Q: Huh??

A: My life as
a Los Angelino, now
expatriate in London
A trite look into my
explorations & findings
of those wiley Brits

By the end, I will have
figured out what
makes them tic and
use mind control on them

Wednesday, January 28, 2004
I am getting horribly bad at keeping up with this site. A combination of finding time for Hannah and Leyhsa with the stresses and requirements at my new job leave very little time for writing on my site. This saddens me and I figure this state of affairs will continue until either I have hired a larger team to offload crud at work or I hire somebody at home to do the same. So I have been back in the land of my oats for three months now and you must be wondering what I have learned. I have learned many things which I will list for you:

1. The beer here sucks. We as Americans have been so blitzed by advertising, that we figure since it tells us that it comes from the rocky mountains, it must be good. The answer is no, it just makes a good ad. I have realized that losing wars for some reason make the French and Belgians great beer makers- far better than here where it is boiled in vats the size of a small town and bottled to be branded as 'low-carb' or 'lite'. Have people forgotten the point? Beer is not a health drink; its alcohol, which is designed to make you dizzy and destroy your liver. That's like calling a pistol, 'Machine Gun Lite'.
   
2. Nobody cares. Its kind of comforting as I worry less now about how horrible my President is making the world as I no longer hear about it. People don't talk about politics at work, you don't hear politics on the news (except for the 3 minute junket), and you certainly don't know about what's going on outside of the four corners of the US. There's a very tight race going on for the Democratic Presidential nominee and I would never know it unless I tried really hard to seek out what that meant.
   
   To give you an idea of what I mean by this frightening insulation, the day the news broke about the earthquake in Iran where 20,000 people died, I turned to 'Komo 4 News- Your source for News' and the top story was (and I am not making this up) about a lady who had her car stolen with an ern of the remains of a dead relative still in the car. The boring story about 20,000 dead terrorists in an evil doer country came after a ten minute piece on this stupid lady who left her keys in the car and after a commercial break.
   
   This Bush guy is going to get re-elected not because people like him, but because probably only 15% of those who should be paying attention will be going to the polls.
   
3. Because driving a car is cool. I don't have to wait 30 minutes for a bus not to be full to let me on, I don't have to be packed into a tube car where there is 1 cubic inch of personal space, I don't have to walk in the rain because the wind blew my umbrella inside out, and I don't even have to worry about paying a ransom's price to be driven by cab for the privelege of being taken a couple miles. I have a car! And my old cool car at that! I love my little P1800 and it is wonderful to be back in my land where we worship the independance, freedom, status, and selfishness of driving a car.
   
4. There are more strip malls per square mile then there are alcoholics in England. By American standards, entire population in England would be considered alcoholics, and I still think the quantity of strip malls out here would outnumber even that total. There's even a place near my work where there is a strip mall within a strip mall. Begone lowly small independant shopkeeper on the corner! Goodbye overpriced haven of unique things! Good riddance variety! I have Wal-mart and Office Depot, so there is no need for you here! It reminds me of how we would see while traveling that all the souvenir shops would all have the same things and it pretty much breaks down to who is the least rude guy behind the counter that you buy from. Here, the super chain stores are essentially doing the same thing where they all have the same 25 stereos or the 8 printers or the 44 brands of cereal, the only difference is if the length of the line is worth it to you for the extra 7% off. There actually is an algebraic formula that I have worked out: Number of Parking Spaces divided by the square footage = the % savings.

See, here's how the math works out for every £1.00 I earn in the UK, for you Americans who don't really get how good you have it.

£1.00 earned by a day of dealing with manic bosses and insane deadlines and intense politics of work
- 0.26 taken out for taxes. I am unqualified to receive a child tax benefit because I'm not a permanent resident
- 0.11 taken out for National Insurance. This pays for my sub-standard medical care that I personally never used
- 0.29 taken out for rent. This pays for a nice place but is the size of the average rich person's bathroom
- 0.14 taken out for utilities. This includes paying the most inept and useless company to ever exist, BT
- 0.12 taken out for groceries. Everything costs 2x as much and comes in 1/2 the size, plus I get to carry the bags home
- 0.08 taken out for transportation. This pays for my opportunity to be sneezed on and stuck in the heat of the Tube
- 0.02 taken out for council tax. I pay property tax even though I don't own property. Somebody please explain?

