Costume Count

It is 8 am and the sun is barely up. It was dark when I went running and very surreal to see witches, mad hatters and demons roaming the streets of SOMA. The rain that descended mid-run only made the makeup of those in Joker costumes more authentic.

Witches - 3

Jokers - 2

Mad Hatters - 1

Sarah Palins - 4

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin - 1 

The Ex is from a town near Brighton famed for its Bonfire Night celebrations. Each year, there is a theme for the effigies burnt on the bonfire. One year, it was parking meters (when these had been introduced to the town high street). Given that Bonfire Night is the day after election day, I can guess what the effigies might be this year.

California Raining

People claim it was raining today in San Francisco for the first time since I've been here. Of course, I wasn't near enough a window for long enough during daylight hours to confirm this but from the amount of concerned/relieved chatter about the annoyance/joys of the rain coming, I assume it was true. Also, the streets were wet as I left work, although because of the vast numbers of homeless people, drunks and tourists, there is usually at least one person cleaning the street along the route of my morning running outings so it's conceivable that this "rain" was all just a big hoax.

Crazy Pizzas

I had no food in my kitchen tonight (other than pesto and bagels) and I was too tired to face Whole Foods (let alone Safeway), which meant I was forced to eat out. There was a Gridskipper post a couple of weeks ago on the best pizza in San Francisco and to my surprise, one was a pizzeria just down the block from the apartment: Pazzia. I had been meaning to check it out at some point but it always seemed too busy and the queue outside on Saturday night was pretty darn long. 

At the Boundary of Sexy Costumes and Political Satire

San Francisco: where even the "adult" bookshops are all political. This would never happen in England — the sign would have said, "Joe the plumbers [sic] favourite store. You betcha. DVD's [sic] as low as £19.99." 

Garden Paths

Stranded runners search resumes, sez the Beeb of the awful weather conditions that have marred a two-day mountain marathon in the Lake District. The first time I read the headline, I assumed it meant, "Stranded runners check out some CVs" (I obviously have been in the States too long, what with my could I get?s and my waiting in lines). 

I was multitasking, as per usual, and so I didn't pause for thought, although at the back of my mind it didn't seem to make sense (whose CVs would the runners be searching? And why would that help?) but it was only when I re-read it that I realised it meant, "The search for stranded runners resumes" (this is what happens when you clip too many words from a sentence and leave it saturated with nouns).

This type of headline leads to a phenomenon called, very technically, in linguistics "garden pathing" (when reading, the brain is constantly seeking to come up with the most likely way a word or a sentence will be finished based on the information we already have--just like predictive texting, really--but sometimes the linguistic context means that the reader is led up a garden path). 

In this scenario, "Stranded runners" is a noun phrase (a noun plus any associated articles and adjectives) and noun phrases are often followed by a verb phrase (a verb plus any adverbs or other associated words), so when I read "search," my brain was already primed to expect a verb and I read the sentence as:

[Stranded runners] [search] [resumes]

[NP] [VP] [NP]

The sub-editor (presumably to keep the word count of the headline as low as possible) chopped out so many words that we actually get a three-word noun phrase followed by a one-word verb phrase:

[Stranded runners search] [resumes]

[NP] [VP]

I find the headline particularly clunky because although "stranded runners search" is serving as an ellipsis for "the search for stranded runners," this type of elision occurs more commonly when the preposition "of" not "for" is involved (genitive not dative case; for example, "the lovely garden of my parents" becomes "my parents' lovely garden).

There are more complex examples of garden pathing, some of which I need to read several times before I can work out, such as, The horse raced past the barn fell. Still, along with pied-piping (restructuring a sentence so that it does not end with a preposition; I think Winston Churchill satirically said something along the lines of, That is the type of attitude up with which I will not put), WTF coordination (my favourite example being from Alanis) and wh-islands, garden pathing did help to make my dull syntax lectures interesting--for the quirky name if for no other reason. Gosh, this post has turned into a stream of nostalgia for a love of syntax I never really had (jeez, now I'm going all Pynchon-esque)! I think I might have drunk too much coffee again.

San Francisco: Sun, Shops and Cinema

Finally, a gorgeous day and I could wear shorts and flipflops and soak up some of the sunshine. After my visit to the Academy, I hopped on a bus (using a probably expired transfer ticket) for six blocks north but it was still quite a long walk east along Clement Street to get to Cow Hollow. 

