The night I arrived back in the US after my most recent trip to Oz I met up with my friends from Australia, Christian and Hedy. They were in town for only a short time, and for months we planned to spend a much more substantial time together than we did, but Blair's death (which is still such a surreal statement that it has no actual real-world meaning) meant that we really only had that night to actually hang out. So we did. We hung out. And hung out. And huuuuung out. So a million drinks later I bundle the pair of them in a cab and I'm walking home. I'm thinking about Blair; he's pretty much all the three of us talked about for the previous four hours.
I come around the corner of my block and the first thing I see is a guy about my age slumped on the pavement, with some chick about my sister's age (but FAR more immature) standing on the nearby stoop saying, "Sir...?... Sir....?... Are you okay?". This guy was clearly not okay. He could barely speak his own name, let alone answer as to whether or not he felt in complete control of his faculties. This girl was making an effort to see if he was okay, but not a particularly effective effort. (Like most people, myself included, this girl was sincerely concerned with the condition of her fellow man, but she tempered that with earnestly polite detachment).
I got some information out of him. His name was Danny and he lived in Brooklyn. That was about as useful as saying his name was Mr. Smith and he lived on Planet Earth. Then he passed out utterly; in the half hour that followed I checked he was breathing by watching his belly bloat in and out of his sweater.
I suggested to Jillian (the chick going "Sir...? Sir...?) that we call an ambulance, initially because I didn't want to be woken up at 9am by a coroner's ambulance screeching around my front door to pick up a gradually cooling alcoholic's corpse from the front step of the apartment building ten doors up. But perhaps more so, I suggested we call an ambulance because Blair's death had made me incredibly conscious of how I treated other human beings, and while I was never a callous person, I feel as though it was not beyond the realms of possibility that I would walk past a guy in obvious alcoholic distress rather than try to take some responsibility for the situation. It was 3am after all, and I was pretty hammered and emotional.
So I dialled 911. A first! But I passed the phone to Jillian because I wasn't confident my Australian accent could convey the seriousness of the situation to an unsuspecting American call-center person...
Imagine if I did:
ME: Oi want to reepoirt a possible alcah-hoilic een deestress.
911: ...A what, sir?
ME: An alcah-holic een deesTRESS!
911: ...I'm sorry, who's wearing this dress?
ME: Noie, an alcah-holic! Hee neids hailp!
911: ...an alcoholic with broken knees...?
ME: NOI!!! What's WRONG with youi?! There's a pissed bloike on the steps of this apaahrtment block who neids meidicahl attinshun! (Note how thick my accent has become in the heat of the moment).
911: Sir, if you've had an allergic reaction to some kind of shellfish, which has cause a thickening of your tongue thus making it unintelligible to my nuanced American ears, then perhaps it would prove beneficial to both our interests if you gave the phone to someone without a debilitating allergy.
ME: (To Jillian) She wants to talk to you.
So the call was made. It was an uncomfortable waiting period. Jillian was young, and I could tell that she didn't often encounter tall, dark strangers from overseas (i.e. she totally had the hots for me. Who could blame her LOL ^-^) I didn't know what to say to her. So I started with local knowledge... I recalled something my landlord told me in an uncharacteristically communicative moment: a few years ago an apartment building down the street burnt down because some kid was playing with matches and set a bunch of rolled up carpets on fire, resulting in his death and the destruction of the building. I was expecting polite enthusiasm for a gruesome story.
"That was my nephew," she said.
Awkward.
So I panicked. The only reason I was stopping for this passed-out drunk guy (or so I believed) was because of my good friend's recent death. I thought I didn't give a flying fart as to whether or not this pissed guy lived or died; I just wanted to make my own life worth living. So I told Jillian about Blair. I told her of his sudden death and his philosophy on life. I was wearing my "good times" badge and I showed her that. I didn't spend much time talking about Blair, but I just wanted her to understand that I wasn't an insensitive schlub making stupid conversation. The futility of the effort and the apparent duplicity of my motives hit me like a hammer and I cried in front of a stranger over the passed-out body of another stranger.
I calmed down. She made soothing noises from behind the gate on her stoop. Eventually an ambulance showed up. (It's important you know that an ambulance in the US is not like an ambulance in Australia: we take for granted that an ambulance will take you to a hospital; as far as I can tell, in New York, you're lucky if an ambulance takes you to the corner unless you can prove you have ample private health insurance).
"Is he going to be okay?" Jillian asked as the ambulance drivers slipped their gloves on and pulled Danny to his feet.
"Yeah, we pick him up almost every night," said one indifferent ambulance dude.
"He was in handcuffs last night," said the other, and they tossed him in the back of their ambulance van like he was a sack of potatoes and drove off.
Sigh.
I don't really know why I'm telling you this story. I thought initially it was going to be an uplifting tale of humanity helping humanity. Maybe that's what I wanted it to be, but it didn't turn out that way. Instead it turned into a fucked up story of me trying to do good in the name of my friend and a flawed healthcare system got in the way. But since I've written this story I've come to the conclusion that if I (or anyone) is going to truly, TRULY learn something from Blair's death, it's not going to come from twee yet contemporary morality tales of helping drunk munters on the street outside my apartment. It's going to come from thinking about Blair's fairly unique combination of passion and compassion. Of caring about life, and caring about others you encounter in your life. I can't say for 100% certain that Blair would have stopped in the street to help Jillian deal with Danny, but I can say that Blair had a great deal of concern for the people in his life. Their successes were his successes, their losses were felt just as keenly by him as by them. And he always came out the other end looking for the silver lining. I'm not sure yet what my silver lining was in this weirdass night, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
A Life Well Lived
On May 3rd 2009 I arrived in Sydney after spending five months abroad in Europe - three of them living in Dublin on a work visa - and I have never been happier to be on Australian soil in my life. With the irritatingly smug gift of hindsight I now know that in the year or so leading up to my impetuous decision to move to Ireland at the end of 2008 I was suffering from a bizarre mix of being both utterly absorbed by my career and having absolutely no idea what I should do next. All I knew was that I was turning thirty and had yet to live overseas, which for some reason I equated with "a good career move". But I couldn't bring myself to move to London because of my stupid obsession with being different from everyone else. My options were limited as I only speak English (albeit excellently, I might add), so with all this in mind I pretty much spun the globe and ended up moving to the Emerald Isle just as the world was entering the worst recession since the Great Depression.
I'll spare you the details of this horrendously ill-planned decision, but suffice to say when I returned to Australia five and a half months later with no savings, a maxed-out credit card, no house, no car, no job and STILL absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, I was pretty lost and dejected. Humbled, I actually listened to my friends' advice for the first time in my life and moved to Sydney to pretty much begin all over again. I was homeless for three months, and spent that time sleeping in friends' spare rooms, working shitty, shitty jobs to try and get some money together and generally regretting the day I'd even heard of Ireland. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was pretty bitter.
But life goes on and I had to claw my way out of this abyss I had created for myself; I knew that the first step to doing this was finding a place to live. I went and looked at a few places I found via the internet, but none of them really worked out (one place in Annandale was owned by a forty-year-old guy who had lived there since he was born. His mother had just passed away and he had inherited the house. The house was a real museum piece, but I was especially told that the front bedroom was off-limits as that was his mother's room and was to stay the way it was on the day she died. That creeped me out, but what finally turned me off was that the house smelt vaguely of burnt cookies and had that weird, dank, faintly greasy kitchen carpet that was popular in the seventies in every room of the house, including the bathroom). I was really getting the shits. Then my good friend Danielle suggested to me one day that I might try a mutual friend of ours who had recently broken up from a long-term relationship and was currently living with his mum. If we were looking for a place together than we could call the shots, plus wouldn't it be nicer to live with someone you know rather than a complete stranger? So with nothing to lose, I called Blair Milan and asked him if he'd be interested in moving in with me.