GRAND TOTAL £1.02, netting -£.02

With one income now, that's how it breaks down. Which sucks. The good news for me is that I have another country that I can run to. One which won't break my back in half -at least until I need to go on Social Security that is. The bad news is, those poor Brits get their ass handed to them and have nowhere to escape to. I at least have lazy days shopping at WalMart, getting fat while watching Oprah to look forward to. These poor Limeys don't get the luxury. I no longer wonder why they drink so much. Well...it explains a higher drinking rate but doesn't quite explain the excessive, almost binge-like-high drinking rate.

So in under four weeks of handing in my notice, I found a replacement, prepared a hand-off, hired a van, took most of our stuff to Heathrow to be shipped, we sold the remainder of our stuff, found a replacement tenant for our flat, had my farewells, Leyhsa cleaned the flat, we headed onto our flight, picked up a van in LA, got some of our stuff out of storage, picked up our stuff that was shipped, drove 1,200 miles to Seattle, unloaded and unpacked, returned the truck and started my new job. No problem! The problem was that some little Limey bastard got my bank details and emptied my bank account two days before I was to pay £1,100 in cash to Virgin Cargo to have our stuff shipped. Now that was a problem.

But it all ended going successfully somehow and I have been working for two weeks now at Classmates.com- a truly pig of a site. It has bad branding, horrible usability and dreadfully, awful design. But this is all good because they are looking to revamp everything and I like a challenge. They also happen to be profitable and are one of the top visited web sites in the US with 37 million members. So again I am very very sorry but this is a good thing as I finally will have money in the bank again. I have lots to update you on as things progress and relearn the American Way.

Already Leyhsa and I were staggering to comprehend the serendipity of walking into our local grocery store here in Seattle that was the size of two football pitches with more choices of soda then our local Tesco in London had of everything combined in the store. I am re-learning American catch phrases like 'boiling the ocean tactic' and 'hockey stick drop'. I was just getting used to and started using Brit terms like 'things went pear-shaped' and where to get the best bagels in London (Broadway Bagels on Edgeware).

So alas, a new chapter has started and I will keep you abreast of the progress.

Sunday, August 03, 2003
Well everyone, today was a very very exciting day. it was a jason and hayley day: it was a day of many adventures. First we had bagels that jason picked up which were Western Bagel quality, Deelicious. then jason and i went to camden town, now there are three ways to get to camden town: bus, underground and water bus. well jason was sure the water bus was the fastest. so we get in the water bus and we are moving at a speed of 3 miles an hour. there was a couple walking allong the thames river and they were going faster than we were. well we finally (after 50 minutes) got to camden town and it was completely awesome it is like venice meets melrose but without the corporate stores everything was independent and there were stores which were contained within walls as well as individual stands where people were selling stuff like in venice.

the coolest thing though was a store called CYBERDOG. it is the coolest store in the history of stores. as jason put it "You want it to be anything but a store you want it to be a club or a disco but its just too cool to be a store." everything was blacklit and i think there was a rule that if you worked at the store you had to wear 12" platform shoes, lots of spikes and a really punky haircut that was dyed at least 3 completely unnatural colors.

after camden town we went to get on the underground to go to south ealing in order to see a rugby game well the underground station we were supposed to go to was closed on sundays but we didnt know so we had to walk about a mile to the next underground station. well we get on the underground and eventually get to south ealing, well once we are there we really have no idea where we are supposed to be going we dont know where the football stadium is. so we ask a guy at the station who tells us the direction we should be going. then we ask a bus driver who says he will let us know where to get off so he signals us and we start to walk around the corner that the bus driver pointed to and we see a sign for the stadium going in the complete opposite direction.

so we follow the sign and we can hear the rugby game.....oh i forgot to mention the game started at 3pm and it was now almost 4pm. so we hear the game and we can see the stadium but we cant see a way in the stadium is surrounded by houses. now why on earth would you want to live next door to a football stadium. anyways we walk almost completely around the block when we finally find the entrance so we go in and get to sit on the pitch it was wild we were so close to the violence and rugby is so cruel. well we barely got there when the game ended at 4:45pm it was hillarious. so we head back to central london where we do some sight seeing and then try and go homebut we cant find the right bus. then we find the right bus but it doesnt show up then we decide to take the underground so we ask a bus driver if he goes to the next underground station and he says yes. but just before the underground station the driver hangs a left and goes three blocks down a different street then we go into the wrong underground station because there are two and we had to try and find the right line but we did eventually get home and my feet ace because i have been walking around for about 10 hours. i am exhausted.

