2013-05-19T16:15:12-04:00 Corinne Purtill http://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=corinne-purtill Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Corinne Purtill Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2779270 2013-02-28T02:51:38-05:00 2013-04-29T05:12:01-04:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/
In any case, apart from a few crossover stars like Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants, television shows that are major cultural reference points in our house are virtual unknowns on the adult scene. For the benefit of those without children or cable, here's a quick primer on what the kids are watching these days. (Kids under three years old, I mean. Not teenage 'kids'. I genuinely have no idea what they're doing. Just planking and sexting each other, as best I can tell.)

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: No longer a talent farm for the future subjects of "Where Are They Now?" specials and Dr. Drew recovery shows, MMC is now a digitally-animated cartoon. The jerky characters and endlessly repeating backgrounds that marked the celluloid animated cartoons of our childhood are largely a thing of the past. Digital animation is cheaper, and it shows. Each episode of the 'Club concludes with the "Hot Dog Dance," where Mickey and company phone in uninspiring performances that would have made 12-year-old Justin Timberlake sad. It's doubly offensive because the song sticks in your head for days. Hot diggity dog, indeed.

Bananas in Pajamas: This is a show about a pair of talking bananas who live together (Brothers? Friends? Gay couple?) and wear matching striped pajamas. The reason for the pajamas is unclear. Maybe they suffer for seasonal affective disorder and have struggled since moving from Ecuador. They also run a school in their backyard. Being homeschooled by two pajama-clad drifters is either the premise of a quirky blogger memoir or the "Family and early childhood" section of a serial killer's Wikipedia page.

Dinosaur Train: This is a show about anthropomorphic dinosaurs travelling by train through what looks like the American Southwest. The action centers on a Pteradon family and Buddy, their adopted T-Rex brother. It is only a matter of time before the Very Special Episode of "Dinosaur Train" when Buddy hits puberty and someone sits him down to talk about his burgeoning desires to eat his family. Like "Jungle Junction," "The Chuggingtons" and other transport-centric series, this show has always struck me as an extended commercial for expensive vehicle and action figure toy sets.

Max and Ruby: Max and Ruby are a pair of 3- and 7-year-old rabbit siblings who live alone, for reasons never satisfactorily explained. Apron-clad Ruby is raising Max by herself. Parents are never mentioned. They have a grandmother they call every once in a while, but she never comes over and frankly seems like she could use a visit from Adult Protective Services herself. At first I wondered if this was a situation like Michael and Bug in "The Wire" - where is their test chemical-addicted mother? Is there a history of abuse here? What unspeakable things is this girl doing to keep the scraps of her family alive? Then I remembered this French film where a mom dies at home, and to avoid being taken away by social services her young children bury her in the backyard and run the house with the help of complicit school friends. I now get very nervous every time Ruby opens a closet door. "Max and Ruby" ran during a very dark week this winter when we were all home with the flu.

Doc McStuffins: Doc McStuffins is a little girl who runs a pro bono clinic for broken toys out of her playhouse. No major complaints about "Doc McStuffins," except maybe that it gives children unrealistic expectations of how cheerful people should be about fixing the stuff they break.

In the Night Garden: "In the Night Garden" is a live-action children's show made by the same production team behind the Teletubbies. In terms of narrative clarity, "Teletubbies" is The Old Man and the Sea next to "In the Night Garden." I don't have words to describe how weird "In the Night Garden" is. None of its characters make sense - not the Tombliboos, a baby-like trio under constant attack from a giant bouncing ball, nor Makka Pakka, a stone-shaped monster with a cleaning fetish who sneaks up on people to wipe their face.

But it's toddler catnip. In the UK, where we live, it's the last program aired before the BBC's children's channel goes dark at 7 p.m. Ours is one of millions of children toddling woozily toward the television at the sound of Sir Derek Jacobi's narration, bewitched by the Tittifers' song. It's so impenetrable to adults that I sometimes worry that it's sending subversive subliminal messages: The system is rotten. Overthrow your parents. Drink all the juice!!! But it calms her down before bedtime, which is reason enough to live with the threat of an eventual Toddler Uprising.

Besides parents of young children, there can be only two kinds of adults who can ever have seen "In the Night Garden": College students who watch it ironically, probably with large amounts of weed and Cheetos; and people on harsher drugs who come across it accidentally while in a fragile state of mind, see the Pinky Ponk coming for them, and cry and cry.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2567321 2013-01-28T12:41:13-05:00 2013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/ turns 150 years old this month. In honor of this occasion, I'm publishing the results of a five-year independent study of the Tube and its 108-year-old American cousin, the New York City Subway. Below is a comparative analysis of the two systems, based solely on the observations of one person with no social science credentials, no car, and a chronic people-watching habit.

