Hair Guy Love Europe, Part 1

Hey guys, it’s Truman again. I just got my blog out of the impound yard – it looks like after Jack’s last update he ran it into a ditch someplace outside Spokane and just left it there when he realized he couldn’t get it out again. It’s going to take a while to get the old girl cleaned up and back in working order: The tape deck is full of CDs for bands I’ve never heard of and there’s a funky smelling stain in the shape of California on the back seat. What’s more, nobody’s made a solid Battlestar Galactica in-joke that 93% of the readers won’t understand for a full seven days, and we’re dangerously low on jokes that have been shamelessly ripped off from Conan ‘O Brien. So do please excuse the mess during the rest of the update as I try to fill those quotas again.

Also, while the police currently have no leads as to Jack’s whereabouts save for a trail of blood leading toward some outdoor music festival where people get their bone on in public and the headlining band is really popular in Greenland, let’s all remember him fondly as a man among men for taking up the reins of Hair Guy for a full update cycle – he truly is a Hair Guy, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve seen the drain in his shower. Jack’s updates not only taught us a lot about the world; they taught us a lot about ourselves. For example, I learned that despite what I may have said before, California is actually a pretty nice place.

...for me to POOP ON!

Yep. Hair Guy will be back on track in no time. And without any further ado, please enjoy part one of a multi-part, daily series…

HAIR GUY LOVE EUROPE

No, that’s not… Ah, fuck it.

Part 1: Dresden

A few weeks ago, I visited London’s Imperial War Museum, which is basically one giant monument to the fact that if you live in the world, England has tried to kill your ancestors (or maybe even you – holla back, Ireland!).

The Imperial War Museum wants to show you its guns. No, really.

In the basement of the museum was the Blitz exhibit, wherein groups of tourists were herded in small groups into a little faux World War II era bomb shelter which would vibrate slightly while recordings of explosions played, to simulate the experiences of Londoners taking shelter from Nazi bombs. Afterwards, a little door opened and we were ushered out into a replica of a bombed out London street, which would have been a very powerful moment had the whole thing not looked like it had been built out of cardboard boxes by someone who had never been to England.*

*So as rides go, I’d rate it below Disneyland’s Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, but above everything at Great America.

What I found most interesting about the experience, though, was that a group of German tourists about my age were in the exhibit with us. As I watched them sitting in the fake shelter, listening to the fake bombs dropped by fake Germans, I thought, Yeah. How do you like them apples, bitches?

And when we stepped out onto the fake destroyed street, in spite of its crappiness I wanted to turn to the Germans and yell, “Look what you did! Look what you did! Go back to your weinerschnitzel and your disturbing pornography; your kind aren’t wanted here! I hope the in flight movie is Inglourious Basterds!” So even though the Blitz exhibit wasn’t great, it was sufficient to inspire me with blind, ignorant hatred of other nationalities, which is, I suppose, as good an English history lesson as you’re going to get.

This whole situation got turned on its head when I visited Dresden.

Dresden is a charming little city of about 500,000 along the Elbe in Germany, perhaps best known as the place that got the absolute shit bombed out of it by the Allies late in World War II. It was during this bombing that Kurt Vonnegut, at the time an American prisoner of war, took shelter in the basement of Slaughterhouse-Five, an event which inspired his book, Slaughterhouse-Five.*

*Or, as I like to call it, Not Cat’s Cradle.

Historians estimate that the bombing and resultant firestorm of Dresden, a cultural center that was of very little military significance, killed between 24,000 and 40,000 people, most of whom were civilians fleeing the war. To cap it all off, the railyards and factories on the outskirts of town, which were the only significant elements of the Nazi war machine in the area, weren’t targeted.

"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." - Kurt Vonnegut

It was America’s first foray into wartime assholery; fruitful years in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq laid ahead.

While the basement of the Imperial War Museum is a record of the Blitz in London, virtually all of central Dresden is a living record of the city’s destruction at the hands of Americans. At the center of the city there’s a new cathedral that’s a replica of a cathedral destroyed in the war, partially constructed out of rubble of the first cathedral.

In a museum downtown there’s a lot of information to be had about just how many priceless works of art and architecture were lost in the bombing. On February 13th every year, the anniversary of the bombing, the people of the city come together to protest war.

Needless to say, Dresden was sort of an embarrassing place to visit as an American. Whenever I would sheepishly ask a waiter if he or she spoke English, I always thought I could catch a glimpse of a steely look in their eye that said, “Oh, well – an American, here to survey the damage. Bad news – if you drop incendiary bombs on your currywurst, we’re not bringing you another one.”

This could also just be my reaction to the German language. At one point during my stay, I tried to walk into a bar that was in the process of closing. The manager came around the bar and briskly explained to me, in German, that they were no longer open, which was a traumatic experience for me because no matter what you’re saying in German, it sounds like, “I WILL CRUSH YOU!”*

*He was no doubt thinking, “Man, this guy looks super shifty, just like Battlestar Galactica’s Gaius Baltar!”

"My name is Gaius Baltar, and I spent basically the whole first season masturbating in space."

Okay, see? It’s like I never left. See you here tomorrow – in case you forget, I mention it again in the stinger.

Truman Capps will be back tomorrow with another update that purposefully skirts any boring descriptions of any cultural or artistic stuff he did in Dresden.

The Dog Dies

R.I.P. Frank Frazetta, 1928-2010

Oh hello everyone! Welcome to the final installment of the groundbreaking three-part series "Jack Hijacks Truman's Blog And Runs It Into The Ground." This is my grand finale. My Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. My Look Who's Talking Now. My Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Actually, let's hope it's not like any of those.

In all honesty, it's been a lot harder writing this blog than previously anticipated. A lot of you could probably guess this, seeing as this is going up about 24 hours after Truman would normally post it. Don't worry, we'll have you back to your regularly scheduled programming in no time. Anyway, I was able to come up with the first two topics relatively quickly, while a third has thrown me for a loop. So, instead of actually creating vast spaces of text-based content, I'm going to post some pictures from the Internet* and comment on them hilariously. I'm just as excited as you are.

*Trans: Teh Internets

PICTURE #1

I think what's most remarkable about this picture is the source. This is supposedly a drawing of the Jersey Devil, a mythical creature that terrorizes people all over the great state of New Jersey. But it's not from some crazy kid's fever dream. This is from an episode of The X-Files, which prides itself in scientific accuracy when addressing the paranormal. Granted, this is supposed to have been drawn by a half-drunk homeless guy, but come on. It doesn't even look intimidating. It just looks like something you'd never let near children*. They do fine the Jersey Devil by the end of the episode, and the most disappointing thing is that it actually looks like this. Boo Chris Carter. Boo.

*Like Truman. Pow!

PICTURE #2

This little beauty is a screen capture of a Chinese bootleg copy of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, and this is one of the worst scenes. Vader realizes the "love of his life" is dead, and he screams "Nooooo!" to the heavens like Kirk raging against Khan. But what really shines here is the firm grasp the Chinese people have on the American sense of humor. Their English translation takes a moment that would otherwise feel hammy and kicks it into Comedy Town, population us. I would much rather have wasted my time on a movie with this as the jumping-off point for the dialogue than any crap George Lucas could come up with*.

*"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth."

PICTURE #3

I defy you to figure out what's going on here. It really boils down to three possible situations, all of which have nothing to do with each other.

Possibility 1: This guy is a sewing machine salesman shooting a commercial where he takes his machine to some sort of prom, and the people operating the green screen behind him used the wrong background image.

Possibility 2: Using the powers of his possessed sewing machine, this young Satanist caused a truck to crash in the ravine. Local law enforcement, all good Christian men, have no idea what's in store for them, which causes our antagonist to chuckle maniacally.

Possibility 3: Purgatory.

PICTURE #4

In this day and age, I have to admire things like truth in advertising. It's really refreshing.

PICTURE #5

Okay, I admit this wasn't an internet discovery. This is actually from the OMB's trip to Sea World during the Holiday Bowl 2008 trip. This is also one of the only documented times where Truman can be seen looking cooler than at least one other person in a photograph. I'm the joyous fellow on the left.

Jack Brazil has thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to fill your heads with ridiculous nonsense. He also fully acknowledges now that last Wednesday's Justin Bieber picture was completely uncalled for.

Go Ask Alice

Your New Hair Guy

Hello again! I’m not Truman. Let’s just get that out of the way at the top.

Truman, as you all may have noticed by last week’s blog entry, has gone native so to speak. He recently decided that he was sick of all the crap that America has saddled on him, and has declared that he will never return stateside. Unless the British decide to take back the land we stole from them. Then he’ll come back.

Until then, you’re stuck with me. Last week’s diatribe that nobody cares about regarded renting movies, and this week, I intend to discuss something only remotely more interesting. And that topic is hippies, of course.

As I vaguely alluded to in the last time I wrote for the Hair Guy, I returned to my hometown of Davis, CA for the first time since early March. It was great to get home, effectively breaking free of the shackles of school for a blessed three days. Instead of normal college life, I had my meals paid for, got to see Iron Man 2 on my parents’ dime and sleep in as late as I wanted. In short, heaven.

But I forgot one important aspect of Mother’s Day weekend in Davis. Every year, in a tradition that stretches back for eons*, a swarm of hippies descends on the sleepy little UC Davis campus to take part in the Whole Earth Festival. They bring with them their drum circles, tie-dye, pachouli oil, and pipes and cigarettes filled with a perfectly harmless blend of various herbs and spices**.

*Probably.
** Marijuana.

In Eugene, this is known as every day. We’re so accustomed to hippies at U of O that it would be weird to NOT be accosted by a drumming dread-head on your way to class. They pervade the very fiber of our campus, and it gives Eugene a unique vibe that is off-putting, mildly amusing or awesome, depending on how many pot brownies you ate.

