The new Mayor of London looks just like Gary Busey. Same crazy unkempt hair, same mad look in his eyes, & of course horrid teeth. Every time I see him on the telly I think Gary’s moonlighting- that’s why we haven’t seen him in any movies lately.
Ok more observations on London both good and bad…
As hip & cosmopolitan as it is, it’s totally hick town that the tube (subway) closes down at MIDNIGHT even on the weekends! The regular buses stop running too so there is only the ‘night bus’. Gregory Issacs, the reggae singer, had a big song in the 80’s called NIGHT BUS— now I get it. And it’s not like the city closes at midnite, just the transportation—how 19th century… One really interesting thing about the people on the tube, when it’s open, is that EVERYBODY is reading. I mean everybody: young, old, B&W it doesn’t matter. And not STAR magazine, they actually read BOOKS! I understand everyone reading the newspapers cause people stand outside the tube station handing you the free LITE LONDON & London UK News, which are pretty good—but whatup with the bookworm thing? Is everybody here cramming for a test? So yeah, yeah I got a book and put my STAR inside of it—Yankee style.
Let’s talk food. I’ve had some great foreign meals i.e. the BEST Thai I’ve ever had and I’ve had plenty of Thai. You see the sequence of Evan here spotting pizza in a beater—he had to go for it and it was DELICIOUS, they were real Italians (that explains the beater;). Every horrible thing you’ve heard about British food is true, but I’ve figured it out. The quality of food here is wonderful. Since we have our own flat we’ve (I’ve) been cooking a lot—more than I do in Chgo. But it’s a communal thing people come over and we all cook together. Food here is very CHEAP and oh so good. The meats (that I don’t eat) are excellent and the fish is SUPERB. Everything including the fruits and vegetables are very fresh and don’t contain all those add chemicals. So it’s not the English food that’s bad it’s the RECIPES. Great resources, bad execution. I mean who thought of pork and beans, stewed tomatoes blood pudding and bangers (don’t ask) for breakfast? Instead of being so aggressive towards the rest of the world they should have asked everyone for a cookbook or a few recipes and they could have stayed home, had a good meal and chilled like everyone else… They also don’t have closets, I knew this but I think Kidist was quite shocked. What to do, what to do. Hmm. But they do have projects and they call them “BRICKS”. Wonder if there any closets in there?
Went to visit some filmmakers in Nottinghill—it is so cute there. I love that area. I saw a building there that I dreamed about when I was a child—I swear I knew it immediately and I even remembered the dream. That’s it with the balcony…
One of the filmmakers, Ishmael, wants to do docs on the meaning of ‘Blackness’ around the world. They had some great art in the studio.
Everyone here still smokes like chimneys—even tho it’s banned indoors. It was so bad that I had to take my meds from the smoke OUTDOORS. Outside every pub and club you’d think there was a fire from all the smoke and I don’t know why—what with all the warnings on the cig boxes. They are not small & subtle with it like our cig companies. They have even launched a campaign showing tar filled lungs and cancer victims in the last stages of lung cancers. Someone explained to me that becoz they have national healthcare it cost the gov more for people to be sick, so they promote health. Unlike the USA, he said, where doctors, druggist, hospitals etc make a profit from our illness. And no I wasn’t talking with Michael Moore just an ordinary citizen. (They’re much smarter than us—must be that reading thing).
Even tho at home I live in a very mixed area (5 Blacks, 3.5 Latinos, 2 Asians and 50,000 whites) being here makes me realize how much we are not integrated and how prejudice we ALL are. There are so many different types of people here living side by side. The Muslim population is off the chain. Every type of Muslim from everywhere in the world— Black, White, Asian, Indian whatever. What I mean by prejudice is that at one point I was somewhere surrounded by what looked like classic ‘terrorist’ to me—I swear they all looked like they were responsible for 911—we’ve seen their pictures, we know. For a moment I felt a little apprehensive (me?!) and I started to understand that racist propaganda machine of the US that makes everyone different a terrorist or a threat. No one else thought anything of these people—some covered from head to toe, others in berkas, some men in, in, er those fake beanies (I’m talking religion not fashion) but I had to take a look at myself (& u look marvelous darling) and re-evaluate my perceptions. I’m doing pretty good now, tho sometimes I do think I'm about to get blown up, not as much as the average American would;)
I actually partied all night for the end of Ramadan. I’m out. I’m on my way to Paris
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