for the dog shit??? No light??? I'll leave it to your imagination as to what state the clothes of the vandals, fornicators and boozers would be in by next morning; but will it save money?

If they hired people to do these jobs – let's say they pay them, shall we say, £650 per week and let's say, to be totally outrageous, that the people earning this money decided to spend £600 of that, each week, on booze and fags and squander the rest, the money that they would spend would attract a lot of tax which would go straight into the government's coffers and . . .

Well, you know, they are making stupid cuts to the NHS; spending many billions refurbishing hospitals, then saying they're not working – not paying their way - so they close them down and sell them.

True!!

In Northwick Park Hospital –  still in Harrow by the way – they are closing down the rheumatology department – closing it down!!!

So come on – come on Generation X or the Generation after that whatever you are called – the boomers have done enough; it's time to stop this lot.

Do you believe, American readers, that in Britain we have 'Virgin Medical' trying to edge its way in to the National Health Service and ruin it.

Nuff said!!

Amazon.

 The River Amazon - seems to go round and round.

A lot of people liked my post last week about acting; it was actually a revue I wrote for Amazon which I copied and pasted here – I thought it might be of interest.

A word about Amazon; in Britain it's http://Amazon.co.uk and America http://Amazon.com – the same derided company both sides of the Atlantic. In France, I believe, they were prevented from selling stuff with no postal charges as they were undercutting the book shops.

I have friends who never use Amazon; they never use them because of the loyalty they feel to the book shops and believe Amazon are closing them down.

That's a fair point.

Over the years I have had friends – other friends – who have worked in book shops, including a famous one in Charing Cross Road, who have been on slave wages; working for next to nothing, being supervised by the supervisor from hell and working very long hours. Well why didn't they get a job somewhere else? Yes, why?

Now those same book shops have been given a kick up the arse by Amazon and at the same time Amazon has saved the post office; Ebay also saved the day for the British Post Office and has put them into a decent profit position so now the government wants to sell off the post office counters to large stores or private enterprises now they have Amazon and Ebay on board for the mail side of things. Apparently the post office counters don't make a profit but the parcels side does; good old Amazon, good old Ebay.

I remember when Amazon first started; they were making no money at all but even so they were sponsoring the Charlie Rose Show on PBS; every night Charlie would espouse their virtues – what a great company Amazon is, he would say, and the rest of us who had read about the stocks wondered just how long it would last; just as we are now wondering how Netflix has lasted so long; that's a very strange company but it hasn't been taken over yet by Google like - YouTube.

But there is a good side to Amazon; not only did they help Charlie Rose, they help first time writers to get started and first time film makers with their film festival information company which is a subsidiary of the Internet Movie Date Base (IMDb.com) which is an Amazon Company. That's a place where all actors have to be aware of so things go around in circles don't they.

But those old book shops hardly ever helped writers to get started. I say, hardly ever as there may be a few – not that I know of any – who are helping new writers and novice novelists like me; but I haven't heard of any so that's just to cover myself.

Well that's it for today and here's a picture of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize!

And here's a man - in one photo with John Lennon, no less was was an anti war campaigner:

Such is life - going round in circles.

Reclaiming the Stanislavski Approach.

The movie 'Stagecoach.' - good acting? natural.

 

An actor I used to work with, many years ago, John Gillett, has written a book on acting; it's called Acting on Impulse: Reclaiming the Stanislavski Approach: A Practical Workbook for Actors.

He wrote it a few years ago and I have just found it on Amazon.

Oh dear; another book about acting, was my first reaction; but then I started to read some of it.

First of all I have to give John 4 stars for the writing of the book and for the kick in the arse the British acting profession needs.

He is right; we don't talk about acting here, we tell stories of old times in rep when so and so came on stage with his flies undone or a large piece of spinach in their front teeth. That's okay; nobody wants to stop the fun but there is a very interesting side to acting theory and, indeed, I spent some time doing this when I lived in Los Angeles.

