2010 June | Periscope Depth

From the Blog

Jun

london part four

Posted by Perich at 7:23 am

(These posts are arranged by impressions, not chronologically. Viewer discretion is advised)

Our hotel was full of quaint Europeanisms. You had to slot the keycard in a box near the door for the lights to work. The shower had two dials that I had to wake Misch up, then eventually call down to Reception, to interpret: one for water pressure, one for temperature. And of course the outlets had the wrong number of holes. But if you just wanted a cheap place to sleep and stow your things while you went out exploring the city, it was perfect. Best Western Victoria Palace: recommended.
We took a tour bus around London on the first day, to orient ourselves in the city and to spot things to revisit later. Our first tour guide was the wittiest. He told a joke that ended up rather unflattering toward Camilla Parker-Bowles, but it’s one of those great modular jokes that you can insert any names into^*. Our second tour guide looked like a Saturday Night Live parody of herself: blonde and perky, but with eyes at perpetual saucer-width.
Our bus tour included a free walking tour of London later that evening. This was notionally a “ghost tour,” but ended up being a tour of our guide’s favorite pubs and noteworthy monuments near Trafalgar Square. We did find Pepys’ house, so I guess that’s historical.
We had a bigger Thursday planned, but lucked into some cheap groundling tickets at Shakespeare’s Globe for an afternoon matinee of Henry IV, Part 1. It was as good as you’d expect a production of H4P1 by Shakespearean actors in a London reproduction of Shakespeare’s most famous theater to be. Falstaff was hilarious, Prince Hal was brilliant and even the rival Prince Harry, or “Hotspur,” had a few comedic moments.
Museums visited: the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Modern and the Imperial War Museum. The Tate Modern was my favorite, because you could take pictures in there and it wasn’t full of pictures of Jesus and the saints. The Imperial War Museum was also good: it had the tank Monty had commanded from in North Africa, a reproduction of “Little Boy,” and so much WW2 propaganda.
Misch and I also saw The Lion King on Friday at the Lyceum, in seats about seven rows back from the stage. It was pretty incredible. The best setpieces were the ones with dozens of puppets and banners onstage: chaotic pictures of movement and sound. I loved Scar the most: in addition to having all the best lines, he had the most complex mask. I can’t describe it with proper justice, but it suited his physicality perfectly. See it if you can.
Watching the U.S. vs Ghana game in the Shakespeare Pub (near Victoria Station) was lots of fun. When you watch a game in London, you increase the odds that you’ll run into some actual Ghanans. The bar was evenly split between U.S. supporters and Ghana supporters (or at least people who wanted the U.S. to lose). There was good-natured rivalry: groaning as the U.S. failed to capitalize, cheering when Donovan scored off a penalty kick, scowling when Gyan sank an overtime goal. “That was a good shot,” I told the African lady watching the game next to us, when Ghana went up in overtime. “Respect.”

Still have a few items left.

Shakespeare's Globe.

__________
* [CELEB #1] is driving home when he accidentally runs over [CELEB #2]‘s dog. He gets out of the car, frantic, when suddenly a genie appears. “I can grant you one wish,” the genie says. “Please, bring this dog back to life!” [CELEB #1] pleads. “I’m sorry,” the genie says, “but I have no power over death. Ask me another wish.” “All right,” [CELEB #1] says, “can you make [CELEB #3] [skinnier / smarter / more attractive / soberer / quieter]?” The genie says, “Well, let’s have another look at that dog.”

Jun

london part three

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

(These posts are arranged by impressions, not chronologically. Viewer discretion is advised)

