Three men

If this blog is to document my activities with any accuracy, then the severe spike in internet use (wireless in the hotel room…) must be reflected.

Hence, three wise men online.

a) Jeffrey Steingarten wrote a book called The Man Who Ate Everything. He also wrote this article instructing the novice omnivore. He is greatly to be admired. I am lamentably bereft of a clear vision of desirable employment. I do, however, think I could manage being Jeffrey Steingarten’s witty and youthful offsider and platonic dinner companion. Who am I kidding? I don’t want to be Jeffrey Steingarten’s Girl Friday and I certainly don’t want to be his mistress. We are in All About Eve and Single White Female Territory here. I want to be Jeffrey Steingarten and usurp his life. Condé Nast, I'm waiting for your call.

b) This excellent article, which I first read in an anthology of travel writing abandoned in a guesthouse, is not normally the kind of thing I get excited about. It’s written by a professional hardcore-adventurer-dude, Mark Jenkins, who used to write a column on extreme outdoorsiness for Outside magazine – macho mountaineering, climbing, paddling, biking, preferably in unstable political environments. This article is about his efforts to trek the Stilwell Road, a road built by an American general to link strategically India and China via Burma. Military history, again, not often my first choice of subject matter. I read ‘Ghost Road’ in an anthology of travel writing and was absolutely engrossed Anyway, this is an extraordinarily interesting, well paced, and ethically engaged account of the author’s attempts to get off the beaten track in Burma. My own travels in Burma had little of this kind of hardcore about them – staring down armed officials was about as tough as it got – but his confrontation with his compromised, egotistical position, playing the role of a romantic vagabond against the backdrop of a scenic and brutal military dictatorship did make me squirm a little.

c) Cable television is the fragile strand which has kept me vaguely in touch with a select version of popular culture of late. Thanks to hotel cable, I know that there is another Harry Potter movie on the way. I have been utterly captivated by Who Wants to be a Millionaire in Russian and my resolve to get to Mother Russia and to trounce the language of Rasputin has thus been steeled. Who knows, maybe Wheel of Fortune à la Russe will be my ticket to greatness. I’ve watched many, many crap movies; I’ve been mesmerised by repeats; I’ve had ample opportunity to indulge my slightly shameful love of MTV; I have scoffed and snorted at CNN… Character building exercises all.

I have also discovered David Tutera’s Party Planner. This is sublime reality television, so far beyond awful, so many light years beyond irony that it is sublime, delirious, hypnotic, divine. I watched this man stage manage a lavender themed divorce party. Solid gold. And of course he has a website.