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Archive for May, 2007

Cambodian news: Kings, Norwegians, bombs and roadkill

Posted in Adoption, Cambodia, International Adoption on May 18, 2007| 2 Comments »

It was a week of events … sort of … in Cambodia, starting on Monday the 14th with King Norodom Sihamoni’s 54th birthday. The party went on for three days, the public holiday part of it anyway, and the papers were full of birthday wishes.

He looks great, too. Must be that dancer’s body thing. Cyd Charisse is in her 80s and still has great legs.

And how about this lalapalooza of a Phnom Penh celebration? Norwegian National Day.

Right. Bet that was a real blow out.

For a look at the film “Sentenced Home”, the story of three Cambodian refugees facing deportation from the US, see the Independent Lens site.

The information they give on how immigration law works is most interesting.

If you’re planning a trip to Cambodia via Thailand, a new route is being talked about.

A major battlefield during the peak of border conflicts with Cambodia in the 1970s, Ta Phraya has now turned into a potential gateway for tourists to visit Thailand’s neighbouring country. Ratri Saengrungrueng, chairwoman of a tour operators club in this eastern province, said the route to Cambodia from Ta Phraya, which is an alternative to the Aranyaprathet checkpoint, has gained popularity with tourists wishing to visit the famous Khmer temple ruins of Banteay Chhmar _ a gigantic 12th-century Bayon sanctuary housing a four-faced monument and a magnificent bas-relief depicting a 32-armed Bodhisattva lokeshvara.

Don’t try this at the drop of a hat, however, as border regulations are an obstacle, even for the Thais.

Cambodia has a Minister of Tourism. Hun Sen fired the last guy last week saying the “reshuffle was made to address some irregularities at the ministry to strive for further development of the mushrooming industry.”

The new minster, Thong Kon, says he’s ” … determined to strengthen the tourism industry by enhancing cooperation with the private sector.”

You know what that means, don’t you? More hotels, big development, probably a lot of golf courses. Ack! Progress. I hate it. Development! I spit in the eye of development. I am, obviously, in the minority on this.

Some big American companies are looking at doing business in Phnom Penh.

GE, ConocoPhillips, Oracle, Fed Ex and ITT Defense have all sent reps as part of a delegation that met with “senior Cambodian officials”.

Does the word “boom” ring a bell?

No? Well, how about “land grab”?

Koh Kong Sugar, one of at least 57 ventures awarded “economic land concessions” since 1992 under a plan to turn fallow fields into export crop plantations, is a glaring example of how Cambodia is being parcelled out to politically connected companies, land rights advocates said.

Land title is a mess in Cambodia, and has been ever since the Khmer Rouge turned almost the whole country into a giant collective. Records were destroyed and people were shifted all over the place. Afterwards, farms and homes took root wherever without much thought to legal deeds or claims.

In 2001, a law was passed allowing people to keep any land that they’ve worked for five years, but very few have the paperwork to prove it’s theirs.

Now, the country is looking like prime real estate in the making, so land value is skyrocketing.

Speaking of skyrockets … and that’s about as cheesy a segue I’ve ever manufactured … this story from zmag is fascinating.

In the fall of 2000, twenty-five years after the end of the war in Indochina, Bill Clinton became the first US president since Richard Nixon to visit Vietnam. While media coverage of the trip was dominated by talk of some two thousand US soldiers still classified as missing in action, a small act of great historical importance went almost unnoticed. As a humanitarian gesture, Clinton released extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. Recorded using a groundbreaking IBM-designed system, the database provided extensive information on sorties conducted over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Clinton’s gift was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind during the carpet bombing of the region. Littering the countryside, often submerged under farmland, this ordnance remains a significant humanitarian concern.

Going on from there, it details American bombing actions in the 60s and 70s. It’s astounding.

The data released by Clinton shows the total payload dropped during these years to be nearly five times greater than the generally accepted figure. To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.

And tragic.

Also tragic, the death of Kate Webb, on of the world’s true heros, and one of the few people on the planet I would have given a lot just to meet once.

Everything that a reporter should be, Kate was what every young woman with a dream of a life in journalism should aim toward, although very, very few will have the guts to do that.

