Gone to America

I didn’t make it to the parade this year, either. Unlike last year, it wasn’t snowing. It was a nice day. I just didn’t find the idea that attractive. People walking.

And it was far away, all the way up 5th Avenue at 44th Street. I started the day down at Houston, at the R* offices. I just had a couple of hours work to do to finish something I had started the day before (work continues intermittently). I left there about 12:30, and headed to the Scratcher. I bought my camera with me, with every intention of creating some kind of rudimentary photo essay, but in fact I only took three photographs, and only two of them came out. This is the first one:

It’s of Anita in the Scratcher, just after she poured me my first pint of the day at about 1pm. I had half arranged to meet up with Helen McMahon and her New-York-resident friends Anne Marie and Ciara around lunch time or in the early afternoon, but they got bogged down in Queens doing women’s things so I just hung around the Scratcher chatting to Anita and various other people who wandered in and out.

Some were Scratcher regulars who I’d met before, like Laurent. It was his birthday. In France this had not been an issue, but since he’s moved to the US it has apparently tended to become a little lost. Another guy I ended up talking to for a while – indeed, having lunch with – was a random stranger called Matt. He’s hosts a TV show on the Discovery channel, which means it could well be poised to become the new American Chopper. He didn’t try and steal anything from me.

After a while Helen and her friends settled in a bar called Vertigo which Ciara designed up around 26th Street, so I staggered up to join them. I had a pint or two more there, but they were expensive ($7!) and the music was too loud (I’m getting old). Julian, Lisa and Anne showed up. The Irish girls headed to Lunasa. I vowed to join them later, and headed with Anne, Lisa and Julian to a new bar on 28th Street and Madison called Boston 212. It was during this short walk that I took the second of the day’s pictures.

The Empire State Building, all lit up green. Julian actually has a better picture of it at his site. In my defense, Julian had taken his earlier and wasn’t nearly as drunk as me.

This was the first night that Boston 212 had opened its doors and it wasn’t quite finished, although extremely presentable. The grand opening will be on April 1st. It’s part owned by a friend of Conor’s called Charley, hence the invite. This is pretty much where I finished off the evening. I hit the wall about midnight and just had to go home. Only eleven hours of drinking! It’s official – I’m not as young as I used to be.

The whole Paddy’s Day thing is interesting. When in Ireland, I don’t really celebrate it much. As a kid I used to be taken to the parade, but nowadays it just starts too early. It’s a day off, which is nice, but the following day isn’t so there’s no real incentive to drink much. I’ve really found that the most fun to be had in Dublin on Paddy’s Day is in hanging out with Americans, to whom it really means something. This year I decided to embrace the stereotype and spend the day drinking, but it was really just an excuse. I just haven’t done that for a while.

It seems to be much more signifigant to the diaspora. The first Paddy’s Day parades weren’t in Ireland at all, they were in the US. They served a very specific purpose. They said to the community at large “We’re here, and there are a lot of us”. By comparison the festival they recently started having in Dublin doesn’t have any such history, or message – it’s really a tourist thing.

As a young(ish) freshly arrived immigrant I really don’t feel that the parade as it exists in NYC really has anything to do with me. I actually feel the opposite – turned off, excluded. Old men marching sternly. It’s not a celebration, it’s a warning. It’s not about the Irish, it’s about the Irish-Americans – an ambivalent relationship to say the least.

Any Irish person who’s travelled at all, and even most of those who haven’t, will be familiar with the surreal experience of meeting people who claim to be Irish and clearly aren’t. Usually, they’re American. At first it can be a little disorientating, and a little irritating. But they usually buy drinks for Irish people, so that’s ok. Then you can start to feel a little superior, and wish to set them straight. “No, you’re not Irish”, you say. “You’re American. I’m Irish.”

This can actually get to be quite heated, particularly with all the free (to you) drinks. Passports are brandished, accents compared, histories related. In one extreme case in Paris in 1997 I actually saw one young American reduced to tears by an Irish girl who refused in the strongest possible terms to acknowledge any validity at all to his claims at an Irish identity. This was about 4am, mind you. I spent quite a while comforting him. Something he said to me then really pointed up the difference between Irish and Irish-American.

One of the ways this guy asserted his Irish identity was by financially supporting the “armed struggle” in the North. He assumed that this established his bona fides, and would endear him to any Irish person. This attitude is no longer the norm from what I can see, but it goes a long way to explaining why Irish people can sometimes feel a little bit resentful and embarrassed by the way we are claimed and represented by Irish-Americans, specifically those who have never been to Ireland. There’s an image they seem to have which really isn’t current, if it ever was. This is also part of the reason for the feeling of exclusion I and other young(-ish) Irish immigrants feel from the parade. It’s celebrating a very different, unfamiliar kind of Irishness. It hasn’t been Irishness as we understand it for a long time. It’s Irish-Americanness.

But that’s ok. Frankly, we owe the diaspora more than they owe us. Paddy’s Day is celebrated all over the world. Pretty much anywhere you go as an Irish person you can find an Irish bar and a welcome based on your accent. As was pointed out to me on Thursday, there’s one day a year when the most powerful man in the world, the US President, has to meet the Taoiseach, leader of a country with a population half that of Manhattan.

This is not because we are so inherently great. This is because so many left, and organised, and started having parades to show that they were here, and that there were a lot of them. I still don’t really have any desire to go see the parade, but it doesn’t matter – it’s really not for me.

Before I start – cough Wishlist cough.

