Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania

An old friend kindly invited me down to Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with her family this week, and it was a thoroughly relaxing couple of days. Thanksgiving seems to be basically like Christmas, but without the God, presents or Queen's speech, as far as I could work out. The vast majority of the time was spent cooking and eating enormous quantities of food and imbibing yummy drinks such as mulled cider (no sign of eggnog though, which I'm very curious about - maybe that's more a Christmas thing).

Thanksgiving dinner itself consisted of lots of turkey (or course) roasted to perfection by my friend and her Dad, along with mashed white and sweet potatoes (apparently the white potatoes were for my benefit!), stuffing made out of bread, apple and onion, cranberry relish and assorted steamed veggies. It was yummy, though certainly missing some key elements from an English Christmas turkey dinner (pigs in blankets, parsnips, roast potatoes etc). Apparently for Christmas dinner Americans tend to eat beef or pork rather than turkey. Dessert was pie, pie and more pie. Apple, pumpkin and mincemeat, to be precise - my first experience of pumpkin pie was pretty positive though I soon honed in on the apple.

We also spent a fair bit fo time in the evenings out and about in the local bars and restaurants with my host's old high school friends. A lovely bunch of people, to be sure, and it's always fun to be around a group of friends who have known each other for a very long time - the pool of stories and remeniscences is very deep indeed. One thing I found it slightly tricky to get my head round though was that many of these people still live in the area - some have settled down and had families, but my friend was one of very few who had actually flown the nest and set up shop somewhere else. Some of them had actually never left the country, so they found me to be something of a novelty as a foreigner. I always feel a little bit snobby when saying things like this, but I find it a little hard to comprehend how someone (and interesting, intelligent people at that) can choose to stay in a relative backwater like Doylestown, PA rather than living elsewhere, especially in their 20s. I've always been so drawn to the big cities and the places where "things happen". I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I'd never moved away from the Cambridgeshire backwaters where I grew up.

Ah well, takes all sorts I suppose. I'm waiting in Philly airport now for a flight to London, just for a short trip and mostly a business-focussed one. It'll be great to catch up with people though, and I should imagine a nice change to be somewhere familiar.

Twenty-five down

Today is my 25th birthday. A quarter of a century since I reluctantly emerged from my mother with the help of some strategically placed foreceps. I'm told that I was peculiar in that I didn't start crying as soon as I was born - I just sucked my thumb instead. Eager to get to the oral stage I guess...

I spend most of the last week in Denver, well, 10 miles outside it. Denver has, I'm told, two things to recommend it - one being the downtown area which is quite lively, and the other being the proximity of the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to enjoy either of these, as I was stuck in a hotel in suburban, strip-mall, SUV hell, ferried from meeting to meeting by my colleague who lives in Denver, and deposited back at the hotel till the next meeting. Without a car, one is absolutely screwed in suburban (that's to say, 99% of) America. I did try to go for a walk once to see what I could find, but I ran out of pavement and found myself on a freeway that it didn't seem advisable to walk down. So, after a day or so I admitted myself and resigned myself to containment at Marriott's pleasure, thought I did strike up a rapport with a Romanian barmaid and a fellow inmate who was there for the week as well. On the bright side, I played a lot of pool, and got an awful lot of work done in the absence of anything else to do.

Yesterday, after an energetic game of squash (I was very rusty and got my arse whipped, but it was good to get the blood pumping) I gathered togther a motley collection of people I've met in Boston so far at a club in Cambridge. It's always slightly odd bringing together what are usually mutually exclusive groups of friends at things like birthdays, but I'm always fascinated by how friends from different sources interact though the results aren't always positive! In this case things were extra dicey, as I'd only been out before with most of them a couple of times before. It should have been a recipie for disaster, but in fact the handful that turned up got on famously and we had a great time. No presents though - I'm not complaining or anything, but the only presents I've had so far have been two M&S ties from my Mum (you know you're getting old when your Mum buys you ties!) and a bottle of shampoo from a friend who stayed in my flat last week.

And now I'm on the train down to New York - I have a meeting there tomorrow, so I'm meeting a friend this afternoon, and hopefully plenty of debauchery should follow.

Jack and Bobby

Bit of a change of tack for this post - this last weekend had little to speak of socially as it was pretty much exclusively a musical one. I had a knackering week what with travelling round and trying to deal with a nasty cold as well, so basically all I did of note was to go to two concerts; Bob Dylan supported by The Raconteurs, playing a 2 night stand at the Agganis Arena in Boston.


Jack White is one of my favourite "contemporary" performers, although I'm much less of a fan of The Raconteurs than The White Stripes. They're good fun and all, but the songs generally seem throwaway, and the whole thing just seems like a hobby that got a little out of hand. I didn't see much of their set on Saturday, but I watched the whole hour on Sunday from my 3rd row seat, and it was damn cool stuff. The highlight was probably a tense rendition of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), the song made famous by Nancy Sinatra and the one that opens Kill Bill. Very brave of Dylan, if you ask me, to get these young whippersnappers to warm up the crowd for him. For starters, for the older half of the crowd it really wasn't their cup of tea - Jack and his boys were much louder and more squawky than Bob's band. The younger half (making up an ever larger proportion of Dylan gigs these days) lapped it up though. Dylan's cred-factor among the young and hip is most definitely at a high point, after the Scorcese documentary last year and his appearance in an iTunes ad to promote his new album, which has been getting pretty heavy rotation over here.