Monday, August 04, 2003
Well today was a very very hot day, and i am not talking hot for london i am talking hot for california. it was in the 90's i am sure and when you are traveling around with a baby low 80's is warm. anyway we probably chose the worst thing to do on a hot day we went to the tower of london which is this this ancient castle in the middle of contemporary london. it is gorgeous- built in 1000 AD and it houses the crown jewels. which include the worlds largest diamond. it was sooo shiny. there was a little crown which was only adorned in diamonds and was once Queen Victoria's and is about big enough to fit around a girls hair when you put it up in a bun. i wanted it for me.

what i dont understand is why i am not a queen. i want to be a queen, i want a queendom with museums based around my tuppaware lunchboxes -that would be awesome. but the tower was awesome, i got a picture with a beefeater which is a certain type of guard that guards the tower of london. and i got to hear all about beheadings and death rituals and i got to see a tower where they kept important, and/or royal prisoners and it was awesome because most of these prisoners carved messages or memorials or pictures in the walls- it was totally awesome. i also got to see the arsenal and all the weapons but my favorite thing had to be the castle itself it was so picturesque (awsome!). it is every girls dream of what a princesses castle should look like. then we walked across the tower bridge and home. i really wish i was a queen. I'd seriously be an awsome queen.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Hello all, well today was a scorcher and i figured out the reason why london is so miserable in the heat. its because the city isnt prepared for it. in london they usually only have 1 or 2 days every year of like 85 degrees and that is their hottest temperature. because of this nothing is air conditioned. not the busses or the underground or museums or resturants. well that isnt entirely true there are a few places that have air conditioning but they are few and far between. before i move on to my activities of the day i want to comment on yesterdays entry, does everyone remember how i said that they were doing construction on st. pauls cathedral...(pause) i will take that as a yes, well construction = scaffolding but you never see any workers. i was walking down the street with leyhsa and the road was torn up and there were construction signs all over the place but at 3pm you didnt see one construction worker.. because you never do you never ever see how things get done. one day the scaffolding remarkably comes down by itself and the entire project is complete and nobody asks how.

well guys today being such a hot day that we decided to go to a museum. the great thing about a lot of the museums in london is that they dont charge for admission. london is the opposite of america in the making of money. London doesn't seem to want to make money they dont care if the way they do something is hazardous to thier financial gain. anyway so we called a museum to make sure they had air conditioning and they did so we decided to head off to the Victoria and Albert Museum which was really awesome because it is a very eclectic museum. they have paintings and sculptures of mary and the baby jesus to a history of dresses, to an entire floor devoted to tapestry, to a floor all about the 20th century which had furniture from the early 1900's and on to tea settings on to a poster that stated "Never Mind the Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols." it was a very awesome museum but the problem was that the told us that the museum was air conditioned and it was but only on certain floors and certain rooms and this museum was huge so we walked through the hot rooms pretty fast. At some point i got a heat headache and i dont remember much else we tried to stay in the air conditioned rooms but it wasnt entirely possible. it was a very hot day today and into the night it is currently 11:00pm in london and about 85 degrees outside it is supposed to be very hot through next week. moving on we went to dinner at an italian resturant and afterwards we were walking to our bus stop and i saw from a distance these huge brests, they looked like two balloons blown up to full under a womans shirt and i nudged leyhsa to show her, and we looked as this woman passed, oh no, wait, thats not a woman its a MAN!!!! swiveling his hips in a mini skirt down the street. i am traumatized.

Speaking of braving parents, my aunt gave my 17 year old cousin Hayley (the one who graduated mentioned in the last entry) the green light to come out here to London to visit with us. She's arriving this Thursday and I have been making the preparations on places to go while she's here. It should be fun and we are very much looking forward to showing her around for her first trip to Europe.

Okay, time for a London insight. This city is way over deep on technology. They will spend millions on latest technologies and not think it really through with the question 'Is it relevant?'. Here are some examples; the city of London is trying to clean up the streets of homeless people by puting computer kiosks out near the train stations informing them where to go for food and shelter. It's real wiz-bangy giving directions and looking all 21st century. First off, the city of London could start by cleaning up the streets much better by giving all dog owners pooper-scoopers, because I am constantly near-missing the stuff. Second of all, the kiosk is text-based, and how large of a percentage of homeless people do you really think are literate? So in other words a total waste of money.