Last night at about 8pm I got a call. “Are you free tomorrow?” Well, yes. “Friday?” Then too. So today I was back in R*, working on some of the preliminaries for their next game. It’s not much work (although they’ve already extended the amount of time they want me on) but it’s welcome. And it bodes well for them getting me back on for a longer period when it really gets going – whenever that is. The NDA I signed last time is still in force, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

It’s kind of ironic that the main reason they’re getting me in this early for a short period is the stuff I used to use to procrastinate. I’m not working for them at the moment because I’m a good sound editor – although knowing Pro Tools is part of it – but because I also know how to use Excel and Filemaker Pro. I only got comfortable with those programs as a way of avoiding work (“Well, I guess I’d better start editing… Or I could redesign the database for spotting the ADR! I guess I’d better try and find some wriggle room in this budget… Or I could try and figure out a way to make the spreadsheet automatically total up the overages based on the date!”) and now that’s what makes me employable. The next thing you know they’ll be looking for someone who both knows how to use Pro Tools and set up a blog site.

I just hope I get enough work out of them to pay the taxes on the work I did for them last year.

Click to read Vegas Part I. I intended this to be a fairly even two parter, but this entry has bloated to an ungainly 2,685 words, so Part I is apparently really just more of an introduction. Here we go.

I woke surprisingly early on Saturday – not quite jet lag, but a three hour time shift isn’t nothing. I lazed for a while, then started rambling aimlessly. David, my aimless-ramble buddy, had headed out fairly early to an outlet store on the edge of town to buy himself a suit, so I was on my own. I had breakfast at the Aladdin buffet. I had always heard that Vegas was cheap – that the casinos were only interested in keeping you gambling, and so food was plentiful and virtually cost free.

This is not true – not any more. The buffet cost $24 – it’s the same in most of the casinos. True, it’s all you can eat, but frankly if I’m paying $24 for breakfast I’d want to be pretty full at the end of it whether it’s theoretically infinite or not. The small bottles they leave in your room cost $5 each if you open them. $5! There was a charge of $3.50 on all the ATMs I saw – in NYC it generally runs about $1.50. I didn’t take a taxi, but apparently they were outrageously costly too.

After I ate I ran into Liz again, this time accompanied by Nacha, who is currently living in Mexico City. I believe she’d spent eighteen hours on a bus to get to Vegas. A lot of people travelled a lot of miles to come to this wedding – a testament to the collective pull of Lisa and Julian’s friendship.

Liz and Nacha were just heading to check in, so I left them to it and gravitated back towards the craps tables. I checked my watch and saw that I had some time to kill. I also had a couple of $100 bills in my wallet, as that’s what the ATMs in the casinos dispense by default. I laid one of them down and got my twenty $5 chips. I wasn’t really expecting to use all of them – I just thought I’d play for a little while, then cash out whatever was left. I was prepared to take a loss. You’d need to be either a lot smarter or a lot stupider than I am to gamble in Vegas and expect to make a profit.

I put my initial bet on the line – $10. That was the minimum on this table. At the weekend, that’s as low as they go. At less peak times they go down to $5. Whoever rolled crapped out. $10 down – bad start, but no big deal. Another $10 on the line, another roll – this time the shooter made a point. I bet the odds for another $10 – fairly standard. Shooter rolls a seven – it’s all gone. I put another $10 down. Another point, another $10 on the odds, and now $10 on a place bet. A seven. $30 on the table. Another seven. It’s all gone. I now have $40 left, and it’s my turn to roll.

I fail to turn things around, and it doesn’t take long before my rack is entirely devoid of chips. I look at my watch again. I’ve been playing for fifteen minutes. I’ve lost one hundred dollars in fifteen minutes. I think of all the times I’ve agonised over $50 purchases – even $20 purchases. Do I need this? Can I afford it? Maybe I’ll wait until I get another job, another check for something. And now I’ve basically taken a hunk of money I can’t really afford to be trifling with and chucked it into a blender, one note at a time.

And it was easy. And that’s the thing about Vegas. It’s themed and cheesy, fun, a holiday. Cheerful. Purely recreational. It’s chips, it’s not money. I’d read about the way the casinos purposely blur the distinction between day and night – no clocks, no natural light, no acknowledgement whatsoever of any kind of diurnal rhythm beyond changing cuisine in the buffet. I’d read about the way they pump oxygen through the gambling floors to keep people stimulated and wakeful, the way they bring you free drinks so you never have a reason to leave the table. That stuff is easy to deal with – just wear a watch and know how many hours sleep you need. But I hadn’t grasped the real alchemy that they perform.

As I rode the bus from the airport, the driver told us that it had rained yesterday. This was noteworthy, because you are in the middle of a desert. This is obvious from the window of the plane, the view from the hotel – a sea of lights ringed by red rock as far as the eye can see. Apparently, for the last six years Vegas has been enduring the worst drought to hit the area for about a century. But you wouldn’t think that there was a problem with water – it’s plentiful. There are fountains, ponds. Every half hour outside the Bellagio there’s a spectacular display of aquatechnics, synchronised to Celine Dion. There are pools everywhere, jacuzzis, spas. Never a shortage of ice for the drinks. Vegas just buys the water. Mother Nature can be circumvented if you have the cash, and there’s no shortage of that.

And it struck me as I walked away from the table that that’s really what they do – they turn money into water, to be spent as freely. They strip it of any value except as a means to playing. It seems like I’ve often heard Vegas reffered to as “Disneyland for adults” or somesuch, and that’s the trick. All the theming and carnivalesque excess is to make you forget that this money is the same money you pay rent with, buy food with. The change in your pocket doesn’t feel like currency that can be exchanged for goods and services – it’s slot fodder.