Does London have more attractive people because it’s a denser city? Because it’s a more desirable city to live? Or is this the same principle that’s at work in all cold reads – I remember the hits and discount the failures? The eye does tend to gloss over ugly people – except the spectacularly ugly – and recall attractive ones with greater ease. Anyhow, more gorgeous women than I’d seen in Boston in a month, I saw in London in a day. Leggy blondes in playsuits; wide-eyed Pakistani in business wear; redheads dusted with freckles and curls. I’m off the market, so this is a tip for the single fellows: London. Summer. Bring a puppy and/or a guitar.
And the guys all wore amazing shirts. Such nice shirts! Sharp collars, pinstripes, cuffs just so. None of the baggy business-casual stuff America tries to get away with. “Where do these guys buy their shirts?” I asked Misch several times. “Look, you see that guy over there?” I indicated a tanned fellow with hair past his ears, the top two buttons of his fitted shirt open. Misch bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll crack him in the jaw and steal his shirt,” I went on. “Then I’ll run off while you attend his wounds. We both win.”
I failed at ordering breakfasts several times. On Thursday I had a traditional English breakfast at the Shakespeare Pub, right next to Victoria Station. I ordered tea. The waitress asked if I wanted it regular. I said yes. She brought me coffee.

On Friday I went to the Cafe Rouge (a chain of faux French bistros) in Victoria Place and saw on the menu pain perdu, or French toast with honey, chocolate and strawberries. So I ordered French toast. Five minutes later the waiter brought me two slices of toast, jam and butter on the side. Ooh, neat, a little appetizer. I ate the toast and waited. Fifteen minutes later, I flagged the waiter down and asked when my French toast was arriving. He said that he’d already brought it. I opened the menu and pointed at it, indicating the entree item with honey, chocolate, strawberries, etc. He said he could make it for me. In a fit of pique – the second time I lost my temper that trip, and it’s a rare quarter where I lose my temper twice – I told him he could bring the check instead. I choked down a sausage roll in a train station kiosk to assuage my hunger.
I set myself a quest to find some proper English pubs instead of the shiny tourist stops that flanked every Tube station. The key to finding a proper English pub is to start at a major destination, like Hyde Park or Victoria or Oxford Circus or Covent Garden. Then walk two blocks away from the flow of traffic. Walk into back alleys. Get yourself lost. Make abrupt turns. Before five minutes, you’ll have found a hole in the wall pub that’s older than the city you were born in. They will serve fish and chips, or a good ploughman’s lunch, and will have local ales on tap for a pittance. THIS ALWAYS WORKS. There is no part of London that will not have a pub in it. Excellent pubs I found this way include the Union Jack (Southwark, London SE1) and Kings Arms (Mayfair, London W1J 7QA).
At the Kings Arms, I had a ham sandwich with sharp cheddar and a local IPA. “You want that sandwich on moldy gray bread or a baguette?” the publican asked – the sort of bluff chap you expect behind the counter. I stood while eating, as the bar was filling for the Brazil/Portugal game. As I did, a salty older man stepped up next to me and flagged the barman down. “I’ll have a pint of Doom,” he said. I wondered which Tim Powers novel I’d stepped into until I saw the tap of Sharp’s Brewery Doom Bar next to him. So after lunch, I sat around and had a pint of Doom as well. Now I fear not the sting of death.
Misch discovered a pub the size of my studio apartment in Covent Garden called CellarDoor. You get to it by descending what looks like a subway entrance. They had a pair of saucy lounge singers when we found them, covering British sing-a-long favorites. A bachelorette party in ill-conceived dresses, heels and tiaras tottered around, while a couple of lads out for a birthday snorted lines off a drink platter. The entire bar sang “Wonderwall.” We would have gone back for Saturday high tea – featuring champagne and roulette – but the door was padlocked from the outside.
Misch would regularly stare at pub menus for ten to fifteen minutes. I don’t know whether this was from choice paralysis or hunger fatigue, but it usually ended with her ordering something hilarious. On Wednesday night, with only two minutes before the kitchen closed at St. George’s (Pimlico, London SW1V 1QD), she ordered the potted beef. Five minutes later, a lump of cold, boiled beef with some bread squares arrived. We stared at it in confusion. Then she ate it. “It’s all right,” she said.

Tomorrow: tourist stuff.

The Kings Arms, Mayfair.

