From the land Down Under, part 4

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was keen on procuring some Australian novels during my trip. This proved harder than expected. Not that the pickings were slim; it's just that with the Aussie dollar higher than ever (or the US dollar lower than ever), the exchange rate made books particularly prohibitive. $26 for a new trade paperback? Yikes! So I checked used bookstores, which meant I had to throw my want list out the window and make the most of the available options.

Luckily, I found a couple of great places and came back with some nifty stuff. The highest I paid was $8; the rest of the haul cost less than $3 per book, with a couple of $1 catches.

In Port Douglas, I picked up Crew, an amusingly trashy 1980s novel about surfboat racing in Sydney; Ride On Stranger (1943) by New South Wales lefty writer Kylie Tennant; and Stiff, the first book in Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series. I polished off Crew in a single day at the beach, then started on Stiff. The series revolves around a member of the Labor party in Melbourne, making for a really great mix of politics and crime. Maloney's humor and locale-specific details aren't unlike the ones in Carl Hiaasen's earlier (and best) novels.

I was happy to find another used Maloney novel at Melbourne's New International Bookshop on Victoria Street. The hallway leading to the store was lined with $1 bins that were actually packed with goodies like out-of-print Daphne du Maurier. While avidly foraging, I was interrupted by a young man who invited me to "the workshop about the Vietnam War."

Fittingly, the store is next door to the Victorian Trades Hall Council, "the voice of Victorian workers since 1856" (Victoria being the state Melbourne is in). And down the block is the Old Melbourne Gaol, where Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880 and whose tour include an interactive feature where "visitors are 'arrested' and encounter what it is like to be locked up."

In short: the perfect place to buy a Shane Maloney book!

From the land Down Under, part 3

I didn't spend all my time in Oz drinking coffee and going to footy games: I also went to the theater (more on that on my NY Post blog) and caught some TV. Some random thoughts on the latter experience.

After watching most of the audition week of the local X Factor (already a hit in the UK, US version coming soon), I can only say that I'm now so hooked that I'm going to follow the proceedings online to see if my favorites (see below) make it through. The four judges are singer Natalie Imbruglia, former Australian Idol judge Kyle Sandilands (trying waaaay too hard to emulate Simon Cowell), baby-faced Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian and former Boyzone member Ronan Keating. Most striking was the candidates' sweetness and naivete — several looked almost paralyzed by shyness. This was in stark contrast to the way many American contestants show up with outsize egos and an often-lengthy history of performing.

In addition, there's four categories of candidates: groups, under 25 males, under 25 females and anybody over 25 — OMG, fogies with, like, wrinkles! This opens up the competition to seasoned people with real histories behind them. I was particularly taken, for instance, with 40-year-old Tony from Perth. His audition performance of "Proud Mary" was the epitome of rugged manliness. Also impressive was 20-year-old apprentice hairdresser Sally, with a dignified cover of Xtina's Hurt."

Another big difference: openly gay candidates (yay, Hayley). Cute.

Another TV favorite was a reality show called The Farmer Wants a Wife, which follows six country folk in various Australian states as they look for a suitable mate. Highlight of the one episode I caught was when the date between cattle farmer Charlie and equine dentist Christy was cut short after she was bitten by a redback spider and had to be taken to the emergency room. (Perhaps this is what inspired me to purchase a pair of Redback boots later on.) Note that the title is deceiving since the farmers include Becky, a woman from South Australia looking for a husband. She seemed to hit it off with an explosives technician from the Northern Territory.

Finally, homegrown pride is very important in the Australian film and TV industry. Every time an American flick starred a local, the trailer or promo blared "featuring Australia's so-and-so." A commercial for new Oz series Cops L.A.C. boasted "with a great Aussie cast!"

From the land Down Under, part 2

Australian coffee rocks. It's not the thing the country is known for abroad, but it's an essential part of the quality of life there.

One of my favorite things when traveling is spending time in the local cafés. This may have something to do with growing up in France, where cafés play a key role in the social life -- despite the fact that the coffee you get there is actually terrible. The point is that they are a place where you can while away several hours with a drink and a book, or meet friends and reconfigure the world. Also, I'm a teetotaler so bars hold little interest to me.

Café life leaves a lot to be desired in New York: Other than some spots in the Village (now mostly tourist traps), I would argue that it's a relatively recent phenomenon here, having picked up after Starbucks came to town; contrary to politically correct opinion, Starbucks didn't kill independent coffee places here, it created them. (Strangely, a similar phenomenon didn't seem to happen in London.) The problem is that it's really hard to find a good coffee, whether espresso or drip. The lattes and cappuccinos, for instance, tend to be boiled beyond recognition. I used to think that the baristas weren't properly trained to use the machines, but now I think the problem is more that the majority of the baristas don't even grasp what a latte is supposed to taste like. They have no frame of reference.