Size: New York's subway carries 1.6 billion people a year to 468 stations on 660 miles of train track. London shepherds 1.1 billion to 270 stations across 249 track miles. Advantage: New York.

Map aesthetics: The Tube map - designed in 1931 by the civil servant Harry Beck, with few major alterations since - is a modernist masterpiece. It's bright and clean and beautiful and no one cares that it bears no geographic relation to the London above it. MTA's map looks like a Body Works cross-section of a dead man's scrotum. Advantage: London.

Value: A single ride on the subway is $2.25, whether you are going crosstown or from the Bronx to Brooklyn. The shortest Tube journeys start at £2.10 and steadily increase. A single ride from the outer boroughs of Zone 6 into central London - a trip thousands of commuters make daily - is £5 one way for the average rider, or nearly $8. This does not include butler service. Insane. Advantage: New York.

Willingness to move down: In a crowded subway car, the importance of "moving down" - the distribution of standing passengers equally throughout the length of the car - is an article of faith. Failure to move down is grounds for intra-car abuse and ostracization. Tube riders unable to get a seat tend to limit themselves to an invisible vestibule directly in front of the doors. This scrum delays boarding and results in the infuriating spectacle of half-empty trains pulling away from crowded stations. This is why so many people died on the Titanic. Advantage: New York.

Availability of shitty free newspapers: Both cities offer commuters two free papers per day. While New Yorkers must guiltily choose each morning between dueling Metro and amNY hawkers, London's papers are wisely spread across the morning and evening rushes. Boredom is averted in both directions. The grisly murder that broke in the morning Metro could have a suspect by the Evening Standard. The quality of these papers depends on your answer to this question: Is there such a thing as too many photographs of Kate Middleton attending things? Advantage: London.

Sense of community: In neither system are riders permitted to make eye contact with anyone, ever. Reasons for this differ. The mood on the subway is one of barely suppressed rage that transcends demographics. It's a place where rich and poor can shove one another like equals, where black and white come together to hurl epithets at old men blocking the doors. To challenge another rider is to invite confrontation - I didn't have a problem with you, motherfucker, but I do now. The Tube is a subterranean sponge into which all of London's social awkwardness soaks. In all but extreme cases, offended riders will swallow their anger to avoid the unpleasant alternative of confronting another human being: I did have a problem with you, you gormless fuckwit, but now that you are looking at me I am going to go back to reading the Guardian. Advantage: London.

Wildlife: Tube mice are smaller and harder to spot than their American counterparts. Personally, I like the subway rats. They're so cute! So scrappy! Where are they going? What exotic diseases are they carrying? Have they just arrived in this country and are searching for the Russian-Jewish mouse family they lost en route? I've never had a pet. Advantage: New York.

Likelihood of being murdered: Up until a few weeks ago, New York actually had the edge on this one. There were two Tube murders in 2010, and none on either system in 2011. But then 2012 closed with the horrifying deaths of two people pushed onto the tracks, and now New Yorkers have to worry that shoving people to a gruesome death before an oncoming train is a thing now, like sour frozen yogurt. Advantage: London.

Interior design: Subway cars are built to transport humanity from one station to another and hose down its residue as quickly as possible. Tube benches are carpeted, which is great if you like the idea of a permanent archive of strangers' bodily fluids. (This is also a nation that carpets its bathrooms.) Hard plastic armrests spaced generously along the bench ensure that a few passengers ride in comfort while the rest huddle wretchedly near the doors. Did I mention it's £5? Empires have fallen for less. Advantage: New York.

Frank approach to facts of life: A suicide that delays a train in New York is a "police investigation." In London, it's a "person under train." Damn. Advantage: London.

Operating hours: The subway runs 24-7 in the city that never sleeps, baby! The Tube runs 19 hours a day in a city that sleeps between midnight and 5 a.m. Advantage: New York.

Entertainment: Mariachis! Doo-wop! Breakdancing! 23 hours and 15 minutes of the day, New York offers unparalleled people watching and freelance performance art. London makes up for it all at 11:45 p.m. with the Last Train Home, a nightly caravan of drunkenness where vomit and nonsensical soccer tirades interweave like a Vegas water show. Advantage: Draw.

Moxie: The Underground has more than proved its mettle on this one - the photos of Londoners sheltering in Tube stations during the Blitz are iconic. But MTA's performance during Hurricane Sandy was nothing short of astonishing. Any system that looks like this on Tuesday and is moving people on Thursday gets my respect. For all the complaining we do on both sides of the pond, these are undeniably two very cool centenarians. Respectfully, I call a tie. And that seat.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2509516 2013-01-19T04:36:13-05:00 2013-03-20T05:12:01-04:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/ World Championship of Ping Pong is happening, is that ping pong on this island has never seen anything like this.

