Go Blues!

Justin treats me to one of the most exciting sporting events I have been to yet : while not on par with The Game, Chelsea's defeat of Napoli at Stamford Bridge in the second round of the UEFA Champions League qualifier equally memorable.  Chelsea lost the opener 3-1 in Italy and so must secure a three goal advantage to advance in the tournament. At regulation's end, the score 3-1 Blues and, since this a tie on points, we go to over-time. Chelsea scores the decisive goal - joy! - and we wait twelve agonising minutes for time to run out. The fans go mad at the final whistle

Napoli has a loud and boisterous section, too : a number of them shirtless and tatooed, leading chants and arm pointings at Chelsea , who is generally reserved (accepting the guy behind me who uses the "C" word in every sentence he utters).  Security officials separate them from us. Euphoria erupts after each strike.  The vibe remarkable exiting the stadium : I understand the fan's emotions : Life and death, dude - at least, tonight.

"This could top them all for sure."
--John Terry, Chelsea captain

On Eating A Burger

The Brits call a 'hamburger' a 'beef burger'. More unusually, they choose to eat their burgers using cutlery (case study A: Justin).

Shortly after arriving in London, I have a business lunch where the main orders are beef burgers. Having no experience of the proper etiquette, and assuming one's hands are the universal approach towards a burger's consumption, I dive in, failing to notice the protocol : knife and fork. All eyes on me. Conundrum : once engaged with hand-to-mouth, does one simply switch tactics, drawing attention to an improper style? or continue suggesting : in America, this is how we eat a hamburger ?

Justin notes: "In fact, eating a burger with cutlery in the company of someone else who is eating with hands is rude (superior behaviour). Similarly, eating a burger with hands in front of someone eating something that requires cutlery is also rude (making what they see much more casual than the general tone of the meal)."

Pi Day

(March 14=3.14)
Photo of 62144 bits of binary Pi ordered as a 512 x 512 bitmap. 0 = black pixel. 1 = white pixel. The bits are ordered from left to right in each row and the rows from top to bottom.

Kink

Jimmy Choo's spring design, pictured. For the very rich and the street corner.

Jimmy Choo (family name: "Chow") opened his first workshop in Hackney, North London, in 1986 , renting an old hospital building. Quickly he become noticed, and his creations featured over eight pages in a 1988 issue of Vogue. Patronage soon followed , including Diana from 1990, making Choo all that. "Sex And The City" added to the run. In '96, Choo co-founded Jimmy Choo Ltd with British Vogue accessories editor Tamara Mellon. Today, the company turns over £200M in sales. And counting.

We watch the medal ceremony at the British Olympic swim trials.
Eitan: "They are giving them soft toys."
Jack:  "What is it?"
Eitan.  "It's an elephant."
Syrus:  "An elephant?"
Eitan: "Yeah, a stuffed elephant."
Me:  "But you boys appreciate what the real reward is ?"
Cyrus: "The stuffed animal?"
Me: "Just getting here."
Eitan, Jack, Cyrus:
Me:  "Go get some junk food or something."

Marc Jacobs

At the "Louis Vuitton-Marc Jacobs" exhibition, pictured, I learn that Vuitton a clever industrialist during the 19th century : He designed the first waterproof, transportable and fashionable travel trunks when High Society, especially women, moved between European capitals for the social calender.  They demanded baggages suitably stylish for their ballgowns and frocks.

Fast forward to now : LV caters to the same jet-set with advertising that promotes impossibly beautiful , obscenely rich,  women in their mid- to late 20s wearing colourful, powerful, in-your-face kind of clothes (the trunks BTW replaced with LV handbags). The  change occurred when Mark Jacobs became LV's creative director in 1997, which ruffled a few feathers since Jacobs an American overseeing one of France's most important brands.  Jacobs on his clothes: "what I prefer is that even if someone feels hedonistic, they don't look it. Curiosity about sex is much more interesting to me than domination. ... My clothes are not hot. Never. Never."

The dude knows what he is talking about. Jacobs is on  Time Magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and ranked 12th on Out Magazine's 2011 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".