So far, Stockholm has been the standard for civilized cafés, maybe because of the local tradition known as fika, ie a coffee break accompanied by a pastry. But Australia is right up there, perhaps even better -- you won't find a more perfect latte anywhere else. And it's not just in the specialized establishments: I've had impeccable cups in airports and gas stations! And unlike the NY coffee snobs, they don't try to impress with crap like how much they paid for their hand-tooled machine or whether the beans were picked by virgins on a single hill in Nicaragua.

Even better, we went to cafés every single day for ten days straight, and not once did we see someone on a laptop -- the scourge of NY coffee joints. People read the paper or had actual conversations with each other. Imagine that! You don't realize how antisocial laptops are until they're taken out of the equation and you find yourself in an environment where sociability is encouraged. Real-life one, not virtual one. I realize this sounds crazy but you must suspend your disbelief.

We hit a lot of good spots, but a particularly enjoyable one was Re:hab, in the small town of Port Douglas. A must if you ever find yourself in FNQ (Far North Queensland -- Aussies love acronyms).

From the land Down Under, part 1

Fact: the jetlag returning from Melbourne to New York is killer. Killer. I feel like crap, exhausted with a low-pressure headache lurking in the back of my sinuses.

But a trip to Australia is well worth this hassle. Man, do I love it there!

First, the timing was just right. To begin with, the political action was primo: The country is stuck with a hung parliament and as of writing, still doesn't have a functioning government. Basically departing PM Julia Gillard (Labor) and Tony Abbott (center-right Coalition) have been spending the past 10 days or so wooing four independents — and they've been driving a hard bargain.

Then, the Sheila and I landed in Melbourne as the regular footy season was ending and Grand Final week was starting. This is the equivalent of the playoffs for Australian rules football. I went to my very first game, Collingwood vs. Hawthorn, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). What a civilized experience! We walked there as the stadium is right in the center of town — and is surrounded by a river and parks, not acres of parking lots. Then we bought general-admission seats for a mere A$20 each. Try that at Yankee Stadium! The 'G, as it's known, is a beautiful venue that feels more intimate than its 100,000 capacity would suggest. We picked seats way up so we could have a good bird's eye view of the action.

The game itself was incredible as Aussie rules is fast and fun. These guys run around a gigantic oval-shaped field so they're in tip-top shape. And as in soccer, there's no time-outs: The action keeps going. I have no idea why this sport is played only in Australia. Anyway, the favorite Collingwood Magpies lost to the underdog Hawthorn Hawks in a crazily suspenseful game, so my introduction to live footy was a really good one. (Game highlights here.)

Next: Why the Melbourne café culture rocks.

French film follies

A couple more days in Paris. The overcast sky gives the perfect excuse go to the movies and hit the museums. Sticking to localfare, so far I've seen Nicolas Saada's debut, Espion(s), and Danièle Thompson's latest, Le code a changé. Two fine, if very different, examples of quality filmmaking, French-style.

The former is a brooding thriller that's been embraced by the critics here--unsurprisingly, perhaps, as Saada is one of their own (he used to write for Cahiers du Cinéma). The movie's been compared to some of Hitchcock's best and most romantic flicks, like Notorious, but it reminded me more of the British series MI5. And while I liked the slow pace (we're very, very far from spy shenanigans à la Bourne), if you're going to do the classic set piece in which somebody transfers information from a computer onto a USB key while trying not to be caught by a bad guyelse coming up the elevator (cue closeup of screen with "copy" status bar moving maddeningly slowly), you'd better come up with a new twist; alas, Saada doesn't. Still, a lovely performance by Géraldine Pailhas lifts things up.

As for Thompson's movie, it's yet another "choral" on, a style the writer-director particularly loves. I admit going mostly for the splendid cast, which includes two of my favorite comediennes, Marina Fois and Karin Viard--together at last. A scene in which gynecologist Fois gives lawyer Viard an exam was the icing on the religieuse.

Next stop: a reissue of Claude Autant-Lara's cult 1949 adaptation of the Feydeau farce Occuppe-toi d'Amélie, starring the scrumptious Danielle Darrieux, and François Ozon's new Ricky.