The center court game is televised on Sky Sports, Britain's closest home-grown thing to ESPN. There are TV commentators jawboning in a glassed-in booth and colored spotlights shooting across the audience and Born to Be Wild blasting on the sound system while lanky men in shorts rally under klieg lights.

Adoni Maropis, one of three U.S. players, is warming up on the center court. All of his matches today have been televised, which has less to do with the fact that he was the 2011 U.S. hardbat national champion and more with his former gig playing terrorist Abu Fayed on 24. The tournament's promotional materials refer often to the Hollywood actor among the 64 entrants, but Maropis is hardly the only star. Number-one seed Maxim Shmyrev of Russia has his own trading cards. Gavin Evans, 19, was an auxiliary member of the UK's Olympic table tennis squad. There are four representatives here of the Orange Army, the traveling fans that accompany Dutch athletes to seemingly every competition in the world, and one is wearing a full-body plush lion suit in support of Marty 'Loekie the Lion' Hendriksen.

The Philippine delegation looks a little dejected. Sandpaper table tennis - the kind played here - is a fringe religion in the Philippines, with money trading hands over illicit games in back alleys and basements. The squad had high hopes, but only three of their seven players are advancing to the round of 32. Organizers did not pay expenses, and it's a long flight back to Manila without a piece of the $100,000 prize pie to show for it.

"I've never seen anything like this," says Reece Mavro, 18, a former competitive player who's just aged out of England's under-18 table tennis program, outside of the audience grandstands. "If this was normal table tennis, it'd be sick."

Let's get some things straight: Table tennis and ping pong are the same thing, except on specific occasions when they are not. The World Championship of Ping Pong is such an event. Whether that's a good thing depends on who you ask.

Since the 1920s, when the sport's new governing body called itself the International Table Tennis Federation to avoid infringing on the Parker Brothers' 'Ping Pong' trademark, the distinction has been largely one of semantics. When played at the Olympics or on the competitive circuit, with its international rankings and millionaire superstars, it's table tennis. When played in a garage, rec center or any other setting in which it would be permissible to place a beer can on the table, it's ping pong.

There is a third category, of recognized variations on the amateur game. One of these is hardbat ping pong, also known as sandpaper table tennis, and it's this particular breed that's getting the World Series of Poker Treatment at Ally Pally today.

Hardbat is played with bats (what garage players call paddles) whose faces are covered in sandpaper, instead of the rubber sponge that's universal across the elite leagues. The sandpaper slows the game down, making for longer rallies and a more telegenic game. A lot of hardbat players were junior-circuit stars three or four decades ago, when sandpaper bats were the only thing to play ping pong with. It's retro, old-school, the fixed-gear bike of the table tennis world.

Hardbat caught the eye of Matchroom Sport, an Essex, England-based promoter whose televised tournaments of snooker and darts are multi-million pound franchises. The company is backing the world championship on the gamble that ping pong will be the next thing that viewers find themselves unable to turn off, even if they can't remember why they turned it on.

"I'm going to make them all superstars," chairman Barry Hearn told the BBC. "It's rock 'n' roll. It's going to be high fives, knocking balls into the crowd, interaction between the players and the crowd."

On day one of the tournament the vibe is congenial, if less rock n' roll than Hearn might have hoped. Outside of the enclosed box that is the televised center match, the rest of the tournament's sixty-four entrants face off in double elimination matches on seven side courts.

They're a low-key group, these ping pong guys. No fancy equipment bags. No head-to-toe logos. Espen Rosenburg of Norway plays in a T-shirt and flowered board shorts and looks like he just got off shift at a Long Beach Trader Joe's. A few of the players - particularly the older, British ones - have the bellies of guys at the pub who never touch the ping pong table in the corner.

Contestants hail from 20 countries. China is not one of them. In the world of competitive table tennis, Chinese players are the Harlem Globetrotters and the rest of the world are the Generals. The world's top four men and top four women players are all Chinese. China has won nearly every table tennis gold medal at every Olympics since Atlanta in 1996. (Damn you, Ryu Seung-Min.)

Organizers and various players ascribed the Chinese absence at Alexandra Palace to the fact that hardbat isn't very popular there, and to the fact that table tennis in China is extremely serious business and no one is going to waste a second on some London sideshow that doesn't even count for ITTF points.

The matches lack the vicious speed of Olympic competition. Each one looks like ... well, like two guys playing ping pong. Hardbat is a slower game. Sponge allows for more versatility - some bats are better for spin, others for speed - but hardbat is the great equalizer. Every player is using a tournament-issued bat they received two weeks ago. It strips away the pizzazz and gets down to real 'pong.

