johnny | words | ideas

It’s not the people who talk the most, the loudest and the fastest who are usually interrupted. It’s the soft-spoken ones who have waited patiently. And when they get cut-off — often by someone yelling “that’s what she said” (God knows why this still cracks anyone up) — I watch their faces. Ick.

Socially, there’s nothing more uncomfortable than not knowing when to start speaking again or where to pick back up. They wait for a simple “I’m sorry to have interrupted…what were you saying?” It’s usually not going to come. Especially when the interrupter is on his fourth Corona.

But a few other notes about London:

- Obviously, we saw many stunning streets and churchy and/or castle-y buildings that are all older than the US…and lots of people whose wealth puts the old (and stodgy) in “old money.” I’m guessing no one here made their fortune back in ’99 when, say, partyinmytrousers.com IPO’ed.

- At least in the East End, men are wearing pointy white Keds tennis shoes. This looked totally stupid 25 years ago when men as impossibly cool as Johnny Marr and Paul Weller did it. What chance do these cheesy hipsters think they stand?

- When we went to see Buckingham Palace, the hugely ornate front gates opened and two Range Rovers drove out. In the front seat of the second one was a really cute dog. Which distracted me from the fact that one of the two humans in the car was the Queen of England.

- Spread throughout London by the hundreds are pubs whose names all follow a simple formula — take any two words in the English language (new or Olde) and separate them by the “&” sign. It doesn’t matter if they sound appealing or even make sense together. Enjoy a pint at The Bugle & Antelope. Or The Stick Your Thumb Up & Your Butt. Someone should create an online British pub name generator.

- The Hoxton Hotel is the greatest hotel on earth. And I felt that way even before they told me they’d found the two shirts I left in the closet and were mailing them to me for free. (I’m used to stuff vanishing into the ether the nano-second you leave it behind in a hotel room. Usually, though, I’m at Motel 6.)

- London and New York should just sleep with each other and get it over with.

[Art coop studios housed in old tube cars.]

[From the Bond Bound exhibit at the Fleming Museum in Soho.]

[Remaining works from Cans Festival beneath the Waterloo train stop.]

[Random bus in front of random churchy place in Shoreditch.]

[Six-story work on the front of the Tate Modern.]

After our afternoon classes in college, we’d go either to Lakota for coffee or Ninth Street Deli for beer. There we’d sit and do what we journalism school kids did: pretend to be of the oppressed and threaten injustice! We’d frequently start sentences with “Society dictates that…” (“Society dictates that I call my parents and ask for more beer money.”) Liking the ring of “Big Oil,” we’d plot against Big Pizza Chain, Big Donut, Big Copy Store, Big Record Shop and Big Asshole Doorguy at Widman’s Who Confiscates Fake IDs. We were aspiring investigators, breathing in the paranoia, who wanted the tyranny of “the establishment” to be real, and we wanted blowing smoke in people’s faces to be the only way to really cover a story.

That’s why we made the mistake of thinking that eccentric dissidents like Hunter S. Thompson would deserve to even sharpen Tim Russert’s pencils.

It’s been years since I was a journalism student — composed roughly of 97% piss/ vinegar — and nearly as long since I gave up aspirations of working for the press. At this point, it’s really only as a follower of politics that I can appreciate the work and career of Tim Russert.

But that’s plenty.

For everything he brought to Meet the Press, the best part is what he didn’t: that ridiculous, all-too-frequent political talk show moment when mortal enemies tear each other to shreds, then are forced to kiss and make up. They come on, they serve and volley insults shaped as soundbites, they interrupt each other at escalating volumes, then they’re abruply cut short when the segment is out of time. Suddenly they return to their normal cheeseball tone of voice and thank the host for having them, while a blood vessel bursts in their eye. Many shows encourage this. It gets ratings.

That never happened under the gentle giant Russert. Debates were allowed to get heated but never out of control. Guests knew that not minding their manners would get them nowhere. It was where Tim Russert made sense of all things political, and he managed to do it by being nice. Now that political shows are finally delivering all the shock and slapfighting we wanted as journalism school kids, he will be missed.

So far, nothing has made my hand more steady. Not holding my breath. Not cutting back to a three-shot americano. Not those four yoga classes I took last summer. Maybe I’m just a twitchy individual. Which isn’t that big a deal — I’m not a dentist, I don’t work on circuit boards, and I only shoot pool in that window of time between my second and third beer. But not having a steady hand does make it hard to take the kind of pictures I like.

