Accents

I've always admired people who could do accents. It's really incredibly difficult -- it's like being a singer. Someone who tries to imitate an accent and fails -- well, your ears hear it, and it's just like going to a karaoke bar.

But people who can do accents, and do them well -- it's like magic. All of a sudden, the person you thought you were talking to is no longer the person you thought you were talking to (I come across this all too often, when Tai-chan, my own son, suddenly starts speaking rapid-torrent Japanese to his relatives, and even though my Japanese vocabulary is greater than even his, there is no way I can ever hope to achieve his casual, unthinking fluency. Thus, he becomes a completely different person right there in front of me. It's really quite disconcerting).

However, through my early years, I was forced to adapt a lot -- going to British boarding school was a major proving ground, so naturally, as a 12 year-old, I had a very pronounced "Prince William" accent. But I grew so tired of people back in the States saying "Oh, are you from England?" that I worked double time to speak American. You wouldn't be able to tell any more, but then again, it has been thirty-five years.

I would never think today of saying "hahlf" instead of "haff." "Cahn't" instead of "caant."

But watch out -- I do a mean Australian, despite never having been there. I once went to a party in the SF loft district in the punk era and I did the whole night as an Australian, à la Crocodile Dundee. People were simply amazed, as if I was some garden gnome who had somehow just popped into being in their midst.

I went up to Bob Weir, he of the Grateful Dead, who just happened to be entertaining court with some fawning fans, and I put on my best leer and said "Heer, mate. Ahhhrnt ye Bob Dylan?"

That brought down the house.

I'm watching a PBS special about old crime shows and Peter Graves does a Russian, completely deadpan, and the transformation is so amazing that I almost fell off my stool laughing.