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Published: August 21st 2008
3 Months In.
The last thing you see before getting hit by a 180mph Ferrari.The final week of my first three months in America began on the morning of Thursday 14th August and for the next few days allowed me hardly a second to sit down and relax such was the hectic yet event packed liesure schedule I’d afforded myself. It all started as I was returning to the office following my daily ten minute mid morning Beijing Olympic catch up session courtesy of the LA Times in the boys room when Megan attracted my attention.
“Matt, Jimmy Chevez has been in, lunch is on for 12:30”.
Puzzled, I wondered if she was confusing me with someone else and promptly told her I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was on about and asked her to please clarify herself.
It transpired Jimmy Chevez was a guy Phil and I had briefly chatted to in the sauna at the gym in my first week or so over here, a chunky, olive skinned, silver haired man in his mid fifties who, he’d wasted no time in informing us, owned his own construction and plant hire outfit and who oozed wealth even though he was
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Cowboys and melons. wearing nothing other than just the smallest slip of a towel wrapped around his more than ample waist. Megan expanded that Jimmy had told her Phil and I had apparently arranged earlier in the week to go out to lunch with him which was all news to me so I immediately went to ask Phil what she was talking about. “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it” he nonchanantly remarked giving me sufficient reason to remind him that in future he must and shall remember to have the courtesy to inform me when he arranges things on my behalf.
We met Jimmy at the nearby Old Ranch Golf and Country Club, a $30,000 membership golf club whose clientele appeared at first glance to exist entirely of filthy rich retirees and shortly after sitting down he informed us his girlfriend of a few months, an English woman by the name of Pauline would be joining us to eat. Twenty minutes or so later a beaming smile that befits someone in the early stages of courtship came across his face as an attractive woman in her mid forties presented herself at our table and as I turned to shake her hand
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Tasting strawberries. in introduction she excitedly burst out with “Oh, I know you” in an bizarre accent that crossed LA with Leeds and in a voice loud enough to turn the heads of every other diner in the room. For the second time in an hour this was again news to me as I had absolutely no idea who she was and the situation all of a sudden had found the potential to become very, very embarrassing.
After a certain level of alcoholic intake my memory is known to become somewhat impaired, in other words I occasionally remember sod all and having had a few liquidy nights out since my arrival I just hoped to God that the circumstances in which she ‘knew me’ were nothing too embarrassing or for that matter anything for which she may be seeking an apology or worse still revenge. I quickly wracked my brain to recall where or even if I’d ever met this woman before silently hoping she’d mistaken me for someone else but the best I could instantly come up with was that she was the woman who’d served us cocktails the previous Sunday afternoon in La Palapa Beach Bar. Although similar in
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Soccer, the family game. appearance the woman from Sunday was definitely an American, Pauline was not and in search of confirmation of my best guess I nodded across the table to Phil and blurted out “You know him too as well don’t you?”. She looked across at Phil and her blank expression clearly told us all she didn’t.
On my very first weekend I’d been in Vons Grocers buying provisions when a woman standing behind me at the delicatessen, upon hearing my heavily accented request for some taramasallata, announced in a voice as loud as the one that had just ambushed me in the restaurant “Ah, you’re English”. At the time it was strangely comforting to hear an English (ish) accent and my relief was huge when I finally realized that that was where this woman ‘knew’ me from.
After work that evening I headed alone to The Home Depot Centre in Carson to check on the progress of Mr Beckham’s managerless LA Galaxy courtesy of my freebie ticket from my new pal Chad leaving Phil to attend the last Party In The Park of the Summer without me. The Home Depot Centre is shared by Galaxy and Chivas USA as a
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The little boy has yet to learn the significance of the Star Spangled Banner home stadium and it was Chivas who on this occasion were the host team. The difference in atmosphere from my last game couldn’t have been any greater. The ground was full of mainly fanatical Hispanic types all bedecked in the red and white stripes of Chivas as opposed to the more reserved Galaxians, a couple of hundred of whom were perched high up in one of the stands. PA announcements were made primarily in Spanish before occasionally being followed by an English interpretation and the chanting and drumming of the noisy Chivas supporters, amongst whom I sat for the entirety of the first half reminded me more of The Maracana than The Depot Centre.