So I called Andras to see what he was up to, as I clearly shouldn’t be allowed to wander around unsupervised. He was having lunch nearby with all the other German speakers – Julian’s family. I went along to meet them, and to see Julian. I’d seen Lisa the night before, but Julian had been feeling under the weather and I wanted to see how he was.

He seemed a lot better – dosed, I believe, with various over the counter medicaments – and a lot less stressed now that his family was fairly settled. His father and grandmother don’t speak much English, although more than I speak German. They were just finishing up, so I joined them briefly. I spoke to his Grandmother’s boyfriend, Josef, from Estonia (I believe). He didn’t speak much English either, but we managed to communicate dimly.

Afterwards, I went back out to the casino floor. It had occurred to me that I had been a victim of unbelievably bad luck earlier, a statistical blip. After all, if craps really was that difficult to beat in general then nobody would play it, and I had managed to play for quite a while the previous night on not much money – even coming out slightly ahead. Surely it couldn’t hurt to have another go? Why, I might even make back some of my $100!

I went to a different table and ran into David – he’s been bitten by the craps bug too. I put down another $100 bill, and got another twenty $5 chips. It didn’t go so badly this time – I won a few bets, I was even up initially. But there were still a lot of sevens being rolled at inopportune moments. This time my hundred dollars lasted twenty five minutes. David was losing too, but he was betting even less than I was. I found myself walking towards the nearest ATM. It was out of order. I decided to take this as a hint, and retire for a spell. I left David at the table, still doing no better.

I went to my room. I had about three or four hours to kill before the rehearsal dinner, so I decided to read a little and take a nap. I had wanted to play poker while I was in Vegas, but I was now taking myself out of the running for any further gambling. It was time to draw a line. And I was tired – my involuntary early waking had left me feeling slightly short of sleep.

Rested, showered, changed and feeling much fresher – albeit much poorer – I headed to Cheesburger at the Oasis for dinner. Most of the guests had arrived, and now we were all gathered together in one place. I was introduced to Lisa’s parents, and I met or re-met many of Lisa’s and Julian’s friends: Doug, Daniel, Max, Lauren, Laura, Ellery, and others. Anne and Mike, who were neighbours when I lived in Greenpoint, were there, and I found out that they had just recently got engaged. Congratulations!

It was a fine time. After dinner, we went our separate ways for a while, arranging to meet up at the club upstairs in the hotel later. I went for coffee with David, and he introduced me to Julian’s workmates who had just been sitting with – Rebecca, Marcie and a different Rebecca. I don’t really know why Julian didn’t invite any of his male colleagues, but I wasn’t really bothered – there is a part of me now that, with all due respect, will always think of The Museum of Jewish Heritage as The Museum of Jewish Heritage: Repository of Hot Jewish Chicks.

We went to the club (free admission!) and drank and danced. I didn’t like the music much, but I danced anyway. Apparently, if I had turned around at just the right moment I could have seen Paris Hilton. She’s opening a club to be imaginatively named “Club Paris” in the Aladdin soon. I don’t know if this is going to be a rechristened Curve or an entirely new spot, but I’m not sure the name, however obvious, is wise. The Aladdin is actually right next door to the Paris casino, and this will surely only cause confusion.

Anyway, I didn’t see her. The next day was the day of the wedding – we had to be dressed up and ready to get on the bus to the Red Rock Country Club at 4:30pm. I wasn’t going to be doing any gambling, and what else was there to do? I basically stayed in my room, leaving only to get some breakfast, and then when the maid came I went for a wander into the Bellagio, just to have a look. Classy. And no gambling. As the hour approached, I started to get ready. I put on my suit. I realised I needed a belt. Thank God for the Gap.

And so to the wedding, the entire reason for the trip. Julian had given me a yarmulke to practice with, so I was fairly confident in my ability to keep it more or less on my head. According to Julian and Andras, the Catholicism of my Irish upbringing was so pervasive that wearing a Yarmulke just made me look like the pope.

After a short period of drinking and admiring each others in our finery, we filed outside. It was a lovely setting, but the clouds were gathering, and I was worried that, however unlikely, it would start to rain. But it didn’t, and in the event the gathering clouds only served to make the sunset more beautiful as the ceremony got under way.

Everything was perfect. Nothing could have been better, as far as I could tell. Julian has blogged about it here (Dodgy english translation here), and the joy he expresses there was clearly written on his face for all to see. As part of the ceremony, the Rabbi read out seven blessings in Hebrew. After each blessing, somebody nominated by Julian would read it out in German, and then someone chosen by Lisa in English. I was the third on Julian’s side. He’d coached me in pronunciation, and apparently I got it more or less right.

Julian had provided me with a translation, but I thought that knowing what I was saying would distract me from pronouncing it correctly, so I hadn’t paid it much mind. I didn’t really understand what I’d said until I heard Ellery read out the English version, and I was struck very strongly by the thought that two years ago I had no thought of being anywhere but Dublin, and now I was speaking a Jewish blessing in German in a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas. Life is a strange journey.

I got a Green Card in the lottery, moved into Lisa’s old room in Greenpoint thanks to an ad on Craigslist. Julian, her fiancee, didn’t have internet access in their new apartment, and my modem was volunteered. Julian came over a few times – we were both new, unemployed immigrants, and we started hanging out. And here I am a year later, in Vegas, speaking German. Thank you, Julian, for befriending me, and doing me the honour of allowing me to part of your wedding. And introducing me to your hot co-workers. And you too, Lisa – you also have many hot friends.