As far as Dylan himself was concerned, it was really a tale of two nights. On Saturday, the only real highlights for me were the 3 selections from his newest record, "Modern Times" - all of the older songs were rather uninspired and drab, not helped by the pub-rock-lite band he's currently employing (what I'd give to see him backed by the Raconteurs - they're a tight little band, they just need some decent songs...). He chose some great songs (Blind Willie McTell, Don't Think Twice, Tangled Up In Blue) but his heart just didn't seem to be into doing them justice, as seems invariably the case these days.

Last night was another matter though. Whether Bobby had just had a good day, or if I was just energised by being only 3 rows away I don't know, but Dylan was committed to pretty much everything. Passionate versions of great songs like Absolutely Sweet Marie, Senor and Every Grain Of Sand, and a killer rendition of the standout track from his new album, "Nettie Moore". Time was when I'd travel enormous distances to see Dylan, but the quality of his live shows has really dipped over the last couple of years. He's still doing very interesting things; writing good and occasionally great new songs, the autobiography and hosting his surreal weekly radio show, but his live shows are so dependent on his mood, and most of the time it seems he really can't be arsed.

I was hoping beyond hope for a Jack and Bob duet - they tried their collective hand at The White Stripes' "Ball and Biscuit" at a gig in Detroit a couple of years ago, which was awesome. Sadly, 'twas not to be...

Here's an mp3 of Sunday's performance of the strange and beautiful "Nettie Moore", for anyone interested.

Skymall

One of the few perks of spending an unseemly proportion of one's life on planes is Skymall, which is an inflight catalogue that all of the domestic airlines seem to have. For me it's a throwback to the old Innovations catalogue that used to come with my parents' Sunday Mail (sob) - full of random, mostly pointless gadgets that someone, somewhere thinks is going to make them their fortune. I picked out a couple of choice entries for your amusement and to inspire any budding inventors.

First up, a laser-guided pool cue. More useful for shining in the eyes of your opponent to distract them than imparting any fierce backspin, I think:


Next, an incredible device that lets you play guitar without having to learn any of those pesky chord shapes, or give yourself unsightly callouses:


I think I may do most of my Christmas shopping through this thing...

Southie, bars and brunch

Time for an update, methinks. It's been a few days since I posted and I need to keep it up or else people will stop coming by (if they even are still).

Last week was pretty much just work, work, work. Lots to do here what with trying to hire new people and stuff, and so I didn't really get round to much socialising. I've made up for it this weekend though. On Friday I met a friend of a friend for a few beers - the first man I have properly interacted with since I've been here, which si hardly surprising given my friend-making methods. We had a great time - he's one of those Americans (people even) that can just talk for hours about anything you throw at them, so the evening passed swimmingly. He took me to a bar in South Boston (or Southie, the rough end of town...) called the L Street, that was used in the film Good Will Hunting. Here's a pic:

We had a great time talking about England (he spent some time in Oxford), sports (he's hopefully going to hook me up with a cricket-loving friend for the Ashes), girls (he has a list of half a dozen he wants to set me up with - who am I to complain?) and politics (getting me up to speed on the ins-and-outs of this week's midterms). All over a good few jars of Bostonian brew. Good way to start the weekend, though I had a pretty nasty hangover the next morning.

Saturday was mostly lost to said hangover. I went guitar shopping for a bit in the afternoon, but didn't find anything I really liked just yet. I am getting itchy fingers though - it's been a good few weeks since I had a good pluck. In the evening I went to meet the girls who hosted the Halloween party last week (let's call them M and J, since I shouldn't put people's names on here, but I equally don't want to have to refer to everyone as "this friend"). We had an Italian meal near their house in the Back Bay, and then went back to their place so they could get ready to go out, though after a couple of glasses of red wine we all ended up having a half hour powernap before we got off our arses. Then we went to a bar downtown called Vox, which was good fun, but crammed with people (I sound like an old fuddy-duddy) and not playing the kind of music that got me going. It was an enjoyable night, but I probably more enjoyed lying around in their living room quaffing red wine and chatting than the bar itself. I met their flatmate too, who was very pretty but clearly a bit of a psycho.

Today was much more cultured. I spent the afternoon with D, another girl from speed-dating who I probably "click" the most with out of the friends I've made here so far - we share a lot of the same interests in music, film, politics etc, and she likes to talk about all of them. We went for brunch to a place called Ryles, a jazz club in Inman Square, which is about a 15 minute walk from my place. It was a gorgeous walk, with the weather on what seems to be the default setting for this time of year, i.e. chilly and fresh but with bright sunshine bringing out the best in the leaves, and it put me in a good mood. For brunch I had pumpkin pancakes with bacon, fruit and syrup (I'm still struggling with the American mix of the sweet and savoury though), while a band played old jazz standards and we talked about what we'd been up to. All highly agreeable. Then this afternoon we went to see Little Children at the local arty cinema. I was expecting an American indie-melodrama type flick, like The Good Girl or You and Me and Everyone We Know. This turned out to be an even more fucked up American Beauty though. There were a lot of interesting characters in it (and Kate Winslet was great, as usual), but I came out a little unsatisfied - I think the film was made from a book, and there were just too many characters in there to properly explore in a 2 hour film. Pretty though-provoking though.

That'll do for now. Someone post some a comment, just so I know someone's stopping by!