I had known Blair for about eight years at that point. We met in Bathurst, where we both did the same theatre course at CSU. He was a fresh-faced first year positively brimming with confidence, whereas I was the grizzled, twenty-three-year-old veteran who had finished his degree the year before but had yet to actually leave Bathurst and still lived with students (which does NOT IN ANY WAY MAKE ME A LOSER, FYI). Although our first real introduction was marred by the fact that it was at 4.30 in the morning when my brother Matt convinced Blair it would be hilarious if they both snuck into my room wearing hockey masks and wielding axes whilst I was asleep (it wasn't), I quickly grew to like Blair a lot. He was charming, confident, and so cheesily egotistical that he could do no wrong. Over the course of the following years we hung out only sporadically, but every time we did it was a really fucking good time, and by the time I left Australia at the end of 2008 I considered him to be within my close circle of friends in Sydney.
The day I called Blair to propose we look for houses together he was driving along the Great Ocean Road in a borrowed convertible with a gorgeous German backpacker he had met a few weeks before. I meanwhile was standing out the front of a high school in St George in the rain waiting to teach five thirteen-year-old girls with voices like starving cockatoos how to sing "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. That pretty much says everything you need to know about our different points of view on life at that time: both broke, homeless, and virtually unemployed (Blair was an actor who spent most of his day-to-day employment working for a high-class catering company); one of us was wallowing in misery whilst the other gave life the middle finger and did what he damn well wanted (hint: it wasn't me).
Awesomely, Blair was enthusiastic about moving in to a house together, and four weeks later we moved into flat 2203 of 177 Mitchell Road in Erskineville. The apartment complex was huge and luxurious, with two tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor pool, a gym, underground parking, and a lovely leafy balcony. We were two young, handsome bachelors living in a kickass apartment with no commitments: the world was our oyster. Except I didn't see it that way. Not at first. I was still miserable, stressed and frantically trying to get myself back to the place I was in before I left Australia at the end of 2008. And misery loves company, right? All I wanted was someone to listen to me bitch and moan about how awful everything was and how much I hated my crappy job in a miserable box office in a dilapidated theatre for a company that could not, even with the aid of valium, given less of a shit about me (one time, an electrical fire broke out under the desk at my feet, and I managed to just get away before it turned into a small but serious blaze, and when I called the head office to tell them, the first thing they said was "can you still sell tickets?"). But Blair wouldn't have a bar of it. Not because he was deliberately trying to ignore my misery or because he thought I was exaggerating, but because his in-built positivity and optimism meant that he was actually incapable of dwelling on the shitty things that had happened. As far as he was concerned, they were in the past. For Blair, there was a whole wonderful world out there, and so whenever I bitched about something he would beam like a summer's day and remind me of something positive I had to look forward to.
After a few weeks, I was ready to kill him.
Yet he persisted. We began to spend the evenings on the balcony drinking wine and talking about good times we'd had, either with each other, or with our friends, or with people that the other had never even met. He'd offer his opinion on whatever piece I was writing, and it was invariably positive regardless of how godawful it was. He would practically cartwheel through the front door after getting home from work or the gym or from his voiceover lessons or from the pub or even from the freaking dentist brimming with glee at all the awesome things that had happened to him, no matter how big or small. And most of all, he insisted that the universe had brought us together - that the next twelve months would see us take ourselves to the next level, in career, relationships, and general satisfaction with our lives. For this reason, the apartment was no longer known as 2203/177 Mitchell Road, Esrkineville, it was only allowed to be referred to as "The Apartment Where Only Good Things Happen And Dreams Come True."
Crazily, it began to work. My general situation barely changed for six months. I kept the same shitty jobs (although I began to pick up some excellent work at local youth theatre companies, which kept me sane), I could barely earn enough money to rub two pennies together, I was still hardly writing any music, and I was, as always, chronically single. And yet one day, like a breath of beautiful fresh air, I stopped thinking about the things that I had lost and instead began to notice all of the incredibly awesome things I did have, including a truly remarkable housemate.
One evening, in late November of 2009, Blair and I were sitting on the balcony of our apartment. We had several empty bottles of wine in front of us and we made a pact: we were going to be living in the USA, come hell or high-water, by that time the following year. To confirm our drunken, 3.30-in-the-morning commitment to this endeavor, we wrote on the back of a big piece of paper: "BY SEPTEMBER 16, 2010, TIM AND BLAIR WILL BE LIVING IN THE USA" and stuck it on the back of our front door. We were both deadly serious about it, too. It became a constant topic of conversation, "what we were doing to get to the USA". Blair began to apply to residencies, and was successful in getting a six week stint in L.A. at quite a prestigious acting workshop. I meanwhile started to apply to schools in the USA in earnest, reminded every day of my commitment to do so both by the big sign on the back of the door and by the ceaseless optimism and support of Blair.
Now, I'm not going to get too Hollywood here and say that Blair was single-handedly responsible for pulling me out of my funk and giving me a much-needed kick in the pants, but there is no doubt in my mind that moving in with Blair was possibly the most serendipitously fortuitous off-the-cuff decision I had ever made. When we moved out of that apartment in early August 2010, with me about to move to the USA, one of the last things to go out of the house was the sign on the back of the door. I wish I had kept it.
You know much of the next part of the story: I moved to the USA in September, and began school, and have sporadically chronicled my misadventures on this blog (and I SWEAR there will be a whole bunch more coming soon). Blair meanwhile finally achieved his biggest break to date, scoring a co-hosting gig on a cooking and travel series with his mum, Lyndey, where they traveled around Greece for a few weeks generally having a kickass time of things.
A few weeks ago in early April I returned to Australia for what was meant to be a week-long trip. My dad is a budding artist and was having his first exhibition, and I went back to support him, give an awesome speech, and drink all the free booze on offer. There was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing on my part though, as it would be right in the middle of the semester and would mean I would miss a fair chunk of school. But in the end I decided it was the right thing to do - if anything I had learned over my time living with Blair it was to never, ever take for granted the wonderful things you have in your life, and my family is definitely at the top of an awesome list. I spent three days in Orange and then went to Sydney. I was to fly out on Saturday April 16th, and had sent out feelers for a party in Newtown on the Friday night before, including a message to Blair. I was puzzled when I didn't hear back from him; Blair was always the first person to put his hand up for a party.
That Friday morning, at 11am, I got a phone call from Danielle: on Thursday, Blair had collapsed at home, and was in intensive care. He had leukemia. No one knew. A huge bunch of his friends went to the hospital to keep vigil with his family outside of the ICU where he lay, unconscious, fighting for his life for two days. His wonderful parents let us come to his beside, two by two, to see him, something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Blair died at 1.30am on Sunday April 17th. He was two months shy of his thirtieth birthday.
* * *
I began writing this entry on the day I flew back to the USA. Strangely enough, it was May 3rd, 2011 - exactly two years after I had returned to Australia and began what I know now was one of the most important phases of my life. The phase where I stopped obsessing about the things I wasn't doing and instead enjoyed the things I had. The phase where I learned that one of the best things you can do is enjoy time with your friends instead of locking yourself away in your study for weeks on end. The phase where I began to enjoy the simple things in life once more, and take pleasure in planning for the future instead of being terrified of it. A phase that is inextricably linked to the life and philosophy of Blair Milan.
I'll miss you, buddy.
To Good Times.
http://vimeo.com/23216938
I'll spare you the details of this horrendously ill-planned decision, but suffice to say when I returned to Australia five and a half months later with no savings, a maxed-out credit card, no house, no car, no job and STILL absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, I was pretty lost and dejected. Humbled, I actually listened to my friends' advice for the first time in my life and moved to Sydney to pretty much begin all over again. I was homeless for three months, and spent that time sleeping in friends' spare rooms, working shitty, shitty jobs to try and get some money together and generally regretting the day I'd even heard of Ireland. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was pretty bitter.
But life goes on and I had to claw my way out of this abyss I had created for myself; I knew that the first step to doing this was finding a place to live. I went and looked at a few places I found via the internet, but none of them really worked out (one place in Annandale was owned by a forty-year-old guy who had lived there since he was born. His mother had just passed away and he had inherited the house. The house was a real museum piece, but I was especially told that the front bedroom was off-limits as that was his mother's room and was to stay the way it was on the day she died. That creeped me out, but what finally turned me off was that the house smelt vaguely of burnt cookies and had that weird, dank, faintly greasy kitchen carpet that was popular in the seventies in every room of the house, including the bathroom). I was really getting the shits. Then my good friend Danielle suggested to me one day that I might try a mutual friend of ours who had recently broken up from a long-term relationship and was currently living with his mum. If we were looking for a place together than we could call the shots, plus wouldn't it be nicer to live with someone you know rather than a complete stranger? So with nothing to lose, I called Blair Milan and asked him if he'd be interested in moving in with me.