And so we ate, drank, listened to speeches, and danced, danced, danced. Eventually, the party moved back to the hotel, and Lisa’s and Julian’s suite. Big room. More drink. Bed eventually. It was an amazing day, and even though I had come out maybe losing more at the casino than I was entirely comfortable with, I had no regrets. A treasured memory.

The next morning there was a wedding buffet brunch, so we all came together again, and said goodbye. David and Marcie were going to go and have a look at a few more casinos, so I said I’d go too. We went to the Bellagio, and I decided that since I’d been good on Sunday I could allow myself to lose another fifty dollars – what the hell. Note that I didn’t say I could afford to lose another fifty dollars – hell, I couldn’t afford to lose the $285 odd I’d already seen vanish down the drain. Come to that, I couldn’t afford to go to Vegas – I couldn’t even afford to move to New York, and that’s something about which I have no regrets. I have a Shakespeare quote that I like to take out of context to justify any random, irrational actions I feel like taking. It’s from King Lear, Act II, Scene IV:

O! Reason not the need!

So I gambled again, in the Bellagio. Craps, obviously. I put down my fifty dollars, got my ten $5 chips, with pictures of Celine Dion on them. $10 minimum bet. Marcie didn’t want to gamble, but myself and David asked the stickman if she could roll anyway, so she did. And I won. The fifty dollars turned into one hundred and twenty. We went to Caesar’s Palace. Marcie rolled. I won again. The same fifty, but this time it became one eighty. We went to the Flamingo. Marcie rolled again…

In short, I ended up only about $15 down on the weekend, which wouldn’t even have paid for the free drinks I’d been given at the table. But poor Marcie – whenever David and myself gave her some chips out of gratitude to bet with, she invariably lost them instantly. She seemed to enjoy herself anyway. I headed to the airport with a smile on my face.

As weekends go, this was definitely one of the better ones.

I’m back. I’m alive, unmarried, and still relatively solvent. Relatively. I arrived in the early afternoon on Friday, and checked into my room – plush, by my standards, even though it was one of the cheaper rooms in the Aladdin. I was offered the opportunity to share with another impecunious wedding guest, but I’m not nineteen any more, and I like a room to myself these days. Nice view, too – there’s a picture of it in the Vegas Gallery post.

I immediately launched into a nap – hey, I’d been up really early to catch the flight. I spoke briefly to Julian, who seemed kind of stressed for some reason. He suggested that I meet up with David, a friend of his who had flown in from Portugal the day before. I had met David briefly when he visited New York a few months ago. We hit the floor.

Not that we started gambling straight away – we wandered the strip a little. I wanted to see New York, New York, to see if it really was as odd as I thought it would be. It was. We played roulette there for a little while – my first Vegas gambling experience! David had played before, and had a system of sorts. I had not, and did not. I lost $85, but it was fun – friendly staff, free drinks and so forth.

After that, we crossed the street to the Excalibur. When I say “we crossed the street”, I really mean we were gently conveyed above the street on a moving walkway and softly carried through the doors accompanied by a rousing medieval-style fanfare. We played a few hands of Blackjack (breaking about even) and then continued wandering, through the Luxor and then on into Mandalay Bay, where we ate at the buffet. We did these last three without going outside – they’re all connected. They don’t really want you to go outside, apparently. You might figure out what time it is.

I didn’t really start getting the Vegas thing until after dinner. We went to meet up with various other guests for a drink back at the Aladdin, which was wedding central. Lisa was there, with her friend Liz, her sister Amy and Amy’s boyfriend Isaac. We were joined by my former roommate Andras, who’s currently living and working in Chicago, and very soon to be a father for the first time. His wife Cora didn’t make the trip, for obvious reasons.

We all meandered over to the Bally. It was around this time that I was introduced to the game of craps. It seems complicated at first, but once you actually start playing it’s pretty straightforward. And fun. It’s more fun than blackjack or roulette, because those games are slow. I don’t mean slow to play, but slow in the rate of change of your bankroll. You win a little, you lose a little… Roulette is a particularly excruciating way of watching your money slowly dwindle, come back, dwindle again – inexorably drawn into the house by sheer mathematics. Craps is fast. You go up, you go down – big swings. I broke fairly even that night, and I only left because I realised that I would probably never feel really tired, just fatigued. The light, the noise, the constant free drinks, the extra oxygen they pump in – you need never stop at all.

But I’m in New York now, and I am tired. I’ll pick this up again tomorrow, when I will describe the wedding, and what it’s like to lose $100 in fifteen minutes. And maybe I’ll come up with a more compelling narrative structure than just “and then, and then…”

Or maybe not.

Yes, another long pause. I’m sorry. But I’m making up for it with this bumper, uber-post, in which I naively express some of my feelings about the upcoming election, largely by means of incoherent rambling. Please help me out – I may not know what I’m talking about, but at least I’m trying. You can skip the other stuff and go directly to the political stuff by either scrolling down a bit or clicking here.