People have very strong feelings about this.

"If you place two tables side-by-side, with a sponge match on one and a hardbat match on the other, the hardbat match will appear uninteresting", wrote Scott Gordon in what can earnestly be described as a seminal 1999 About.com article on hardbat. "However, that would be the same as having a 'battle of the bands' between Chopin and Led Zeppelin."

Tony West admits to having been "quite a good junior", which is a very English way of saying that he was in the top ten. He's in a Division I British table tennis league now, but hardbat is a fun diversion. "In normal table tennis, there's always people complaining about people's bats. With this, it's completely fair. It's great fun. I don't want to knock anyone's sport, but darts is just this," he said, miming the toss of a tungsten with a bored expression. "In table tennis there's a million different shots. It has that very close, person-to-person combat."

Plus, the money for this tournament is ridiculous. His $1,500 prize for advancing to the round of 32 is the equivalent of several Grand Prix table tennis winnings, he said, "which is a bit of a shame."

Therein lies the tension in the relationship between footloose ping pong and its tighter-wound professional cousin. Events like the World Championship of Ping Pong bring in the money, viewers and popular cachet the sport needs to succeed. UK Sport just announced that they won't be funding a table tennis team for the Rio games in 2016.

But at the same time, purists gripe, they undermine the legitimacy of a sport that struggles to move past punchline status in the US and UK.

"The sport doesn't get the respect it deserves", said Reece Mavro, while his friend and former teammate Guy Ben-Aroya nodded vigorously in agreement. "It's seen as this - ping pong. This hardbat is getting the respect table tennis should. It should be the other way round."

In the center court, Maropis is warming up against Egle Adomelyte, a spindly blond Lithuanian who is the championship's sole female competitor. He lost his first match and won his second, which means he needs to win this one to advance. A gaggle of beer-clutching twentysomethings in the stands are yelling out characters from 24.

Maropis, 49, started playing seriously six years ago, when searching for something to boost his spirits during a career slump. "I was having a rough time as an actor. I did some great, great movies, and then nothing", he says before the match. "I thought, 'I need to get back to that joy.'"

The arena falls silent before the first serve, that supplicating bow that looks like a magician's sleight-of-hand. Maropis, who plays in glasses, an elbow guard, and kneepads, wins the first set 14-12.

Adomelyte gestures in frustration when she misses, spitting on her hands and smoothing them reflexively over her bat, shirt and skirt. In the second set, she's up 7-2. Then 10-3. She's mad now. She wins the second set.

It's the last set. Adomelyte is up 5-0, then 8-3, then 10-6. Maropis fights back and they chase each other point for point, until Adomelyte finishes him off for an 11-9 win. He tosses his bat up in resignation, toward the lights. The screen in the rafters shows what the cameras got. It looks great on TV.

Egle Adomelyte and Tony West were defeated in the final 16. On 6 January 2013, Maxim Shmyrev beat Nigerian Sule Olaleye to become World Champion of Ping Pong for the second time. Adoni Maropis has co-authored two screenplays, one a "sexy comedy fantasy" and the other a WWII drama; direct inquiries here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2438136 2013-01-09T09:36:40-05:00 2013-03-11T05:12:01-04:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/ Hoarders marathon on Bio, and then forget about this until you see it on Google News sometime next week. Let's get down to our picks.

Best Picture:

• Magic Mike


• The Dark Knight Rises


• A Fantastic Fear of Everything


• The Five Year Engagement


• Argo


• 21 Jump Street

I chose these films because they were the only ones I saw in 2012. I rented 21 Jump Street from our public library eight months after its U.S. premiere. I watched the first three-quarters of The Five Year Engagement on an airplane until my daughter woke up from her nap, and finished it two months later on a different airplane flight. The rest I saw in theaters.

One of the things people don't tell you about having children is that, for most parents, going to the movies really just doesn't happen anymore. If my husband and I were passionate cinephiles, the kind of people who read film blogs and know about upcoming movies even before their ads appear at bus stops, then we would probably make more of an effort to include them in our lifestyle. As people who enjoy movies a completely average amount, however, the economics of post-baby movie dates simply don't work.

Between the cost of four hours of babysitting (travel time to and from the theater, ticket purchase, previews, film, one trip to the restroom) and the staggering price of London movie tickets (up to $29 each), a trip to the movies for two of us is about a $125 investment. Figures like that really make a person question how badly they need to see Sparkle.

Note: I may have seen another movie while visiting family in California this summer but I can't remember what it was. In trying to recall it my husband and I had the following conversation via text.