I had known Blair for about eight years at that point. We met in Bathurst, where we both did the same theatre course at CSU. He was a fresh-faced first year positively brimming with confidence, whereas I was the grizzled, twenty-three-year-old veteran who had finished his degree the year before but had yet to actually leave Bathurst and still lived with students (which does NOT IN ANY WAY MAKE ME A LOSER, FYI). Although our first real introduction was marred by the fact that it was at 4.30 in the morning when my brother Matt convinced Blair it would be hilarious if they both snuck into my room wearing hockey masks and wielding axes whilst I was asleep (it wasn't), I quickly grew to like Blair a lot. He was charming, confident, and so cheesily egotistical that he could do no wrong. Over the course of the following years we hung out only sporadically, but every time we did it was a really fucking good time, and by the time I left Australia at the end of 2008 I considered him to be within my close circle of friends in Sydney.
The day I called Blair to propose we look for houses together he was driving along the Great Ocean Road in a borrowed convertible with a gorgeous German backpacker he had met a few weeks before. I meanwhile was standing out the front of a high school in St George in the rain waiting to teach five thirteen-year-old girls with voices like starving cockatoos how to sing "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. That pretty much says everything you need to know about our different points of view on life at that time: both broke, homeless, and virtually unemployed (Blair was an actor who spent most of his day-to-day employment working for a high-class catering company); one of us was wallowing in misery whilst the other gave life the middle finger and did what he damn well wanted (hint: it wasn't me).
Awesomely, Blair was enthusiastic about moving in to a house together, and four weeks later we moved into flat 2203 of 177 Mitchell Road in Erskineville. The apartment complex was huge and luxurious, with two tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor pool, a gym, underground parking, and a lovely leafy balcony. We were two young, handsome bachelors living in a kickass apartment with no commitments: the world was our oyster. Except I didn't see it that way. Not at first. I was still miserable, stressed and frantically trying to get myself back to the place I was in before I left Australia at the end of 2008. And misery loves company, right? All I wanted was someone to listen to me bitch and moan about how awful everything was and how much I hated my crappy job in a miserable box office in a dilapidated theatre for a company that could not, even with the aid of valium, given less of a shit about me (one time, an electrical fire broke out under the desk at my feet, and I managed to just get away before it turned into a small but serious blaze, and when I called the head office to tell them, the first thing they said was "can you still sell tickets?"). But Blair wouldn't have a bar of it. Not because he was deliberately trying to ignore my misery or because he thought I was exaggerating, but because his in-built positivity and optimism meant that he was actually incapable of dwelling on the shitty things that had happened. As far as he was concerned, they were in the past. For Blair, there was a whole wonderful world out there, and so whenever I bitched about something he would beam like a summer's day and remind me of something positive I had to look forward to.
After a few weeks, I was ready to kill him.
Yet he persisted. We began to spend the evenings on the balcony drinking wine and talking about good times we'd had, either with each other, or with our friends, or with people that the other had never even met. He'd offer his opinion on whatever piece I was writing, and it was invariably positive regardless of how godawful it was. He would practically cartwheel through the front door after getting home from work or the gym or from his voiceover lessons or from the pub or even from the freaking dentist brimming with glee at all the awesome things that had happened to him, no matter how big or small. And most of all, he insisted that the universe had brought us together - that the next twelve months would see us take ourselves to the next level, in career, relationships, and general satisfaction with our lives. For this reason, the apartment was no longer known as 2203/177 Mitchell Road, Esrkineville, it was only allowed to be referred to as "The Apartment Where Only Good Things Happen And Dreams Come True."
Crazily, it began to work. My general situation barely changed for six months. I kept the same shitty jobs (although I began to pick up some excellent work at local youth theatre companies, which kept me sane), I could barely earn enough money to rub two pennies together, I was still hardly writing any music, and I was, as always, chronically single. And yet one day, like a breath of beautiful fresh air, I stopped thinking about the things that I had lost and instead began to notice all of the incredibly awesome things I did have, including a truly remarkable housemate.
One evening, in late November of 2009, Blair and I were sitting on the balcony of our apartment. We had several empty bottles of wine in front of us and we made a pact: we were going to be living in the USA, come hell or high-water, by that time the following year. To confirm our drunken, 3.30-in-the-morning commitment to this endeavor, we wrote on the back of a big piece of paper: "BY SEPTEMBER 16, 2010, TIM AND BLAIR WILL BE LIVING IN THE USA" and stuck it on the back of our front door. We were both deadly serious about it, too. It became a constant topic of conversation, "what we were doing to get to the USA". Blair began to apply to residencies, and was successful in getting a six week stint in L.A. at quite a prestigious acting workshop. I meanwhile started to apply to schools in the USA in earnest, reminded every day of my commitment to do so both by the big sign on the back of the door and by the ceaseless optimism and support of Blair.
Now, I'm not going to get too Hollywood here and say that Blair was single-handedly responsible for pulling me out of my funk and giving me a much-needed kick in the pants, but there is no doubt in my mind that moving in with Blair was possibly the most serendipitously fortuitous off-the-cuff decision I had ever made. When we moved out of that apartment in early August 2010, with me about to move to the USA, one of the last things to go out of the house was the sign on the back of the door. I wish I had kept it.
You know much of the next part of the story: I moved to the USA in September, and began school, and have sporadically chronicled my misadventures on this blog (and I SWEAR there will be a whole bunch more coming soon). Blair meanwhile finally achieved his biggest break to date, scoring a co-hosting gig on a cooking and travel series with his mum, Lyndey, where they traveled around Greece for a few weeks generally having a kickass time of things.
A few weeks ago in early April I returned to Australia for what was meant to be a week-long trip. My dad is a budding artist and was having his first exhibition, and I went back to support him, give an awesome speech, and drink all the free booze on offer. There was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing on my part though, as it would be right in the middle of the semester and would mean I would miss a fair chunk of school. But in the end I decided it was the right thing to do - if anything I had learned over my time living with Blair it was to never, ever take for granted the wonderful things you have in your life, and my family is definitely at the top of an awesome list. I spent three days in Orange and then went to Sydney. I was to fly out on Saturday April 16th, and had sent out feelers for a party in Newtown on the Friday night before, including a message to Blair. I was puzzled when I didn't hear back from him; Blair was always the first person to put his hand up for a party.
That Friday morning, at 11am, I got a phone call from Danielle: on Thursday, Blair had collapsed at home, and was in intensive care. He had leukemia. No one knew. A huge bunch of his friends went to the hospital to keep vigil with his family outside of the ICU where he lay, unconscious, fighting for his life for two days. His wonderful parents let us come to his beside, two by two, to see him, something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Blair died at 1.30am on Sunday April 17th. He was two months shy of his thirtieth birthday.
* * *
I began writing this entry on the day I flew back to the USA. Strangely enough, it was May 3rd, 2011 - exactly two years after I had returned to Australia and began what I know now was one of the most important phases of my life. The phase where I stopped obsessing about the things I wasn't doing and instead enjoyed the things I had. The phase where I learned that one of the best things you can do is enjoy time with your friends instead of locking yourself away in your study for weeks on end. The phase where I began to enjoy the simple things in life once more, and take pleasure in planning for the future instead of being terrified of it. A phase that is inextricably linked to the life and philosophy of Blair Milan.
I'll miss you, buddy.
To Good Times.
http://vimeo.com/23216938
 |
| Blair, Danielle and Me |
Friday, March 25, 2011
Why I hate the G train
Unless you've been living under a rock you're probably aware that New York has this quaint little system of tunnels known as the "subway". These tunnels have trains inside them, and they criss-cross the city thus enabling its inhabitants to get around with relative ease. Dirty, rickety and yet (to my Australian eye) incredibly efficient, the subway is the great leveler. If you live in New York you will almost certainly have to use the subway at some point in your day, whether you're a high-falutin' businessman, a too-cool-for-skool hipster, or the crazy man who was on the train with me one evening last year and spent the first half of the trip over the Williamsburg bridge ushering invisible people through the door adjoining the carriages, and the second half with his pants around his ankles talking animatedly to his penis.
