You know you’re on a Foreign Exchange to America When... Every time you see a Cute Guy Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ Runs through Your Head.

For years now teenage girls throughout the world have had pictures of American men adorning their walls, covered in greasy lip balm kisses that have worn away some of the colour. It seems that the unique gene pool formed through an almost completely immigrant population has managed to produce some of the most exportable totty the world has ever seen.

It’s not that British boys don’t have their charms. It is just that they are all around you. The American male is a pop sensation, a successful actor, a star. He is something alien, unobtainable, mythical even.

Then you get here and you soon realize that those guys represent the cream of what America has to offer. The milk is much more varied. However, in the weeks I have been studying the new fish pond I find myself in, several species have appeared. Some of these are stereotypes we have grown up with watching Molly Ringwald navigate the same waters 20 years ago. Some seem to be an evolution of those stereotypes and others are new, strange creatures that need to be investigated more thoroughly. Here are the results of my research:

1) The Tappable Geek
Back in the day these were elusive, hanging around by their lockers and in the library, mentally preparing for the next time the school bully singles them out for that days games. They were always there but hardly recognized by greater girl society. Now, intelligence is no longer a dirty word and with fine examples from TV such as The OC’s Seth Cohen and Pushing Daisies’ Ned the Piemaker, the nerd has hit back. They can still be found in any number of computer science classes but in recent years they have grown in confidence, knowing that girls will now take the chance that the bespectacled comic reader in front of them may become the next Bill Gates.

2) Boy From Another Decade
Imagine, if you will, that the 90s had never happened. We would all still be wearing graphic tees, mooning over Johnny Depp and dancing to Madonna. Hang on... Whether or not we have slipped back a decade, it is a strange sensation when you witness a man who appears to have been sent through a wormhole from 1985. It’s not even the cool side of the 80s. Rather than picking up a Smiths fan or a member of the New Order fan club, this time tornado has randomly chosen a Rob Lowe look-a-like, all gelled hair with floppy bangs, suit slacks and button down stripped shirt. He looks like a reject from the set of ‘Wall Street’ and has the opinions to match. Greed is never good.

3) Hipster or Hobo?
Can you tell the difference? He could be the lead singer of a cutting edge local electro band. He could be an artist who shows his work on a street corner every Second Saturday. He could have read slam poetry at whichever independent coffee shop in currently in vogue. Or he could collect cans in order to get jacked up on some cheap vodka and live under a light rail bridge. The trouble with wearing ironic clothing is that sometimes you get a little too close to the joke.

4) He’s On the Team
The jock. The ultimate stereotype. And yes, he still exists. He has diversified and is no longer carried through the school system on his ability to catch a ball. But you can still spot them a mile off: cap, sports jersey, standing head and shoulders above most of the other people around him. Yet when he tells you he’s on the team, even the most cynical of chicks gets a little flutter in her stomach.

5) Republicans: The Ultimate Bad Boy
It used to be that the bad boy was from the other side of the tracks. Now they could be from the other side of the political divide. Hey, it worked for Marie Shriver. Imagine the ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ scenario she had to go through. What we should remember in these divided times (for the next week and a bit anyway) is that Republicans are people too. They can laugh, cry, field dress moose and, yes, even love. Still not sure I could date one though.

You know you’re on a Foreign Exchange to America When... You Feel Like a Dirty Red.

In recent weeks I have noticed a disturbing trend. It started with subtle policy differences but has ended with blatant racial slurs. There are connections to the radical 60s and a dictatorial governmental system whose communist ideals are slowly but surely creeping into America.

Duck ‘n’ cover, keep the kid’s away from the windows, the British are coming! (Back!)

Look at the evidence: A single party government in power for over ten years with a new leader recently installed without election, a large percentage of workers pay taken to benefit the masses, a national TV station paid for by the people without the comforting capitalist intrusion of adverts and not one plumber called Joe. Stick a big mustache on the queen and we are mid century Russia!

All this used to be a joke within my group of American friends. ‘Kate’s a Communist! Ha, ha, ha!!’ (Coming from Chicagoans, a city clearly now proven as the crucible of radicalism on this continent, it seems a little pot-kettle-blackish.) But it wasn’t until Wednesday night’s debate that I realized what a threat we’d become.

During a discussion on health care McCain accused Obama of putting patient choice in the hands of bureaucrats. “If you want that then you can go to England or (worse) Canada”. He spat out the names like they were poison, red poison. This attitude, that somehow a national health system is the gateway to totalitarianism, stems from the 50s (we actually went commie in 1946) and particularly a 1961 recording by the Gipper condemning national health as a socialist “foot in the door” conspiracy. Watch out! The Reds are on the way and they’ve got stethoscopes!

