Eric saves the blog

I am presently in the midst of revising (FTYPAH: "studying") for exams, so blogging has fallen way down the priority list -- still above housecleaning but well below watching "I'd Do Anything" (a). So, I was all set to let the blog go into its usual other-things-are-happening languishing state, but now Eric has given me something to post.

Here are a few videos from a recent performance of the Secondhand Ska Kings at Minneapolis' Fine Line. It's a group of people in their 30s pretending they are still in college. But they are betrayed by the fact that they are in tune:


On this one you get to hear funky, funky Eric sing. An interesting thing to note is that Eric is always like this. Watch his mannerisms and this is pretty much how he acts all the time. No, really. Go to his house and you'll see him acting like this while he's watching TV, making food, etc. Actually, don't go to his house. His wife would not appreciate my sending a load of people over to visit.


Apparently, the fellas have taken on Markéta Irglová. What's with the chick on keyboards? Who is that? Do I know her?

One of my favourite things about Secondhand Ska Kings is that I know most of the members. Eric has been my best friend for 20 years; Matt (the guitarist who hides to the left of the screen) used to live next door to me in Ballard Hall (b); Bryce (the trumpet player) used to live across the hall from me and Matt; Scott (the other trombone player and singer on two of the songs) is the guy who always riles me up by suggesting that Welsh is really Klingon. I am hoping that I do, in fact, know the female keyboardist and that I have shagged her.


(a) Yes, I realise that every time I admit to watching these shows I fall a little further in the eyes of Chris and Jenny. By now they almost certainly regret ever having let me stay in their home.

(b) Note that this is an all-male residence hall. Trust me, it's even worse than it sounds.

Yeah, we are that lame.

The other day, Geraint listed his Facebook status as: "Geraint doesn't live in Chicago." Thus prompting this Wall conversation:

ME: "I don't live in Chicago, either. But I used to work there... in an old department store..."
GERAINT: "But you don't work there anymore?"
ME: "No, not since a woman came in and asked for a hammer."
GERAINT: "A hammer from the store?"
ME: "Indeed. A hammer she wanted. My tool she got."

For those of you playing along at home, uhm, this whole exchange isn't really worth explaining. But it strikes me as particularly funny. Perhaps because it's a conversation that played out over three days.

I wonder if there is anyone reading this who might have also worked at that same department store. I wonder if they still work there; or if not, why?

Morning, evening

I woke up yesterday in Dublin. That sounds like a song lyric, but it is, in fact, a simple declarative statement about my life. And not all that exciting a statement, considering I had gone to bed in Dublin the night before.

It would be a much more interesting story if I had woken up in Dublin after a night of heavy drinking in another country. But I already have a story like that, and a man's liver can only stand so many such experiences. In this case I was simply visiting Donal and Isobel in the comfy green of north Dublin. It was in their apartment that I woke up. Again, this story would be so much better if I hadn't been invited to their apartment, or if I had woken up between them dressed in a leather nurse's uniform and covered head-to-toe in 5W-40 motor oil. Sadly, that didn't happen either.

Visiting Ireland has such an iconic status in the American imagination that I feel ashamed to come back from a weekend in Dublin with a simple tale of grown-ups in a large metropolitan area doing boring grown-up-like things such as: going to dinner, taking a bit of a walk, looking at things in a museum, and checking train times.

If it makes you feel better, we did tend to stay up late drinking beer and talking. But even in that case, the content of our conversations wasn't all that exciting. It was agreed that clocks have grown quite clever over the past several years, the public transportation infrastructures of both Ireland and the United States are woefully inadequate, young people's tendency to finish texts with numerous "x" kisses causes confusion (Do my female classmates really mean that? Are the kisses like Tesco Clubcard points? Can I cash them in for real kisses, or a holiday in Mallorca?), and Something Should Be Done about China but we're not entirely sure what.

It doesn't make the best story, but I had a good time.

I went to bed last night in Cardiff. The story of that adventure I'll save for another post.