Davis, while certainly not Stepford, has a far smaller hippie population for the majority of the year. It’s really a town where hippies go when they’re too tired to rage against the machine anymore and want to settle down and start a family. It is also a town where you move to if you’d like to build a tunnel for frogs to pass safely underneath a busy street.

But when the Whole Earth Festival rolls into town, it’s a whole other ball game. The overwhelming musk emanating from the UCD campus pervades the town for the entire three-day celebration of Mother Earth. And that’s fine. I don’t really have a problem with hippie culture, especially due to the inherent peacefulness they strive to achieve. No one has a Reefer Madness-esque freakout and runs around murdering innocents*, and they clean up pretty nicely.

*At least that we know of.

The problem comes from the junior high and high school kids who attend Whole Earth for the sake of seeming counterculture for a few hours*. These are the same kids who stress themselves out over school on a daily basis, the kids who overachieve beyond belief. They’re the children of doctors, lawyers, university professors and other folks who fit nicely into trust-fund territory. For them, Whole Earth is the safe, easy way to pretend that they’re totally cool while paying $30 for a henna tattoo that will wash off in two weeks.

*Also, free pot.

And it’s not entirely their fault. For every peacenik who rode their bike to Davis from San Francisco, there’s a shrewd businessman selling $40 tie-dye t-shirts. Whole Earth Festival, while embracing the great things our Earth has to offer, is simultaneously an excuse for a guy with slightly above-average smarts to make a quick buck.

But it doesn’t really matter. Whole Earth has achieved a certain balance that seems to serve it well. You could go there and spend no money, camping out, purifying your urine to create clean drinking water and rocking out in the greatest drum circle in your life. Or you can borrow $20 from your folks, put on your store bought tie-dye, buy a peace necklace and throw up on the way home because you forgot to listen to your mom and not take the brown acid.

Jack Brazil knows this is shorter than a normal entry, but his rage burns white-hot for only a brief period of time.

Guest Update, Jack Brazil

Due to a computer time crunch and an upcoming trip to Dresden and Copenhagen, I've temporarily left the blog in the hands of Jack Brazil. Let's see if he screws it up!

Well, well. It looks like Truman left the keys to the blog in the ignition, and now Big Daddy Brazil is going to take it for a joy ride. I’ve been reading Truman’s musings for quite some time now, and let me just get one thing out of the way: they’re good. They’re damn good. And you’d be a fool to expect this is going to be better. But there’s one thing I can promise you: I’ll use the word TARDIS* more than Truman ever has. TARDIS. There. 200% more.

* Hi Doctor Who fans!

But what I’d really like to talk about today (and who’s going to stop me?) is something that I discovered recently. Let it first be known that I absolutely love movies. I love movies more than the proverbial fat kid loves that mythical beast known as cake. And because I love movies, I end up renting them all the time.

You see, as a college student, I don’t have vast sums of money; otherwise I would just buy every movie I wanted to see. Or I’d just go see them all in theaters, but I don’t remember the last time Robert Altman’s Popeye was shown on a big screen. But I don’t have the big bucks, so it’s much cheaper to rent films both new and old, and watch them from the non-comfort of Bret’s lumpy, old futon. *

*Hi Bret!

“But Jack,” you say, “this is not making for a very interesting blog entry!” I completely agree, and if you’d stop interrupting, I’d get to my point. I’ve lived in Davis, CA for the bulk of my childhood, and near my house is an independent video rental store called 49er Video. This is an absolutely wonderful place, a veritable paradise in a sea of mediocre, corporate chains. My family goes in often enough that the staff recognizes us, and always engages in friendly banter. Not only this, but they are extremely helpful when you’re looking for a movie, or you need a suggestion. And, to top it all off, they still have some VHS tapes intermingled with the DVDs, something that has an awesome nostalgia factor, even if I never watch them.

But. There is no 49er Video in Eugene, OR, where I now spend the bulk of my year. This creates a dilemma: do I go without renting movies or do I sacrifice myself to a chain rental store? Do I sacrifice my support of small, independent businesses for my own personal pleasure? You could cut the tension with a knife!

For the first two years of college, I did without movie rentals, relying instead on what my friends owned, or watching a lot of TV. There’s not a whole lot of TV watching in the dorms, and last year my roommates were watching Blazers games more often than not, so movies were not all that frequent in our tiny little quad. This year, however, the game has changed.

Truman, as you probably have figured out if you read this blog with any frequency, is a freaky pop culture nerd much like myself. Because of this, and the exquisite TV he and Bret chose to purchase, movies have become a regular feature in this household. * The demand for watching movies suddenly increased more than I had anticipated, and my reasonable DVD collection was clearly not going to be enough to satiate our needs. So I broke down. I got a Blockbuster card. And for a while, this was enjoyable enough. They did charge more for movie rentals than I was used to, but I was so happy to be able to be only a few blocks away from a vast movie library. But then, as I should have expected, the Imperial Empire raised their costs for rentals to a point where it wasn’t financially viable anymore. And that was the day my life changed. FOREVER.

*Granted, he’s gone now, so Bret and I get to make ALL the movie choices! No more Battlestar Galactica** for anyone!

**I actually like BSG.

Rather than take their financial slap in the face, I decided to retaliate against Blockbuster and join the Rebel Alliance. I signed up for a Netflix account. And oh baby did I make the right choice. For a paltry $8.95 a month, I could rent as many DVDs as I want (one at a time), plus stream unlimited movies and TV shows on my computer. A match made in heaven, to say the least. Netflix has more than paid for itself if you’re basing it on Blockbuster rates, and their library of films is gigantic.

And yet I’m not entirely sure about this. On the one hand, Netflix has been one of the best choices I’ve ever made, making movies instantly available to me whenever I want to watch them. But I’m starting to miss going to the video store. I miss walking the aisles, looking at new releases and remembering movies I’d forgotten about. Netflix likes to provide suggestions, but there’s no real character to it, no employees to converse with. Of course, Netflix is a large corporation as well, so I’m still taking business away from my beloved 49er. I don’t know if they’re suffering without me (probably not) but I still feel bad.

A few days from now I’ll be returning home to celebrate my mother’s birthday. And I know, as part of the weekend, my family will go into 49er to rent some movies we all can enjoy. I haven’t been back in 49er since I started my Netflix account. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been quite this excited to walk back through those doors.

Jack Brazil hates that this sounded like an advertisement for Netflix at some points, but it’s probably worth it. They’ll probably decide to start paying him.

Murphis

Oh, you KNOW it's going to be a good update now.

So here’s the deal: After making the last update, wherein I said I was going to be really busy for a week working on a script, I went and wrote the entire 30 Rock script within about two days, which I’m now scrubbing and preparing for submission (I’m going to try and send it well in advance of the deadline, because who knows? Maybe it’s a race.) Tomorrow I’m shooting my video interview, and I’m too psyched up to sleep on a Sunday night.

And the thing is, last night I wound up going to a British karaoke bar with my housemate, my host sister, and her boyfriend in celebration of the completion of my script, and the whole night all I could think was, “Oh, man! I can’t wait to put this on my blog so everyone can read about this totally wacky experience!”

And, of course, I could’ve just sent this out as an email to my parents and Trevor Jones and had the same effect as putting it here without going back on my promise to not update, but hey – I’ve got a reputation to keep up.

So anyway…

My host sister, Karen, has this boyfriend, Jonathan, who’s usually here a few nights a week and eats dinner with the family. Saturday night, my housemate Tom and I were getting ready to go to a pub and, bumping into Jonathan in the hallway, we invited him along. He wasn’t able to make it, but he did us one better and invited us to a surprise party he was throwing for Karen at a karaoke bar in central London called Murphis.

Now, of course, karaoke isn’t really my thing, but I certainly didn’t come to London to tell people that I wasn’t going to try things, so Tom and I both agreed to meet them at the bar at 9:00. We left Harrow at 7:00 on the Underground, taking three different trains to London, only to find out that the Underground station closest to Murphis, the one from which we had the directions to get there, was closed. However, an Underground employee told us that we could get off at the next closest stop and make the walk in 10 to 15 minutes.

At the time, I thought this information was helpful. Now, I would say it was probably harmful, unless the information was somehow meant to teach Tom and I a valuable lesson about ourselves by showing how much rainwater we could absorb, in which case it was highly valuable.

We spent an hour and 20 minutes parading up and down different winding streets in the pouring rain, receiving contradictory directions from bartenders and maitre’dis and genuinely wondering if Jonathan had given us the name of a fake bar in order to get us out of the house long enough to steal our computers. At some point, our trek became less about going to a party and more about proving that in fact a bar named Murphis did exist – because about half of the people we asked, sometimes within a few blocks of Murphis, vehemently denied that there was such a place. Others, though, would say, “Oh, yeah – it’s right down the block, on the corner!”, pointing us in the wrong direction down an alley toward a Laundromat that was definitely not a karaoke bar.

When we finally found Murphis, we entered to find two piss-drunk English guys onstage, screaming the words to ‘Easy Lover’ by Phil Collins into the microphone.* This, we knew, was going to be a good night – because while there were a couple of assholes loudly butchering a great song, they were both no older than 25, and neither one of them was grinding on me, which made it a real improvement over the last time we went out.

*Incidentally, the video for Easy Lover is a spot-on accurate depiction of my time in London so far.

We went downstairs and found Karen, Jonathan, and their friends, almost all of them prolifically drunk. Karen explained to me throughout a variety of enthusiastic hugs and cheek kisses that her college friends had thrown her this party because they’d more or less skipped her last two birthdays in college because they had always fallen during final exams. Then, she began introducing me to her friends.

