The Japanese Beatles!

Okay, The Killers concert I saw at the Patriot Center, Virginia, was strangely supported by no less than the Japanese Beatles, The Silver Beats! England, you've not nothing to cover this band of the 4 mop-tops from Liverpool. These lads - I believe John's real name being "Eric" - have got it made. Check out http://www.silverbeats.com/english/index.html for the full-Beatles experience, and I'm not talking the American college stadium the Beatles played speeded-up in the 60s - they couldn't hear their own music because of the screaming! The Silver Beats dressed in the classic Beatles white shirts and black waistcaots and sounded sublime. Ringo, Ringo, come down off the ceiling! Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry!

We embark on a triangle of cultural experience, England, when you see The Beatles in America played by 4 Japanese lads and The Killers and the strange world of US college tour music! You're not in Kansas Toto! You're back in the USSR with Tokyo always your ma-ma-ma-maaaa-minddd!!

Lounge Bar Patriots!

We hope you enjoy your stay
Outside the sun is shining
It seems like heaven ain't far away

It's good to have you with us
Even if it's just for the day!

Good afternoon England! The 80s revisionist Duran Duran pop synth rock band The Killers played the Patriot Center, Virgina, last night, and were...kinda good! My expectations were high after two albums of infectious pop woven for lost souls of the road - and college girls - but I was out of my seat (yes, seat) and captivated by the all-American light show, sad-to-say giant video screen and merry antics of the band! Clearly Brandon Flowers is a weekend Mormon British church-goer. But The Killers were clearly playing for the Promised Land of the lost American highway only trapped in a Tony Bennett themed Las Vagas bar-room. But you'd have to be a communist and 100% straight not to be a little seduced by the crimson glory of their disaffected heatstrung ballads, songs of crushed teenage angst and bored mayhem. Fun was had! I can always listen to Megadeth another time (but why would I want to?)

We danced, we queued for $7 Miller Lite, we got the wrist band for the drinks, got the ID checked, got the police directions, got told okay for alcohol from the interior staff (depsite my tender 30 years) and got the wrist band checked for more drinks, got moved from the dance floor (the security no doubt enhanced after Virginia Tech) and still enjoyed the spectacle. Did I ever say I love this country, England! For two hours I bowed to a much-loved British band (from the Nevada desert) as only a lost Anglophile can! I still have the Queen's head on my passport!

I've been down across a road or two
But now I've found the velvet sun

That shines on me and you!

Not to be confused with the Ernest Hemingway - filmed with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner - short story The Killers!

British Chess Hope!

England, the days of Nigel Short has been replaced by the days of our latest hope for chess success, Michael Adams!

His nickname should really be the Jackal when you check out his games (not to mention his face) at http://www.chessgames.com/player/michael_adams.html

He has almost 2000 games at the above link! Geeks welcome!

Fragrant Harbor!

Hello England, Welcome to the summer! After a disastrous three weeks of late winter in "the nation's capital" with a strange storm, high winds, snow and English drizzle, spring has finally sprung! The Japanese cherry blossoms have opened their ten-day buds only to freeze and die just as the beautiful weather breaks, but America still loves Japan baby! And to prove it, I just have to get on a 16-hour flight to land in the land of the rising sun! A friend of mine is heading to Tokyo from Shanghai and lands at midnight half an hour before she takes off, and comedy will ensue, mostly getting lost in translation on the Bullet Train around the beautiful former fascist little isle. I used to be schizophrenic but we're okay now! My plan is to spend 10 days touring Japan, then cut away like an far eastern fruit for 3 days in the fragrant harbour of Hong Kong!

What has this got to do with England? Well, Hong Kong was a former British colony of course before Chris Patten gave it back in an amusing little ceremony to shrink the former power of Britain, before Tony B. developed his democratic scheme to spread freedom to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Irish Stormont, if only stretching it a bit far with Iraq! Quit when you're ahead I say. And when you can't, go east, my son! The dawn breaks in the east and a new day beckons, with sushi for breakfast, Saki for lunch and karaoke for dinner! O my God! Bring me the breezy mountains and misty paradise of Hong Kong harbor, and I'll promise to let the Chinese have their island jewel (so long as they leave Taiwan alone for just a little longer). I kid you China! Keep sending the laptops!

Katie and Cherry Blossoms, Washington DC

Guns Don't Kill People, Gun Laws Do!

Dear England, The recent incidents at Virginia Tech University have created an incredible interest in gun laws Stateside - and back in the UK - and rightly so. What is amazing to me is the resistance to change - yes, and I mean to tighten the gun laws against gun culture. The Second Amendment to the Constitution (the right - the civil right - to bear arms) was never set in stone, but was included because the Founding Fathers of the US had to sanction a militia army in the face of a foreign occupying power, namely the British colonizers. They expected culture and society to change and US culture and society has changed. The Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars took care of that! Owning a gun is not an act of freedom, but a fear of your neighbors' guns. Guns are not a civil liberty. The incidents in which citizens defend other citizens against criminals - with guns - are practically non-existent. Dare I say it: Stop the fear at home and the fear of the barbarian insurgent enemy might lessen a little. It depends on what you consider safe - you having a weapon to defend yourself in the sheer panic of someone pulling their gun in a McDonald's line - or the fact that everyone else will pull their gun too and everyone being less safe. US gun laws are notoriously lax. But the indiviudal is more important than the soical whole? By lax, I mean there are literally thousands of places you can buy a muderous weapon on any given Sunday.

