I’M writing this from the lobby of The Garland Hotel in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, where I’m travelling for work this week.
Before you begin to hate me, let me assure you that it’s absolutely pouring rain here for the first time since about 1824 (or March this year, at least). And you’ll be delighted to know that this seems to have happened entirely to coincide with a bunch of Irish animation professionals arriving in the city on a trade summit, all of whom are primed for a few days of networking in the Californian sunshine.
If only I could get my hands on a Child of Prague.
Everyone we meet here thinks this weather situation is absolutely hilarious, of course.
‘It doesn’t rain here for months, man, then you guys arrive and bring the weather with you!’
We laugh, but inside we cry, as is the Irish way.
I keep telling everyone that I’m only sorry I didn’t pack my set of uilleann pipes to accompany the gloomy skyline, but that joke is even wearing thin on me at this stage, as I gaze out onto an outdoor pool being pelted with rare, west coast raindrops.
What would Peig Sayers think of it all?
I don’t travel to the US a lot, but I seem to have a knack for arriving here whenever there is an election. And this year is no exception, with the US primaries taking place this week.
In 2008, I happened to be on a trip to New York with my wife around this time of year as Obama was historically elected for his first term. The mood at the time in America could not have been more different back then, as the streets of Manhattan filled with joyous revellers.
Change and hope were in the air with the election of the first African American chief of staff. It felt like the divisions caused during the Bush era and their deeply unpopular neo-con war in Iraq were now in the past, and a new liberal golden age was in the offing, first in the US, and surely to follow on around the world.
How wrong that was. The world we live in now is almost unrecognisable, after four years of Trump and what appears to be an ever-decaying world order.
Flying in on our direct daytime Aer Lingus flight at the beginning of the week, you get a sense of the immense scale of this continent and how varied the geography is. From snow-tipped mountain ranges to vast empty plains and on to the twinkling oddity of Las Vegas, lighting up the middle of a desert, it’s no wonder a lot of Americans never feel the need to leave the place.
By extension, you also get a sense of the massive scale of the political project required to unite what is a very disparate collection of states.
The media is reporting a real air of anger here and a feeling of disorder, including city leaders making racist remarks and strangers ‘just being mean, as reported in the New York Times. There is a frisson of danger in the air that you can almost sense. But it is hard to define from a warm hotel lobby with The Eagles blasting out on the stereo.
I remember hearing President Obama speaking a few years back on a podcast about how worried he was that his election might have come too early for the country, and how he feared a backlash from the more nativist elements within the country.
Well, talk about a backlash .... For me, and for much of our wider culture, what happens here always has an impact on our lives, whether it be tech jobs in Dublin or the massive multinational dependency culture we have baked into our tax, not to mention Ukraine, and what looks like darkening despotic clouds in China.
Maybe it’s just the cold November rain, unlikely as it is here in Hollywood, but those hopeful nights in Chelsea back in 2008 sure feel very far away.
Mutiny over the Bounty
AND now to more serious issues, indeed.
I was alarmed last week when I read reports that Mars was going to be removing Bounty cars from their box of Celebrations.
This is, presumably, with a view to personally ruining my entire Christmas.
Well now, have they completely lost their coconuts over at Mars?
I don’t go in for political extremes as a rule, as regular readers of this column will know, but here is something I think I could finally be radicalised by.
Luckily, it was revealed that the mutiny on the bounty won’t extend to Ireland where the Bounty bar will be kept on the Celebrations team, for now at least.
Finally, something to celebrate!