The California Academy of Charismatic Creatures

As there has been such media hype over the long-awaited re-opening of the California Academy of Sciences, I thought I ought to pay a visit, even if I did baulk at the admission charge of $24.95 ($16.95 if you came via "alternative transport" and have an (ah-hem) valid student ID). Coming from London where you can get into the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and many others for free (or for a genuinely optional "suggested admission"), this is pretty pricey. Even the American Museum of Natural History in New York is only $15 for adults. 

Crafty Design Festivals Just Aren't Fair

One of my favourite SF-based jewellery makers (The Weekend Store, from whom I got my 'B' typewriter key necklace) was exhibiting at the Capsule Design Festival so I decided to go along. To me, "design festival" reeks of the kind of place where recent arts school graduates exhibit their really kewl alternative designs for tables or mugs or, I don't know, matches. It's actually just Amerispeak (or, at least, Bay Arean) for "craft fair." Does craft fair just make it sound as though it's going to be a bunch of old ladies selling their knitted oven gloves or home-made flapjacks, or something?

The Pancake Tour of America

Every time I come to the US, I like to have at least one decent burger (not usually very difficult to achieve) and one brunch of pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. The latter can be tracked down in the UK but the bacon is rarely crispy enough and the pancakes are usually only mediocre. 

Planespotting

It's Fleet Week at the moment and so San Francisco is even more sailor-filled than usual. It almost feels as though I've stumbled into a Thomas Pynchon novel. This also means that it's impossible, as a woman, to walk around without receiving some 'complimentary remarks' from said able-bodied seamen or being accused of being anti-patriotic when declining to go to a bar with them (the clue's in the accent, guys — ditto to the dudes who were demanding that I voted Obama. If only I could..). Still, Pynchon primed me to expect them to burst into song or a bawdy limerick every few minutes or so and thus far, I've been pretty disappointed.

Election Fever

I haven't yet been swept up in the election fever that is sweeping through my current adopted country, although I'm sure I will in time, given that I got pretty into the last US elections even from Nowheresville, so much so that I stayed up watching the BBC coverage until at least three a.m. on election night. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not that I'm skipping the country two days before the elections--I think part of the reason I enjoy election night is because of the dry, cynical coverage it gets in the UK but it would be pretty cool hanging out and doing whatever Americans do on election night (go to bars to watch the results come in, presumably).

There is no shortage of coverage on TV, anyway, not that I've been watching much--occasionally, I'll flip the TV on as background noise, forgetting that much of American TV is for people who have already lost their minds. Almost every ad break (which seem to take place every six minutes or so) contains at least one piece of political propaganda, all of which seem to be encouraging voters to do things like, "Vote no on prop 7." Fine, I guess, except they don't explain what prop 7 is--do they assume that everyone knows by heart exactly what a yes/no vote on each "prop" means or do they think that it's better that people don't know and that if they repeat the phrase "no on prop 7" approximately 11 times in a 30-second commercial, all the viewer will remember is "no on prop 7" and not what the bill means? 

The latter, I assume. Occasionally, the commercial will venture more information like, "Maybe you feel funny when you think about a same-sex couple marrying--and that's fine as you are entitled to your opinion but don't you think that other people should be able make their own minds up and that marriage for all should be allowed? Vote no on prop x, you bigoted piece of shit, or else!"

I can't decide which are worse--these pieces of political propaganda or the medical propaganda that make up about 30% of the other adverts ("Hey, you! Yes, you! Are you suicidal or depressed? Well, ask your doc for this great drug because science proves it can help! Yes, really! But there are a list of side effects that takes longer to read than the rest of the ad--oh, and you shouldn't take this wonder drug in the following 20-seconds worth of circumstances."). They both hurt my head.

Keira's Menage à Sept

Two Keira Knightley films in one weekend was probably a bit much but having gone to see The Duchess with E on Saturday afternoon, I decided I didn't have much more to lose by watching The Edge of Love on the plane. 

The Duchess, of course, has the tagline, "there were three people in her marriage," which was playing on something Princess Diana, the descendant of Georgiana, the duchess in question, had said about her own marriage. The three people in question being Georgiana, her cold, detached husband the Duke (played very well by Ralph Fiennes) and her best friend, Bess, who comes to live with them as the Duke's live-in mistress. Fair enough. In the Amanda Foreman biography on which the film is based, this little threesome is the focus. However, in the film, they choose to highlight the fourth person in the marriage--the future Earl Grey, the love of Georgiana's life. Dominic "History Boys" Cooper makes an attractive Grey though he doesn't seem experienced enough to play this role very well. So far, then, four people--and that's before you include the duke's beloved pet dogs.

