matthew’s alibi

I finally got unpacked this morning. The internet was down, you understand, so I had nothing better to do, or else I would be living out of the suitcase at least well into next week.

Other than this morning, it’s been a week full of things more interesting than unpacking. Yesterday, for instance, was move-in day for the students at the camp where I work, and this year one of my responsibilities is coordinating shuttles - 82 students, mostly on different flights in different terminals - with about 30 staff members to pick them all up in the course of about 15 hours. I came in at 7:20 AM yesterday and didn’t leave work until nearly 11 PM. I did get out of the office - just to walk over to where the buses were leaving, from the curb, and once to drive to LAX myself and pick up a staff member whose student had gotten stuck in US customs, and had been kept there, incommunicado, for 3 hours. The staff member waited in the arrivals area all that time, and was remarkably unsnarky about it.

Days that are over twelve hours or so long are not uncommon in this first week of work, but thankfully things slow down after that, which means after yesterday’s marathon day, I get to come into work after noon, and have time to write a blog entry in between parent phone calls.

Other than that, it’s been an eventful week, to say the least.

On Saturday, after work, I (finally!) saw the Decemberists (along with the Long Winters and the Places) at the El Rey theater. It was probably the best gig I’ve ever seen, and I’m hoping to write a little more about it in the next couple of days. I went out with my friend Mark, who I think is the first proper “industry” person I’ve ever hung out with in LA, I think, although I think it would probably horrify him to be called that - he’s decidedly New York. We had a great time, despite my having stranded him at Mani’s, a snotty semi-vegan bakery that makes truly wretched chocolate dipped cookies. But Marilu Henner apparently loves them, and that makes up for a multitude of sins, I think.

On Friday, twenty (!) of us went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 on its opening night. I’m hoping/planning on writing a bit more about the film in the next couple of days. I was figuring it would sell out, so I booked a dozen tickets early (on my credit card!). This is a bad idea. First of all, more than twelve people wanted tickets, and I felt bad about it - and by then, the show was sold out for twenty miles in every direction (except, when I checked, at the Universal Citywalk, which makes sense, because who in their right mind would want to go there?)

On Thursday, six of us went to Tiger Heat - where they were celebrating their three year anniversary. That means we got in on the very ground floor of Tiger Heat my first summer at CTY. I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of. The club has moved from the classy Hollywood Athletic Club to a place called the Arena in West Hollywood. While it’s got some nice bits, I miss the 80’s room a lot, and I don’t like the way they segregate the over 21’s and the under 21’s at the new venue - particularly having been in the alcopop-soggy UK for the past six months, it just seems beyond silly to me.

Still, we had a good time. I got chatted up by an English footballer on holiday, and a recent political science grad from California (who, oddly, lived for 8 years in England. There must be some weird “talk to me if you’re British” vibe radiating from me. I certainly wouldn’t mind.) Also, my co-worker, who I had thought relatively quiet, surprised us all by taking over a podium and dancing on it for upwards of a half hour. She complained all the following day about the bruises she acquired when she fell off the podium at one point.

On Wednesday, I had my first ever karaoke experience. It was a place on Sawtelle called Yuu Yuu Karaoke Studio, a tiny little place that sold lots of cool Asian food. It was a really good time - I helped sing Californication, Skater Boy, and Come on Eileen (which is surprisingly difficult, as it turns out.)

On Tuesday, we had a late night in the office and had a big dinner at PF Chang’s after. I had been craving the Ma Po tofu, which everyone else ended up trying. One of my co-workers actually literally called home about it she liked it so much.

And on Monday, we kicked off the week by going with the whole staff to the Santa Monica pier. A lot of folks rode the rickety old scary roller coaster, but a few of us curmudgeonly admins felt that an old creaky roller coaster over the Ocean was perhaps not the optimal place for a Sunday night, and so we stayed at the carnival and tried to figure out the best strategy for a game that involved climbing suspended ladders to press a buzzer without first flipping over. All in all, a magical night (although no Smash Mouth, who were filming a video the last time we had a first all-staff outing in Santa Monica…)

Lots more news from LA on the way, but if you haven’t heard from me lately, hopefully this will explain part of the reason why - I’ve been staying very, very busy! In the next update, I’ll tell you a little about the job and car fronts, and try to make it less than deathly dull.

Did I mention my friend Angelo was sweet enough to send me a gmail invitation? So I’m having a good time playing with it, which is taking up a good chunk of my afternoon. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a while. Which would be ironic, wouldn’t it?

I’ve made it to Los Angeles, and after two nights at the fabulous Hacienda Hotel, I’ve moved into my place for the summer. Well, half moved in. OK, I brought a couple of the suitcases in and started fussing with the internet.

A good thing, too, as I’ve got high speed wireless joy here now, which, after an eternity (well, a week, anyway) of dialup, I thought I was gonna die. Dramatic, much?

I’d love to tell you about my scary rental car, and about getting utterly disoriented in the elevator at the Hacienda, and about the sunshine in California, and I promise I will - as soon as I unpack. So, that will be next week some time, at this rate!