Now, this might be revealing too much of what ticks around inside my head, but I can't help but consider some of the trains I usually catch to have distinct personalities. I have always done shit like this. When I was a kid I thought that numbers, letters, colours and even days of the week had "personalities" and I either liked or loathed them based on their traits, and since no one told me this was nuts until it was too late I still have vestigial flickers of emotion when certain characters pop up. The number "6" for example, still seems to be a selfish little shit of a number, Sundays are miserable and the letter "E" is so common but thinks it's sooo fucking good, slutting around all over the place. The number "11" however still feels exciting and different, ripe with possibilities, deep green fills me with joy and calm, and one of the highlights of my day is being able to legitimately handwrite a capital letter "Z". So flamboyant, yet still elegant (like me).
Anyway, as I was saying, since I have managed to carry this lunacy into my adulthood, it didn't take me long to begin to associate certain trains with particular emotions. How could I not? Each train is designated with either a letter or a number, and then most of these trains are grouped with two or three others into particular colours, a perfect storm for a neurotic someone like me to indulge in a bit of crazy while waiting on the platform. My favourite is the "M" train, one of the helpful bright orange trains. It obligingly whisks me each day between the Marcey Avenue stop near my house to West 4 near school via the Williamsburg bridge, giving me an awesome view of the city and reminding me that I'm in freaking New York. My day is always brightened when I get to catch one of the rich, royal dark blue trains, the "A", "C" or even the "E" (despite its slutty ways). Alas, such opportunities for me are rare, like getting to ride a camel, so I relish them when they crop up. Then there's the "L". The "L" is the James Dean of trains, a loner grey, a rebel. From the Lorimer Street station near my place it stabs into the heart of lower Manhattan with cool arrogance, and doesn't give a fuck what the other la-di-dah trains think, with their fancy routes all over the place. I want so badly to be friends with the "L", but it'd never talk to me.
Of course every story needs a villain. Some villains are oafish, stupid brutes, others are dorky little clerical jerks who think they're doing good but screw everything up, whilst others are tortured souls who can coolly assert that their noble end justifies their wicked means. But the villain in this insane cast of enormous metal actors (am I laboring the metaphor? Probably. But shut the hell up) is the worst kind. This is the Iago from Othello of trains: superficially appearing to be helpful, loyal and friendly, but you realise too late, too late, that it hates you and has been plotting maliciously all along to destroy you and everything you hold dear, that its most treasured dream is to dance amongst the smoking wreckage of what was once your life.
I am, of course, talking about the "G" train.
The "G" train.
I loathe the "G" train.
On the surface it seems to be a perfectly lovely train. It runs the length of Brooklyn and Queens. It doesn't need to show off and hang out with the other lines in Manhattan. "G" is a kind letter, a motherly letter, one that helpfully finishes things off with a graceful little curl. This train is a lovely calming green colour, one that suggests it could take you peacefully to the moon if you so desired. Even the stations on the "G" line feel welcoming, more like waiting inside a tiled cathedral than a subway station. But that's what it wants you to think... it wants you to let your guard down, to unthinkingly meander into its open craw, whereupon it will snap shut its doors like a Venus Fly-Trap and will take you God-knows where.
It will whizz through the station that you were intending to get off at for absolutely no reason at all. It will shut down without warning and force everyone off in the middle of nowhere at ten o'clock at night. It will decide it's tired and not run for weekends at a time. You'll wait for half an hour for a downtown "G", while across on the uptown platform trains will arrive every freaking five minutes. This trend is, of course, reversed on the return journey. Any plan involving me catching a "G" train will be given serious reconsideration. The promise of free gold bullion would not necessarily be enough to lure me onto this insidiously fickle asshole of a train. The worst part though, the absolute worst part, is that it is the only train that runs the north/south length of Brooklyn. AND IT KNOWS IT. It sits there, smugly grinning in its beautifully tiled lair, taunting you, knowing that as much as you try to avoid giving it the satisfaction of stomping down the subway stairs, waiting for an eternity for it to show the hell up, not being 100% sure that you will even arrive at your chosen destination, you cannot evade it forever. As inevitable as God's final judgement on mankind, eventually you will have to ride the G train .
In other news, it's hayfever season. I think that the antihistamines are stronger here than they are in Australia.
Now, this might be revealing too much of what ticks around inside my head, but I can't help but consider some of the trains I usually catch to have distinct personalities. I have always done shit like this. When I was a kid I thought that numbers, letters, colours and even days of the week had "personalities" and I either liked or loathed them based on their traits, and since no one told me this was nuts until it was too late I still have vestigial flickers of emotion when certain characters pop up. The number "6" for example, still seems to be a selfish little shit of a number, Sundays are miserable and the letter "E" is so common but thinks it's sooo fucking good, slutting around all over the place. The number "11" however still feels exciting and different, ripe with possibilities, deep green fills me with joy and calm, and one of the highlights of my day is being able to legitimately handwrite a capital letter "Z". So flamboyant, yet still elegant (like me).
Anyway, as I was saying, since I have managed to carry this lunacy into my adulthood, it didn't take me long to begin to associate certain trains with particular emotions. How could I not? Each train is designated with either a letter or a number, and then most of these trains are grouped with two or three others into particular colours, a perfect storm for a neurotic someone like me to indulge in a bit of crazy while waiting on the platform. My favourite is the "M" train, one of the helpful bright orange trains. It obligingly whisks me each day between the Marcey Avenue stop near my house to West 4 near school via the Williamsburg bridge, giving me an awesome view of the city and reminding me that I'm in freaking New York. My day is always brightened when I get to catch one of the rich, royal dark blue trains, the "A", "C" or even the "E" (despite its slutty ways). Alas, such opportunities for me are rare, like getting to ride a camel, so I relish them when they crop up. Then there's the "L". The "L" is the James Dean of trains, a loner grey, a rebel. From the Lorimer Street station near my place it stabs into the heart of lower Manhattan with cool arrogance, and doesn't give a fuck what the other la-di-dah trains think, with their fancy routes all over the place. I want so badly to be friends with the "L", but it'd never talk to me.
Of course every story needs a villain. Some villains are oafish, stupid brutes, others are dorky little clerical jerks who think they're doing good but screw everything up, whilst others are tortured souls who can coolly assert that their noble end justifies their wicked means. But the villain in this insane cast of enormous metal actors (am I laboring the metaphor? Probably. But shut the hell up) is the worst kind. This is the Iago from Othello of trains: superficially appearing to be helpful, loyal and friendly, but you realise too late, too late, that it hates you and has been plotting maliciously all along to destroy you and everything you hold dear, that its most treasured dream is to dance amongst the smoking wreckage of what was once your life.
I am, of course, talking about the "G" train.
The "G" train.
I loathe the "G" train.
On the surface it seems to be a perfectly lovely train. It runs the length of Brooklyn and Queens. It doesn't need to show off and hang out with the other lines in Manhattan. "G" is a kind letter, a motherly letter, one that helpfully finishes things off with a graceful little curl. This train is a lovely calming green colour, one that suggests it could take you peacefully to the moon if you so desired. Even the stations on the "G" line feel welcoming, more like waiting inside a tiled cathedral than a subway station. But that's what it wants you to think... it wants you to let your guard down, to unthinkingly meander into its open craw, whereupon it will snap shut its doors like a Venus Fly-Trap and will take you God-knows where.
