Salaryman's new tat

I had to go to the INS offices today to get fingerprinted for my citizenship application. It was a pretty quick and efficient process, and the system that captures the digital print images (oooh, double meaning of digital!) is cool--it rates each image on a points system, with clearer images getting a 70+ score. The technician had to do mine a few times, but was very nice about it (yes! Nice INS officers!!). They also gave me a "Larn yersel' US history" book and CD, so I can practice for the exam (date TBD).

Riding the Green Line back to work in the early afternoon, I stood next to a guy in kakhi Dockers and blue dress shirt who was sporting a fresh tattoo--so fresh, it was still in its shrinkwrap. His right sleeve was rolled up, and his (rather hairy) forearm was shaved, and under the protective plastic was a very clear, sharp image (some kind of Japanese fighting-star motif). He was trying not to move his freshly painted arm too much, and as the train pulled into Arlington he was struggling to put his tie back on with one hand.

I thought that was pretty cool--he'd gone out at lunch, got a tattoo, and was now going back to the office to grind away for a few more hours, the aching flesh under his Van Heusen reminding him what a badass he was.

Llamas and poutine

So this weekend (at the risk of seeming like complete gadabouts) we were in Montreal, mostly to hang with my cousin and her husband, who had flown over from Wales for a vacation.

We flew in Wednesday night, and by the time we'd checked in to the hotel (following a scary moment as the booking, made online, didn't show up in the hotel's reservation system, and The Boy spent 15 minutes on hold while the Yahoo phone rep and the hotel receptionist yelled at each other), it was 11pm and we were starving.

So out onto the street for eats. Pretty much everything food-related was closed, with the exception of one place on St Catherine's with a red neon "Ouvert" sign. It turned out to be a very cool cafe/bar/club with cowskin seats, a red enamel ceiling, a Gorillaz-heavy soundtrack and a poutine-heavy menu.

The Boy had been foiled in his attempts to sample poutine on our last trip, so this time he went straight for the version avec merguez. Oh, and was it ever good. I mean, the whole concept of chips (french fries, that is) 'n' gravy has long been celebrated in England. So take that and add cheese curds? Perfect. Especially at midnight with a cold beer.

Walking back to the hotel, we realized there were a lot of ladies in very high heels. And obviously there were also a lot of people driving around lost in that area, because they kept stopping to ask the ladies for directions.

The next morning we met up with my cousin Sonia and her husband David at the Biodome, a multi-ecosystem zoo with open-plan exhibits that allow you to walk through rainforest, Laurentian forest and northern marine climate spaces. Coolest were the otters and the penguins. Could watch the 'guins for hours.


In the afternoon, we wandered around the Underground City and then headed to Old Montreal, though a persistent drizzle kept us from being too adventurous. After strolling Marche Bonsecours, we stopped for a drink in Place Jaques Cartier at a place where the cinq a sept was more of a quatre a huit and, misunderstanding the two-for-one beer deal, ended up with a table groaning with eight beers. Somehow, we struggled through them ...

That night, we wandered around Rue Saint-Denis looking for food, and ended up at Mochica, a really nice Peruvian place. We shared a selection of tilapia ceviche, squid in black olive sauce, potatoes with goat cheese sauce, and veal hearts grilled with chimichurri. And then between us we had steak, lamb in Pisco, goat stew and llama. The llama rocked. Oddly, we were pretty much the only people in the place, which was surprising for a Thursday night. Maybe weekends are busier.

The next day, in an attempt to walk off copious amounts of meat, we did a yomp up Mont-Royal, which is a nice gentle walk through wooded paths and makes us non-outdoorsy types feel like explorers (for us, "roughing it" is when you have to leave the hotel to find a Martini). And then my cousin and her husband headed off to spend a few days on Mont Tremblant before going to Toronto for the rest of their trip. It was really cool to see them, and made me realize I should stay in touch with family more than I do.

After they left, we wandered Rue Saint-Denis some more, and I bought a couple of shirts (it's hackneyed, but the fashions are much more interesting than here). Back to the hotel, passed out for a couple of hours, then into the hot tub with a bottle of Prosecco to unwind before heading out to dinner.

