You’ll NeverWalk Alone

It turns out that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, I was unable to orchestrate a holiday-themed photo op for James Brown this year.  Having scoured the local pet store and drug store offerings, the best I could find was a striped elf hat (replete with ears!) which, sadly, involved a complicated and unsubtle seating apparatus VERY unpopular with the canine participant.  After several failed attempts and much whining, cajoling and petulance (by all involved), the enterprise was abandoned in its entirety.  We will clearly need a better plan for next year.

I offer instead photo-documentation of an important New Year’s revelation in the Reynolds-Knighten household.

Traitors Among Us

It seems that all occupants have now declared their 2009 EPL allegiances.  The final tally is Liverpool -2, Tottenham – 1.  To which my response is 1) it’s (cheap and) easy to root for the league front runners, and 2) I’m not naming names, but somebody’s a bad dog.

Happy New Year and go the Spur!

Go the Spur!

Supermarket Trolley Dash

I promise to get something holiday-appropriate up soon.  We are canvassing local pet stores.  James Brown will not make it through the Christmas season without being festooned with something jolly for your viewing pleasure.  Stay tuned.

The unsung art of understatement

 

 Until then, chew on this next post – another issue in a series I like to call “Why It’s Hard Being Me.”

 

 I concede from the get-go that I have more than my fair share of idiosyncrasies and a (hopefully endearing) brand of quirky “charm.”  In general, I like to think I keep most of the crazy under wraps from day-to-day.  I do acknowledge there are flare-ups that, while few and far between, are always entertaining.  I live to serve, so here you go.

 

I’ve noticed of late that my usual compulsions and preoccupations have become exaggerated as I age.  More frightening still is the revelation that I seem to have overcome my long-standing aversion to talking to strangers.  It has turned out to be an unfortunate confluence of events.

 

I was at the grocery store a couple weeks back stocking up on those boring but essential household items that seem to demand an ever-increasing supply of my attention.  Piling boxes of Kleenex into my cart, I encountered a bit of a hiccup.  My local Safeway-turned-Lucky “super”market had only seen fit to provide three suitably non-descript grey boxes of Kleenex.  I mined the depths of the options on offer but to no avail.  There were green boxes, blue boxes, boxes with kittens, boxes with dolphins, boxes intended to suggest you were walking through a forest at dawn and, finally, a hideous mauve misfire encased in a bizarre ivy overlay that I will have nightmares about forever.  Aside from the three acceptable instances already in my cart, there was not a single alternative sitting on the shelf that I would consider bringing into my home for reasons that I maintain are obvious.

 

And before you bother suggesting that I buy some other color (or heaven forfend another brand), allow me to explain how buying Kleenex works in my world.  It is a complex and many-tiered decision tree that I’ve developed over years of dedicated tissue consumption – really another post for another time – the quintessence of which is 1) I only buy boxes of Kleenex with acceptably subtle décor (usually grey), 2) I only buy boxes of Kleenex in even numbers, and 3) I always buy boxes of Kleenex myself because, well, if you want something done right…

 

So I’m standing in the household aisle looking from my three boxes of “good” Kleenex back to the 3’x5’x3’ shelf of nothing but “bad” Kleenex and wondering what my next play will be, when I notice a gentleman idly pushing his cart past the paper towels and BAM! Orange-off spray as he steadily approaches my location.  More importantly, I notice the grey box of Kleenex nestled in the bottom of his cart.  I wonder whether this man might be willing to entertain the notion of a Kleenex exchange and I select a relatively non-objectionable (but decidedly unacceptable) box from the shelf in front of me.  I want to say it had stripes and mini Christmas lights on it, but I can’t be sure since things started happening pretty fast after that.

