What's American for "it's the vibe"?

The President of the USA and... some chick

I spent last night baking kangaroo-shaped cookies to celebrate Australia Day, the national Aussie holiday which, if I were home, I would normally spend enjoying the day off, swimming, barbequing, listening to the radio and getting drunk, but because I’m across the other side of the world I will spend working, drinking coffee, napping on my desk and getting drunk. Oh, and eating kangaroo-shaped cookies.

Actually, the thing I miss most about Australia Day is the listening to the radio part. While I guess it may seem like some sort of quaint tradition to those not fortunate enough to call that big, dry, marsupial-infested island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean ‘home’, in fact listening to the Hottest 100 is an important cultural right and indicator of social belonging. Listening to the Hottest 100 is to Australians what watching the Superbowl is to Americans: everyone organizes house parties or crowds into bars and screams obscenities at electrical objects that can’t hear them. Basically, in the lead up to Australia Day, Triple J (the government-funded nationwide youth radio station… see guys, big government ain’t so bad after all!) organizes a huge online ballot where you can vote for your favourite ten songs of the preceding year. Voter turnout is pretty damn huge, numbering somewhere around 2 million people I think – so, a larger percentage of people than those who drag their asses of the couch to go and vote for the President (who, let’s not forget, is also the leader of the free world, for now at least) in America. On the big day itself, the countdown stretches until the early evening, when, upon the announcement of the number one song – which always happens to be at once completely out-of-the-blue and completely underwhelming – screams of excitement or disappointment rise up from just about every backyard in every street in every town across the land.

Anyway I was explaining this to my lovely new housemates while I haphazardly rolled out my cookie dough last night (“Wait, you’re making it from scratch? Why?” which was the natural progression from last week’s comment, in relation to my exclamation that you can buy cake frosting already made in a can, of “Of course you can. How else do you get frosting?”) and they were peppering me with questions about the holiday, our traditions, and Vegemite (“it tastes like vitamins”). In the course of the conversation, we decided that the analogous holiday in America might be Thanksgiving, at which point one of them said, sweetly, “Thanksgiving is a national holiday here in America. We eat turkey and pumpkin pie and all the family comes together to give thanks for allthe good things in our life.”

I looked at her blankly. Seriously? Did I need that explained that to me?

And then I realized: Americans think that we know as little about them as they do about us. Because they have no idea what 72 degrees is in Celsius or whether we have freshman and sophomores or what a “Sheila” is or whether we have parliamentary democracy or what any of the cities that aren’t Sydney or Melbourne are called, they assume that we are similarly lost when it comes to the equivalent in their country. They’re completely unaware that we have all of this information shoved down our throats every day from birth, through the television and books and music and even our own slowly-Americanising culture. Since I’ve arrived here Americans have stopped to tell me the meaning of any number of things I have not only heard of, but been colloquially familiar with – the meaning of ‘frat’ and ‘jock’, what a hogie is, that ‘Philly’ is short for ‘Philadelphia,’ what Crisco is, who the speaker of the House of Representatives is – despite the fact that those things don’t exist in Australia at all. Watching the State of the Union while eating dinner last night, one of my roomies turns and, in all kindness, points at Joe Biden and says “that’s the Vice President, Joe Biden.” Are you kidding me? Does he think that just because Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan aren’t on the front page of the New York Times once a week, it doesn’t mean that Obama and Biden aren’t gracing the pages of The Australian? I almost expect them to say “Just Google it. Do you know Google? It’s like a search engine that we have here in America. It’s awesome, you should totally see if you can download it illegally or something.”

There was just one exception to this insanity in the last week that put a smile on my face: while reading an article in the New Yorker on mass incarceration in America, I was pretty tickled pink to find a reference to The Castle, an AMAZING Australian film that is just about required viewing in every law school in the country. The article was referring to this scene, which has become a cultural reference akin to “a dingo ate my baby” around which whole friendships and relationships can be made by Australians in bars in remote, foreign locations:

  

If the Americans are referencing this (and in an almost intellectual way), I thought, then perhaps things aren’t so bad after all. Perhaps we Aussies are finally about to make an impression on this country and The Castle will receive the accolades it so deserves. Only 15 bloody years after it was released!

Happy Australia Day!  

The cult of groceries

One of the feelings that has characterised my New York experience so far is that of paralysis by choice. Walking into Duane Reade, confronted by 72 different types of toothpaste, I find myself unable to muster my thoughts into a coherent decision. When someone asks me whether I want blue, Swiss, cheddar, American, or cream cheese on something, I stare at them blankly. Perusing colourful candy bars and endless gossip magazines leaves me hypnotised; choosing coathangers at The Container Store on the weekend almost had me in a state of catatonia.