I didn’t catch the name of the first girl Karen introduced me to because somebody was blaring the lyrics to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ (the first of many that night), but we struck up a pretty interesting conversation about television when she heard that I liked the British version of The Office.

“I hear the American one is quite different.” She said.

“Yeah.” I replied. “The receptionist and the paper salesman are married with a baby now in ours.”

This shocked and impressed her, as though I had brought news of a victory in some foreign war. Then again, if somebody told me that in the Nigerian version of Battlestar Galactica the Colonial military forms a glee club and starts singing 80s pop tunes, I’d be shocked too. And angry.

Then Karen introduced me to her friend Vicki, who instantly dove into my hair with both hands, running them through it and yelling to her friends, “Look at this American’s hair!”

All I’m saying is, in my country, strangers ask before they start rubbing their hands all over your head. But I’m also not complaining.

At some point, I was passing by the bar when Karen grabbed me and dragged me over to another group of friends to have a jagerbomb with them.

I love England and English culture, but in this regard they are savages: The jagerbombs that Karen bought for us consisted of a short tumbler with a shot glass full of jager placed in the center, and then Red Bull poured in around it. They mix when you drink it.

This is not how you make a jagerbomb. In a jagerbomb you drop the shot of jager into a beer stein full of Red Bull, much as you would drop, I don’t know, a fucking bomb. Maybe England is still sensitive about dropping bombs after the Blitz. Regardless, what I had was not a jagerbomb. It was more of a jagerfart, if anything. It’s still a disgusting drink I don’t like, but the least they could do is make it the way God intended.

Jonathan’s friend James was a good conversation partner, mainly because he appreciated American football and was an Arrested Development fan. Hearing someone saying, “Illusions, Michael!” really makes you feel at home, even if they’re saying it with a British accent.

As it got later, more and more of their friends were eager to know if I was going to do karaoke. I suppose their reasoning was that many of them had never hung out with an American before, and they were trying to see what kind of cool tricks it could do. I suppose if I was having a few drinks with a chimpanzee I’d try to get it to fling its poop at something, so I can’t blame them.

I looked through the karaoke songbook for Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’, because there’s no better ‘fuck you’ to the karaoke bar patrons than four minutes of melodic wailing, but it turned out that the British karaoke bar didn’t have any Pink Floyd songs, so I declined to do any singing. I suppose Pink Floyd isn’t really a good soundtrack for having a good time with your friends, what with the songs about mortality and insanity and all that.

In the taxi back to Harrow, while Karen, Jonathan, and Tom slept off their beers in the backseat, one of Karen’s more sober friends asked me if I missed America.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a lot of stuff I miss. Big cars and strip malls. I guess I miss the familiarity, y’know?”

“What do you mean, ‘strip malls’?” Karen’s friend asked.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I mean, it’s not like I really like strip malls or anything, but I grew up around them, so…”

“No,” she interjected. “I mean, what is a strip mall?”

I was not aware that there were people in first-world countries who did not know the blight of strip malls. Explaining a strip mall to someone who’s never seen one is like explaining orange to a blind man. But, I gave it my best shot.

And so, from the left hand front seat of a British taxi driving through outer London at 3:00 AM, I explained to an Irish girl what a strip mall was, and I felt like I understood at that point what this study abroad business is really all about.

Truman Capps appreciated this brief opportunity to think about England, and will now return to constantly obsessing about his internship.<

Goin' Hollywood

Thought experiment:

In the professional statement I sent to the people at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, I included more than one reference to the regularity with which I update my blog. Yesterday, they named me as one of six finalists out of hundreds of applicants for the television scriptwriting category.*

*For those of you not following the drama on Facebook, this is the one of the most widely sought after internships in the country and arguably the most sought after internship in the entertainment industry. Having progressed to the finalist round, if I win, I will be placed in the writers’ room of a major TV show and given a $4000 stipend. We’re all very excited.

Presumably, they picked me as a finalist based on the strength of my professional statement and the five page writing sample I wrote, an original 30 Rock cold open. In order to stay in competition, I’ve got to write and submit the rest of the 30 Rock script before May 7th – this on top of being in England doing everything.

Fortunately, my classes over here are a joke, and I’ve gone hog-wild enough with tourism in the past few weeks to have earned a few days alone in my room, hard at work on my 30 Rock script. However, in order to win one of the two positions these other five people and I are competing for, I’ll need to go to the mattresses: Writing, rewriting, editing, and generally upping the funny.

Which means that blog updates until May 7th may be kind of dicey, which in turn invalidates the claims in my professional statement about being diligent about timely updates. But if they deemed me worthy of the job on the basis of those timely updates…

For about nine days, I’m going to need to abandon you guys. If it’s any consolation, it’s because I need to selfishly advance my own career.

If you want to sully your reputation as a writer by being a guest contributor, please do hit me up on Facebook. I’m going to do my very best to make sure there’s content here on every update day, even if that means asking Slagathor to contribute.

In the meantime, you can keep up with my Flux travel blog updates at blog.fluxstories.com, which just recently went online. There’s three older updates there, and as I’m required to update weekly there you can expect one more (it’s not because I like them better than you. Daddy loves both blogs equally.)

Thanks in advance for understanding – and if you don’t understand, piss off. This mess is about to get raw like sushi, so haters to the left.

Truman Capps thanks Jeff Matarrese for reminding him of that last line.

London, Indian Style

Pappadoms. This will be important in a moment.

Blood sausage, liver and onions, jellied eels. These are just a few of the disgusting foods for which England is traditionally known. In fact, England is essentially the only country I can think of that has an internationally bad reputation for food – and if a major facet of an entire nation’s culture can be unilaterally written off by the international community, you know that shit has to suck.

This was worrisome for me, because while I am a great lover of England, English culture, and girls with English accents, I am also a big food lover. Someone who loves food going to the country known for having the worst food is a lot like someone who loves not getting murdered by drug cartels going to Mexico. It just doesn’t make one helluva lot of sense.

One thing that people did tell me before I came here was that I could expect some of the finest Indian food in the world, thanks to England’s close and sometimes jingoistic relationship with India. This relationship permeates pretty much every level of English society.

In America, for example, should you walk into a fast food restaurant, you’re pretty likely to see a person with brown skin standing behind the counter. The same is the case here, but it’s a different flavor of minority. Indians work many of the service industry jobs in London – they drive the trains, they wait the tables, and they operate literally every single market in the country.* Seriously, fucking come over here and prove me wrong.

*I’ve also seen plenty of Indian people in business suits and ties, because everyone is equal in one big happy rainbow of employment.

This sort of immersion into Indian and Pakistani culture is new for me, since never outside of a speech and debate tournament have I been around this many South Asian people before. The other day, for example, I saw my first ever mosque. It wasn’t anything too special, but having never seen one in Oregon before I took a picture to show all my friends back home and piss off the rednecks.

Everybody walking by was looking at me like I was crazy, this guy standing in awe of a regular building with a spire and concrete half moon on top, because they see mosques everyday. I imagine an English person visiting America would be equally impressed by various mundane aspects of Mexican culture.

“Yes, Mum, it’s really amazing! I just had some traditional Mexican food today at a little place by the Interstate! I think it was called Taco Bell. Have you ever heard of a Crunchwrap Supreme? I think it’s Aztec!”

One of the good things about Indian food in London, I had been told, was that it was often far cheaper than the local western fare. This was what led me to an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane, one of London’s hotspots for authentic Indian food.

I picked a restaurant, got settled at a table, and ordered a lamb curry dish priced at 7.95. And the waiter nodded and said, “You want poppadoms with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some pappadoms!”

And the waiter said, “And do you want naan bread with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some naan bread! Do I look like the sort of guy who eats Indian food without naan bread?”

And the waiter said, “And do you want rice with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some rice! You show me the asshole who tries to eat curry without rice, and I’ll show you a man whose life is hollow and empty!”

And he left, and twenty minutes later my food arrived. Lamb curry, rice, pappadoms, naan bread – a feast fit for a king, or, at the very least, a duke of some sort.

Imagine how great this would look if I'd thought to use my flash!

This good, probably.

And it was great – tender, flavorful lamb, crispy pappadoms, naan bread all fluffy as the dickens. As I ate, I thought, “Man, what a great deal – all this food for 7.95! Long live India! I’m going to give Slumdog Millionaire a critical reappraisal!”

So imagine my surprise when they brought the check and I found that I had paid close to 16 pounds ($24) for what I had thought was a 7.95 meal. Pappadoms? Not cheap. Naan bread? Also not cheap. White rice? 1.95. In America, I can get enough uncooked white rice to smother a baby elephant for that much in dollars, but here they charged me that for a single dish of it.

I learned two things:

1) If you want a good dinner, no matter what culture you’re in, you’ll have to pay big for it.

2) Saying ‘Yes’ to everything the waiters offer you might be a good idea from a multicultural perspective, but it will straight up murder your pocketbook.

Truman Capps can hear the British person visiting America saying, “Would you believe they charged me $2.00 for guacamole? $2.00! Thieves, these Americans!”

Jolly Old Election, 2010

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

England is a very civilized place, and nowhere is that more apparent than their election cycle.

Elections in the UK don’t happen on a set date every four years, like they do in America – rather, Parliament sees that everybody’s term limits are coming up and says, “Well, shit – I guess we should have an election then, shouldn’t we?” And then they announce the election date, which is generally about one month after the date of the announcement.

Yes, that’s right – the entire British election cycle runs for one month, or four weeks, or 28 days, which is enough time for England to be completely overrun by zombies or for Sandra Bullock to kick her drug abuse problem and learn a valuable lesson about friendship, depending on which section of the video store you’re in.

