CityHangover Guestblog, Vol VI

Look out people, the CityHangover Guestblog series can now be counted on two hands...

This installment comes courtesy of the illustrious J-Buckets, known for her skills in luxury living and underage drinking, to name a few. As the better half of the visiting New York born and bred L-Unit (her partner in crime has a bunch of his own internets), Buckets came, saw, and conquered Londontown like none only a few before her. And when the going got tough, she singlehandedly saved Thankgiving dinner, for which I am forever indebted.

Surviving Thanksgiving



If there is one thing I truly learned during my time in London, I’d say it is that Survivor is everything. EVERYTHING. All of the crucial moments of the trip can somehow be understood through a Survivor lens. (Survivor Wiki).

The Immunity Challenge: Cooking a Thanksgiving dinner in a country other than the United States. There were a number of reasons why cooking dinner was so difficult. In the first place, CJB’s sweet apartment did not come equipped with many of the necessary materials for cooking like pots, pans, measuring cups and measuring spoons. We got about half of these, not including the measuring items. CJB’s oven is not exactly what we Americans come to expect in a fully equipped kitchen. One would think since duck is so popular in England, turkey would be also common. Well, it’s not. Finding the ingredients for turkey—and pumpkin pie and various potato dishes—is not an easy task. The most challenging aspect was converting all of the American recipes into metric measurements so we could buy the right amounts (a shout out to Microsoft Excel). The carving of the turkey was not easy either. In this challenge we even had our very own Jeff Probst in other Americans at the grocery store. We were so loudly and comically struggling to find the ingredients and amounts that the other Americans in the store came over to us offering candid commentary and advice. I think Probst would have appreciated their efforts.

The Reward Challenge: Pilfering a bottle of wine from a restaurant (don’t worry, it was one that we had purchased) during an already dramatic meal. (Note: most of this is heresay from Joey.) Somehow, a viewing of the Chelsea v. Manchester United game took a serious turn to drunken town. After we returned from Clapham two porn magazines richer, we had dinner at Pizza Express (I think). We immediately had the waitress watching us because of an altercation with a lemon. I really do not like lemon in my water. So before the water was poured into the lemon-bearing glass, I threw the lemon on the table. CJB then threw it on the ground, to which the waitress responded, “I can see the lemon.” It was an auspicious beginning. At the end of the meal, we had only half-drank our bottle of wine. We attempted to take it, but the waitress wouldn’t let us. Not letting a wine tyrant get in our way, we successfully snuck that wine out of the restaurant. I think the reward is obvious: pride and wine.

Camp Discussion Between Challenges: 4 words—Yul, Terry, Gupta, Claudia. Not only was this trip Survivor-esque, but we talked about Survivor a lot. Yul from Survivor: Cook Islands was definitely the most discussed, but was closely followed by Terry from Survivor: Panama. Joey filled many conversations with his deep love, admiration and respect for this Terry character. CJB and I were unfamiliar with this Terry, but Joey just would not stop gushing. He must be pretty special. After Terry, there is Dr. Rajat Gupta. Gupta was mentioned up the wazoo. He was cited as someone to ask a bevy of questions; someone who has great achievements; someone who everyone loves; Gupta this Gupta that. There was really a lot of Gupta talk. Joey and CJB also claimed that I talked about one of my friends, Claudia, just as much as they talked about Gupta. However, I think that it is just not true. (Note: this Survivor discussion may not have been so dominant had this past episode not been so solid. I am still reeling from it.)

Tribal Council: 13-year-old English girls vote out three Americans. One of the funniest moments of the trip occurred as we were approaching Windsor Castle. We were discussing something, and given my two companions, it can only be assumed the discussion was of high volume. I guess something that was said was ridiculous or typically American because these three 13-year-old English girls started making fun of us. And how did they make fun of us? They invoked the rhetoric of Borat! They taunted us with “Yegshemesh! Yegshemesh!” It was HILARIOUS. Borat is really taking over the world. Or maybe I should say, the tribe has spoken and they are in an alliance with Borat.

The moral of the story, of course, is that Survivor is everything and if it doesn’t fit into a Survivor metaphor, it is just not worth mentioning. In any case, it was a great trip.