Jun

london part two

Posted by Perich at 9:15 am

(These posts are arranged by impressions, not chronologically. Viewer discretion is advised)

Virgin Atlantic babies its travelers with amenities. Everyone gets the seat-back screen with a catalog of movies, TV episodes, music and knock-off video games. Everyone gets the plastic bag with the eye mask and the footie socks. Everyone gets blankets and pillows. But you still have to pay extra to sit in the exit row^*. Which is why Virgin changed our seats from their original row to the exit row when we checked in, only to change them back by the time we reached the gate. Virgin must have found a sucker, I guess.
None of these amenities address the fact that I’m a 77-inch man trying to curl up into a space that’s no longer than 60 inches in any one direction. If you’re on a red-eye flight to London, you have to sleep on the plane or else you’ll lose the best part of the first day. But I can’t recline any farther from the seat in front of me, since it can recline back as well. I can’t curl into the fetal position: my feet slide off the seat. I can’t quite lean forward, since the seat in front of me has reclined to where I can’t duck my head under it. I can’t lean against the bulkhead; there’s an armrest in my way. It is the “little-ease” of Camus’s La Chute or Iraq interrogators. I squirm and contort until my brain shuts down from fatigue. I wake up with at least two limbs numb.
“Welcome to Heathrow Airport. The local time is 7:45 AM. You have a thousand-yard walk from the terminal to your next stop. We will keep an eye on your baggage at all times. Our national language is English with a slight Indian accent and our national font is Helvetica. Please allow sixty to one-hundred twenty minutes for immigration inspection, depending on the quantity and surliness of customs inspectors. On behalf of the ~~Labour~~ ~~Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition~~ ~~Conservative~~ ~~eh, sod it~~ British Government, welcome to London.”
I love the London Underground. I would compare it to Boston’s subway, the T, but Boston would lose in every respect save price. This doesn’t surprise me. The Tube serves a dense urban population of seven million; the T serves a suburban population of four million at less than a tenth the density. I would wager the Tube also draws a greater share of tax revenue than the (notionally) private corporation which runs the T. The Tube has to be good, or London would die. Anyway, you can’t knock the results: clean, fast, frequent trains that take you anywhere in the heart of the city. Several stations employed people whose job it was just to stand on the platforms and announce the train service every two minutes. Men in smart uniforms broadcast that there’s “a good service” on the Jubilee line today, the way someone might say there’s “a good madeira” that the sommelier just opened. Compare this to the MBTA, for which mumbling “portah, changeheahforcommutahrail, thisabraintreetrain, braintreetrain” is often too much effort.
The flight back to Boston (SPOILER ALERT: I returned) was comically bad. First, by checking in at separate kiosks (just swipe your passport, guv’nah!), Misch and I lost our adjacent seats. My boarding pass wouldn’t print out, leading us to talk to three separate check-in agents. “You must have checked in online,” one of them guessed (incorrectly), scrawling something on my pass. This scrawl must have meant SEARCH THOROUGHLY, as I was randomly selected for a pat-down when we reached the gate. We boarded only after standing in an unventilated annex for twenty minutes, separated from the gate waiting area by secure glass doors. These doors, propped to ventilate some air, would give off piercing sirens and swing closed if left open for more than five minutes.
But the flight itself was fine.
Tomorrow: British food and people.

__________
* Charging people extra for the privilege of being responsible to help open the exit door in an emergency landing strikes me as at least bad business ethics and at worst a terrible incentive structure. And yes, I know why the exit row is so desirable – as a man who’s more leg than torso, I know – but that’s a side effect of its necessary function. I want the people sitting in the exit row to be brawny altruists who pay attention to every pre-flight safety lecture, not gangly travelers with more money than sense.

Jun

london part one

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

london

By the time you read this I’ll have been in London for about six hours. I have no idea what my actual London experience will have been by this point. I don’t plan on updating this blog with actual London anecdotes until Tuesday at the earliest. But I can talk about all my prep!

