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…and this happens in Somerset.

Could the two events be related? I think we should be told.

(Apologies to Kelvin and the bloke he nicked the link off before I nicked it off him)

Last night Courtney and I took our first steps towards becoming twinkle-toed dancers for the inevitable season of weddings which loom on the calendar’s horizon (sometime around June). Swing Dance for Beginners happened at the Twelve Corners Presbyterian Church in Rochester, and by God it’s a sprawling edifice. I have decided all dance classes are essentially alike, but with regional variations. American can claim rights to two in particular: the first is the ever-present name tag, although thankfully they weren’t pre-printed with “Hello, my name is.” The second is that the instructors wear the kind of obvious microphone headsets reminiscent of late eighties Madonna or twenty-first century call centre workers.

They also had one of those cool CD decks beloved of club DJs which allow you to slow down the speed of the recording. If I hadn’t been concentrating so hard on my feet I’d have been eyeing it enviously. And one, two, dou-ble-step, dou-ble-step.

They patiently took us through the basic step structure and I lost my way only once, although this did entail hopping around like Steve Martin in the Jerk with his honky rhythm deficiency, trying to get back on the beat. Still, no-one laughed. When I recovered I looked up and everyone else was doing the Steve Martin dance too. Several partners and a pair of moist armpits later (mostly from the stress of being watched by the more advanced class who had gathered at the back of the room) we were sent off into the night to argue with our partners about which of the other people we’d danced with we fancied. I got three hotties, Courtney just got old men.

Our Swing-themed night was rounded off with Belleville Rendez-Vous (or the Triplets of Belleville) at the Little. It’s an inventive animation with an eye for the absurd, stereotypical and grotesque. It takes a range of potent cultural myths and throws them into the blender. Its only flaw it that it outsmarts itself at the climax by dissolving into a hackneyed chase that does not suit the genre.

Many people who have seen it have commented “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s nothing like Disney!” This is true, but whoever said all animation had to be like Disney? There’s a long tradition (more so, I think, in Europe) of animation and absurdism. Animated precedents for Belleville Rendez-Vous include the surrealist animation of Jan Svankmajer, Gosciny and Uderzo’s Asterix and – possibly – the Brothers Quay. It also draws on the live-action exploits of Jacques Tati (did anyone spot the M. Houlot poster in the Triplets’ apartment?) and adopts and absurdist tone throughout.

The music, like the visuals, are a heady hodge-podge, blending swing, blues, hot club (there’s a brief appearance by an animated Django Reinhardt, whose hands are those of Mickey Mouse – a fantastic joke if you know anything about the reduced finger count of both characters), musique concrete and club music. I think it won an Oscar for best song, and quite right too.

I’m calling it Belleville Rendez-Vous because of the three official titles, that’s the one that suits it best. The triplets are accomplices, not the main characters. I don’t think that counts as a spoiler.

Courtney and I – in what must count as a shocking display of un-Americanism – went to see Bertolucci’s The Dreamers last night. An intelligent and provocative film, the responses it squeezed out of the audience of twenty or so offered what I think is an insight into the collective consciousness of the nation.

Without spoiling the film for anyone who intends to watch it (and by all means do) it deals with the political scene in Paris in 1968, cinema, sex, and incestuous relationships through the eyes of three students. During one beautifully edgy disrobing I caught a nervous cough firing out from behind me. It was a mellow, deep, throaty cough; the kind of cough your Dad coughs. You’d expect the owner of this cough to have seen a thing or two. One would presume (he was there with a woman of similar age) he’d been married for many years and is no stranger to the sight of naked female flesh. He had also sought out an art house cinema and an NC-17 rated film. Why, then, was he unnerved by a little post-pubescent petting?

The Dreamers is not a comedy, but it has its comic moments. Courtney and I were the only ones laughing. Did people just not get it, or didn’t they find it funny? No-one walked out in disgust, but the cinema drained pretty quickly as soon as the credits rolled. All of which leaves me wondering: is sex a taboo outside Los Angeles and New York?

In comparison, when Pasolini’s Salo was re-released in the UK a couple of years ago I saw it in a packed cinema. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom is far more graphic and very disturbing. It features killing, sexual humiliation, shit eating and torture. Certainly many sat in shocked silence through much of the film, but there was no awkward coughing. The audience stayed riveted until almost the final credit had rolled, and while they didn’t leave the cinema in a jovial mood, they were talking animatedly. Clumps of them hung around in the cafe to dicuss it some more. There were many criticisms of the film, but no-one was unable to deal with what they’d just seen. There is a stark comparison between that audience of two years ago and the audience of last night.