-- Besides Batman, what did we see in CA?
-- I don't remember, sorry.
-- That may have been the only one.
-- I thought we might have seen two, did you see any at the cheap theater?
- -I can't remember.

Let's assume that this elusive seventh movie was forgettable enough not to include in our Best Picture nominees. Also, if there's an exact opposite of "sexting," that conversation might be it.

Best Actor: Christian Bale, The Dark Knight Rises. This is more of a compensatory Oscar for his unrecognized work as Laurie in 1994's Little Women, like Denzel Washington's Oscar for Training Day that was really for The Hurricane. My husband sold me on going to see The Dark Knight Rises by pointing out that it starred Tom Hardy, because he knows I really enjoy watching films with Tom Hardy in them. Yes, Tom Hardy is technically in this movie, but in a way that wastes everything I most enjoy about Tom Hardy films. Totally specious.

Best Actress: Emily Blunt, The Five Year Engagement. I chose her for two reasons: This was the only movie of the six in which I can remember a woman doing anything (is this a bad sample, or is the thing about women in Hollywood real?) and this scene with Blunt as Cookie Monster and Alison Brie as Elmo made me laugh harder than anything this extremely primed moviegoer saw all year. Relevant to this discussion of my current relationship to pop culture is the fact that I heard the Cookie Monster cover "Share it Maybe" before I heard "Call Me Maybe," and when I hear the song now the first thing that comes to mind is still

Me just met you
and this is crazy
but you got cookie
so share it, maybe.

Best Supporting Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike. I have been on the record with my support of McConaughey for the Oscar since I saw this movie. Who else is on deck for this one? Robert De Niro? Philip Seymour Hoffman? That's nice. It's McConaughey's year.

Best Supporting Actress: Alison Brie, The Five Year Engagement (see above)

Best Costume Design: Simon Pegg's underpants, A Fantastic Fear of Everything. We bought discount movie tickets on Groupon, and this was the least-terrible movie playing in the very narrow window in which these Groupons were valid. We left A Fantastic Fear of Everything thinking it was great. We still drop it into conversations so that we sound like people whose weekends are full of Ethiopian restaurants and quirky independent films. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 41 percent rating. I look at the Internet, and people say that maybe this wasn't the best movie of the year. Maybe not even a really good one. Huh.

This is a good example of the Mamma Mia! principle: A friend of mine with two kids saw this on her first trip to the movies in more than a year and found herself thinking, This is the greatest film ever made. Later it occurred to her that, wonderful as Meryl Streep is, her assessment of the film might have been biased by the sheer joy of leaving her house. Takeaway: Simon Pegg = great! Simon Pegg + sitting quietly in the dark for two hours without being harassed for more juice = astounding.

Best Screenplay: Wired magazine, for Argo. Great as the movie is, the Wired article by Joshuah Bearman that inspired the screenplay is even better. Runner-up is 21 Jump Street, for this line: Stop f---ing with Korean Jesus! He ain't got time for your problems!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up 2012 as a year.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2271952 2012-12-10T13:26:14-05:00 2013-02-09T05:12:01-05:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/
Expats, everywhere, are famously good complainers. (I loved this list from Beijing writer Mitch Moxley about expats' top complaints in China. I haven't lived there, but I recognize the spirit.) Instead of indulging in whining or nostalgia, however, I'm trying a new mental exercise: conscious appreciation of all that is good about the United Kingdom.

Many substantially positive things make the UK a great place to raise a family: generous vacation leave and benefits, beautiful outdoor spaces, a culture that makes it easier to achieve the "work-life balance" whose pursuit torments working American parents.

One of the design flaws in our psychological wiring, however, is how easily we overlook fundamental good and focus on the immediate, no matter how trivial. We're disposed to favor the gratification of instant, uncomplicated pleasures.

So here it is: My first un-comprehensive list of great yet insignificant things about living in the UK.

Availability of cake: The UK's cake supply is such that a special meal has been created to absorb the surplus. "Teatime" is not a catchall euphemism for any time when tea is served. It is a specific meal occurring on or around 4 p.m. featuring tea, impractically small sandwiches and an assortment of tiny cakes. Does it make sense to eat a carb- and sugar-filled meal late in the day, just after you've come out of your post-lunch coma? No. Productivity isn't Europe's strong suit. Whatever. Cake is delicious.

Office Christmas lunches: My last US office celebrated Christmas with an annual potluck lunch to which the company contributed a foil tray of greasy turkey slices, like the kind they have in soup kitchens. Employees were invited to fill up a plate and then eat it, festively, at their desks. My current employer's Christmas lunch was at a pub. "Best we not start until 1:30 p.m.," someone said quite seriously during the planning. "These things do get quite boozy." Yes.