 

By this point the man with the cart sees me watching him and gives me the kind of acknowledgement that leads me to conclude that this may become a more lengthy exchange than I’m willing to endure, but I’m stymied by the prospect of having to return one perfectly reasonable box of Kleenex to the shelf so that I can leave the store with an even number of boxes and my sanity (irony intentional).  As I’m running the cost-benefit analysis of engaging this man in conversation in the hopes of commandeering his Kleenex, he reaches speaking range and gives me a barely imperceptible nod, as if to say “You’ve been staring at me for a while now.”  At this juncture I still have it in my power to redeem myself and get out of there with Kleenex in hand by responding with any of the following:

 

“How do you feel about blue boxes of Kleenex?”

“You look like a sailboat kind of guy.”

(A nautical-themed box being crucial for this purpose)

“I’m hoping for a Christmas miracle and you can be the architect.”

 

What I actually said was:

 

“This is not weird for the reason you think it is.”

 

To his credit, the guy did not even slow down.  He looked at me appraisingly as he passed, but by now just to satisfy himself that I was unarmed.

 

I went home that day chuckling to myself with two grey boxes of Kleenex and a fresh reminder of why it can sometimes be so hard to be me.

Pardon me, is that the Ford Nepotism you’re driving?

I recently had the qualified privilege of viewing the most recent Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace.” For those of you who have seen the less than stellar reviews, I have to say it was better than I thought it would be. If you approach the experience with lowered expectations, you may be pleasantly surprised. I was encouraged to discover that Daniel Craig is less of an awkward fit as Bond than he seemed to me to be in the last film, but I nearly blew a gasket over this fresh onslaught of rampant product-placement by Ford.

Ford Edge

And so here it comes – my latest rant.

 

James Bond would never drive a modern Ford. I am personally insulted by the suggestion that he would. And he would certainly never stick with Ford across two installments of a revered cinema franchise. For starters, he’s British (and those people are fickle). More importantly, Ford makes a mediocre car and – say what you will about 007 – the man does not go in for mediocre (or, rather, didn’t until now). And, before everyone gets all up in arms defending Ford’s proud American heritage and their many (if aging) accomplishments, I am just as big a fan of vintage Ford models as a right-minded person should be. They just haven’t rolled out anything decent lately (including their ubiquitous and ham-handed promos).

64 Mustang from Goldfinger

I really struggled to keep an open mind about this, but ultimately decided that even if I were to accept – only for a moment and only for argument’s sake – that Bond might accidentally find his way into a Ford – meaning that he murdered some poor shmo and made off with his ride – it would still have to be a Mustang and it would STILL have to be minted before 1979.

 

 

Which really begs the question – what the hell happened?

 

I am neither sympathetic to nor willing to accept the theory that in these prequel films Bond has yet to “grow into” his trademark style. You either have taste or you don’t, and I have serious doubts about the undiscerning eye of the movie executive who gave this tie-in the green light. Even putting pure style aside – again merely for argument’s sake – Ford isn’t a frontrunner in any of the categories that could conceivably matter – technology, fuel efficiency, speed, endurance, longevity, craftsmanship, ergonomics; frankly unless he needed an F-350 to tow an airplane, Ford is nowhere near the list of potential Bond-appropriate conveyances. And to those who would suggest that the make and model of the car Bond drives is of little or no consequence, I welcome you to return to the rock under which you have been living and send you along with a friendly admonition to be mindful what you say and to whom you say it.

67 Shelby GT500 "Eleanor"

So vehement are my feelings on this topic (and so free, it would seem, is my time), that I devoted an hour to researching an appropriate focus for my limitless rage. The product of which is the discovery that I need look no further than one of the oldest tricks of the trade. A time-worn practice so entrenched in human history that it hardly requires explanation. Not the oldest profession, mind you, but close.

“Ford has had a long-standing relationship with the Bond movies since Henry Ford II brokered the deal with Albert “Cubby” Broccoli to showcase the ’64½ Ford Mustang convertible in “Goldfinger,” says Uzielli, senior advisor to Ford Global Brand Entertainment, who is also the grandson of Henry Ford II. But he hastens to stress that regardless of that relationship, the vehicles chosen to appear in the Bond films are selected solely based on their suitability for the role.”