Of all major choices I have had to make in the last week, the one by which I am most seriously paralysed is that of supermarket. So scared into indecision I am at the thought of aligning myself with one grocery store in particular, I have yet to visit any of them, and as such have been forced to survive on raw almonds and sushi . It is not only about number of supermarkets from which there are to choose, although that is certainly part of it. But even more serious is the gravity of the decision. It seems that in New York one commits to a supermarket as they commit to a life partner - they stay with them through thick and thin, they travel long distances to be with them, and they defend them against public criticism. New Yorkers love Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Zabars, The Food Emporium, Costco, or Fairway so passionately, wearing their heart on their sleeve. A trip to Trader Joes reveals an underground lair of hundreds of deliriously happy people, passing coconuts and peanut butter cups to shopping companions, reaching up to select organic cereals from high shelves for short grannies, revealing their innermost insecurities to the hawaiian-shirted girl at the cashier. People are crazy for that place, seriously!

The New Yorker had a great article on this a couple of weeks ago, I'd recommend it to anyone facing the same paralysing decision. Your choice of supermarket may go on to determine your future, so you'd want to make sure you read up on all of your options before you take the plunge. Because, I suspect, in New York it would be much harder to leave your supermarket than it would be to leave your life partner.

a little perspective

On Saturday, a friend and I hired a car and embarked on a mini-road trip to visit Woodbury Common, a Truman Show-esque village of outlet shops somewhere in upstate New York where one can unload the entire contents of their credit card on a variety of fashion and household goods that they don't need. Sounds like a blast, right? Well, it would have been had New York and it's surrounds not received pretty steady snowfall all throughout Friday night. We awoke on Saturday morning to find a city covered in white, it's sounds and sights muted by the soft marshmellowy cover. Those initial few hours of Saturday morning, before the crowds mustered the bravery to leave their homes and the snow melted into brown mush, were no less than magical. That is, of course, unless you were driving on the I-87 upstate, in which case they were no less than perilous.

We survived, however (though our credit cards were badly damaged) and I found myself enjoying the opportunity to be out of the big smoke. It sounds so cliched, but after only a week in the city I already needed a bit of space, a small reminder that the world does not begin and end, like in the Truman Show, at the edges of Manhattan.

The following day we squidged around the streets of Williamsburg, our breath clouding in front of us as we took pictures of cool graffiti and admired the awesome view of the Manhattan skyline. The city looks so small from over there.

When I returned home my housemate, in response to my exclamations about how much fun we'd had in Williamsburg, replied with a scowl, "Brooklyn? Ew. I never go to Brooklyn. Why would I need to?" and reality set in again. Who was I kidding? The world really does begin and end in New York.

Well, at least to New Yorkers it does.

What's with the spots?

Last night, swathed in layers of scarves and jumpers, I walked headfirst into the bone-chillingly windy western streets of Chelsea to seek out the Gagosian Gallery on West 24th (between 10th and 11th... so basically IN the river). Gagosian is currently exhibiting The Complete Spot Paintings, a collection of all of Hirst's completely dotty paintings, across its 11 galleries worldwide. Though I'm no art guru or afficionado, nor a Hirst devotee, I have of course a general social awareness of him and how he fits into pop-cultural discussions and attitudes. The formaldehyde shark and the diamond encrusted skulls and the debate that surrounds them sits somewhere on the periphery of my consciousness, along with Snooki and the Ryan Gosling meme and The Wire and Newt Gingrich. As in, I get that these are all things, but that's about the extent of it. 

Anyway, going to the exhibition of Hirst's spot paintings caused a kind of chain reaction where all those periphery-bound thoughts about his work, whether it is art, what is its worth etc. came stumbling to the forefront of my brain. I tossed through them while I stood in the cavernous hall, my brain (seriously unschooled, in matter of art that is) holding the following dialogue: "wow, they certainly make an impression. Isn't that what art is supposed to do? They're deceptively simple pieces, do you think he used a computer or some sort of automated device to draw those circles? Is that what art is really about? Well, isn't he challenging our preconceptions of beauty and aesthetics? This kind of provokes a feeling of nothingness, isn't that kind of the antithesis of what art is meant to do - fulfill you, move you? I don't know, is that what art is really about? Or is it about challenging you, making you uncomfortable? But this doesn't even make me uncomfortable, it just makes my eyes sting because the whiteness is so white that it makes the coloured spots kind of dance around. You know what would be cool, a spotty key ring. Where is the gift shop?"