Low-cost travels

Going from Paris to Corsica to visit my family, I had my first experience with a Euro low-cost airline, Easy Jet. The flight was almost six hours late but everybody waited in relative calm, a new concept in France. This of course had everything to do with the fact that said flight was more than a third cheaper than the same one on Air France, which until recently had a de facto monopoly on flights from the continent to Corsica. The thing is, it is harder to feel angry when you bought a cheap ticket; the anger was also diffused by the fact that there was nobody from Easy Jet on site, only Charles de Gaulle airport employees assigned to Easy Jet, and they had barely more of a clue than we did. Rage with no specific target is just a waste of time, as we all discovered.

Never mind: I eventually made it to the island, where I discovered snow-capped mountains and a cold wave. All the more reason to stay inside and watch the world championship in slalom, where a Frenchman got silver. Needless to say, Alpine skiing doesn't really shake TV ratings back in the U.S., whereas here it's quite popular.

Where are you from?

The least you can say about snowbirds is that they love to chat, and the first thing they ask is, "Where are you from?" I guess when you're in Florida, or at least this part of Florida, so few people are local that this is a natural question. In two days we've met people from Ontario, Maine, Ohio, Ireland, New York, Michigan and Nebraska. I was seating next to the latter on a boat tour we took in Myakka State Park this afternoon. By the end, the wife was all friendly and invited me to drop by next time I was in Nebraska. "We're in the northeast part of the state, in an Indian reservation." She paused. "It's just horrible there. People don't work, kids drop out of school." Hmmm, okay then. This message not approved by the Nebraska Tourism Board.

Another thought prompted by vacationing in Florida: America really is segregated by age. The Sheila and I are 30 years younger than most people around us, a difference bigger than even at Saturday matinees on Broadway. We don't mind all that much but it can get odd. If you go to most French resorts, it's not rare to see three generations of a family vacationing together. (The past two winters, I went skiing with my mom and aunt, plus my sister and her husband, along with their young kids, and this isn't considered abnormal in the French Alps.) Such is not the case here. A vast generalization, I know, but it's just a little weird to see how this age-based division is implemented in Florida. In your early twenties you go to the party spots and get wasted, preferably before renting a jetski. In your thirties and early forties, you go out as a couple or as a young family. After that forget it: You are assumed to lose all sense of taste, and you're meant to only eat crap while pink becomes an acceptable color option for shorts. (Pink: it works for tween girls and senior citizens.) I wonder what's going to happen when the generation that's grown up on lattes and organic food nears retirement age. Granted, there is a class divide as well as one of age at work here. More on this later, as the lobby of our Venice Beach hotel isn't all that conducive to sociological musings.

Greetings from the Venetian causeway

When the Sheila and I travel, we do it in style. And so we decided to take a few days off in Venice. Not, not Venice, Italy. Not even Venice, California. We're actually in Venice, Florida, which is on something called "the Sun Coast" by the local tourism authority (ie the gulf coast roughly between Tampa and Fort Myers) and happens to be the subject of George Packer's devastating article called "The Ponzi State" in The New Yorker. It's a great if depressing read.

As readers of this blog know, I'm interested in public-transportation issues, especially when I travel. And this bit of Florida is a vivid, terrifying illustration of sprawl gone wild, where cars are necessary for just about everything. And everybody here seems to go for gas-guzzling SUVs, which doesn't help. It took us what felt like forever to drive down from Tampa to Venice on US 41, which looked more scenic than I-75 but turned out to be a traffic nightmare (on a Saturday afternoon) and an uninterrupted parade of strip malls and car dealerships with overflowing lots. This snake is biting its own tail, clearly. The only public transportation we could see consisted of the appealingly named SCAT (Sarasota County Area Transit) buses, which seem to carry only the darker-skinned people trimming hedges and working in drugstores. This all makes Los Angeles look really advanced. Packer quotes some local people who seem to realize the necessity of improving local transportation, including Tampa's mayor, but from here, the task looks positively herculean.

Venice itself is charming and actually quite walkable, so that's what we did today, saving the trip to the Smugglers' Cove Miniature Golf (which the Sheila is dreading, but nothing can keep me away from a putt-putt experience) for tomorrow.

Dateline London, part 3

Farewell, London, it was nice getting to know you a little better. Indeed, it was only on this, my fifth or so visit, that I feel I finally got London. Before, I could never get the lay of the land and constantly got hopelessly lost, unable to figure out where the most basic landmarks were in relation to each other. I truly think it had something to do with the driving-on-the-left thing, as I experienced a similar disorientation on my trips to Australia. In any case for some reason things clicked this time, and I was able to actually enjoy walking around—especially since I also knew which bus to take, and which direction to take it in.