Covering every major Asian conflict of her time, she put herself on the line over and over. Imprisoned by the Vietnamese army in Cambodia in 1971 and coming very close to death in Afghanistan more than once, she also worked in Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong after years in Viet Nam, and covered the Gulf War in 1991.

“She was a pioneer for female reporters and a role model for all foreign correspondents. She was one of the legends,” said veteran Agence France-Presse journalist Chris Lefkow, who covered the 1991 Gulf War with her.

The world is one Kate Webb poorer now, and that’s a crying shame.

Not gone, contrary to scientific thought for the past few years, is one of the meanest, scariest sounding creatures I’ve heard of in a long time, the Cantor’s giant softshell turtle.

What’s scary about a turtle?

Well, this one grows up to 6 feet long, buries itself in mud so no one can see where it waits, has a strike faster than a cobra and a bite that can crush bone. This in a country where no one wears shoes!

It may look like roadkill, but if you see one before it sees you, get the hell out of its way!

And that’s all I can do today.
Canot’s giant soft shell turtle

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The power rodent is off his wheel AGAIN

Posted in Island life, Seychelles on May 17, 2007| 2 Comments »

A person would be forgiven for thinking that eleven-plus years of life on a dinky tropical island would have me prepared for the little inconveniences that interrupt the flow of productivity on a regular basis. After all, we have all this sunshine and these fabulous to-die-for beaches where warm, azure waters gently kiss the shore — blah, blah, blah — so some sort of a trade-off seems more than fair. And, heck!, when things get stressful we should just grab the snorkel gear and go … shouldn’t we?

Bollocks.

I have work to do, and the damned electricity has been cut off all day. Finally, finally, after seven hours the power rodent has managed to find his way back on to his wheel and he’s commenced plodding away at his normal barely adequate pace, but something about being unpowered for most of the day has the Internet in my neck of the woods dead in the water … azure and warm though it may be.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that I spent the entire morning trying to convince a two-year-old that it wasn’t my fault that she couldn’t watch “Grease” for the nine-kazillionth time … she goes joyfully ballistic EVERY TIME the balloons drop at the end of the dance contest scene and loves to sing along with Stockard Channing … neither fan nor aircon could stir the sticky heat and three loads of laundry were not getting any cleaner.

I really should chuck it all and head for the beach on days like this, shouldn’t I?

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When crap is just crap

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Celebs, Entitled to opinions, International Adoption on May 16, 2007| 5 Comments »

Due to popular demand, this post has moved to the International Adoption Blog.

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The Bloody French

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Seychelles on May 15, 2007| 4 Comments »

As a follow on to posts about the recent elections here in Seychelles, I came across this article from August, right after the presidential election, from an angle that is SO typical of the French perspective.

Yes, the election observers were happy enough with the above-boardness of the polling and found nothing to criticize in the way the voting was held … blah, blah, blah … but the French who’d been sent to watch the proceedings were totally pissed off by the fact that the French language, “had been under-utilized in both the campaign and polling”.

The call was made in a statement by the representatives of the 53-nation bloc that gave a positive assessment of the polls but did not elaborate on how much French was used in the campaign or by electoral officials.

Can we guess that a big deal was not made in the general statement because only five of the observers were French and no one else could give a flying escargot how much French was used?

And why should they? The ballots are nothing but names next to photos, so where does language come into the process anyway?

A bit here about the names … we had some good ones, as usual for Seychelles, running for office … Waven William was my personal favorite, with Elise Channel Somebody, a man, a close second. My district’s winner’s first name is Wilby, which had me wondering if he has a brother called Wontby.

Complaining about, ” … anecdotal evidence suggesting that most speeches at rallies, printed campaign posters and election material were almost entirely in Creole with a smattering of English … ” is nothing more than a classic case of les raisins sont trop verts.

People here don’t like to speak French. They speak Creole, and when they run out of words … it being a word-poor tongue with few shades of gray … they like English. They like English films and English music.

Most Seychellois CAN speak French, they simply most often choose not to, a fact that annoys the French to no end.

The French, you see, have never been able to come to terms with the reality that has for the last hundred years or so, and increasingly, seen their language fade as English beomes the … shall I say it? … lingua franca of the global community.

They’re not giving up, though. Through a network of “La Francophonie” cells world-wide, they keep plugging away at stuffing French, if not down throats, then certainly at least into the mouths of as many people as they can as often as they’re allowed.

