i had a "day" recently, where some series of miscellaneous events occurred in relative succession, such that not one of them is notorious or even very interesting, but all together they gave me a bit of vertigo and i had to lie down and sleep for about 12 hours.
Saturday i got up to go to my friend Ainsley's birthday party. Ainsley is one half of the Canadian Super-Couple Adam&Ainsley, from Toronto and Alberta, respectively, the city-mouse/country-mouse duo you can't resist. Of course, i am a lazy bastard, and i hardly got out of bed, early on a Saturday, so i could share my praise.
Ainsley decided she wanted to go to Brighton, the beachside community about an hour from London that is the denizen of the kind of 20-year-olds that wear clear sunglasses and spend more money on hair product than food. There is a collective thump-thump beat that's pumped into the seaside clubs and bars at the same monthly rate as electricity or water. But i am able to rise because we're making a DAY-trip, not some nightclubbing ecstacy flush. Despite my trip to San Francisco and LA in March, i haven't seen the sea in about 10 months, and this feels like a bit of a natural defect, like i'm some Dracula who needs a coffin of sand to replenish. (I keep a small dish of St. Augustine sand in my cupboard, but it's just not enough)
*Tangential But Necessary Aside: last summer i went to Burning Man; i'm not really going to recount the experience here (some would argue it is impossible to do so), suffice it to say that i am constantly finding events which in some way pale in comparison to BM. Also, suffice it to say i'll never go back to that flaming hellhole. But my favorite story (and personal sensory experience) of BM was Critical Tits. Your are likely familiar with the activist collective known as Critical Mass, which overtakes city streets on the first Friday of the month to proclaim our possible independence from the automobile. Critical Tits, however, is the yearly parade of about 5,000 women around the lake bed to proclaim independence from bras. I got back from the exhibition and collapsed when i told Davina (Rhodes, class of '01, wife of Jake Byrnes) that i'd collapse if i saw another pair of tits and then she flashed me.
So Brighton basically turned into the British version of that event. Which is to say, older, pastier, and better accents. The weather was actually fantastic. The sun was shining, and getting out of the train station actually gave me a feeling that there is such a thing as 'cool ocean breeze.' The seagulls make me think about being home. The rampant plastic makes me think about Ocean City Maryland. The leathery old men make me think about used wallets.
Walking to the beach Adam gets shat on by a seagull. In Etruscan Rome this was seen as a sign of good luck, but Adam just got upset and stopped our Sherman march to the sea. I told him about the tradition, but he just kept saying, 'damn bird.' When we finally did make it to the sea, i was surprised by two things: the beach was entirely covered in both small to large round pebbles of varying colors and shapes, and small to large round boobs of roughly equally variations.
It's not really fair for me to paint a picture of some ocean of boobs without end (save that for my BM acid flashbacks). There were plenty of runts, geezers and blokes messing about, but i tend not to notice these. I'm no fag. And there are plenty of dazzling things about Brighton Beach. There are 2 giant piers in Brighton: The Palace Pier and The West Pier. The Palace Pier has bumper cars, a roller coaster, a log ride, and plenty of hot dogs. Even an exhibit based on the new Doctor Who television series. The other pier, the The West Pier, had the same sort of thing going for it until it closed down in 1975, laid dormant for 25 years, and then was burned down to pilings and steel framework a couple years ago. It's widely acknowledged that the owner of The Palace Pier had The West Pier burned, but no arrests were made. The beautiful terrible structure is actually a lot more fun to look at than the carnival monstrosity to the east, but kids aren't allowed to play on The West Pier, at least not without a tetnus suit.
But the BOOBS! I hadn't really expected British women to be so forthcoming with their nipples. The pleasant weather probably drew out the pups, as if every resident in the greater London area wanted to save money on holiday by getting a £10 ticket to Brighton instead of a £300 weekend to Oz. The generalizations about English weather are pretty spot on, so it was no surprise to see the pebble beach fully stocked with raw, pale London flesh. And i might corrupt the fantasy a bit further by mentioning that the age of the boobs laid out before me reflected the normal age distribution of England, many of them hanging lower than the fold of their bellybutton. Saggage abound. Once i was in an Eckerd and my friend Julie taught me what the toilet seat extension is for. I imagine women have the same fears.
A couple of the girls in our party took off their tops and then we all preceeded to have a conversation about the shapes of breasts. It's a conversation i soon find myself dominating, which doesn't really bother anyone except the two girls with their tops off, who seem to think themselves the experts for the fact we can all look at their nips. We ended on some vague disagreement on the uniqueness of each set of breasts; not something i'm exactly sure of, given me research in the public and private sector. It's a cute idea, but i'm too much of a generalist not to see things in certain categories.
The rest of the day is lost in a haze of lager, sunsets, and bead shops, though you've lived in cheap seaside towns so you know. I'm the only one that didn't get burned or eat fried foods during the trip, so i don't have any particular scars from the adventure. I got off the train a couple stops too early, and so i had to walk across greater london to get home. I was pretty exhausted, given the sun and the booze, until i get a few blocks from home and see my road blocked off by police cars. Usually this means the Queen's on her way home, but sometimes it happens for fancy (once i was woken up by a police van playing the A-Team theme out of their loudspeaker and driving in circles on Brompton Road).