Holidays when stuff happens to the Queen and her family: We arrived in the UK at the dawn of a golden era in royal-related public holidays. Weddings. Jubilees. And all of them include a day off work for everyone. I am not the only person to notice this. Search "Do we get a day off" and Google UK eagerly suggests "when the Queen dies? If Prince Philip died? If Prince Phillip died?" (What was I Googling? Never you mind.)

Rain: This may seem an odd choice. It is my top summertime complaint. (I have enough to group them by season.) But England is made for these dark, wet winter afternoons. The streetlights' glow on a rain-slicked street makes the indoors feel instantly warmer and cozier. It's best if you have nothing to do and no need to leave the house. And if you can get your butler to bring your tea into the library.

Season 3 of Downton Abbey has already aired here. Sometimes I feel small and insignificant. Then I remember that with a single tweet I could launch a hail of fiery plot spoilers onto North America, and I feel again like a big, important person. I'm not saying it's right, the way Kim Jong-Il behaved. I'm just saying I understand.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2230510 2012-12-03T07:14:46-05:00 2013-02-02T05:12:01-05:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/
British slang in the US is a thing now, says the New York Times - and the BCC, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Without complaint or resistance, Americans are allowing Britishisms like "ginger" and "brilliant" and "rubbish" to plant their Union Jacks across the broad flat plains of our freedom-loving vernacular.

I don't know who you self-hating Anglophiles are, but now might be a good time to quietly pull you aside and say kindly what your friends and family have been thinking ever since you started going "on holiday": You sound like a bloody tosser. Please stop.

Britain has been complaining about America's encroachment on the Queen's English since the Revolution. In 1781, language historian Dennis Baron notes, Scotsman John Witherspoon complained in the Pennsylvania Journal of the "chief improprieties" of his native tongue's use in his adopted country, including phrases like "fellow countryman" - a tautology! - and "mad" for angry.

Last summer, the BBC's website compiled a top-50 list of readers' most hated Americanisms, although the Economist and others pointed out that decent people everywhere, regardless of nationality, are troubled by "could care less" and "oftentimes."

Language evolves. I get that. But it was jarring to arrive in London from New York and hear the degree to which so many American expatriates allow the slang of our host country to colonize their speech. There is the South Carolinian who lightly tosses off phrases like "bits and bobs" in a Southern drawl, the Brooklyn designer who confesses to saying "shez-jul" for schedule.

Is this assimilation? Or is it linguistic Stockholm syndrome, where phrases that seemed absurd upon arrival now season your speech like HP Sauce? When are you simply blending in to your new surroundings, and when are you the kid who comes back from a semester abroad with a fake Aussie accent?

The Times quotes a New York restaurateur who confesses to regularly lapsing into Cockney rhyming slang, a language system as intuitive to a native American English speaker as the click-based !Kung. "I don't do it consciously," he said by way of defense. "Five of my best friends are Londoners."

That's crazy! How can you not be aware you're speaking gibberish? I can spend days on end with my grandparents and still not call TV shows "programs." Stand your ground, man.

On an entirely different plane of offence - Madonna-level, if you will - are Americans who adopt the cadence of an English accent, like no one can tell they sound like Kevin Costner in Prince of Thieves. When I overhear an American telling an English colleague about their trip to "HONG Kong," or asking "Shall I ring you?" I want to leap from a corner and shout J'accuse!

But I don't, because people who use gratuitous French phrases are even worse.

I had dinner a few weeks ago in London with friends hailing from Canada, South Africa, England and the States. We discussed the degree to which we'd gone linguistically native. There was some allowance for regional differences - the Canadian and South African already called their mother "mum" - but most agreed that it's easier than not to accept the local vocabulary, and to try desperately to clean up your speech on trips back home so no one makes fun of you.

I can't do it. They can make me drive on the other side of the road and go to work on Thanksgiving and I am exceptionally grateful for all the extra vacation time, but leave me my American dictionary. I will assimilate in all other ways required of an immigrant, but I will keep "diaper" and "cell phone" and "apartment" like talismans from the old country.

But every day I stay here, it gets harder.

I mean, "a bit crap" denotes dissatisfaction with just the perfect light touch. And if I don't say "trousers" instead of "pants," people will think I'm talking about my underwear. And this list of Americans' favorite Britishisms - "no worries" is English? And "run-up"? I say those all the time.

All I can say to my countrymen back home: we're surrounded here. You have no excuse.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2169988 2012-11-21T08:13:58-05:00 2013-01-21T05:12:01-05:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/
This week, however, is Thanksgiving. We are Americans. Thus the mini-muffin tray and the can of Libby's I've been saving in the back of the cupboard for the last 11 months. No eggs, though. You can't bring treats with eggs. Or nuts. Some rules supersede special traditions.

