This is England

I had to go to England for my friends wedding. I thought it was going to be an ideal way of also catching up with my family there and also to close down my house which I had put on the market around Easter this year. The sale had been dragging on whilst small proceedural points were made by the purchasers solicitor. [More of this later, it deserves its own posting].

So the trip started off pretty bad. The plane was delayed on the runway at takeoff for 3 hours. Naturally they turned off the a/c and didn't serve any water until at least an hour into the delay. All in all it was fairly distressing but we did eventually take off. I watched a great film on the plane called 'This is England' which is set in the grim early 80s. It recounts the struggles between a gang of skinheads who start out peaceful but after the return from prison of a former gang member the lighter mood soon darkens.

Then we arrived. It was raining and grey. At first we were relieved since NYC had been suffering 100 degree/100% humidity. Then we discovered that our advance train tickets to Leeds were invalid because we had missed our pre booked train because of the delays. They charged us 220 pounds for the privilege of taking their crappy train. Bastards.

WAIL TO THE JAIL

Blubber Paris Hilton wails and cries all through her hearing. This woman is the epitome of a spoiled brat who is so stupid that having been sprung from jail by a sheriff who is in awe of celebrities tries not to attend an all important hearing with a judge who is rightly pissed off by insisting that she should be able to 'phone in' her testimony.

What an ignorant, stupid stupid girl.



At least try to placate the judge by showing up on time [she didn't] and have the common sense to realise that using private highly paid psychiatrists on your payroll who are prepared to lie to thwart the will of a straight as a die judge is only compounding your farcial attempts to evade justice.

Your stupidity is what got you into trouble in the first place. In fact, your risible TV show trades on your stupid vapid personality.

Stupid is as stupid does. Read a fucking book for chrissakes!

Go to jail, do not pass go.

Hugh

The hunky House man is an intelligent and very funny individual. Not many americans realise that his career in Film/TV is largely based upon a comedy double act between him and Stephen Fry which then led to his many appearences on Blackadder. Like many funny men Mr Laurie's humour grows out of a finely tuned and somewhat academic mind. When he says that what he likes about his British culture is the 'buildings and the cruelty', I think he is being serious and funny at the same time.


A Quote from Hugh 'House' Laurie on what he likes about Britain.

"The buildings and the cruelty. They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them. LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally."



There's more than a grain of truth in this...The architecture of Britain is unique in diversity and scale. Now that I live in New York and am thinking of buying a house in the US I have realised that the architecture is not exciting me in the same way that Britain's Georgian, Edwardian and Victorian stock is. I am not talking about fabulous Manhattan lofts nor large hacienda style piles in LA but about the suburbs, where the normal people live.

As to the cruelty? Ponder this; a good friend, Michael Roemer, from Hamburg whose father served with the Wehrmacht in WWII once asked me, "Why are the British so warlike?" I couldn't answer but knew what he meant. We Brits are a warm and fuzzy bunch who will rip your throat out if you spill our pint or shag our wimmin. Maybe.

The BIG Gay Rock Musical

YES! I am a hypocrite. Well not really, its just that I am preternaturally phobic about big blowsy Broadway jazz hands musical theater, especially Jukebox musicals. Now I am directing a musical, My Inner Mark Berman, which, for the record has songs and dances but is nothing whatsoever to do with either Lloyd-Blubber or regurgitated Pop legends with additional five, six , seven, eight.

The facts are that I evolve and my opinions are liable to change as fast as a whippet on speed. Two things happened recently which led to a partial change of heart. Savannah, my daughter, appeared in Anything Goes in the lead role of Reno and then Evan/Larry [MIMB's writer], contacted Savannah to say he needed a director.

The story is about a young repressed Jewish gay man with an 'out'- rageous alter- ego, Cricket Santiago. Cricket/Mark's therapists are sex-change Nurse Terry, the Psychopathically camp Head of Hospital and the barely concealing Rabbi.

There has been a lot of work to do in a very short time period but I'm feeling confident, so confident in fact that I wore my bright red wife beater.

My wife said I looked very gay indeed.

So I beat her.

My doppelganger looks just like me

I think it must have been a good day when this picture was taken. I certainly look more rested than normal. The strange thing about being in the performing arts is that we are required to have headshots/publicity photographs. Now getting these has led to a massive support industry whose sole function is to service the actors and performers with industry standard pictures. The theories and philosophy of 'what makes an effective headshot' are legion. Mostly we need these shots to get us work. So we pay for them, agonise over them and generally resent the regularity of the ritual 'updated shots' that seems to come around before we have even got rid of the last lot.