The last time I was in London was with a school trip over Easter break. We flew out of ~~Reagan~~ National Airport on the day I turned 18; I bought a pack of cigarettes for an underage classmate in the airport lounge^*. We flew to Ireland first, touring the Ring of Kerry, then passed through Wales on our way to London. I recall Westminster Abbey and the Changing of the Guard, though I know we saw more than that. We ate lunch at the original Hard Rock Cafe. We also saw a production of Miss Saigon on Drury Lane that, for whatever reason, cut the final song of the show. Up until Tuesday afternoon I was convinced that Miss Saigon ended with Kim shooting herself and Chris finding her body. He groans, curtain falls. I couldn’t tell what all the fuss was about.
The chaperones kept a really tight eye on us on that trip, so I didn’t get to do any (PERFECTLY LEGAL) drinking. I don’t even know why they let us explore Piccadilly Circus. All I remember seeing was a bunch of very entertaining pubs from the outside (where I could have LEGALLY IMBIBED alcohol), a billboard for the forgettable film Plunkett and Macleane, and the aftermath of a stabbing. A pair of feet poked out of a circle of cops; the ground was stained dark red.
Google tells me that the dollar buys 0.675 GBP as of Tuesday. To put it another way, 1 GBP equals about $1.50. It’s like I’ll be giving the UK a really generous tip.
When I went on that high school trip, I remember the hassle involved in securing American Express travelers cheques before hand, then converting them to GBP every few days. This was the safest way for a teenager to transport large sums of money in 1999. Well, perhaps not the safest: if I’d had a credit card then, as I do now, it wouldn’t be an issue. But giving a teenager a credit card opens up its own dangers.
I’m deliberately resisting my urge to over plan. I spent thirty minutes flipping between a GIF of the London Underground and a Google Map of London to make sure I had the most direct route from Heathrow to our hotel. Then I remembered that London’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Northern hemisphere. Its economy hinges on gently guiding tourists from point A to point B. And everyone there speaks a corrupted pidgin English anyway. I should be fine.

_______
* I hope the statute of limitations on this sort of thing is shorter than 11 years.

Jun

when seven powers failed to spin me, I had to get me seven more

Posted by Perich at 7:19 am

I like making bold promises on my blog in the hopes that the Internet will hold me to them. This proves that you’re reading.

Anyhow, when I went off on my rant about the census, I closed with the following:

So I’ll make you a deal.

You find me an official Census statement that acknowledges the wrongdoing of prior Census staff, and I’ll fill out my own form. Show me a link on Census.gov. Show me a press release by a Census Bureau chief. Show me somewhere, in writing, where a representative of the Census said, “Yes, we aided in one of the most evil acts ever carried out on American soil: the internment of American citizens on the grounds of their ancestry, not their actions. We carried water for villains. We were wrong and we are sorry.”

And the Internet paid up. My friend Christine, with some casual research, uncovered the following statement by then Census director Kenneth Prewitt (warning: PDF):

The record is less clear whether the then in effect legal prohibitions against revealing individual data records were violated. On this question, the judicial principle of innocent until proven otherwise should be honored. However, even were it to be conclusively documented that no such violation did occur, this would not and could not excuse the abuse of human rights that resulted from the rapid provision of tabulations designed to identify where Japanese Americans lived and therefore to facilitate and accelerate the forced relocation and denial of civil rights.

I would also like to state clearly that for many years the Census Bureau was less than forthcoming in publicly acknowledging its role in the internment process. Silence was not the worst offense, for there is ample evidence that at various times the Census Bureau has described its role in such manner as to obfuscate its role in internment. Worst yet, some Census Bureau documents would lead the reader to believe that the Census Bureau behaved in a manner as to have actually protected the civil rights of Japanese Americans. This distortion of the historical record is being corrected. The internment of Japanese Americans was a sad, shameful event in American history, for which President Clinton, on behalf of the entire federal government, has forthrightly apologized. The Census Bureau joins in that apology and acknowledges its role in the internment.

On Saturday morning, a Census worker gave a long ring on my buzzer. I went downstairs and found a man named David, with broad, freckled arms, waiting in my lobby. “Oh, do you — okay, yeah, let’s do this outside,” he said, as I shouldered past him and closed the (locking) building door behind me. It was a gorgeous day out, high 80s with a slight breeze.

After showing me his Census worker badge – unprompted – he sat down on the stoop and reeled off his list of questions. I stared into the middle distance. Only resident as of April 1, 2010. Renting. Unmarried. Would describe myself as white. Checked the spelling on my first and last names.