It will whizz through the station that you were intending to get off at for absolutely no reason at all. It will shut down without warning and force everyone off in the middle of nowhere at ten o'clock at night. It will decide it's tired and not run for weekends at a time. You'll wait for half an hour for a downtown "G", while across on the uptown platform trains will arrive every freaking five minutes. This trend is, of course, reversed on the return journey. Any plan involving me catching a "G" train will be given serious reconsideration. The promise of free gold bullion would not necessarily be enough to lure me onto this insidiously fickle asshole of a train. The worst part though, the absolute worst part, is that it is the only train that runs the north/south length of Brooklyn. AND IT KNOWS IT. It sits there, smugly grinning in its beautifully tiled lair, taunting you, knowing that as much as you try to avoid giving it the satisfaction of stomping down the subway stairs, waiting for an eternity for it to show the hell up, not being 100% sure that you will even arrive at your chosen destination, you cannot evade it forever. As inevitable as God's final judgement on mankind, eventually you will have to ride the G train .
In other news, it's hayfever season. I think that the antihistamines are stronger here than they are in Australia.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Responsible Service of Getting Smashed
When I was twenty two and working as the venue technician at the Bathurst Theatre I was sent off one day to the local TAFE to do my Responsible Service of Alcohol. I don't remember why any more; possibly my boss felt it was important that, as the holder of a freshly minted Bachelor of Arts degree, I become acquainted with the work I was likely to be doing sporadically for the rest of my life. At any rate, I dutifully attended the six-hour long course and learned about things like how to deny drunks any more booze (point at the "No Service to Inebriates" sign, because then it's not your fault, it's the sign's fault. Drunks are pretty stupid), or the importance of checking I.D. (because you'll get a five thousand buck fine if you let that gaggle of bubble-headed seventeen-year-olds in your bar), or what combination of drinks will give you the worst hangovers (officially it makes no difference what you drink, but after having a few benders where I worked my way through the rainbow of booze from beer to red wine to cocktails to dark spirits, I humbly submit that that is utter bullshit), or even the fact that it is illegal to have any kind of promotions that encourage one to drink, like free giveaways, two-for-ones and so on (not that I think Australians really need much encouragement to drink. As my friend Daniel said one day after I complained about having a hangover, "Why were you drinking last night? Was the day spelled with a "Y" again?". Smartass).
Anyway, drinking culture is one of those things that I hadn't really considered could vary from country to country. What could be different? You go into a big noisy room with a bunch of strangers and drink alcohol until either you don't want any more, your money runs out, or verticality and coherent speech are distant memories. Well, quite a bit could be different actually. New York City is a pretty big place for such a small place. The drinking culture can vary dramatically with the difference of a few blocks. If I attempted to experience and describe the differences between them all then this wouldn't be a blog, it would be a Lonely Planet Boozing Book and I would be WAY more broke and hungover than I am at the moment. So instead, I will limit myself to the drinking culture of the neighbourhood with which I am best acquainted... my own charmingly decrepit Williamsburg. And at the risk of heresy on a number of levels, I think that Australia could learn a thing or to from the boozing habits of the local hipsters.
Here, bars are small. Bars are plentiful. Bars adorn every corner of my neighbourhood. For a bar to be so full you can't find a place to sit, or at least lean against a wall, is pretty odd. The result of this is that bars have the vibe of a cafe. And it is absolutely AWESOME. When was the last time you were in a cafe and two drunken knobs started beating the shit out of each other? Or some thoughtless jerk bumped your arm, knocking your coffee all over you and your friend, and couldn't give less of a shit? Or some vacuous bimbo absent-mindedly burnt a hole in your favourite jacket with her cigarette while telling some crap story about the bitches at her work at the top of her voice? Never, that's when. Bars here are civilized dens of intelligent conversation, good-natured humour, and attractive people with ironic moustaches.
Here, they check your ID even though you are clearly WAY over 21. Personally, this is flattering but also annoying, since my drivers license lives inside a little plastic pocket of my wallet that I suspect was designed by the people who make Chinese finger-traps. Here, they have daily specials on different kinds of booze, from $3 mimosas, to happy hours that extend generously beyond the traditional sixty minutes, to a free shot of Jameson with every can of PBR beer you buy (although I wouldn't recommend that last one, not unless you enjoy exorcist-style vomiting). Microbreweries pepper the city, so here bars are full of obscure, delicious and awesomely named beers, such as my personal favourite, "Captain Lawrence's Seasonal Peculiar".
But perhaps the biggest point of difference for me is what I'd always thought inevitably happens when you combine good times with music, copious amounts of discount alcohol and a bunch of red-blooded boozey drunks in one place... the bar fight. I've been here since September last year, and up until last weekend I hadn't witnessed so much as a raised voice. New Yorkers, it seems, are much better at holding their booze than Australians. Then, last weekend, I finally saw what happens when a fight breaks out. No bouncer grabbing each trouble maker roughly by the arm and dragging them out the front to duke it out. They take a much more holistic approach. The ugly lights get slammed on. The music stops. Everyone in the room turns to look at the morons who have decided to ruin everyone else's night by getting all macho. The bouncer goes "hey hey hey!". The aggressors let go of each other's shirt collars (which were identical. Perhaps that's why they were fighting). Things calm down. The lights go back down, the music goes on, and everyone goes back to discussing whether James Joyce's finest masterpiece was "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake" over their boutique, exquisitely microbrewed beers.
So obviously the entirety of American Drinking Culture is not this civil (a la Jodi Foster in "The Accused" for example), but while I live in Williamsburg I'm cherishing going out to a bar and feeling like I'm at a party in someone's lounge room rather than a factory warehouse filled with lobotomized alcoholics. So much so that in my hazier moments I've toyed with the idea of trying to open my own bar back in Australia modeled on my local Brooklyn boozers. I reckon I'd make a mint. If nothing else I'd justify my old boss's investment in sending me off to get my RSA.
Anyway, drinking culture is one of those things that I hadn't really considered could vary from country to country. What could be different? You go into a big noisy room with a bunch of strangers and drink alcohol until either you don't want any more, your money runs out, or verticality and coherent speech are distant memories. Well, quite a bit could be different actually. New York City is a pretty big place for such a small place. The drinking culture can vary dramatically with the difference of a few blocks. If I attempted to experience and describe the differences between them all then this wouldn't be a blog, it would be a Lonely Planet Boozing Book and I would be WAY more broke and hungover than I am at the moment. So instead, I will limit myself to the drinking culture of the neighbourhood with which I am best acquainted... my own charmingly decrepit Williamsburg. And at the risk of heresy on a number of levels, I think that Australia could learn a thing or to from the boozing habits of the local hipsters.
Here, bars are small. Bars are plentiful. Bars adorn every corner of my neighbourhood. For a bar to be so full you can't find a place to sit, or at least lean against a wall, is pretty odd. The result of this is that bars have the vibe of a cafe. And it is absolutely AWESOME. When was the last time you were in a cafe and two drunken knobs started beating the shit out of each other? Or some thoughtless jerk bumped your arm, knocking your coffee all over you and your friend, and couldn't give less of a shit? Or some vacuous bimbo absent-mindedly burnt a hole in your favourite jacket with her cigarette while telling some crap story about the bitches at her work at the top of her voice? Never, that's when. Bars here are civilized dens of intelligent conversation, good-natured humour, and attractive people with ironic moustaches.
Here, they check your ID even though you are clearly WAY over 21. Personally, this is flattering but also annoying, since my drivers license lives inside a little plastic pocket of my wallet that I suspect was designed by the people who make Chinese finger-traps. Here, they have daily specials on different kinds of booze, from $3 mimosas, to happy hours that extend generously beyond the traditional sixty minutes, to a free shot of Jameson with every can of PBR beer you buy (although I wouldn't recommend that last one, not unless you enjoy exorcist-style vomiting). Microbreweries pepper the city, so here bars are full of obscure, delicious and awesomely named beers, such as my personal favourite, "Captain Lawrence's Seasonal Peculiar".
But perhaps the biggest point of difference for me is what I'd always thought inevitably happens when you combine good times with music, copious amounts of discount alcohol and a bunch of red-blooded boozey drunks in one place... the bar fight. I've been here since September last year, and up until last weekend I hadn't witnessed so much as a raised voice. New Yorkers, it seems, are much better at holding their booze than Australians. Then, last weekend, I finally saw what happens when a fight breaks out. No bouncer grabbing each trouble maker roughly by the arm and dragging them out the front to duke it out. They take a much more holistic approach. The ugly lights get slammed on. The music stops. Everyone in the room turns to look at the morons who have decided to ruin everyone else's night by getting all macho. The bouncer goes "hey hey hey!". The aggressors let go of each other's shirt collars (which were identical. Perhaps that's why they were fighting). Things calm down. The lights go back down, the music goes on, and everyone goes back to discussing whether James Joyce's finest masterpiece was "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake" over their boutique, exquisitely microbrewed beers.
