A decade ago...

I was in California.  All rather surreal in it's own way.  My first (and thus far, last) ever trip to the Sunshine state.  During this time, Mike and I covered three of the major cities (by freeway, trawling along for hours at 55 mph) listening to 'Moods' (though mostly I remember "The Return to Innocence" by Enigma), and to the soundtrack to 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' whilst mooching down the 5 highway, in a large Pontiac like affair.  The company we worked for had refused to pay for an airfare from Los Angeles and San Francisco, or San Francisco and San Diego so we had to drive to both these cities and back again, In the end Mike and I covered a wide scope of Californ I.A. in a relatively short period of time, and managed to interview a large quota of people who ended up on various DVDs.

During this time we interviewed two porn stars, one gay and one straight, viz. Jeff Stryker and Robert Kerman (aka. Robert Bolla), both of who had made attempts to appear in "legitimate" movies during the 80s in Italy and had been cast in the lead of a zombie film and cannibal movie respectively.  We met two real estate agents, who had both once been actors but now worked as real estate agents in Los Angeles:  John Steiner (who appeared in so much) and Adrienne LaRussa, a delightful New Yorker of Sicilian decent who appeared as the eponymous heroine in one of Lucio Fulci's best films, the pseudo-biographical 'Beatrice Cenci.'  Both told fantastic stories of their adventures in the Italian film industry.  We also met three people who are sadly not with us any more.  First of all there was David Hess, who for most horror fans needs no introduction as he appeared as one of the most infamous "bad guys" on screen, as Krug in Wes Craven's (future director of A Nightmare on Elm Street) Last House on the Left.  Mike and I spent a weekend in San Francisco, and managed to spend pretty much an entire weekend with David and his family, which was enlightening and great fun.  David was a cultured, interesting fellow and could wax lyrical about life and his experiences as well as archaeology and music, which showed him to be a truly fascinating person once you scratched beneath the surface.  He will be greatly missed.  We also met Candice Daly, a very pretty blonde somewhat washed up soap opera actress who had appeared alongside Jeff Stryker in the aforementioned zombie flick.  And finally we met the great Carlo Rambaldi.  Rambaldi and I conversed in Italian which was rather surreal as Mike and I were in Los Angeles and my mind was attuned to thinking in English and suddenly I was thrown into speaking Italian again.  Nonetheless, Rambaldi was an absolute delight, talking about his career, sharing his props and discussing his experiences on the various films he worked on.  Mike soared into new fits of ecstasy when he got to see the model of the alien used in Alien.  We also learned the idea behind the face of ET, got to handle some of the bats from the film "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" which was why we were meeting Rambaldi, and saw the slightly moth eaten alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

We also got to meet Deran Serafian, now a successful director, and the delectable Beatrice Ring and to record a really excellent and fun audio commentary for a rather dire film called Zombie 3 which they had made in 1987 in the Philippines.  Sadly, the DVD, when finally released, was issued in two versions and the one with the audio commentary (in indistinguishable packaging from the one without) is the more difficult one to find.  But it was a wonderful afternoon spent in San Diego, and after that Beatrice and I struck up a friendship which has lasted to this day.  It was also during this time that I spoke to Margaret Lee for the very first time after exchanging email correspondence over a year, however we were not to meet on that occasion.

This wonderful adventure however was a mixed blessing.  When I departed from London, I had less than £5 left on my overdraft as the company I was working for had not paid Mike nor I in a couple of months and so, not unsurprisingly, my resources had run dry.  After a couple of days nagging the morons in New York, they finally transferred the money which we were owed from June and July into our accounts.  It was literally like squeezing blood from a stone at the best of times.  As an afterthought to this, when Mike and I asked for our money for August, once again much humming and ha-ing took place in New York, which was truly ridiculous.  The money from June and July was owed to us (and given that we had been to France in July), it seemed ridiculous that there should be such an issue with the money for August.  But, nonetheless, John was unsure whether we had worked hard enough in August to justify another payment, even though we had interviewed the lead actors for four different films in the space of eight or so days, and had an exclusive interview with Carlo Rambaldi (!!).  John's avaricious nature truly showed itself during that time, concluding with staying in a truly grotty motel "Motel 6" next to LAX airport which had a loo that boomed for twenty minutes every time someone flushed it and a leaking ceiling.

Finally, it was a time that was rather heartfelt and emotional for me.  Three weeks before I went, my father had been complaining of not being able to swallow terribly well.  On one of those mornings in Los Angeles, at 6am (owing to the time difference between California and Europe) I telephoned home for news.  My father had been diagnosed with cancer, and they had found a cancer the size of an orange inside him.  After hearing my news, and although Mike suggested we take the trip easy, I was determined that we should meet lots of people in that time. My way of dealing with this awful news was to tell everyone I/we met this in passing, to which, most everyone was very friendly, supportive, empathetic, sympathetic and understanding. 