Example two: my rival the current Mayor of London has (as described in a previous entry) introduced a 'successful' scheme of putting thousands of cameras all over the city that scan license plates as cars enter a congestion zone within central London, automatically charging people a £80 fine if the driver doesn't pay the £5 charge within that day. The problem is, this system of cameras, computers systems, IT geeks, web site maintenance people, any number of beurocratic nitwits plus the call center people costs the tax payer millions of pounds to support and has already generated over 1,000 incorrect charges a day, including one sent to a museum for its 1914 car that has not moved in 60 years. Mayor Ken just approved £32 million tax payer dollars to bail out the congestion charge company because they are losing more money than investing in Betamax tapes. Now imagine the misery when an already far-over capacity 120 year old tube system now receives an additional 20% more passengers who travel in conditions that are illegal if it were cattle on a train rather than people on a subway car with no fresh air and 90 degree heat. So who is this technology for? I have no idea but I guarantee that those pea heads at BT are getting a piece.

I say that because on my walk to the bus station I pass another technological revolution; a BT internet kiosk-phone booth that costs 1 pound a minute. Even though around the corner is an internet rental place for 1 pound an hour and you can sit down like a normal person. Anyway, on the outside of the booth it says nice and proud, 'pay your congestion charge here!'. Nice exclusive rights but here's the catch. Its on a street that has no parking and is OUTSIDE the congestion zone. Its like some nimrod up there in a suit with the tie too tight said 'blimey, this computer thing is jolly good!' and bam there you go, a complete waste of money that looks fancy.

Time these days seems to slip through the fingers like runny glue and only part of my evenings seem to stick together on being proficient but I do however have somehow miraculously found the time to put together a 'best of' photo gallery for you of all the best shots from the over 3,000 pictures taken in the past 2 and a half years. So knock yourself out and check out the Best Of Photos.

Since my last entry, we had Leyhsa's father come visit us. We had a great time with him. He did however bring the curse and cure of our existence with his visit by introducing Hannah to being swung. What he demonstrated for us was a great way to calm Hannah to sleep by putting her in the carry cot / car seat thinger and swinging her back and forth in it. The cure being that after twenty minutes or so, it worked. The curse was though, it took twenty minutes of swinging a 20 pound cot back and forth. If you look at the Scotland wedding pictures, there's one where you can see me - tirelessly swinging. Hannah didn't want it any other way so the next step was to buy an automated swing which of course was three times the cost as it would have been if we managed to hold tight until we went back to the states to get it. But as far as his trip out here went, we had a great time showing him around and he seems to be quite taken by the charms of his latest grandchild. There's pics to prove it too.

Next was off to visit family back in LA. It was the first time Hannah was out of the womb and experienced a plane flight and she was surprisingly good. Well...up until about 9 hours into the flight that is. See, the poor thing was very nervous and stayed attached to Leyhsa feeding pretty much the whole time. Then, she started to cry so Leyhsa put Hannah over her shoulder and then all of a sudden, 9 hours of milky barf came up all at once, dousing Leyhsa's seat and going all down Leyhsa's back. Now here's the part that really sucks; we still had TWO MORE HOURS TO GO with a couple gallons of barf everywhere. I have witnessed one thing from this venture with a 3 month old baby on a plane that I have learned and am about to bestow on you my reader: The only thing worse than barf down your pants is cold barf that's been sitting down your pants for two hours.

Being back in Cali was a world wind tour but it was so good to see family that I hadn't seen in over a year. It was a huge family bonanza of a week as one cousin was graduating high school (the highlight of the ceremony being when one of the students who spoke in front of the 3 thousand or so people that school was a prison and the teachers were mostly disinterested scum just there for a paycheck), the other was having her Bat Mitzvah (with not a dry eye in the house), and Hannah was having her baby naming (despite exerting her best crying fit to date). It was one wonderful event after another and my grandparents were soaring with delight the whole time which was very sweet to see. For those that are into family reunion type things, I have a gallery of those pics from my LA trip now available for you to check out.

The other fantastic reunion was regaining the freedom of driving my car again- with the sun shining, sunglasses on and the ocean wind in the hair, I was saying to Leyhsa that we were crazy ever to leave. And then we got on the 405 freeway and the whole world came to a vehicular stop. Time froze and we would slowly watch hours of life slowly inch away in horrendous traffic. We had several trips to run errands back and forth between Santa Clarita in the northern part of LA to Santa Monica in West LA and it became a laborious chore to face the throwing away of 4 hours a day sitting in traffic. How do people do it, I ask? Why isn't everybody screaming and shooting each other in utter frustration, I ask? The real question actually is why doesn't anybody carpool and why does the public transit system suck so bad? By the end of a week I couldn't wait to get out of the car and to get back home to London where they have proper transport to complain about.