 

I’m sure that’s true and Mr. Uzielli shouldn’t feel the need to defend himself.

 

“If we didn’t have the right cars, the relationship wouldn’t mean anything,” he said. “They are very particular about the way their brand is perceived, and they would never force fit a vehicle in that didn’t work.”

Except that he seems compelled to do so (while lying through his teeth).

 

And so, with that revelation, I find myself strangely placated by the knowledge that the world still works in the rational, if disappointing, fashion it always has. Who am I to question the horse trading and credit swaps that occur among the big men who make the decisions that matter, except to leave you with the following plucked verbatim from the media offerings at ford.com.

 

“For the third straight year, Ford topped all other brands (not just automotive) to win brandchannel.com’s 2008 brandcameo Award for Overall Product Placement, appearing in 30 of the 52 number one films at the U.S. box office from Jan. 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008. Ford also won the Scene Stealer Award, given to the brand that took the spotlight from its human co-stars, for the placement of the Ford Mustang in the 2007 hit “I am Legend.”

 

Thank you, Ford, for doing your part to ruin the things I love.

Carnie Wife

A couple of weeks ago, Michael and I attended a showing of Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion. This is my best attempt at an account of what transpired.

Having been ushered through a series of tents and passed along a string of handlers, we find our seats just off the aisle. Settling in, we celebrate our proximity to the main stage and, preliminaries dispensed, Michael sets off back toward the concessions stand. I give a friendly nod to the couple sitting to my left and then turn my attention to deciphering the pre-show entertainment – three or four clown-like characters let loose in the audience administering minor embarrassment and a shock of spotlight as they gambol and cavort up and down the aisles, jumping in the laps of the unsuspecting and engaging in one-sided games of tag with the less-than-enthused among us.

Thus engrossed, I do not apprehend the rogue clown skipping down the aisle behind me, shaking hands in exaggerated fashion as he goes, until he seems to materialize beside me, and I make the fatal error of meeting his gaze. I watch as he tips his bowler, takes my hand and issues a barely decipherable mix of Spanish and Italian, which I interpret as something along the lines of “Alone this evening? Such a tragedy!” and then in English, “I get off at 11.” Ha. Ha. Whereupon, he yanks off his hat, bows deeply, kisses my hand and high-steps his way to the next victim.

I breathe a sigh of relief at having avoided further spectacle and relay to Michael – just now returning with a bucket of cotton candy in hand – all the fun he has missed, to which he responds, “Wow, I’m impressed. You really don’t like clowns.” It’s true. I really don’t like clowns. I’m not liable to just haul off and belt a clown in the mouth without warning or provocation, but I will cross the street or engage in more complicated evasive maneuvers to avoid coming in contact with a clown. I cannot trace my aversion to clowns to a single traumatic event in my childhood, but I do find the make-up deeply disturbing and, ever since reading Stephen King’s “It,” I always suspect clowns of being a hairsbreadth away from conduct unbefitting a children’s entertainer.

A few minutes later, the lights go down, an exotic flavor of jangling music rolls through the crowd, the curtain goes up, and then, suddenly and inexplicably, I find myself bathed in a white, hot light. Looking around, I notice that the edges of the light seem to encompass only me. There is a jostling up the aisle, and there before me, once again, the self-same clown of moments before. And that is when the real horror sets in. Exposed by the spotlight in front of a thousand hungry eyes, I consider the possibility of making a run for it, but decide, ultimately, that whatever this clown has planned is bound to be more humane than being chased by a spotlight while scrambling for the nearest exit.

So this clown takes my hand and escorts me up the aisle, to a higher vantage point – as I flip through my karmic rolodex to discover what it is I’ve done to possibly deserve this – and, having reached the apex, we turn to fully embrace this blinding and relentless light, poised to reveal the next chapter in what is sure to be a source of shame for years to come. The clown procures from his vest a bridal veil, which he jams on my head. The band explodes in a swooping, circus-y version of a wedding march. And there I am, walking down the aisle on the arm of a clown, the audience throwing confetti and shrieking with laughter, delighted at their participation on the fringes of this fiasco.

