Towards the end of 2016, I got to see David Sedaris read some of his essays in Oakland. I assume that everyone reading this knows who he is, but if you don’t, let’s just say that he does what I do, but infinitely better and gets paid lots of money to do it. This isn’t a cue for you to stop reading and Google “David Sedaris.”
David Sedaris
Read the rest of this and others in “More Inappropriate Behavio(u)r” Coming in 2020!
Foreword: According to sources, Dom Quinto invented the leaf blower in 1957. Later that year, his mutilated body was found in a leaf-filled dumpster. Not one of his neighbors came forward to say they saw anything suspicious. Most strange.
I live in a thirty-unit apartment building on the corner of a block containing million-dollar house, after million-dollar house. The view from my room is impressive, but fills me with envy. When I first moved in here, I spent a lot of time looking at these houses trying to imagine what kind of lives the inhabitants of these homes led.
I mean, I could have actually stopped when walking up the street and had an actual conversation with some of them, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, that is an entirely un-British thing to do. We’d rather peer through the curtains and speculate. Also, as soon as my neighbors might discover that I lived in the 30-unit turd in their Utopia, they might shuffle their kids and pets back into their houses, making sure that the security system lasers are engaged to disintegrate any approaching riffraff.
This one is my first music video. I created it for Sheila Star. The song is called “Lose Control” and is the lead track on her latest release called, “That Fire.” Click on the link and check it out.
How is this video connected to a drought? A good question. Drop a man from Seattle in the Sahara Desert and he could tell you, or, less dramatically, take a stereotypical and sometimes homesick Brit and deny him the rain, as he lives his life in drought stricken California for a few years. Lose Control? Too bloody right.
Now if you are a Brit and reading this and are thinking “Miss the bloody miserable, drizzly, damp? You must be off your bloody rocker.” I respect your opinion, but you can’t know until you have tried it.
Anyway, enjoy the video and thanks, as always, for being a friend to The Bay Area Brit.
Well, I’m still putting words on “paper,” my lovely Britophiles, but now the words form scripts for my animations. I know many of you would rather read an essay than watch a cartoon I created, but this is where I am at right now. I hope you stick with The Bay Area Brit on this cartoon ride.
This new short animation was inspired and pays homage to the Norwegian Nazi Zombie flick, “DEAD SNOW.”
I know, right! Frikkin’ Nazi Zombies. Kind of like Donald Trump’s idea of the perfect, mindless voter, but I digress.
Hope you like it. Feel free to share and subscribe on my YouTube Channel if you like.
This short animation is dedicated to anyone that has worked in the service industry or had to stand in line behind a high-maintenance customer at a cafe or a bar.
Feel free to share this if you like it. As always, thanks.
It has been a long time since I’ve written a new entry and for that I apologize. I get a lot of people asking for more cartoons, I hope to go one better than that by offering this one-minute animation that I created. I hope you like it and will continue to follow me. Thanks.
The Bay Area Brit returns! No, that’s no good. The Bay Area Brit—this time it’s personal. Scratch that. Jeez, I thought this would be easier. I’ll name it later. I’m returning to a country that I have glorified and mocked in equal measure. How will I be received? Will anyone care?
“You can’t go home again.” – Thomas Wolfe
And that was when it hit me: I should have ordered the pasta. Oh, sorry, I’m still on a plane on the way to London, and every co-passenger with keen vision can get a preview of my ramblings, I mean witty prose. Or something.
I suppose when this two-week trip is done and dusted I will look back upon my sojourn wistfully. I anticipate moments of great joy, tears, and reflection with my family. I will also be a tourist. I will be flooded with memories, as I remember both good and tough times in my old Bayswater neighborhood in West London. I’ll also briefly forget why I moved away all those years ago.
When traveling back to a place that you were once so familiar with, you ask yourself some of the daftest questions: “I wonder if Ali still works at that little market across the street from where I used to live 30 years ago?”
Am I insane?
Of course he doesn’t, and if he does, I think my eyes would look upon him with such poorly disguised pity that it would just be better altogether if I didn’t go in there. But maybe I’ll have a quick peek; maybe the new guy will know what became of Ali. No, no, forget Ali.
Visitors to London used to say things like, “Can you believe that this building is over a thousand years old?” Now tourists say things like, “This is the house where Colin Firth punched Hugh Grant in the face for being such a wiener. Can you simulate punching my face? Or, better still, actually punch my face so I can get a great selfie with a black eye.”
