Mental Snapshots:

• walking the overwhelming journey of the Holocaust victims at the memorial museum in DC


• observing the manic ravings of a Republican senator whilst sitting in the gallery in the Senate chamber


• being scared out of our very soul by the wicked glee with which an FBI agent demonstrated an automatic sub-machine gun at the end of the FBI tour


• taking in the vibrant atmosphere of Dupont Circle


• resolutions made whilst delayed at Cleveland airport to find out where the hell Cleveland actually was


• luxuriating in floors and floors and aisles and aisles of books in huge superstore-esque bookshops


• pursuing a policy of 'blendage', whereby we would do our utmost to avoid looking like tourists: however the inevitable backpacks and occasional picture snapping, or the odd surreptitious peek at a map or guidebook are all sadly tantamount to walking around with a giant flashing neon sign bearing the words 'non-native moronic tourist, probably lost'


• dying a death at every meal as we collapsed under the weight of American portions


• astonishment at every occasion how inexpensive everything is in comparison to British prices - and subsequently seriously supplementing our book and CD collections


• falling in love with NYC


• lazy Saturday in Central Park


• lazy Sunday sipping coffee in sidewalk cafes in Greenwich Village


• marvelling at the wall-to-wall capitalism of Times Square


• being accosted by a disgustingly perky-looking MTV casting gal who tried to coax us into making up the screaming hordes of hormone-ridden teens on TRL


• movies, movies, movies, movies


• watching angry New Yorkers with no teeth skate around a rink at breakneck speeds, beating the shit out of a defenceless puck (and each other) at a Rangers training session


• geeking out with Andy


• feeling about three inches tall if ever the urge to have a beer/long drink struck, as we debated whether to risk the humiliation of being carded for the first time since we
  were 15


• being all bagelled out after gorging on a diet of NY Times, bagels and cream cheese for a week


• giving into our inner kitschiness and watching episodes of Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show whilst at the Museum of TV and Radio


• thinking how surreally like parts of Britain Boston is, yet so quintessentially American


• watching a man juggle six basketballs whilst balancing a metal shopping trolley on his chin in outside Faneuil Hall


• being handed a three-kilo tray of strawberries for free at Haymarket when we tried to buy a small punnet, and consequently being stalked for half a mile by an eccentric Italian bloke who kept insisting we accept a bite of his half eaten piece of pizza (and off loading the rather cumbersome load of fruit onto an unsuspecting chef sat outside a trattoria in the North End, who probably had a special of fresh berries at $5 a pop that evening courtesy of two nutty English girls)


• being walking cliches as we swooned at the US naval officers (in full spiffy white Uniform) giving tours of the USS Constitution


• enjoying dinner and (quite a) few beers with the wonderful Billy and his friend Paul, being regaled with hilarious band tales of yore


• acquiescing to the acceptance that we were tourists and therefore avoidance of the aforementioned duck tours on the basis of not wanting to do something so obscenely touristy was just daft - and actually boarding Beacon Hilda for a tour of Bah-stun


• choosing the one day of torrential rain to take a trip out to Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod


• filling our rucksacks with approximately one kilo of clothing, about seven kilos of books and CDs, and managing to lug it all (plus assorted other bags) from the Y to the Station, on the T to the airport, from Gatwick airport to Victoria station, from Victoria to Euston, from Euston to Manchester, and then home, without toppling over even once. Yee haw!

I sincerely hope she's brought back a whole stack of I [heart] NY t-shirts, dodgy doggy fashion items, velvet elvis paintings, tschochkes (or however you spell it) for the mantelpiece and hula skirts. Maybe a novelty ashtray or two, too. I'll be insanelydisappointed if she hasn't.

Well, a girl can always live in hope.

So our work here is done. We're packing up our snide comments and cynical attitudes into our labrador-shaped bags, and mozeying off into the sunset, in the most bowlegged and cliched way you can imagine. Well, how else could we possibly leave? There was a suggestion of swinging out on a trapeze (the circus is pretty darned kitschy, dontcha know?), but Luke refused to get on, and then all hell broke loose and ...well, you can picture the rest.