Not only are there Francophonie centers in former colonies like Seychelles, there’s even one in Sacramento, so they’re pretty darned pervasive, and all are determined to defend and protect the French language against the onslaught of English, no matter what.

Running under a motto that translates to “equality, complementarity, and solidarity”… a damned good example of why the language is losing favor … the modern version of Francophonie started in 1970 as a small club of Northern French-speaking countries. They’ve thrown their net wide, however, and now include … somewhat desperately, if you ask me … nations like Lithuania where 1% of the population can speak French and Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony that just happens to be surrounded by French-speaking countries.

So determined are the French to convince former colonies that moving along to a language their people prefer is not a good idea, their Embassy supports one of the three private schools here in Seychelles, the all French-speaking French School. The Brits certainly aren’t pushing their language to that extent, if at all; they don’t have to, as cultural popularity does it for them.

I used to do a radio show here on the only FM station in the country … Paradise FM … and had two standing rules on my show: nothing by Cher, and no French rap. In my book, or on my show, there’s no reason for either.

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Seychelles Election Results

Posted in Seychelles on May 14, 2007| 1 Comment »

Okay, I don’t have all the numbers in front of me, but that really doesn’t matter. The meat in the burger is that nothing has changed. Yes, there are a few new names and faces, but the proportions of SPPF and SNP stay exactly the same in the National Assembly … 23 seats for the SPPF and 11 for the SNP, including the unelected “proportional representation” seats.

SNP lost in two districts they’d previously held, and won in two that had been SPPF. (Bernard Georges won by a margin of 4 votes in Les Mammelles, so it was, as it always is, a case of every vote counting.)

In my village, Baie Lazare, the SNP candidate lost by close to 300 votes, with the breakdown something like 53% to 47% The biggest SPPF win was Praslin, where they got 75%.

The turnout was less than for the presidential election in July, but still over 75%, which is pretty darned good compaired to many countries. There were more spoiled ballots, most likely protest votes, than before.

The polling went calmly, and there was no violence. The obligatory driving around the island by winners waving flags happened on Sunday, and there were no problems there, either, as far as I’ve been able to determine.

This is probably a good place for me to start my campaign to get “none of the above” on every ballot in the world. If “none of the above” gets the most votes, the powers that be MUST go out and find new people or new ideas or whatever is being voted on until they come up with something or someone people really WANT to vote for. It seems totally undemocratic to have options dictated the way they are now, and if there was a way for the people to actually check a box that said, “We’re not happy with the choices you’ve given us,” then perhaps the smorgasbord on offer would get a whole lot more appetizing from the get-go.

I’m not talking here about Seychelles … in fact I’m thinking much more about how many times I voted in the States by grudgingly ticking alongside what I sorely hoped was the lesser of two evils. The few times I was excited about a candidate stand out because that happened so rarely.

Just a thought that’s been rolling around my head for the past, oh, 40 years or so.

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Election Day in Seychelles on Birth Mothers Day

Posted in Adoption, Seychelles on May 12, 2007| 1 Comment »

Things were calm at the polls, and aside from fairly long queues waiting for the stations to open at 7am, there were no crowds, just a steady stream throughout the day according to news reports. Early estimates predict a turnout of between 75% and 80%, but that won’t be official until late tonight when the winners are announced. I’ll be sound asleep, and more than willing to wait for the news until sometime tomorrow.

By the way, tomorrow is not Mother’s Day here, but just the same I’m wishing everyone who calls themselves a mom a lovely day.

Somewhere along the line, today has been appointed Birth Mothers Day in parts of the world … well, the US, at least … so I have spent sometime thinking about the women who brought Sam and Cj into the world. I hope they are well and that their lives are as happy and healthy as can be, and I thank them.

All in all, an interesting Saturday.

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Cambodia: Leopards and war crimes and cows … Oh, my!

Posted in Cambodia on May 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Welcome to a week of Cambodian news …

Starting with threatened strikes over pay cuts for garment workers, and the government is recommending a cut of 70% on shift allowance for working nights.

As it is, those on the night shift get twice the monthly pay … that’s $100, instead of the $50 of day workers — yes, per MONTH … and employers find this too expensive, so only about 10 factories run night shifts.