This was quite a surprise to me, as I’m still shell shocked by the Iron Man Triathlon of a campaign we had to go through to get our current president, which I’m pretty sure started shortly before the birth of Christ and continued, relentlessly, through the following two millennia as McCain, Clinton, and Obama duked it out amid constant sideshow scuffles between a small army of obscure third party candidates and VP hopeful faux pas. As terrible as it was, though, I didn’t see anything wrong with it, because that’s how American politics works! Once every four years, there’s a solid 18 months where Saturday Night Live briefly gains relevance, and then there’s a new (or the same) guy in the White House.

I’m still sort of skeptical that you can even have an election in one month. What about the trash talking? Don’t get me wrong: There’s a fair amount of that going on here, but there’s no way that it can be enough to have an election! In my eyes, trash talk is like lubricant – you need a whole lot of it if you’re going to have a good circle jerk.

See, and politics is the circle jerk.

Not that I’m an expert on circle jerks. It’s not like I’ve ever done it or anything, because that would be really weird, right? It’s not the sort of thing you’d mention publicly, where all of your friends and your parents can read about it, unless you were totally kidding. And I am. I only know what it is because Trevor Jones keeps asking me to do one with him.

Right, anyway.

One month! They do the whole election in one month! And with three major political parties, no less – Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrats, who, as far as I can tell, are basically three slightly different shades of liberal battling it out over economic policy and immigration, as opposed to hot button issues like gay marriage or individual involvement in Vietnam.

I feel like they’re cutting corners, almost – like maybe the democracy over here isn’t quite as good as our democracy. And of course that’s true, because America invented democracy; after all, no Philly Cheesesteak will be as good as the one you have in Philadelphia, am I right?

With a one month long election cycle, Britons don’t really come to enjoy the end result as much as we do in America. There’s none of the satisfaction or accomplishment. At the end of every election in the United States, I always think, “Well, I made it through another election without completely losing my shit after the candidates called each other Nazis for the 15th time – God bless America!” Elections here are quick and easy, yet in my experience, good things don’t come quickly or easily. Knowledge, wisdom, Writers - all built on a veritable mountain of blood, sweat, and tears.

How can you be sure you’re electing the right person without two years of debate, punditry, waffling, and sex scandals? If our election had only lasted one month, John Edwards could’ve been president for nearly a year before we found out what a festering piece of shit he was! You’ve got to keep your politicians under intense public scrutiny for as long as possible – the one who doesn’t crack is your president.

At least, that’s how we do it in my country.

Truman Capps was also interested to find out that the Pacifica Forum is a political party here, and it’s called the British National Party.

Boozing In England, Part 2 - The Oldening

I didn't take my camera with me (thankfully), but this is what Flickr says Champers looks like.

The term ‘pub crawl’ has never made much sense to me, because it (quite rightly) conjures in my mind the image of a bunch of people getting piss drunk and literally crawling from one pub to the next. And of course, binge drinking is sort of a mainstay of English culture and there’s not a thing wrong with that – it’s just that, in my experience, when you give something a name, the name is intended to dress the thing up and obscure its faults. A shitty house is a ‘fixer-upper’, a wad of paper to fill with snot is a ‘Kleenex’, and a writer who makes a mockery of grammatical conventions by stitching together unnecessarily long sentences with dashes, semicolons, commas, and parenthetical statements is either ‘Faulkneresque’ or ‘Almost as shitty a writer as that Truman Capps guy, whose sentences sometimes get so long you have to take notes just to keep track of what the hell he’s saying.’

Saying “I’m going on a pub crawl,” though, lays it all out on the table: “I am going to go to bars and get shitfaced to the point that I might have to crawl from one to the next. I do this of my own free will.”

I had never been on a pub crawl before coming to England, as back in Eugene I only really went to one bar with any regularity in spite of the shitty booze, cranky bartenders, and decided lack of appropriate taco supplies on Taco Tuesdays. When I drank at home (something I only did once I was over 21, Brothers and Sisters writers assistants and 44 Blue Productions internship selection staff), it was usually White Russians with the roommates and friends. We never really had any reason to go anywhere, so crawling never came into it (although getting up and down the stairs would get difficult after a while).

So when several girls from the semester program invited my roommate Tom and I to go on a pub crawl with them in nearby Eastcote, I thought, “Great! Yet another chance to do everything!”

The girls had four pubs lined up down Eastcote’s main strip, which is probably what Salem’s Lancaster Drive would look like if everything was more charming and English. When we reached the first pub, though, I realized that something was wrong.

Firstly, there was a ‘MEMBERS ONLY’ sign in the window.

Secondly, everyone inside was over the age of 40.

The girls, dissuaded by the members only sign, began to drift away from the open door, but the bar’s crusty proprietor burst out, all yellow-toothed smiles.

“Where’re y’goin’, now? Y’just got here!”

The girls all giggled diplomatically.

“Well, we saw it was a members only place.” I said, pointing to the sign. “And we’re not members.”

“Y’are now!” He said, beckoning toward the door. “C’mon in! Make yerselves at home!”

I would have found this charming and friendly were it not for the fact that his charm and friendliness was completely motivated by the fact that he wanted five girls thirty years his junior to be closer to him.

But we went in, and for our entire time in the pub I could sense eyes on the girls – both the hungry, “God, I wish I wasn’t going back to my 47 year old wife tonight” eyes of the men and the “Where the hell do those young bitches get off upstaging us?” eyes of the resident pride of cougars. The bartender yelled at us to get out of the way when a new pack of people came in, and a bunch of drunken bald guys at the bar made more and more desperate attempts to strike up a conversation as the night wore on.

The hostile vibe, and the fact that the bar closed at 11, forced us out within an hour, and we moved on to the next site on the crawl: Champers, which billed itself as an honest to God disco and wine bar. This was a bad sign. Strobe lights and music thumped from within. This was a worse sign. The thumping music was Lady Gaga’s ‘Caught in a Bad Romance.’ That was the worst sign of all time.

So the girls lead us in there and it quickly becomes apparent that we are the youngest people here by a good 20 years. The room is full of drunk, horny, middle aged British people bumping and grinding to songs that people my age bump and grind to.

As I stood in the doorway, regarding the scene with outright horror, the bouncer pulled me aside.

“We don’ normally allow trainers in ‘ere,” he said, pointing to the sneakers I was wearing. “But because you came in wiv a bunch of girls, we’ll make an exception.”

And I smiled and gave him the thumbs up in a thankful way, but what I actually wanted to say was,

That’s pretty big talk coming from the guy working at a nightclub full of people who only came out because their kids are in college and NCIS is a rerun tonight. Maybe you didn’t get the memo, but nightclubs were invented for people our age! You see, I come from a place called America, and in America they would be paying a bunch of sexy twentysomethings to come party it up with people older than our parents, regardless of what the fuck kind of shoe we were wearing!

And so I went into the dark, oppressively hot room full of loud music, flashing lights, and dancing drunk people, which, to be honest, I would’ve outright hated even if the room wasn’t full of cockney baby boomers.

A catastrophically drunk, balding 43 year old in a douchebag buttondown black shirt quickly spotted us in the corner where we had formed a tight circle, the girls enthusiastically dancing and me bobbing my head and wanting to slit my throat. He moseyed up behind one of the girls and began grinding against her, which was all fun and games for the first four seconds, until she realized that somebody her Dad’s age was rubbing his dick against her ass.

She moved into the circle and motioned for me to fill the gap before Baldie could, and I did, like a straight up hero.

Then, he started to grind on me.

11:30 in a senior citizens’ nightclub in suburban London with some drunk systems administrator in a midlife crisis rubbing his junk all over me. Truman Capps, this is your life!

I wanted to stand on a chair and shout,

You should all be ashamed of yourselves! You’re doing the stuff that we’re supposed to be ashamed of! You guys had your time to do this kind of shit – it was called the 1980s! And you had it way better than we do now, because the music was better and it was socially acceptable to do cocaine! So go home! Be adults! It’s after 11:30, and if you’re anything like my parents, you probably wanted to go to bed two hours ago anyway!

In my quest to do everything, I was bound to do some things I didn’t like, because as we all know, I dislike probably 30% of things. You win this round, London.

Truman Capps has every intention of getting way drunk when he’s in his 50s, but he will follow his mother’s example and only do it with friends in private, and feel very ashamed about it in the morning.

Boozing in England

When I was nine years old, my family went to New Zealand for a few weeks. This was back before Lord of the Rings and Flight of the Conchords put New Zealand on the map as the central repository for [Subject] of the [Object] – at the time, it was just a tiny country known primarily for its export of sheep.

Yes, the sheep industry in New Zealand was so big that while the country boasted a human population of roughly three million, the sheep population was something like 50 million. This was pretty exciting for a suburban nine year old who hadn’t seen a lot of sheep before.

On our way from the airport to the hotel I excitedly snapped pictures of every sheep I saw. They were white, fluffy, and cute, and I had it in my head that they were so unique that I ought to record every one I saw on film in order to remember the experience better.

By my second day in New Zealand, I had seen so many sheep that I scarcely even noticed them any more, and to this day am decidedly unimpressed by the entire species.

I had a similar experience with pubs when I first came to London. In my initial travels around the city on my first day in town, I excitedly snapped a picture of every rustic, quintessentially English pub I saw, as they were totally new to me and I figured that they were entirely unique.

Now, just like sheep, I’ve become utterly desensitized to the presence of charming pubs on every corner. However, unlike sheep, I’m willing to go inside pubs and look for something to drink.