Oh, we were cool

A quote from me, age 12:

"Yeah, but I liked Metallica better when Jimi Hendrix was their lead guitarist."

I can't ever decide which I like more about that quote: that Eric bought it; or that I didn't know I was totally full of shit in saying it.

Happy Birthday Alicia Cordes!

This is my old friend Alicia Cordes. Her favourite hobby is stealing babies. I'm not entirely comfortable with this behaviour, I'll admit; but, really, who am I to judge? I can no more disown her than I can my white grandmother.

When I refer to Alicia as an "old friend," I mean that I have known her for a long time -- not that she is actually old. We knew each other in high school, which, for our friends in the Home Nations, is something different than what you call high school. High school in the United States generally encompasses those terrible wonderful years from age 14 to 18. Terrible in a wonderful way; wonderful in a terrible way. Like the strange ecstasy that comes from diarrhoea.

Alicia's locker was next to mine for those four years. Shoulder to shoulder for four years, on average seeing each other 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Roughly, that works out to 300 hours spent in close contact over the course of our high school experience -- 12.5 days. Easily longer than any number of romantic relationships I've had.

Anyway, today -- March 20 -- is her birthday. Alicia is 32 years young.

I am able to recall Alicia's birthday, despite my shockingly poor memory, because she and I were born on exactly the same day.

I can only sing short phrases

Primrose Hill is not in Greenwich.

For those of you who playing along at home, Primrose Hill is, shockingly, in Primrose Hill -- in Regent's Park, specifically, a fair walk north of the river and on London's western end. Greenwich is east of London's East End, hugging the southern bank of the Thames.

I have no idea how I screwed up these locations so badly. But it was to Greenwich that I dragged Jen Rodvold in my pursuit to stand where Iolo "Reality Spoils A Good Tale" Morgannwg stood in 1792 and held the first Gorsedd. Fortunately, the adventure turned out to be worthwhile.

Jen is a friend of mine from high school. It seems the older I get, the more friends I have from high school. Thank you, Facebook. Thank you, maddening nature of aging. As we get older and spin further and further away, we find that we really appreciate the people who were there 15 years ago.

Anyway, 14 years and 4,032 miles from the Mall of America Hooters where I had seen her last, Jen is now living with a bloke named Dave in a closet in London's east end and earning an MBA. This past weekend I travelled out for a visit.

There is something about me and London. In past visits to the Big Smoke, the people I've stayed with have found themselves distracted from my witty banter and enjoyable company by a particularly vicious stomach bug. The first time I stayed with friends in London Jenny was hit; Chris was the victim the next time I was in town. This time, Dave was on the receiving end. He was up early and often on Saturday morning and not particularly in the mood to go tracking down the origins of historical events that mean nothing to him. So Jen and I set out on our own.

We eventually found ourselves standing on the hill that houses the Royal Observatory, looking out across London and beyond to northern hills on one of those stunningly clear late afternoons that always seem to settle the soul. Dusk started in and turned the whole thing into a sort of moving painting. Silver/blue sky sharpened the shining lines of the Docklands buildings and then to the west lit up with yellow/pink/orange/red sunset that burned to an intense all-sky red as Jen and I walked through the park a bit more.

Atop a hill we had pretty much to ourselves, Jen stopped to call Dave and I stood and looked out and felt for the second time in a month this strong strange feeling that I struggle to put a name to. Connection? A root? The last time I felt it was when the child bride and one of the Claires and I sang out into the Irish night on New Year's Day. It is a feeling of no longer yearning to be elsewhere. It is a feeling, slight and surreal, of being at home.

It punched at my heart and I thought of that scene in "The Gathering Storm" when Churchill looks out across the English countryside and becomes resolved in never giving up. The place, the land is a natural physical representation of his soul. Its spirit reaches up through his feet and connects him to every soul that ever worked or fought or loved in that place. I imagine that for him, the connection he felt ribboned across England, the posh places in particular.

