My friend the Brit

I've made a new friend at work. An editor named Simon. A jolly fellow who, even though he's lived in America these last twenty years, is still just as British as any you'll find outside of London. Thick lilting accent, wears soccer (sorry, football) jersies to work, and with his spiked hair looks like he just fell out of a Clash concert. And it's been a nonstop and thoroughly amusing anthropological study these last few days as I gleen more and more English-isms from him, which I will pass on to you now.

The first happened on the second day of the edit when Simon told me, "We're just waiting for the geezer to come in to record his V.O." So here I am expecting some old guy to come in the room when in pops some dude in his mid-thirties. After discreetly waiting for the guy to step into the soundproof booth I ask Simon, "I thought you said the voiceover guy was a geezer." Well apparently for the English a geezer is just our equivalent for "guy" or "dude." And if someone is a "diamond geezer" it means he's a really swell mate... not old gay fart.

On the third day, after showing Simon the multistep process needed to pull up a video source, he parroted the instructions back to me to make sure he'd gotten it right using the following narration: "Okay, so I do this, then that, click here, open that and boom, Bob's your uncle." Yes, that's right, 'Bob's your uncle' is British for, "There it is." Smashing.

Today as he sat around with us outside having a smoke before his session he got onto the topic of how much the rest of Europe hates the British. You think the world hates America, it's apparently a lukewarm emotion compared to their pure utter disdain for English fucks. That means whenever Simon finds himself in a bar in, say, Italy he is automatically viewed as the spokesman for the entire English people, forced to answer for just about everything from the Royal family to football rioters. And forget France, Simon won't even go there. "See ever since the war you Americans have somehow forgot what collosal pricks we all are." Apparently the Europeans have not had the proper distance to forget.

Funnily enough though, the Brits are surpisingly American when it comes to their vacations ('holidays' of course) in that, while they might travel to a foreign country, they look for places that are still, for all intents and purposes, very very English. Be it Holland, Spain, Germany, "They've got to have English food, English beer and they have to speak English. I'm on holiday mate. I'm not here for a cultural lesson."

They're all gems, I swear. I'll continue to post them as the come.