What I understand now is that my being impressed by the traditional, English appearance of pubs is about the same as an Englishman going to the United States and eagerly snapping pictures of an Applebee’s. “Cor blimey! They’ve got sports jerseys and old timey pictures of firemen hung on the walls! So quintessentially American! What a unique find!” As it turns out, all pubs have been following the same design standards (ornate mirrors, polished bars, thick carpet, ornamental taps) since pretty much forever. Just like you wouldn’t see an Applebee’s with a reserved, minimalist design, you won’t see a pub that doesn’t adhere to the same design standard every other pub has used for the past billion years.

And for the record, that’s a good thing.

Pubs are to England what The Force is to Star Wars - they’re everywhere, they hold the country together, and they’re awesome. In many ways, England is like a bigger, classier version of college, in that it’s a commonly accepted practice that everyone goes out and drinks pretty much every night. The pubs are where this happens. Everybody comes in, has a few beers, eats some food, and gets jolly with people from the community. It’s like Taco Tuesday, only it’s every night. And there’s usually no tacos, because nobody over here knows what the fuck Mexican food is.

A lot of people told me that I was going to have to start liking beer if I wanted to make it in England, because I would probably get beat up by soccer hooligans if they heard me ordering a bitch drink like a White Russian. And this is undoubtedly true, as I’ve met my fair share of Britons (my host father* among them) who are very quick to point out the things about America that are feminine or inferior, probably as some sort of belated resentment for having their asses handed to them in two separate wars a couple centuries ago.

*On our first night here, my housemate, Tom, mentioned over dinner that he was sad to be missing out on the end of the Portland Trailblazers’ season. My host father looked up. “That’s basketball, yeah?” He said. Tom nodded. “Hm.” My host father grunted. “It’s a women’s game, innit?”

Rather than start drinking beer, though, I’ve moved to cider, which is sort of like Diet Beer – fitting, as I am a Diet Coke man through and through. Also, cider has a higher alcohol content, high enough that our program director saw fit to warn us about it at orientation, lest we throw back several pints of cider without knowing what we were getting into.

There’s definitely something to be said for being able to walk into a pub, order a pint of cider and a reasonably priced meal, and then get a solid buzz on while watching a sporting event you don’t understand on TV between two teams you’ve never heard of* with a bunch of English strangers who, by virtue of being in a pub, are now your best friends.

*Which, admittedly, is the case for me with virtually every sport in the United States, as well.

These are people who don’t smile at you on the street or speak in the subway – it’s as though they save up the pleasantries until they’re in a dimly lit room full of booze and fried food, at which point they let loose.

Truman Capps enjoyed a pint of cider before a trip to the theater the other night, which made the play about Enron FAR more exciting.

Food in London

Fucking ploughmen.

When I told people I was going to London, they often cautioned me, “Get ready for some terrible food!” And I would scold them for being culturally insensitive, acknowledging that while England does have a well-earned reputation for bland, unpalatable food, this came mainly as an outgrowth of wartime rationing and London is now a vibrant culinary center thanks to the growing international popularity of fine dining.

Or, y’know, a shorter version of that.

I got all of that information from Wikipedia and guidebooks – and I knew, of course, that no guidebook would say, “English food is terrible - do not eat for the duration of your trip!,” nor would an encyclopedia article read, “CUISINE OF ENGLAND: Don’t.” I recognized that they were probably blowing a fair amount of smoke – clearly, to have earned this reputation for bad food, England had to have at least some really nasty food.

I did not, however, think I would come into contact with it so soon.

On Saturday, my housemate Tom and I went out to the British Museum to take a look at the Rosetta Stone and the various other ancient priceless trinkets they had on display. On the way from the Underground to the museum, we were hit by hunger, and decided to stop in at a restaurant a block away from the British Museum called Munchkin’s.

I would wager that our first warning was that the restaurant was a block away from a major tourist attraction on a street lined with currency exchanges and gift shops. The second warning came when we opened our menus and were informed that ‘MUNCHKIN’S ACCEPTS EUROS AND AMERICAN DOLLARS.”

It appeared that we had been caught in a tourist trap, and even as we sat there I could feel its acidic saliva slowly beginning to digest us. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” blared from a PA system, ensuring that as I spent the rest of my day inspecting various landmarks in Greek statuary, the only thing I could think of would be the disco anthem of gay rights and women’s empowerment.

My first instinct was to jump up and leave in favor of somewhere completely authentic, run by a charming old English couple, but then I stopped, considering my ‘DO EVERYTHING’ credo. I had already eaten at several authentic restaurants. I had not, however, patronized a classic English tourist trap. If I fled, I would be leaving a thing undone, which would compromise my goal of doing everything. Besides, even if it was a completely terrible meal, it would only make my subsequent good meals all the better by providing a horrible experience to bounce back from.

So Tom and I each picked an exotic item on the menu, and not long after a waitress with a strong Eastern European accent and a seemingly scanty knowledge of English came to our table and informed us that she would now like take order please.

“I was wondering,” Tom said. “What’s the Ploughman’s Lunch?”

The waitress nodded. “Ploughman Lunch – O.K.!” She noted this on her pad and turned to me. “You?”

I pointed to my menu and asked, slowly, so as to avoid the miscommunication she’d had with Tom, “What is the bacon split potato?”

She nodded again. “O.K. – split potato. Beans?”

I figured she was asking if I wanted beans in addition to my bacon, and seeing as I’d already accidentally ordered an item I knew nothing about, I decided to take the plunge and said, “Yeah, sure.”

She left us to wonder just what the hell we’d gotten our gastrointestinal tracts into. I resolved then and there that while I would do my best to keep an open mind, if ‘split potato’ turned out to be a bladder of any sort, I would not eat it – multiculturalism be damned. You could fill a sheep’s bladder with meat loaf, hummus, and first edition singles of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ and I still wouldn’t go near it. Animals’ bladders should only be used as storage for animal urine, or as soccer balls in instances of severe need. Never food.

When she returned with our food, we were relieved to find that neither item was bladder based, though both were unexpected and not necessarily what we were looking for. Tom discovered that a Ploughman’s Lunch is intended more as a platter to be shared by several people over beer, comprised of multiple cheeses, pickles, and onions. It is no more a meal than a microwaved chocolate pop tart and a glass of whiskey are a dessert at a Black Angus.

I found that a split potato is a baked potato, split open. I also found that when our waitress had said, “Beans?” she didn’t mean, “Do you want beans in addition to bacon?”, she meant, “Do you want me to slather your potato in beans and nothing else?” Hearing my positive answer, she had done just that, dumping a can of baked beans onto a baked potato.

I was about to go to a museum that showcased some of the finest artistic and cultural products the world had to offer, followed by a long ride on a crowded subway. It was not a day for flatulence.

“Excuse me,” I said, pointing to my plate. “I ordered this with bacon.”

Her Eastern European eyes flicked to my bean laden potato, then back up to me – icy and unblinking. She said nothing.

“See, uh…” I muttered, trying to fill the silence and provide her with whatever information she appeared to be seeking. “I wanted, uh, bacon, and not beans, so…”

She continued to stare, as though it was my fault that she had fucked up my request to have a potato covered in bacon.

“I just, uh… I want bacon, not the beans, so…”

“I understand you say, ‘beans.’” She said, finally.

“Well,” I said. “I ordered bacon.”

She picked up my plate with a glare. “I bring bacon.”

Not long after, she brought me a similar baked potato covered in bacon, which was about as good as a shitty baked potato covered in shitty bacon could be. However, I’m reasonably certain that she or one of the cooks spat in it, so I suppose that was a pretty authentic experience.

The moral of the story? Don’t go on a culinary, “What the hell did I order?” adventure when you’re in a country with a reputation for disgusting food.

Truman Capps finds it easier to do everything when bacon is involved.

Photo Essay: London, April 5 - 7

Get used to this sort of thing, folks - it's way easy to take a picture and way difficult to write a blog, and between jet lag and physical exhaustion from walking all over the place, most nights when I get home I don't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt. Thus, please enjoy:

These cars were part of a small children's carousel set up at the local shopping center in Harrow, the suburb where I'm living. In order to make the cars seem exciting and realistic, the manufacturers evidently decided to put the names of random American states all over them.

No matter where you go in London, the suburbs are uniformly rustic and charming like this. I would know - I've ridden past a few billion houses like these on the tube, and all of them look just like these, in that you expect them to be full of magical nannies and mischievous, singing children.

I think we've established that the only people who will get this besides me are my Dad and Jack Brazil. So yuk it up, guys.

I was feeling a bit out of sorts and alone on my walk to class on the first day, but then I saw this and felt right at home all over again. (Yes, I know most of my pictures from London so far have been of otherwise unremarkable signs and children's rides; the good stuff is coming.)

Woah! Double decker buses AND black taxis? Well this is basically the most characteristically London picture ever! If only there was a...

Boomtown.

Here in downtown London, there's one of these on pretty much every street. And after dark, it's like Taco Tuesday EVERY NIGHT.

Alleys in London are more than just places for restaurants to put Dumpsters and hobos to masturbate - here, they actually have shops and pubs in them.

See? Nobody in this picture is a hobo, and I was the only one masturbating.

Truman Capps took something like 300 pictures in two days - expect more on Facebook once he has the time to get to uploading everything.

Brothers, Sisters, and Housewives

When I was a freshman in high school, our English teacher went around the room asking each of us what we wanted to do. When he came to me, I told everyone that I wanted to get famous writing TV shows and movies. Frankie, a stocky jerk with an illustrious JV football career ahead of him, snorted and said, “Oh, yeah right, Truman!”

I saw my interview for an internship on the TV show Brothers and Sisters as the first step on the long road to the awards show acceptance speech where I go up to the microphone, hold up my award, and say, “Blow it out your ass, Frankie.”

The magazines outside my interview at ABC had advertisements for Learjets and listings of what were the best over the counter painkillers and sleepaids in various South Asian countries. Right away I knew that I was in the big leagues – the magazines in the waiting room at my dentist’s office in Southwest Portland are full of ads for cheap mulch and knockoff erectile dysfunction pills.