Unlike the last game I attended this match was an exciting spectacle with a much higher standard of play culminating in an injury time equalizer from the Galaxy for a two two draw which surprisingly even to myself found me standing up, cheering and clapping with my arms in the air when the ball hit the net. It appears I’m a Galaxy convert.
Golf is the another sport that I’ve missed since being out here and the following morning, Friday was to be my
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The Chivas faithfull. first ‘knock’ since my arrival. It was in a Corporate Event being staged at the California Country Club in Whittier forty five minutes to the east of Long Beach and entailed an absolutely ridiculous start time which found me sat on the beach wall opposite my apartment building waiting for my lift at 5.20am and as I rubbed sleep from my eyes I was bemused to find, even at this unearthly hour people out and about power walking and jogging. It wasn’t even daylight.
Ryan, one of the young South African intern’s was nominated driver for the day and also with us were big Dan and Tony, a likeable lad from in his early thirties. Dan had asked me previously on a couple of occasions to join him for a Sunday morning round but I deemed his usual 8am start way too early to warrant interrupting my Sunday morning lie in. This start time was taking the biscuit but the attraction of a day off work and a game of golf to boot made the sacrifice seem wholly worthwhile.
I’d gone to the driving range on Wednesday lunchtime with Dan to hit my first balls for four months
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Feeling horny. Noisy little git. using Phil’s borrowed graphite sticks and unbelievably hit the majority of balls straight and fairly long. It surely couldn’t last. We arrived at 6.30, ate a continental style breakfast of croissants and fruit stood around in the club car park then met our playing partners and saddled up. The format of the day was Texas Scramble, one which encourages team spirit and disparages individualism whereby all four team members hit a ball and then all play their next shot from where what is decided to be the best shot of the four lies. As a result my solo competitive nature had no part to play in the day and I played like someone who hadn’t played for months but who didn’t really care.
I was buggy sharing with a guy named Neil, the retired head of BP’s Carson Refinery, a pleasant enough recently retired, recently divorced 58 year old with the skinniest legs I’ve ever seen which made my infamous spindly limbs from the knee down look like those of a Russian shot putter.
On the other cart making up our team were Rick, a 53 year old company director who fancied himself as a golfer but who
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Best seat in the house. hacked his way around from first to last whilst stating on every tee that he was going to start playing from now on and who almost found himself on manslaughter charges on two separate occasions when successive drives sliced off the toe of his club and sent the ball veering over the protective pines and onto the adjacent crowded lanes of the 710 Freeway whereupon we all froze and waited for the sounds of the ensuing multi car pile up which unbelievably never came and Tom ?, a bullish redneck who, it appeared from his shape and swing was put on earth purely to chop down trees, who confessed to never having played the game before (you could tell) and who swore with more regularity and vulgarity than even myself. Right from the first hole we were visited at regular intervals by trolleys driven by pretty ladies carrying an assortment of foods and beverages and I resisted cracking a cold beer until the 16th hole which was around 11.30. Dan, it later transpired when we met up in the clubhouse had lasted approximately four and a half hours less than me and had consumed a tin on every hole and
needless to say neither of us were involved in the hunt for medals .
There are certain differences between corporate golf days over here and those in the UK. In England after the golf has finished you will normally be required to dress up in your Sunday best in order to be ‘treated’ to an after game banquet. This will usually consist of either a square piece of short crust pastry topped meat pie, cut school dinner like from a huge aluminium oven tray and served with a handful of soggy, anemic chips decorated with twenty or so half frozen garden peas or a processed TV roast beef dinner followed by a solitary dollop of vanilla ice cream and all served by a bored looking sixteen year old who gives off the impression that he/she would much rather be necking from a bottle of Dry Vintage Cider sat outside their local chippy.
Here we were sat down sipping on our Cadillac Margerita’s served to us from the complimentary bar by formal waiters dressed in waistcoats and dickie bows when I noticed the double kitchen doors swing open and a gourmet trolley buckling under the weight of the biggest
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Chiva Girls. piece of beef I have ever seen be pushed in and parked at the head of a long table holding a vast array of fresh salads, veggies, pastas and other meats.