Lastly, I owe you all a huge apology for neglecting my bus stop so badly and leaving you my reader to walk to school in the rain. I suck, and in remorse I have several gifts for you. First there's a fun email game that we just released at work calledThe Big Villa House you can check out which is a parody of the reality show Big Brother. Also I have gathered the latest responses to your questions for Angus in the Ask Angus section. I will try to be better Mr. Lord Fahquar...

The fancy Flash stuff I did for the portfolio came out alright and you are more than welcome to check it out. Why am I working on a portfolio, you ask? Alright, you probably don't care either way but the answer to the question is that I'm heading to the sunny shores of LA for a week and I figured it would be worth testing the waters on jobs back home. From everything I hear and have seen, the economy if it could be summed up in just a single word would be 'SUCKS'. With the economy taking a back burner for two years while wars were going on and whatever possible cash their could be to help being further funneled to fat bastard rich folks, I suppose I might be marooned out here in the UK for quite a while if things don't change soon. Right now that suits me fine as I am really enjoying my job.

The Scotland visit was beautiful and Leyhsa and I had an exhausting time trying to keep up with Hannah, yet it was still a refreshing trip away. She was very well behaved but man oh man, is it a ton of work taking care of a baby while on the road. Everything was just so green and lush. This was our first time being so far north and it was wild as the skies stayed light until past midnight with the sun rising again only a few hours later. We stayed in Inveruvie at a lovely little B&B in the countryside, then headed to Inverness to check out the highlands and finally to Aberdeen to take the overnight train home.

I am wickedly tired from a lack of sleep and I don't have time to go into it all so I will try a cliff note version to describe:

Scotland Trip - abridged
Inveruvie- Pronounced IN-VUR-ROO-VEE and a flea-spec size of a town. Countryside good, and green. People nice. Very tasty Haggis for breakfast; I especially enjoyed the stomach innards flavoring. Car next time because cab driver drove us in circles even after calling the police station (yes, that small of a town) to get directions to the cottage we were staying in.

Inverness- Forgetful. Was I there? Oh yeah- damn. Inverness is an uneventful small city with little to do until you leave Inverness. We did. Went to close by Loch Ness and saw an eerie destroyed castle plus took a leisurely calming boat ride down the Loch. No monsters. Many pictures though.

Aberdeen- Amazingly shockingly incredibly fantastic city. Like gray slate buildings though- lots of that here. I was poorly advised to avoid the oil shipping town of Aberdeen so we only ended up having a few hours there, which was a shame because it had so much character. You better like gray though, there's lots of that.

We happened to be in Scotland for my friend Nigel's full traditional Scottish style wedding. Ironically, he's Irish but the lovely bride is Scottish. The wedding was amazing with most of the men in kilts, the women in big giant bonnets and there was even a bag piper. They held it at a beautiful castle in Fyvie which was fully renovated. The wedding had a few distinct differences from your standard US affair. Again, as I am minutes away from collapsing in drool on my keyboard from sleep deprivation, I shall attempt the cliff note style:

UK Wedding Differences- abridged
Super old things- a castle from the 1600's, a reception at a mansion originally built in the mid 1700's, the chauffeured car was 85 years old, clan plaids worn that originate from 800 years ago. You get the drift.

Less parties- American weddings are not an event, they are events. You've got the engagement party, the bridal shower party, the bachelor party, the bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner party, the family meet party, the wedding itself, and finally the post wedding party. Some smart capitalist at some point in the past realized a good thing when he saw it and glommed on all these additional parties to stretch out the wedding cash cow. Here they have a few less then that- but the capitalists over here too are catching on apparently as stag and hen nights are big business.

Better speeches- Aside from my grandfather at my wedding who had an incredible gift for timing and setting up a joke, most US speeches are not all that memorable. The Brits take much time and pride in preparing very lengthy and hilariously funny speeches. I was crying in laughter from them- see Four Weddings and a Funeral to get the idea.

Scots do it better- they don't shy from the lager nor the Whisky, the men wear skirts in public, they have tumultuous line dances, and they like to include the timid American spectators. Plus they kept calling Hannah the the 'Wee Bonnie Lassie' which was so cute- and appropriate.