“Phone number?” he asked. “In case the Census Bureau needs to follow up?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t have a phone?”

“I’d just as soon not give a phone number,” I said, “if it’s all the same to you.”

“Okay,” he said. He wrote “refused phone number” on the bottom of his sheet, saying it as he said it.

After double-checking the details and trying for the phone number one more time – not cajoling; I need to stress how friendly this man was – he thanked me for my time. “There’s a bunch of other people in your building who haven’t answered their Census yet,” he said. “Would it be all right if –”

“I’d just as soon not,” I said, heading back inside. “You can ask them yourselves.” I pulled the building door closed behind me.

I can’t pretend that all of my beliefs are fully rational. But I like to believe they’re pretty well informed. And the one thing I can do that makes them more rational is to set conditions that’ll change my mind. “What would it take for you to question this theory?” is a hallmark of scientific inquiry. More deeply held than my belief that the Census is a tool of ill omen (which it’s not, no more than any piece of innocent bureaucracy) is my belief that no American federal agency would ever apologize for the sins of prior administrations. I was wrong about that.

So, I’m learning.

Jun

things are ordinary

Posted by Perich at 7:15 am

london

1. I’m flying to London next week. I’ll be there Wednesday through Sunday. Anything I should do while I’m there? I hear the city has some culture to it.

3. There is no #3.

Jun

and the knocking in my head, just like the knocking at my door

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Census workers have been hitting my apartment at all hours. I came home on Sunday to find a “We stopped by to snoop on you” form tucked under my door. Just last week someone rang my buzzer, identifying themselves as a Census worker. And on Wednesday afternoon, a man jogged across the street from a parked car as I entered my building. He said he was a Census worker, looking for people in a few apartments (one of them mine). I told him I didn’t know any of those people and went inside, closing the front door behind me. My building’s nothing but furnished studios, a favorite of cranks and shut-ins. It must be a briar patch for the Census.

They’re after me because I haven’t returned my Census form. And I don’t intend to. I don’t trust them.

Briefly: in 1943, the Census Bureau released to the Treasury Department the names of Japanese citizens in the Washington D.C. area. Not general demographic data, but names, occupations and addresses. Census Bureau chief Christa Jones, when questioned on the subject, claimed that “it was legal at the time.” In 2002, the Census Bureau released neighborhood data on Arab-Americans to the Department of Homeland Security. Jones’ answer for this one: the information was “publicly available.”

These disclosures don’t affect me. I’m not part of a threatened minority group. As a white male with a good haircut and no visible piercings, I have to make a real effort to get in trouble with the law. But I’m not acting out of self-interest here. I simply will not cooperate with a system that aids behavior I consider immoral. The Census is one of the few areas of institutional control I can duck with little risk. So I’m ducking it. They can keep sending folks to ring my doorbell and flyer my mailbox at minimum wage. I do not intend to cooperate.

“You’re being silly,” I can hear you saying. “All those Japanese internment camps and sweeps of Arab neighborhoods are in the past! The Census would never do anything like that today.”

I don’t believe that. Not for a second. I don’t believe that there’s an agency – or a corporation – in this country that wouldn’t serve up names and addresses to the DHS in thirty seconds if they came knocking. I do not believe that the law is an adequate defense against the whims of power. I know that the unemployed people whom the Census pays a pittance don’t mean me any harm. That doesn’t affect me, though. An institution isn’t ten people conspiring to do evil; it’s one million people with no incentive to do good. No one’s willing to pay a fine or go to jail to keep my information private. Except me, I guess.

But maybe I’m being stubborn. Maybe I’m holding to political opinions better suited for someone twice my age with half my education. Young urban professionals who went to the schools I attended aren’t supposed to be paranoid about the federal government. I could be off base. So I’ll make you a deal.

You find me an official Census statement that acknowledges the wrongdoing of prior Census staff, and I’ll fill out my own form. Show me a link on Census.gov. Show me a press release by a Census Bureau chief. Show me somewhere, in writing, where a representative of the Census said, “Yes, we aided in one of the most evil acts ever carried out on American soil: the internment of American citizens on the grounds of their ancestry, not their actions. We carried water for villains. We were wrong and we are sorry.”