In the end, I settled on an opinion on the works, which was so unarticulate that I would have never dreamed of expressing it here, until I stumbled across this excerpt of a review in The New Yorker, which says it better than I could have ever hoped to say it: 

“Deliberate deadness distinguishes Hirst’s art, not only in the famous pickled shark but in everything he makes, including the paintings now globally on display: grid arrangements of colored disks, in household gloss paint, on white grounds. Their formulaic concept amounts to intellectual formaldehyde. I can enjoy looking at one for a while, but to like them would entail identifying with the artist’s cynicism, as herds of collectors, worldwide, evidently do. Hirst will go down in history as a peculiarly cold-blooded pet of millennial excess wealth. That’s not Old Master status, but it’s immortality of a sort.”

I especially liked that the snipped is entitled, "Jumping the Shark", invoking another peripheral cultural reference out there in my subconscious.  

Shit New Yorkers Say

In yet another spin-off on the Shit Girls Say meme, today I discovered Shit New Yorkers Say, which had me partly in hysterics, and partly making mental lists about things I should start saying if I want to be a real New Yorker. I've got the "where is the train?" down pat, now I'm working on the "there's Sarah Jessica Parker... oh who cares." Hilarious. Bagels!

Jerry, Jerry everywhere

In five days living in New York, I’ve already experienced a number of profound, earth-shattering realizations – if you walk out in front of a car the traffic will actually cede to you, rather than run you straight over (maybe don’t try this one at home); you’ll get a lot further if you ask for the “check” at the end of a meal than the “bill”; and there really is a method to the madness of the subway map. These New York realizations are beautiful things, small moments of achievement and satisfaction in a city here the big moments of frustration and desperation come at you hard and fast.

The most profound, earth-shattering of these realizations, so far – although I find it hard to imagine that anything, ever, will top it – came to me when I was standing in a sweaty subway car coming home from work last night, and Jerry Seinfeld walked in and sat next to me. Okay , it wasn’t the real life Jerry Seinfeld, but rather a near-identical embodiment of his fictional self, complete with scuffed New Balance sneakers; baggy, slightly-faded jeans worn just a tad too high;  shirt, jumper and coat both too big and at the same time failing to conceal the slight middle-aged paunch; a generously receding hairline, and a New York Times in hand. As I looked this man up and down, the various thoughts running through my head – “what, are joggers and jeans like some kind of New York uniform?” “who IS this man, and who is he MARRIED to?” “I never knew there were so many shades of navy and black” – were eventually drowned out by one clear, over-powering fact: in New York, this Jerry Seinfeld doppelganger is everywhere. He is in every subway, in every deli, lining up for coffee and bagels and hot dogs and cigarettes at every street van on every street. He is walking with his wife in the park and fighting with the attendant at the post office at and talking baseball with another guy just like him at a bus stop and picking up apples and bananas at Trader Joes. He has no discernible fashion sense, sexual orientation, religion, or job. His ethnicity is undetectable; you could only really describe it as “New York”.

And then came the profound, earth-shattering realization – Jerry Seinfeld is everyman! The Seinfeld writers did not, as I had previously believed, invent a character full of quirks and nuances, a unique individual so bizarre in his mannerisms, appearance and habits that he couldn’t possibly exist in real life! No! They designed a character that is a tribute to every man just like him in New York; so full of quirks and nuances, so bizarre that he exists in every man in this city. All of them, each and every one of them, are a little bit Jerry. The Seinfeld writers have created a historical chronicle of our times; a cultural portrait of a man who is none of us, but at the same time, all of us.

This does NOT bode well for my dating life…

the sound of night

It's 5:00am, and I have long since dismissed the prospect of sleep. For two hours now I have lain here trying to achieve silence and stillness in a city that is the antithesis of both. It is not only the noises - the fire trucks and police cars who not only employ what is surely the world's most obnoxious-sounding siren, but also insist on honking their horns to really drive home their point; the car alarms and the garbage trucks; the groups of drunken frat boys revelling in the win, a few hours ago, of the New York Giants in the quarter finals of the football playoffs; the distant screams and grunts and cries and laughter; the bangs and shakes and hissing of the radiators; the low hum of the televisions and refrigerators - which amount to no less than a cacophony, but also the... energy... which keeps me awake. It is no over-exaggeration to say that there is something akin to a kind of electricity - a "buzz" for want of a better word - which runs constantly through this city, keeping its inhabitants warm and energized and concordant in the belief that they are young and indestructible and able to have the world whatever way they want it. This energy is both a product of and an essential pre-condition to life at the centre of the world. It is present in every part of New York, it is what inspires her thinkers and artists, what motivates her scammers and entrepreneurs, what sustains her dreamers and idealists. It is one of the many beautiful, unique things about this city of cities.

It is also highly likely to be the cause off my inevitably slow, painful death by sleep deprivation.