You could be half justified to expect a piece of meat the size of a huge pumpkin to be cooked with some sort of inconsistency, blackened in some places raw in others but this was perfection, the best I have tasted since my time in Argentina and so good that Dan and I just had to go up for seconds. It got better.
After meal presentations at the majority of golf days in England usually consist of winners being presented with a half hearted round of applause, a couple of shouted comments that questioned their honesty and integrity and a prize that within hours would find itself stacked up to collect dust in the recipients garage or under stair cupboard, another umbrella, another cap or glove or even worse still a silver plastic golfer on a varnished teak base.
Here the unfortunate winners each still received the obligatory trophy, in this case a plastic silver golfer crouched on all fours with his arse in the air
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And in action. presumably lining up a putt but which made him look like he’d be more relevant being awarded to the local gay communities ‘Arse Bandit of the Year’ but in addition every single competitor, and bear in mind there were one hundred and forty four of them had their names drawn out of a hat to each receive a present. The gifts for the early names called out generously included weekends away for two and full sets of iron or wood golf clubs and we were chatting amongst ourselves almost oblivious it was all still going on when twenty minutes later I heard my name called. I looked up to see one of the waiters coming across to where I was sat struggling to carry a large red box with a lot of Spanish writing on the side and when I sat it down on the table I saw it contained a remote controlled five speaker stereo home surround sound system. Not bad for a hacker.
To round off the day perfectly I was back home for 2.30 which gave me time for a nice couple of hours afternoon snooze on the beach before Phil had even arrived home.
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Have fiddle, will travel. After our now regular Friday night blow out I was up early the following morning for another dose of soccer although this time, with no kids tournament taking place we had a proper pitch with proper goals. There were a few different faces to my last game including a six foot five African recently arrived in LA from Senegal via New York who stood out from the pack like a sore thumb. He told me his name was Ibram, I thought he’d said Abraham, and when I asked him my stock question of what position he liked to play he replied “I’m a winger”.
I’d noticed when I was sat under the shade of a tree putting my boots on that a couple of his gangly uncoordinated attempts at simply stopping a straightforward pass during warm up had seen the ball squirt under his foot or haphazardly bounce off his shin so without wanting to hurt his feelings by telling him bluntly that he’d never make a winger as long as he had a hole in his arse I suggested to him that he’d make a great centre half or centre forward. As we waited for the others to
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This young man looking like a Japanese Kamikaze pilot is confused and has a life altering decision to make... Chivas or Galaxy ? get ready I planted high ball after high ball in his general direction and shouted words of encouragement as the ball bounced off all angles of his head in totally random unintended directions.
The game, once it finally got underway was a really enjoyable if knackering hour and a half as my knee brace gave me the confidence to run around as much as the hot sun would allow. I managed to put two crosses right onto Ibrams head, neither of which perhaps not surprisingly ended up in the net but which warranted him to message me the following day to say ‘Matt, I’m working that head’.
Phil said he was thinking about sending out a search party when I finally arrived home around 1ish and I joined him at the gym for a sauna and jacuzzi and later that afternoon we jumped on the bikes and set off to the area of grassland adjacent to the Queen Mary where an exhibition of souped up European cars was taking place. I’d noticed the show advertised in one of the many free papers that gets bandied around these parts and knowing it to be Phil’s sort of thing and
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Chad holds his head in joy as Galaxy score last minute equaliser. I sent him this pic and it got me five free tickets for the next game. also that there’d no doubt be several photo and freebie opportunities had suggested we went along.
We locked the bikes up to a lamp post close to the entrance, went to the desk adjacent to the gates and were asked for fifteen dollars admission each. Why would we pay fifteen dollars each I argued when we can see all the cars through the chain link fence from where we stood, when it’s almost four o’clock and when the show stops at five. I’d made a point they couldn’t deny and we ended paying ten bucks for the two of us.
