My Fellow Americans - Dissensian roadtrip

[mos dan]

Hello dissensians. Me and my good friend the artist Tom Humberstone (www.ventedspleen.com) are travelling around the USA's key electoral states following and blogging the US election! Starting in a little over two weeks!

Please subscribe to the feed! And come hang out with us, the Americans among you. Here's the spiel I've been e-mailing people:

Let's make this relationship special again...

During the 2008 US Presidential Election's decisive first six weeks we're going to be out there on the road: meeting, greeting, charming and confusing the American people.

While the real journalists are at press conferences flashing their laminates and collecting official statements, we're going to be in the bar around the corner, drinking whisky with attractive young Republicans in sharp suits, or having coffee with grizzled old Democrats who once met Jimmy Carter.

We fly in to the United States on 30 December, and will be blogging through the duration of our trip, Dan writing the words, and Tom drawing the pictures.

Please click the 'RSS' link on the front page to bookmark the website feed:

www.myfellowamericans2008.com

Please tell your friends, tell your friends to tell their friends, and keep checking back to see how we're doing. And if you're in the USA, come and meet us for a coffee!

coffee@myfellowamericans2008.com

 

[nomos]

that's amazing dan! you'll have to try get yourselves on the daily show whenever the writer's strike ends.

 

[petergunn]

please whatever you do, don't pull the out the old british cliches re: america

1) the great wide open, the freedom of the plains, the salt of the earth wisdom of Flo from the truckstop diner

2) taming the barbarians, their shocking ignorance about the rest of the world, wow they are being really really standoffish/deferential to me because of my accent...

 

[mos dan]

please whatever you do, don't pull the out the old british cliches re: america

1) the great wide open, the freedom of the plains, the salt of the earth wisdom of Flo from the truckstop diner

2) taming the barbarians, their shocking ignorance about the rest of the world, wow they are being really really standoffish/deferential to me because of my accent...

thank you. these are very good points..

there will be some tightrope walking to be done when it gets down to the nitty gritty of the issues as well.. i've just written a blog clarifying that we have no intention of having ANY opinions on the election as well (well, as few as possible) - we don't want another Operation Clark County on our hands haha.

 

[zhao]

that sounds really interesting but also kinda crazy mos dan. may i ask what the "purpose" is behind this project? is it the making of a documentary film or something?

 

[mos dan]

that sounds really interesting but also kinda crazy mos dan. may i ask what the "purpose" is behind this project? is it the making of a documentary film or something?

ha - that's a more difficult question than i thought it would be. the idea, prompted mainly by my obsession with the west wing (also hunter s thompson and pj o'rourke's books), was originally to do the trip and write a book about it afterwards. then it became a blog-into-a-book idea for a while, and now the book idea is not being pursued anymore, and the blog has become an end in itself. off the back of it i'll be writing articles for people back here in the uk i expect, tom's got loads of arty contacts who are interested in the project... but we're doing it for the craic rather than explicit professional/creative reasons, basically.

my main ambition at the moment is to get interviewed on american local radio somewhere obscure, by a presenter who thinks tony blair was god's gift to politics and can't understand why i don't like him - that's an mp3 i'd love to have.

 

[Gavin]

my main ambition at the moment is to get interviewed on american local radio somewhere obscure, by a presenter who thinks tony blair was god's gift to politics and can't understand why i don't like him - that's an mp3 i'd love to have.

Haha, don't expect too many obscure local radio jocks to know who the fuck he is!

 

[mos dan]

Haha, don't expect too many obscure local radio jocks to know who the fuck he is!

last time i went to the us, to stay with my cousin in oakland in 2003, all any of his friends wanted to talk about was tony blair and what had happened to the labour party/with iraq.. but then my cousin's friends are slightly to the left of trotsky, and about as politically aware, so maybe that would explain it.

 

[tate]

Dan, do you have a general map/itinerary lined up, state by state or some such? I looked on the blog for one but didn't find ... if you're planning to be in upstate ny or midwest (missouri) i'd be able to put you in touch with people who'd be pretty interesting to talk to for this kind of thing (and maaaybe could hook you up with that radio interview ) . In any case, I look forward to reading the blog, have no doubt but that it will be hilarious and insightful to hear about your experiences re-told .

 

[mos dan]

That sounds amazing tate, thanks for the offer. We haven't put up an itinerary yet as it's still fairly flexible/undecided in places, but I can say we're unlikely to make it to Missouri alas (we're going from Chicago to IA and then back east again), but will definitely be in upstate NY, as that's where we're meeting a good friend of ours who has a car (rather vital, this!). Here's the tentative itinerary:

December
30 Fly to Chicago
31
January
1 To Iowa City, IA
2
3
4 Towards Rochester, NY (probably by train)
5
6
7 To Manchester, NH
8
9 To Boston, MA
10
11 To New York, NY
12
13
14 To Philadelphia, PA
15
16
17 To Washington DC
18

(IN THE REST OF JAN WE DO SOUTH CAROLINA AND FLORIDA AND AS MUCH OF THE REST OF THE SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST AS WE CAN, THE ROUTE IS STILL HAZY THOUGH)


February
1
2 To San Diego, CA
3
4 To Los Angeles, CA
5 *Super Tuesday* (I DON'T THINK WE WANT TO BE IN L.A. ON SUPER TUES THO)
6 To San Francisco, CA
7
8
9 To Portland, OR
10
11
12
13 Big northern train route back to Chicago
14
15 Fly home!

 

[zhao]

craic? not the first time i encountered this word or shorthand still dont know what it means.

a fun trip with a purpose and sort of plan is maybe even more fun than just a fun trip. also considering America as we have known it might not actually exist very much longer it might turn out to be an important historical document of sorts...

 

[hucks]

craic? not the first time i encountered this word or shorthand still dont know what it means.

It's gaelic for fun/laughs/ a good time. Also, it's pronounced "crack", leading to hilarious Ali G consequences (about 1 min in)

 

[zhao]

ah ok. are there many gaelic words in current use in england?

 

[Mr. Tea]

ah ok. are there many gaelic words in current use in england?

'Whisky'?

 

[Lichen]

ceilidh

 

[tate]

I've sent out some emails, will let you know if anything comes together. Could definitely assist passage from Rochester to New Hampshire tho Will let you know by PM what I find out, if anything works out activity-wise, etc etc.

 

[zhao]

ceilidh

sel lee da ? and it means?

 

[Immryr]

kay lee
a type of folky dance / party

 

[Lichen]

Sorry to derail further

English words of Gaelic origin include hard, glen, bog, slogan, whiskey, blarney, shillelagh, shamrock, colleen, brogoc, and galore. Specifically Scottish Gaelic are clan, loch, and ptarmiigan.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

sel lee da ? and it means?

Pron: k-lee, which is actually spelt céilí or Céilidh, originally referred to a rural Irish/Scottish music event involving traditional Irish dancing - céilí dancing, set dancing (like Riverdance) with traditional instruments, including bagpipes, accordion, bodhrán, tin whistle, etc. The expression 'ceol agus craic' (music and entertainment) originated at the Céilidh (the Irish word "spraoi", on the other hand, means "fun", from which the English word "spree" is derived, as in a "shopping spree").