I have a good reason for not posting – after I put up these pictures my bandwidth usage went through the roof. Well, through the roof is probably a little strong, but I guess there are more people reading out there than I thought (or maybe fewer people reading more obsessively). When all of you started checking out the relatively large picture files my poor little site edged over the 2gb-per-month that I pay for, by 25%. I didn’t post because I get a spike in hits when I do, and I was hoping to minimise the damage for the month. Rather sportingly, my host has said they won’t charge me extra for this month, as it’s my first offense, but they “recommend” that I upgrade my hosting plan to 5gb. It won’t cost that much, and I do have a little bit of cash lying around at the moment, but I might wait and see how this month pans out…

Yeah, my little bit of cash. The Rockstar job was an efficient pocket liner, but I think it’s definitely over-over-over now – I haven’t heard from them at all this week. I guess I’ll probably have to wait until their next game needs some sound editing before I’ll hear from them, and I’m not sure if even they know when that will be. While I was working I wasn’t spending much – just the odd book – but since I finished I’ve been haemorraghing cash. A new flatscreen tv, a new LCD monitor for the G4, a new hard drive, new headphones, plane tickets and a hotel room in Vegas for Julian and Lisa’s wedding, and a steak dinner for Julian, Lisa and Marilyn, (because she’s the one who got me the job in the first place. Thank you, Marilyn!) I’m going to have to dial it back a little, although I’ll be ok up until at least Christmas even if I don’t earn any more.

I’m working from home at the moment, on a low budget (low, low budget) feature. I really dislike working from my room – there’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night and realising that you’re in your office. And there are too many distractions too close at hand. But there’s no money (I’ve been recording ADR in the producers’ office), so this is the only way it’s going to get done. Focus! Focus! At least there isn’t an incredibly harsh deadline, although I’d really like to get it finished before I go crazy.

Timbuktu, the last movie I worked on before I left Ireland, has been nominated for seven IFTAs. Congratulations, everybody! No “Best Sound” category this year for some reason, but I’m not bitter. Who wants the chance to be nominated for an award anyway? Mutter mutter popularity contest mutter mutter philistines mutter mutter unrecognised in my own time mutter mutter…

POLITICS

Politics, eh? Yeah… Like most Europeans, and almost exactly 50% of likely voters who expressed a preference*, I have very, very strong feelings of fear and loathing for President GW Bush. I was nearly sick with anxiety as I prepared to watch the debate last Thursday – I was terrified that Kerry would screw it up. Actually terrified. He didn’t (although it remains to be seen how important that is), but why do I feel so strongly about it? Is it that big of a deal, really?

I have very strong anti-Bush feelings. It seems so clear cut – I mean, he lies, he manipulates, he has a self serving agenda, he has cronies, he can’t string a sentence together. How could anybody not be appalled by him and his cabinet?

But a lot of people aren’t – they just don’t see him that way. And, as I’m living in America now, some of these people are friends of mine. And, surprisingly, they’re not stupid, or brainwashed, or uninformed. In Europe, you would have to talk to a lot people before you’d find someone who genuinely supports Bush (the argument is more likely to be about whether he’s the evil one himself, or just the dupe of the evil ones). That’s not the case here – even in New York, a staunchly Democrat state.

And it’s interesting. People are so divided. There are such strong feelings on both sides. There’s very little sense that there can be just a difference of opinion. Each side feels very strongly that the other is wrong, that the other is somehow fundamentally different, that the other is dangerous. Debate doesn’t really take place – just abuse. There’s so little understanding of the other point of view that it seems that neither side can even conceive of a reality where somebody, anybody, could conceivably change their mind. It almost seems as if political opinions are like gender – reassignment is really, really hard, and involves serious surgery.

I guess the only way for me to try and get past this is to try and get inside the mind of a GW supporter. It’s not easy.

Attempt #1: I’m a born again Christian. I hate gays and…
No. That’s stupid. That’s the problem – stereotyping of the other side.

Attempt #2: I’m extremely rich, and GW in office means that I’ll be even richer…
No. Why should I assume that people who disagree with me are only operating out of self interest?

Attempt #3: We’re at war. We need to kill all the towelheads and…
Ok, back to the stereotyping. But maybe this is fruitful. Racism aside, America was attacked – very dramatically. Ok, not by Iraq, but there’s a new awareness of vulnerability, a new sense that the good life might have to be earned, might have to be defended. And GW certainly has demonstrated that he has no qualms about taking the initiative. The rest of the world might be appalled at Bush’s disregard for international opinion, but for many Americans that’s a good point. “Why should we defend ourselves only when France says it’s ok?”

Well? It’s a good point, really. Sure, there were no WMDs, but is that really the point? America’s economy is heavily dependent on oil. If Saddam had, or was going to have, the opportunity to influence oil prices, that’s a lot of power in the hands of someone who is on the record as wishing you ill. Saddam had access to cash, and terrorists want cash, and Saddam might have given the cash to terrorists to use against the US. The US probably is safer to have Saddam out of power, whatever world opinion is of the way it was done.

And now my anti-Bush genes raise their their collective head. Sure, maybe there was a case to be made for invading Iraq, but he sure as hell didn’t make it. He demanded, and got, intelligence that showed what he wanted it to show, and ignored other intelligence that might have given pause. He constantly, constantly planted the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were in cahoots, despite the complete lack of any evidence that this was the case. Even now, as recently as the debate on Thursday, after the 9/11 commision has come out and said there was no link, he continues to promote the idea. It’s as if he has no faith in his decision – that he feels he can only fool people into supporting him, not convince them.

But Bush supporters feel that he had a tough decision to make, and he made it. Gutsy. Even if the intelligence was flawed, he had no way of knowing that – they give him the benefit of the doubt. And there is doubt – I can’t say for sure that Bush intentionally misled people. It’s what I assume, because I’m predisposed to distrust him, just as his supporters trust him. So I guess the divide goes deeper than national security, the war in Iraq.