I did not expect this, that my child would be the one in the class from someplace different. Not someplace exotic. There is nothing exotic about being an American in London, or in most of the world for that matter. Our culture precedes us like medieval minstrels, a garish parade of Miley Cyrus and KFC and "Friends" re-runs everywhere, always, in perpetuity.

We're not different in the interesting sense, but in the subtler, more awkward way of missed cultural references and a calendar of annual festivities that don't match with public holidays. She wore to school the Elmo t-shirt her grandmother sent from California and her teacher asked "Who's that?" At times like this I want to take the train to Brighton and hurl a bottle into the ocean with a message sealed inside: We are trapped on an island where the preschool teachers don't know who Elmo is. If you can see this, send help.

I think of "us" as outsiders together, "us" being the family of my husband, myself and our daughter, but it's increasingly clear that some of us are less different than others. Born in the US but transplanted to the UK just weeks after leaving the womb, my daughter is showing signs of growing up an English girl. She says "wha-tuh" for "water" and "yes PEASE" for "yes please" and she doesn't just call her bath a "baff" but a "bahhhh-ff." She is not yet two. She points to our flashlight and asks for the torch, and last night she tapped the mischievous gorilla in her picture book and said "Cheeky monkey!"

There have even been times when she's called me something that could have been Mummy, but I don't hear it. I don't hear it in the way that football dads don't see their sons twirling in front of the mirror in their mother's heels. In my heart I know that it's my problem, not hers. But I'm not ready.

My husband thinks it's adorable. It's not so strange to him. He spent most of his childhood in the US, and his American accent has no trace of his parents' melodic South African ones. He understands better than I do how a global family fits under one roof.

It's not the accent. It's how unbelievably quickly it starts, their taking of cues from the world outside the safe cocoon of your home. Already I can see how parenthood is the joy and heartbreak of endless releasing so that your child can unfold into the person they are meant to be, like a balloon that floats upward from an outstretched palm into the welcoming expanse of the sky. When she asks for her wha-tuh I hear the possibilities of how far she may go, of how many other voices she may turn to for guidance on the way. And I sense how very short is the part of that road where I may walk by her side.

So, the pumpkin muffins. I send them with her not as a symbol of a stubborn refusal to assimilate in a place that has so far embraced our family. They are a reminder that she may be a global baby, but she is not a rootless one. That is what families are, the people on the other shore who find your bottle and send back messages of their own: We love you. We're sending provisions. You are not alone.

The point is not that she comes from somewhere different. It is that she comes from somewhere. I can give her no truer compass.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2057142 2012-11-02T10:03:04-04:00 2013-01-02T05:12:01-05:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/
After waiting in a line that snaked under a tunnel of scaffolding somewhere near Manhattan's 86th Street, I pulled a dirty crimson curtain behind me and stood before a voting console the height and heft of a pinball machine. I flipped my candidate's switch - hope and change, baby! Let's do this! - then pulled a lever that felt like it was sending my vote straight to the Capitol Dome. It was an unexpectedly satisfying experience, a physical labor on behalf of democracy.

There are a lot of reasons why 2012 isn't as good as 2008. One of the smaller and more selfish ones is that this time I feel less like an essential cog in the wheel of civilization and more like an old man mailing letters to the editor that no one will ever read. This time, I am a voter abroad.

We are a tiny crew, the people who don't live in the US but still exercise our right to vote there. Only 7 percent of Americans abroad bother to cast their ballots, according to Global Post. To put that level of disengagement into context: high school dropouts are one of the least politically active demographics in the US, and 39 percent of them vote.

There are a lot of reasons for this apathy. Some Americans choose an overseas address because they are fed up with their home country, and figure that any place where "Paul Ryan shirtless" gets nine times as many Google searches as "Paul Ryan budget" deserves whatever it gets come Election Day.

The quirks of the Electoral College can also sap an expat's motivation to put in the extra effort required to cast an overseas vote. Why bother keeping track of the special advance deadlines for registering, obtaining and returning a ballot, one could argue, if your vote is just a surplus drop in a red or blue bucket?

And then there is the sneaking suspicion that votes that arrive in airmail envelopes simply don't count.

This is my second time voting abroad. The first was in 2004, when I was working in Phnom Penh. After shuffling through security at the US Embassy, I checked a box on the back of a postcard and then handed it - without any kind of envelope - to a consular worker bearing the bored and bemused expression of a postal clerk accepting a child's letter to Santa Claus. I don't believe that anyone, anywhere, counted that vote.