We went to Au Pied du Cochon, which we also visited on our last trip, and had almost exactly the same experience: the place was very busy, the service was lousy, but the food was fabulous. I started with a goat cheese and beet salad (creamy cheese working perfectly with the sweet/crunchy beets) and The Boy had a salad of greens and walnuts. Then he had the house boudin and I had a boudin tart. I love what they do with pig's blood. Thick slices of boudin, peppery and spicy, on a buttery pastry base ... Here's the website, with apologies; who told them this was user-friendly?

Our last morning, we took a final stroll down to Old Montreal via Chinatown and then headed out to the airport. A fun trip, in all, and probably our last jaunt until Christmas, what with work and conferences and the rest. A good way to end the summer.

In my defense, it did have rats on it

Last weekend we went to New York, to catch MOMA's Dada exhbit before it closed, to shop, to eat everything in sight. MOMA is one of my favorite museums (along with the Tate Modern, the Brit Mus and the Louvre, which has my most favorite sculpture in the world, a piece I like to think of as Man Getting Bit on the Ass by a Cat). As well as the Dada pieces, I loved Douglas Gordon's Play Dead; Real Time, a 21-minute worm's-eye-view of elephants moving in a stark white room.

The eating was fab, as always, though our unexpected four-hour delay at Logan (yeah, we decided to fly because it would be better than the five-hour drive. How smart are we??) meant we missed out on our tradition of arriving in the city and heading straight to lunch at Margon. We finally got to the hotel with 45 minutes to spare before our 7:30 reservation at Wallsé, and so just had time to force the lock on the suitcase (because someone who wasn't me lost the key), throw on clean clothes and take a cab down to the West Village.

The Boy had scallop ravioli in a saffron cream sauce, then a pork belly dish that was all delicious melt-in-the-mouth fat. I had a simple salad of really fresh greens, and then a rich, peppery-sweet Hungarian goulash. The wine list was almost all Austrian varietals, and the sommelier, for some reason, decided I probably spoke German. Luckily, I was able to fake it.

On Saturday night we went to Havana, Alma de Cuba, a busy, cosy place in the Village with a menu of traditional comfort-food dishes. The Boy went for the lechon, which probably could have used more salt but was pretty tasty. I had the rabo encendido, an oxtail stew that was almost the Caribbean cousin to the previous night's goulash, with a little less of a bite. The rice likewise needed salt (and for me to say that, it's gotta be serious!). Dessert was tres leches cake. I need to make that some day soon.

The one thing I don't yet have the hang of in New York is shopping. I know it's out there; I just haven't quite figured out where "my" stores are. And when I do poke around and find occasional items I love, they're completely out of my range.

Case in point: in some random boutique (populated by three employees and four customers), I found a beeeeyooootiful shirt. Soft, delicate jersey, with grey and black stripes--and a perfect circle of rats chasing their tails on the front. They were velvety-suede silhouettes. There was another rat at each cuff. I was in love. And then I looked at the price tag: $222. Sigh. The Lenny Kravitz-bewigged salesguy told me it was by a really great designer (of course she's great! She puts rats on a shirt!) but I just couldn't bring myself to pay more than I spent on my last two winter coats on something so frivolous.

Naturally, this became the source of that weekend's Nichtkaufenbedauern. "Maybe I should have got that shirt," I mused aloud as we wandered up to Union Square. "We'd spend that much on dinner, and that only lasts a few hours," I reasoned over breakfast the next morning. "It had rats on it," I sighed as our plane soared out of JFK.

The Boy rolled his eyes.

Binoche in a sack, Super-8, blood subtitles

Watched a lot of movies this week: Little Miss Sunshine (again); Sideways, V for Vendetta (oh, cute bald Natalie Portman!). The three that really stood out, though, were:

Caché, Michael Haneke's mystery about a French couple (Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche) who start to receive videotapes suggesting someone is spying on them. The title translates as "Hidden," and as the movie progresses it becomes clear that it's appropriate on many levels. It's not just a film about a middle-class couple's personal dramas, and the secrets people keep from each other, but also about France's immigrant population, here represented as either ignored and overlooked or eyed with suspicion and malice. On a side note, why do people in French movies look like ... like ... like people? Here Juliette Binoche is in shapeless linen dresses. Characters wear rumpled pants, have craggy faces and cigarette-graveled voices. But unlike in a Hollywood movie, where those things would be used to define the character ("the mom, she sounds like she smokes four packs a day, okay?"), here it's just a reflection of who the actor is. The reality is almost unreal, it's so unusual.