Despite (or perhaps because of) my elaborate plan, things went wonky fast. I left my flat later than I had intended - around 10:30 with what can only be described as a slightly new-wave looking pair of eyes peering out as it shuffled down the Wells Street and waited pitifully on Oxford Street for a cab driver to stop.

I couldn’t help but feel the whole time that I was only going on a short vacation - that I wasn’t leaving Britain for long. I think that helped me get through.

The cab that finally did stop featured a surprisingly chatty driver, which was a nice distraction. He had been bombarded by foreign currency that morning - the customers before me had paid in American dollars and in Euro, and he was none too thrilled, and spoke in a near impenetrable accent. I found it really charming, but I may have been lightheaded and disoriented from carrying the luggage - I woke up with bruises around my neck from the weight. (I don’t mean I slept with my luggage. You know what I mean.)

When I got to the airport, I set off the metal detector, of course. First I had to take off my belt, and when it still beeped, I had to be thoroughly scanned, and they ion-tested my shoes. The gentleman who did it was so friendly and pleasant it was easy to be friendly in return. He even explained to me what the machine did (it tests those little swabs of cloth for ions fom explosives - the machines can also be switched to test for drugs, he told me, but that he wasn’t worried about drugs.) I had figured as much, but I had always been afraid to ask before, since I always figured it’s not a good idea to seem to have an inoordinate amount of interest in what the airport security is doing.

The plane ride was uneventful.  I sat next to a guy who was kind of cute, but not at all chatty.  I didn’t mind; talking to people on air planes - on flights over seven hours, especially - is always an odds game. I don’t mind talking to my seatmates if they’re interesting, but there’s always a good chance that they won’t be.  I’d say the chances of him being tiresome were pretty high, actually, based on the fact that he was ravenously devouring a sleazy looking book about the Kennedy assassination.  I was terrified that if I tried to start a conversation, I would have to hear about it.

So, instead, I kept to myself and read my own book, Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair.  In it, the author travels around the London version of the Monopoly game board, discussing what each of the streets and stations would have looked like in the 1930’s, when the game came out.  The London monopoly board (which I didn’t even know existed, but apparently the London version was played all over the British empire, in India and Australia and New Zealand and so on) is all centered around the West End, which is where I have been living for the past six months.  I’m very well acquianted with most of the streets he’s discussing, so the book is a treat in that way, although I’m not sure I like his writing style.  I will probably post a brief review when I get finished with it.

So, we landed in Detroit.  I’ve always liked the Detroit airport - it has this tunnel with a moving sidewalk people-mover thing in a lighted psychedelic tunnel - I’m not sure I’m describing it very well, but it’s very cool.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have to go through the psychedelic tunnel to get to my gate, and I was too exhausted to seek it out just for jollies.

I went through security again, since you have to claim your luggage and get re-screened as well as go through customs at your first point of entry into the US.  I set off all the alarms again.  I was especially paranoid about this, as I had a pack of cashews burning a hole in my pocket.  They had said on the plane not to even try bringing fruits or vegetables into the country, as there was a huge fine.  I was thinking “do cashews count?” and decided that they didn’t.  Then the customs officer asked me if I had any food.  The cashews were burning a hole in my pocket, but I decided she must mean fresh agriculture, certainly not packaged nuts, which were hardly even food, really.  Right?  I got through (although she was not impressed with my passport, which recently went through the washing machine) and moved on to security, where I promptly set off all the alarms again.

Although they were not as characteristically rude as usual, they certainly weren’t as lovely as my cockney friend from that morning at Gatwick.  I had to take off my shoes and stand up and have the wand thing passed all over me, over and over again.  It kept beeping when it got near my snaps.  I had to stand with my arms straight out at my sides and my head facing forward, toward the line of people coming in through security, which is never much fun - being frisked in front of hundreds of travellers looking at once smug that they’re not being frisked in front of strangers and terrified that they soon might be.  And I had to empty my pockets.  I thought, “Oh no, my cashew game is up!” But the security guard couldn’t have been less interested in my cashews.

I got to the gate with plenty of time left.  I was listening to Sufjan Stevens deliciously good album Welcome to Michigan! The Great Lakes State (I saw Stevens play at Bush Hall last Thursday) and was bopped happily down the hall to the mechanistic folk of Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!

As I pondered how I could recharge my electronics, the announcement came:  our flight would be delayed 20 minutes, as the incoming flight had been delayed by weather.  Oh, the gate attendant added, almost as an afterthought, and the mechanics were going to have to check out the door, since the flight crew on the inbound flight thought they heard air rushing in through the door.

People in the lobby were unimpressed by this.  They were still less impressed a half hour later when it was announced that the flight was postponed until 6 AM the next morning.  We were directed to the ticket counter, but I stopped off to try and call home and let the parents know not to come get me.  I couldn’t get through, and the phone was rejecting my credit card.  After fifteen or twenty minutes of frustration, I called my uncle collect and asked him to get in touch with them.  With the time difference, the fact I didn’t have a clock set to the proper time zone, I didn’t realize that they were already waiting for me in Pittsburgh.