What I feel isn't as strong. It is a single strand, and one that wraps a larger area. It is a feeling that doesn't make a damned bit of sense. Ireland and Wales and London -- these places can't collectively be called "home" unless you are a Victorian imperialist. It is a connection that is absolutely ridiculous. For me especially.

But there it was, kicking at me and making me think that I am finally taking tiny steps toward feeling that this place, whatever "this place" means, can be my home. That is a terrifying possibility in a way. I am here on visa. Pieces of paper can take it all away from me.

The sky had turned infinite dark cobalt, fast becoming night, and Jen and I walked down toward the shops and pubs and restaurants of Greenwich. We crossed under the laser light that marks the Prime Meridian. A tiny green line that tears out over the park and across the night. A tiny invisible strand that connects all of us and how we live our lives.

I turned to Jen, attempted to say something profound and failed completely. Much as I've done here.

Doin' it Celtic cool

Remember those old Mountain Dew country cool ads? These were the ads that came before the days when Mountain Dew was target-marketed to morons. In the 80s, Mountain Dew ads were almost indistinguishable from ads for Busch beer. They generally involved a group of buddies gettin' together and throwin' themselves into lakes and rivers while hooting and slammin' back a few cans of the Dew. For our friends in the Home Nations, this is the sort of thing we do in America. Every day.

It's from these commercials that I got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments. Well, it's from these commercials that Jim Moore got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments.

Moore is an old friend of my dad's. When I was 11 years old, I was allowed on a rafting/camping trip down the Guadalupe River with my dad, Moore, Phil Archer and several other quick-witted beer-drinking Texas journalists. One of them a cameraman named Austin (which is the coolest name ever [a]), who had a certain fondness for flinging himself into perilous situations. When one of the rafts overturned and got stuck in the churning of a section of falls, Austin tied a rope around his waist, the other bit to a tree, and went in after the raft. How's that for macho? He risked his life to save an unmanned raft!

One day, when the group was stopped for lunch, Austin climbed up a tree and positioned himself to jump in the river.

"Is it deep enough for you to jump from there?" Archer asked.

"Hope so," Austin said, and he flung himself into the water.

It was deep enough. Over his head, And instantly I was scrambling up the tree to mimic the act. Moore spotted this and, recognizing that an 11-year-old shouldn't jump into a fast-moving river without supervision, shouted to Austin: "Stay in there for a second. The Cope spawn wants to re-enact your Mountain Dew Moment."

A Mountain Dew Moment is one that is particularly memorable. Not necessarily life-changing or at all important, it will probably still end up on the end-of-life video montage.

Mountain Dew Moments don't necessarily have to be action-based. For me, they are often surreal swells of emotion. The time the child bride and I went to a mariachi festival, and a massive 30-piece band performed a mariachi version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and something about the performance ignited the crowd to a standing ovation and I looked behind me and saw 20,000 people on the Coors Amphitheatre lawn seemingly stretching up into the Chula Vista night sky, all of them going completely mad and the applause was so loud that all I could do was howl -- that was a Mountain Dew Moment.

I tell you all of this to try to underline the strangely magical, stars-perfectly-aligned moment that occurred at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day in a pub in Skerries, Ireland.

The child bride and I were visiting our friend, Claire. Through her we found ourselves in a gathering of the old Skerries crew. Everyone knew each other, had grown up with one another. For those of you playing along at home, it was a bit like being at someone else's high school reunion, but a high school reunion where the people actually know each other. At my high school reunion, people kept shouting my name at me and I had no idea who they were.

On New Year's Eve we bundled into the upper floor of the Joe Mays pub, where some idiot had thought it a good idea to set up a karaoke machine. As you can almost certainly guess, it was a shambles. The last thing one wants as they close the book on a year is a squad of screeching drunkards belting out "Like a Virgin" and "Sweet Caroline." Phrases like "the wheels have come off" and "it's gone horribly pear-shaped" were created for evenings like this. By midnight there was no karaoke, just background music to the amplified screeching of intoxicated women. It was like some ridiculous neo-Dadaist performance art.