Anyway, it's been fun. There are so many kitschy things we didn't have time to mention, including

• Morning TV Hosts
  
• Russ Meyer
  
• The Pope
  
• British Coastal Resorts
  
• Franklin Mint
  
• Wicker Furniture
  
• Antfarms
  
• Anything which involves Optic Fibres
  
• Gold Taps
  
• Turtlenecks in pastel colours
  
• Jewellery involving coinage
  
• Those hideous "art" works involving copper wire wrapped around nails hammered into a bit of chipboard
  
• Cheesecake
  
• Fondue
  
• Meat that comes in a can (especially if you need to open it with a key)
  
• Dogs in spacecraft
  
• Three wheeled cars
  
• Chicken in a basket and
  
• The space age.

Hope you enjoyed the redesign, the 'tude and the nonsensical blethering (sometimes more lucid than others). Don't forget to stop by and visit us once in a while now, y'hear?

Kitschy kisses:- Meg and Luke

So this could go on for some time.

The great Terry Wogan, host of the Eurovision Song Contest and cultural icon, is publishing his autobiography. Entitled 'Is it me?', the book will doubtless take us into the dark recesses of Wogan's tortured and profound existential ennui.

Or not.

What has Peru done that's so awful?

No, screw that, I have to speak out. Doggy clothing in general is just innately evil. And the people who dress them are no better. Do dogs particularly need bandanas? Or sunglasses? Or t-shirts? (Presumably emblazoned with witty slogans such as "my other owner is also a complete imbecile") Do they spend ages in the morning havering over what to wear? Is there a whole canine fashion subculture that I somehow missed? Apparently so.

Not content with being utterly tasteless themselves, it seems that our kitschy american cousins (and yes, before anyone leaps on their high horse and starts ranting about how I'm pandering to unfair stereotypes again, they are almost exclusively all american) now feel the absurd need to spread their eye-bleedingly awful fashion creations to their pets. People, my friends, are very very odd.

I'll tell you something, though. If I was a dog and someone dressed me up as Santa, a bumble bee or (heaven forbid) a court jester, I'd rip their fecking arm off. Grrrrrr.

Mind you, doggy-sized Elvis costumes? Now that's pure class.

"Tomorrow, on Channel 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10 News, we'll be reporting on the latest controversy to hit the...."

Yes, it's something that perplexed me during my 5-month spell in the US last year, but we're doing a bit of a travelogue here, so we'll just pretend that it's especially pertient here too. "Tomorrow on the news...."?! Doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being news? Isn't that kind of negating the whole newness of it, if you're already showing previews of th next night's items? And isn't it kind of making a mockery of the entire 'live, local, late-breaking' strapline? Or is it jusy some really cool American thing I haven't got to grips with, whereby you have amazing clairvoyant powers, and can actually report on major local and nationwide events before they've even happened? Either way, it's one of those little observations that that I love about travel in another country - those small quirks and oddities that you see in day-to-day life which people familiar with them probably don't notice bevause they're so seamlessly and naturally a part of their daily lives. But seriously - can someone let me in on the whole foretelling the future thing - and if they could drop me some hints as to this weekend's lotto numbers, I'd be rilly rilly grateful....

Phnarr.

The Queen of Cleavage will even be appearing in person around the country. Look for a queue of furtive men in cloth caps muttering and holding hardback books outside your local book shop. If you are very unlucky, you will be surrounded by people practicing innuendo and dusting off their Sid James impressions.

...

That was supposed to be it. But when I was seeking Sid, I found something so bizarre ...well. I found this.

How true. Harrods will sell you just about anything, as long as you are prepared to pay for it. That includes a Harrods teddy bear.

It's the little logo on his feet I really like. And the cravatte, of course.