I spent 16½ years living and working there and worked with actors who were trained in all kinds of methods from Stanislavsky to Meisner, Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, and I bought all the books, started learning all over again; I did workshops, joined an improv group - as it's the 'done thing' in a company town – went to 'Starbucks' and 'Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf' on Sunset, and did a bit of networking. 

Everybody walks around with a 'spec' script in their pocket, their 'head shot' in their bag and some changes of clothes in their car in case they get an emergency call from their agent with an audition or 'call back' for the one they went for the other day.

There are no 'rules of thumb' of course, but I have worked with actors who have talked at great length about acting techniques and it hasn't made a bit of difference to their performance. They were great at the theory and terrible at practice; as my dad used to say 'they could talk a good fight.'

I am a great fan of John Malkovitch who is, in my opinion, a great actor; very dangerous on the stage who does virtually no research at all. He knows how to 'behave' and that's what acting is all about. I didn't see anybody like him in any workshops.

I remember a Stella Adler lecture when she referred to British acting as something the Americans couldn't aspire to as 'they' (the Brits, as they're called) have their natural class, poise and manners that 'we' (the Americans) just cannot do. I am paraphrasing her, as it was a long time since I first became aware of the lecture, in the Stella Adler Studio on Hollywood Boulevard, which is played on a continuous loop - but it's something to bear in mind.

Maybe she was thinking of actors like David Niven and Leslie Howard?

Whilst in Los Angeles I would go to a workshop and 'work-shopped' quite a few plays including playing the title role in Richard III – that would never have happened here; another thing that would never happen here was that I was auditioned to play Sir Isaac Newton on TV. I didn't get it but over here I might have had a very slight chance to play his servant.

That is the main difference between British and American acting – class; and that's why you see the same faces on TV over here all the time and why we – and I shouldn't really say this as an actor – have to put up with so much stereotypical bad acting on our screens; acting we have got used to over the years and since I have returned to London I have got used to it too after the initial shock upon my return.

I remember working with an actor in LA who was trained in the Sandy Meisner technique and who used it; he would use a yellow highlighter on his script and that was the only part of the script that he ever read or even knew.

He thought this was enough; I loved having conversations with him, during the rehearsal breaks about his various techniques, but I could never get through to him that his character might have been mentioned in another part of the script and this might help him with his characterisation. What if his character committed suicide at the end of the story or had some kind of quirk or disability?

I mean what is the point of acting? To help tell the story I should think.

In Los Angeles there were coaches and workshops for everything: cold reading classes, audition classes, comedy classes, stand-up comedy classes and all the rest of it. I did the workshop aforementioned and a term at The Groundlings – the improv group.

There were quite a few stars emerged from The Groundlings, I have to say, who would go in to Saturday Night Live and then on to movies and then disappear with their money – apart from Will Ferrell who really made it big.

The people that make the most money in Hollywood are the acting coaches – they are all over the place; they're all 'in the moment.'

I had a friend there who taught at the Lee Strasberg Institute on Santa Monica Boulevard but nowhere did I see any classes in voice production or diction.

And the other way to make money in Los Angeles is to write an acting book; Samuel French's book shop on Sunset Blvd is always busy and puts to shame their branch in Fitzrovia, London.

So what about John's book? For a start he splits actors in to two types: Representational Actors and Organic Actors and you will know from the supermarket which one is considered the better in every day life - but can you taste the difference?

Representational, he says, use fake emotions and the Organic ones use experience. The other thing he points out is that public subsidy in the theatre here should be raised to European Rates and recent cut backs reversed – what that has to do with Stanislavsky is beyond me.

John also talks of group theatre philosophy, publicly funded; what about the National Theatre, here? It's government funded and employs lots of privileged actors and actresses?

Read this book if you think you need help but always remember, if you can't act in the first place this book will not teach you and furthermore ask yourself who the best actors are in your life; they are our children who are naturals. They only become unnatural when they are given lines to say or acting teachers get hold of them.

