The Weirdness That Binds

I just got off the phone with a man named "Bernie."

"Short for Beh-nehd, actually."

He's English, and the proprietor of a bed and breakfast in Lexington, Vermont, where my wife and I will be staying this weekend.

(If you're into fabric with frogs on it or antique typewriters, robbing our house might very well be on your agenda, then, this coming weekend. Please just try not to leave too much of a mess. And feed Finley.)

My conversation with Bernie lasted exactly 6 minutes and 26 seconds, but, two minutes into the conversation, we were fast friends-- united by our common association with another British hotelier, Basil Fawlty.

Ordinarily, I don't bring up 1970's-era British situation comedies like "Fawlty Towers" with bed and breakfast owners, but it just came up so naturally with Bernie, so organically. In truth, in faith, I just couldn't help it. It was so easy. So... right.

He was taking me through the list of rooms available.

"Well, there's the Pheasant Room, which, in my opinion, is the nicer of the two, but it's got two twin beds in it, and I don't know if that would suit your particular situation."

Instantly, my brain was flooded with images, dialogue, and memories of episode three of "Fawlty Towers," called "The Wedding Party" in which scandal erupts when an unmarried, lascivious couple try to rent a room with a double bed from the obsessively prudish and notoriously repressed Basil.

Basil: "It's against the law."

Guest: "What law?!"

Basil: "The law of England, nothing to do with me!"

Later in the scene, the guest temporarily relents, saying that he and his lady friend will take the room with the two twin beds, "if that's alright with the police."

I told Bernard that Mrs. Apron and I are, in fact, married, and that we'd take the room with the Queen-sized bed, "if that's alright with the police." Bernard howled with delight on the other end of the phone.

"Oh, God!" Bernie cried, "don't get me started on 'Fawlty Towers,' you'll have me going on all day. I've seen them all a thousand times! My favo(u)rite is the one with the Germans-- 'Don't mention the war! I mentioned it once and I think I got away with it alright!'" he quoted with precision. I couldn't help but chime in.

"A Prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and two Colditz salads!"

It was like talking to an old, um, gay friend. Not that Bernie's gay. He's just English. And I know they're basically synonyms. Basically. I didn't know that I was going to hit it off with the innkeeper at this place. I didn't even know he was an ex-pat. I swear to God. I didn't know.

I guess some people would be disappointed to know that their Southern-fried bed and breakfast isn't managed by some overalls-wearing good ol' boy named Hanky Lee, like they're somehow not getting the full, below-the-Mason-Dixon-Line experience, but I'm not disappointed. Not one jot. I'm elated. I am, however, a bit worried that they won't have any salad cream.

Stupid.

When John Cleese Dies...

...I'm going to be very sad.

He's not my friend or a distant relative, and we're not even buds on Facebook but, when he dies, I am going to be devastated. Maybe not as much as when my allergist died, but that's a different story altogether.

I wrote John Cleese a letter once-- when I was twelve. It was my version of a "fan letter" I suppose, and I included a Python-inspired sketch and his agent wrote back, saying something to the effect that Mr. Cleese was "very busy" and didn't have time to write back to "children in America."

Quite fired up about that, I shot back a nasty letter asking what, exactly, John Cleese was so busy doing, back in 1992? "I find it hard to believe that John Cleese is so busy these days," I wrote in a letter to his agent, printed out on our ancient Dot Matrix printer, "all he does is gain weight and advertise Magnavox TVs."

That earned me a letter back from Cleese himself, which I have, of course, since lost.

I owe John Cleese a lot, and I'm sorry that, in my porn-filled adolescent angst I basically referred to him as a fat sell-out. He is, but Eric Idle, the purveyor of "Spamalot" and a thousand other Python-related reinventions and machinations designed at netting him a small fortune from nothing other than resting on his, and the other Pythons', laurels, is more of a fat sell-out than Cleese ever could be.

Incidentally, I also wrote to Eric Idle when I was twelve, and I've a good mind to do it again, now that I have a marginally better vocabulary.