It is a surprisingly accurate facsimile of my own personal version of hell.

Somehow the clown and I reach the bottom of the aisle – a fact of which I am only semi-aware, having devoted the entirety of my attentions to not falling down or crying. He turns to face me all googly-eyed and mugging for the audience and I struggle for a moment against the impulse to throttle the life out of this clown, thinking of all the terrified children who would thank me. But, undaunted, he plunges ahead, holding forth, again, in indecipherable Esperanto, a speech, the cadence of which loosely approximates traditional wedding vows. I again consider the possibility that I may have to kill this clown to get out of this with my sanity. At which point I realize that the speech has stopped, a hush has fallen over the crowd, and the clown is leaning toward me with his face screwed up in full pucker. He’s leaning in for a kiss – with no idea of the violence he is inviting.

Again it is the exposing knife of the spotlight – and the potential myriad witness statements – that mitigates my natural response. I pause a moment before I kiss the clown once on each cheek, congratulating myself on my temperance and my ability to be a good sport. But this clown truly has a death wish because he balks, gushing gibberish and gesticulating wildly, stomping his feet and pointing at his lips. I am, frankly, considering slugging him full in the face because, while I’ve been the very picture of grace under fire up to this point, I am well and truly done with clowns and public humiliation and circuses in general, thank you very much.

It is in this moment of furious internal debate, while the crowd waits in anxious anticipation, that I hear the voice of a jocular Aussie bloke ring out, “Just do it!”

So I do. And we very much enjoy the rest of the show.

However, even weeks later, I must admit I am haunted by the dreadful memory of my carnie wedding and the possibility that, by virtue of some unwritten circus law, I have actually somehow married a clown.

Seeing Red

I apologize in advance to those of you who are eager for an Australiana update.  I’ve got nothing to report on that account.  It’s raining again…there you go.

This post is more about how I’m not always very bright.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have anyone to blame for that.  My parents are smart people and spent a lot of time and effort (read “money”) to ensure I was well educated.  What can I say?  Sometimes things don’t work out the way you hope.

Anyhoo, here we go with another story about how I could stand to be smarter.  I woke up this morning to discover that the rain has, lamentably (for me), returned to Sydney.  (To be fair, the past two days have been gloriously warm and welcoming and had me thinking I might be able to live here afterall.)  I glowered out at the weather, drank my coffee and tried to avoid eye contact with James Brown who, per usual, had decided that since I was no longer supine in bed, it was time for his morning walk.  We engage in this battle of wills every morning.  Apparently he thinks it’s fun.  When I could no longer handle the sad looks and sighs from the dog, I capitulated and set about getting ready to take him for a walk.  I got dressed, brushed my teeth, put in my right contact, put in my left…suddenly a bright, searing pain wrapped around my eyeball.  My eyelid automatically clamped shut and my tear glands went into overdrive as I feebly clawed at my face in an effort to eject the offensive contact lens from my occular cavity.  Finally, I managed to pry open my eye and extract the lens.  Sweet relief!  The incendiary threat in my head subsided.  I quietly congratulated myself for rectifying the situation without wetting myself or blindly bumbling into the wall and knocking myself unconscious.  Then, thinking that the contact lens must not have been rinsed well enough, I placed it in my palm, submerged it in saline solution and gave it a good scrub.  After which, I popped it back into my eye.  Again, the searing alien pain bathed the right half of my face, and, again, whimpering audibly, I frantically struggled to cleave the evil, poisonous film from my retina.  Once removed, I stared at the contact lens in my palm, the pain in my eye diminishing, and wondered aloud, “Well, what the hell?!?!”  I stared and wondered, wondered and stared, and then, and only then, did I recall having chopped a bunch of chillies the night before to make Hot Chilli Prawns (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/517008).  Three medium red chillies, in fact, after which I certainly washed my hands, but apparently not in the pre-op surgeon’s fashion necessary to dispell the tenatious capsaicin clinging to my fingertips. 

