Practice makes perfect - or does it?

Will, Edgar, Bill, Lynne, Bobb, Barbara, Jim, Regina, Ian, Sue, Bob, Steve L, Jeanette, Ben
Oct 26

While Javier was handing round the huge green menus, conversation among the early arrivals turned to the strange American concept of practice dating - which, like many female concepts, is a euphemism for a Platonic relationship, which is in turn a euphemism for no sex please, I don't fancy you.
It is a tribute to women that they will go through these charades, which men will undertake only under threat of blackmail or the prospect of vast riches. Unless of course the woman in question is a brilliant conversationalist, in which case the man's thoughts will turn carnal anyway, whatever her looks. Women don't understand this, but then few of them understand the male need to dominate, which invariably boils down to notches on the bedpost.
Does there have to be fireworks? No, but it's a bit dull without them. Yes, men are shallow, childish, animalistic games players who will play along with female games mainly in order to further their own masculine agendas.
As Sue Dadd shrewdly observed, it depends whether you are the asker v askee. If, like most women cleverly do, you manoeuver yourself into the position of askee, you have more options as, crucially, you have not declared your position. On the other hand the askee, usually some sap of a guy, has stupidly put his cards on the table, just waiting to be trumped by the lady, who then dictates the play (which is how they like it).
Dating is like selling, Ian said - the more the merrier. Will Frankel said I'll give anyone two hours of my time.
But, as frequently occurs in other situations, money is the key. Regina pointed out that on practice dates the two people go Dutch. A vital line is therefore crossed when one of them insists on paying. A relationship has begun. The practice is now for real - maybe, but the maybe stage is when it gets to be fun.
Edgar is about to end a relationship, as he is losing his doctor. Reason: said doctor is abandoning insurance jobs, the bread and butter of most surgeries. But the price of the insurance company check is a roomful of records, with a staff to manage them. Something I still find it hard to come to terms with is the extent to which conversations with a GP here revolve round money, which often decides what sort of treatment will be implemented. I am on a physical therapy course, but I couldn't go back to my orthopedic specialist on the day of one of my therapy sessions as this would have breached some insurance rule. So I had to make an extra journey. For someone like Edgar, and the rest of us, it is vital to find a doctor who does play the insurance game. They charge much less for cash jobs, but they are still dearer. And anyway, we need insurance cover in case of suffering a major illness or injury. And when you're in the system you're in the system. It's like pregnancy: you can't be a little bit pregnant.
As this was the penultimate Conrads session before the Presidential election, discussion fell to who would win and what the winner would do about the crunch-recession-depression-crisis thingy.
The McCain-Palin show is looking very rickety, veering on a freak show - and that is the opinion of many Republicans. So is the way clear for Obama? Democrats refuse to believe it until it happens. The race card, so much more of a factor in the US than anywhere in Europe except perhaps Germany, muddies all rational discussion although newspaper commentators seem to be deciding that the positives and negatives roughly cancel out.
So we are likely to get a US President of color, a Democrat, who will inherit the worst econonomy since FDR in 1932. We have come so far and become so prosperous that it is still impossible for many people to imagine we could go back to the deprivation of the 1930s, mass unemployment, terrible poverty. But a penetrating article in the Wall Street Journal, End of the Age of Prosperity, shows how it could happen.
Everyone knows we lack confidence, but no one knows why and therefore no one knows how to restore confidence. The WSJ article suggested that we were suffering from precisely the same malady as in the 1930s: too much uncertainty. The election result will remove one strand of uncertainty but, despite FDR's magisterial leadership in the 1930s, his election was not enough of itself.
The new man can't do nothing and he will be constantly criticised for being too slow, too quick, too meddlesome, too much in the hands of the free-marketeers and Wall Street. The temptation to order the banks about will be immense. And, despite all that, we could languish for years until something happens to unify purpose. Let's hope it's not a world war again.
Ian spoke wistfully of the twilight world he inhabits, consisting of the three Cs: Conrads, the Coffee Gallery and Cantalini's. Is it a parallel universe or an alternative universe? I think it's one of an infinite number of satellite worlds that constantly circle LA, just as they do every great city. The center can only hold so much before activity bursts out. Hollywood and Beverly Hills burst out from Downtown, which has become reduced to satellite status.
Ian also highlighted a common problem in leafy Altadena, Pasadena and South Pasadena. When a tree sprouts branches into a neighbor's land, who does the law say is responsible for trimming it? Ian's black preacher neighbor turned up in his front garden to demand that Ian trimmed his tree, which had spread over the fence into the preacher's garden. Ian insisted that the part which was over his neighbor's space was his neighbor's responsibility - not so, Lynne subsequently discovered. The neighbor CAN cut it, with the owner's permission, but the obligation lies with the person on whose land the tree grows. Ian talked his neighbor into doing the job himself, with much mockery of his hand gestures and preacher's dramatic speech. But the preacher hadn't done his homework.
The internet would have settled that dispute, as it does so many others. The free access to such a storehouse of knowledge should make the present generation of children far better educated than their predecessors, as Bob argued, but Jim disagreed. How important is rote teaching? Or is it irrelevant?
Today's teachers would on the whole disdain drumming into their pupils the name of the capital of every US state, as Jim can recite, and spelling is going back to being the movable snack it was 200 years ago.
But memory is less important, as long as we remember to check facts. And today's adolescents seems better able to debate, perhaps because they are allowed to and perhaps because deference is disappearing like an outgoing tide. Few adults can nowadays get away with the clincher 'Because I say so!' It's simply not enough, and it never should have been.
Despite the internet and hundreds of TV channels, there are more bookshops than ever before. School orchestras and other special-interest groups flourish as never before. But is it enough? Only time will tell, says he as he tries to bring the blog to an end.
That's all folks, as the mighty Bugs Bunny used to say, until Lynne and I return from London on November 17. But the airwaves are open to anyone else to keep the series going....

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
Day trip? I thought he said a gay trip!
Once you've seen one wave you've seen the lot.
If you look right it doesn't matter if you've never acted in your life.
After van Gogh was assassinated he became van Gone - to Americans, at least. To Europeans he was just a nasty cough.
I dream about Hitler, not elevators.
My doctor called all his women patients Honey, but only because he couldn't remember their names.