The British National Dish is Not British

The favourite national dish of the British is Chicken Tikka Marsala which is a delicious medium hot Indian dish. The only problem is that it is not a recognised original dish back in India. The general colour of the dish ranges from bright orange to lurid red and when this dish was cooked in Britain and then flown over to India for perusal by indigenous Indian chefs they were perplexed by the garish concoction and worse yet, they had never heard of this dish. They consulted their recipes, grandmothers were referred to and it was agreed that this hybrid was essentially a recipe that whilst Indian in intent and in spice terms was something that had not originated on the Indian sub-continent.

One thing that all Brits would probably agree on though is that Curry answered the need to enliven our cuisine. 21st Century Britain is now a place where one can find all the haute cuisine that a gourmand might demand but for the John and Jane Brits there is no substitute to the weekend ritual of a curry washed down with lager down at the local curry house . The more thuggish, chavs would probably top off their weekend outing by picking a fight with someone in the taxi line. And end it with a technicolour yawn whilst driving the porcelain bus. [Translation puking it all up in the toilet]. Here's a link Safa in Camberwell where I used to live that serves decent Indian food including Salmon Tikka which is not strictly Indian either but it works: http://www.toptable.co.uk/details.cfm/qs/rid%7C2009/spos%7C7


Luckily for me I am now working in Curry Hill [Murray Hill 30's on Madison] which is a couple of blocks from the area of Lexington which is known for Indian restaurants and spice shops so I should be able to get my fix of super hot authentic food on a regular basis. Even more lucky for me is that I am only 20 blocks away in Queens from the Jackson Heights district which is the largest Indian/Pakistani community in NY and therefore another source of excellent curry.

So with all this talk of curry you are wondering what happened to our other national dish? Fish and chips? Well, ponder this; Fish and Chips were originally two entirely different dishes yep Fish [Battered and deep fried] and Chips [potatoes also deep fried]. The fish part was apparently originally a Jewish recipe brought to England by immigrants to London's East End and the Chips was originally a dish created by the French and then popularised in the North of Britain, [quite likely to be Lancashire]. No one knows who brought the two dishes together but it is reckoned that this did not occur until around 1860. So our national dish is actually French and Jewish and lets not forget that the humble potato is also an import from South America which was brought back to our shores by Sir Walter Raleigh. If you want more check out this link: http://www.niagara.co.uk/fish_and_chips.htm

Even our most popular beer, lager, was invented by either the Bavarians or the Bohemia Czechs. No you can't have a f#$king link, do your own research.

Two and a half years ...because I was broke, afraid to go back or what?

The English Bulldog. Strong, yet ugly. Proud yet slobbering. Tenacious yet ridiculous. Not unlike Brits. I have actually become prouder of my heritage since moving here and yet have no desire to go home. Why? Well, actually NY is home. London is a place that I owe a lot to but can't see myself living in at this time and maybe never again. The two and a half years refer to the time since I moved here and also is a reference to the length of time since I was last in England. I just came back last week from a visit to check on my property there and the news is not good.

Back in 2004 I endured break in which led to a fight with the burgular who I disturbed in the act. The burgular stabbed me with a knife and this plus other unpleasant occurences made me feel it was time to get out. Matters were made worse the following month when I disturbed another potential burgular at my other property on Camberwell Church St. Then the basement got flooded.

So, what was so bad about this current visit?

Well nothing really if you don't mind reading the ubiquitous yellow signs that act as a substitute for real policing. Sexual Assault - Can you help? Shooting - Can you help? Assault with a knife - Can you help? Not content with terrifying both populace and visitors alike with these hopeless and alarming signs Britain seeks to create a total climate of fear by sticking very imposing black poles with cameras on top at every turn, every cross roads, shopping center, bus. In fact, they are everywhere. Britain has morphed into the creeping totalitarian world of 1984. King Ken is ruling London and he has decreed that we shall all be televised.

And there is nothing revolutionary about it.

Two and a half years on and only now can it be told

I am a Nylondoner. There are apparently thousands of Brits in NY, at least it seems that way when I am walking around Manhattan. I can be standing on a street corner wishing that the Walk/Don't Walk signs still existed whilst trying to cross and all of a sudden that braying voice that is inextricably a Brit 'Poshie' or worse still, the flat Mockney tones of an Estuary import invade my daydream. Shit, Brits! Fuck! I moved here to partially get away from my fellow Geezers, Chavs and Henriettas and they are all around. There is also talk of naming a small part of Greenwich Village, Little Britain, which, is highly ironic since the biting Walliams-Lucas satire is hardly known over here.

I'm pretty sure that we are no longer exotic or surprising to your average New Yorker since no one ever seems to say, "Omigod! Are you from England?". Not that I care but it seems to me that twenty years ago when I first started to come over here on a regular basis that people were always surprised in fact mostly they were impressed or at worst, pleased to meet you. Now, NYC is so cosmopolitan that it is not very common to hear the traditional accents of the boroughs. Gone the nasal Queens, vanished the Brooklynese and absolutely no one seems to say Noo Joysey.

Homogenisation, that's right, were all mixed up.