But then came that blessed moment, the Mountain Dew Moment when we all clicked into one another amid the opening strains of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." Some groaned, some cheered. But then we all sang. Every single person in the pub was there in that moment. All of us singing so loud, so full that we couldn't even hear our own insufferable voices. For 4 minutes and 35 seconds we just didn't care. We reached a state of Zen. We were one.

It was so perfect, so exquisite, that the karaoke machine was shut off immediately afterward. There were no protests -- even through the gallons of Guinness and Miller (b), we collectively knew we had reached our peak. There was no possible greater moment. We could do no more. It was absurd. It was beautiful.

And that's how 2008 began for me. We spilled out into the cool Irish night singing whatever came to our heads, staggering arm-in-arm, ready for this life. Whatever the hell it's got for us.

-------------------------------
(a)Reportedly, my parents originally planned to name me Austin, after the city of my birth, but my grandfather -- who everyone knows as Breezy -- thought it sounded stupid. In my early 20s, I seriously considered legally changing my name to James Austin Cope, but there are already plenty of reasons for my friends to make fun of me. I didn't need to add changing my name to that list.

(b)I don't know who was buying my drinks -- it wasn't me -- but somewhere along the line it was decided that because I am American I should be drinking American beer. As I say, since I wasn't buying (big up the Skerries crew) I had no recourse to complaint.

Alesha, Astrid and Éire

I just heard the 9:08 train to Cardiff Central roll past. For some reason, that made it official for me that Christmas is over.

For those of you playing along at home, trains and buses don't run in Britain on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Everything stops -- only the godless Spar stays open. Now that Christmas is passed, we'll slip into a half-speed routine for the next week, with everything again coming to a standstill on New Year's Day.

It was a good Christmas, starting with Alesha Dixon winning "Strictly Come Dancing." I voted for her twice, which is a clear sign that I am coming unglued; I am phone voting for celebrities on camp television. I try telling myself that doing this is simply an extension of my love for all things British -- obsessing over reality television is a national pastime here -- but I am still slightly embarrassed.

Probably not as embarrassed, though, as Jenny and Chris think I should be. At Thanksgiving they were wearing looks of serious concern and discomfort when I was talking about my love for the show. Theirs was the same look you might give someone going on and on about the innocent eroticism of child pornography: "OK, it's a given we're never going to speak to this man again. Do we just get up and walk out now, or leave it, hope he shuts up, and bolt at the earliest opportunity?"

But how can you not love the British Beyonce? That's Bruce Forsyth's estimation of Alesha Dixon, at least -- indicating more Bruce's total lack of awareness of Beyonce Knowles than anything else. He told Alesha this after she won the "Strictly Come Dancing" trophy.

"You can sing and dance. You've got quite an act," Bruce told her.

A little song, a little dance -- that's all you need to make it big. Apparently, vaudeville is not dead in Brucie's world.

Nonetheless, I was so enamoured by the show that once again I got out the video camera and forced the child bride to dance with me. Our making an ass of ourselves is becoming a Christmas tradition. That dance is the third take, with the other two showing an even more shocking lack of physical rhythm on my part. Originally, I had wanted to walk into shot moving my arms and hands in that exaggerated way you see in Salsa dances. But I did it so poorly that it was neither camp nor suave nor funny. I was spastic; I looked like a meth addict trying to swat away imaginary mosquitoes. Looking at myself jerk around in semi-epileptic fashion, I was suddenly taken back 15 years to when I was in Santo Domingo, hearing Merengue music for the first time.

Groups of people would gather on roadsides, throw open the doors of their cars, crank the radios and dance in the street. In a hotel, I heard the music blaring again and tried to mimic the dance I had seen. Then I looked around and noticed that two men in the bar had fallen off their stools, laughing at me.