I am waiting to be proved wrong, but right now I get the impression that the mainstream American attitude to depictions and discussions of sexual matters is analagous to that of a five year-old who blushes and covers his eyes when the couple in the old movie he’s watching start to smooch.

Britons ‘spend more on alcohol than fruit and veg’ claims the Money section of the Guardian. What terrible news! We must be a nation of dispomaniacs!

1kg carrots = 60p, 1kg onions = 67p, 1 cucumber = 58p, total = 185p

1pt draught lager = 228p

(All average prices from some office in Jersey)

If we were to spend more on fruit and veg than we do alcohol I estimate we’d need to eat an average of roughly three kilos of vegetable matter for every pint we drink.

I finally watched The King of Comedy by Martin Scorsese last night. At the beginning of the 80’s he directed two black comedies: this and After Hours. Judging by the comments on the Internet Movie Database they’re pretty widely misunderstood and underappreciated. Too many people fixate on Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino and Taxi Driver. They expect every Scorsese movie to be about tough men doing tough things. It’s true that a lot of Scorsese’s movies are about male-dominated social structures: the Mafia (obviously), Jazz bands, sports and organised religion (Catholicism and Buddhism), but people who watch Scorsese films in lieu of getting a testosterone injection are missing out.

I imagine audiences at the time did not warm to Scorsese’s comedies, and this explains why he hasn’t made any since 1985. The blame should rest not only with the Scorsese=macho crew, but also with those who eschew delicate, sad and sometimes surreal and disturbing comedy for Adam Sandler pratfalls. I won’t be taking Courtney to the cinema for 50 First Dates on Valentine’s day, for purely selfish (and probably elitist) reasons.

Up til now this immigration business has been pretty daunting, but this is surely one deterrent too far. I went to get my Social Security number from the City Hall the other day. There are some windows and a waiting room which are about as threatening as a bank. There’s a ticket dispenser which is about as threatening as a normal deli-counter. But all this is a cunning ruse to calm your suspicions, for when you take your ticket – that’s when they catch you unawares!

David Kay, the recently resigned head of the US weapons inspections team in Iraq went in front of a Senate hearing yesterday.

Mr Kay blamed a lack of human agents inside Iraq and inadequate intelligence that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons stockpiles. Source: The Guardian.

Can we take this to mean that the UN should have been allowed to finish their inspections before any action was taken? That’s the way I’m reading into it.

[cough] Oil! [cough]

Ah, that would be the Hutton report.

Further proof that American comedy is in a bit of a hole right now. The last “all new” episode of Friends I saw was five minutes of new jokes and a long trawl through the archives. Will & Grace is poor and there are plenty more where that came from. The only worthwhile US comedy I’ve seen is Curb Your Enthusiasm, which in Bush’s America pushes the envelope too far to be honoured with gongs. Thing is, it’s the same style of comedy as The Office, but The Office is “ethnic” (yes, I’m finally part of an ethnic minority), and so over here it’s worthy as well as funny.

I’m not allowed to get a job right now. So with all this wonderful free time I’ve been trying to do something worthwhile. A bunch of people I know quite fancy having their own blog, but don’t think they’ve got enough to write about. Well, having thought for a while, I’ve made a group blog, and people seem to be using it. Lovely. It’s called One Thing I Learned Today and it might be worth a look.

It has snowed here every day this month. You don’t so much walk down the street as walk down a chasm of snow. There’s enough snow in our back yard to build an igloo. I might well do so.

OK, I promised. I’ll deliver.

A great director once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) “All I’ve ever done is re-make the same film over and over.” I can’t remember who the director was, and I can’t look it up because all my film books are back in England. But trust me on this one. He was a director, and he said something similar to the words above.

This stunningly badly-remembered passage can be very appropriately applied to the career arc of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu. His latest film glides into the showroom very much like a mk. II Amores Perros. It’s more refined, shorter, more disciplined, lingers longer and strikes deeper than his much-lauded debut feature.

21 Grams is set in the US. (As an aside, I hope that this doesn’t mean that Hollywood has already devoured the main practitioners behind the Mexican new wave and that Innaritu will follow a similar path to his compatriot Alfonso Cauron, who has so far managed to dodge back and forth between Hollywood and his indigenous cinema with Great Expectations, Y Tu Mama Tambien and the imminent third installment of the Harry Potter series.) It employs a similar disjointed narrative technique to Amores Perros as we skip backwards and forwards through time catching glimpses of the principal three characters’ stories. Early on we see blood, we see the angry and wounded faces of the leads, played by Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and we wonder what twists of fate could conspire to bring them here. 21 Grams is essentially a puzzle, a puzzle with a strong symmetry and, thankfully, a puzzle that solves itself before our eyes.

