The Commercial Break

Whilst I have gained patience and become more tolerent of many of the foibles of my newly adopted homeland, I do still have a few major bugbears.  The commercial break is definitely one of them.  One year on, I still find these continuous interruptions drive me to distraction. As far as I am concerned the commercial break is one big turn-off.  In fact, there has been many a time when towards the end of a film or TV show, as the time between the breaks decreases from 7 to a mere 3 minutes,  I have reached the end of my tether. Forget the flipping ending…I can’t be bothered, and I give up and switch off.  It’s that bad.

And, for those uninitiated in the delights of American life, the commercial break will burst onto your TV screen without warning, at least 50 decibels louder than whatever you happen to be watching.  The subject and content of these commercials may well surprise you.  Well it surprised me and I thought I was an open minded worldly wise individual. The amount of advertising for medical and pharmaceutical products here is phenomenal and these Americans are not backwards about coming forwards, you will be spared no details. Do I want to watch advertisements for products that will “enhance” my love life at 2.00 pm in the afternoon?  Not really.  Do I want to hear about regular and irregular bowel movements whilst I eat my supper?  No. In the same vein, do I want to watch lengthy commercials for prescription only drugs that go on forever listing every possible contra-indication and side effect including imminent heart seizure, kidney failure, and very occasionally death: I’m not a medical practitioner.  Sell the drugs to the professionals, not me.  After all what has a doctor spent ten years in medical school training for, isn’t he/she the one who’s qualified to tell me what I need to make me better or shall I just do a bit of self-diagnosis following a five minute TV ad or a three page spread in a magazine?  

And it’s not just TV advertising that drives me nuts. Buy a glossy mag out here and you play a guessing game of spot the genuine features and articles.  You can pay $5 just to read page after page of adverts.  The newspapers are the same.  The LA Times on a Sunday is so heavy it takes two of you to carry it back from the supermarket; but the whole bundle is double the size it needs to be because of the adverts and promotional inserts. Oh and the coupons of course.  Americans just love their coupons.  Every time I go the supermarket I’m asked if I’ve got my coupons.  Americans like to think they are getting a good deal, well I know a good deal when I see one and it doesn’t involve spending Sunday afternoon cutting up bits of newspaper then wasting fuel by driving all over town clutching my coupons just to  save a couple of bucks in seven different stores…

And talking of food…....I’m sure the food production companies are in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry ( in fact having studied a vast amount of food labels and seen some of the ingredients I'm actually convinced they are one and the same thing).  For the first 40 years of your life they entice you buy all this rubbish to eat, then for the last 40 years of your life they sell you all the remedies to counteract the effects! Brilliant idea!  

My least favourite ad on TV at the moment has to be the Jack in the Box fast food guy smugly telling weary mom  unpacking grocery bags that rather than spending $200 on the weekly shop, she should have just gone to Jack in the Box and spent $3.99 on his double burger, fries and soda meal. Hold on if she’s got a family of four and they all go to Jack in the Box, then that’s $16; but that’s only one meal a day, so if you times the $16 by three then times it by seven for the whole week, I actually think Mom’s weekly grocery shop was quite a good deal.  Of course the advertising guys behind Jack in the Box aren’t expecting their audience to think like that.  In fact, no TV production team over here ever expects their audience to think.

Take the car adverts.  Super car whizzing round the hairpin bends on snowy mountainside.  Little caption comes on screen. Professional driver. Closed circuit. Do not Attempt.  Funny that - I wasn't going to.  I knew it was an advert.  I’m not that stupid….

How – and why - on earth does your average, intelligent American put up with being patronised like this? Come on guys,  enough is enough. I’m going to start a campaign to get rid of  crass adverts, I just need to publicise my cause and get noticed by a wider audience....how can I do that? I could always make a commercial I suppose…. 

Acclimatization (with a zee....)

The most awful thought occurred to me the other day as I drove to school…I’m becoming acclimitised.  My bubble is starting to burst.

How did I come to this conclusion? My driving is deteriorating. I jumped two sets of lights in quick succession. Why? Because if you don’t go through amber lights at certain junctions it’ll be ten minutes before the light goes green again. Some of these road junctions are just too big and convoluted for words, but in my defence, I didn’t go through on red, and a lot of people do.  I’ve seen more crashes in 12 months of driving out here than in over 20 years in the UK.  Pop in a few roundabouts and a lot of the problems would go away overnight.

So yes, I’m starting to drive like an American.  My neat, tidy, economical little Ford Focus has gone back to the car showroom in exchange for a convertible.  Not for me, you understand, but for the man having a midlife crisis.  I’m now stuck with a Honda Accord, which although not big by American standards, is really twice the size of what I actually need for the few miles I do each day.


I’ve got fed up of having to repeat myself six times when I politely ask for a glass of water (with a T) so I find myself asking for waugher  when I want a drink. I realize our daughter starts school every Monday  speaking the Queen’s English after a weekend at home with mum and dad, but by Friday, we have this little American kid in the house, who, like me, has gotten so fed up of having to repeat everything at school she just slips into this lazy Californian drawl….

The packet mix cookies she bakes for school functions no longer seem so unbearably sweet, in fact they are so nice I’ve just had two…

I’m suddenly concerned about the welfare of the KTLA 5 morning weather man.  I miss him - he’s been off screen for ages and they say he has pneumonia but I’m starting to suspect something far more sinister.  And what about poor Ginger Chan, the girl who does the traffic news – she’s had the longest pregnancy on record; is she ever going to give birth?  Suddenly I care about these people whose lightweight news programme I used to so despise…..