In order to document this moment, I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the Learjet ad, but had to self consciously tuck it away a moment later when I heard someone coming down the hall. I would hate for my first impression with the writers at Brothers and Sisters to be that of the small town yokel so thrilled to be in LA that he’s photographing the magazines.

The interview went really well. The people interviewing me were arguably the four most beautiful individuals I’ve ever seen, like four Pygmalion-style Greek statues come to life, yet at the same time blessed with a sort of worldly knowledge that I could only hope to one day attain. On an unrelated note, they mentioned during the interview that they read my blog.

When they asked why I wanted to fetch coffee for TV writers, I explained that at this point in my life my only other option is to fetch coffee for journalists, which doesn’t sound nearly as fun.

After the interview my cousin Gene, who has been kind enough to let me invade his home during my time in LA, drove* us up to the Universal backlot to visit his incredibly nice friend Amanda, who works in the costume department at Desperate Housewives. She rolled up in a golf cart and gave us an impromptu backstage tour as we made our way to the set.

*Gene has a farm truck that is roughly 8000 years old and has no shocks whatsoever, which gives every pothole and speedbump a jolt similar to massive turbulence in an airplane. This would ordinarily be kind of scary, but the truck feels really heavy and solidly put together, as though it’s made out of Kevlar and melted down Terminators.

Golf carts might be one of the most dangerous modes of transportation, but nobody at Universal seems to know or care. Sure, they only go about 15 miles per hour, but they’re doorless vehicles with no seatbelts or shocks, so all it takes is one bump on a steep incline to send you tumbling out and down a hill into the shark tank from Jaws.

Cruising the Universal backlot was particularly fun because we got to see the Universal Studios tour groups go through in their big carts, seeing all the same cheesy attractions while we trotted off to a legitimate TV shoot. Once, while waiting behind one of these trucks, a bunch of overweight tourists near the back of the tram started excitedly taking pictures of our golf cart because it had “DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” emblazoned across the front. I am now no doubt plastered all over some Midwestern Desperate Housewives aficionado’s Facebook page – “Is that Kyle McLachlan in the golf cart? Man, his complexion looks really bad in person!”

In the scene they were shooting, Eva Longoria confronts her husband while wearing some skimpy nightgown. However, they were shooting the scene inside the house and we were outside watching monitors, and all of the cameras were pointed at the husband for his reactions as they’d already shot Eva, so all I could see on the monitors was some middle aged guy making aroused faces and talking about how sexy his wife looked, which my Dad does basically all the time anyway.

However, as soon as the scene was finished, everybody poured out of the house, Eva Longoria among them, wearing an open robe over the absolutely tiny costume gown. She flounced down the stairs of the house and across the lawn to where all the crew, Gene, Amanda, and myself among them, had gathered by the monitors. She waved at Amanda, who she clearly knew from the costuming process.

“Hey, Eva,” Amanda said. “Have you met my friend Truman?”

Eva Longoria, #14 on FHM’s 2008 list of the sexiest women, shook her head and turned to face me. I scrambled out of the canvas chair I was sitting in, breaking the footrest in the process.

She had a Blackberry in one hand and her script in the other, but she extended the index finger of her Blackberry hand, which I gently shook. (I later realized how great it would be if she said, ‘pull my finger’).

“Hi.” She said.

This is your chance! I thought to myself. She doesn’t know you’re in the marching band! She doesn’t know that you have a Battlestar Galactica poster in your room! Make Eva Longoria think you’re cool!

And the best I could do was, “Hello, Ms. Longoria.”

“Eva.” She corrected me, before jogging off to a white van that took her back up the hill to her trailer. I got the distinct impression that she had forgotten me even before she met me.

So, first name basis with Eva Longoria. Blow it out your ass, Frankie!

Truman Capps also saw Ms. Piggy and Chris Rock that day, but that update is going to have to come later.

Of Neither Substance Nor Humor

I’d had it in my head that I could do a video blog in the airport and save myself from having to write an update, but then there were just so many people at gate C3. Sure, it’s 2010, and I probably wouldn’t seem crazy for sitting alone and talking into a Flip video camera, but at the very least, I’d get some strange looks.

“What’s he got to talk about? We’re all just sitting waiting for a plane. Maybe he’s talking about us… Let’s kill him!”

There isn’t one hell of a lot I can say about going to LA that I haven’t already said a few times. LAX is everything that PDX isn’t – cramped, dirty, stale urine fumes wafting from every darkened corner.

The plane ride down went fast enough, I had an aisle seat, the middle seat was empty, and the lady sitting by the window gave me her packet of salty snacks, so I’d say that it was basically the single greatest plane trip I’ve ever been on. The only way it could’ve been better was if they’d given us those delicious sausage and cheese breakfast sandwiches that the band got on the way down to the Rose Bowl, but I guess food lightning only strikes once.

It’s confirmed that I’ll be blogging for Flux magazine this coming term, so look forward to that.

Look, with respect to all of you, I’m tired as hell and nothing interesting happened today. By Sunday I’ll have been to a couple of interviews and will have something to talk about. So look forward to that, too.

Truman Capps SLEEEEP.

England

Flag of England, or a plus sign? YOU DECIDE!

Man, you know what I’m getting tired of? Commercials for The General, and telling people when I’m going to England.

So for the last time, all of you: I leave Oregon on March 31st, and I leave America (from Detroit, unfortunately) on April 4th. I come back on June 20th. I will be using planes to get there. I will be traveling alone. Yes, I still hate flying with every fiber of my being. Yes, I do remember that time I freaked out because I thought we were crashing on the way back from the Rose Bowl. No, I don’t plan on doing it again.

But the fact remains: In a matter of days, I’ll be studying abroad in England. I’ve always wanted to go to England, because I have an inherent respect for the people who invented the one and only language I will ever speak, as well as the deep fried fish and the deep fried candy bar. I suppose that if there were any other country besides America that showed a stronger dedication to deep frying ordinary foods than England, I would study there, even if it meant learning a new language.

Academically speaking, my trip to England is going to be more or less a wash. I’ll be taking three general education classes that, while they appear to be highly interesting, will fulfill requirements I’ve already completed in the United States for a fraction of the cost. However, that’s the way I like it: I’m not going to England to take classes, I’m going to England to do literally everything. The last thing I want is my education getting in the way of that. This is the express reason that I pulled out of the internship I was going to do in London at the last second – making photocopies for some British TV station could take up time that I could be spending doing literally everything.

My trip overseas will not have an impact on the blog per se – if I can write 2000 words a week about the inane bullshit I do in Eugene, Oregon, then the only reason I would be unable to write that much during my globe trotting adventures in England is because I’ll be too busy doing literally everything to post an update.

One of the major changes you can expect while I’m away is that there’s going to be more multimedia content. Ordinarily, the pictures you see on this blog are barely-related images pulled from Google at the last minute before I post my blog and return to my regularly scheduled pornography. In England, though, I’ll be using both a digital camera and a Flip video camera to record everything of interest, and probably a lot of uninteresting things too.*

*On that note, I had been planning to do this update as a video blog, but when I looked at the footage I realized that video blogging really doesn’t have much on text blogging when it’s just a greasy dude who hasn’t showered sitting alone in his parents’ house in Oregon. It will, no doubt, be more visually compelling when I’m both clean and on the road.

The other major change is that I will most likely be blogging for an on-campus organization while I’m gone. I can’t say who just yet because I haven’t received official confirmation, but should I get the job, my blogs will be appearing both on their website and here more or less simultaneously. Their blog receives a bit more traffic than this one does, too, so there’s a good chance that in the future I won’t be able to name all of my readers in ten seconds anymore.

You may have noticed in my departure information that I’m leaving Oregon several days before I leave for England. The reason for this is that I’ll be spending a few days in Los Angeles to interview for summer internships at production companies, and potentially pitch Mike’s and my recently completed screenplay, should the opportunity arise. If I’m fortunate enough to land one of these internships, I’ll be spending my summer in LA, which means my blog will probably abandon its highly analytical dorkyness in favor of a more ‘coked out hot tub full of cheap strippers’ sort of vibe.

In one way or another, it’s all comin’ together for ‘ol Liz Lemon – for the next six months I’ll be either studying in the country I’ve always wanted to go to or interning at the heart of the industry I’ve always wanted to get into. It’s rare for all of my good fortunes to align like this – an apparent six months of Owen Wilson days – and so I’m somewhat nervous that on my way to the airport to start this grand adventure a giant Monty Python foot is going to come out of the sky and squish me.

Rest assured, though, that whatever happens over this next crazy half of a year, it’s going to be pretty thoroughly catalogued here. I’ve always been an on time update Nazi, but maybe give me a little leeway if I’m off by a day or so – for a long, continuous stretch, I’m going to have A Lot Going On, and I would be an idiot to turn down a chance to go steal silverware from Buckingham Palace because I’ve got to write an on-time blog that night. Some updates might be shorter, too, but they’re bound to be more interesting than 1000 words about cardboard boxes.

All I’m saying is, be ready to have your minds blown, even if it’s not in a necessarily timely fashion.

Truman Capps will probably listen to Rocketman on the plane.

Bloated, Hairy Shitbags

Well, that happened.

In the last weeks of my relationship with The Ex Girlfriend, she and I went camping with our friends Whitney and Collin to a campground in Eastern Oregon. On the long drive through the Columbia Gorge, we talked about school, movies, TV, music, and just about all the normal, safe, nonpartisan conversation topics.

But then, we started talking politics, and within a few minutes we were yelling at each other.