The line to get re-booked, by the time I got to the ticket counter, was at least forty people strong, and there was one harried looking woman working who hadn’t had a break since 4 PM.  We stood in that line for three hours, and although there were some small temper flares, most of the people were good humored and troopers.  Northwest really handled it badly - they should have made some sort of announcement to everyone as a group about what to expect instead of leaving us to wonder for three hours what our situation would be that evening.

When I finally got to the front, I was presented with a voucher for a hotel, and $20 of meal vouchers, as well as a phone calling card and $35 off my next flight with Northwestern.  (That’s a joke, right?)

My comrades from the line (a Nashville girl named Carrie who was headed to my parents old stomping ground of Jane Lew and a young family of six whose four - or maybe five - daughters were bouncing off the walls by the end of the night) jumped on a Park 2 Fly tram and made our way to the beautiful Northwest Inn.  The diner in the Best Western was nearly closed, there was only one waitress working, and they only had sandwiches anyway, so I opted for a local pizza place that took the airline vouchers.

On my way back to my room, I ran into an elderly couple who also had a cancelled flight and who were getting shunted between Best Western and Northwest Inn.  The checkin girl at the Northwest Inn couldn’t have seemed more bored or less helpful, and offered them a smoking double, which was the last room in the hotel.  This caused them great despair, and, remembering a kind lady on a cancelled flight to Portland who offered me her mobile phone to call my folks when absolutely nothing else was working, I offered to trade them my non-smoking room.

In general, I tried to be relentlessly positive about things over the course of the evening.  I figured the only place I could be that would be better than Michagan would be home with the folks, and since that wasn’t going to happen, I might as well try and have a nice evening.  Also, unflagging cheer in that situation seemed to really perplex people, and that was fun to watch.

So, I’m back at the airport, and my plane is boarding now.  I’m finally off to Pittsburgh.  More updates soon…

I’ve never been very good at packing. Everyone has tips - the latest trend seems to be “roll everything! You can fit more!” But suggesting that rolling a couple of t-shirts will help me fit the contents of my room into an oversize suitcase, a large duffel bag, a backpack and my laptop case is something akin to saying I could pack the results of the big bang back into a single speck if I could just roll up Toledo.

It’s been a hell of a last week. I’ve fit so much into this week that I can barely remember what went on. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to write about some of it in the next few days, but probably not - here’s the itinerary from here:

Tomorrow, Monday, I fly out of Gatwick in to Pittsburgh, via Detroit. It was either that or Newark, and, oddly, the total time for the Newark version was longer than the Detroit option. I get into Pittsburgh in the evening, and will probably get back to West Virginia fairly late at night. The folks will be picking me up, and I can’t wait to see them and the animals!

I may or may not have a rental car at my disposal during my time on the farm. If not, the joy of sharing a car with Mom will be an extra delight for the week. On Tuesday, I’ll be back at the Asian Garden - hopefully some of the old gang will be there as well. On Wednesday, I’ve got a dentist appointment. I’m really excited about it, but I’m not sure why. On Thursday, I’m having dinner at the Cafe of India buffet with a friend from WVU. Yes, I have scheduled the trip around the relevant vegetarian buffets.

Then, on Friday evening, it’s back to lovely Pittsburgh International Airport where I’ll be whisked away to California. I’ll be getting in quite late at night, and probably staying in a hotel for the first couple of nights. On Saturday, I’ll be up bright and early and off to the Enterprise to get a car in order to go look at cars to buy. The plan is to use the free time during the week (I’m not exactly sure when that will be, but…) to pick out a few used car options that I can investigate in person on Saturday, and hopefully even go ahead and get a car. On Sunday, I move in at LMU, and on Monday, I start work.

So, that’s the next week in a nutshell. This time tomorrow, I’ll be more than 3,000 miles and a whole ocean away, and this time next week, I’ll be over 6,000 miles away. It’s a bit much to contemplate!

I’ve been seeing London friends to say goodbye over the past couple of days, which has been nice, but sad, as well. When I got home tonight, the flat felt terribly empty. There were a few more goodbye phone calls, and when I hung up, my room turned into the loneliest place in London. I put on some Phil Ochs and then some Belle and Sebastian to keep me company, and that seemed to do the trick.

I’m doing my best not to dwell on how much I’m going to miss London. It’s relatively easy not to dwell since there’s a lot to keep me focused on the future rather than looking backwards, but it sneaks up on me sometimes - like looking out my window as I type this out across Wells Street, and thinking that this is my last night in this room. It often seems completely impossible that it’s only been six months or so that I’ve been in London - I think more has happened in that time than in any two whole years at WVU! I’m still very much in love with London, and can easily see myself moving back here.

I’ve spent enough time procrastinating. It’s going to be a big couple of weeks! I’ll do my best to keep things updated on here. I’m also hoping to do a “London wrap up” here soon, kind of a final analysis of some of the shows and gigs and restaurants and things that have rocked these past several months. I don’t know when I’ll find the time to do that! In the meantime, I should get back to packing. Maybe if I roll my socks, I’ll be able to fit the underwear!