Pics to follow.

You're going to kill me. If I don't return from this sojourn, and kitschbitch is no longer after my demise, well, you'll know why. Aside from there being an eatery on every corner and then some, portion sizes are literally going to cause me to explode. Or I'll be so big when I retun that they'll have to charter a plane to take me back across the pond. A sandwich isn't just a sandwich. Oh no. It's a whole experience. Aside from being like a multiple choice exam where you have a thousand and one options as to the bread, filling, relish, condiment and about anything else you can think of, did I mention that it's actually about the size of a small family car in Britain? We've made it out mission to survive dinner so that we're abloe to order dessert at least once before our holiday is up. Now, this might involve ordering the main course and the dessert on different nights, and having the American Heart Association dinner of chocolate-chip brownie with cream and hot fudge sauce for the evening meal, but if that's what it takes to accomplish the mission, then so be it. Wish me luck, comrades!

Going to the toilet (sorry, restroom) in American airports is a truly awesome experience. Not only do you get those such as at Chicago O'Hare, where a sensor detects that there is a new bottom about to be placed on the seat, and the cling-film-esque wrap starts whizzing round so as to provide you with a wholly sanitary environment in which to go about your, ahem, business, but you also have seriously scary ones, such as those found at Newark. You see, they don't have flushes - they have sensors. Which is all well and good except when they start flushing mid-pee, goveing you a rather unwelcome bidet-esque experience. And then, of course, when you're, well, done, you can't actually flush the damn thing, so you have to start waving your hands around or move about in some strange fashion so as to try and set off the sensor to flush the toilet as nature intended. All in all, quite a daunting experience, but it all adds to the fun. The week in NYC starts here baby!

Every person alive on this planet has one thing in common: no matter who they are or what they do to live, drive and survive, not one of their ancestors died before having at least one child. Every single one of us is the product of billions of generations of hothouse evolutionary selection. We are lean, mean, and lethal.

Now see what they have done.

But of course, as in politics, so with poultry: there is always a third way.

Chickens are fundamentally dumb. Forget, if you can, the cute but misguided anthropomorphic characterisation of the birds in Chicken Run. Ignore for a moment the amusing and loveable cartoon antics of Mr Foghorn Leghorn. Picture in your mind a feather cushion, running around a yard, pecking at stones and getting flustered every 2.8 seconds. Picture a bird with a brain the size of a pea and all the studied calm of a hyperactive chihuahua after four cups of espresso. That, my friends, is a chicken. A chicken with a postgraduate degree. A chicken who's read an awful lot of Tony Buzan. That is the pinnacle of chicken intellect. Most of them are a whole lot dumber than that.

So is the chicken motif the ultimate in postmodern irony? The perfect way of cocking a knowing nod to both camps? A way of acknowledging that because you are well aware that the species is moronic, choosing to wear it, display it anyway, makes you more intelligent? Perhaps. But bear in mind that that kind of self-referential naff irony only works if people know you're doing it. Otherwise you just end up looking like yet another dumbass with a jaunty middle-american rooster'n'hen salt cruet set. And that, my featherbrained chums, is not something to be proud of.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, it's generally accepted, was one of the true Renaissance Men of history; doing a couple of interior design jobs for God will often stand you in good stead for being remembered through the years. He was exemplary in terms of what could be achieved in art, and made the study and presentation of the human form his life's work. But when he picked up the chisel and let David out of his marble, he unleashed the beast. It is legion, it is evil, and it is concrete. It is Garden Statuary of a Classical Bent.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. From human perfection (albeit with oversized hands and a wonky eye) to backyard abortion in the space of one reduced casting. Michelangelo's work in David was simplicity itself - but it was precisely this simplicity that led landscapers, professional or otherwise, to believe that they could invoke some universal majesty by whacking a three-foot copy of a naked bloke into the backyard. And it just doesn't work. Merely by appropriating great art in concrete and sticking it on your lawn does not endow you with any more class than seeing the real thing.