I have seen literally thousands of performances and I have loved some of them them, been swayed by some of them and thrilled by some of them. Sometimes I have almost been moved by some of them, but I've only been really moved twice and I know this was purely by technique and both times it was by Sydney Poitier: once in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and once with Bobby Darin in the movie Pressure Point. I fell for it both times.

Good actors? I don't know.

Seamus Heaney; RIP.

It's a very sad day today.

Today we have heard that the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney has died.

Seamus Heaney was the first Irish poet laureate since WB Yeats and the one thing I know about his poems is that they are – as were Yeats' - very accessible; that's the main thing. 

Some poets are so complicated and dense that they require an education in something else in order to be understood.

Heaney's poems, as well as Yeats' – make the reader look for the meaning of the work elsewhere. 

Work that is usually accomplished part time, evening time and slumber time.

Poems come in a flash to lots of poets and some take time to write – some of the great ones, as with some songs, are written in a moment. Seamus Heaney said Digging came to him as he was driving; here's a bit:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down . . .

Easy peasy isn't it? You can see what it's about – a bit like the miner father to the poet son, the labourer to the lawyer son and so on.

I have known of Seamus Heaney for years and years and I am sorry to say I am not that much of an expert on his actual poetry - but there again I am not much an expert on anything but I can't let that stop me from saying a word about him on this day. 

You have to envy me though as I have that pleasure to come.

But I will never forget that perfect Derry accent and the reading of his own poetry.

I don't know if you need to come from the British Isles to appreciate his sonnet about the shipping forecast but here is a bit of it:

Dogger. Rockall. Malin, Irish Sea:
Green swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux
Conjured by that strong gale-warning voice.
Collapse into a sibilant penumbra.

This is what sends people to sleep in the British Isles; it is preceded by Sailing By which is a piece of music that has been played in the same spot for fifty years. One can imagine Seamus drifting off to sleep at about 12:50 am – as that is when Sailing By, followed by the shipping forecast, comes on to Radio 4. 

If you are in America just listen to it on the Internet; you should be able to work out the time – 5:50 pm on the west coast – and you may be able to hear the inspiration before Radio 4 turns in to the BBC World Service with their new music – Lilly Bolero long gone.

Seamus Heaney was born in Derry; son of a farmer; Derry part of the so called Northern Ireland but he carried an Irish Passport; green it was till the EU came along when you could see your fellow Irish standing in the queues at the airport flashing their 'greeny' but that has gone and Seamus Heaney has gone now too – just 74 in an age when we are all supposed to be living till 100. RIP.

Seamus Heaney - Sailing Away.

The Pitch!

cricket bats - good and solid willow.

The word pitch has loads of meanings: you can pitch an idea, pitch a ball at baseball; it can be the pitch you play on, as in football (soccer), or the cricket pitch which is the piece of ground between the two wickets at cricket, twenty two yards long and ten feet wide – the hallowed piece of real estate that no one will walk upon.

People jump over it in case their foot leaves a mark or moves a piece of the sacred sod.

A pitch at baseball is what they call it when the 'pitcher' throws the ball at the batter, trying to get the ball past him, and into the catcher's hands – or to be more precise – his glove. The glove being worn on one hand – the none throwing hand.

Here is the picture of a pitcher:

not not that one – this one:

in all truth does this look more dynamic?

or this?

or even these 2 images.

Those last two are of Frank (Typhoon) Tyson a bowler – at cricket. 

And this is what it looks like at the other end:

At cricket you have to bowl the ball and keep your bowling arm straight or it will be a foul as you are not allowed to throw the ball which you are at baseball.

You will notice that the pitcher – no not the jug – lifts a knee just before letting the ball go.

Now why is this?