In the end, after much treatment, my father underwent the operation the following year and to his credit, he is still alive and with us.  This might seem a somewhat bleak coda to end a reminiscence of my journey to California but it should not be seen as such.  It is to emphasize hope, for my father survived cancer, and cancer of the oesophagus as well, and is still very much with us.

'Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be Blest'
 (Alexander Pope)

Kalevala

Today, a delightful parcel of goodies arrived from my dear friend Heidi, all the way from Pori, Finland.  Within the box was to be found a small cornucopia of various Finnish sweets, mostly differing brands of liquorice, which for those who have been reared on either Bertie Basset's Liquorice All Sorts and the only alternative has been the liquorice stick in your Sherbert Fountain, well, you simply don't know what you have been missing out on.  When not making Mars bars or jelly babies, the English confectionary houses tend to have a tendency to attempt to make English renditions of continental sweets and generally, not always to do it especially well.  A good analogy in this instance might be when one hears the English tourist in Paris or Rome, armed with their trusty Lonely Planet phrase book, endevouring to ask directions.  No attempt being made to disguise one's thick English accent  nor nuance and every word, be they French or Italian or otherwise, pronounced and enunciated in that uniquely English way, and generally not terribly well.  After all, to pronounce French with a French accent would sound either pretentious or contrived, surely...(?!)  Never mind that the accent tends to play an essential part in the pronounciation of the various words.  Therefore English variants of foreign foods have been created.  Some are honest copies (such as the terribly sweet Greek dessert Baklava), others are actually better than the originals (such as Bombay mix, which when compared to the bland Indian original is far more spicy and tasty), and others simply fall flat on their face.  For example, take nougat.  I love the stuff, especially that made in Motelimar.  Rather sweet, rich and with chopped almonds, cherries, or pistachio nuts. Although Greek in origin, and with the French version (probably) dating from the 1600's, one gets a real taste of something earlier, almost able to imagine bars of this being brought along the trading routes into France and Italy in mediaeval times by the exotic Greek traders together with spices, olives and fabrics.  The English have created in the wisdom their own version of nougat, which is, in a word, revolting !!  A travesty of the original.  The English version is pink and white, soggy, soft, gloppy and inedible.  Best avoided completely.

I don't know where the English tradition for liquorice came from, but it is certainly nothing like that of the Scandinavian variety.  I suppose that most of the English, when tasting some of the Scandinavian liquorice would probably find it unpleasant and distasteful.  The worst denounciation I have yet to hear for the much loved, iconic, Ga-Jol was the disclaimer that "they sort of taste like cough sweets".  In Scandinavia you get so many different sorts of liquorice, yet somehow very few of them seem to appease or appeal to the English palette.  It seems so strange as the nations are not that geographically distant and I am sure most English would find somewhere in their geneological pasts some sort of Viking blood.  That said, the French and English are such opposites "the old enemy" and have made a subconscious decision not to embrace each other's cultures too strongly.  Anyway, the parcel itself contained wonderfully named sweets such as Pantterri ("Panthers"), Salmiakki Mix (proclaimed as "The Original Finnish Salt Liquorice"), Bis Bis Bis Bis, and two different varieties of Tyrkisk Peber ("Original" and "Volcano").

Shunted to the side of these sweets was a copy, in translation, of the Finnish epic poem The Kalevala, which I must confess that, until I had spoken to Heidi, I had never heard of.  The translation is over 600 pages long, and though the printed version was first published in the mid nineteenth century, it harks back to the oral tradition as far back as prehistoric times.  The translation appears to be more literal in nature than poetic, which, in certain cases, as a matter of preference, I do tend to prefer.  I am not especially fond of such poetic translations (such as Dryden's of The Aenead, which, although masterful, tends to jar).   I feel they are, as I described above, mere renditions that, yes, conserve the original idea, some of the flavour, but lack the panache and mood.  This is not always the case as I say, I can revel in and find entertainment a-plenty in reading out loud (to myself) Simon Armitage's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; yet, even in the original Middle or Early Modern English, prefer the choice of words of Donne, of Spenser, of Chaucer, of Wyatt, etc - over a modern translation.

I have so far, admittedly briefly, leafed through some of the various cantos therein.  I can't wait to start to read through this.  Sibelius playing in the background, nibbling on some salt liquorice, with rain pattering outside and wrapped in a snug blanket.  Sounds idyllic and delightfully escapist.  So, to Heidi, in conclusion to my ramblings above, I want to say a heartfelt thank you for this wonderful, and unexpected, heartfelt and uniquely Scandinavian gift !!

And so, in "Kris Finnish", I will conclude...

Kiitos siitä sydämeni pohjasta tästä ihanin lahja!