Music at Trader Joe

Trader Joe's plays music in the shop. Nothing unusual there. What is unusual is the music that they play. I've recently heard:

• Big Time - by Peter Gabriel
• Our House - Madness
• She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult (when was the last time you heard that? When was the last time you heard anything by the cult?
• Take on me - A-Ha
• Save a prayer - Duran Duran
• Don't stand so close to me - The Police
  

(I keep meaning to write them down when I get home, so I remember.)

Notice any connection? First of all, they are all from the 80s, and second, they are almost all English (except for A-Ha, and they are Norwegian). I'd like to know who chooses this, and why. First, the staff mainly seem too young to be of that age.

My best theory is that it's the demographic they are after. Who spends the most in supermarkets? People with young (or young-ish) children. And that's people of about my age, who came of age in the 80s, and would say things like "She Sells Sanctuary - when was the last time I heard that? Or when was the last time I heard anything by The Cult").

But that doesn't explain the European-ness. I'm going to have to try to be more systematic. First, writing down all the songs that are played in TJs, and second, going to other stores (there are a couple of others that I go to sometimes) and seeing if they play similar music.

There's a good chance they won't - each store has a 'theme', ours is an airport theme. The checkouts are labelled "Runway 1" "Runway 2", etc, and there are model planes hanging from the ceiling. The other one I go to occasionally has a Hawaiian theme, and has canoes on the walls. The checkouts are called checkouts, and each has a little chalkboard with amusing quotes on it (which, I think, change. My favorite "before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes". (Each TJs also has art on the walls, which is done by local artists.)

Reflections

Sometimes stuff happens, and it feels like an earlier memory is being replayed, except that I've shifted roles and turned into one of my parents, and D or A has turned into me. Like one of those training things that policemen do, when one of them has to be the criminal, and be interrogated, and then they change over.

Sometimes these are painful. Only because I think of what I put my parents through, but I guess they are getting a kind of payback now.

When I was little (let's say 5, I don't remember), I used to like doing the washing up. This involved standing on a chair, and pouring water into and out of things in the sink. I wasn't allowed to do it very often. When I got older (let's say 10, for the sake of argument), I didn't like doing the washing up. My parents would ask me, and I'd moan (and I'd imagine that I only did it rarely). Once I asked them: "When I was younger, I liked doing the washing up, and you didn't let me. Now I don't, and you won't let me."

They replied (words to the effect of): "That's because you were toss useless at it when you were younger."

[Sometimes I wonder if that episode in my life is why, when I first had my own unfurnished house, the first thing I bought, and I mean the first thing, before I bought a TV or a fridge or a cooker, on the day I moved in, was a dishwasher.]

Today, A asked if he could wash the plates. I said he could - there were a few in the sink, and having a bit of water sloshed over them before they went into the dishwasher wouldn't hurt. I was reminded of the episode much earlier in my life, when he picked up the washing up liquid bottle (which was only half full) and emptied it onto the counter.

Frat Boys

Here's D and A's pre-school photo (S says I'm not allowed to call it a nursery). D, in particular, looks like an American frat boy (S says he looks like an actor, but I think that's because frat boys try to look like actors), and both look beyond their 4 years and 11 months. Which, naturally, makes them very happy now, but won't when they're 40 and 11 months.

Santa Monica Festival

The day after the Strawberry Festival, it was the Santa Monica festival. At the Strawberry Festival, the boys had been sweetness and light, and had shown amazing stamina. They made up for it at the Santa Monica festival, where they were back to their usual evil selves.

The festival was interesting - it was designed to produce no waste. Everything had to be either recyclable or biodegradable. S went to buy some biodegradable plates and cups (for A and D's 5th birthday party, which is coming up). The people just wanted to tell her about how great the plates were - she just wanted to buy them. This seems to be a common problem in this sort of thing - I go to the Farmer's Market, and buy cheese. The woman at the cheese stall now recognizes me, and says "Oh, I don't need to tell you about the cheese, do I?" But I digress.