So obviously the entirety of American Drinking Culture is not this civil (a la Jodi Foster in "The Accused" for example), but while I live in Williamsburg I'm cherishing going out to a bar and feeling like I'm at a party in someone's lounge room rather than a factory warehouse filled with lobotomized alcoholics. So much so that in my hazier moments I've toyed with the idea of trying to open my own bar back in Australia modeled on my local Brooklyn boozers. I reckon I'd make a mint. If nothing else I'd justify my old boss's investment in sending me off to get my RSA.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
SnoWOW!
Last Wednesday night started like most other nights for me. I unpacked my school bag, had an argument with my landlord about the hot water, felt guilty about not having written seven symphonies and a wind quintet that day, the usual. That evening I was planning on meeting my brother's friend's mum Tracy who was in town from Orange (and if anyone can come up with a more Australian sentence than that without using the words "kangaroo" or "vegemite" I want to see it). We went to a fancy-pants French restaurant in Tribeca and sipped red wine and discussed the differences between 42nd Street and Summer Street (there's a few, BTW). Over her shoulder through the front window I could see the snow start to fall. How magical, to be sitting in a dimly lit yet tastefully decored bar in New York sipping French wine and watching the snowflakes prance and fly outside a... a... an increasingly difficult-to-see-through window... Holy shit, did that cab almost hit that lady? Geez, Trace, it's really coming down out there! What the hell?!
My first ever blizzard. Awww. It was nuts. You know what it looked like? A snow globe. Exactly like a snow globe. It swirled and fell in waves, spiralled around street lamps and headlights, and fell in piles and piles on everything. The thinnest of perches would have a pile of snow half a centimetre wide and six inches high balanced on it. Pedestrians battled their way through the wind, coated from head to toe in a thin dusting of powdery snow, making them look like they'd just been hugged by the dandruff monster. Moving vehicles acquired lovely white toupees and drove through the streets at five kilometres per hour, floats in a really shitty parade celebrating albino hair pieces (SHUT UP, this is my blog). It blew through doors, across faces, down subway stairs, and caused little short circuits on the subway overpass near my house, mixing showers of bright orange sparks into the murky gumbo, giving everything a thrilling post-apocalyptic feel. I couldn't help but laugh out loud as I fought my way home.
The next day when I woke up the light outside my window was weird, almost fluorescent. I opened the curtains to see... well, an absolute fucktonne of snow. Eighteen inches, in fact. It was beautiful. It was magical. It caused school to be closed for the day. And, as it turns out, it is a massive pain in the goddam ass.
Eighteen inches fell on the city that night. That's what, slightly less than half a metre? Didn't seem like that big of a deal. Until you consider that eighteen inches fell across the entire city. As my previous mathematical research has uncovered, that's eighteen inches over 780 square kilometres of roads, buildings, footpaths and subway lines. My maths might be a bit hazy, but I think that is roughly equivalent to 351 cubic kilometres of snow. Where the hell is all that snow going to go?
As it turns out, unless you live in uptown Manhattan and can afford a man to come and take it away for you, probably nowhere. It's been five days now and snow still sits everywhere, stubbornly refusing to melt. It turns black. It dissolves into slooshy slippery crap at every intersection, so much so that when I walk to the shops I have to stick my arms out like a tightrope walker to stop from falling face first in this toxic sludge. Garbage, which is never absent from New York streets even in the sunniest of weather, begins to accumulate in teetering piles since garbage trucks can't get around the streets. And of course the local canine population makes its mark on the winter scenery, leaving both bright yellow uriney stains and dark brown turds, the latter contrasting so boldly with its white background that the utmost care seems to have gone into its placement, like the most thoughtful shit in history.
Today though, there seems to be evidence of the snow being dealt with. There are a couple of bulldozers moving the snow around (although to me it looks like they have the "eight year old cleaning his room" approach of just moving the snow from one pile to another, hoping that somehow this will make everything look better). It's sunny today for the third day in a row, so I'm cautiously optimistic that this will make some of it go away. Not because it isn't pretty mind you; despite the black road-gunk, the neck-snappingly slippery pavements, the rubbish, and the dog shit, it's still quite beautiful. It's that I know me - and if someone is going to go ass over tits into this crap, it's going to be yours truly. It's lovely and magical and all that jazz, but if it doesn't go away soon then my next blog might be entitled something like "Why it's hard to be a composer with a broken wrist".
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Talk like me
You may have noticed that there’s been a bit of radio silence from the blog for the last few months. Oops. Like most awesome projects I start, without immediate and constant praise for my efforts, I quickly lose any motivation to continue them, which is why I have a desk drawer full of half-finished workout programs and barely used books with titles like “Teach Yourself German”. And like most awesome projects that I start and fail to see through to any sort of meaningful conclusion, I never really stop feeling guilty about them, and I involuntarily wince at their little baleful, papery glares accusing me of abandonment I encounter whenever I go hunting through my desk for a pencil (or, on rare occasions, a halfway decent looking gym-program that hasn’t been too filled-in to be resurrected). So when I came back to Australia I was surprised and flattered by the number of people who complained that I had stopped writing my blog, since no one ever complains when I stop going to the gym or learning German (which might explain why I neither have a six-pack or know what "Ich bin ein Zwerg, reitet auf einem Staubsauger" means). So thank you, you devoted half-dozen of blog readers – your bitching has paid off, and I’m going to start blogging again.
So it seems the most appropriate place for me to get this party started (again) is how different Australia seemed to me after only four months away. Things I’d never noticed before suddenly seemed adorably provincial, or fucking weird, or sometimes just filled me to the brink with homesickness and made me not want to go back to the USA. I noticed for the first time just how full of utterly useless and infuriatingly irrelevant celebrity Sydney gossip the newspapers are, and how such ‘news’ stories about which swimmer is sleeping with what underwear model are considered of such earth-shattering import that they occupy vast swathes of the opening pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, with pesky filler articles about things like a new nuclear-arms race in the middle east or the beginning of the seventh year of Australia’s involvement in two unwinnable wars relegated to the arse-end of the paper near the comics and horoscopes. I almost clicked my heels with glee each time I walked into a café and ordered a skim flat white without the cashier looking at me like I’d just make some obscure Ku Klux Klan reference. I unthinkingly made the common tourist error of ordering a pint of beer in the heat of the Australian summer and struggling to get it down before it turned into humid mug of piss. I loved being in Orange and hearing the cicadas. I loved being in Canberra and smelling the wet-earth-and-eucalyptus smell that pervades the whole city. I even loved walking through Newtown at night and reading the ineffectual socialist propaganda sticky-taped to lightposts and parking meters by angry twenty-year-olds in the middle of their arts degrees (“Facebook and the War in Iraq: How the Capitalist Machine forces you to buy homophobic cars”). But the thing that I loved the most and at the same time found so bizarre and perplexing is probably the one thing that most Australians living in Australia never give the slightest thought to: the enigmatic Aussie accent.
Americans love accents of all kinds, but in my experience none seems to fill them with such child-like delight as the Australian accent (although admittedly I haven’t got any other accent to try out, so perhaps I might be a little biased. But whatever). Something as simple as ordering a sandwich can be enough to make the cashier’s eyes light up as though an honest-to-God magical gnome has just wandered in off the street and ordered a turkey-with-swiss. It rings like a bell across the most crowded of rooms, and sticks out like dogs’ balls in the streets. Obvious words like “tomato” and “banana” are amusing enough, but saying the simple little word “no” can send the most world-wise American into a fit of giggles. I never understood why until I came back to Australia, and suddenly I heard it: Americans and British say “No”, Australians say “Naoeie”. It’s like someone’s strapped the word into a little inflection roller-coaster and sent it on its way.