Whitney and The Ex Girlfriend were of the opinion that all Republicans, everywhere, were irreparably retarded and needed to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

“They’re just so stupid.” The Ex Girlfriend said. “They’re totally evil. I just wish they would all die.”

I tried to point out that wanting everybody who had an opinion different from yours to die was, in many ways, not all that different from the way the Bush Administration had been running the show for eight years.

“Also,” Collin pointed out, “Just because somebody is a fiscal conservative who wants to preserve states’ rights doesn’t mean he’s automatically a Bible thumping racist.”

“All I’m saying is, Republicans aren’t doing anybody any good.” Whitney said. “All they’ve ever done is start wars and destroy the environment.”

“But Richard Nixon started the EPA.” I protested. “Teddy Roosevelt created the National Parks and won a Nobel Peace Prize, for God’s sake!”

“Jesus, Truman, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Ex Girlfriend snapped.

Keep in mind, everybody in the car classified him or herself as a liberal. However, Collin was a former Republican with fiscally conservative tendencies, and I know enough intelligent and reasonable Republicans to have some respect for their point of view, even if I don’t share it. But that’s the current state of political discourse in this country, I guess – we’re so divided that a political conversation between liberals and slightly less liberal liberals still degenerates into hysterics just as fast as a 5th grade slumber party where the pizza rolls are full of crystal meth.

My feeling is that an ideology, so long as it’s not one perpetrated on punching babies or disenfranchising minorities, isn’t evil in and of itself. Conservatism, Christianity, Islam, and the pro-life movement are not inherently evil. Fundimentalism is the real evil; the point at which people get so wrapped up in an ideology that they start hurting others. That’s why I make a point of seeking out and acknowledging fellow liberals who are totally full of shit a lot of the time – Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann, come on down!

But when I hear that Senate Republicans have their panties in such a tight wad over healthcare that they’re actually utilizing a Congressional loophole to walk off the job at 2:00 every day, stalling hearings on national security and homelessness to name a few, I can’t help but think that maybe Whitney and The Ex Girlfriend were right.

And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s other people being right, especially when I used to date one of them.

Matt Tiabbi wrote a story for Rolling Stone a couple years ago called “Obama’s Moment.” Written while Obama was still on the campaign trail, the story combines interviews with Obama supporters and the author’s own musings on just what, exactly, makes Obama so different from other politicians, who Tiabbi referred to as “bloated, hairy shitbags.” The article is a difficult read today, because it reminds us liberals of how we assumed that, realistically, Obama would be able to fix, like, maybe three or four things, in stark contrast to today, where the majority of Republican senators would ardently oppose an Obama-approved anti puppy torture bill.

I just can’t understand where the support for these tactics is coming from anymore. A while back I wrote an update about how liberals were trying just as hard to stall the Bush Administration’s progress a few years ago, but I have no recollection of them straight up not doing their jobs as revenge.*

*Of course, that depends on your definition of ‘not doing their jobs’, because for eight years there it was like half of Congress was just sleeping while wearing those novelty glasses with pictures of open eyes on them.

I’ve got Republican readers – and hello to you all – and I have to ask: Are you proud of this? I’m not blaming you for these actions and I certainly don’t think it’s your fault, I’m just genuinely curious. I just want to know if you see Republicans walking out on the jobs that you and me and everybody pays them to do and feel the same sort of “Go get ‘em!” thrill I felt when that Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at Bush.

I’m serious – either hit me up on Facebook or leave a comment below. I’m not trying to pick a fight, I just want to know how it makes you feel. I want to know where you’re coming from. If you support them, I want to know why you feel like it’s an okay thing for them to do. I don’t want to vilify you; I’d much rather understand you.

All I’m saying is, don’t laugh at President Obama’s failure to enact ‘change’ when this sort of thing happens. It’s not exactly his fault.

Truman Capps will give you all the details on London next week, barring any further shutdown of government.

Inside The Box

Like you didn't see this coming.

Over the past three years of college, my interests, social habits, and living arrangements have frequently changed. The boxes I use, however, have always remained the same.

Cardboard boxes are designed to be a disposable container – once you’ve put a thing into it and taken the thing out again, it has no more purpose. Yet the men of the Capps family don’t seem to trust this characteristic of the box. My father and grandfather are both compulsive box-keepers; my grandfather primarily out of dementia and my father largely because he has a lot of oddly shaped technological doodads in his office which will be a pain to pack without boxes if ever we move, hence why he keeps the boxes they came in. For as long as I can remember, our garage has been a treasure trove of empty cardboard boxes (and sporadically used exercise equipment).

As a child, this was tantalizing for me, because avid Calvin and Hobbes readership had taught me that there was nothing no more fun than an empty box to play in. I had this idea that an empty box would be a vessel with which I could let my imagination run wild – I could pretend it was a spaceship, or a car, or… Well, come on, this is me we’re talking about; probably just a spaceship. However, my family didn’t buy a lot of things that warranted boxes big enough for me to play in, and whenever we did, Dad would set the box aside in the garage for safekeeping. Those boxes, I was told, were not to be played in under any circumstances, because if I damaged them, then we wouldn’t be able to pack things in them on the glorious day that we finally moved out of Salem.

It was sort of a boxes, boxes everywhere, but not a one to play in situation for me. Sometimes, I would just sit around pretending I had a cardboard box to play in, and would then pretend that I was pretending that the pretend box was a spaceship.

I did not have a lot of friends at that age.

Incidentally, last year my mother inadvertently started a grease fire in our garage thanks entirely to a faulty grease trap on our barbecue. To her credit, she also discovered the fire about 45 minutes after it started and was able to put it out before it did any serious damage. However, smoke had tinged the garage and everything in it with the smell of burned fat and misery, and we were forced to hire a professional cleaning service to remove the smell and throw away basically everything that the smoke had poisoned, which included many of Dad’s prized computer boxes. This night went down in history as The Night Mom Burned Down The Garage (and I can’t stress enough that this wasn’t her fault), and it still dominates conversations to this day. “We have to make do with this printer, Truman.” Dad will say. “We lost the box on The Night Mom Burned Down The Garage. We can’t return it now.”

This impression that boxes are a resource to be treasured has followed me to college, where, after six moves to and from school, I am still using the same set of boxes that my father tearfully entrusted to me when I prepared to come to school freshman year. There’s a big box with ‘MAYFLOWER’ printed on the side, a relic from our family’s move from Longview to Salem in 1995, which has traditionally been the home for my clothes, and a family of smaller repurposed Hammermill paper boxes to store desk trinkets and office supplies, along with two mid-sized boxes for kitchen items and DVDs and video game systems. They were intended to be used once and then cast aside into an alleyway for a hobo to take a dump in, yet they remain in diligent service, getting stuffed full of things, trucked down the I-5 corridor to Eugene, flattened and tucked away in my closet, and then reassembled a few months later to repeat the process in reverse.

I packed up my boxes early this year because I’ll be spending the coming term in England (more on that on Wednesday), and in the process noticed some of the wear and tear on these boxes of mine.

And I asked myself, Why do I keep using the same boxes? It’s not like they’re made out of gold. You can get boxes anywhere. There’s no reason to have this assumption that boxes are rare, or that these boxes of yours are intrinsically better than all other boxes.

Part of it is tradition, which, I will admit I’m kind of a stickler for. Every year I pack these same boxes, and while I pack them, I listen to ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel. This year, I also listened to ‘Rocketman’ by Elton John as I packed, and the combination of spacefaring imagery and a room full of cardboard boxes nearly brought me to tears as I imagined myself standing amidst a fleet of pretend spaceships.

I’d say the main reason, though, is that keeping the same boxes limits my consumption, as if to say, You can only have enough things to fill these boxes. If you get more things, you have to get rid of some other things. You can have exactly seven boxes’ worth of things. That is how many things you can have.

If I were to get even one new box that was bigger, it would throw off my Balance of Things, and then I’d have too much stuff. The boxes, along with constant moving, keep me from buying more stuff than I need – because I’ve been just fine with the amount of stuff that I have for the past three years. It’s basically me versus capitalism.

If the boxes were actually spaceships, though, I could have as much stuff as I wanted, and I could take it with me on wild interstellar adventures.

Truman Capps initially had a really different vision for the direction of this update, but then he started reminiscing about boxes.

The Price Is Right, Part 2

Drew Carey is going to Google his name and find all the pictures on this blog, and he'll be all like, "Whaaaa?"

Once we’d been seated in the studio (which, might I add, is a good deal smaller in real life than it is on TV, leading me to believe that Mark Wahlberg’s penis at the end of Boogie Nights is probably half as big as it looked) the current announcer for The Price Is Right, Rich Fields, a former TV weatherman whose hair gets a solid 8.429 on the Capps-O’Brien Follicle Scale, appeared from backstage and greeted us.

I’ve sometimes wondered if voice talent like him are ‘always on,’ so to speak – that is, do they always talk in deep, booming tones, or is that just something they do between 9:00 and 5:00? In the case of Rich Fields, I’m inclined to think that he’s always got a throaty, grandiose lilt to his voice, because even when he was just shooting the shit with Drew during commercials it still sounded like he was talking about an amazing vacation getaway.

“Well, everybody,” he said to us all once we’d done away with the formalities. “I think we’re going to have a great show today, and you know how I know that? Because when I was walking from my dressing room down that big ‘ol hallway behind the prize door, it was full of BRAND NEW CARS!”

Everyone cheered, and I found myself cheering too.

You idiot! Common Sense yelled in my ear. You know that free cars on game shows are basically the world’s biggest scam! You get cornholed with taxes so bad that you’re better off selling the damn car!

“…and SPEEDBOATS!” Rich Fields continued, whipping his non-microphone arm around in a Pete Townsend windmill.

People went batshit, myself included.