I think it's when you lift the knee you have passed the point of no return and you cannot throw the ball at one of the bases if you see a batter out of his ground which is what you can do before lifting the leg.

It's the same as running someone out at cricket – in cricket two bases, in baseball three bases and the batter's box as in the expression think (or whatever) out of the box.

Yes there are plenty of sayings from baseball but probably more from cricket – a straight bat, a safe pair of hands, a sticky wicket, it's not cricket and many more.

The glove is worn on the one hand, at baseball, so the fielder can throw the ball with the other; however, at cricket, they don't wear a glove at all even though the ball is heavier (between five and a half to five and three quarter ounces as opposed to the baseball which is five and a quarter ounces) apart from the wicket keeper which is the cricket equivalent of baseball's catcher. He wears a pair of gloves.

The difference in weight between the two balls means that the cricket ball can be thrown further than the baseball which makes the long fielding at cricket better than long fielding at baseball but baseball's close fielding is far superior; there is nothing so spectacular as the double (or even triple) play.

The object of both games is to score more runs than the other team; in cricket you can have a drawn game – that is when the time allowed for play runs out before the last batting team are all out – or a tie; that is when both teams score the same amount of runs. 

If this happens in baseball they play till one of the teams has more runs than the other when they have both batted for the same amount of innings; this can sometimes mean playing after midnight.

As a general rule, batsmen at cricket think they can play baseball – but they can't. In baseball when you hit across the ball and you have to run when you hit it.

As a general rule, batters at baseball think they can play cricket – but they can't. In cricket you get behind the ball and hit it with a straight bat but you don't have to run; you can play defensive – unheard of in baseball.

Two great games, though, and I am privileged to know both of them so I know what a 'curve ball' and a 'googly' is.

By the way in cricket it's an innings and in baseball it's an inning.

A run at cricket is when you run to the other end of the pitch (you know what pitch means) and the batsman (batter in baseball) at the other end reaches the wicket at the batsman's end who has just hit the ball.

A run at baseball is when the batter (batsman in cricket) has run all the way around the triangle.

Here's the triangle:

 And here's the cricket pitch:

The bowlers at cricket bowl fast or slow. The fast bowlers 'swing' the ball and when it bounces it can go anywhere and when they bowl slow they 'spin' the ball and that can go anywhere too.

Give yourself a treat and look at one of the greatest bowlers ever, the Australian Shane Warne bowling the ball of the century – see how good it is on the replay in this clip which is about one minute long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waE8Ew5bejM

I hope all this is clear?

Oh! Not to worry – I hope you enjoyed the pictures. Here is a simple explanation of cricket:

The aim of cricket is simple - score more than the opposition.

Two teams, both with 11 players, take it in turns to bat and bowl.
When one team is batting, they try and score as many runs as they can by hitting the ball around an oval field.
The other team must get them out by bowling the ball overarm at the stumps, which are at either end of a 22-yard area called a wicket.

A batsman protects his stumps

The bowling team can get the batsmen out by hitting the stumps or catching the ball. Other ways of getting out
Once the batting team is all out, the teams swap over and they then become the bowling side.
Each time a team bats it is known as their innings. Teams can have one or two innings depending on how long there is to play.
The Ashes Test matches are over five days so England and Australia have two innings each to score as many runs as they can.
Whoever scores the most runs wins. But a cricket match can be drawn too.
That happens when the team bowling last fails to get all the batsmen out..

Here for baseball:

A baseball game is played by two teams who alternate between offence and defence. There are nine players on each side. The goal is to score more runs than the opponent, which is achieved by one circuit of four bases that are placed on the diamond.

When it boils down they are the same game but that's the way the Americans play it; they misread the memo.

Here are the heroes; two in baseball and the other at cricket; these men will never be replaced:

Ted Williams of the Red Sox and Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees.

Ian Botham - a hero for all time (a sporting hero, that is).

The Testament of Mary.