Late in the film, Benicio Del Toro’s character, Jack Jordan, is drunkenly staring at a cheap print of a tiger on the wall of his flyblown motel room. It is a brief moment which conjures up the lines:

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

21 Grams is essentially a fatalistic film. The characters are locked into this string of events, and this means that its gaze is dispassionate. Addiction, extreme religion, terminal illness, emotional breakdowns are all observed with the same cool eye. No judgments are cast because the fates of all the films protagonists are set. Is it right that Naomi Watts’ character uses cocaine to escape her pain? Is it right if Benicio Del Toro’s character’s parenting will bring up another man who makes the same mistakes? Is it right that Sean Penn’s character leaves his wife? In 21 Grams there is no right and wrong, only the fearful symmetry of fate.

These people have too much time on their hands. Scroll down to the “Weird Scoreboards” part of the article for walruses and turbots.

Courtney called in sick today so we can go sledging, or sledding, or tobogganing, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe we’ll build a snowman too.

You are Jarvis Cocker from Pulp.
“I think people who think they’re sexy have
got problems.”

What gloomy rock musician are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I am Jarvis from Pulp. It must be all that time I’ve spent with my cheeks exposed.

Lovely little article on the Guardian website. More reasons to despise mainstream TV and tabloid journalism, if you ever needed any.

Two weeks in and already we’re settling into familiar routines. I’ve noticed that Courtney and I only really nag each other about two things (one each), apart from TV. I complain about her eating habits; without me around to cook for her she’d eat nothing but toast and takeaway. On the other hand she is dumbfounded by the way I happily wash my face with hand soap, or whatever’s close to the basin, or just cold water. She tells me that there’s a programme on TV in which gay men do lifestyle make-overs to straight men. One of the first things the gay blokes do (before they redecorate the straight bloke’s house and throw out his clothes) is run into the bathroom and shriek about the lack of facial scrub.

It strikes me that our nagging of each other might reveal the root of the difference between European and American schools of thought. I, being European, think that all problems can be solved with food and a sensible approach to eating. Courtney, being American, thinks that all problems can be solved with the correct soap and a good amount of scrubbing. Guts vs face; Insides vs Exteriors; Digest vs purge. Stop me when you’re bored, or if you think I’m spouting gibberish.

It’s -10 Fahrenheit outside again today. That’s 42 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing. When I finally convert these numbers into Celsius I’ll be horrified, I’m sure.

I just did. It’s -23 degrees Celsius. I knew it felt cold out there.

This snow thing is still a novelty. It stopped snowing in the early hours of the morning and now the light breeze is knocking powdery flurries from the branches of the trees. It’s distractingly pretty, and if it weren’t below freezing outside I’d be wandering around gawping at it all.

Courtney and I saw the excellent 21 Grams at the Little last night. I’ll post some thoughts about it later. I also picked up a job application form. I wonder if they’d be willing to train me up as a projectionist? Ever since seeing Tyler Duerden’s approach to projecting film in Fight Club I’ve quite fancied having a go myself.

I was glad to read today that Norwich fans are still the bunch of good eggs I always knew they were. Hopefully I shouldn’t even need to cross my fingers for tomorrow’s clash against 20th place Bradford.

Other news? There’s a good few inches of snow on the ground, which is still a novelty for me.

Main differences between US and UK supermarkets (that I’ve noticed so far):

1) They sell beer, but not wine or spirits. In some states (Massachusetts) they don’t sell any booze at all.
2) There is a huge aisle in the freezer section specialising in ice cream, frozen yoghurt, etc. but the only frozen meat available is leftover turkeys from Thanksgiving.
3) Single cream and double cream are “Cream” and “Heavy Cream” respectively and are sold in handy measures of either half a pint or four pints.
4) Regular battery chicken eggs are bleached white, just like in Israel.
5) The only bacon on offer is streaky bacon. It’s almost impossible to get hold of back bacon and to do so you have to ask for “Canadian Bacon.”

Bizarrely, in the European cheese fridge I found a combination of Stilton and Double Gloucester (it’s done in layers) called “Stilchester”. Even more bizarrely, it’s made in England.