The Amazing Astrid rolled into Cardiff on Christmas Eve for a short stay at the palatial Cope estate, which pretty much made the holiday for me.

I think having an extra person in the house encouraged the child bride and me to make more of an effort in celebrating. Had we been on our own, we probably would have sat around for two days, listlessly staring at the television. We still did a lot of that in Astrid's presence (I don't think I will ever again be able to go visit family in the U.S. over Christmas, for fear of missing the "Doctor Who" Christmas episode) but there were also good meals, sitting around talking, playing games and occasionally getting out of the house.

"Getting out of the house" is a phrase which for me is most often synonymous with "going to the pub." So we took Astrid to the Blue Anchor, which Rachel always bills as the oldest pub in Wales. I don't actually know that to be true. The Blue Anchor was established in 1380 and has been operating steadily as a pub ever since. Having 627 years under its belt certainly makes the Blue Anchor old, but I'm not sure there aren't others out there as old or older. It is, at least, the oldest pub in Wales that I have been to.

My immune system apparently can't handle two days of Hot Astrid Action and I am now ill, stumbling around the house in that sort of idiot haze that so often comes with cold symptoms. This wouldn't bother me so much if the child bride and I weren't Dublin-bound. On Saturday we're going over to stare at things for a few days and then spend New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with a friend who grew up in Dublin's northern suburbs. I will be leaving out the suburbs element when retelling the story to American friends.

New Year's in Dublin just sounds cool. New Year's in Skerries -- not so much. From what our friend Claire tells us, it will be an evening of imbibing with middle-aged people. Rock. If I were a single man, I would now be practising how to undo the clasp on a Marks & Spencer bra.

Too cool for Yule

This picture both amuses and pains me. It is me, Sara, and Sara's best friend Michelle back in 1995.
Damn it we were cool.
So, so cool.
Really cool.
Maybe if I keep saying it to myself that will make it true.
Great googly moogly, we were cool.

Did I mention how cool we were?

I am a magpie. I am that bloke off 'Final Fight'

It feels like winter in Yr Hen Ddinas, which means that it is wet and windy and miserable. It's not all that cold, admittedly; by Minnesota standards it is spring-like. But the conditions make you want to stay inside, wrapped in a blanket and refusing to move, unless to shuffle to the kitchen for more port. This is Christmas in Cardiff.

We are supposed to get 80 mph wind gusts overnight, but already the tree in our garden is dancing a strange sort of solitary mosh in the wind. On top of the house across the garden, there is a magpie clinging to a TV aerial (FTYPAH: "antenna"). He looks absolutely miserable and it strikes me as a particularly odd place for him to attempt to station himself. Surely birds instinctively understand things like wind and know better than to position themselves in less blatantly exposed locations.

I feel a bit like that magpie at the moment -- hanging on desperately, and almost certainly failing to identify simple steps that could be taken to make things less stressful. I am hoping that things will improve from next Thursday, when my Christmas breaks starts.

I have several things to do over the break, but at least the work won't keep piling on. I have so much trouble keeping up in my courses not because I'm not interested or not doing the work, but because they keep happening. Week after week. I could probably keep up if I had a week of lectures followed by a week to debrief. But as is, I find myself pushing to the end of the semester feeling as if I am playing one of those arcade fighting games, and I'm looking at that little meter that tells you how much strength you've got left and I'm thinking: "Fuck, there's no way I'm getting past this level."

In an effort to push time forward I am listening to Christmas music almost nonstop these days. Strangely, that hasn't driven me mad yet. Or, maybe it has and I'm not aware of it. Either way, I am doing my best to get into the spirit of the season.

For those of you playing along at home, getting into the spirit of things is a lot easier on this side of the world. It's the booze, you see. Christmas + Britain = Booze. On Friday I was in Marks & Spencer and they had three different areas in the store where people were giving away generously-sized free samples of port and mulled wine.