The Prime Minister says that lowering shift pay from 200% to $130% of day wages will create more garment factory jobs and ” … increase peripheral economic activities for those operating transport and selling food to the workers at night.”

The Garment Manufacturers Association agrees with Hun Sen … or vice versa.

Politics may have played a part in the removal of the Tourism Minister.

Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said the removal of Lay Prohas was another step by CPP to consolidate its power in the more lucrative ministries, English language newspaper the Cambodia Daily reported.

The UK’s Guardian Newspaper takes a look at the KR trials and history that’s worth a read.

The purveyors of doom and gloom have cast a pall of pessimism over proceedings. Rumours abound of international judges about to walk out, the tribunal on the verge of collapse, or speculation that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government is hell-bent on sabotaging the whole thing.

But the Phnom Penh reality is far more complicated and nuanced. The decades of cynical neglect during which time several Khmer Rouge leaders have died, including Pol Pot, and the tortured history of negotiations has made this a uniquely complicated tribunal from the outset.

There’s a lot more to it, so take a look.

This from the Washington Post about what Cambodian kids have been taught about the KR years is disturbing.

“Suppose that ever since 1945, Germany had been ruled by former Nazis,” said Philip Short, author of “Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare,” a biography of the Khmer Rouge leader published in 2004. “Would the history of the Nazi regime be taught honestly in Germany today? This is now Cambodia’s problem.”

Another article deserving attention is this about the Global Environment Facility and it’s new exec. She’s a hard-nosed, non-green business woman who knows her stuff.

The New York Times has another story about the worries about how oil may end up being a curse for Cambodia, a “poisoned bonanza”.

“This will be a watershed event for this country one way or another,” said the American ambassador, Joseph A. Mussomeli. “Everyone knows that it will be either a tremendous blessing or a terrific curse. They are unlikely to come out unscathed.”

Indeed, this is a land that already suffers many of the symptoms of the oil curse, even before a drop of oil has been pumped.

With its tiny economy, weak government institutions, widespread poverty and crippling corruption, Cambodia seems as ill-suited as any country to absorb the oil wealth widely expected come its way.

In the meantime, UNICEF has noticed that lack of sanitation is a problem for children’s health. Okay.

Estimating that only 16% of rural Cambodians have access to proper sanitation facilities, they have “identified” this as one of the major causes of diarrhoea, so are putting in wells and providing technical assistance to villages.

In the past year, UNICEF has implemented its Seth Koma project in six rural provinces. By improving water and sanitation access and hygiene, the project is helping Cambodians avert the preventable deaths of thousands of young children from diarrhoea and water-borne diseases.

I think I’ll look into this while I’m in Cambodia later this year.

One thing I don’t plan on spending time examining, however, are the royal cows. They’re predicting a bad season.

The result was mixed as the two fractious beasts, bedecked in red head cloths and golden silk rugs, turned their noses up at the majority of the seven golden dishes laid out before them, signaling a lean if mostly peaceful year ahead for the overwhelmingly agricultural country.

Two chocolate brown oxen were finally brought forward to choose from a feast including fresh grass, wine, water, corn, rice and sesame, but one refused to eat altogether and the other ate just 45 percent of a dish of corn before turning his back on the proceedings.

If they had eaten the grass or drunk the wine, Cambodia would have braced itself for war, chaos and turmoil. However their refusal to touch the water signals scarce rains for the coming rice season, according to palace Brahman priests present for the ceremony.

If you’re thinking no one takes this seriously, you may be interested to hear that Hun Sen was furious when the royal astrologers failed to predict deadly floods in 2001.

Maybe the cows aren’t happy, but there’s been some luck with leopards.

The first ever photographs of a wild leopard with young in Cambodia show that a pioneering project is helping to conserve wildlife and support local livelihoods there. The photographs were taken by the animals themselves when they triggered camera traps that had been set up by wildlife biologists working with local community rangers.

The article, adapted from a news release from WWF, has details about the leopards and projects in the Srepok wilderness area that are involving local people in conservations efforts and ensuring they have a stake in protecting wildlife.