Sonnet Paris

Sonnet and I sneak out of the house for St Pancras and Paris (Kamila retrieves Madeleine from morning swim practise; Richard picks up Eitan for Elm Grove vs. Kings Park). Here she is at the hotel.

After dropping off our bags, we spill onto Place de la Concorde and trundle along rue du Rivoli to the fashion museum at the Louvre to see the Louis Vuitton-Marc Jacobs exhibition , which opened Friday. Despite Sunday , there is an endless line and, dear reader, I am most impressed when my wife waves her card and - voila!- we are in. This so rarely happens in life.

From there , Sonnet and I walk beside the Seine to le Marais on the Right Bank inside the 4th arrondisement (question: who lives in these apartments overlooking la Cité and Notre Dame ?). The Marais has been inhabited since the 1st century BC when a bunch of Gauls sat down to eat some foie gras. History happened then the Jews settled here, noted by the kosher restaurants excluding "Shwartz's" which opened since our last visit and completely empty.

The gays took over in the 1990s and neighbourhood became le plus chic du Paris. It has cleaned up, too : once there was graffiti, dog shit, traffic .. the 4th felt counter-culture despite Place des Vosges and the Picasso Museum. Now, Sonnet remarks, "it is a shopping mall" and sure enough , amongst the boutiques,  I see Nike and even Muji, a Japanese brand. WTF is that one doing here ?  The people-watching remains top class and we find a local cafe w/ an ancient television set showing local football. Parfait.

Café

I have a quick lunch in the 8e : Parisian cafes are a wonderful thing, too. This one on rue Boissy d'Anglais, near my hotel, and where I often have a croissant and coffee before traipsing along rue due Faubourg St Honoree. According to CBS , there are around 7,000 cafes in Paris. In  the 1880s there were 45,000 cafes.

Lunch

Madeleine: "Did you go Paris just to have lunch?"
Me: "Well, yes, it was one of the reasons I was there."
Madeleine: "What did you have?"
Me: "The first thing on the menu was purple sea urchin."
Madeleine: "Woah, did you have it?"
Me: "No way. I had cod. In a layer of truffles."
Madeleine:
Me: "But you would have loved the deserts. Home made marshmallows. Macaroons. Chocolate with nugget .. "
Madeleine: "I hated lunch today. It was disgusting."
Sonnet: "Oh?"
Madeleine: "It was pieces of chicken in a disgusting sauce. And the bottom crust was like.. like ..
Sonnet: "Soggy goo?"
Madeleine: "Yes! Just like soggy goo." Don't tell Janet I said that, though."

Evans

Janet Evans, pictured, is an animal - and I mean this as the highest complement. She lit the world up with her distance freestyles : her 800 meter crawl went unmatched for 19-years before Becky Aldington took the World Record in Beijing. Evans a diminutive 5-foot, six inches, and 119 lbs in an era where elite swimmers grow bigger and taller. But, boy, does she motor : her speedy turnover goes on and on and on. Evans, who set WR in the 400, 800 and 1500 at the '88 Olympics , nick-named "Miss Perpetual Motion." Now, at 41, she is making a comeback and will compete at the US Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska later this month.

The other day I meet a Brit, Ed, who came across Evans at a USC party, where Evans a student-athlete in the '80s (she also attended Stanford for a while). Evans is pretty cute and, according to Ed, chatty and friendly. They hit it off, and she asked him point blank : "Do you want to shag ?" Not looking a gift-horse in the mouth, Ed leaves the party and ... ends up line-dancing until 4AM. He wonders, still, today: what the fuck was that all about ? (A Google search indicates that a shag dance is swing dance that originated in the 1920s). Poor bastard, he still hates America.

At the end of her first career, Evans held seven world records, five Olympic medals (including four gold), and 45 U.S. national titles — third only to Tracy Caulkins and Michael Phelps. Photo from the web.

Big Brother At W'Loo Station

Down And Out In Stockton, CA

Ugly graph, familiar story.  Stockton, California, will soon become the largest municipality in America to file for bankruptcy.

The Three Einsteins

Jack, Cyrus and Eitan - a goofy crew, if ever there was one. Jack crushed his school entrance exams getting places at Kingston Grammer, Hampton School, Latimer and Tiffin (which accepts less than 10% since it is the best state-school in Surrey); Cyrus, who will go to St Paul's, and Eitan (Hampton School). When together, these usually serious fellows act silly : Syrus hits a sugar high and I think : powerful drugs. It is all I can do to keep an eye on them.

