Notes from the Anglo File

The bumper-sticker (custom made, mind you) says it all:

"WARNING: Gilbert & Sullivan Freak Behind Wheel"

You know, even if you're just some random schmoebert driving behind me, that I'm a little, well, off.  I'm a little, well, smitten with all things Britain.  I'm a little looney.

Just a li'l.

(To be said with a traditional Cockney glottal stop.  Of course.)

Anglophiles are a unique breed, and we're all a bit muddled, a bit befuddled, because, see there's the whole identification issue-- identifying with your oppressor.  After all, Good King George did try to fuck our shit up for daring to take flight, lest we forget.  But for an American who is, after all, half-Israeli and 100% Jewish to boot, that whole dynamic seems almost a bit irrelevant.

I fell in love with English culture years and years ago.  Too much "Monty Python's Flying Circus" exposure at a time when the brain was extremely soft, malleable, and porous.  It's settled some now, but the damage has been done.  And it was done unto others.

Our elementary school had a program where 5th graders were paired up with 2nd graders.  The purpose of this was that the 5th graders would get together with their 2nd grade "book buddies" in the library once a week and read the 2nd graders stories.  Mentoring at a very young age.  It worked-- my book buddy and I are Facebook friends.  And she's fucking hot as balls now, but I digress.  Anyway, I can still vaguely remember reading young Carly "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs."  It was a swell time.

Anyway, the culminating event of the Book Buddy program was that we 5th graders were to write a book specifically for our 2nd grade book buddy.  Every page of the book would be laminated (in case, I guess, our book buddy became violently ill while reading it) and spiral bound by the school librarian, and entered into the permanent school library collection, for future impressionable youths to enjoy.  Some 5th graders wrote their takes on traditional fairy tales, some wrote stories where vegetables came to life and some wrote about things that had happened to them in their own lives, like breaking bones or getting puppies.

My story concerned Queen Elizabeth II getting kidnapped by members of the IRA and being hidden away inside the clock tower of Big Ben, and then rescued by members of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard, assisted by Detective Inspectors from the London Metropolitan Police Department.  That Carly is Facebook friends with me today, and that, to my knowledge, she has never been the recipient of inpatient psychiatric treatment, is nothing short of miraculous.

I'm the kind of Anglophile who believes that everything coming from the British Isles is better than things in America.  Hobnobs taste better than Chips Ahoy.  The English Ford Focus is cooler than the American one-- at least it was for years, until the latest American restyle.  G&S is better than American musical theatre.  The monarchy is cooler than the presidency.  British comedy is funnier than American comedy.  British men's clothing is sharper than American men's clothing.  The British are more refined, more tasteful, more... correct than Americans.

That last point, however, gave me a moment's pause today as I looked through a slideshow from the Queen's Jubilee celebration.

Observe:

Mm-hm.  And let's not ignore...

And that, my friends, is how an American Anglophile gets bloody well humbled.

God Save the Queen.

Once, I Thought I Was an Intellectual...

...it didn't last long.

Nowadays, I'm sure that I'm not an intellectual. A thinker. Someone who enjoys wrestling with, and perhaps even creating, problems, existential questions, crises of the heart and of the head, engaging in spirited debates with like or different-minded others about politics or philosophy or psychology or other issues of portent that begin with the letter "p". I, once upon a time, thought that I was someone who would spend much of his life grasping onto the issues of today, yesterday, and tomorrow and steadfastly refuse to let go until I had methodically explored the hows and the whys and the wherefores of these matters.

I was eighteen or so when I realized that this, really, wasn't me.

For one thing, I was masturbating too much to be a real intellectual. Intellectuals masturbate when they are intellectualizing-- it's not literal masturbation, it's just talking. An intellectual engaged in the process of hearing him or herself talk is basically masturbating, and can actually achieve a surreptitious, tangible orgasm while so doing. This is why so many intellectuals wear tweed trousers, because stains don't show.

I noticed, too, that I get restless, frustrated and, sometimes even angry when I try to engage in an intellectual conversation or argument with somebody. Sometimes the anger and frustration is pointed at the other person, but, oftentimes it is self-directed. I know a little about a lot of topics, but I only know a lot about precious few topics, and so I get annoyed with myself at being bereft of facts and/or background knowledge that would otherwise make me a keen and cogent debater on, say, the subject of Syria's place in the Middle East or the ethics of mandatory decanoate shots for severely, chronically psychotic patients.