We bought some disgustingly coloured and flavored ice, so that the boys could be hyperactive. These came in biodegradable glasses - there's a photo below, but you can't really see them. The glasses looked and felt so like real plastic (hang on, real glasses, made of plastic, oh, you know what I mean) that I didn't believe they actually were biodegradable - I thought it was a con. I tried to bite the spoon, and managed to make a small mark, but that was all, so I wasn't sure about that either. However, there was someone standing by the bin to make sure that we put them in the compost - so then I was convinced.


They (naturally) didn't eat most of the colored ice, so I had to finish it (at $4 we weren't going to let it go to waste, and I was thirsty). A and D sat on police motorbikes - they were Santa Monica police motorbikes, not California Highway Patrol (as in CHiPs - who remembers Ponch and Jon). The boys didn't mind that though. (Incidentally, the California Highway Patrol is always called CHP).

Notice D's mouth is red, from the frozen ice thing.

Strawberries

V was visiting at the weekend, and wanted to go shopping. But she didn't want to go shopping just anywhere - she wanted to go shopping at the Camarillo Outlet Shopping Center. I have no idea how she knew this existed, but she did, and so we went there. It's like a Designer Outlet Centre, except bigger and more American.

Our initial plan was that V and S would shop, whilst the boys and I (the boys?) played at a park. However, there was no park.

What there was, was the California Strawberry Festival. Very conveniently, they had a park and ride system set up, and even more conveniently, the parking place was the Camarillo Outlet Shopping Center.

So we drove to Camarillo (every day I'm hugging my pillow, almost), and the ladies shopped while the boys rode a school bus to the strawberry festival. A proper yellow school bus, with the flashing lights.

The strawberry festival involved, well, strawberries, as you would expect. But these people took their strawberries seriously. There were strawberries for sale. (By the time we got around to thinking about buying some to take home, most had sold out, and the ones that hadn't had long lines.)

Strawberry lemonade.

Strawberry smoothies.


Chocolate covered strawberries from Oxnard Buddhist Temple. Buddhist temple. Strawberries being covered in chocolate. Boggles the mind.

Strawberry margaritas:

I'm not sure if that's strawberry wine, or strawberries with wine.

But that definitely says strawberry beer.
Strawberry pizza:
And if you weren't strawberried out, strawberry nachos.

Visits

I haven't been posting much in the last two weeks, 'cos we've had two visitors - M came for an interview at Corporation of Current Employment, and V had an interview at University of California.

They were both surprised by how simultaneously hard and easy the interview process seems to be (at least for academic, or quasi-academic jobs). It's easy because people chat to you in your interviews, sometimes you feel you should be trying to get a word in edgewise. You don't get asked a succession of hard questions, or any questions at all. It's hard because it goes on, and on. Both started about 8am - there are no breaks, lunch is part of the process. M was finished by 5pm - well, he wasn't because he had dinner with me, but that hardly counted. V finished with her evening meal at about 9pm, restarted the next morning at 8am, and finally finished at about 4pm.

M and I drove around to some places, so we could take photos of interesting things to show the folks back home. The first photo is of the Hollywood sign, the second is of the beach at Malibu, and the third is a freeway. I'm not sure why we took that photo - it might be because, if you look closely, the sign says Sunset Boulevard.



We didn't actually get out of the car to take any of those photos (as you can see).

V had less time to acclimatise (her interviews started the morning after she arrived), had two days of interviews, and on Saturday (her only full free day), all she wanted to do was shop.

She managed to out-shop S, and we were impressed by her stamina, but that's another blog post. (Or, if you read these in the traditional manner, starting at the top and working down, it's the one you've just read.)

Bedtime Snacks

At bedtime, A wanted milk. Well, specifically he wanted Better Milk (that's warm milk - as in "Daddy, my milk is too cold".. [Daddy puts it in the microwave] "Is that better?" "Yes, that's better milk") mixed with Daddy Milk (which is soya milk) - sometimes they want better milk, sometimes they want Daddy milk, and sometimes they want a mixture.