Now, I’d like to say that this is the first time this has happened to me, but, as aforementioned, I’m not so bright.  I like to learn things the hard way, forget them, and then re-learn them repeatedly.  Keeps things exciting.  At any rate, I had at the very least realized the source of the problem, and so, hopefully, could save myself a repeat performance of all that initial unpleasantness and foul language.  I washed my hands…twice.  I rinsed and re-rinsed the tainted contact lens in a series of ablutions of my own invention which seemed, to my mind, likely to do the trick.  I washed my hands again and then steeled myself for re-insertion.  I placed the contact on the surface of my eye and blinked a couple times and it seemed okay…except that a second later a gentle stinging erupted around my eye and escalated with alacrity to a firey crescendo before I could pry it out of my eye…a third time.  Now, at this juncture a smarter person would have abandoned the entire effort and gone about their day wearing a perfectly serviceable pair of glasses, but I have the dubious distinction of being both stubborn and dumb.  And I wasn’t about to be beaten by…er…myself. 

Since I wear weekly disposable contacts, I abandoned the chilli marinated pair and released a fresh pair from their hermetically sealed plastic pods while smuggly thinking to myself, “Well, that’s about enough of that.”  Out of an abundance of caution, I rinsed a fresh lens and inserted it in my eye.  Again, the stinging, the crying, the frustration, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Not to be so easily bested, after removing the fresh lens and placing it in its case with a generous squirt of saline solution, I washed my hands no less than 10 times in increasingly hot water until my skin was virtually scalded and my fingers were prune-y.  And again, for the fifth time, I bellied up to the mirror, rinsed the contact lens and put it in my eye.  I blinked several times and waited.  As the seconds ticked by there was, happily, no inkling of the searing pain I had previously experienced (repeatedly).  Success!  Almost an hour later, I emerged from the bathroom ready to take the dog for a walk.  Phew!

And Michael wonders how I manage to “entertain” myself all day.

Food Stuffs

In case you’ve ever wondered how much food you can fit in a dorm-sized fridge, it’s this much.

 

Which is to say not much at all.  And don’t kid yourself and start wondering what’s behind that mostly squished loaf of bread.  Nothing is behind it.  The back of the frigging fridge is what’s behind it.  Kind of makes you wonder why they bothered with the light.  It’s not as though I’ll have occasion to go mining the depths of my dorm fridge.  At a maximum depth of about 8 inches, you can rest assured that if it isn’t readily observable after you open the door, you don’t have it.

We may be on the brink of acquiring a full-sized fridge, which would do wonders for my mental health.  Had a bit of a melt-down today when I couldn’t jam a half-bag of frozen peas into the the freezer of our dorm fridge.  A freezer that is approximately the size of a box of kleenex and already houses a couple ice trays and at least three inches of frost.  So guess what we’re having for dinner?  Peas!  You betcha!  Lots and lots of peas.  I suppose that’s one way to plan a menu.  *sigh*

The offending bag of peas.

Who Needs Clothes Anyway?

You may have read in one of my earlier posts that we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the things we shipped from California.  These items were picked up in Redwood City on April 23rd and we were told to expect them to arrive in Sydney this weekend.  HOWEVER, we just now received an email informing us that the new ETA is now August 18th.  Frigging August!  Unbelievable!  The worst part is that we are pretty much powerless to intimidate better performance from these people.  We’ve already paid them their fee, so we really just have to hope they do what they say they would and actually deliver our stuff some day.  It seems like all I do these days is complain, but COME ON!  The movers initially quoted us 4-6 weeks transit time for our things, which I (being the skeptical, untrusting person that I am) assumed meant it would actually take 6-8 weeks.  BUT 4 MONTHS!

And so the saga continues.

Where’s an El Grullense When You Need One?