A couple of recent highlights: a really good lunch buffet in a vegetarian South Asian place (lots more fresh veggies and fruits than we'd find in the NY equivalent, where they seem to think everything has to be drenched in either sauce or syrup) and Hampstead Heath. Now that is a city park! I was struck by how bucolic it was, especially since unlike Central/Prospect Park, it wasn't overwhelmed by nonstop athletic activity and nutty picnics in which people feel they have to transplant their entire living room to the outdoors, complete with recliners and stereo systems. The most striking feature: the swimming ponds reserved for men and women. We only saw the women's one, of course, and it was like being beamed onto another planet; the sense of isolation was enhanced by the fact that our host and guide tried to use her GPS as a joke and the device was utterly befuddled as to what our location was. It felt like a slice of women's utopia lifted out of a 1970s feminist novel. I wonder if such a thing could exist in New York.

Before I leave for Heathrow, some observations about cultural differences on television.

In Stockholm, we watched a show called Singing Bee, on which contestants are tested on their knowledge of song lyrics. (I believe there was an American version but it didn't last.) The participants were all quite good, but what blew me away is that they essentially knew pop classics in two languages, Swedish and English. They had no idea what would be thrown their way but they never looked fazed. A guy was equally at ease performing Eurovision entries, Motown, and Swedish tunes I couldn't recognize. Oh, and "The Final Countdown." I'd like to see English or American contestants with this kind of bilingual facility. Actually, you could find them, but they'd be, like, Asian in England, Hispanic in the US. Perhaps a similarly bilingual show exists on, say, Univision in America, but I seriously doubt it could be on one of the major English-speaking networks.

In London, we caught the end of the British version of Deal or No Deal. First, we were surprised by how many family and friends the contestant, Betty, was allowed. But then it turned out they were the people holding the suitcases! So instead of a big razzamatazz set with identikit models holding cases out of a James Bond movie, you had totally normal people, in all shapes, ages and colors, around some kind of table. Second, the whole thing was tuned down several notches from the hysteria reigning on the US version, which somehow bolstered the suspense. It was kinda hushed and thoughtful, and the closeups on Betty's anguished face were almost…haunting.

Which brings me to third: Betty seemed to be in her late fifties/early sixties and looked every hard-lived second of it (HD is particularly merciless). Our Brit host remarked that the show looked like a Mike Leigh movie! I doubt Betty would be allowed on American television: The web of wrinkles and creases on her face harshly illustrated the very notion of aging and mortality, which is not allowed to be suggested in the youth-obsessed US. You could tell Betty had not had an easy life, which of course made the suspense even more biting. Very canny casting there!

Dateline London, part 2

More sunny weather in London. Yesterday we walked around parts of the East End, with a coffee break at the new Rough Trade shop. I'd only been to the old one, near Portobello Road if I remember correctly, and the difference between the two is like that between a tenement and a boutique hotel. The new store is really spacious, with a little stage in the back for free performances (Neon Neon tonight, Daniel Johnston Saturday), a row of computers with free internet access, and of course the now-de rigueur café. I couldn't help but wonder how they sustain themselves, with that much real estate in a happening neighborhood--aren't record stores supposed to be dying?

Much less impressive: accompanying the Sheila to a business meeting this morning, we had to take the tube at rush hour. I'll never whine about the NY subway at rush hour after that miserable experience. We had to let three trains go by before we could even get on one. Then being tall-ish, I had to stoop slightly, crammed against one of the curving sides. And we were so packed that of course reading was out of the question.

We've been using an Oyster card to get around. It's a magnetic card that you just press against readers as you enter and leave the tube, or as you board a bus. Recharging them is a breeze. Still, the price is high and getting around adds up quickly. And despite this snazzy technology, Stockholm still had the best innovation: you can buy bus tickets on your cell phone, then you just show the cell's screen to the driver as you board. Again, America looks completely stuck in the 20th century there. But since Americans don't travel abroad all that much, they don't even realize how antiquated their infrastructure is. And don't get me started on the rail situation!

Dateline London, part 1

Alas, we had to leave Stockholm yesterday. Goodbye, Tidy Town of the North! We flew on to London, where we'll be for a few days, visiting friends. Much to my surprise, it took us only 90 minutes between the moment we left the SAS plane and our stepping into our new temporary abode near the Fulham Broadway tube station. The smoothness and cleanliness (well, it was filthy compared to Stockholm but spotless compared to New York) of the public transportation were stupendous--even though we keep hearing about how it's a weakness of London. I'm quite obsessed about public transportation, and it's one of my favorite things to explore when I travel. In the midst of the hullaballoo about rising gas prices in America, the lack of debate on public transportation never ceases to amaze me: that is what pundits should discuss, not alternative fuels like ethanol and used cooking oil. As usual, Americans are more interested in bandaids and lunatic pseudo solutions rather than structural innovations--especially since developing decent public transportation would require real change and real sacrifice (ie, higher taxes).

