‘Step Out of the Car Please, Sir’

I am a felon.

A miscreant. Es desperado.

Maybe I should choose my colors now. I think blue. It brings out my eyes.

Like most people I’ve encountered in California she looked great, like a supermodel, but a supermodel that could wrestle you to the ground and snap on the cuffs. As she rode over on her bike, that bright, white, American smile on her face, I thought she was being like most people I’d met since arriving in Sacramento two weeks before; friendly. I give her my best ‘I don’t know you but you’re an authority figure so I’d best smile back’ smile and continue past the massive light-up guitar that can only signify ‘Hard Rock’. I even raise my hand and start to mummer a quick ‘Hi’ before I notice her smile has gone and she’s blocking my way with her front wheel.

“Good evening, mam...”

Uh-oh.

The words of my British tutors ring in my ears; “If you do something illegal, your American friends might just get a warning, you will get deported.”

De-port-ted...

...and never let into the country AGAIN!!!!!

“I need to ask you a question...”

I start to panic. The hot flush creeps from my shoulders, up my neck and into my face. Flashes of my past misdemeanours enter my head; drinking a beer on a Chicago street last summer, smoking some really bad weed in Seattle a couple of years ago, stealing a pencil topper when I was about six. Which one are they gonna throw me in the Big House for?

Stood there, legs astride her mountain bike, observed by the groups of sketchy looking young and old gathered around the entrance to the Downtown Mall, she fixes me with an icy glare.

“Why’d you cross the street on the red?”

WHAAAAAT!

Let me make something clear: Despite my penchant for Lucky Charms and the fact that I still sleep with a knitted soft toy called Mouseykin, I am a fully grown adult. I am over the age restrictions for smoking, sex and even alcohol. I can vote, I can cook and I can even get knocked up, live in a trailer and call my child Zee Zee Sputnik (if it’s a girl). In many states it would be perfectly legal for me to walk into a store, pay my money and walk out with a brand new, spanking, semi-automatic weapon.

But I can’t cross a street unless a light tells me to.

The nervy, subservient, basket case her approach had caused was now joined by a petulant, snarky teenager almost unable to control the laughter invoked by the fact she might be getting a ticket because she didn’t wait for the white man. This isn’t going well. Thankfully it’s at times like this when being British really helps. Not only do I have the uncanny ability to repress all emotion, it is also a free pass to the ‘I’m not from around here’ excuse.

I apologize profusely, putting more and more emphasis on my accent. Gradually she relents after giving me a healthy dose of guilt: ‘See all these people? They expect me to give you a ticket’ (It looked more like they were wondering where their next tab of crack was coming from to me) and fear mongering: ‘We’ve had accidents on this street’. Then she rode off warning me to be more careful next time.

And the stupid thing is I have been. Since that day, unless that light has changed my feet remain firmly on the curb.

You know you’re on a Foreign Exchange to America When... Celebrities Are Politicians and Politicians Are Celebrities.

Conan the Destroyer is not just a movie. It’s a premonition.

At the very end of the film Princess Jehnna thanks Conan for saving her and offers him her hand in marriage but he declines. Standing there in a fur loin cloth, his muscles glinting with baby oil, he grinds out of his heavy accent “One day, I shall have my own kingdom, my own queen”.
24 years later he does have his own queen; Maria Shriver, princess of the Kennedy Dynasty and his own kingdom; California. Who’d have guessed?

Obviously the script writer.

Just look at the unlikely band of misfits Conan leads to victory; a Japanese mystic, an unshaven slacker who appears to have gotten his hands on some really good weed even while being, literally, on a different planet, a busty blonde seriously lacking in academics despite destined to be queen and Grace Jones. Is there any better analogy for the population of California?

Arnie, of course, is just one in a long line of American celebrities who have stepped into politics.

The most obvious is the monkey lovin’, pyjama wearing ex actor who went one step beyond ‘The Governator’ and became Teflon. Reagan managed to use his vast acting talent to stay in charge of a superpower for two terms and gave his name to a policy of economics that the country still pretty much stands by today. Good job! He was also about the only guy who was ever able to make our Prime Minister of the time look like a woman.

There are other’s of course; Clint Eastwood brought justice to the small town of Carmel as Mayor from 1986 to 1988 before he realised he’d get more done behind the camera and Jesse Ventura a former WWF wrestler who tired of acting in front of a baying crowd became Governor of Minnesota instead. Not much change there then.

Even one of my personal heroes, the majestic Hunter S. Thompson, ran for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado although, of course, for him it was more about anarchy than the law.

In such a celebrity soaked culture, where most people’s immediate experience of the world comes through a screen, it is understandable that we want the people we see there to be in charge. It’s not that the British don’t also grow up on TV and film it’s just that all our screen stars are ugly. Of course our politicians are even uglier and hardly ever want to be seen on TV. If they could all just remain sequestered in the Houses of Parliament the aesthetics of the BBC would be greatly improved.

By contrast American politicians love being seen on television. It is their prime tool in message conveyance and they are experts in its use. From the first televised debate between a cool, good looking JFK and a sweating, nervy Richard Nixon it was clear the medium would shape the way elections were fought.

Indeed, recently it is not just celebrities becoming politicians but politicians becoming celebrities. The Clintons have replaced not only the Kennedys as America’s first family but also have more complex plot twists and alliances than The Sopranos. John McCain, once a media darling himself, now accuses Obama of playing to the ‘liberal’ newsrooms.

And then there’s Palin, whose outrage at press intrusion on her family was shown so succinctly by parading them during her speech at the Republican National Convention and having their images on the front of practically every magazine in high glossy colour for the next two weeks.

So the mantle of a media hungry political warrior with a dubious accent falls on fresh shoulders.

You know what the difference between a hockey mom and Xena the Warrior Princess is?

Guess.