Like lots of other boys my age, I grew up watching shows like "The Muppets" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Diff'rent Strokes." Unlike lots of other boys my age, I also grew up watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Fawlty Towers" and films like "Clockwise" and "Time Bandits." Because I have a somewhat obsessive personality, I didn't just watch one or two episodes of MPFC or one or two British films, I engorged myself on all of them and, as I began acting onstage, I began incorporating bits of the actors whom I respected so much. As I grew older, the actor whose mannerisms and vocalities I adopted the most of was undoubtedly John Cleese.

Though you wouldn't know it to look at him now, (because he's a fat sell-out), in his hey-day, John Cleese was beanpole thin, with endless legs, which made him hilarious-looking. One night, after performing the Major-General's song in The Pirates of Penzance, one of the actors in the male chorus remarked to me, as he was changing from his pirate costume into his policeman's costume, that "you don't even need to open your mouth to get laughs-- they're rolling about in their seats just looking at you." And I said, embarrassed, "Well, this is when being funny looking is its own advantage. Didn't help me much in high school, though."

I realized, though, that it's my physical appearance that's funny, and that appearance is very similar to that of John Cleese. Tall, impossibly skinny, with forever legs that any runway model would kill Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn for. While I can thank my parents genetics for my "funny body" more than I can thank John Cleese, I can at least thank him partially for knowing what to do with it onstage.

Work it, girl.

A story came out a couple of years ago that John Cleese was almost killed in his chauffeur-driven car when his driver had either fallen asleep or had suffered some sort of medical emergency at the wheel. Cleese was fine, but I thought to myself, "God, what if he'd died?" What if? People die every day, don't they-- people far more important in the world than John Cleese. But I suppose it's the people in your own little corner of the world that matter the most, to you. Not that John Cleese resides in my own little corner of the world, though, with his move to California, he's a lot closer to my own little corner than he was back when he resided in England.

I definitely owe John Cleese my voice. My British voice, that is. Though it's been tweaked somewhat, whenever somebody (particularly an English somebody) congratulates me on my accent, I always make sure to credit the original source: John Cleese. He taught me everything I know, especially how to rip out a good, "BAAAAHSTARD!" whenever necessary.

I know it's morbid, and it's not like he's on a respirator or anything at the present moment but, when John Cleese dies, I'm going to be seriously bummed. I might even eat him, dig a grave, and throw up in it.

That's a... a... Monty Python... um... joke.

You know...

...Cannibalistic Undertaker... Sketch....

Episode 26...

It....

Nevermind.

Their Stodgy Old Cuteness

I think it's probably pretty likely that, when most Americans think about English culture, if they ever do, the word "cute" wouldn't immediately leap to mind as an appropriate adjective to describe the British. We tend to think of them as stuffy, boring, uptight-- that's the overwhelming American stereotype (sorry, Sebby-Debs, but it's true). Our minds turn to pomp and pomposity. If we're old enough, we think about the Coronation. If we're not quite that old, we think of Charles and Diana's wedding. If we're younger still, we think of Diana's funeral and, any way you slice those memories and television broadcasts, the word cute is still pretty far afield from what we perceive is the English way.

As many of you know, I am a dedicated anglophile, and my condition as only worsened with age. I first suspected the English of being a cute culture when I began my love affair with Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. There, W. S. Gilbert created an adorable world of parliamentary faeiries, sailors who never swear (well, hardly ever), pirates who are duty-bound and weep when they hear someone is an orphan, police officers who are sensitive and sentimental, and Japanese people named "Pish-Tush," "Pooh-Bah," and "Yum-Yum."

Could this notoriously bombastic, proper, conservative British gentleman with silver-colored sideburns and walrus mustache, clad in his dark frock coat and beaver top hat be harboring the trappings of a cute culture in disguise? Mate his precious characters to Arthur Sullivan's sparkling, glittering, whimsical melodies and there can be no doubt.

If you are wanting for further evidence of the covert cuteness of British culture, go into a bakery there and order a cupcake. Just remember to call it a "fairy cake."

Speaking of food, last night my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit a supermarket located in the next town over, you know, where the "goyim" live! She confronted me upon my arrival home from work and announced that we had "NO FOOD!" in the house. Concerned as I was by this bold pronouncement, I was loathe to venture out to the supermarkets located in our Jew 'hood, as yesterday was the day before Rosh Hashanah, and every Jew in the neighborhood would be at the supermarket, haggling over the expiration dates on their mackrel coupons. I couldn't deal with that.