By association with this insidious plot to put American workers (including Joe the Plumber) in the Gulag, Obama and the Democrats have now been tarred with the scary socialist brush, you know, the one actually made out of Lenin’s nose hair? They keep it in the glass coffin with him so it’s covered with those rampant ‘power to the people’ germs. This lunchtime I watched as Glen Beck, a ‘journalist’, visited his sister station, the ‘unbiased’ home of ‘the best political team on television’, CNN to proclaim “They’re all Marxists!” when asked to give his opinion on the Democrats. But higher taxes and socialized medicine won’t make America Communist. It’ll just make you British.

Obama is being vilified for his promise/threat to ‘spread the wealth’ and his successful trip to Europe was seen more as a joke than an asset to his foreign policy experience. But if the only alternative to this is a self-proclaimed maverick and a hockey mom with an unqualified plumber as their figurehead then maybe it’s time you guys did look towards us for some influence. And come November if you continue to decide that even mildly social policies a too stronger pill for America to swallow, send our brother Obama back over. We’ll be glad to have him.

Diablo Cody: Honest To Blog

“Cody is a fad writer - she will disappear in a poof of smoke and sulfur odor when her 15 minutes are up. Like the writer of Reality Bites, which was simmilarly oh-so-hip 15+ years ago. Do you remember her name? Exactly.”

This was a comment on Diablo Cody’s first Entertainment Weekly column in December 2007. It is one of many ‘hater’ comments left condemning Cody as, among other things, “phoney”, “self-indulgent”, and “pretentious, completely unoriginal, and singularly pointless.” Cody retorted the only appropriate way, in a blog.

“I am middle-class trash from the Midwest. I'm a competent nonfiction writer, an admittedly green screenwriter, and a product of Hollywood, USA. I am "Diablo Cody" and if you're not a fan, go rent Prospero's Books again and leave me the fuck alone.”
Is the stripper turned blogger turned Hollywood darling over the hill already? Or is it yet another example of humanity’s inability to deal with another’s sudden success?

There is no doubt that the last couple of years have been incredibly lucky for Cody. In fact, turning to the skin trade as a form of income (a job that for most people is a slippery slope to further degradation) after becoming bored with her day job may well have been the best move she could ever make.

Born Brook Busey, a name she describes as “so not heavy metal”, Cody led an uneventful childhood in suburban Chicago and graduated from Iowa with a Media degree. She claims to have had an epiphany while typing copy for a Minneapolis ad agency. “This sucks. I’d rather be naked.” So she signed up for amateur night at a local strip club. Within a matter of weeks she had given up her day job and started blogging, with accounts of both her private life including cameos from then boyfriend Jonny and her new “anthropology” project, documenting her new chosen career path from stripper to peepshow object to phone sex operative.

This occasionally pornographic but surprisingly mundane diary is punctuated with sharp criticisms/glorifications of pop culture, a passion for which Cody uses as the basis for most if not all of her subsequent writing. The blog, now provocatively titled ‘Pussy Ranch’, would swing wildly between these subjects throughout the collection of stories told that day. On December 19th, 2003, for example, she first chastised Kid Rock for hooking up with Pamela Anderson, then described an uncomfortable situation during a peep show and later ran through her favorite music videos of the day.

The real power of this period of her writing, and I suspect why she was plucked from obscurity by Mason Novick, her manager who managed to secure an autobiography for her at the age of 24 after discovering the blog while surfing for porn, is her ability to show the reality of life as a stripper. Instead of being an erotically charged, glamorous lifestyle, Cody’s account is more akin to the hyper reality of ‘The Office’ than the fake glorification of ‘The Girls Next Door’.

Of course, the reason Cody is able to cast such a critically witty eye over her life is that she has chosen to enter that life. Unlike most of the other girls working the bars, she is more than capable of moving on, a future most of the others have little chance of. Her descriptions of other strippers, such as the aptly named Tassle, only accentuate her own detachment. She is studying them and hence herself and her own desire to be part of what they can never escape from. Through this self examination she becomes the poster child for generation X, someone desperate for rebellion but finding only boredom and disappointment and ‘normality’, whatever world she inhabits. She is most successful in her writing when she strikes at the very heart of these fears. “I'm trying to figure out why (how?) some people hit their twenties and automatically begin cultivating roses, making polenta, committing fully to jobs and functioning” (Pussy Ranch July 30th 2003).

The problem now is that her recent fame has taken away the normality of the different she was so able to comment on. She now has a new reality, that of a fully fledged Oscar winner, celebrity and journalist. Perhaps before blaming her for being successful we should allow her obvious talent to realign with her new life and see if she can once again bring an objective eye to another life few of us will ever live.