I prefer the dark (or at least the dim). I turn the flash whenever I can get away with it. Flashes ruin things, turning any background into one of those silly Sears Photo backdrops and turning my pathetically white skin in to that of a jellyfish. Not that my skin deserves better, but backgrounds do. Maybe that’s why I like iPod commercials so much. Or maybe I just secretly like Coldplay.

The problem is, everything — foreground, background, all of it — is blurry without a flash unless you can hold the camera perfectly still. So I’ve taken lately to practicing by shooting trees at night. Usually I set my camera flat on the hood of a car pointing up at the branches, set the timer for 10 seconds, then run away like it might explode. I don’t know why I back so far away. Maybe I’m worried that by breathing too hard I’ll somehow…shake the car?

The photos above are as close as I’ve come to clear (meaning still) shots at night.

I don’t like fantasy sports leagues. I just don’t like them. I think they’re stupid. I like fantasizing about sex, and all the amazing things I have no shot in hell of achieving, and the frequent overlap between the two. But I’ve never once been compelled to fantasize about trivial crap like that a place kicker will have a really big game this Sunday in Miami. That is not dreaming big.

Oh, and there are the fantasy drafts, during which my friends freak completely out for a weekend and cancel all plans. They don’t eat. They don’t leave their houses. I can’t be certain, but I think they pee in milk jugs. And if they find they don’t get a signal up in the Smokies, they’ll cut your camping trip short to race down the mountain at breakneck speeds toward cell phone reception so they can make their picks. (A true story. Dan, you jackass.)

But hold everything. ESPN has introduced a fantasy soccer league for the upcoming Euro 2008 tournament.

On one hand I’m excited because I freakin’ love soccer. On the other hand, though, just how is it supposed to work? One of my favorite parts about soccer — the part that puts it at odds with other fantasized-about sports — is that there are pretty much no stats kept. Steals. Interceptions. Tackles. Completed passes. Fouls. They all happen, but no one tracks them or flashes them across the screen coupled with jet engine and blowtorch noises. If your team loses, you lose, and you don’t get credit for having a statistically-sound individual performance. It’s a team sport in the truest sense.

Unlike most fantasy leagues that are like part-time jobs (that not only don’t pay but might also actually cost you your full-time job), this one is low involvement. Making your picks is easy. If you don’t know who to grab, just go with whose names are the most fun. I’ll have Fabio, Fernando, Francesco and…Torsten. You can take Cristiano, Gianluigi and Cesc.

I’ve been catching previews for the movie The Strangers a lot lately. From what I can tell, the guy (Scott Speedman, whose character I liked in Felicity) and the girl (Liv Tyler, whose dad’s band wrote Sweet Emotion) go for a romantic weekend at a secluded summer home up in the Poconos or the Adirondacks or wherever. The rest is pretty straightforward: when night falls, people wearing really creepy masks — it appears, burlap sacks with air holes cut out — just kind of…stand there and watch them. For my horror flick money, that is absolutely as scary as shit gets.

I’m not a huge fan of the horror genre, but it seems like scary-movie makers spend their time in 4 to 6 year cycles trying to reinvent the wheel (by exploring alien creatures in wormholes, demonic possession, abandoned asylums…and the possible overlap of the three) before always returning to a motionless person whose face you can’t see. And why not? Stock stillness. It’s mortifying.

For example…

• Scarecrows. Scarecrows = terror. I think scarecrows killed people in the Jeepers Creepers movies. What, they had to come to life? Being crucified in a cornfield wasn’t creepy enough?

• That scene at the end of Blair Witch when Heather runs down to the basement of the abandoned house and finds Mike standing there, completely still, facing the corner.

• Interpol.

Someday I’ll confront my fear of people who just stand there. Someday. When I’m ready. Which won’t be on May 30th, when The Strangers comes out.

I was unaware that Chicago was experiencing a problem with unsafe/underground live performances, but City Council’s excessive proposed response — which will be voted on tomorrow, May 14th — would render many legitimate local promoters powerless and drastically affect live performance of all kinds, both for local artists and for those hoping to tour here. Please read the details on Sun Times music critic Jim DeRogatis’ blog. And if you feel inclined, sign the attached petition.