D wanted asparagus. So I cooked him some, and he ate it. (Even the really tough bits at the bottom of the stalk.)

Fashion

In England (and probably Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and all the other bits of the UK) it is (or was, when I was there) trendy to have t-shirts with stuff about surfing on them. The rest of what they said was usually nonsense. But that didn't matter, because no one cared.

Until someone gives your offspring t-shirts that say "Pasadena Beach Club" on them, and you move to California, and go to Pasadena. And your children wear the t-shirts. And you hope no one notices, because it's really obvious that there isn't a beach for a good 20 miles.

Kinderfest

We went to a "Kinderfest und Maifest" today, at Anaheim. (Anaheim is mostly famous for having Disneyland, but it so happens that it was founded by German settlers - it means "Anna's House".)

I'm not sure of the exact translation of "Kinderfest und Maifest" but it probably means something like "Lots of fat old Germans sitting around getting pissed on Bavarian beer and playing music which involves tubas". Despite the emphasis on kinder, there wasn't much for kiddies to do. There were pony rides, and a petting zoo, which had some bedraggled looking sheep and goats, a couple of chickens, and several nervous rabbits, and a bouncy castle.

There was a large tent (the "Festhalle") which had lots of tables and benches, and a stage at one end, where the tuba players congregated. When the tuba players got tired, there was some sort of male voice choir - there was a lot of shouting at the crowd to stop talking, but only from the choir, not from anyone in the crowd.

After the choir, there was the singing of the national anthem - they sang the American anthem first, just to show whose side they were on, and then the German one. Next, came a lot of announcements which involved people going up to the stage for some reason - I don't think it was the raffle, but the acoustics were appalling, and I had no idea what was going on.

The whole place was run and organized by old German people, mainly for the benefit of old, German people. They sold soft drinks from the beer stalls, but the old men selling it seemed to have no understanding of, well anything to do with soft drinks. When drinks overflowed, or they served the wrong one (which was quite regular) they dumped it into the container of ice. I ordered a diet Coke (with no ice), and one turned to the other and said "Ho ho ho, zis man haz ze fonny acsunt!! Ho ho!! He say Coke!"

Anyway, we ate Reibepfannkuchen and Bienenstich and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and drank Koestinger Schwarzbier. A parade went by, of people in various German dress, and then we left.

Oh, you'll want to see some photos, I suppose.

German fashion:



German ladeez:

A beer tent, with lots of German people with feathers in their caps:
This was kept at the back of the Reibepfannkuchen (potato pancakes, to you [probably] and I):
We've got a German flag, but we've got an American flag too, and it's higher. So that's OK. (And the one on the left is a California flag.)

Germany Week

It was Germany week at the pre-school. There are 2 (or maybe 3) other children there, who have at least one German parent, but they wisely stayed out of the way of the organizational juggernaut that is S. There was German food, and German flags, and S spent the whole week wearing red, yellow and black (like the German flag - I didn't notice until she told me on Friday).

S made a collage of German stuff from things she'd cut from magazines. One of the pictures was a German model of some sort (Claudia Schiffer?). When we went to pick up the boys from the pre-school, a sticker had been placed over her cleavage - obviously it was felt to be too revealing.

Here's the boys, in their German gear. A on the left is dressed as a fisherman from the North, and D, on the right, is wearing Bavarian Lederhosen.

Elected

I've written before about the pre-school that the boys attend and also here) If you can't be bothered to go and read that, basically it's a parent's co-operative, which means it's owned by the parents. We have to work there, and jobs - things like administration, or putting up the fence, or painting the classroom.

S went to the monthly membership meeting (attendance obligatory) of the boys' pre-school last night, and when she came out, she had been elected president, for the forthcoming academic year. She knew she'd been nominated, but so had a three or four other people.

She also said that she didn't mind being elected too much, as if it wasn't her, it would be some incompetent moron (referring to everyone else), she's trusting like that.