Torremolinos 73, a Spanish-language movie set during Franco's Spain (though the action seems largely unaffected by that fact). Here an encyclopedia salesman, struggling to make ends meet, is offered a choice by his boss: get involved in a new business venture making, um, scientific, educational films (starring your wife) to sell in Scandinavia, or lose your job. As it turns out, he has a knack for wielding a Super-8 camera and she quickly sheds her inhibitions (and various outfits) and soon they're so successful that he's given the chance to write and direct a real film. The plot, which also revolves around the couple's attempts to start a family, could have been melodramatic, overly sleazy, judgemental or plain silly, but it's none of the above. Rather, it's honest, quirky (ooh, I hate that word!), compelling. I saw it on HBO Latino, so no subtitles, but it must be on DVD by now.

Night Watch, apparently, was a huge box-office hit in Russia. And while the plot may seem hackneyed to me (ancient battle between good and evil is revived; the Apocalypse is near; vampires are involved), some of the visuals are creative and clever (the doll that sprouts spindly spider legs; the bird who changes into a woman; the backstory illustrated with a hand-drawn flip-book). Most innovative, though, are the subtitles. Not content to simply flash obediently at the bottom of the screen in yellow Arial, they fit themselves into the action. One of the best examples appears as a boy gets a nosebleed while swimming underwater. The subtitles, dark red, fade in ... and then wash away, dissolving like blood in water. At other times they move with the speaking character, disappearing behind objects and coming out the other side, or fading out slowly on a particularly important statement, allowing just a little longer for the viewer to grasp their significance.

Lest I give the impression of being a foreign-film geek, I should point out that I also saw the last half of Better Off Dead (though by this point it's already etched into the cerebral cortex) and Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (which actually has some beautifully crafted comic moments, and no, I wasn't watching it stoned).

A last Hummer rant

Because I know we all know, and I don't really need to go on and on and on ...

But really. What is the thinking behind this ad? A quick descrip: two guys in line at the grocery checkout. The guy buying veggies and tofu notices that the guy behind him has huge stacks of raw meat. So he runs out and buys a Hummer. Tagline: "Restore the balance."

Who, exactly, is this supposed to appeal to? Hypocritical vegetarians? Meat-eaters who fear they'll be mistaken for health nuts? People with high blood pressure and low self-esteem?

A little more TOTP

On Sunday night, for reasons best known to themselves, VH1 showed the final episode of Top of the Pops. It was as corny-cheezball as one would expect--and my God, Jimmy Saville is OLD, man!--but they had a few priceless musical moments. The one that knocked me out--and the one that reminded me why the show could be worth the many hours of crappy Dave Lee Travis intros--was Gnarls Barkley's live, somber-powerful take on "Crazy."

I'd hoped to link to VH1's schedule here so you could see when the show will replay. But I guess the network doesn't think it's useful or important for people to know what's coming up. Unlike, say, Sundance Channel, which has a detailed schedule with extremely well-written and insightful film descriptions. If I do say so myself.

The US does not welcome habitually drunk princesses

Yesterday I met with my lawyer again to file for naturalization. He read a list of questions that would come up during the interview, to which I had to be sure to give the correct answer. Examples:

Have you ever voted or registered to vote in the US? (Correct answer: No.)

Have you ever been a member of the Nazi party? (Correct answer: No. Of course, given that I'm in my 30s, I think they should be able to figure that one out.)

Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not arrested? (No. This seems like an odd question, but apparently there have been instances of people answering in the negative and then getting picked up by the cops later that day.)

Do you hold a title of nobility in any other country? (The assumption being that if you do, you probably have a higher sense of allegiance to your throne than to your adoptive, more-theocratic-than-monarchic land.)

Have you ever been a habitual drunkard? (It was probably a good thing to hear this question in advance, as I laughed so hard that I shot neat gin out of my nose.)

Are you willing to bear arms, if requested, to protect the United States?

(Wait ... what?)

Apparently that's part of the Oath of Allegiance you take at the naturalization ceremony, so you have to say yes. Exceptions can be made for Quakers and pacifists, but you have to prove you're one or the other. And, as my lawyer said, "You're female and over 26. they're not going to come after you."

Here's the form (PDF) in its entirety; the good questions start on page 6.

So then I signed some papers, gave him two passport photos and wrote a check for $1000 (the only difficult part of the whole meeting). He files the paperwork on Monday, and then I wait for the call for fingerprinting and the interview.

In the meantime, I need to practice being American. Let's see ... I need this, this and ... this.