I was laying in bed the other night, the night of the shooting stars – the meteor showers, reading a book by one of my favourite authors, Colm Tóibín, called The Testament of Mary. This is a book about the mother of Christ but it is a fiction – a novel. It's only about one hundred and ten pages or so but I felt I had to read it because of the standard of writing.

It's not a subject I read about much but I am always interested in various religions.

The novel is written in a first person narrative, supposedly from Mary, and she talks of her son; never mentioning him by name – well not yet anyway.

She is speaking some time after the crucifixion from some 'other' place and she is going through her thoughts about what happened in her son's life. I reached the part in the novel where she reminisces about him bringing Lazarus back to life. You will remember Lazarus as the man that Jesus 'revived' from the dead. He is supposed to have said 'Lazarus come forth' and, as the saying goes in Dublin, he came fifth and won an orange.

But I digress.

It seems that Lazarus had been dead for four days and was buried in the ground and when Jesus came upon the scene his two sisters, helped by a few others, cleared the dirt away for the Lazarus miracle. After the miracle people treated Mary – and Lazarus in fact – very suspiciously and as I read this, tucked comfortably in my bed, a big fly buzzed around the room. Now this has happened before and because of the darkness of the room, being lit only by my bed side lamp, I have never bothered to swat the fly, but because the book is only about one hundred and ten pages long, I took a swipe; bingo!

I heard the slight thud of the book to fly impact and saw it careering across the room and landing on the white chest of drawers where he lay motionless; possibly waiting for our spider to take him away.

He has to be 'our' spider as he lives with us.

And so – on with the book.

There were lots of people who didn't believe that Lazarus had died at all and the thought occurred to me that he would find it rather uncomfortable with a mouth full of dirt for four days; the narrative goes on to say his sisters, his beautiful sisters, would put wet cloths into his mouth and I didn't wonder why.

Mary was taken to a wedding and at the wedding people seemed to be interested in her instead of the happy couple and she felt uncomfortable about it. She is warned that a man at the door is a spy and if her son comes she should sneak him out of the house as the Romans did not like the fact that her son was leading some kind of revolution and breaking certain traditions – one of them being death!

As I read this I noticed that the fly, as with Lazarus, was moving on the white chest of drawers; it was that tiny bit too far away from me to swat again without getting out of bed and in any case I wasn't about to run around the room after it, with my wife neatly napping next to me; but I watched.

Up he rose and started to fly around the room – not making the same buzzing noise as before but, nonetheless, being a nuisance. I know all creatures have their place on this earth and if we take one species away we will be plagued by whatever they eat, but I was reading and didn't want his company.

After a few minutes he settled on to the ceiling; the ceiling in my bedroom is very high so I would have had to jump up and smack him with something so I lay there and watched him walk to the corner where I know there is a spider's web made, some time ago, by our spider. After a few seconds I could see he was tangled up.

So back to the book and back to where Jesus enters to the wedding party. His mother said he had a glow about him, was wearing rich clothes; he seemed to have grown and that his followers, the people he had come with, didn't dress the way he did and didn't have a glow about them, and that he was the centre of attention as soon as he came in. 

Well he would be wouldn't he? He had just brought a man back to life but . . . . . when people looked at Lazarus he looked dead; he was being watered by his beautiful sisters with a wet cloth and he looked as if he was about to collapse.

It gave Mary the chance to go to her son and tell him that he must get out of there that he is in danger and that they must leave right away but he looked at her as is she were not his own, that he didn't know her and went and spoke to others.

His mother thought she heard him say that he was the son of God and this disturbed her so she went to him and tried to reason with him again and as she did this - the fly escaped from the spider's web.

The captivity must have frustrated him so much that he was flying around, buzzing, bumping and nearly hitting me so I had to take the decision and get out of bed.

As he flew across the width of the bed I took the book and, using it like a table tennis bat, I backed handed it into the wall by the window where it perished.