So it seems the most appropriate place for me to get this party started (again) is how different Australia seemed to me after only four months away. Things I’d never noticed before suddenly seemed adorably provincial, or fucking weird, or sometimes just filled me to the brink with homesickness and made me not want to go back to the USA. I noticed for the first time just how full of utterly useless and infuriatingly irrelevant celebrity Sydney gossip the newspapers are, and how such ‘news’ stories about which swimmer is sleeping with what underwear model are considered of such earth-shattering import that they occupy vast swathes of the opening pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, with pesky filler articles about things like a new nuclear-arms race in the middle east or the beginning of the seventh year of Australia’s involvement in two unwinnable wars relegated to the arse-end of the paper near the comics and horoscopes. I almost clicked my heels with glee each time I walked into a café and ordered a skim flat white without the cashier looking at me like I’d just make some obscure Ku Klux Klan reference. I unthinkingly made the common tourist error of ordering a pint of beer in the heat of the Australian summer and struggling to get it down before it turned into humid mug of piss. I loved being in Orange and hearing the cicadas. I loved being in Canberra and smelling the wet-earth-and-eucalyptus smell that pervades the whole city. I even loved walking through Newtown at night and reading the ineffectual socialist propaganda sticky-taped to lightposts and parking meters by angry twenty-year-olds in the middle of their arts degrees (“Facebook and the War in Iraq: How the Capitalist Machine forces you to buy homophobic cars”). But the thing that I loved the most and at the same time found so bizarre and perplexing is probably the one thing that most Australians living in Australia never give the slightest thought to: the enigmatic Aussie accent.
Americans love accents of all kinds, but in my experience none seems to fill them with such child-like delight as the Australian accent (although admittedly I haven’t got any other accent to try out, so perhaps I might be a little biased. But whatever). Something as simple as ordering a sandwich can be enough to make the cashier’s eyes light up as though an honest-to-God magical gnome has just wandered in off the street and ordered a turkey-with-swiss. It rings like a bell across the most crowded of rooms, and sticks out like dogs’ balls in the streets. Obvious words like “tomato” and “banana” are amusing enough, but saying the simple little word “no” can send the most world-wise American into a fit of giggles. I never understood why until I came back to Australia, and suddenly I heard it: Americans and British say “No”, Australians say “Naoeie”. It’s like someone’s strapped the word into a little inflection roller-coaster and sent it on its way.
The personal result of this is that the mere fact that I say “banAHnah” instead of “banAANa” makes me much more popular than my personality probably warrants (although I am devilishly handsome and cheekily charismatic, which can’t hurt). I can confidently strike up a conversation with a stranger in a bar, since I already have the perfect ice-breaker: a nice broad “Howyagoinmaite?” usually does the trick. In fact, I suspect my accent has become even broader since I moved up North. It could be a subconscious defense mechanism to being immersed in American accents, but knowing my propensity to ham it up if there’s even the faintest glimmer of attention being paid to me, I might be (subconsciously) bunging it on. A bit. Sometimes. Just a little.
Part of the reason that Yanks love our accent might be that The Australian Accent is one of the last pleasures on earth that America can’t produce by itself. You wouldn’t think so, but apparently the Australian accent is a deviously tricky one to convincingly emulate. Most non-natives get the broad “aah” vowel that makes sentences like “is the car-park far?” sound like the speaker has a kazoo stuck in their nose, but apart from that most Americans I’ve encountered who try to speak with an Aussie accent sound like they’ve had the grievous misfortune of suffering from a stroke and anaphylaxis at the same time.
Furthermore the Australian accent is unusual in that, despite what many of us have been led to believe, there is no broad consensus on where the Australian accent comes from. (I learned this from a sweet article I read in the paper a few weeks ago, and you can check out the original here. Pretty much the rest of this blog totally plagarises it though, so maybe you shouldn’t read it and just think that I’m really smart). Anyway, accent experts can say with reasonable confidence that the Boston accent comes from the mixing of Irish and Italian immigrants in days of yore, or that the Californian accent is a mix of all the other states smooshed together, but recent studies have discounted the traditional theories that the Australian accent is a bastardized cockney accent, or that up until the beginning of the twentieth century we sounded as Irish as a leprechaun snorting shamrocks. Recent documentary evidence suggests that our English overlords were noticing a distinct Australian twang as early as forty years after white settlement (or invasion, however you prefer to look at it), and moreover they were not all thrilled with what they heard.
Even more interesting is that there are now actually three generally recognised Australian accents – the General Australian accent, (shared by myself and, depending on how ocker I’m feeling, either Paul Hogan or Nicole Kidman), the Australian Aboriginal accent, and weirdly but awesomely, the Australian Lebanese accent. But even most Australians would agree that the General Australian accent is fragmenting a little further producing such sub-species as the Melbourne accent (or, in the tongue of the natives, “Malbourne”), the glorious Bogan accent, or, my favourite, the Gingham-wearing knick-knack-shop-owning country-ladies accent which has definitely been around since I was a kid but has been thrust into the forefront of the Australian psyche by Prue and Trude from “Kath and Kim” (and I think it’s just graysche).
This variety in accents might explain the occasional difficulty Americans have in placing where I’m from. Absolutely no problem at all with that (I still have trouble telling Americans and Canadians apart until I subtly ascertain whether my conversation partner rhymes “house” with “moose”), but I was a little non-plussed at a conversation I had with a lady in the supermarket a few months ago. When she overheard me ordering my sandwich meat from the deli she said, “are you from London?”
“No,” I replied, without the minutest hint of condescension, “I’m from Australia”.
“Oh,” she said. After a short pause, she asked, “is that near London?”
What a stupid bitch.
Furthermore the Australian accent is unusual in that, despite what many of us have been led to believe, there is no broad consensus on where the Australian accent comes from. (I learned this from a sweet article I read in the paper a few weeks ago, and you can check out the original here. Pretty much the rest of this blog totally plagarises it though, so maybe you shouldn’t read it and just think that I’m really smart). Anyway, accent experts can say with reasonable confidence that the Boston accent comes from the mixing of Irish and Italian immigrants in days of yore, or that the Californian accent is a mix of all the other states smooshed together, but recent studies have discounted the traditional theories that the Australian accent is a bastardized cockney accent, or that up until the beginning of the twentieth century we sounded as Irish as a leprechaun snorting shamrocks. Recent documentary evidence suggests that our English overlords were noticing a distinct Australian twang as early as forty years after white settlement (or invasion, however you prefer to look at it), and moreover they were not all thrilled with what they heard.
Even more interesting is that there are now actually three generally recognised Australian accents – the General Australian accent, (shared by myself and, depending on how ocker I’m feeling, either Paul Hogan or Nicole Kidman), the Australian Aboriginal accent, and weirdly but awesomely, the Australian Lebanese accent. But even most Australians would agree that the General Australian accent is fragmenting a little further producing such sub-species as the Melbourne accent (or, in the tongue of the natives, “Malbourne”), the glorious Bogan accent, or, my favourite, the Gingham-wearing knick-knack-shop-owning country-ladies accent which has definitely been around since I was a kid but has been thrust into the forefront of the Australian psyche by Prue and Trude from “Kath and Kim” (and I think it’s just graysche).
This variety in accents might explain the occasional difficulty Americans have in placing where I’m from. Absolutely no problem at all with that (I still have trouble telling Americans and Canadians apart until I subtly ascertain whether my conversation partner rhymes “house” with “moose”), but I was a little non-plussed at a conversation I had with a lady in the supermarket a few months ago. When she overheard me ordering my sandwich meat from the deli she said, “are you from London?”
“No,” I replied, without the minutest hint of condescension, “I’m from Australia”.
“Oh,” she said. After a short pause, she asked, “is that near London?”