Gettin' crazy with Love 40

The band took the stage looking like some kind of '70s Wimbledon nightmare and launched into the triumphant climax of Queen's "We Are the Champions" as the 300 pound lead singer, in crisp tennis whites and sweatband, practiced wild backhands with his racquet.

"We're Love 40," he said. "Gnarls Barkley couldn't make it tonight, but if you don't mind, we'd like to cover a few of their songs."

And then they launched headfirst into "Go Go Gadget Gospel" with an enthusiam and energy that didn't let up for the whole show. Cee-lo's voice was by turns raw, sweet, angry, joyful, and a John McEnroe-frightwigged Danger Mouse (looking to be quite happy in the back, surrounded by equipment) spent time noodling on keyboards and signalling instructions to the sound guy.

I don't think I'd ever seen a string section (cello and a handful of violins) dressed for tennis--certainly the sight of them dropping their instruments to do the stiff-arm Mummy dance for "Boogie Monster" was a first. All the musicians were crankin' blissful.

The band bounced through all the tracks on "St. Elsewhere," plus a couple of covers: The Doors' "Who Scared You" and The Greenhornes' "There Is an End."

Right before "Crazy," Cee-lo asked the crowd, "Okay, which song haven't we done yet? There's only one other song on the muthafuckin' album, right?"

Ame-ruh-kuuuhhhh ...

Yesterday I met with my immigration lawyer and started the filing process for naturalization. I got a form to fill out, plus a list of the 100 questions I'm most likely to be asked during the interview.

The questions are pretty easy on the whole: Who was the first president, how many stripes on the flag, what were the first 13 colonies, etc etc. My lawyer says it's good to study anyway; the people who do poorly on the interview are those at the extreme ends of the spectrum (the quasi-literate who have trouble understanding the questions, and the Ph.D. holders who assume they know this stuff because they read the NYT every day). I'm neither one or t'other, but I haven't failed a test in my life and I don't intend to start now.

Of course, because I'm a smart-arse, my gut instinct is not to give the pat answer, but to give the accurate answer:

Q: Who is the vice-president?
A: A Dick

Q: Who is the president?
A: Concidentally, also a dick.

Q: Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
A: Rich white guys.

And then I looked at an older citizenship prep book I picked up at Dollar-a-Pound a while ago, which had questions like, "What is the 20th Amendment?" and "Who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance?" (I'm not going to tell you, because if you're a citizen, you already know the answers. Right??)

But becoming a citizen isn't just about knowing a bunch of stuffy historial and political facts. It's about gaining a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. It's about uniting with everything this great country stands for. And nothing, I think, sums up the total awesomeness of what that means better than Dennis Madalone's America, We Stand As One. If you're not in tears by the end of this video, you have no soul.

Hummer love

A recent discovery, thanks to the lovely people who compile Salon's Video Dog section: IHumpedYourHummer.com. Though I'm sure these people are unrepentant hippies who deserve to have their hacky-sacks stomped on, I have to admire their stand against what they call "a gross display of power and unrighteous dominion."

I just hope their technique is a little more refined when applied to non-automotive amorous partners ...

Goodbye, Top of the Pops

Tomorrow is the last-ever episode of TOTP, a show indelibly tattooed into the psyche of my generation. It was a once-a-week summary of what was happening in the Top 40, and back in the days before MTV, it was pretty much the only place on British TV to see music videos and band performances.

I still remember the first time Culture Club was on, singing "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"--Boy George looking like nothing I (or, as I discovered the next day, none of my classmates, among whom there was a heated argument about his gender) had ever seen before. I watched every one of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's multiple appearances for "Two Tribes"--by their fifth time on the show, they'd all switched instruments (doubtless bored by the routine of it all).

I remember when the theme tune changed from "Whole Lotta Love" to "Yellow Pearl" to some synth-pop thing written by Paul Hardcastle; I remember when Pan's People (the dance troupe who would interpret, sometime hilariously literally, the lyrics of songs when a band couldn't appear in the studio) morphed into Legs & Co.

I remember watching the video for "Ashes to Ashes" and wondering if that was really Bowie's mum he was talking to on the beach; I remember how Adam Ant's crossing-the-wrists dance from the "Prince Charming" video became a staple at school discos; I remember feeling both envy and schadenfreude for the girls who made it to the front of the stage but still danced badly in Marks and Spencers sweaters.