Another foray this evening into what Sydneysiders call “Mexican food.”  Another rip-roaring disappointment.  Don’t get me wrong – there is plenty of good food to be found here, but none of it can fairly be called Mexican.  We tried a little place on Oxford Street out at Bondi Junction called “La Fiesta.”  The decor was appropriately festive and there were pinatas hanging from the ceiling, so we thought we’d give it ago.  The most unsettling feature of this place was the crazy prices.  The completely lackluster “beef burrito” I ordered was priced at an ungodly AU$21/US$18.  WTF?  That’s too much for a good burrito and far too much for a bad burrito.  Nevermind that in my current state of need I’d pay $50 for my standard carne asada super burrito from El Grullense.

Seems like it was not so long ago that I was foolishly taking El Grullense (http://www.elgrullensegrill.com) for granted and wondering aloud at the speed at which its franchises were popping up like mushrooms on every street corner in my former neighborhood of Redwood City, California.  Little did I know that I would soon be craving a carne asada super burrito with no relief in sight.  Shame on me.  Shame!  I wonder if El Grullense would consider opening a franchise in Sydney.  They’ve got to have the Bay Area saturated by now.

The good news is there are at least four El Grullense locations between SFO and the South Bay.  Another month to go and I’ll be eating a carne asada super burrito out of each hand!

Sydney – They say they need the rain but I’m not convinced

The first time I visited Australia and Sydney was about 4 years ago.  It was the end of April (autumn in the Southern hemisphere); the weather was idyllic and I whiled away each afternoon strolling around Circular Quay people watching before going to dinner at some swank and happening venue.  I had fantasies of never leaving, of starting a new life in Sydney and never looking back.  The people were friendly, the city was beautiful and inviting, the food was great – every street was bespeckled with bars, restaurants and cafes chock full of boisterous patrons celebrating their collective zest for life.  It was a city I was sure I could get used to.

And so here we are 4 years later and I’ve somehow managed to find myself living in Sydney.  As those of you less naive than myself have probably guessed, it’s not quite as permanently paradisical as I had imagined.  It was silly of me to think it would be – I know – but that’s still what I had in my mind’s eye when we arrived.  The first major complication is that our timing was just flat wrong.  We moved from California at the beginning of May, thereby guaranteeing as long a winter as can be achieved on the planet, with the obvious exception of actually moving straight down to Antarctica.  This unfortunate scheduling snafu is not helped by the fact that I do not like winter and I do not like the cold.  I can barely eat ice cream.  I am a warm weather person going on like 8 months of winter and I’ve officially lost my sense of humor.  Also, it’s been raining to beat the band.  Sydneysiders keep telling us they really need the rain because they’ve had droughts and water rationing for years…all I know is that it’s done nothing but rain since I got here and waiting for the bus in the rain is no fun.

To be fair, some of my angst and frustration stems from the fact that moving in general is pretty awful.  Just moving across the street is hard enough, nevermind moving to another continent.  The movers picked up our stuff in California on April 23rd and we were told we could expect it in Sydney in 4 to 6 weeks.  Well, surprise, surprise, here we are 11 weeks later and we still don’t have our stuff and the movers are strangely nonresponsive.  Excellent.  Meanwhile I’ve been wearing the same two suitcases worth of clothing for the past two months while temperatures have fallen from 80 to 40 degrees.  So lately while I’m standing in the cold rain waiting for the bus, I like to dream about all the coats and other water-repellent clothing I own that I cannot wear because they are all in the middle of the ocean somewhere.  (Assuming, of course, that they have actually departed the US – we’ve had no confirmation of that fact.) 

All I can say is that when spring finally arrives, there had better be a rainbow in the sky everyday, flowers had better burst from the earth like geysers overnight and strangers had better profer unsolicited compliments on the street or the wheels are going to really fall off this bus.

I am counting the days until we go back to California in August.  I am going to spend the first two days just thawing out (and the next two days eating Mexican food).

Chicken Chips

There are a lot of “chicken” flavored things here.  For example, chips  and biscuits (read “crackers”).  From what I can discern, it closely approximates licking a cube of chicken bouillon.  Yum!  I recommend avoiding the chicken chips.  But that’s just me.