The basic plot is this: Georgiana very excitedly marries the older Duke (she seems more excited about the idea of becoming a duchess than with the Duke himself), spends seven years failing to produce an heir (although has two daughters), while the Duke has multiple affairs, latterly with Georgiana's best friend Elizabeth Foster. She (reasonably, perhaps?) thinks that if he can do it, so can she and starts carrying on with Grey. "No," sez the Duke, "this is the 18th century, dear, and you are forgetting that there are plenty of double-standards to comply with. I will continue to shag Bess but you are not allowed to be with this Grey chap. Now, come here and let's produce an heir." The film portrays the Duke as abusive and taking Georgiana by force, although, of course, these standards don't really make sense in an 18th century context. In the end, he makes her choose between Grey and her children--she picks Grey and then starts to read the letters from the enfants that the Duke has thoughtfully left behind, and changes her mind and goes to confine herself to a lifetime of misery and lost opportunities.

While this is all recorded in the biography, there are other elements that seem more important, such as Georgiana's addiction to gambling and repeated, crippling debts and the relationship between Bess and Georgiana. The film has one, vaguely sapphic scene but Foreman highlights throughout the extremely deep friendship between the two and although she cautions that it doesn't make sense to talk about a heterosexual vs homosexual relationship between the two, people did question the closeness of their friendship; furthermore, in reality, Georgiana's friends and family questioned her devotion to Bess, who they felt was using her for various ends and that Georgiana was too gullible to see it.

None of the background of friendship comes off very well in the film, though, where Georgiana sees her husband flirting with Bess, goes to introduce herself, becomes best friends with her, then goes post-modern when she finds out Bess and the Duke are sleeping together. The same is true in The Edge of Love, where Keira this time plays Dylan Thomas's other woman to Sienna Miller's wife: the two meet in a pub (Keira being surprised that Dylan has a wife), Sienna sez, "I'm not sure I'm going to like you," Keira sarcastically sez, "well, I'll be on the edge of my seat" and in the next scene, the two are shacked up together in Wales, sharing baths (it was the war--they had to conserve water) and secrets. Not that Sienna was any less angry when she found out that dear Dylan's interactions with Keira were present tense rather than simply past, although again, the friendship between the two women was strong enough that they could remain best chums, despite the weird, entangled situation in which they found themselves. 

Again, in The Edge of Love, there were four people in Keira's marriage--Dylan, Sienna and her husband, William. I couldn't really bring myself to care too much, though, as the patchy (at best) Welsh accents were very distracting and none of the characters were particularly sympathetic--Sienna's "oh gosh, I am wounded. oh noes!" acting made it hard to feel too much pity for her sweet, if doormatty, character, and the flaws of the others were present in abundance. The film was trying to be far artier than it ought (I did like the soundtrack, though) and by the end, I definitely felt that one Keira film per weekend was definitely more than enough.

Mastering the American Kitchen

1. Why is kitchen towel rectangular and not square?

2. How do I remember that one of the light switches in the kitchen is actually for the garbage disposal, which makes such a big-ass noise it tends to scare the crap out of me? When Bill Bryson moved back to the States, the garbage disposal was one of his favourite things in his new kitchen and he had plenty of fun experimenting with what it would and wouldn't consume but I think I will probably be more cautious.

3. Why does the "bagel" setting on the toaster only toast three out of the four sides of the two bagel halves? Do Americans eat only half a toasted bagel at a time? Or do they put both halves into one side of the toaster? Or is the fashion to only have three toasted sides?

4. Will I ever master the microwave, which looks sufficiently technologically advanced to launch small rockets? (Cf. my très basic model, which still manages to do everything I ask of it.). The oven is the opposite--huge but with very few controls.

5. How hard is it to invent a kettle that doesn't need to sit on the hob? I know Americans prefer mud-flavoured coffee to tea but even so...

6. How nice to have a fridge approximately the same size as the ones we had at the Sandwich Shop of Dreams (in which I used to occasionally hide)--because I eat as much food as is consumed in the average sandwich shop on a typical day...

7. What is the purpose of American TV? (Other than making Brits feel that their own selection of televisual programming is actually not that bad?) Yes, I know, I do like a bit of Gossip Girl but given that that is on at 8 p.m. Eastern on Mondays, the chance of me being close to a TV at the right time is slimmer than Keira Knightley.

A Tale of Three Cities

It's typical that, having been marooned in the wilderness that is Nowheresville for years on end, three cities then come along all at once. My body ought to be confused--a week in hot, wet NYC, 5 hours behind the UK, a week in wintry, rainy London, and now an Indian Summer in California. I'm glad I brought my bikini (or not--it would have been an excuse to buy another).