Of course, I haven't seen the show in 13-some years, so I haven't observed its slow decline from mandatory injection of pop culture to sad, marginalized dinosaur. And, having found this tribute to its heyday, I can't help suspecting I spent most of my teen years with a distinct lack of taste.

Still. I know I wasn't the only one glued to the TV on a Thursday night.

Here are more memories, from some of the musicians who appeared on the show over the years.

La puta Migra

So this is the story (okay, rant) I was going to write earlier, before Tony Bourdain made me realize the essential pettiness of my problems:

This morning I had my annual appointment at the INS (sorry, it's now the USCIS) to update my I-551, which is the stamp in my passport that proves I'm within status. In theory, this should no longer be necessary because I already have a green card. The problem is, I've never actually seen it.

In 2003, I went to get the I-551 stamp and learned that my green card had been approved a whole year earlier. When I said it hadn't arrived, I was told to fill out an I-90 application for a replacement (which included fingerprinting, which cost $70), and to watch the mailbox.

In 2004, I was told the application to replace the lost card hadn't been input into the system yet, "But it's probably around here somewhere."

In 2005, I was told the original card had never been created in the first place. And the application for a replacement still wasn't in the system.

Today, I 'splained the whole charade to yet another officer, who handed me a piece of paper. "What you need to do," he said, "is go over to the forms desk. Ask for an I-90 form, fill it out and mail it to--"

"But I did that already," I said. "I did that three years ago."

"Well, it's not in the system."

I asked whether it would be quicker to file for citizenship. "Yeah," he said, "at this point it probably would."

So next Friday I meet with my immigration lawyer, who says that the turnaround time from filing to inteview is currently four months. I could be a citizen by the end of the year--without ever seeing my green card.

Anthony Bourdain's view from Beirut

I was going to write a dumb anecdote about this morning's visit to the INS, but then I read Anthony Bourdain's essay in Salon. He went to Beirut with a camera crew to film an episode of No Reservations, his Travel Channel show about finding great food in unexpected places. Except that on Day One, bombs started falling.

(You might have to watch an ad to read his article, but please be patient. It's worth it.)

Car ad as US-involvement-in-foreign-affairs motif

Last night I saw an ad for the Hummer H3 that summed up perfectly, in perhaps 30 seconds, why the rest of the world has a problem with the US.

A mom is at a playground with her son. They're waiting for his turn to go on the slide, when suddenly another mom pushes her kid ahead of them. When mom #1 politely points out that her son was next, she's told, "Well, now we're next."

Cut to mom and son striding into a Hummer dealership. Cut to son being strapped into his seatbelt (let's be safe, people!). Cut to mom sailing her new H3 armored tank out of the lot, a smile on her face. No-one's gonna mess with her now.

I don't like Hummers on principle. But some of their other ads are creative, funny, even breathtaking. (Edit, Nov 06: I did have links to the ads here, but as YouTube has now gone all corporate and fearful of lawsuits, the videos are no longer available. Sorry.)

This is the first ad I've seen that appeals directly to the soccer-mom demographic, pushing the "protect your kids like a mother wolverine" ethos: if you're not driving your offspring around in a Hummer, they'll spend the rest of their lives getting sand kicked in their faces. And what kind of parent would you be then?

And isn't this pretty much how the US approaches international relations: mess with us and we'll spend a lot of money and come right back atcha with even bigger toys? Bring it on.

Thank goodness for satire.

The success of MySpace

There's an excellent Spencer Reiss article in the July 06 Wired about News Corp's aquisition of this platform. It's amazing that some 280k people are still signing up every day.

Particularly of note is that the advertising angle still hasn't been figured out; if each of the millions of user-created pages has a different interest set, and if much of the content of those pages is an alphabet soup of text-message semaphore and emoticons, how do you determine what products are likely to excite your target audience?

As Reiss points out, "Thats why a top-priced Google ad say, one that appears with search results for the word refinance is valued in dollars per click, while a MySpace ad clocks in around a hundredth of a cent per view."

From tiny acorns, or something

Okay, I'm behind the times. It took me this long to get here because I just realized that the blog on my MySpace page only holds a finite number of entries. And I've only had the MySpace blog for a couple of months. Hell, I only got a cellphone two weeks ago!

So the first few entries are pasted from MySpace, to give them a more permanent home. (Not that I suspect MySpace, currently the number one most-viewed site on the Internets, is going anywhere soon ...).