And then last week we had a cold snap.  It got down to below 65 degrees during the day.  Brrr...I had to put a pair of socks on! That’s how soft I’ve become.

I pass houses on my morning walk dressed from top to toe in Christmas decorations - I no longer think how OTT; instead it inspires me to go home and create a winter wonderland on my balcony.

And even the grocery shopping doesn’t seem such a chore anymore. - even when disaster happens like it did last week at Fresh & Easy.  I'd just self-checked out a large weekly shop when the computerized till broke down at the payment stage.  At Fresh & Easy it’s all self-check out and you have to pack your shopping yourself which I’m sure is why no-one else ever shops there.  It's always empty. Anyway, an assistant came over; had a look then called the supervisor who spent about ten minutes trying to sort the computer out.  They both offered profound apologies but the outcome was that my shopping would have to be unpacked and rung up all over again on a different till. Can you imagine the furor this would have caused back home? Fresh & Easy is  part of Tesco and if this had happened at my local Tesco on a Thursday morning back in the UK there would have been a riot! The queue behind me would have been huge and I’d have wanted the ground to swallow me up but here there wasn’t another frustrated customer in sight.  And that’s when I knew I really had become acclimitised. I merely shrugged and said:  “Don’t worry, you go ahead, not a problem, take your time….” 

What’s happened to me? Soon I’ll have nothing left to blog about…no gripes or moans.  Next I’ll be telling you we've become so integrated into American culture we had full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.  Well we did actually, my sister was over and we had a very pleasant family meal.  It was just like Christmas but without all the stress of having to get presents for everyone.  Our turkey was delicious but pumpkin pie is definitely something you have to be spoon fed since birth to appreciate.....

But don't worry - my bubble hasn’t completely evaporated; I still don't find Two and a Half Men  funny. But I did spot a Chihuahua in a Santa outfit and found myself thinking, gee that looks kinda cute…….

The Health Kick

Now here’s a contentious issue. I know it's just because I've always lived in a country that has a government run national health service  but I really don’t understand this huge problem  the vast majority of Americans seem to have with the prospect of President Obama's health care reforms.  The bottom line seems to be Americans don’t want affordable health care for all – they certainly don’t want tax increases to pay for it and they definitely don’t like the thought of money they’ve earned being used to support anyone else.  And what would Ty Pennington and the producers of TV's Extreme Home Makeover do if they couldn’t go around helping those poor unfortunate families whose houses are literally falling down around them because they have bankrupted themselves spending their very last penny on medical bills for their sick children……

Health insurance over here isn't cheap and it certainly isn't a bottomless pit - all schemes have their limits.  So,  if you have to pay your own medical bills doesn’t  that mean you start looking after yourself a bit better? Well in California the answer is a resounding yes – and it’s very easy to get yourself on a health kick out here. 

I remember those mornings back in the UK, waking up in the dark when it's grey, wet and windy outside, all you want to do is pull the duvet back up over your head.  What is there to get up for? I’ll have another cup of tea and chocolate digestive please….

 

Here you wake up, jump out of bed with a spring in your step, have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, grab a granola bar and get out there and feel that sun on your skin  (not for too long though otherwise you’ll end up like a wizened up old prune.)  The weather out here is an instant pickup. And yes people really do all they can to keep themselves fit and active and away from the doctor’s surgery and the $20 they have to fork out just for the appointment….

For a start Americans carry on working as long as they possibly can – people don’t want to retire here  and it’s not because they love their jobs, it’s because they don’t want to lose their company’s medical insurance.  And when they do retire and have to go onto Medicare, then they do all they can to keep fit and healthy - so they “volunteer”. Very admirable – you certainly don’t want things seizing up through lack of mental or physical activity.  Of course this is all well and good until you realize that lots of American public institutions rely on these elderly retired volunteers to perform what really ought to be paid jobs –  are your hospital notes truly safe in the hands of a couple of 90 year old filing clerks who really should be sat at home playing dominoes…

Anyway, back to this continuous strive to stay healthy.  Americans can appear just a little obsessed with their health - there is definitely an air of neurosis out here which must stem from this fear of visiting the doctor - well not actually visiting the doctor but the bill that will come afterwards.  I'd say self diagnosis is widespread and there are all kinds of aids available for the prevention of all things nasty and infectious.  Sales of antiseptic wipes and disinfecting handwash must be huge, and as for the market for vitamin and mineral supplements....well that's a winner!

I thought we could do with some multi-vitamins to keep us going this winter.  Our daughter had been a bit under weather and with the colder temperatures looming I thought we should be doing a bit more to boost our immunity so I set off to the pharmacy hoping to spot a recognisable general  multivitamin suitable for the whole family.  Could I find one? No this is America.  I was totally overwhelmed by  shelf after shelf of vitamins, minerals and supplements for absolutely every condition you’ve ever heard of and plenty that you haven’t heard of as well, and whilst I could find vitamins disguised as gummy bears and chewy sweets for the very young, and vitamins designed specifically for teenage boys, and others specifically for teenage girls, and  a variety of supplements for pre-menopausal women, post-menopausal women and men having a mid life crisis, could I find one designed for all of us? Of course not!! Why make do with one vitamin and when you can create a sales pitch for thirty three?!

What a great country! I’d give up now Mr Obama – it’s a lost cause.