Here’s something from Laurie Fenton of Emily’s Books:

Positions Available for Summer 2007 Putney Student Travel
Program Leaders in Cambodia
In this our 56th year, with alumni in all 50 states and abroad, Putney Student Travel provides unusual opportunities for small groups of high school students to share an exciting, educational summer.

We are seeking two qualified college graduates (one male, one female) to
lead a group of 16 high school students from the U.S. on our Global Awareness in Action program in Cambodia which focuses on Women’s and Children’s Issues. This program begins and ends with several days at Yale University during which participants in all 7 or our Global Action programs to different locations around the world meet to discuss challenges faced by developing countries. Each group spends 3 ½ weeks in its destination country exploring the group’s target issue through hands-on activities, meetings with local leaders and NGO workers, and extensive discussion. They also participate in cultural activities, and have some time available for visiting sites of interest including Angkor Wat. As a culminating activity,they prepare and present an in-depth, multi-media report to all other
Global Action participants at Yale at the end of the program. For more detailed information, please visit out web site at http://www.goputney.com .

Leaders must be at least proficient in Khmer (fluency preferred) and fluent in English. In-country experience in Cambodia is required. Knowledge of and professional involvement with women’s and children’s issues, and
experience working with US teenagers are important criteria in selection.

Leaders must be able to motivate and energize students in a wide range of situations and settings. Due to the high degree of independence and responsibility granted to leaders, successful candidates must be highly organized, have strong leadership skills, and must be able to work well with others.

Leaders receive a stipend of $1000 in addition to having all expenses paid. They are responsible for their own health insurance, and must be certified in Basic First Aid. Leaders must be present at an orientation in Putney, Vermont June 14-16, 2007. Travel to Putney is compensated. The program dates are June 29- August 2. If you are excited about the prospect of helping students learn about Cambodia and the challenges it faces, please e-mail a resume and cover letter outlining your experiences in language, travel, community service, working with young people, and leadership as soon as possible. Visit the Leadership Opportunities section of our website for more details:
http://www.goputney.com/About/Opportunities/opportunities_Frame.htm.

And if you’re near Lowell, Mass. the Angkor Dance Troop there is offering a Khmer language program for children staring Sunday the 20th of May and running for six weeks.

And there’s another week …

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Cooling off in Seychelles

Posted in Island life, Seychelles on May 10, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The news in Creole is on in the other room, prompting me to mull for a moment the election that will be held here on Mahé on Saturday.

Tonight’s coverage includes stories about voting that took place today. The citizens of Silhouette voted, as did people in essential services who’ll be working on Saturday … police, hospital workers and Air Seychelles employees who’ll be out of the country … who had a special voting station set up for them at English River, and apparently the turnout was good.

Last election saw more than 90% of eligible voters mark their ballots in the district I live in, and close to that everywhere else. Makes the 30% or less that bother in many US elections look pretty pathetic.

It really is all over but the shouting, campaign-wise, as we’re now in the “cooling off period”, a week of peace and quiet when anyone caught electioneering gets time in jail and a fine.

Such a fine idea! None of the last-minute hollering in hopes of changing minds, or pulling rabbits out of hats just before the polls open. Plus, it’s a whole week of time to digest without having new stuff stuffed down gullets in attempts to get people to choke.

And there’s none of this starting-years-in-advance stuff, either. This campaign lasted exactly 17 days. Seventeen days was plenty of time for all candidates to say their piece on TV and radio, for hats and t-shirts and umbrellas in party colors to be passed out, for rallies to rally and for as much debate as was going to happen to happen.

But this is a small country, and most people have known which way they’d be voting even before candidates were announced, so long, drawn out campaigns would probably only annoy the citizenry and inflame tempers.

International observers have arrived in the country, and everyone is ready.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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“Harold and Maude”: In love again

Posted in On getting older on May 9, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Harold and Maude
I’ve been accused of being Maude-like in a “Harold and Maude” sort of way, given my proclivity for younger men and a grab-the-brass-ring tendency to jettison stuff and security when something wonderful floats by, but in reality I can only dream of emulating the late, great Ruth Gordon’s rendition of the tiny larger-than-life character that is Marjorie Chardin, aka Maude. (To be honest, the comparisons aren’t meant kindly, but I take them that way, nonetheless.)