Speedboats, Truman? You hate the water! Mean ‘ol Mr. Common Sense spat. And the taxes! Oh, the taxes you’ll pay! Obama’s going to laugh his way to the bank on your speedboat!

“Yep, those are all prizes for our second taping today…” Fields continued with a wry smile. “But for this show I saw a lot of really nice razor blades and vacuum cleaners!”

And we cheered regardless. At that point, he could’ve said, “And after the show, we’re going to take you all into a small room and fill it up with DELICIOUS ZYKLON B!” and we’d still be happy.

He explained the rules of the game to us – both in the sense of the games played on The Price Is Right and also the broader game of television with a live studio audience, wherein the one rule is that you have to cheer and clap for everything, but only when they tell you.

And then he said, “And now, who’s ready to meet our host, DREW CAREY?”

And the music started playing and the cameras turned on, and a bunch of production assistants onstage held up signs with the names of the first four contestants on them, and like that the taping had begun. Drew Carey came out from behind some wonderful door and presided over a few games until the first commercial break, at which point, cameras off, he stepped up to the edge of the stage and started an informal conversation with the audience.

I once read a glowing review of Drew Carey’s personality from someone who had briefly worked with him on a TV show. I believe the exact phrase she’d used had been, “He oozes cheeseburgers and love.” At the time I didn’t quite understand what she meant (nor was I enticed by the thought of cheeseburgers coming out of a rotund man’s pores), but what I saw at the taping really clarified it. Drew Carey is just plain nice. He’s just a really friendly guy from Ohio who also is a celebrity, which he treats as though it happened by accident.

Looking out at people in the crowd and reading their oversized nametags, he questioned them individually. “Hey, Carl! Where are you from? What brings you to LA?” When talking to an ex-cop from Nova Scotia, he suddenly burst into song. “Yes, we have No-va Scotia! We have Nova Scotia, today! Hey, hey!” People loved this and clapped along, encouraging him to go through a couple of choruses. When he was finished, he explained that he’d just repurposed “We Have No Bananas Today,” but if he hadn’t I’m sure most of the people who didn’t know would have nominated him for a Grammy.

This man of the people thing carried over to the on camera segments as well. During one game, a prop failed at the last second and the contestant was able to see the actual price of what he was bidding on. In the heat of the moment he still lost, but the producers decided during a break that they should reshoot him losing with the real price covered up, so that they wouldn’t look incompetent on television. The guy came back up onstage and diligently recreated his failure for the cameras. The producers were all ready to send him home empty handed when the audience began to boo.

“I’ll be right back.” Drew said, disappearing backstage. A moment later, he returned with $500 cash, which he handed to the double-loser. “Tax free.” He pointed out. “Thanks for helping us.”

Rich later said that this was Drew’s own money from his own pocket, upon which I called shenanigans – because seriously, who carries $500 cash around? – but the gesture was still heartwarming. Drew didn’t have to do a damn thing. He could’ve let the guy leave with some lame-ass consolation prize, and at the end of the day he’d still go home to his crystal kingdom at the center of the Sun with the undying support of all his fans, but he didn’t. He is a just and loving man, that Drew Carey.

Eventually during a commercial break, he saw us, a cluster of 20 people in the back, all wearing green shirts with “OREGON” written on them, and said, “So I guess you guys are from the University of Oregon. What’s your deal?”

We yelled to him that we were from the Oregon Marching Band.

“Oh, no kidding!” He said. “I used to play trumpet in the marching band at my high school. How many of you are trumpet players?”

He spent a solid five minutes talking to and about us. He asked my friend Jefe what kind of trumpet he played (for the record, Drew Carey is not a fan of the Bach line of trumpets) and told us about how he’d created the marching band for the Seattle Sounders, the soccer team he owns a quarter of. He talked about how he had a subscription to Halftime Magazine, and how whenever they show Drum Corps International finals on television he watches them.

“Hey,” he said to the whole crowd. “How many of you have seen the movie Drumline?”

About 30 people raised their hands, and we, the band, cracked up, because not a day goes by that we don’t make fun of that movie.

“Well,” Drew said. “Here’s what you do. Rent it and fast forward through all the plot and everything, because that all sucks, but watch the bits with the marching band in it, because that stuff is pretty awesome.”

And then one of the stage directors started playing one of the marching band hip hop covers from the movie, and Drew started dancing like a Southern drum major on stage, kicking his legs out and bending over backwards, and I suddenly knew what true joy was.

Truman Capps cannot comment on whether anyone in the OMB won or not, for fear of them losing their prizes which they may or may not have.

The Price Is Right, Part 1

Imagine if this was your job.

When I was seven years old, my family moved from Longview, Washington, to the well of sorrows known Salem. This was a particularly difficult process for me because it isolated me from my best friend at the time: Television. Yes, from when we packed up the TV in Longview until it was unpacked in Salem, I was completely without entertainment. This was only for between 48 and 72 hours, but keep in mind that this was 1995. I had no Game Boy, I couldn’t ride a bike, and the Internet had not yet been invented. I had nothing to do but sit in a house filled with boxes while my parents unpacked, staring out the window at the children playing on the street and resenting them for not being able to show me Batman reruns.

A benevolent neighbor or perhaps my grandparents lent us a little portable television at some point during this dry spell, which I grabbed like a drowning man taking a fuzzy, low resolution life preserver. I set it up at the foot of the bed in my largely bare room, plugged it in, and fiddled with the rabbit ears. As the static waxed and waned, I could see a man’s silhouette emerging from the interference, accompanied by snatches of a catchy, upbeat theme song. At long last, I positioned the rabbit ears just so, and the picture came clearly into view.

He was an old man, even in 1995, holding an abnormally shaped microphone and standing in front of a colorful backdrop. Throngs of screaming overweight Midwesterners who had been shoehorned into a few hundred seats were hopping up and down, wearing colorful T-shirts singing this modern day messiah’s praises. He selected one lucky member from this mass of people and raised the microphone to his mouth.

“Come on down,” Bob Barker said. “And let’s play The Price Is Right!”

The only two channels the TV could pick up was some sort of Oregon-centric state capitol C-SPAN and this mysterious channel, which apparently only showed The Price Is Right. And so, for those two or three days until we unpacked our TV, all I watched was The Price Is Right.

And oh, how I hated it. I was seven years old, for Christ’s sake – I wanted talking dogs and fart jokes, not excitable retirees guessing the price of a dinette set. At the time, about the only game show I actively enjoyed was Double Dare, and as I recall the main hook there was that people would jeered and coated in slime if they answered a question wrong (a few years later, they called it college).

After that initial encounter, The Price Is Right and I didn’t have a lot of contact. As my life went on, I had a wider variety of TV channels to choose from, and I had more to do during the middle of the day when the show was usually broadcast. A couple of years ago, Bob Barker finally retired after approximately a billion years of service to the show, and was replaced by Drew Carey, which surprised me because I figured that Drew, like myself, had better things to do during the middle of the day.

At the time, I remember there being a fair amount of controversy about the change – a lot of people said that Drew Carey wasn’t as good as Bob Barker, that he didn’t do the show justice. I even took part in the Drew bashing myself, not knowing what I was talking about:

[From Writers, Episode 4:]
“Mike: Well, yeah, Truman, it’s just like what’s going on with The Price Is Right. They should’ve cancelled it when Bob Barker left. This beady eyed Drew Carey bastard thinks he can get up there with his Elvis Costello glasses and host The Price Is Right, but he’s wrong, because there’s a thing called manners, and a thing called decorum, and that’s how this show is done.

I, along with about 20 members of the Oregon Basketball Band, saw a taping of The Price Is Right on Wednesday, and all I can say is that I wholeheartedly retract any and all previous statements about Drew Carey and the show itself.

Contrary to popular belief, television is not as interesting in person as it is at home. I learned this the hard way when my parents and I saw a taping of The Late Show With David Letterman in New York a few years back – there were always several cameras blocking whatever was going on, forcing the audience to look up at the monitors instead, which begged the question of why we spent four hours waiting in line to see the taping in the first place when we could’ve just sat in our hotel room and gotten the same effect in more comfortable seats.

At the outset, I had similar expectations for The Price Is Right. We spent roughly four hours moving through a variety of less and less comfortable waiting rooms at CBS Television City along with legions of overexcited tourists. Dead eyed CBS pages guided us from one point to the next as we were screened for weapons, relieved of our cell phones (with all their potential price checking abilities), and interviewed by an energetic producer as a means to determine which of us had the right personality to be called down to play The Price Is Right.

We were among the last to be herded into the studio, which was full of cheering people dancing to YMCA by The Village People. In my experience, whenever The Village People are played, my mood tends to go south. This is primarily because I don’t like dancing, and the song YMCA sort of demands that you dance, especially when you’re in a room filled with people who are all dancing. If you’re standing there not moving your arms into the shape of the corresponding letters, everyone starts to look at you like you’re the crazy one.

“Hey! That guy isn’t dancing to this shitty, awful song! Let’s kick his ass!”

But then we were seated, the lights came up, and 90 minutes of pure joy began.

Truman Capps invites you to come back Wednesday and find out exactly how joyful it was.

The Price

This man is a kind and loving God of daytime TV.

I'm in LA for the Pac-10 Tournament, and we just got back from a taping of The Price Is Right. It was a massive experience which requires far more attention than I can give it right now, being as I'm in the middle of a band trip, but expect a full rundown on Sunday.

To keep you occupied in the meantime:

Video games:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/copter

Relevant facts:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/27/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase27-2010feb27

Comedy:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

Best music video ever:

http://www.youtube.com/okgo#p/a/u/0/qybUFnY7Y8w

Truman Capps has earned this cop out update through years of diligent, loyal service to this blog.