Point me to those words and I’ll reconsider. Not before.

Jun

little fish, big fish, swimming in the water

Posted by Perich at 7:32 am

If you’re at all interested in the promo trailer for Mortal Kombat: Rebirth that bounced across the Internet last week, check out my take on it – and the limits of verisimilitude – at Overthinking It.

The explanations for Baraka, Reptile and Scorpion all have verisimilitude. They may not be the most rigorous science — how likely is a harlequin baby to survive to adulthood? — but the authors tried. The fact that they tried indicates an attitude that prefers naturalism and plausibility. They’re helping us with the suspension of disbelief. They want us to believe that Jax, Sonya Blade and Sub-Zero inhabit the same world we do.

The problem: verisimilitude only goes so far.

Jun

respect yourself; it’s one on one

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Though I don’t follow soccer, nor will I ever, I’ll say one nice thing about it: every goal counts.

That’s the beauty of a low-scoring, high-effort game. Every point is worth celebrating. Ripping your shirt off, running around screaming and suffering a dogpile of your teammates aren’t excessive. That’s perfectly appropriate. Given that most of the World Cup games are decided by one or two points, you expect nothing less. Consider the celebration for Paraguay’s ~~second~~ tying goal yesterday. Or Robert Green’s total collapse at letting an easy goal bobble through to tie the U.S. vs U.K. match.

robert-green

Now compare that to a basketball game. I prefer basketball, it being the sport I was raised on, but try maintaining constant enthusiasm throughout the Celtics/Lakers series. How many of Boston’s 96 points in their Game 5 victory over L.A. were that memorable? That Rasheed Wallace block that he fed to Tony Allen on the fast break? One of Kobe’s three-pointers in the 3rd? What’s the signature image of that game? I’m not saying basketball’s boring, but the game-changing moments don’t jump out at you. You never know the tide has turned until you see the highlight reel.

Of course, soccer has a few more disadvantages. A game of soccer can never be shorter than 90 minutes. There’s the nursing of injuries to coax out a foul. There are all the weird penalty kicks, corner kicks and a baffling array of referee calls. So it’s still not the sport for me. But I recognize the special little moments.

Update: the Brazil/North Korea match either refutes or validates my point. 50 minutes of nothing – no substitutions, no yellow cards, no scoring – until the first goal.

Jun

can you take me higher

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Sylvia, her friends and I went to Six Flags: New England this past Saturday.

Our first stop was the “Superman: Ride of Steel” coaster^*. A Six Flags staffer stood near the entry gate, holding a metal yardstick with a bar across the top indicating the minimum height. As I approached, she stopped me and produced a much taller stick. The wooden bar across the top came right to my forehead. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re too tall.” Confused, I wandered outside just as the rain began to fall in earnest. I took a ride on Catwoman’s Whip – a much smaller metal coaster with no height maximum – and dropped a dollar at the mini-arcade next to Superman. Three middle school students spent about twenty dollars trying to claw an iPod nano out of a prize machine.

They put those height maximums on there for a reason. I just made it under the bar for Mind Eraser, a looping inverted coaster that’s been at Six Flags for years. When we boarded, I pulled the padded harness down over my head until it was snug. Then the attendant came by and drove it into my crotch as hard as he could. “Sorry,” he said. I shifted in my seat and allowed the harness to clamp me in one notch tighter: about as comfortable as a solid steel full nelson. Thus ensnared, I took off.

Don’t get the impression that Six Flags was all disappointments and crotch shots. The rain scared off a lot of the crowds: by five o’clock, the park was near a quarter its capacity. We got to ride the Batman coaster three times: once in the morning, then twice back to back that afternoon. The terror in a roller coaster comes from not knowing what it’s going to do to you. Riding the same ride three times chips away at that terror, leaving you with the thrill of the hundred-foot drop and the zero-g roll. Like most rides, it’s better with your eyes open.

* Which was re-branded the “Bizarro” coaster last season.