You know you’re on a Foreign Exchange to America When... You Want To Vacuum Pack Your Clothes.

Some adverts make you laugh, some make you aware, some make you cry (anything with puppies and kittens for me!), some make you want to get in your truck and race to the nearest mall and some make you just go ‘Huh??’.

These are a particular breed, clearly made with a budget of around $6 a minimum of 3 years ago but still being shown night after night as you tap your fingers waiting for the next segment of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (another thing guaranteed to get me reaching for the Kleenex). Just as your stealing yourself for Ty revealing a new home for a disabled war widow and her five blind kids, Vince comes on.

For those of you not in the know (or who have a life) Vince is the Shamwow guy. Shamwow is a shammy cloth and Vince wealds it like Indiana Jones with his bull whip. If he wasn’t on TV he could be in a circus sideshow. ‘Roll up! Roll up! See the google-eyed freak and his magic towel! Marvel as it drinks up twenty times its own weight in liquid!’ Vince talks at the speed of a freight train, eyeing you through the screen like a crazy person while running the Shamwow through its paces. He informs us it’s made by Germans, “and you know they always make good stuff”. Yep! He’s actually comparing a fancy dishcloth to a BMW.

The next ad features some guy asking you to send him your scrap gold. Scrap gold? Isn’t that an oxymoron? The advert also features some really sentimental women who have sent in gifts from their ex’s, even their first wedding ring in order to get a check they’ll probably put toward a new face rather than a new man. Now that’s emancipation.

Have you ever been to church and had difficulty hearing the sermon (Isn’t that the whole point?)? Do you annoy your cow of a wife by having the TV too loud? Do you want the birdsong to be even louder? Then you need ‘Listen up’! Yep, you too can look like a complete dork while you hold up the handset in order to better hear the word of God.

But at least you’re not wearing a blanket with sleeves.

It is bad enough that they recommend wearing the ‘Snuggie’ in your own home but camping? If you came across that family your first thought would probably be “cult!” than “ooh, I really need one of those!” And if anyone wore that at Wrigley Field we’d laugh them out of the park (along with all hope of ever winning anything ever). By the way, if the last thing your mom said to you before you left for college was “Don’t forget your Snuggie” you’ve got way more serious issues than passing midterms.

These adverts are all disturbing in their individual ways but there is another kind that really freaks me out, drugs. Every time they go through that long list of side effects such as suicidal tendencies, constipation and anal bleeding, I start to wonder whether you’re better off just sticking with what you have already. In a country where health care is a commodity and one of the presidential candidates describes it as a responsibility rather than a right it obviously requires promotion. Otherwise how else would you know what to tell your doctor to give you?

So as I pull my ‘Snuggie’ further around me, get my ‘Shamwow’ ready to soak up the tears and turn on the ‘Listen Up’ to not miss a single word of Ty and co, I wonder if I’ll ever even get some gold I’ll want to get rid of and get really homesick for the NHS.

Shamwow ad

Snuggie ad

Ding! Ding! Round Two!!

In the red corner the Bulldog of Arizona, John ‘The Maverick’ Mac Mac McCaaaaain! Aaaaaand in the blue corner straight from the hard south-side of Chicago, the Homeboy of Hawaii, Baaarak Obamaaaaaaa!

The ref throws in the elephant in the room. How will these two brave fighters handle THE ECONOMY!

Obama bounds out. He jabs with a biblical response. It’s the final judgement on Bush policies, 700 billion is just first step, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are riding over the horizon, we’re all going to die! Except the execs at AIG who will probably just go back to the spa.

McCain looks tired… but then he always looks tired. He lumbers to his feet and puts in a good middle-class punch. He’s already using the words America and heart in the same sentence and reminding the audience that all the countries who “don’t like us” have all our oil in their ground. How dare they! Guess we’d better find some of our own. Damn.

So how about that bailout, will it work?

Mac is straight in with his super suspender! (In case you haven’t heard due to being sat in a corner, quietly crying as the remainder of your pension slips through your fingers like the sands of time, McCain suspended his campaign a couple of weeks ago for all of about 2 hours in order to save the country from economic meltdown. Good job!) After putting his underpants over his trousers he turns to that old favorite ‘ I complained first!!!’ bringing up his claim of sheer outrage, from 2 years ago, about Freddy and Fanny.

After an explanation of the situation during which there were points where Obama should have used PowerPoint, or at least the flowchart he drew in class this afternoon, he socks McCain with a catty ‘Let’s correct’ section. He too uses the ‘I did it first’ tactic. A letter indeed! Wow, that was productive! How about a meeting next? Then a second warning? You can see why the American public gets a little frustrated with the Senate, like, all the time!