Of course, I know that you can't rationally expect yourself know everything, but, when you hold yourself to impossibly high standards, rationality doesn't enter into it. And, if it does, you just masturbate until it goes away.

The other thing is-- I find I lack the attentional capabilities required for sustained bouts of intellectualism. When talking to someone about a thick, meaty, marbelized matter, after only several minutes, I find my attention wandering. I am easily distracted/distractable. I'd love to blame it on ADHD, but I don't have that. I think it's more that my brain is filled with things to worry about, obsess over, become horny about, perseverate on that I just can't engage in an intellectual debate about something. I can be in a two-hour play, but that's because all that other shit turns off because I'm a character, and the character isn't distracted and focus must be maintained because there's a paying audience who will boo and stone me if I start thinking about my mortgage payment and begin wandering around the stage aimlessly looking for a cheesestick in the middle of a Chekhov short.

When I was fourteen, I wrote a letter to Prime Minister John Major (Queen Elizabeth II was cc'd out of consideration) about the arming of British police officers. This event, which garnered a reply from both sources, marked my last official recorded act of intellectualism.

When we're young, delusions of grandeur are fanciful and often remarked brought up at the dinner table when reunited with our parents. When you get older, delusions get you committed to psychiatric facilities until they (the delusions) are medicated out of you. I'm glad that, today, I no longer suffer from the delusion that I am an intellectual. I'm pretty much a realist about who and what I am.

I'm an amateur performer, I'm not an actor.

I'm a blogger, I'm not a writer.

I'm a husband, I'm not Dick Van Dyke.

I can play six chords on the banjo, I'm not a musician.

I'm a relatively okay person, I'm not perfect.

And I'm certainly not an intellectual.

A Right Down Reg'lar Royal Queen

The media is really funny.

So, Michelle Obama met Queen Elizabeth II.

Big fucking deal.

So, Michelle Obama and Queen Elizabeth II touched each other's shoulders and backs.

Jesus Christ! Please excuse me while I go change my pants.

Thousands of angry protestors are clashing with police officers outside the Royal Bank of Scotland. The country is up-in-arms, world leaders are meeting to decide the fate of nations and to debate significant economic and strategic global policy, and what are the papers concerned with? Some alleged social faux pas committed by two well-meaning adult women who, I'm pretty sure, can decide what kind of contact is and isn't appropriate for themselves.

I've never heard such idiocy before in my life. It's like Michelle stuck her finger up the Queen's bumhole and gave it a twist, for Christ's sake. The two women got along, so there's an issue. If they hadn't gotten along, there'd have been an issue. Nobody's ever satisfied. Maybe they should have started tweaking each other's nipples while humming "Scotland the Brave." That would have really given the papers something to talk about.

Not that they need the help-- even when there's no story whatsoever, they make one up.

I think it's amusing how prudish and uptight reporters pretend to be when it suits them. On Fridays, they can all go fart on pub stools and drink till their noses are as red as strawberries, hit on women and bash everyone from Obama to midgets, but in their columns there is this attitude of superiority and arrogance that they can barely struggle to maintain.

"Michelle Obama touched the Queen!"

Well, I'm sure that, if it were really a problem, the Yeomen of the Guard would have wrestled her to the ground and stabbed her through the head with their pikes and spears.

And, not to sound like a third grader, but, the Queen touched Michelle first.

British culture is certainly steeped in tradition and rigidity, but we are all human, after all. I'm pretty sure the Queen shits just like the rest of us, though the paper she uses is probably of better quality and is perhaps emblazoned with the Windsor family crest. I think the Queen probably took to Michelle because Michelle Obama isn't a snob or an elitist, she isn't obsessed with whether or not she's saying and doing the wrong thing-- and I'm sure that the Queen, who has probably felt suffocated by tradition and formality her whole life, finds that refreshing.

We humans make faux pas all the time. We're constantly putting our hands in the wrong places or putting our feet in our mouths or overcorrecting and offending-- we're always insinuating or deflating, insulting or revolting. We need to get the fuck over ourselves and just be.

We need to touch each other more. There's too much distance. Too much aloofness. Too much blogging.

The Queen-to-First Lady contact is a good thing-- it's a message to us all:

It's okay to be human.