We's in California: Take me home.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Take me home.

I just spent last week in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I returned there for work reasons and am glad to at least see some snow for the week that I was there. I wasn't able to post anything because they don't have the internet in Canada yet. In trying sqeeze my whole typical Canadian winter into 7 days I did fairly well. I managed to re-injure my knee playing hockey, wait too long for a bus in the freezing cold, lose a pair of mitts that weren't mine, and listen to my dad ask for ketchup at a Thai restaurant. This describes the last 8 winters of my life.

Most questions I get talking to family and friends about living in California is, predictably, "what is it like". But another question I get that is infinitely easier to answer is "What do they think about Canada and Canadians." And my answer is simple: "They don't".

I think we forget that the population of the US is TEN times greater than that of Canada. Coinciding with the upcoming Canadian election (of which I'm sure every American from LA is aware) there was a televised debate on Monday between the four potential prime ministers of Canada. I missed the live debate and came home to see if it made any US stations. Predictably after about an hour of surfing the TV news channels: no mention on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or any other US news network. Anderson Cooper was literally doing an hour long show about what might happen in the news tommorrow. For a second I thought about watching the whole thing to find out if it was an SNL sketch. Turns out it was.

It's been really busy lately but am planning to get back on the proverbial blogging horse in the next few days.

Yesterday I left the land of snow, ice, and PST and returned to my wife, Arnold, Spanish billboards, and the Orange Line. To everyone I saw (and you know who you are), it was really nice seeing you.

"Let's talk space and time, I like to get deep sometimes, and think about Einstein, and Carl Jung And old Kung Fu movies I like to see, pass the hydrator please" - the streets.

I forgot to tell anyone, I'm ending each post with a lyric from the band the streets that doesn't really make any sense. Just don't pay any attention to it.

7 Comments:

No, seriously. What do Americans think of us. My self esteem depends on the answer.

By Anonymous, at January 13, 2006
They don't. I don't get it?

By Anonymous, at January 13, 2006
We went to Montréal and had our fill of winter and coloured money ("Look, you can tell the difference between a five, a ten and a twenty. One's red, one's blue and one's green. Doesn't that make more sense than our bizarrely green-and-pastel-orange money?")... but what was striking was the lack of television commercials about the election. There were signs all over the place for "Les libéraux de Paul Martin" and "Parti conservateur du Québec" and "Heureusement, ici c'est le Bloc!", but no other advertisements. Well, unless you count the people singing "Je me souviens" in the métro, which was more entertaining than political.

As for what people in LA think of Canada, anyone in the Industry will sigh and mumble about Vancouver stealing production jobs from LA; tell anyone else you're from Winnipeg and they'll probably say, "Oh, is that near downtown Canada?" or "Do you know Susie from Oshawa? She's the really hot one," as though there was only one hot woman in Canada in the hundred and thirty-whatever years since Confederation or something.

Yeah, uh, welcome back. Winter is scheduled for tomorrow morning -- remember your hoodie sweatshirt, or just don't go out and have your sushi delivered.

On a different note, this evening in Valley Glen (remember, we're not part of Van Nuys, we're not we're not we're not!) a couple of cracks rang out about 8:30 while my wife and I were playing a game at the kitchen table...

"Hm, gunshots," said I.

"Yup. Your turn," said she.

I need to move to Canada, where at least when shots ring out it's news. This won't even be on the police blotter in the Daily News tomorrow.

By Anonymous, at January 13, 2006
Save a few fonts and post lyrics from "the band" as opposed to "the band the streets"...equally meaningless, yet elegantly less work. No big surprise when Arkansas and Ontario collide in a bong accelerator...

"Catch the cannonball, now to take me down the line
My bag is sinking low, and I do believe it's time" - the band, the weight

By Anonymous, at January 14, 2006
I'm actually surprised at how little crime I've seen or heard about in the valley. Maybe that's a bad thing because it happens so much that (like you say) it doesn't even make the news. In Winnipeg gunshots would make the news, but even that's changing now. I DO see the helicopters that just seem to hover in the skies. Is that where we get most of our footage for "Worlds Most Dangerous Police Chases" and Cops? Hope not.

By Gareth, at January 14, 2006
The LAPD use helicopters quite a bit more than any other jurisdiction I've ever seen -- but yes, I've seen our area on World's Most Superlative Police Whatever... they had a whole segment on the Wells Fargo holdup (the "building with handles" on Victory and Laurel Canyon -- deadliest bank robbery in the history of the world).

By Anonymous, at January 16, 2006
That was a Bank of America that was robbed in that colorful way, on Laurel down the block from Victory, where the building with handles sits.

And deadliest robbery in history? Weren't the 2 robbers the only dead?

By !, at January 17, 2006