What a stupid bitch.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Tips from a stupid foreigner
In 2006 I went overseas by myself for the first time. I chose Vietnam for no other reason than my friend Sam had been there a couple of times and I thought he was cute. Within fifteen minutes of my arrival in Ho Chi Minh City I was in the back seat of a cab with no seatbelts whizzing through night-time streets slightly wider than queen-sized bed, while surrounded on all sides by hundreds of locals on Vespas, all beeping like a flock of deranged road-runners. Within an hour I was ensconced in my hotel room drinking Vietnamese beer (which looks like VB and tastes like awesome), lying on my Vietnamese bed (which was twice the size of any bed I'd ever seen in my entire life), watching Vietnamese television (which, on the bizarre-o-meter lies somewhere between Mexican Soap Opera and Japanese Game Shows) while bright orange Vietnamese geckos ran across my ceiling going 'gnak! gnak!' at each other (which was cool).
The point is that from my first night in Vietnam I knew that I was a total outsider. I had no idea of cultural norms, I didn't speak any Vietnamese, and so I could cheerfully bumble my way about the country for two weeks while the locals good-naturedly tolerated things like amusing mispronunciations of "thank you" or gross violations of holy buildings. I was a tourist, I was an idiot, and that was fine.
Living in America as an Australian is a little more tricky. As we all know, American culture leaves its Yankee fingerprints all over our dinky-di media industry (except of course for the ABC, which the British have claimed as their own). A lifetime's exposure to everything from "Seinfeld" to "Sesame Street" has lulled me into a false sense of familiarity with America, and the fact that everyone here speaks English only aids my delusion that the US and Australia are essentially the same place, just that they're on different sides of the world and one has far superior coffee (hint: it's not the US). In reality, there are a whole host of subtle yet bewildering social norms here that I grapple with on a daily basis.
The most obvious of these is tipping. EVERYONE knows that in the US, you tip in restaurants and bars (although on my first night ever in the US, way back in 2007, I forgot to tip the waitress. I still feel guilty about that). What no one told me is that there's a whole HOST of other people you have to tip. Catch a cab, and you have to tip the taxi driver. Get a haircut, and you have to tip not only the hairdresser, but also the person who washes your hair. Most recently, I paid eighty bucks for a fairly ho-hum massage, and on my way out the door the receptionist asked me, "and how much tip will you be leaving today?"
"Tip?" I asked, a little incredulously. "You tip masseurs here, too?"
"Yeah. Usually fifteen to twenty per cent," came the reply with smiles.
"Well, what did I just pay eighty bucks for?"
"Yeah, the minimum wage is pretty low here," was the explanation. I left a fifteen dollar tip, but I can't help but feel pissed off about some capitalistic yoga master sitting somewhere in Williamsburg on a pile of eighty-dollar massage money, while his poor little massage-minions wait hopefully for tips huddling for warmth around burning barrels in the street wearing Thai fisherman pants and Crocs.
The thing that is most bewildering about tipping though is that it seems completely arbitrary who you do and don't tip. If you go to a cafe and order a coffee and you collect it at the counter, you don't tip the person who made you the coffee. But if you order a coffee in a cafe and a waiter brings it to you, you tip the waiter. Surely you should tip the person who makes you the coffee? Doesn't that require some level of skill, more so than merely bringing a coffee to your table, which simply requires functioning arms and legs?
At first I thought I had it sorted out - you tip someone who actually physically does something for you. But then on closer scrutiny this doesn't hold out - you tip cab drivers, but not subway drivers. You tip waiters but not the garbage man. You tip the girl who pours your beers all night, but not the girl who later splints your leg after you fall down a flight of stairs, drunk as a skunk from aforementioned beers. I would say each of these services are just as important as the others, but only some of them are deemed worthy of a tip.
It's heavy. Being the caring individual that I am, I feel as though I'm exploiting the poor people who rely on tips to make a living. If they were simply earning enough from their wage to put food on the table or a roof over their head then I wouldn't give a shit. But to know that I personally have it within my power to either make their night or starve them to death is a responsibility I'm uncomfortable with. I almost feel as though I need to carry around a basket filled with one-dollar bills and skip down the street hurling handfuls of cash at anyone who so much as steps out of my way on the footpath.
The upshot to this is that the service industry here is a genuine service industry. Sure, it might be mercenary, but the promise of a crisp dollar bill is all it can take to encourage the waitress to smile and pleasantly offer you more beer rather than scowling, snatching away your pasta primavera before you've finished with it, and then arguing with you for five minutes as to what constitutes a "finished meal" (which happened to me once in Australia. Bitch). A tip is leverage to ensure that the service you are paying for is actually done properly and politely.
Damn, I wish I hadn't tipped the cab driver on the day I arrived. Stupid me.
The point is that from my first night in Vietnam I knew that I was a total outsider. I had no idea of cultural norms, I didn't speak any Vietnamese, and so I could cheerfully bumble my way about the country for two weeks while the locals good-naturedly tolerated things like amusing mispronunciations of "thank you" or gross violations of holy buildings. I was a tourist, I was an idiot, and that was fine.
Living in America as an Australian is a little more tricky. As we all know, American culture leaves its Yankee fingerprints all over our dinky-di media industry (except of course for the ABC, which the British have claimed as their own). A lifetime's exposure to everything from "Seinfeld" to "Sesame Street" has lulled me into a false sense of familiarity with America, and the fact that everyone here speaks English only aids my delusion that the US and Australia are essentially the same place, just that they're on different sides of the world and one has far superior coffee (hint: it's not the US). In reality, there are a whole host of subtle yet bewildering social norms here that I grapple with on a daily basis.
The most obvious of these is tipping. EVERYONE knows that in the US, you tip in restaurants and bars (although on my first night ever in the US, way back in 2007, I forgot to tip the waitress. I still feel guilty about that). What no one told me is that there's a whole HOST of other people you have to tip. Catch a cab, and you have to tip the taxi driver. Get a haircut, and you have to tip not only the hairdresser, but also the person who washes your hair. Most recently, I paid eighty bucks for a fairly ho-hum massage, and on my way out the door the receptionist asked me, "and how much tip will you be leaving today?"
"Tip?" I asked, a little incredulously. "You tip masseurs here, too?"
"Yeah. Usually fifteen to twenty per cent," came the reply with smiles.
"Well, what did I just pay eighty bucks for?"
"Yeah, the minimum wage is pretty low here," was the explanation. I left a fifteen dollar tip, but I can't help but feel pissed off about some capitalistic yoga master sitting somewhere in Williamsburg on a pile of eighty-dollar massage money, while his poor little massage-minions wait hopefully for tips huddling for warmth around burning barrels in the street wearing Thai fisherman pants and Crocs.
The thing that is most bewildering about tipping though is that it seems completely arbitrary who you do and don't tip. If you go to a cafe and order a coffee and you collect it at the counter, you don't tip the person who made you the coffee. But if you order a coffee in a cafe and a waiter brings it to you, you tip the waiter. Surely you should tip the person who makes you the coffee? Doesn't that require some level of skill, more so than merely bringing a coffee to your table, which simply requires functioning arms and legs?
At first I thought I had it sorted out - you tip someone who actually physically does something for you. But then on closer scrutiny this doesn't hold out - you tip cab drivers, but not subway drivers. You tip waiters but not the garbage man. You tip the girl who pours your beers all night, but not the girl who later splints your leg after you fall down a flight of stairs, drunk as a skunk from aforementioned beers. I would say each of these services are just as important as the others, but only some of them are deemed worthy of a tip.
It's heavy. Being the caring individual that I am, I feel as though I'm exploiting the poor people who rely on tips to make a living. If they were simply earning enough from their wage to put food on the table or a roof over their head then I wouldn't give a shit. But to know that I personally have it within my power to either make their night or starve them to death is a responsibility I'm uncomfortable with. I almost feel as though I need to carry around a basket filled with one-dollar bills and skip down the street hurling handfuls of cash at anyone who so much as steps out of my way on the footpath.
The upshot to this is that the service industry here is a genuine service industry. Sure, it might be mercenary, but the promise of a crisp dollar bill is all it can take to encourage the waitress to smile and pleasantly offer you more beer rather than scowling, snatching away your pasta primavera before you've finished with it, and then arguing with you for five minutes as to what constitutes a "finished meal" (which happened to me once in Australia. Bitch). A tip is leverage to ensure that the service you are paying for is actually done properly and politely.
Damn, I wish I hadn't tipped the cab driver on the day I arrived. Stupid me.
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