Adrian meets Richard X

Last night, I met Richard X, uber-producer. This is how it went.

*A slinkly bounces over*

A: Hi!
X: Hello.
A: drunken ramble, flyer, ramble, ramble, ramble, Contact, ramble, ramble, YOUR FACE!, ramble, ramble, Europop, ramble, ramble.
X: Where are you from?
A: Ireland.
X: Ah.

*A bounces off*

Place Quote: Australia's hidden racism

With Australia, it's always been a very devious kind of racism, it's always been well hidden. Whereas in South Africa, it's our there. It's in your face. It's blatant. The thing that's sold overseas - y'know, wonderful down-under country of sun, koalas and kangaroos... this land is drenched with blood.

• from Planet Ustinov, TV show

Place Quote: Cody - Buffalo Bill & Jackson Pollack

The people of Cody, in one of the more desperate commercial acts of this century, bought Buffalo Bill's birthplace and re-enacted it in their town. But they are lying through their teeth when they hint that he was a local. And the thing is, they have a talented native son of their own. Jackson Pollack, the artist, was born in Cody. But they don't make anything of that because, I suppose, Pollack was a complete wanker when it came to shooting buffalo.

• Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent, p.244

Place Quote: USA - Route 1

By the 1960s, Route 1 has become too congested to be practical - a third of all Americans live within twenty miles of it.

• Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent, p.139

Place Quote: American natural beauty

America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn't have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.

• Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent, p.86