As a Brit you also have to contend with the fact that certain foods reached America through different routes and will not necessarily have the same names. For example, what I call coriander was brought to the Americas by the Spanish and so everyone here calls it cilantro. Still, a keen eye, a good nose and the readiness to ask silly questions will just about see you through.

Apoologies to everyone for lack of email. I’ve written a whole bunch, but I’m having trouble getting my email program to send mail, even though it recieves perfectly. Go figure.

…that’s me!

It looks like someone else has passed through immigration at JFK recently. The United States’ relations with the rest of the world get stranger and stranger.

I hope this is just selective reporting of a minor incident. Norwich isn’t exactly the most cosmopolitan of cities, but the fans did enthusiastically embrace the “Kick Racism Out of Football” campaign, so I’m a bit surprised that this should happen. Something definitely does need to be done about the “We Shoot Burglars” chant, though. I’ve heard it far too often (about twice in both matches I’ve been to this year) and it’s not the kind of thing a good family club’s supporters should chant.

It’s all to do with psychotic Norfolk farmer, Tony Martin. Here’s the Mirror’s tabloid take on him and here’s the Grauniad’s.

Clearly the man’s a national hero, just like the Krays, Nicholas van Hoogstraten and Jeffrey Archer.

I’ve got a few days (weeks?) of idleness before my Social Security number comes through and I get a job. I’m planning to use them well. I chomped through most of the Filth today, which I have on loan from Kelvin. I read the first few last year and was very impressed (mostly because it has quite a high tits and arse quotient if I’m being truthful) and I’m as impressed and even more confused having read to the end. Grant Morrison has lots to say about abjection and society’s approach to transgressive behaviour and he says it as luridly as possible. Greg Feely is a confirmed bachelor with a comb-over, a ginger cat and a sizeable collection of porn under the mattress. One day he is visited by weird looking people who tell him he’s not Greg Feely at all, but a bizarrely toupeed inter-dimensional binman, Ned Slade, agent of an organisation called the Hand. It is his job to clean up the messier, seedier and downright perverted side of human life. Through the twelve issues he battles against corrupted cell-sized organisms that force humans into perverted sex acts, giant flying sperm which fertilise women to death and a male US president with enormous breast implants and astonishing lapdancing skills. And at the end it seems Greg’s simply been rolling around on his kitchen floor all the time.

There’s some business involving agents of the Hand cleaning up comic books. They enter the two-dimensional space of the books, alter the course of the plots and then re-write the “Continuity Pages” so it seems nothing’s amiss. At times it feels like the same has been done to the Filth. There are little elisions in the books. Tiny chunks go unexplained and at the end you feel like there was something at the edge of your vision all the way through; always there and never properly seen. Kelvin’s missing an issue, so that might explain some of it, but the missing bits really are part of Morrison’s style and scheme. I wonder if the Filth has its own continuity pages sitting somewhere waiting for release?

By hook or by crook I will get to the trashy soiled bottom of this one or my name’s not Ted Mudd and I’m not wearing a lime green toupee over my unwashed comb-over.

Top of the UK Pop Charts: Mad World (from the Donnie Darko soundtrack)

Top of the First Division: Norwich City FC

This bodes well for the new year.

Yesterday I went to Grosvenor Square in London. There’s a beautiful building there: Georgian neo-classical with lots of red brick and white stone. It’s called the Canadian embassy. I didn’t get to see inside it. I had to go to the ugly 60’s building at the other end of the square which is the US embassy.

While I was there a very nice man gave me some advice. He said “When you get a job in America you should wear an undershirt underneath your dress shirt.” Apparently it’s customary to do so and people look at you funny if you don’t. He also put something in my passport called a visa.

I’m leaving this country in twenty-five days. Is America ready to recieve me? Is England ready to lose me? I don’t know, but I’m going anyway.

Apparently the keyword that has brought the most visitors to my site is "toddler&quot. In these Michael Jackson obsessed times, I have to consider the sexual aspect of these searches, and frankly the idea of someone whacking one out over a twenty-two year old picture of me is hilarious.

Today I got the wrong bus back from work, probably something to do with my ridiculously high blood sugar levels. This bus delivered to me three more ill-advised Christmas houses, including the mother of them all. It has lights – still, flashing and animated. It has a Father Christmas on the roof. It has a Christmas tree. It has three enormous inflatables lit with spotlights. I expect on Christmas Day Donner and Blitzen will be flying in the sky above with laser beams on their antlers. Everyone on the bus looked at it as one might look as a UFO. It was astonishing.

Come to think of it, I think it might be legendary. Frog told me someone drove him to see a very similar house last year. Could they be one and the same?