Attempt #4: I work hard for my money. Why should it be taken away to give slackers an easy life, taking drugs and…
Well, to be fair, this is an American thing, rather than a Bush thing. In European terms, I’m probably just slightly left of center – this makes me a raging communist here in the US of A. I am so scared by the way Americans in general tend to feel that healthcare should be expensive, and that poor people and the homeless probably deserve to be poor and/or homeless, and it’s not their responsibility to do anything about it. It really freaks me out.

But it’s actually a lot more understandable to me now than it was when I first arrived. Now that I’ve had a job, I feel much more a part of society here than I did before, and I’m starting to see how fundamentally different the US is to Europe.

It’s all about freedom, the freedom to change your life. In Europe, our idea of a rich person is somehow related to ideas of class, of aristocracy. People who are wealthy have always been wealthy. Of course, this isn’t a rule, by any means, but it’s a persistent impression. Over here, a wealthy person is more likely to be someone who had a good idea and worked hard. Of course, there are dynasties, inherited privilege, but even these don’t really tend to go back much past grandfather. That’s pretty recent. My feeling is that people’s expectations of themselves are generally lower in Europe – people very early on have a mental ceiling on what they feel they’ll achieve. It’s very different here.

That’s a good thing, right? It’s certainly very energising, once you start feeling it – the sky’s the limit. But it has a flipside. In Europe, you may find it harder to feel you can get to the top, but you also know that the worst case isn’t so bad either, provided you don’t actually get addicted to drugs or something. If you can’t get a job you’ll draw the dole, if you have an accident a hospital will take you and look after you, if you want to retrain you can probably get a government sponsored course and a grant.

Not to say that people in Europe never live in poverty, never fall out of society, but it’s so much easier here. The rewards are much greater, but so are the risks. To do well here is really seen as an achievement, a reflection on the individual, and so the inverse is also true. People really feel they own their success, in a way that I don’t think they do in Europe, and so they resent anything that infringes on it, like taxes. Not that people are heartless – far from it. I have found Americans to be extremely generous and hospitable.

But they value their freedom. In a typical European welfare state, people in general will surrender a little of their freedom to keep what they earn to feel more secure that they’ll probably never have to live on the streets, or die without access to medicine that could save them because they can’t afford it. Americans would rather take their chances, rely on themselves.

That’s why Bush supporters aren’t so bothered by his tax cut, even if it doesn’t directly affect them. They feel if somebody earned something, they should be allowed to keep it. I can see where they’re coming from, but I’m still European enough to be terrified by it.

I don’t know. When I started typing this I really was hoping to be able to grasp the differences between those who support Bush, and those who don’t, but I’m no closer. I guess it’s beyond me. It bothers me. It really does. People constantly say things that are disparaging about Bush supporters, writing them off as misled fools, and I just want to scream “How can you say that? There are so many of them – they’re just as smart, as educated as you. How can you write them off? How is it so easy for you to believe that you’re better?” But at the end of the day, I feel the same way, and I can’t get past it.

Somebody reading this must support Bush. Help me understand – I really want to. Set me right in the comments, somebody.

*Statistic made up.

So, Daragh’s been and gone. He was here for ten days, and left on Wednesday evening. I met him at Grand Central Station on his first night – he’d landed at Newark airport, not perhaps fully realizing that I lived in Queens. An easy mistake to make, and one of little consequence. It was late, anyway, so we didn’t really do anything – I introduced him to my roommates, we organized the mattress on my floor and went to bed.

On Tuesday we lazed around a bit, then went and had a proper American breakfast in a local diner. Of course, this being Sunnyside, the waitress was Irish – we needed to go outside and look at the skyline to remind ourselves that we were in New York at all. I had to go into work for 15 minutes (read: an hour), but I work right downtown, so I didn’t feel bad about dragging Daragh along. He came with me into the building. In a way, it’s kind of charming that even though he was offered full access to roam around the offices of one of the biggest game publishers in the world as they prepared to deliver one of the most eagerly awaited games of the year, he preferred to hang out in the waiting area and play “Space Invaders”. If you’re looking for the scoop on San Andreas, no point asking Daragh!

Anyway, after that we wandered around Bleecker Street looking in record shops, which was good fun – I don’t really do it that often. We had a pleasant, slightly boozy Mexican lunch/dinner, and headed home. That night we went out locally, to a bar called “Tailor’s Hall”. It was quiet, being early on a Tuesday night and all, but perfectly pleasant. Vanessa joined us, and we watched admiringly as Daragh put some Sambucca in his mouth and set it on fire. I could tell Vanessa was particularly impressed.

On Wednesday, I took Daragh in to see Julian at the museum where he works, and we had a look at the exhibition. I actually had never done this – it was very impressive. We would have liked to have had longer there, but it was closing early due to the Jewish New Year. We left just as they were closing up and headed over to Ground Zero. The last time Daragh had been in New York was May 2001, with me, so he’d been up the towers then. We had a look in Century21, as you do, and moved on to see Anita and have a couple of pints in The Scratcher. While there, Daragh conceived the idea of going to a comedy club. We wandered up to the Virgin Megastore in Union Square to browse CDs, buy a copy of Time Out NY, and have a cup of coffee. We decided to go the Comedy Cellar in the village. We were amused, but disappointed with their drinks policy – we had no objection to the two drink minimum, but the three drink maximum really grated. I guess it cuts down on hecklers, but it also leaves Irish people feeling aggrieved. So we left. And that was Wednesday – I think.