I know that voting absentee is technically the same as voting on Election Day. The US Postal Service insists that Sandy won't disrupt voting by mail. Even Obama voted early. Fine.

But I still have a hard time believing that overseas votes aren't just shoved into a pile to be opened only in cases of electoral emergency.

This is the first election since my daughter was born. I imagined carrying her into the booth with me on her first Election Day and explaining how it worked: that my vote - and one day, hers - would count as much as the president's; that all that is best about the way this government operates is founded on the simple dignity of this act.

Instead, two weeks ago I placed the yellow envelope addressed to the Board of Elections on Varick Street into her hand and held her up while she dropped it into the slot of one of Her Majesty's crimson mailboxes. All suspicions aside, this labor - small as it is - is still worth it. Count me in with the 7 percent.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2022457 2012-10-28T19:00:00-04:00 2012-12-28T05:12:01-05:00

Corinne Purtill http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corinne-purtill/ Sun, whose areas of editorial expertise include football, punny headlines, sex scandals, celebrity gossip, an unforgiving stance on welfare cheats, and enormous breasts.

Every weekday for the last 42 years, the first full inside page of the Sun has carried a large pin-up style photograph of a topless, buxom young woman frolicking in a pool or garden and gazing into the camera with her own version of Zoolander's 'Blue Steel.' Usually she wears underpants; sometimes she doesn't.

The Sun is no niche publication. With a daily circulation of 2.6 million and an estimated 8million daily readers, the Rupert Murdoch property is as mainstream as media gets. It is as if there was a half-naked lady inside every issue of USA Today - and five million more people read USA Today.

Apart from the featheriness of the models' hair, little about the photographs has changed in their four-decade run. A great many things have changed in England, however, and a small but growing movement is now suggesting, ever so politely, that it might be time to retire the daily hooters parade.

Lucy-Anne Holmes, a Brighton-based writer, hit her breaking point with Page Three during this summer's Olympics, when she picked up a copy of the Sun and noticed that the photograph of a woman who'd done no more than remove her shirt was bigger than that of Jessica Ennis, the UK's beloved heptathlon champion. Was that really what it took for a woman to get noticed?

A Sun reader sees "men in suits doing stuff, and then you see this one big image of a woman in her knickers doing nothing," Holmes said. "It's about standing up to how we're portrayed in this country."

She started with a letter to editor Dominic Mohan in which she asked, "very nicely," to quit it with the naked pictures. When that got no response, Holmes launched an online petition that has garnered nearly 50,000 signatures and a letter of support signed by 26 members of Parliament. Holmes and supporters are also in the midst of organizing a boycott of the Sun's major advertisers.

Page Three's fans may defend the page as a harmless bit of fun - "they've been here as long as I have!" - cried the be-hoodied newspaper vendor at my local rail station, when told of the burgeoning protest - but previous challengers have endured vicious attacks from those threatened by the loss of their daily fix of flesh.

When the lawmaker Clare Short first raised concerns about Page Three in the 1980s, the Sun retaliated with decades' worth of taunts and pranks, including a 2007 headline that called the then 61-year-old lawmaker "fat" and "jealous."

Mohan has yet to respond. In his February appearance before the Leveson inquiry, the parliamentary investigation of media ethics prompted by the phone-tapping scandals, Mohan described Page Three as a "British institution" and a celebration of "natural beauty," defending the Sun in a as "occasionally boisterous and often cheeky, but . . . always a loyal companion to our readers, male and female."

(It's fair to note here that the Sun was also the only paper in Britain to flaunt the local media's self-imposed embargo on publishing the photographs of Prince Harry's naked Vegas capers, evidence of an equal-opportunity commitment to bare flesh of all genders.)

To an outsider in England, Page Three is one of the odder quirks of a culture with a decidedly quirky relationship to public sex and nudity. The commercial appeal of breasts needs no explanation, but how did they land such a prominent spot in the favored daily rag of a population whose single most defining characteristic, according to the comedian Stephen Fry, is "embarrassment"? Isn't this something the French do?

Yet for more than 40 years, whatever their cultural sexual hang-ups, the English have offered a special dispensation to Page Three. In her 2004 book Watching the English, the English anthropologist Kate Fox cited a national survey that found Page 3 the least offensive of all depictions of sex in the media, with only 21% of Brits - and 24% of women - objecting. "It's just daft, with the silly captions full of awful puns," an interviewee told her. "You can't really feel offended by it."

The cheesy quality of the portraits, the groaningly stupid pun-filled captions, the awkward ho-ho! humor that permeates the page, like something a great-uncle would wink at - the whole thing seems more hokey than hot.

"Only the English," Fox put it, "could manage to make pictures of luscious, half-naked women into something quite as un-erotic as page three."]]>