Giant Lizards Rule the World

As one would expect, I have become the office expert on everything American.  Whenever something comes up in conversation relating to Bush, Obama, Brangelina, JLo (comes up alot actually), etc, my co-workers call on me to explain the who, what, why, where and how to them.  Sometimes, though, I'm left baffled.  

For example, earlier this week we were talking about the tragedy of John Travolta's kid dying.  I said I thought it was interesting that in the American press they were totally calling Travolta out saying that his kid was autistic but since they are scientologists they found some other disease to cover it.  In the British press, they actually acknowledged this Kawasaki disease, or whatever it was.  Well during the discussion the scientology questions began and I was supposed to answer.  "Are there a lot of scientologists in America?" "Do they really believe in no epidurals?" "What's the deal with no believing in mental disease?" and my favorite "Are they the ones who believe that a giant lizard is controlling the world, or the ones who believe there is an intergalactic battle taking place?"  ...."Ummm, yeah I don't know..all I know is that Tom Cruise is one, Leah Remini is one, Will Smith hangs out with a lot of them, and they don't believe in mental illness but they do believe in silent birth."  I wasn't quick enough on the keyboard to consult my new best friend, Wikipedia, this time to find out the truth before I spoke. 

I did, however, get to wikipedia just in the nick of time when they "why do Americans make everything French, when they clearly aren't?"  This came after my announcement that I got coffee for Christmas (my story was interrupted by mimics saying "cawwfee, cawwfee!! haha") and its French Vanilla, my favorite flavor.  One of my co-workers said, oh I love vanilla!  I said, no no, not vanilla, FRENCH vanilla.  And then the question of the hour came.  I asked for more example, and got hit back with french toast and french fries.  Well I bluffed my way though french toast saying that everyone knows french people love eggs (what?? I can't believe I didn't get questioned on that one), but for french fries I had to hit the internet.  I made small talk while searching telling the story of a long long time ago, back in 2003, when everyone stopped calling them french fries and started calling them FREEDOM fries.  They thought this was hysterical.  I explained that it was mostly conservatives doing this and it lead to an all out boycott of food, anything from France.  Some people went as far as boycotting Heinz ketchup because Teresa Heinz is married to John Kerry.  Of course this is where my father drew the line on his boycott because, clearly, Heinz is the only ketchup that actually tastes good.  

So during my tirade, I jump over to wiki and discover that there are several theories on why french fries are french fries.  One is that they are cut in the french manner, while another says that when Thomas Jefferson first described them (the first record of this happening in America), he said they were potatoes fried in a french manner.  Will we ever know the truth??  Do we care that much??  The world may never know.

On a side note, Trever is here this week and we are having a lot of fun hanging out after work.  She has mastered London and all of the tourist sights across town.  Last night we saw Avenue Q.  It was a little weird at first with the puppets, but very funny.  My favorite song was, "Everyone's a little bit racist".  This weekend we'll hit the town and Greenwich so I'm very excited to be doing touristy things!!