Thursday, I took Daragh to Greenpoint and Williamsburg, where I lived when I first arrived. We had a look around some more cool record shops, I took some pictures of Daragh and we had a really nice lunch/dinner in Sea Thai. That picture of Daragh in the bubble chair is from there.

After we had hung out in Williamsburg for a while, we headed home. Vanessa had rung earlier, looking for Daragh’s date and time of birth, so she could do his chart. She does that kind of thing. (Apparently I have a strong Sagittarius aspect to my otherwise routinely Aquarian nature). We arranged to go and see Collateral at the local theatre, which we kind of enjoyed. Vanessa sat down with Daragh and went over his chart, and they got talking about stuff. I left them to it after a while. Daragh came back to my room at about 2am.

Friday, I had to work. I left Daragh my key, and we arranged to meet for lunch in Katz’s Deli – always a popular choice. I left him to his own devices and told him I’d meet him again in The Scratcher when I finished work. We had a couple of pints, and then Vanessa came along.

That was the last time I saw Daragh alone.

We headed on to Mollie’s, where we met Conor, Mike, Michael, Young-Min… the usual suspects. Daragh had heard about Karaoke from Zaini, and Young Min was willing, so the four of us headed down to Chorus in Koreatown, and sang the night away. A very romantic atmosphere, for an Irish guy on holiday, and a Brazilian gal with a few beers in her…

Saturday, and Vanessa took Daragh to the Met. Sunday… well, to find out what Daragh was doing from this point on until he flew out on Wednesday you’re really going to have to check Vanessa’s Blog (here’s the strange Google translation) or wait for Daragh’s guest entry. Which will be heavily censored.

That’s right! I will write about other people’s private business, but not allow them to write about mine! This is my website, after all. If they want to they can get their own damn blog.

So, I think Daragh had a good time – probably better than most. I was sorry not to see more of him, particularly since when I was hanging out with him I was invariably tired and/or grumpy due to a slightly frustrating time in work – I’m probably back in there tomorrow for a couple of hours. I’ve bought myself an insanely expensive television to reward myself for having actually earned some money. And some new headphones. And a hard drive. But I really needed those last two for work. As well as money, I also came out of Rockstar with three free t-shirts (one of which I gave to Daragh) and a copy of Red Dead Revolver. So I did ok.

And relax. I didn’t pay full price for the TV – it was a display model, so I got a good deal.

Yeah, so I’m going to leave. I’m going to head back to Dublin at the end of the month. Anybody know a good place online for cheap flights?

I’m looking at this as a retreat to regroup rather than an abandonment. New York is better than Dublin, but Dublin is where I have to be at the moment. Basically, as I see it, the only way for me to have any chance of remaining here is to focus on sound editing – something I stopped doing a few months ago. Trying to be a writer here from scratch is too hard! I’ll go back to Dublin, where I can live with my parents for a little while and be in touch with people who work in the film business and know me – something I don’t have here.

This may be wrongheaded of me – it’s hard to tell. Am I a fool to want to be a writer rather than a sound editor? Well, yes, obviously. But I have to try for a little while. New York is a really bad place to try and switch careers when you’re not established anyway. But I would probably never even have tried the change if I hadn’t come here, so it’s all to the good.

So, now I have to focus on doing a bunch of stuff I haven’t gotten around to yet for the first time, doing another bunch of stuff for the last time, and fretting about packing.

And just to show that I’m serious: I’ve actually been offered a job doing sound on a low budget feature that would pay just enough (with some NYFA teaching hours) to keep me here another month, but I’m still not staying. My decision to leave is motivated by more than total lack of funds! The lack of funds is fairly total, though… These next few weeks will be disappointingly quiet, I fear.

I am a little worried about my Green Card – I’m all legal and everything, but the stamp in my passport (which is only supposed to tide you over until your physical Green Card gets to you) expires October 6th, and no sign of the card yet. Apparently, what with new Homeland Security regulations, it frequently takes a year or more to appear.
This will only be a problem if I decide I want to re-enter the States sometime between the expiry of the stamp and the delivery of the Card. What are the chances of that?

Of course, there is Julian and Lisa’s wedding in Vegas on October 24th. D’oh!

Hopefully this won’t be an issue – maybe the consul in Dublin can renew my stamp. Damn you, elephantine bureaucracy!

Oh, and I’ve seen and reviewed Fahrenheit 9/11 and Spiderman 2.

This is the Fourth of July – America’s Independence Day. I’ll be heading out in a little while to drink and watch some fireworks – should be fun. Mind you, I won’t be with many Americans, but I suppose that’s kind of the point of New York.

It’s also the one year anniversary of this blog – well, OK, tomorrow is the anniversary. But this is the 365th day. Here’s my first post.

I probably won’t be posting much interesting stuff here until I actually move, although the decision has already impacted my life. For a start, I’ll be moving back in with my parents to save money. I’ve lived out of home for just over 3.5 years now, so that’ll be a change.
Hopefully, this blog will be an interesting record of my experiences, and a way to stay in touch with people. Check back for updates, although there probably won’t be anything interesting to report for quite some time.

Ah, memories. A lot has changed since then. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to predict what my life in New York would be like, and I was right. I love New York, but it seems to be unrequited. I haven’t managed to make a go of it here at all. I can’t make a living, and it looks increasingly likely that I’ve already begun my last month in the big apple.

But that’s only part of the story – I’ve met some great people, made new friends, had my horizons expanded, written a screenplay… I’ve come to realise certain things – things that were bubbling under for a while, but I probably never would have realised if I’d just kept chugging along in the same rut in Dublin. I really don’t like sound editing. I really have no interest in pursuing it as a career. I want to be a writer.
This is really a stupid, and a hell of a pain in the ass. It’s the reason I haven’t been able to get on my feet – I haven’t actually been looking for work in the only field in which I have any real skills or experience. Well, I have been looking – applying for jobs, meeting people – but half-heartedly. And people can smell that.