"Let's go to the market in the goy neighborhood. Deal?"

"Deal."

While we were at this supermarket, we wandered into the "ethnic/foreign" food aisle. You've been there. Lots of Goya products-- frijoles, rice-n-beans, taco shells, and then there's the plethora of soy-and-soy-related sauces, bean sprouts, shrimp-flavored chips, ramen noodles, and the odd Indian meal. And, even in the goy market, there was gefilte fish and matzah, for the wandering Jews who happen to wander in.

"Oh my God, Bobber-- look at this!" my wife squealed. "They have a faggy British section!"

My wife always knows just what to say to me.

I stared in disbelief. Kippers. Fucking kippers. Unbelievable.

There was HP Sauce, which I had read about in "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4," back when I was basically the same age. There were Jaffa Cakes, which I had heard referenced in the British mockumentary "People Like Us," a brilliant and almost totally forgotten-about show that I discovered on BBC America in college. There were Ryvita crackers, which Sybil offered to the health inspector in an episode of "Fawlty Towers." There was salad cream, unforgettably offered by Basil to an unctous little bastard in the dining room of another episode of "Fawlty Towers."

Basil: "We don't have any salad cream. The chef made this freshly this morning."

Boy's Mother: "He likes salad cream."

Boy: "That's puke, that is."

Basil{through clenched teeth}: "Well at least it's fresh puke."

As you can probably tell, I was in Brit Heaven. All of my fond, warm memories of the books, TV shows and films I enjoyed as a boy were coming back to me in that supermarket last night.

"Well, we have to buy something from this section," I said to my wife.

What recession?

I settled on the Jaffa Cakes. I don't know why-- I guess because "People Like Us" was the last British program (ahem, "programme") that my wife and I watched together, in which WPC (that's Woman Police Constable, for you yanks) Jane Thorpe offers some Jaffas to her male partner on the force. It's her solemn duty to offer the male constables tea and cakes, apparently.

As I looked over the box of Jaffa Cakes, (soft, cake-like circles with a dollop of orange jam half-covered in chocolate) I couldn't help but laugh, right there in the supermarket, thinking that the conclusion I had begun to form about the underlying cuteness of British culture way back in my early obsessional days with G&S was still true today. Here's how the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group (which is based in Ireland, by the way), advertise Jaffa Cakes on the box:

"10 Spongy Cakes with the Squidgy Orange Bit."

---------

I'm sorry-- the squidgy orange bit?

Wait. It gets better.

With this box, you get "Bigger Jaffa" and "NEW recipe with lots more orangey centre yippee!"

ORANGEY CENTRE YIPPEE, MOTHERFUCKERS! ORANGEY CENTRE YIPPEE!

I don't know how the English culture, by and large, feels about its inherent cuteness. I suspect it makes certain members of the population a tad uncomfortable. I can imagine Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, all 6'4" of him getting hot underneath his celluloid shirt collar at being referred to as "cute." Maybe only his Lucy could get away with that, but I suspect it's one component of British culture that often flies beneath the radar.

Look at the Japanese-- stern-faced businessmen in black suits walking around with "Hello, Kitty" cellphone charms attached to their Nokias. Cuteness is out there, folks, and it's not just for children. We lose many things in this world when we grow up, and I think that's what J.M. Barrie, another Englishman who was often moved to flights of cuteness, was fighting against as his immortal Peter Pan shouted out, "I WON'T GROW UP!" He was fighting against the loss of cuteness that we so often suffer from as we age. It doesn't have to be.

But, in America, it so often is. Americans, especially men, feel this extraordinary lust for machismo. We need to drive fucking trucks. We need to wear camo. We need to drink 74 ounces of coffee in the morning. We need to eat breakfasts referred to as "The Lumberjack." We need to wear boots, even if we don't work outdoors. We need to wear scruff. We need to scratch our asses and our balls.

I don't know what that's all about, but that's what we're all about. So I guess I'll just sit back with my Jaffa Cakes and enjoy the squidgy orange bit while I sit cross-legged on the sofa with a cup of tea and Utopia, Ltd. plays merrily on the record player.

Join me, if you please. I'll even save you some McVitie's Hobnobs. Be careful, though-- "one nibble and you're nobbled."