Friday, March 8, 2013

Doug Stanhope: Come to America


"America is fucking great. It really is. I know you don't want to hear this from me but that's the truth. Brits love to bitch about America, and they love to hate America –– the government and the wars and the torture. But that's not life here, come on.

Life in America is actually fantastic. Everything works; come here. I want you to be here. Just get a nonstop from Heathrow, go directly to Florida, walk down that ramp and tell me if you can't immediately sense: something's really good here.

Rent a car. Get a convertible. Fill up the tank. Look at the price –– fucking $11 a gallon (in the UK). Look at the price; you're going to fill up your tank, you're going to fill up the backseat, as well. Just because it's that fucking cheap comparatively.

Drive down big, empty highways. Drive to the beach. There'll be a half a dozen cabana bars open, it's only 8 o'clock in the morning, and they're waving at you. They're smiling at you and they're waving for you to come on in. They want you to be there. Because they don't know yet that you don't tip.

Come on in. Come on in. Have a seat at the bar. She's going to hand you a big breakfast menu... You know what we have for traditional American breakfast? Choices. Yeah, lots of choices. You want some eggs? How do you want them done? We can do them 10 different ways. You want French toast? You want a waffle? Pancakes? We have chocolate chip pancakes. They'll put a whip-cream smiley face right on there for your fucking British ass. Or maybe you want a whip-cream frowny face to match that dour expression. You're still trying to fight liking here.

Order a cocktail and she's going to do something you've never seen before: she's going to pour it like this, and it'll go up and down and she keeps pouring it. How can this possibly be right? In the UK when you order a mixed drink some scientist pops out of the floorboards in a lab coat, and he uses a system of weights and measures and a fucking stainless steel cylinder that assures that you will not get any more –– even the vapors –– of one measured ounce in your fucking $15 cocktail.

Life here is really fucking good. Yeah, we have a lot of dumb people here, but you can afford to be dumb here. Everything makes sense. You're lost, you don't know where you are. Where are you? 77th Street? Go a block, you know what's next? 78th Street. It makes sense. You don't have to think. It's not like your roads that are all criss-crossed and mesh-mashed and they're all built 1,100 years ago for donkeys and carts, and you don't know where the hell you are or where you're going.

Hitler did his best to help the UK and level that country flat so they could start over. Like "Extreme Country Makeover." And what did the Brits do? They spat in Hitler's face and built it back, brick by brick, exactly the way it was 1,100 years ago when it didn't make sense.

Come to America, you can stay on my couch."