Things have been pretty good over here as work has been going well and our little Hannah is now a healthy 11 pounds. She's getting more feisty and strong and we are starting to notice that she recognizes us.

This past Sunday Leyhsa and I went to the V&A Museum to see their exhibition on Art Deco. The hundreds of pieces they had ranged from flapper dresses to an all-silver deco bed to a 20's roadster. The flamboyance mixed with craftsmanship and design styling was truly remarkable. It was our first attempt taking Hannah where there were several people and it was a bit difficult.

People would crowd around displays so we were quite hesitant from getting too close to strangers with a 6 week old baby with us. The funniest thing happened though while we were stuck in a very crowded group of people. With maybe fifteen people congested around us, Hannah pooped letting out the loudest whoopee cushion fart noise as she did it. All fifteen of those people (minus me futily trying to seem dignified) looked at us with wide stares right when our little princess let out a second rip for good measure. And then, with nowhere to go and nowhere to move, the pungent baby poop smell filled the air. As the looks got cross at us, Leyhsa and I started to laugh, because Hannah was notably more content as a little grin on her face appeared and she nodded back to sleep.

I have a new set of pics to check out in the gallery as well as yet another NEW section! This time its to help those in need of deciphering what is the largest gap that divides Brits and their American friends across the pond- the English language. So as a token of good faith, I am offering a British to American Dictionary I have affectionately called in my new section Limey Lingo. Its from a site that I found of a Brit visiting the US and being so perplexed he wrote this dictionary, which I am now mirroring. I didn't write it which makes me certified lazy, but I'm tired of linking to sites that end up going down- and it is pretty funny.

Many members of the Bush administration stand to benefit handsomely from the new cuts: Treasury Secretary John Snow tops the list with a $275,000 windfall... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could pocket an extra $184,000. And not far behind is the $181,000 that could go to Secretary of Commerce Don Evans. Man, I sure wish I was a millionaire business man and had a cabinet position too.

Its being paid for by borrowing on our future which is already a $3 TRILLION deficit. Schools and other vital programs are on the budget axe to pay for it too. Let me help illustrate for you $3 trillion:

THREE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO. If I paid one dollar every single day until it was paid off, it would take me 8.4 billion years. By that point, there will have been 2,100,000,000 Presidential elections, 42,000 ice ages, the sun will have lost its ability to generate enough fission and would be turning into a red giant, and the London Underground will have just about completed escalator refurbishment.

Look up your Senator conatact info here and your Congressman contact info here. Make sure the staffers know you're a constituent, and urge your Senators to please OPPOSE all new tax cuts. Then, if you like, ask them how much they will personally pocket if these cuts pass.

Off the soapbox I go for now. But look out! Angus MacGinty was right were I left him last week at the Startford Arms, in the exact stool, with possibly the same pint in his hand, so he has kindly answered some reader questions for you!

So the big news is that I'm now an official .com and no longer wear the burden of geocities in the URL name. To celebrate, I've added a whole new section to my site. Its hosted by Angus MacGinty, a beer and whiskey toting alcoholic from the East End of London. He is full of the wisdom and purity of consciousness that only a former taxi driver turned in his words, 'to the light and became a Monk to Jack Daniels', could provide. Just Ask Angus anything at all and he will be sure to respond with an inspired solution. The best part is that since this is over the internet, you don't have to deal with the awful side-effect of toxic brewery breath as he delves out sage advice.

I had left last week commentary about the awful state of the five channels we get here and hadn't mentioned the most entertaining portion of UK television programming. The commercials. The tellie commercials seems to be where all of the creativity, originality and entertainment are going. The good ones are clever, witty, smart, stylish and memorable- all things you rarely find in a US ad other than maybe during the Super Bowl. They use a concept hard to find in mass media in the States - subtlety and irony. The Brits do it exceptionally well, its just too bad there's no longer any programming to go with it anymore. As a special treat, I have compiled the videos for you to check out of my fav adverts, from the convenience of your work's internet bandwidth.

Here are my five favorites:

Honda Accord - 'When Things Just Work' - a beautiful ad of car components that domino in a mouse trap kind of way as the camera follows to demonstrate perfection. The two minute ad apparently took 605 takes to finally get.

John Smiths - 'Top Bombing' - A very humorous ad that was taking place during the Commonwealth Games which intentionally throws you off as it mimics a high dive competition

Levi's - 'Odyssey' - One of the most beautiful ads I have ever seen where two people with seemingly superhuman powers pummel through walls as they compete against each other. Well trust me that it looks better then I can explain.