The advert in the local rag had said as well as being cars on show there would also be a number of models present and noticing a small clutch of people gathered in the far corner of the field I left Phil to ogle over the BMW’s and Audi’s and went over to investigate. A girl in the briefest of bikini’s imaginable that looked like it'd been made from a catapult was performing gymnastic contortionist type moves for a small clutch of amateur photographers all equipped with huge telescopic lenses who were click clicking away at will whilst
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Neil celebrates his nearest the pin with Rick. at the same time wiping huge slivers of saliva that was dribbling from their chins. I queried to myself if these fellas were actually interested in photography or if they’d simply borrowed the equipment to enable them to get up close and personal with an almost naked girl. Most were obese, bald and sweating profusely and when we we’d saddled up and were leaving an hour or so later I stopped next to were they were excitedly comparing shots.
“Are they going to go in any particular magazine?” I enquired through the fence.
“Oh no” one of the fatter ones replied in a voice that reminded me of Cheech Marin, “these are purely for the hard drive” inspiring them all to burst into a particularily seedy and sinister series of Beavis and Butthead type chuckles.
Of course I don’t class myself in the same manner as these men, my interest in the models it has to be understood was purely to capture the essence of my life over here for blogging purposes, honest, even if it did entail me jostling for prime position with the big boys armed only with my tiny point and shoot. I’ve taken
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Time for a beer for the guy with the Russian shot putter legs, hole sixteen. pictures of flags, dogs, kids, cars and buildings, why not bare naked ladies ? Why not indeed.
The final model, who posed over by the water side was equipped with an unnaturally large false chest crammed into an equally unnaturally small bikini top and had a set of lips that ensured some botox providing physician would have lived to inflate another day but despite obviously thinking she was the epitomy of beauty she somehow struck me as being a very sad and unhappy girl, so much so that having squeezed myself to the front of the sweating, heavy breathing, camera clutching throng I attempted to give her a bit of encouragement.
“C’mon, gizza smile misery guts” I joked.
No smile was forthcoming but if looks could kill within hours I’d have been measured up, boxed up and placed in the hold of a Boeing 747 en route back to Blighty.
At six o’clock I dropped Phil and Lisa at a $180 per head wine tasting function courtesy of our office blocks management company and spent the rest of my Saturday night ‘baby’ sitting Olivia and Marisa. I knocked us up a Vindaloo curry and sat grinning
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Text book. Okay Horrible but it's six runs over long off Beefy Botham style. as Marisa rushed to the kitchen for water wafting her hand across her burning mouth as she went before settling for a ham sandwich and Olivia, either too polite or too proud to say it was uncomfortably hot dined simply on boiled basmati rice.
I’d been intending to visit the weekly craft and farmers market for a few weeks now and early (10am) Sunday morning I got on my bike again and headed off there. I don’t know where my attraction for fruit and veg’ markets emanates from but suspect it was initiated in Santiago, Chile on my world tour. I find people watching is at it’s most enthralling where the squeezing, prodding and selecting of farm produce is involved and this one was no different and it also gave me ample opportunity to experiment with a couple of settings on my new camera producing a couple of the special effects you can see below.
With the weekend over Phil headed off for a few days with his girls to Palm Springs leaving me, once again, to fend for myself. Ever in search of a bargain I’ve been biding my time until the end of Summer to purchase
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'Arse Bandit of the Year' trophy, 2008. some patio furniture for my balcony but the recent earthquake had thankfully assissted in speeding up the process. The day the earth shook a glass topped table and two comfy swivel chairs that were the pride of the local Ralph’s garden furniture sets had transformed themselves into two chairs and a topless table frame and had been on ‘buy as seen’ offer for fifty bucks for the last two weeks. Keeping an eye on their progress I bided my time before seeking out the young manager, pointing out they obviously weren’t going to sell at that price and offering him forty cash and celebrated the anniversary of my three months in America sat with a glass of Californian Merlot alone on my rear balcony watching a full moon throw sparkles of light onto the surprisingly calm Pacific Ocean pinching myself in the realisation that this is the place that I now call home.
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non-member comment
Do I detect here the first tentative steps into Photoshoppery? Woooh! Loook! The photo is in black and white but somehow the balloon is blue! And...and...the oranges are...ORANGE!?! How do you do that?