In the Olympic Village shopping mall.
Me: "What's that?"
Eitan: "It's a 'Winlock.' " [Eitan holds up a small, stuffed object]
Me:
Eitan: "The Olympic mascot. I'm going to buy it for ten pounds."
Me: "You're kidding, right?"
Eitan: "No .. ."
Me: "So you're telling me that if I told you to clean the front and back yard- that's two hours work - for £10, you would spend it on this?"
Eitan: "Yeah what's the big deal ? "
Cyrus: "I'm going to buy an Olympic key ring for £12. Eitan, can I borrow 2 quid?"
Jack : "No, way, that is such a good deal."
Me:

Men's 200 Meter Freestyle Final

Olympic Trials

Butter.

Britain owns a grand total of seven Olympic-sized pools (50 by 25m), or one for every 8,888,394 people. This a pretty good reason to stay from swimming.   In California, I spent my summers at Heather Farms in Walnut Creek, a suburb of San Francisco, whose Olympic pool bracketed by a 25 meter diving well (where we oggled the synchronised swimmers) and a 25 m lap-pool. All of it surrounded by green grass and bathed in beautiful sunshine.


But back to the London Aquatics Centre : The pool employs all the tricks : three-meter depth to dissipate turbulence and pool-floor wave-rebound; poolside deck level, allowing waves to run over the side and into a trough . .. .26-degree temps.  Further, the outside lanes kept minimise agitation.  While none of these things new, together+the arena's atmosphere, should lead to a few world records at the games (even without the hi-tech swimsuits).

We watch the good and the great including Becky Aldington (2X gold in '08+broke Janet Evens 19-year old 800-meter freestyle record in the Olympic finals); Liam Tancock (WR, 50 m backstroke), Robert Renwisk (Brit record-holder, 200m crawl) and Hannah Miley (British record-holder, 200 and 400m IM).

Lizards

Madeleine and I to the pet store for a lizard and I am ready to do the deal, too. Ready, that is, until I learn that the Crested Gecko that we contemplate .. eats black crickets, which are sold in batches of 60.   The salesman, helpfully: "They live for, like, a week."  Madeleine justifiably upset when she learns we will get a lizard that eats less disgusting things. Like mealworms.  Sonnet thanks me for this, later, in a private moment.

My photo, taken somewhere in Colorado, is not a Crested Gecko, despite its eating a cricket.

Speaking of Lizards, a fired-up South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham , after meeting "a frustrated" hawk Benjamin Netanyahu, re Iran : “It’s not just about the Jewish vote and 2012. It’s about reassuring people who want to avoid war that the United States will do what’s necessary.”  I.e, go to war.  The Republicans must have small dicks or something.

Kamila

The British swimming trials kick off yesterday at the Olympic pool and Sonnet takes the boy while I attend to Madeleine and drama class. The competition used as a tune-up for the summer games so there are hundreds of helpful volunteers and security professionals standing in the cold rain.  Entering the Olympics park, we go through security equivalent to Heathrow, only here the guards joke in good humour. They've only been doing it for a couple weeks .

Today, we switch:  Sonnet with  Eitan at the Surrey swimming championships (he swims the 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley) while Madeleine and I to the trials, joined by our fabulous Czech au pair Kamila , pictured, and her visiting brother, Mathais, who high jumps over 2-meters. Holy mackerel. He recently won the Czech under-18s for the event.

Boots

Sonnet takes Madeleine to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy so I pick up the boy from school. I tell him : "anything you want to do" and he picks .. .Sports Direct to buy football boots. Father son bonding, dude.  He goes for the red Nikes that wazza wears but unfortunately they don't have his size.  Me, I show some unusual restraint, and walk out without another pair of Gazelles.

Maps Anyone ?

I snap the City of London Information Center in Saint Paul's Yard, across the street from the Wren cathedral.  The structure went up in 2007 , designed by make architects. It is pretty funky, too, standing-out in old London yet not distracting from the church. So bravo for that.