But I digress…

I hadn't been to London in about five years but the mere transformation of Fulham Broadway in that interval says volume about gentrification: For a second I even thought I had led us to the wrong station as it was completely unrecognizable. Just imagine, I don't know, a basic stop on the F in New York renovated from top to bottom, going from a regular station to a subway emporium-slash-minimall with a movie theater, a Starbucks, a Borders, etc. That is what happened to Fulham Broadway in the past five years. The rest of the neighborhood has gone through a similar metamorphosis: it's really poshed up, paralleling, I suppose, the evolution of Chelsea FC, whose stadium is nearby (our host is a transplanted Liverpudlian and so loathes Chelski, as it's nicknamed due to its being owned by a Russian billionaire).

More updates after we go on the town today.

The horror, the horror

The Sheila and I went to the Jersey Shore for a couple of days and being contrarians, we stayed in the least hoppin' town of all. One word is enough to suggest the anomaly that is Ocean Grove: dry. Yep, you won't find any booze in that quaint little hamlet. You can't buy it in stores and you can't buy it in restaurants. Finding it is easy, mind you: You only have to follow the boardwalk north to Asbury Park or south to Bradley Beach. But the folks of Ocean Grove get their kicks out the Methodist way—by praying, eating a lot of ice cream (only $2 for a small sundae!), and buying scented candles and wooden ducks. The big event on Saturday night was a double bill of Air Supply and Little River Band at the Great Auditorium (the size of a football field and usually hosting preachers). The GA is surrounded by Ocean Grove's biggest oddity: a tent city of over 100 permanent, trailer home–size tents, passed down from generation to generation.

We stayed at a small inn so quaint that people were giving us dark looks when we were watching High School Musical 2 in the common room (no TVs in the guest rooms) on Sunday evening. But I was pretty happy with our rugged accommodations because the inn had a bookshelf of beach readings left behind by previous vacationers. I don't mind sharing a bathroom if I can get my mitts on old paperbacks by John Saul, Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz, Sidney Sheldon and—prize of prizes!—Judith Krantz. I finished the book I'd brought, Scott Smith's The Ruins (and left it behind, in true inn spirit) and got through Saul's Guardian. Add to these Joe Schreiber's upcoming Eat the Dark, which I recently polished off over a couple of subway rides, and a few thoughts about horror fiction surfaced. Okay, one thought: It's in a pretty sorry state, relying on clichés and skimpy psychological insights, and tying it all up with plain bad writing.

As a dedicated genre writer, Saul is easy to dismiss by most critics. He's one step above Dean Koontz, but not a very high step. If I recall correctly the handful of his books that I've read, Guardian is no better or worse. Suffice it to say that it hinges on a revelation of lycanthropy and a government experiment gone wild—and I'm not spoiling anything, as any reader with a tenth of a brain will figure it all out early on. But I got through it fairly painlessly. Eat the Dark, on the other hand, is plain embarrassing, like something written by a ten-year-old weaned on Z-grade serial-killer books and movies.

Smith's novel is the most "literary" of the three and it even got a rave from Laura Miller in Salon. But a lot of her assessment seems based on misreading. Miller writes that "The de facto leader, Jeff, is a medical student who probably keeps a copy of 'The Worst-Case Survival Manual' on his bedside table." Except I seem to remember that Jeff is going to enter med school after his Mexico vacation—he's not a med student yet. Miller also writes that he "is the closest any character comes in 'The Ruins' to a traditional hero: He's fairly resourceful, he makes plans, and when he decides that something nasty has to be done, he's got the nerve to do it." Perhaps, but half of his decisions are also wrong: He's the one who gets the group on the path to destruction to begin with; because he's convinced he's always right, he always dimisses his girlfriend's warnings. It's hard to find a a better symbol for the gung-ho American male than Jeff. Furthermore, the book entirely relies on the Idiot's Principle, ie the characters need to behave like total morons and do counterintuitive things for things to move along.

On the other hand (and I'm not sure whether this is entirely on purpose), The Ruins turns out to be a pretty fascinating indictment of young Americans: spoiled, brattish, obsessed with instant gratification and completely unable to think more than two minutes ahead—actions don't have consequences for these cretins. I suppose that is the real horror of the book.

Could Stephen King's 1970s and 1980s novels have represented a high point of modern horror writing, and we didn't even know it?