I made sure of this by gently tapping him with the spine of the book and moving him, with the book, to the skirting board.

Usually I read heavier books which cannot be used as a swatter so this book has more uses than it was meant to have and I recommend it in any case as a good read.

The next morning I looked to see if the fly was still where I had left him but he was gone; taken away by our spider I suppose.

Internet Bullying - Trolls.

I wrote in a blog some time ago about the film director Alan Smithee – who doesn't exist.

It's a name film directors use when they don't want their name attached to the film they have directed mostly because someone has messed with the film and, in the opinion of the director, ruined it; but let's face it sometimes they improve it.

The directors are really saying they don't want their name associated with the film and by doing so they create publicity and they don't achieve the anonymous state they profess to desire.

They are not and never will be anonymous.

Now my pal Jim, who writes a blog that you can click on to at the top of this page, has trouble with an anonymous troll who writes comments on his blog all the time.

This must be a bit worrying but I know Jim and I know he can handle it; the fact that he edits his comments and doesn't publish any more of the comments from the anonymous troll tells you more about the anonymous troll than it does about Jim.

In Britain, lately, trolls have been threatening female members of parliament; one in particular because she was campaigning for Jane Austin to appear on the ten pound (£) note.

She has been threatened with rape, bombs and other kinds of violence but, as in the case of Jim, she can handle it.

Last week a young girl committed suicide because she suffered the same kind of abuse and it's obvious that she couldn't handle it; she's not the first and she won't be the last.

I heard of it happening in America before we came back here.

There is no answer to it really; I have noticed that YouTube have been asking for real names lately but that will never work.

These people are usually weedy little pieces of garbage who live in a little room at their parent house.

I saw a documentary on TV once where a man was being threatened over the phone in his apartment; the guy on the other end of the phone was say 'I'll be up to kill you, soon. I got a gun.'

When the police found the man they knocked his door down and he was in his apartment, surrounded by old pizza boxes and he was about five feet four and weighed about 90 pounds wringing wet - ' don't hit me, don't hit me' he cried. If only that girl knew the type of person that was threatening her.

On the IMDb, which is the Internet Movie Data Base, there are loads of trolls. If you go on to the Star Wars page and leave a comment saying 'Star Wars is crap' you will be spotted straight away as a troll.

Now where did this word troll come from; we all know the song I’m a Troll fol-de-rol, I’m a Troll fol-de-rol, I’m a Troll fol-de-rol and I’ll eat you up for supper from Billy Goats Gruff, but this word troll comes from the fishing term and the activity of trolling; it's when you have your rod in the water trying to pick something up.

It's strange that the other bad Internet activity has a fishing connotation – phishing; that's when people send you an email asking for your password.

Another con trick these days is when someone gets that password from you, signs in to your email and sends an email to everybody in your address book saying that they (pretending to be you) are in Venice and they have lost their wallet – can you send money etc.

If I run out of money in some far away place with a strange sounding name I will not send any of my pals an email; if I'm in trouble I'll call you.

Baseball and Cricket - the difference; or Memorial Day in the Valley.

Memorial Day in America is a national holiday; what you would call in Britain a bank holiday, and when I first moved there I would go to a big house in the San Fernando Valley (The Valley) to celebrate with a friend of a friend.

The friend was a guy called Hank; everybody called him Hank but his real name was Chaim – pronounced Hime, with that guttural sound on the aitch – but people called him Hank. It wasn't that he wasn't proud to be Jewish but Hank was easier for goys to remember and pronounce. 

 

Now 'goy' is a Yiddish word and if there was one thing I liked about Hank it was his use of Yiddish; I learned what a schnorrer was, a schlemiel, a schlepper and all the other uses of words not so complimentary but colourful and interesting. 

 

I also got used to hearing those words from his other friends and when I went to the world première of the movie Showgirls (don't ask) with him I met all the guys in the producer's office and learned their humour too.

When they heard my accent they'd say 'Where you fram – Joysey??'