I remember the first time I saw Nike acknowledge that soccer was, as it turned out, a sport. It was in the late 80s in one of its famous “Bo Knows” TV spots. The idea was that Bo Jackson, the world’s greatest athlete (which was probably the case), could play anything. And so alongside tennis, hockey, indy car racing, badminton, rhythmic gymnastics, skeet shooting, apple bobbing and the frat house drinking game known as “Viking Master,” soccer made the cut. Bo played it. There were probably a few Nike execs who, feeling that soccer was only a cover for propagating communism and the Iron Curtain, argued that it didn’t belong in a Nike ad…that it might even cause the company’s credibility to collapse.

I was probably 10 at the time, but I’d been a soccer player since I was 4, and I knew that Bo, in fact, did not know soccer. Soccer players were skinny, ropey little dudes (often sporting a “soccer rocker”…essentially a mullet), and Bo — wearing short shorts and one of few pair of crappy soccer shoes Nike made at the time — was built like a shit brickhouse. He would have looked less out of place in a tutu. And Nike didn’t look to be taking the world’s most popular sport all that serious.

But someone got to Nike in the 15 years that followed; they started improving their soccer products and their ad presence. For the 2002 World Cup, Nike created an absurdly high-concept ad campaign in which a secret 3-on-3 tournament was held, inexplicably, in the belly of a ship. The best soccer players on earth starred in the ads, which were directed by Terry Gilliam. The music was a Junkie XL remix of the Elvis song “A Little Less Conversation.” It topped the charts in over 20 countries.

Nike became the company to chase in terms of soccer branding and superstar sponsorships. Nike being Nike, they’ve accepted that status and completely jumped off the deep end by snatching up everything and everyone and sticking a swoosh on it, just because they can. But I still look forward to the ads they put out in the months surrounding major tournaments. And this new one — directed by Guy Ritchie and starring members of Arsenal, ManU, Barcelona, Inter Milan and the Dutch and Portuguese national teams — does not disappoint.

Thumbing through all the junk mail the other day, I came across an envelope from the Tempe Police Department. Actually it was no envelope; it was a damn packet. It was as though I’d applied and been accepted to their training program or had requested a catalog of their spring line of kevlar fashions. It was that big. I figured this couldn’t be good.

I evidently got a speeding ticket when I was there at the end of March. Yeah I was pretty lethargic that whole weekend from a bad cocktail of dry heat and strip mall iced americanos, but electronic signs all over the roads there blink (and practically scream) at you when you’re speeding, so it wasn’t hard to stay within the limits, agonizingly low though they were. I’d remember if I’d been pulled over.

I wasn’t pulled over. I was caught doing — among other things — 46 in a 35 by surveillance camera, and the Tempe cops were sweet enough to mail me the evidence. They’re just photos, so you obviously can’t tell if I was speeding. What you can tell though is that I was picking my nose in a rented Dodge Prius.

Nice. I hate to break it to them, but that’s not exactly a one in a million. I pick my nose about 15% of my waking hours, and I get caught by disgusted friends and coworkers quite a lot. Still though…don’t the Tempe police have a sense of humor? I know they have a job to do and revenue to generate, but they caught me on film! Picking my nose! In a rented Prius! I’d happily let them stick my booger-picking pic up in their office for all to laugh at, if they’d just cut me the $100 break on the ticket.

But enough about the content of those dumb pictures. I have a problem with their mere existence. I’m being asked to pay $100 for something I don’t think I actually got “caught” doing. At least not in the old fashioned power-hungry-radar-gun-jockey cop vs disgruntled-tax-paying-citizen sort of way. Assuming they can even do that (I haven’t brushed up on my constitutional law…um, ever), doesn’t their speeding cam system ruin the cat and mouse game between drivers and troopers? Aren’t bored cops robbing themselves of that precious “what’s your big hurry, city boy” moment? Also, couldn’t such sophisticated technology be used to stop more serious crimes (I’m thinking auto theft and drug dealing)?

My fight is far from over. While my legal counsel (that’s you, Hartshorn) has advised me that I can’t really argue my way out of the ticket, I believe I can bail out my dignity by playing the “it was a scratch, not a pick” card. As a serial picker, this certainly won’t be the first time.

Everyone has a favorite word. But I don’t think it should be based just on being fun to say. Words should be judged using a cumulative scoring scale combining their phonetic phun-ness and the value — the goofiness or awfulness or hilariousness — of the thing or things they describe.

Scoring that way, the best word in the English language simply has to be “Popemobile” or “Slurpee.”