The architects set out their stall (from the website):

"A folded metallic envelope wraps 140m2 of internal accommodation, lending the building an angular profile and an air of lightness akin to that of a paper aeroplane. This aerodynamic effect is enhanced by the sloping roof which rises from 3m at the rear staff entrance point to 5m at the public entrance. The large spans and cantilevers required have been achieved using a steel frame braced by a structural ply skin and clad in stainless steel panels. This solution minimises the thickness of the structural envelope - an important consideration in a building of this scale. In addition, the sensitive and restricted nature of the site made a rapid construction method highly desirable. Accordingly, the steel frame was prefabricated in 2 separate sections which were craned onto the site at night and assembled over the course of a couple of days.

"The structure is clad in a specially manufactured system of 220 pre-finished stainless steel panels. This subtly reflective surface provides a striking counterpoint to the stonework of St Paul’s, and the panelisation of each elevation emphasises the crisp angularity of the folded form. By contrast, the building interior is lined with a tessellation of 174 vivid yellow panels formed from Trespa, a recycled timber product. This bright and compact interior conceals a host of high-tech equipment necessary for providing a state-of-the-art information service to visitors. Public facilities are located at the widest part of the triangular plan, and are separated from the staff facilities beyond by a specially-designed information desk.

"

Going Going Gone!

Sonnet and I invited to a dinner auction fundraiser for the Contemporary Arts Society ; Veronique is on the committee.  The dress-code is "Circus chic" and for a moment I contemplate the cow suit but instead go for the African wrap, pictured, which Katie gifts me from Nairobi. 

The evening at the Farmiloe building in Clerkenwell, a retired warehouse now used for .. entertainings. A man on stilts greets us from 25-feet up; two Frenchmen juggle and a model smiles in a provocative clown suit.  Inside , we watch acrobats dangling from ropes contorting their bodies in gravity defying sorts of ways.  We are handed martinis and champagne cocktails.

Since this an auction, the art displayed for the 1% who bid £50,000 like it was water . The Sotheby's auctioneer moves things along : " Can I hear 35?  35 is on offer. Do I hear 36? 36 it is! 37? 37? 38! DoIhear40goingoncegoingtwice!soldtothegentlemanininsequenedtrousers" Taste is subjective. 

I sit next to the Russian whose dress holds the rest of her in. She has a gallery on Regent's Park and invites me to have a look. At the gallery. Ar ar.

Car ride to football.
Me: "So how much homework are you boys going to have at the Hampton School?"
Eitan: "I don't know."
Joe: "They say its an hour and twenty minutes. Every day."
Me: "Which will take you guys , like, three hours."
Eitan:
Joe: "Is that your way of saying we are not very smart Mr Orenstein?"

Borough Trials

Madeleine swims four races: one butterfly plus three crawls including two anchors on the medley and freestyle relays. Since this is London, one-lap a weird 33-meters which makes it impossible for me to judge, by times, whether the kids are fast when compared to when I was an age-lapper. Regardless, Madeleine crushes it : she wins her individual crawl in a time of 25.84 (the judge says fastest time for Year-5s, boys and girls) and powers through the relays delivering top place for both. The look of joy, pure joy, on her face like nothing else. I have not seen it before or, if I have, it was when we got the dog. And there that smile is again made all the better as Madeleine shares her happiness with her team-mates.

Eitan cruises to victory in his 33-meter freestyle (21.83), backstroke and two relays.  He is polite , even shy, after each race : he looks at me briefly for encouragement, offers a sheepish grin, then off to the accolades of his friends.

It amazes me  how the parents yell at their darling athletes: "Gooo!! 'Beck!" (the Dad behind me emotes) "Go. Go!  GOO!! Argghh! Don't Quit. Agg!! YOU ! ARE ! ALMOST THERE 'BECCAAAAA!! ! 

The noise deafening and shrill made worse by being indoors.  The football pitch, where I expect nastiness on occasion, no comparison to this. And mostly the mums, too, who, when I see them at the school yard, are the most civil people I know. So reserved, so British. And now it is all, like,"FASTER! F-A-A-SSSTT-E-R-R!!"

SM wins the gala and everybody feeling good. Pizza for dinner. Woo hoo!