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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
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Daily Blah for... Friday, March 03, 2006
The Americanization of Clapham
I have, on past return visits to the UK, been concerned -- no, that's too strong a word, saddened -- by the increasing American-ness of just about everything. Every year, there were more baseball caps, SWAT T-shirts, fast-food chains and Starbucks in evidence on high streets. Every year, television content seemed a little more dumbed-down. I wouldn't have minded if my countrymen had heartily embraced American style with the full flush of fashion, but this just seemed like a pale imitation, a half-hearted colonization. A Big Mac over here, for example, tastes like cardboard; the American version, as I found out on my first trip to New York in 1992, is gourmet by comparison.
So I came braced for the same sadness this time around, and have been pleasantly suprised to find the era of pale American imitation seems to have bottomed out -- and that where the transatlantic culture is making inroads, it is doing so selectively and heartily. This week Rich and I visited Bodean's BBQ in Clapham Common -- yes, Clapham, South London central, home of the man on the Clapham Omnibus (the British equivalent of "will it play in Peoria?" is "what does the man on the Clapham Omnibus think?"). We went warily, expecting a pale imitation of the kind of 1950's diner that never existed in the 1950's. But no -- the ambience was pitch-perfect dark American bar, the TVs were chock full of March Madness, and the hefty slab of ribs I received tasted like real ribs, not cardboard. The only difference was that I was expected to slather on my own BBQ sauce from a bottle. Hardly authentic, but hardly unwelcome from a health standpoint. I'm not big on sauces.
Only one slight hiccup: the beer mats advertized Anchor Steam, a San Francisco brew, but Anchor Steam was not available. The waitress explained that they had been found and thrown on tables carelessly to add to the authentic American charm, rather in the same way that the Japanese like to choose random English words for their T-shirts.
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