Peaches, Pizza and Pub

My fifth week in California began to feel like I was in a routine of work and TV.  I have discovered that the secret to TV here is to regularly review the schedules, identify programmes I recognise or might like and then set them to series record.  As a result I have a huge back catalogue of Big Bang Theory episodes to watch, along with hidden treasures like Hetty Wainthrop and series 1 of Scott and Bailey, and I can whizz through the adverts.

Wednesday was Italian speakers' group as normal, but this time we went out for pizza.  It was pretty strange being in a pizzeria, talking Italian to the rest of the table but with English speaking waiters, it was completely the wrong way round.  Wonderful though to be able to use the language I love and to feel less foreign - when everybody speaks Italian my Englishness blends in!  The food however was not entirely traditional Italian fare, I had a bacon and peach flavoured pizza.

On Thursday I got to have lunch with real clients!  So I was in a pretty good mood when Friday came and I was taken out for a Happy Hour, which over here means a work trip to the pub, whether or not you are happy and usually for considerably longer than an hour.  I managed to avoid getting the Housemartins in my head.

We started in Palo Alto's English pub, the Rose and Crown.  I was expecting a grotesque pastiche, but it was actually quite a pleasant pub.  Dark wood inside and loads of tat on the walls, but that only added to the air of authenticity.  They served draft Dry Blackthorne (in smaller US pints) and passable bangers and mash.  I met a random Portugeuse man who beat me at darts (mainly because I kept missing the board).

I am not sure I have learnt much this week, in fact I still have many unanswered questions about the USA:

(1) Why do they not use Chip and Pin technology here?  Instead I am frequently asked to sign some sort of digital pad with my finger when using a credit card.  I can't imagine a scrawl produce by my fat digits will prove anything if there is a credit card fraud investigation.  And why do they always want you to enter your zip code at the pump when buying "gas" (which is not gaseous, even at Californian temperatures: if your gas isn't liquid you're probably dead). It just inconveniences anyone whose credit card is registered to a foreign address, although I guess inconveniencing foreigners has been official US policy since before Woodrow Wilson.

(2) Why do they keep trailing new late night comedy chat shows seemingly weeks in advance on TV, by showing the new "star" being totally unfunny?  For instance there's a guy called Pete Holmes who claims (in his trailer) to love adjectives but mixes them up with adverbs.  Why is that even slightly funny?  And why do they think it will make me want to watch his new show?  He might be hysterical, but if that's the best he can do, I doubt it some how.  You might well say that humour is different over here, and that may be true, but there is plenty of US comedy that I do get.  There's another trailer that claims to have "the entire cast of Breaking Bad together for the first time on one late night talk show" - but surely they've been on TV together before?  On Breaking Bad for instance?

(3) Why do they advertise prescription drugs on TV?  Do they really think people will go to their GP and say "Hey doc, this bloke on TV described all my symptoms, seemed like a reasonable and objective kind of guy, can you prescribe me the particular drug he's pushing?"  Particularly when you consider that the advert is given over in large part to setting out the risks and side-effects at such great length that I would be terrified to take the drug even if it came with glowing personal endorsements from Emma Willert, John Vincent and every single one of the other 19 doctors I know personally because I go to a church in a middle-class area?  For example, see this advert for a male hormone replacement product - do they really think that the beautiful scenery and his lovely sports car will distract us from the dire warning that his medicine might give his teenage daughter chest hair? 

(4) Whose crazy idea was peach and bacon pizza?  Who'd have thought it would be so delicious?

(5) And what on earth is going on with Congress?  How can they let the government shut down, stop paying people's wages, stop funding vital services (and close National Parks that foreigners want to vist, although that is more understandable given the standing policy referred to above)?  I struggle to understand many US politicians at the best of times (right wing nutters mainly) but right now I don't understand any of it.  I can't think of anything funny to say, the US Congress is a joke.