And then again, i am confronted with The Other. A vast pink parade of women strutting out of Hyde Park wearing nothing but bras and spandex leggings. The Playtex Moonwalk is, ostensibly, a midnight parade of 15,000 bra-clad women powerwalking to raise awareness and money for charity, but for me it was just a punctuation mark on The Day of The Breast. Granted, the mean age rose significantly, but i think i was somewhat vindicated, as the bras these women were wearing were built for comfort, as well as speed, and there was no attempt to push-up to the round ideal. There were no gravity-defying porno globes, just lots of sweaty swelled chests, and more giggle than i am prepared to describe. Sizes, complextions, and sagginess varied, but overwhelming was the mundanity of it all, the averageness of the unprepared tit, and the uncomfort at my at standing for 5 minuntes to watch it. Pert breasts are few and rare and unhappy breasts hang all the same.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The Chelsea Flower Show is Decadent and Depraved
you should keep in mind, you stupid people outside the realm of the brain, that you only see things because your eyes keep moving. if your eyes stopped making tiny movements inside your skull you would cease to see, and cease to make visual memories. the visual system, like the rest of you, is dynamic and thrives on change. like einstein says, the only way to ride a bike is to...but what happens when the moving stops? how do you record an event in your life if the tiny saccades of your eyeballs are forced to standstill because of unnatural factors and nefarious intents. You don't forget, you bastard, you just don't remember.
so this is what is was like to amble through the chelsea flower show. stasis, as best represented by an outdoor/indoor $10million salute to plants. all you could expect, i guess. these factors, i should point out, weren't nefarious so much as inertial: 200,000 people on pensions shuffling through a crowded tent, with only roughly half of them observing the one-way signs directing them from the black orchilds to the strawberry towers, and about half of them sticking to the small picket fences guarding the exhibits. it didn't help that my fellow flower-gazer, the old bastard that got me into the show, was in the beginning stages of Parkinson's, developing his shuffle in an appropriate venue for such a motion.
i never really knew what the lower-upper class looks like till i went to the show, but now i know. Tweed coats and a bamboo cane, or a double brested suit with some meaningless crest sewed onto it, and a wife that looks like Camilla. And horrible teeth, which seemed to me more a mark of priveledge than unruly dentition. the phrase "can't be bothered", emitted at a regular frequency of about 5 times an hour (admittedly, this is a catch phrase common to most of the British, and a goo number of the americans who come get sorted here).
And, of course, rampant rudeness. but i realized about halfway through it, after shuffling past one too many english garden exibits, perhaps after i whiffed too much Miracle-Gro, that the only experience the Show was willing to engender was one of abject boffishness or class submission. I, the American, have no experience with either, and so of course decided to make a complete fool of myself.
It starts, i suppose, when you ask the john deere rep if you can take a lap around the Show in his 30-hp Gator. When he does not capitulate, you make a fuss with British words like finkle and preposterous, but in an annoying American accent ('oh my god, look at the liine'). With that display you've probably earned enough guff to walk into the Champagne and Oysters Tent, run by Perrier-Jouett. Ch. n' O. are apparently the only foods the residents of Knightsbridge are willing to eat in public, outside the confines of four-star restaurants and gastropubs.
You perform the duties of the waiter, i.e. clearing the table of unconsumed Ch. n' O.'s. Men in tweed jackets and golden walking sticks and women with birds on their heads both notice you and scoff. As if you noticed. As if you noticed security, even.
It ends, apparently, with two men in red coats, pensioners who laid down the old limbs for god, queen and country, old enough to be my medieval ancestors, escorting you to the Gate. For "being a nuisance". Nothing for free in this district, mate.
so this is what is was like to amble through the chelsea flower show. stasis, as best represented by an outdoor/indoor $10million salute to plants. all you could expect, i guess. these factors, i should point out, weren't nefarious so much as inertial: 200,000 people on pensions shuffling through a crowded tent, with only roughly half of them observing the one-way signs directing them from the black orchilds to the strawberry towers, and about half of them sticking to the small picket fences guarding the exhibits. it didn't help that my fellow flower-gazer, the old bastard that got me into the show, was in the beginning stages of Parkinson's, developing his shuffle in an appropriate venue for such a motion.
i never really knew what the lower-upper class looks like till i went to the show, but now i know. Tweed coats and a bamboo cane, or a double brested suit with some meaningless crest sewed onto it, and a wife that looks like Camilla. And horrible teeth, which seemed to me more a mark of priveledge than unruly dentition. the phrase "can't be bothered", emitted at a regular frequency of about 5 times an hour (admittedly, this is a catch phrase common to most of the British, and a goo number of the americans who come get sorted here).
And, of course, rampant rudeness. but i realized about halfway through it, after shuffling past one too many english garden exibits, perhaps after i whiffed too much Miracle-Gro, that the only experience the Show was willing to engender was one of abject boffishness or class submission. I, the American, have no experience with either, and so of course decided to make a complete fool of myself.
It starts, i suppose, when you ask the john deere rep if you can take a lap around the Show in his 30-hp Gator. When he does not capitulate, you make a fuss with British words like finkle and preposterous, but in an annoying American accent ('oh my god, look at the liine'). With that display you've probably earned enough guff to walk into the Champagne and Oysters Tent, run by Perrier-Jouett. Ch. n' O. are apparently the only foods the residents of Knightsbridge are willing to eat in public, outside the confines of four-star restaurants and gastropubs.
You perform the duties of the waiter, i.e. clearing the table of unconsumed Ch. n' O.'s. Men in tweed jackets and golden walking sticks and women with birds on their heads both notice you and scoff. As if you noticed. As if you noticed security, even.
It ends, apparently, with two men in red coats, pensioners who laid down the old limbs for god, queen and country, old enough to be my medieval ancestors, escorting you to the Gate. For "being a nuisance". Nothing for free in this district, mate.
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