In fact if there's one thing I miss about LA it's the Jewish humour – not Jewish jokes but Jewish humour – you know: Woody Allen, Seinfeld etc. 

 

The Jews here in Britain, seem to play gentiles ever since David Kossoff died. The closest thing Britain ever got to a Jewish series, since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width was a series made by Indians called Goodness Gracious Me which had that fish out of water, matriarchal, Italian/Jewish/Irish feel to it, even though it was from a country so far away.

Back to memorial day and my pal Hank.

I went to the house twice in the valley and it was the same story each time; when we arrived we met Hank's pal and he would be sitting in the big house by himself. He would take us in to the rear of the house where there would be loads of food and drinks all set out on a garden table next to the pool.

'The others will be here soon' he would say 'Hey Chris – when we have time maybe you can explain to me the rules of cricket.'

And I would say 'They're quite simple it's . . . '

'When we got time' he'd say; then we would sit around and take a drink.

A little while later his daughter would arrive, by herself, and sit at the table. She had the same conversation each time and that was to do with the 'valley' seceding from Los Angeles.

That's all she was interested in and, in fact, one of the years they had an election and the people of the valley decided to stay in Los Angeles.

After that the fella's ex-wife would show up. She would sit with the daughter and the fella would say 'how about some food' and as we were helping ourselves the son would arrive. 

 

He wouldn't say hello to anybody but would get in to some argument with dad and the arguments would usually spring from the fact that mom and dad were no longer a couple, mom no longer lived in the big house and neither did the kids.

So each Memorial Day this fella would get ready for a big garden party that no one went to; the son was embarrassing, the daughter was a typical 'valley girl' and the poor mother would try and hold on to the remnants that once were her family.

Each time we went there we ended up playing darts and leaving most of the food.

One year, Hank brought along his wife – that was a new one on me and I think he married her so she could get a green card.

She was a make up assistant in the film industry and Hank and his pal were assistant film directors; they were always setting up one big film after another none of which ever happened and if there's one thing to know about the Los Angeles film industry it's that most people have a script in their pocket, a project they are working on and, as an actor, I have been offered stardom more times than I can remember.

It was usually 'I want your voice in my movie' – my voice? Maybe I can get in to it too aye?

Hank asked me to join him when Memorial Weekend came about again – some time in May, as a rule, before the weather got really hot and the sun reflecting on the pool would blind you with its glare and when I would go indoors to get away from it the image of the last thing I was looking at would stay with me – but I passed as it was just too embarrassing.

I never completely lost contact with Hank; he would call me every Saint Patrick's Day and offer his services as a nominated driver. He drove a 1963 Chevy Nova convertible with red seats and white body work and in the winter, even though it was LA, it was cold, as he couldn't get the hood to work – or the top or whatever it's called - so we were forever in the open.

When I started to do my one man Irish Show on St Patrick's Day in the year 2000 he came to see it and one year he brought along the guy from the valley.

'Nice show, Chris; listen when we get time maybe you can tell me the rules of cricket.'

'Yeh – when we get time' I'd say.

I did the show each year up to about 2010 and each year I'd send Hank a flyer and he would call to say he was available as a nominated driver.

As well as the Yiddish, Hank had a very rough voice with a thick Brooklyn accent; he would talk about his 'dawdter' and his 'mudder an' farder' and one day when his daughter showed up she turned out to be quite a beauty. It was strange to see something so beautiful with such a rough looking man – let's face it he looked like a gangster.

One year one of the flyers came back – not at this address, so I feared the worst.

Hank had called me one day, when I got back from New York; I saw his name on my 'caller I.D.' thing on the phone and meant to call him back but I was rushing out so I didn't. He probably wanted to know how his home town was.

I felt guilty not calling him that day as I knew what the returned envelope meant, which I kept in the car; one day when I was travelling through Culver City, I called at his address and what I had suspected was true.

