The More You Change

I'm in heaven. I really am. I was walking to the office today and it hit me. Here I was, in London. Seriously, the city has grown on me and its charms are even more hypnotic now that Dan is here. He arrived on Saturday and we've been having a jolly good time. On that note, it has been raining and the temperature has been as low as 50. Yet Dan and I soldier on. On Monday we went to the National Portrait Museum to check out "The Face of Fashion" exhibition. Yesterday, after putting in a solid day at the office, we saw This is England, a story of a 12-year old boy in 1980's England who becomes a skinhead. The movie was really quite good. As I got up this morning I found myself thinking about the character. It also was an excellent way to familiarize myself to my topic. I saw the gloomy desperation of these working-class people and the gross hate that they dealt to immigrants. I also felt like I was less-sympathetic to the conservative outreach agenda than I had once been. This came at the point when the leader of the gang, Combo, poses a question to a friend of some of the members, Milky, who is Jamaican. He asks him, "Are you English or are you Jamaican?" At that point, Milky stared at the ground for what seemed like an intolerably long time. After the tension had built to an excruciating level, he replied, "English." Combo replied, "Good. We need more like you." Essentially, this is what a lot of the conservative outreach entails. There is slightly less of an exclusive relationship between the two identities, but the cruel choice lurks in the background. In other news, I am thisclose to buying the Blake Lewis EP on Itunes. Is this horrible? I feel like it is. I find him delightful and I love his song choices (we'll ignore that Maroon 5 selection). Now it is back to work for me.