March 2004 Archives
One of the pleasures of running a website is seeing how visitors stumble upon it. Thanks to the wonders of javascript, when somebody clicks on some other website's link to Yankee Fog, I can see the name of the referring website. If that website is a search engine, I can even see the search terms that led them to me.
I'm traveling right now, so I'm afraid there will be no something interesting this week. Sorry about that. To make up for it, next week, I will post something that is twice as interesting as usual, as measured by the most finely calibrated interestingometer available to man.
I recently saw a remarkable short film. It stars Cary Grant, Sean Connery, Humphrey Bogart, Buster Keaton, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Marie Saint, and Ingrid Bergman.
Our flat is being visited today by a professional visitor. This is actually how she signs her letters: "Susan Watson, Visitor." I would like to imagine that, before landing the job, she had to undertake intensive studies in tea sipping, biscuit consumption, and mantelpiece-photograph commenting. Sadly, the truth of the matter is that her workday consists of visiting flats on behalf of their owners, to ensure that the roof is not in danger of collapse and the walls are not covered with mold.
Particularly for an American, London is a breathtakingly old city, packed with history. Lest you forget this fact, the city is filled with buildings adorned with plaques that tell you when Samuel Pepys lived there, or which novels Charles Dickens wrote while residing at that address. There are plaques not just for obvious London suspects like Gilbert & Sullivan and Winston Churchill, but for foreigners like Frederic Chopin (who gave his last public performance at #4 St. James Place) and Karl Marx(who lived at 28 Dean Street while writing Das Kapital). George Frederick Handel has a plaque at 25 Brook Street, and next door at 23 Brook Street is a plaque to Jimi Hendrix--as if some cosmic force has ensured that musicians in London are arranged in strictly alphabetical order.
Even amongst this distinguished company, there is one plaque in London that is unequelled for the pleasure it gives to all who behold it. It is a tribute to a great American patriot, and it cannot help but stir the noblest feelings in all those of my countrymen who have the privilege of gazing upon it.
As I have mentioned in a previous entry, I'm not normally a fan of organized athletics. However, there is one sport that is so thrilling, so keenly competitive, so rich in complex tactics, and so seeped in macho glory that I cannot help but be seduced by its siren thrills.
I refer, of course, to pancake racing.
On Sunday, ABC aired a reality special. It was three hours and twenty minutes long, and they announced the winner in the first ten minutes. Then they announced the winner a few minutes later. Then they announced the winner again, and again, and again. Oddly enough, nobody I know found the show particularly enjoyable.
The show, of course, was called "the Oscars."
Lately, I have begun seeing advertisements around London for a novel that, according to the blurb, is "funny, wise, and sentient." Frankly, I am not sure I like the idea of a sentient novel lurking about my flat.