OK. So it's a long bow to draw. But I'm plucking the string. The original David is a thing of beauty, and - I'm told - an awe-inspiring sight. The miniaturised, plaster-cast David is not. If you want to stand with greatness, nip off to Florence; don't put his smaller brother in your flowerbed. It's culturally evil, and is its own travelling-section on the jet of kitsch. Economy, Business, First, and Those Who Have Abortionate Sculptural Mimicry In Their Gardens.

Do we put so much energy into designing or adorning toilets? Wastepaper baskets? Bin bags? No. The ashtray is unique in its enviable blend of form and function. And kitschness.

A house I once stayed in had an ashtray that was so ugly and tasteless I really wish I'd stolen it. It was in the shape of a woman's head with exaggerated features, and if you rested a cigarette in her pouting lips, smoke emerged from her nose. She was all class. Now tell me there's not genius at work there.

But I do not restrict myself to modern, mass-produced kitsch! I know the value of the craftsman. My Empire will be spoken of in hushed whispers until the last plastic glowstar falls from the ceiling of the universe, because I have seen the hand-made kitsch from across the world.

No one can challenge my supremacy...well, perhaps there is one man...

Mwahahahaha.

As our first major gesture of defiance to the old order (apart from redesigning and...er...taking over) we declare fellow guestblogging interloper Nick to be the very epitome of kitschness, fulfilling the above criteria to perfection.

<gauntlet>So all hail the great kitsch emperor. We kneel before thee. But only for as long as it takes us to get the energy together to bitch about you. Unless, of course, you can come up with another, more appropriate candidate..... </gauntlet>

Let the bitching begin.

1. When I moved at anything faster than a slow-motion snail's crawl, it rode pornographically up to the top of my thighs, and clung to my nether regions like clingfilm, especially when wearing woolly tights (as we were fond of doing back then).
   
2. In order to avoid giving myself and those around me repeated unpleasant static shocks, I had to either a) go barefoot b) avoid carpets or c) walk like a horseriding whore, all legs akimbo.
   
3. It was hotter than satan's airing cupboard inside that dress in the summer.

But recent fashion waves have demonstrated, insanely, that polyester is on the way back in. From bowling shirts to pimpdaddy cool, men all over the world are once more walking around looking sweaty, with strangely aroused nipples (although some of them never stopped). Women are rustling around offices worldwide, jumping back from door handles, tugging at their hems and looking on perplexed as their hair performs gravity defying feats independent of styling products.

And as for polyester knickers and slacks...well, if it was up to me, items of clothing which lower one's breeding potential should be handed out at the door of the Met bar, frankly.

Take it from me: creating your own electrical force field is kind of cool if you're a Jedi Knight, but otherwise, just plain irritating. And speaking of irritation, you might already be aware that while having hard nipples is occasionally good, being aroused unwittingly by your clothing is just sick, frankly. We don't want your type around here.

Polyester is abominably kitsch.

Sadly, although comprehensive information is available on earnings, holdings, and corporate positions, heart conditions and family health problems are not listed.

"Don't come back married unless he's a billionaire with a serious heart condition."

I ask you! No billionaires with dicky tickers on the horizon yet, but a lot of walking, seing sights, and tours. So far, the Holocaust Museum and the Air & Space at the Smithsonian. Tomorrow, we attack the Capitol and the FBI - you have been warned...

Exceptional examples of the art form generally include Elvis or a dusky nude, but there's just no beating a velour masterpiece which manages to depict the lord and an eighteen wheeler. Genius. So bad, it's fantastic.

Another introduction: Nick - friend of Katy and Tom. Lanky. Occasional drinker of herbal tea. Web illiterate and not-quite-bloggist. I registered my first domain name this afternoon, and immediately received a phonecall asking if I meant it.

Katy's got me in here for light relief, hasn't she? I'm the clown who smacks himself with his own custard pie.