Ironically, I have a better chance of being a writer in Dublin. I know more people, and I can live rent free with my parents. I have been asked to rewrite a screenplay here, which is a big deal for me. But the money is very little, almost nothing – a gesture. A much appreciated gesture, but not enough to make a difference. It’s pretty cool though.

I’ve run pretty much the gamut of emotions regarding the thought of my return. At the moment, my position is that I don’t really mind going back to Dublin – there are people here I’ll miss, but there are people in Dublin I miss too – but I can’t countenance the idea that I might just go back to what I was doing before. It can’t just be as if this whole past nine months never happened. That would kill me. But I’m in a lot of debt, and that’s the only way I know how to earn money. Oh, well. Time will tell.

But enough summary, and on to recent events. I’ve actually been very busy over the last couple of weeks. I did the sound for a short, six minute comedy by James Monahan, who was the editor on the Midnight Madness project in a day, more or less. I got his drive, cut the dialogue, added a few sound effects and mixed with him – a few days later, I was watching it being screened with my parents as part of a Spoiler films event in Chelsea. It’s got to be the fastest turnaround of any film I’ve ever been involved with. It’s also one of the funniest – it deservedly won the “Best Laughs” prize on the night. You can download it here.

I also recorded sound for the first time, on another short. Man, that’s a tough job – never again. I had an inkling it would be difficult, so I only agreed to the first two days of the four day shoot. I’m very glad of this – both because I really wasn’t having an enjoyable time (even though there were many great people on the crew), and because I got to spend more time with my parent.
It was interesting, and my position was unusual. On the one hand, I understood the post production process better than anybody else on the shoot, so I could with some authority insist that yes, it actually was worth recording decent sound for this shot, even if it was going to inconvenience the DoP slightly; on the other hand, I really didn’t know very much about things like knowing where a good spot to put the boom might be, and so forth. This was fairly obvious. It wasn’t really a problem – I hadn’t misrepresented myself, so they knew I didn’t have experience – but it did tend to undermine my authority a little.

Anyway, it’s over now. My parents visit was very enjoyable for me – and for them too, I believe. We did bunches of stuff – long walks, interesting restaurants, shopping, meeting people. Highlights included, but were not limited to, the discovery of the Century 21 shopping experience right next to Ground Zero, and a night of Korean Karaoke.

I realise that that’s a highly truncated account, but this post is quite long enough and I need to start heading out to a cocktail party. I may ask my parents to contribute their own report.

I’ve probably left something out I didn’t mean to… Oh yeah, I went to a free Frames gig at the South Street Seaport on Friday with Julian, Lisa, and the indomitable Helen McMahon, limping bravely on with her sore knee. It was really good.

I’ve been keeping myself pretty quiet recently, in an attempt to conserve precious money. I’ve set various arbitrary surrender dates for myself while I’ve been here – “if I haven’t got a job in three months, I’ll go home” “OK, six months” “OK, well, June”. I’ve been treating these as I feel my literary hero Douglas Adams would wish – he once famously wrote “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by”.
But this is for real. The end of July is finally it – I can sense it, I know it in my bones, I actually believe it for the first time. I’ve been granted an extra month through the dangerous largesse of a foolish credit card company, but that’s as far as I can stretch without something finally breaking. I was in a lot of debt when I left Ireland, and ten months in New York barely earning has not exactly lessened it.

But New York has been good for me. I…

No, no retrospective summaries yet. I’ve always been very lucky when it comes to career. Something always seems to happen, just when I’ve given up. Just when I’ve been at my most rudderless, my most despairing, something has always come through. And it was usually something I wanted, no matter how unlikely. Getting into DLCAD was a bit of a stretch – 18 places, nearly a thousand applicants. It was unrealistic of me to expect to get in, but I really had no backup plan at all- that was all I could see for myself. And I got in, just like I had assumed I would, but not before I had a fairly lost year floundering in Clay Animation Production in Ballyfermot Senior College. Even there I made some good friends.
And again, ending up as a sound trainee on Screen Training Ireland’s first course. Nobody knew what that was going to be like – again, about 18 places, a bunch of applicants. And I got to meet some great people and sent to work in a real Hollywood studio for three months. That was incredible – and I got a career out of it, just like I assumed I would, even if that isn’t really what I want to do anymore.

I’ve had dips, but always been rescued. I remember my first sound editing job – I was going to be the dialogue editor on a movie called The White Pony. I showed up on the first morning to start work, and after lunch I was told that the job wasn’t happening – we’d been underbid by some firm in LA. I remember the first time I lived off my credit card, having stopped accepting pocket money for my parents, but had no work for a while. I reached my limit, and had no money to pay any of it off. I was just about to skip a payment, when I got a call – a job. Just in time, I was able to put my paycheck in the bank and avoid a penalty. Just like I had assumed I would, with no evidence.

I have no evidence now that anything will change in the next six weeks, but I have hope. Maybe I should learn to drive and head out to LA. But I want to stay in NYC – I really do. And if I go I don’t know if I’ll ever come back. Trusting to my luck is a very risky proposition. It’s always served me well so far, but past performance is no guarantee of future profit, as they say.

Well, I guess we’ll see. Or I’ll see, and let you know.

Oh, and I’ve reviewed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.