The fact that Cho Seung-Hui was able to kill dozens of people with hundreds of rounds one morning at Virginia Tech University, Blacksberg, Virginia, was because he could walk over the single road from campus into a local pawnbroker's and with a credit card and no cash buy a Glock 9mm pistol for $571 ($1 for a free bullet) with no check on his mental illness record. Then on the radio I learn the Virginia gun laws might be tightened by "considering" laws to make people with mental illness find it "more difficult" to purchase a handgun. Of course they should. What is wrong with this picture, England? In Blighty we are so immune to the idea of gun deaths that our Olympic shooting team has to leave the country to fire its weapons. Is this right? Well, a bit extreme, but when was the last time they shot anyone? (Do they ever win? No, okay. But our Scottish women's curling team has an gold medal!) Anyway clearly someone with mental illness should have their civil liberties and second amendments rights not curtailed, but simply erased. Should they be allowed to carry a big stick either? Sure.

The second alarming comment was the "disappointment" from the internet gun shop owner that he sold the online weapon to Cho "out of all the 10,000 gun shops in America." My disgrace! He was saddened to hear of the bad luck and wild improbability of Cho landing on his website? As though through a freak accident someone got killed? He sells guns for a living!

In fact, I believe the only solution to American gun culture is to have everyone who wants to carry a weapon in public, no matter which side of the train tracks they live (yes, and I know America incarcerates more peole than any country in the world in relative and absolute terms) should first have to carry a very large stick. They can speak softly or loudly - that is the right of free speech - but no shouting in libraries)! Then they can beat someone first and see if they like it. Only then do they graduate to guns. In the meantime they carry a stick perhaps with a knife on the end to see how they find stabbing before shooting. Given the proximity and danger of retaliation, I believe this would reduce crime, sincerely, and would be eminently better for public safety. Trying shooting me with that piece of wood! I really don't mind black eyes! Then decommission the criminals America because, yes, they will be the only ones with guns!

As for erasing gun ownership rights of the mentally ill, I don't include anti-depressant patients or folks with New York City Upper East Side therapists. Those people have enough problems of their own and can keep their guns! But anyone else who sees their freedom in their big speech and their Glock should know that their freedom is not reflected in their high chance of being either shot or incarcerated. One of these things is not like the other one, one of things things is not the same!

National Mall Kite Festival, Washington DC

At Last, A British American Pub

Dear England, Washington DC has a multitude of Irish pubs - from Ri Ra to Murphy's - but after four sad years of hunting for a taste of home, I am pleased to add a second British pub to my list! The Elephant & Castle, named no doubt after the London district of the same name, with its 24-hour roundabout and its very own Elephant & Castle pub on said roundabout (my pal once had a pad looking over that ever-revolving circle of lights), has miracously been transported to Washington, DC. And the results ain't half bad, mate: http://www.elephantcastle.com/content/locations/washingtondc

With a view of the Capitol a step from the door, hanging round the Elephant & Castle DC-style makes for a surreal experience: franchise or no franchise it does resemble a London pub, fake wall-decor is kept to a minimum. The bar looks like an old pub and the beer stretches beyond Guinness and Bass Ale to the more US-uncommon Boddingtons to three (count them) Fuller's ales, the London Pride bringing it all back home. It only took half a decade for me to find this place! But then again I did get distracted by Union Jacks in Bethesda, Maryland, an Americanized British pub with all the fake paraphenalia you'd expect from red telephone boxes (cue the Telephone Bar, New York City http://www.telebar.com/ - a good joint) to white plastic directions to Picadilly Circus and Clapham Common, Sarf of tha Riva!

Union Jacks http://www.unionjacksbethesda.com/ is clearly a dedicated

follower of fashion, and a loud night on the tiles. But if you want a decent pint and a flavor of the old country while trying to look all District bleak and chic then it has to be the E & C for you, my son!

Land of the Delta Blues, or the other LA

Dear trusty Englanders, I am completely overexcited about re-visiting New Orleans two years on. Back in May, 2005 I trooped it the hundreds of miles with my cohort of fellow Brits - 5 to an "SUV" - into the sweltering heat, edgy atmosphere and faded elegance of the Vieux Carré, the old French-Spanish quarter, home of Mardi Gras mania, Hurricane pints and live music to drown for...

This time it's different though. Catching CNN this morning in the "food court" of GW, I watched the strange sight of GoogleEarth floating over the destroyed wards of New Orleans, making the overwhelming point that little has changed. The houses are still flattened, families fled, the city poorer than it was two or ten years ago. So if you really want to bring it all back home to this wonderful European-American foolish-hearted city of delight and plug up the tiniest of holes in the levée, check out Bring New Orleans Back http://www.bringneworleansback.org/, the musicians fund at http://musicmakerstore.stores.yahoo.net/neworre.html and Spike Lee's requiem documentary When the Levées Broke http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whentheleveesbroke/







The music will go on!