Free booze for shoppers. Yes! That sort of thing would be against the law in Minnesota. And it's a damn shame in economic terms, because a wee tipple has a certain way of loosening the wallet. Once, after spending an afternoon drinking with my brother, I went with the child bride to Target, where I wandered off with the cart ("trolley" for our friends in the Home Nations) while she looked at clothes. When she finally caught up with me, the cart was loaded with myriad items that I insisted we buy for her.

I wasn't quite in that state on Friday, but in a good mood and eager to run about city centre. When I finally got on the train home I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, a feeling that is rare in these days of always playing catch-up in academics. Nothing is ever done in university, I simply run out of time to focus on it any longer and turn in whatever shit I've come up with so far.

"Look at me," I thought. "Look at all the stuff I got. I have actually done something"

When I wrapped it all up and put it under the tree, it looked far less impressive, but I am still excited. Especially so because Astrid will be here celebrating with us. I don't know what kind of horrible things must have happened in her life that she has fallen so far down she is now stuck spending Christmas with the Copes, but there you go. If I gain from others' misfortune, who am I to complain?

I am especially excited because there will be another alcohol drinker in the house. The child bride is a teetotaller, which would normally leave only me to consume all the booze-laden Christmas goodies. Unfortunately, I prefer these things in quantities too small to validate their purchase.

Indeed, on the whole, I refuse to drink anything stronger than beer. Higher-octane stuff has a bad habit of sneaking up on me. One minute I'm having a witty conversation, the next minute I'm not wearing a shirt and demanding to go on a road trip and weeping.

But it's Christmas, see. And I am really eager to enjoy all these brandy-infused things and port and mulled wine and so on. And with Astrid coming, I now feel that it won't be a waste to buy all this stuff. So, my Christmas plans involve getting a Dutch girl drunk and stuffing her full of mince pies. That sounds like the sort of thing you'd pay premium rates to see on the internet, but you get what I mean.

Doing that thing of making my already-stale blog even staler by blogging about shit that happened a week ago

Thanksgiving went well, by the way. I realise I'm a week late in offering that information, but considering that blogging has become something I say I do, more than something I actually do, I suppose it's alright.

Despite the presence of no less than eight bloggers, only one of us bothered to take any pictures of the event, with most of those pictures having that people-taking-pictures-at-events quality of leaving you thinking: "So, why were we posing like that?"

Thankfully, Jenny came through with the brilliant artist's interpretation that you see to the left. Having also once provided a view of what my funeral will look like, Jenny is now my artist of choice in all things. One day, when I am allowed to write books I think I will have Jenny illustrate them. Ideally, these books will be in the Welsh language and I will refuse to translate for her.

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday, because it doesn't ask a whole lot of you. If you can eat, you can celebrate Thanksgiving -- only the anorexics are left out of the fun. I assume this is the reason (and, of course, the only reason) that Victoria Beckham fails to show up at the house every year.

Having Thanksgiving in a country that is Thanksgiving-less is arguably more fun than celebrating in the United States. Rather than being a family event, in which I spend the whole time making sure I don't drink too much and hoping my brother's girlfriend doesn't say something embarrassing, it was an opportunity to pack the house with as many friends as I could and enjoy their company.

The only problem is that the whole thing took place at the Cope Estate, which meant that it caused a ridiculous amount of stress for me. When I invite people to my house, I feel as if what I am really doing is inviting them to come over and judge me: "Hey, pop 'round the house and see if I've cleaned the toilet properly. Here, this is my chequebook -- why not take a gander at how mismanaged my finances are."

This, of course, causes me to judge myself, which I always do to a ridiculous extreme. That I didn't have a house full of people breaking into a sort of religious euphoric state over their joy of being fed turkey in my presence left me feeling that I was the worst host since Andrea Lugovoi's last tea party. But I am assured by others that it was an agreeable experience, thanks to a large degree to the witty banter of Jenny and Chris.

By now, the panicked stumble toward Christmas is under way. I am really upset that it is already 3 December.