McCain comes back with a hard swing of patriotism but the American worker defense has little power due to it’s associations with the fundamentals slip up. He can’t get away from it by just saying “I meant you!”. It’s missed its mark. He reaches for his lucky charm the elfin like Joe Lieberman, who is dangling from his keyring, hoping to spread some of his magic bipartisan dust over the proceedings.

They’re on to priorities. The Black Knight (but in a good way) uses his lance of common sense and actually puts them in order. Super Mac displays his powers by claiming he can do everything at once, health care reform, the economy, education, victory in Iraq, Afghanistan, heal the world and cure cancer. Why wait? With one stroke of my hand all evil will disappear! (This from a man whose VP candidate accused Obama of playing Jesus).

Health care and foreign policy pass with the usual moves: accusations of liberal votes, responsibility or right, did you vote for this or that?, Obama as foreign darling who wants to bring socialized (read commie) medicine and McCain as defender of the castle, more than willing to go into defend national interests without that pesky UN getting in the way.

The match ends yet again with no knock out, each sides definitive win among their supporters being forced on the public in thousands of living rooms around the country, ‘fair and balanced’ or in countdown form. Meanwhile the fighters return to the trail, preparing for the next round. And as Cindy and Michelle paint there big 3 signs the electorate sits back and wonders if it’s November yet.

'Pushing Daisies' Gets It's Second Life

The trouble with really loving the first season of a show is when the second season comes along. You wait and wait, months go by as you wonder what joys the next season might bring. Anticipation is one of the great hidden pleasures of TV watching.

‘Tis the season when all these wishes may come true... or not. There is always the possibility that your favorite program from last year may royally suck this year.

‘Pushing Daisies’ burst on to our screens last season in a cacophony of bubblegum colors, quick quips and enough sweetness to keep dentists 401ks healthy whatever happens on Wall Street. The story of Ned, a boy who literally has the touch of life, and his childhood sweetheart, Chuck, who he has pulled back from death, captured hearts throughout the country, including mine. The delicate dance between the lovers whose slightest touch would prove fatal is the anchor of the show. The relationship is flanked by Olive Snook, the ditsy ex jockey turned waitress who is also head over heels for Ned, and money hungry, pop-up book loving, knitting PI, Emerson Cod, who’s wacky murder cases, solved with the help of Ned’s unique gift, are the bread and butter of each episode. Throw in Chuck’s eccentric synchronized swimming aunts, oodles of secrets and a few show tunes all wrapped up in a Tim-Burton-on-a-sugar-rush-esk world and you have a show that should keep anyone entertained.

The second season kicked off on Wednesday with ‘Bzzzzzzzzz’. The murder of Kentucky Fitz, a sales girl for Betsy’s Bees beauty products, stung to death by a swarm sets the gang on a familiar trail of undercover sleuthing in order to apprehend the perpetrator and, always more importantly for Emerson, collect the reward. The theme of bees was an important connection to last season (Bees were a big part of Chucks sheltered life with her aunts before she died) but unfortunately for fans it was one of few.

The long narration at the beginning, presumably to allow new viewers to get caught up, was excruciating. In a show that uses language so cleverly, it was unfortunate that more subtlety couldn’t have been used. For an audience who clearly enjoys, and are more than capable of following, complex storylines in a vivid landscape the overlong introduction was awkward and bordered on patronizing.

There was also very little in the way of fallout from last year’s events. The last episode of that season featured a heart wrenching conversation between Ned and Chuck at her father’s graveside after it was revealed that Ned’s gift had caused his death. This incredibly touching and emotional scene was barely mentioned and it seemed that Ned and Chuck’s relationship had not been affected by the revelation.

As a result the character of Chuck seems diminished. Last season Anna Friel's character came across as feisty and plucky as well as a great dresser. Her ‘second life’, both figurative and literal, had given her the opportunity to prove her inner strength. At least in ‘Bzzzzzzzzz’ she seems to have lost that. Her undercover role at Betsy’s Bees turned her from investigator to bait, just waiting for Emerson and Ned to save her. In future episodes, I can only hope Chuck gets back to her old self.

Thankfully the rest of the show is. The fantastical production is even more luscious, the colors are just as rich and the 50’s inspired wardrobe is still to die for. Lee Pace as Ned once again proved his nomination in this year’s Emmys was well deserved. His awkward, childlike persona plays brilliantly against Chi McBride’s world weary Emerson and Kristin Chenoweth’s flirty, materialistic but good hearted Olive who all too often steals the scene with lines like “And when I say cabbage patch, I mean your lady parts” perfectly delivered.

It’s at times like that all the anticipation pays off. Your favorite show is back and on top form and you find yourself falling for it all over again. I, for one, can’t wait ‘til next week.

‘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.