Coke - 3 Legged Striker - A very clever claymation ad for Coke and the World Cup. It's about this three-legged kid who gets drafted to win the World Cup. The music is really good as well.

Vauxhall - Hide & Seek - A fun advert to watch as cars play hide and seek from each other within a city. It uses very clever use of imagery.

To enjoy the welcoming blue skies of Spring, Leyhsa and I took Hannah on her first real outing and went on a field trip to Hampstead Heath. I don't know if she noticed it much as the papoose carrier thing put her to sleep for the entire hike.

With a newborn baby, Leyhsa and I are at home pretty much all of the time now. One of the things being home more does is invite the fatal opportunity of watching more television than perhaps you would normally. Unfortunately with only five channels to choose from it ends up being like a steak dinner at a free methadone clinic: mostly inedible bone and full of fat. The few small morsels of meat will turn out to be tough and taste like year-old freezer burn. With the collapse of the Sadam government and the entertainment value of the Iraqi Information Minister gone, there's just nothin on.

I have to take back all of my positive comments that I had said earlier of Brit TV being fairly good. Since then, the BBC launched a new BBC3 channel on digital cable, making most of their interesting stuff go there instead. Channel Four used to produce some great shows but the production arm, Film Four (makers of Four Weddings and a Funeral), last year announced they were ceasing original programming due to costs. So now all that is left is schlock. Our Methadone Steak breaks down as the following:

The bone: completely unwatchable Crap with a capital 'C'. For two weeks straight and for as many as 6 hours a day, 'The Beeb' as we affectionately call it here, has been featuring the exciting world of the Snooker Championships. I don't even pay attention to my opponent when I am personally playing the game of pool, let alone some street shark playing it on TV. The announcer to my groans had the nerve to announce that my show was being interrupted for a 'Nail Biter Semifinals'. The most painful part is the fact that I have to PAY a TV license for my right to have 680 hours of nail biting snooker. There's lots of unwatchable Crap just as useless and awful to watch like the Dart Throwing Championships, the fifty different shows they do on gardens or the thirty or so different shows they do on house buying. I am pained to admit that of I have watched some of the house buying shows out of pure desperation and I have yet to see ONE person actually buy a house- they all wimp out. So in other words, the show is even useless to the person they are trying to help buy a house for.

The fat: greasy and oily filler Reality TV shows that I volunteer to do the vacuuming AND the dishes rather than watch. Hollywood is 100% to blame for the emergence of Reality TV, as four years ago, there was a major actors strike threatened and so executives decided to circumvent the pre-madonnas and have shows without actors- Reality TV. There are tons of them here; Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, Fame Academy, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, The Salon, Love Cruise, Boot Camp, and on and on. They all have two things in common; they are boring beyond belief and the expectation of seeing some skin. I will not threaten the IQ of my child- fat is banned from our home.

The freezer burn: recycled American show re-runs. We get a few shows that are from the states that are good, but the previous year's series. So we have the 2002 and sometimes the 2001 run of shows like Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Friends, Will & Grace, and Frasier. Its nice to get a little quality programming, but not necessarily good enough that if I have already seen the episode, I would want to watch it twice.

The confiscation of entertainment isn't so bad, but where I feel the real pain is no B-Ball. But luckily my grandparents are living up to the 'grand' in their title and sending me tapes of the Lakers playoff series so I can get my fix. It also gives us more of an excuse to turn the Brain Drain off and just play with Hannah instead. Poop and all, a much better show.

Right, my frightening statistic; 172. Hannah Alexandra Levine has been in existence a mere 24 days and has pooped enough times to require an incredible 172 changes of diapers. I don't even blink my eyes as many times as that in 24 days! Keep in mind this inconceivable output is coming from a tiny 22 inch-long frame. I think she is even savvier than I had thought and must be taking tips from Dubya on how to be on the dole as she is obviously in cahoots with the Huggies corporation making a commission on diaper purchases since there could be no other explanation for why there is always another half of her poop to arrive once the new 'nappie' goes on.

There is a small piece of bad news as our little adorable Half-Limey won't be officially a Limey after all. I finally got through to the right department of the Home Office so I could find out the definition listed in the paperwork of citizenship being based on the 'parents being settled in Britain'. The gist being that though Hannah was born in Britain, she is NOT a British citizen, since my work permit is only for a fixed date period. If it was an open ended work permit (eligible in 2 more years) or I was to apply for citizenship (eligible in 1 more year), then she'd get the British ID badge and the 'God Save the Queen' bumper sticker.