Sorry, Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Tower of London, you had your day. Now, throngs of young people pose in front of the bookshop featured in the film “Notting Hill.” And yes, I’m sure Colin Firth punches Hugh Grant in the face in that film too. I’m pretty sure that people would flock to see any film that has Colin Firth punching Hugh Grant in the face.
We live in the age of instant gratification. Social Media rules our daily lives. I discovered that although a lot of the museums have wi-fi, they block websites like Facebook and Twitter.
iTourist is thwarted and not happy. “Screw you. If I’m spending $80 to see the goddamned Crown Jewels in the goddamned Tower of London, I want to send picture-proof to all my homies that I was actually there. Here’s a selfie with Queen Victoria’s crown on my head.”
There are about 50 uniformed adults that, albeit politely, will tell you that you cannot photograph the Crown Jewels, wear Richard the Lionheart’s suit of armor, or pose with your head inches below the blade of Henry the VIII’s trusty, head-removing axe of choice. So the iTourist says, “Well, then, you can kiss MY Crown Jewels, London.”
The glossy, black front door at 221b Baker Street stands soberly in the background as hundreds of people take pics of themselves—for free. And you know what? There’s not one single person there to stop the iTourist from knocking on the door, or ringing the doorbell, leaving a steaming poop in a flaming paper bag and running away, or, heaven forbid, breaking into Sherlock Holmes’ digs, only to be massively disappointed that Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t serenading Martin Freeman with a violin.
This is the new London and this is the new tourist. iPhone poised, ready to document every thing they see through their camera lens.
London is a pulsating, vibrant energy as big and exciting as New York City and just as unpredictable. London was broken when I left and it has been fixed. I mean seriously, central London effortlessly hums along. For a brief time at the beginning of August, it felt like home again. The home I might have never left.
When Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can never go home again” he was wrong (unless you once lived on Alderaan, because, spoiler alert, The Death Star blew that planet up.) However, whether the home you remember (or want) is the same, well that’s another matter. The main thing is that no matter what the future holds for London in the next few years, it seems for now, tourists are pretty happy that Hugh Grant is getting punched in the face.
The Bay Area Brit here. I normally update with a funny essay, or captioned photos of people mis-behaving in public. BART I’m looking at you.
But today I’m just giving a quick update. Sorry I haven’t added anything here lately, I’m in the closing stages of writing a new book. I think it’s the best thing I’ve written so far, and I wanted to finish it completely before devoting time to anything else in the writing department. It’s a funny, murder-mystery set on a construction site in Marin County, and if I tell you any more than that, you won’t get me to shut up.
If you miss me–stop pretending you don’t miss me–I will be reading a short, funny essay about my purely platonic relationship with James Bond at The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, Saturday March 1st.
It should be a fun event and well worth the entry fee. Regardless of whether a Brit is prattling on about James Bond, the museum is a must-see in San Francisco if you’re a fan of the comic strip/cartoon oeuvre.
Welcome to the fifth “Gospel According To BART.” Now with some late-breaking news about the BART strike, we go over to our “on the train” news team Diane Summers and Ron Dayton……
“Guys, you’re on. Ron…wake up! You’re on live! Diane, can you hear me? Cut to Gary with Sports, I think they’re dead.”
BART’s definition of “OUT OF ORDER” differs greatly from my own.
So I’m confused. Is this the button to call the Agent or to get the elevator? If only it were more clearly marked.
Dear BART, Shit doesn’t work as an adhesive. That is all.
This is why you should feel uneasy when someone sits RIGHT BEHIND YOU. He’s already taken out the lady to his left. I don’t know, maybe he’s just taking a photo of a mole on the back of the guy’s neck to show him and tell him he should get it checked out.
Meanwhile outside the station, in the BART parking lot, commuters discuss transport alternatives to BART. “Hey, bro, cool bike. We have so much in common. Wanna go grab a coffee sometime?”
Phone theft on the BART system is on the rise. Cameras are not a guarantee of safety, please keep an eye on all your valuables, including laptops, purses, and especially phones.
Whether BART workers are justified in striking is a hotly debated issue. But this chap says he is with the workers and peacefully picketing in a show of sleepy solidarity.
When I was 16 my arms were like two pale sticks attached to an anorexic snowman. I was painfully thin. It wasn’t my fault—I’m English. Dickensian-skinny is to the youth of England as childhood obesity is to America. I was completely free of the burden of things like fat or muscles. I had seldom lifted anything heavier than a suitcase, and had never felt the urge to lift said suitcase over my head as a form of exercise for any reason. I was a runner, and that was how I chose to exercise.
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