Should I ever reach the venerable age of ‘eighty on Saturday’ I can only hope that I’ll have it in me to wear kimonos, sing, dance, stick daisies in my hair and pose nude for artists. (In deference to my darling husband, I won’t wax all lyrical-like about snuggling for sunsets with a 22-year-old … and so on … but I have to admit the scene brings a pang.)

I watched the movie last night for the first time in years and fell in love with it, and them, all over again.

When I saw it in 1971 it was a movie about youth and yearning and learning that made me laugh. Funny how it’s morphed into an over-the-shoulder glance toward acceptance and contentment that I now find comforting.

The nostalgia it prompted kept me awake most of the night. So much of it was shot where my childhood played out … places I haven’t seen in many, many years … and those locations overlaid with the texture of the times in the costumes, the Cat Stevens music, and the 70s qualities of the images, so very ‘of its time’, set off a thrumming as the film resonates on so many levels.

One reverberation has to do with how different the 2007 world is from the 1971 … not in the sense of what’s been added, but what’s been taken away.

Seeing the art constructions on the mud flats off I-80 near Emeryville transported me to the back seat of my parent’s Ford when my brothers and I … all kids under 10 … couldn’t wait until we passed, craning our necks for a good look at what was new in that ever-changing outdoor exhibit of creativity and political opinion. They were removed from the scene before I was, and I have no idea what there is to look at from that stetch of freeway these days.

And the old Dumbarton Bridge! I understand it was replaced in the 80s, but it’s been thirty years or so since I was needing to get across to visit Aunt Mary.

The scene mentioned above, the one I refrain from allowing myself to place a future version of me in should a quarter century still find me here, when Harold notices the concentration camp tattoo on Maude’s inner arm, for example. The shot lasts a second or two, so short that a young viewer now would miss it completely … yes, and the Dreyfuss quote will pass over many heads, too. In 1971 the world had many people wearing the nazi brand … their memories were alive and walking around. That doesn’t happen much now, if at all. My generation is the last that will see numbers on an arm flash by and react from the gut. That time is finished, we’ve moved on, and history is swallowing much of what I was taught to believe was as permanent a scar on the soul of humanity as anything could ever be.

Not so. It’s all an eye blink.

My father, Aunt Mary, Ruth Gordon … all dead now, and for some reason ‘Harold and Maud’ has me missing them and wishing I’d lived a little bit more every day of 1971 and since.

I lost a ring in the sea here 14 years ago, and I find myself looking for it every time I snorkel. Not any more. From now on, I’ve decided, “I’ll always know where it is”.

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Out of the loop:Paris Hilton is a person? Go figya …

Posted in Celebs, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in on May 7, 2007| 3 Comments »

I am so out of the loop that the loop doesn’t even look like a loop any longer … it’s more like a spiral my eyes can’t follow very long before they start to water and cross.

I’ve not lived in the US since 1993, and a lot has happened in America in the intervening years.

Politics are almost unrecognizable to me, for example. I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around the fact that an election went wonky and that the “decider commander guy” has been running the show for quite a while now. And my home state, the land I remember as Jerry Brown country, now takes orders from Arnold. That’s just too strange.

I haven’t seen any one of the past three years’-worth of Oscar winners and can no longer do the NYT crossword puzzles. Who am I trying to kid? I can’t do the TV Guide crossword any more. I have never seen an “Idol” show, or Reality TV of any kind … well, not since Candid Camera. I have no idea who anchors network newscasts, and although I do know Rush Limbaugh … he used to be a loud-mouth fat jerk in Sacramento, so we bumped into each other (shuddering yuck) often … but have no clue what an Imus is or sounds like.

Since it’s a small island in the Indian Ocean I live on and not Uranus, there are whiffs of pop culture that occasionally drift in, and certain times of the year we even get Larry King Live here … and what better smorgasbord of celebrity is there on offer than Larry’s? … but just hearing a name yacking about themselves for the half-hour before CNN switches to the BBC mid-way through whatever I’m trying to absorb does not necessarily convey context, and it’s context I’m so definitely lacking.

For example: Who the hell is Paris Hilton, and why do even I know her name? I get that she’s blond and rich, but I don’t understand why anyone cares.

I suppose I could pass for the celebrity litmus test … If Sandra’s heard of you, you must be famous … just don’t ask me to have an idea about who you are or what you do.

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