Just been to the ICA for a screening of Ring. It was fairly breathtakingly petrifying. If you're going to go, make sure you go with someone who has steady nerves, won't object when you jump into their lap, and doesn't object to a stiff drink afterwards.

For sheer irrelevance value: this has to be the most wishful, useless, heroically optimistic and utterly tedious webcam in the world.

While I appreciate that it has its uses - not least to frame the fireplace - the inventor should really have thought through the full potential impact of their architectural feature before unleashing it on the world in the dark ages (or whenever fire entered the home in an aesthetic way). See, the problem with mantelpieces is that they're basically big empty shelves, which means that their mere presence inevitably creates a need for hideous and tasteless ornaments which invariably become the focus of the room. However, I am at a loss to explain precisely why the mantelpiece attracts the kitsch and ridiculous more than, say, the common-or-garden bookshelf.

So now, whenever you go over to your Auntie Mary's house (because everyone in the world has an Auntie Mary), instead of serenely regarding the chintz-covered chimneybreast, you are forced instead to stare at garish, ugly, overpriced, mind-bogglingly repulsive kitschy shuddersome tat.

Mantelpiece ornaments are supremely kitschy.

Welcome. After that warm-up from Meg, I'd like to introduce myself. Name's Luke - or CaptainFez, if you prefer. Whatever greases your slides. Anyway, we're taking over kitschbitch for the next three weeks, while Katy sojourns in foreign climes. And we're going to take this opportunity to give you, dear reader, a knock-down, drag-out twenty-one day cultural enema. We'll be exploring the world of kitsch. And bitching about it. Vehemently, often with large amounts of bile and very little factual basis. But bitch we shall.

We're going to ease into this gently. Relax. To get your mind working on our level, here's a couple of found musings on the topic. Take whatever one matches your curtains:

• Dictionaries define kitsch as 'popular art with sentimental appeal' or 'worthless pretentious in the arts' and relegate it to the contempt zone. Kitsch is not simply bad taste, it has a powerful seductive ability to both attract and repel you at the same time. Its very awfulness is what we find appealing.
• To qualify as kitsch and not simply bad taste there has to be a real sense of the ridiculous present. Ridiculous manifests itself in many ways.
• The reasons why things come to be regarded as kitsch start with the way that they clash with established notions of good taste. The more spectacular this collision, then the greater the resulting bad taste.

So this is what Kitschbitch looks from the inside - I always wondered.

While Katy's away in the US, Luke and I will be your humble hosts, bringing a special brand of kitschy bitchiness to these pages.

Who? Alright, by way of introduction:
He's Australian. I'm not. He's a bloke. I'm not. He's got a zither. I don't. He's got Tintin hair. I haven't. He lives in Kilburn Vale with a wonderful flatmate. I, on the other hand....just live with him.

Anyway, since Katy's gone to the land where kitsch was invented, we've decided to bitch about kitsch for a while. I'll let Luke get the ball rolling.

I know I've ranted about this before, but I'm going to do it again. How on earth do the up-and-coming dot-commers in the UK, the movers and the shakers, those touting the British web revolution, expect any of this to happpen when our service providers maintain backward attitudes? This article, from ZDnet UK, had me seething:

"the..."Heavy Internet User" (or HIU as he'll now be known)...is increasingly being accused of spoiling the unmetered party for the healthy majority who would never stay online for such unreasonable hours.

What is sticking in unmetered ISPs gullets is the way the HIU is sticking to the letter rather than the spirit of the law....I have to confess I sympathise with ISPs to a certain extent -- after all who would seriously believe that there were people out there who would regard sitting in front of a computer screen for a WHOLE DAY AND NIGHT as a worthwhile human endeavour....Surely none of these bandwidth hogs can lead happy and fulfilled lives, and as to what they are doing online I would say look no farther than the top shelf."

An old, bearded shepherd, with a crooked staff, walks up to a stone pulpit and says . . .And lo it came to pass that the trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot.