The manager of the building told me he had died; he had a heart attack one day and that was all he knew.

All the stuff I knew died with him: his daughter, his mother in New York, his money worries, the very cheap places to eat he had found all over Los Angeles and his Chevy Nova convertible, which he called Betsy – all gone.

Took me a long time to get over the guilt of not calling him that day – but I did think of him just as I think of all my friends, like you, that I will call one day.

Just as one day I'll tell you the difference between baseball and cricket.

King Billy's wife, Kate! Am I a Royalist?

 Does the wife of a Conservative MP have labour pains?

Am I royalist? Well I wasn't at one time till I thought of the alternative. 

It would mean a president to replace the monarch and who would that be? 

 

President Thatcher followed by President Blair?

 

I don't think so – maybe even President Livingstone and then President Boris Johnson.

You might say that one or two of those might be better than the Queen but they would have their crazy 'hobby horse' little schemes and skirmishes and would promote barmy ideas like an airport in the middle of the Thames.

The thing is, a lot of people from all over the world come to Britain to see the royal palaces and gardens and Shakespeare. They probably cost the tax payer less than tourism brings in as the tourist spends money on everything from hookers to a room at the Ritz and the recipients pay tax - well the Ritz hasn't paid any corporation tax for nineteen years - so maybe the royal family are worth it.

 

That's the way things are here; there has been a monarch here since William the Conqueror apart from the time when England was a republic and look what happened under Oliver Cromwell at that time.

In fact ask any Irishman what they think of Oliver Cromwell if you would like a thick ear!

So a lot of people are moaning about the attention the news channels are giving to the future King Billy's wife, Kate, having a baby this week; maybe even today; well what do they expect?

 

There will be a lot of other people celebrating it. 

 

Me?

 

I don't care one way or the other. I know it's a sucker bet. 

 

The bookies here have the odds @ 1-2 for a girl and about 6-4 for a boy.

 

I think the favourite name is Elizabeth.

When I say it's a sucker bet I mean how could there even be odds? 

 

There is nothing to go on. 

 

But the British bookie is an honest bookie and they make the odds judging by the amount of bets coming in; unlike the American bookie who adds vigorish to the bet so they can guarantee a profit.

I have written about vigorish before, in a previous post, if you want to look back, but my American friends, who live in America, don't believe the bookies don't charge it here.

So what are we to do?

Some people here want to leave the common market (the EU, I think it's called), become a Republic, notwithstanding what happened under Cromwell, abolish taxes and let the pubs open all day! 

 

Oh! That last one has already happened which has resulted in 100 pubs closing every week; I think I wrote about that one before and if anybody is from Pinner (Elton John, for one) and hasn't been there for some time, the little pub by the station has now closed. It is surrounded by scaffolding and a big sheet so we can't see what is going on – or is that just to prevent the dust spreading?

And maybe we should choose a new royal family: we'll choose some family from, shall we say, Yorkshire or Lancashire or even Birmingham. 

 

Lock them up, feed them riches, send them all over the world, where they can shake hands with everybody presented to them, so they can crack a little joke, look a little ordinary before being whisked off by the men in suits with ear pieces and bulging pockets.

Oh what a life it must be showing no emotion, keeping the upper lip stiff, standing on a boat for five hours dying for a piss whilst everybody has a great time, getting drunk and singing songs 'one' has never heard; not being able to disappear to the shed to see to the ferrets or to the pub or even Starbucks where they pay their employees £6 an hour and only give them ten minutes break and actually charge the poor buggers for their coffee and snacks.

So leave the future King Billy's wife, Kate, to have her baby and, if you are quite young you will be reading about her baby for the rest of your life so get over it – let's hope all goes well in the private wing of that hospital – wherever it is.

In days gone by, by the by, when a heir to the throne was to be born, the birth had to be witnessed by the Prime Minister of the day – that's one job the future President Cameron wouldn't have to do!!