The real benefit would be that in the future she would be able to work without any hassle in Britain, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa- all of which have difficult work permit hoops for Americans to jump through otherwise. Plus, if Jeb were the next war mongering Bush one day to sit in the power seat, Hannah would have the option if it ever got that bad to head to other shores elsewhere. So Leyhsa and I in the meantime must consider this as part of whether or not we have the endurance to brave another 8 months of darkness and rain in the UK, come Winter. Leyhsa did child birth with no anesthetics, so I believe she might be strong enough but that still leaves me unproven.

On other news, last Sunday, I had my first real LA-like celebrity sighting since leaving those glittering shores and ran into Billy Zane at Marble Arch. Last year I ran into David Beckham with an entourage going into Victoria Station, but he doesn't count because he's just a limey. But a real live movie star with the required 'trying to look anonymous' baseball cap on, after a two year drought. It's not that I am all that excited about Billy Zane, I think he's annoying, its the fact that my star spotting skills are stilled fine tuned, like an aging karate sansei that can still break wood boards with his face. The exciting part is that I still hold the intrinsic powers that were dawned upon only me and my fellow Los Angeleno native brethren.

Rubbing shoulders with the Glitterati is perfectly normal as part of your LA passport, so it doesn't sound like I'm delusional when I talk about how I got cut off on the 405 Freeway by Arnold Schwarzenegger, or went to high school with a girl that got frisky with Rob Lowe, or I once was peeking down Courtney Cox's cleavage in her convertible while on my bicycle at a stop light, or went to a benefit my mother helped organize with Michelle Pfeiffer or that Leyhsa and I sat next to Madonna at a Kabbala class- these are everyday events for the Los Angeleno. As if my hometown was giving me a personal send off, the day I left for London I had a double whammy of seeing a frighteningly skeletal Pamela Anderson at the airport and then later on, I was picking up my luggage next to a reformed Cat Stevens.

But here in London, they are much tougher to spot, as there is more of a class structure in place where everyday folk normally never associate in the same venues as high-society. LA is much more egalitarian where the best taco stand in Santa Monica attracts all stratas. But here in London where there are first of all no good taco stands and no places broad enough for all types, the beautiful people reside from their perches in Kensington or wherever and they are not to be seen.

My theory is that this is all set up because of the untouchable aura the monarchy have created. That if you are elite, you do not touch the same filthy ground as the commoner. I believe I can destroy this class system with one decisive blow. When I become mayor, I will open a really good taco stand that nobody can resist drawing the Kate Winslets from their pearly gates so she can gorge on a beef burrito right next to Lemmy, the now out of work tube driver because I fired them all. Karl Marx and Martin Luther King would be crying tears of joy if they could see my fabled London taco stand. What a great world I can make with just your vote!

Its a huge sigh of relief to see the Iraq War coming to a close. Lets just hope that little Dubya proves me wrong- I'd sure like that though I have serious doubts as the hawks are already swooping in to put Americans in harm's way for yet more wars in the Middle East.

1. Nipple
2. Cry
3. Poop
4. A combination of the three
5. Sleep

Notice that Sleep is ranked low on that list. That means it also ranks low on my list as well. Its hard to get cranky about loosing sleep, because the darn thing is just so cute and sweet. She coos and wiggles her beg floppy feet (my gene pool) and just looks at you so serenly, you just forget about your old friend and hope that maybe you'll see each other once more. Maybe when she turns three.

With all of my extra awake hours, I have had time to add a few more pics for you to see. Also, last chance to send a message!

Also, you can still send a message to Leyhsa and Hannah.

The midwives refused to believe that only three hours after we arrived at the hospital that Leyhsa was ready to go and I finally had to be a serious dick to them before they went to check on her. She was so ready to go that like a short order cook, Leyhsa delivered less then a half hour after we got her into the delivery room. The baby's name is Hannah with the middle name still up for discussion. If Hannah had come in just three more days, I would have received an additional 2 weeks paid time off as the government benefits are to change for all births that are after the 6th of April. So we missed out, but the cab driver gave me a free ride home when he heard I was a new dad so the benefits are a healthy baby and a £6.50 taxi. I'll take that any day.

If you would like to send a message or a tip to new mother Leyhsa (who is spending the night tonight at the hospital) or little newborn Hannah, send a message here and I'll put them up in a later posting.