And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why doth thou travel far, from town to town, with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?"

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, Dear?" And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)".

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums, as long as he could have his way with her. And Dot said, "There will be a lot of banging in the land". And Abraham replied, "It is my most fervent wish that this be so".

And the drums rang out and were an immediate success.

Abraham sold all the goods he had, at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.

But his success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading.

And the young did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would only work if you bought Brother Gates' drumsticks.

And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others". And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known, "eBay", he said, "We need a name of a service that reflects what we are".

And Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators".

"Whoopee!", said Abraham.

"No, YAHOO!", said Dot Com.

Tom / Jack Nicholson

Meg / Cookie Monster

Yes! So Tom and I had what is possibly one of the trashiest evenings ever, attending the Sing-along-a-Sound Of Music at the Prince Charles Cinema (now playing in NY too!). Sadly, we didn't dress up (a Jewish Nun, and a group of people wearing green astroturf, who came as 'the hills' won) but we had a bloody good laugh, as we:

• learned the Julie Andrews school of acting whereby any moment of trauma, elation, frustration, displaced anger or sexual tension is expressed by the touching of one's head


• watched Christopher Plummer give an exceedingly camp performance, strutting around in his naval uniform, pouting his (lack of) lips every now and then, as we saluted him with a 'Yes Captain' when he made his entrance


• did a truly Barry Manilow-esque wave with our plastic Edelweiss, waving in unison as Captain Von Trapp strummed away, as we simultaneously hissed the Baroness (boo hiss!) for being an evil old hag


• gave stunning renditions of 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain', 'Doe a Deer' and 'My Favourite Things'. We even hit the high notes. Worryingly so, in Tom's case.


• all several hundred of us in the audience popped our party poppers at the same time in one combined release of sexual tension when they finally kissed in the garden. Swoon!


• heaved enormous 'ah' sighs whenever Gretyl said something cute (ahhhhhhh)


• then leapt up onto our feet with great gusto, waving our invitations from Captain von Trapp, exclaiming 'To the ball!'


• booed loudly every time Rolf, a Swastika or any other Nazi appeared on screen


• I also collapsed with hysterical laughter when, while waiting on the Tube platform at Picadilly Circus, Tom nonchalantly asked me:
  

  'If you had to, which one of the Von Trapp kids would you shag?', to which the bloke standing next to me got very intrigued and stood there waiting for my answer.

Captain Fez got his Zither baby! Reminiscences of Captain Corelli purely incidental...

Jen is an absolute star for suggesting Zipangu, and being general organisey bod - for which we love her even more, aside from being a general all-round top person.

We really really loved the idea of www.ifhitleratesushi.com. Don't quite know why (yes we do, cue Mr Tom 'I'm going to put some green plastic sushi decoration on my face as a moustache and then threaten to beat people up with misu ladles Coates) but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Extra Props to Chris for actually offering hosting. Ideas on a postcard as to what the hell we'd actually do with the damn thing...

Meg called Jesus Shotgun - as we moved to seat ourselves at the restuarant, Meg exclaimed 'Can I be Jesus!' in order to bag her place at the table. In circumstances such as these, you can't really deny the girl whatever she wants, because classy lines like these plainly rule all

Dave had the brave task of sitting next to me, and he didn't run of screaming once. I think that's pretty amazing, and the guy probably deserves a medal

Giles snapped away, and was our wonderful photographer for the evening. Cheers me dear! See the evidence for yourself

We all accosted Dan with the argument that as we'd all been updating for the last few months, and he hadn't, he was duty bound to spill the gossip of the last three months of his life, as it was only fair to have tit for tat, so to speak....

Debbie graced us with her presence, and to her surprise, didn't have a fatwa taken out on her for the standard article, but was rather a very cool addition to the fray, and ferociously joined in the gleeful slagging off of dot-commery.

And thus was the GBloggers meet!