Europe for President on Norwegian TV (NRK 1 - Safari)

Today the campaign got a new supporter, to all intents and purposes, The Norwegian government, since they run Norwegian TV pretty heavy-handedly...

Oh weeell, no complaints. We all need all the help we can get, and thank you for it, tax-payers wherever you are, from Otta to Oslo.

Altheimer is currently under-cover in the States, doing some stealthy campaigning and presumably stacking up some powerful headaches along the way, along with Hillary I should hope. He was last spotted on Alvarado, downtown LA, sporting a sailors outfit, carrying a baguette, or a "flute" as some say, with finer tastes and knowledge than myself.

He's a true hero Altheimer. Make no mistake about it. He's out there suffering for all us sinners. Me, I'm back to peeling potatoes again. See you in the fall, hopefully.

Check it out ( about ten minutes in) here!
Or enjoy the screen-shots below, with poetic Norwegian subtitles.

Gearing up

Europe for President is slowly gearing up again after months with prosaic fundraising. We have a slate of new youtube campaign videos on European Central -- thanks to Mike Gravel

Swedish TV is showing story on our progress on March 10:

We are also in promising talks with potential European sponsors for a big push these coming months.

A diary film from July's campaign trail is up: Europe '08 diary

Please don't forget to support the European cause. All contributions are deeply appreciated.

Help Europeanize America! Do the PayPal!

Press Release

Europe for President ‘08 rally in East London

The European campaign to take over the White House in 2008 takes a break from the American campaign trail to shore up financial support from American ex-pats and Europeans in London. Alma Enterprises on Vyner Street will be hosting the glamorous event on October 12th.

Thomas Altheimer, who announced the ambitious campaign on Manhattan on the 4th of July this year, is looking to back and assist a native-born American who will pledge to run for president on a platform of European issues in 2008 —
Issues like increased international cooperation, the slashing of greenhouse emissions, secularism, decadence and good taste. The European campaign is yet to find a qualified candidate. Several talented Americans have offered their services but up until now negotiations have foundered on the size of the fee.

Altheimer comments on this occasion: We are still a little short of our goal to raise $200.000 here at the end of the third fund-raising quarter. We need more money to ensure we get the best candidates on the European ticket in ‘08.

It was a big surprise for us to see our American competitors suddenly troll for campaign cash in our European homeland — it is the first time in my memory that any presidential candidate has come abroad in a fundraising effort. A few weeks ago Rudy Giuliani hosted a luncheon at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge. Michelle Obama is set to host three fundraising dinners on Oct 15 at the Landmark Hotel in Marylebone and Hillary is sending her husband Bill to host a fundraising event on Oct 3 at a venue in Windsor Great Park. Like Clinton we will be offering donors a special "honored guest" status, which includes a photograph with me.

In view of these efforts to encroach on our hinterland, we have decided to return to London to advertise the European alternative in the 2008 American Presidential Election and tap into European money before our American friends gets to it.

Altheimer added: I know we have a huge task in front of us but I am confident that Europe will win the hearts and minds of the great American people. America is just too important to leave to the Americans!

We'll Be Back!

Oh yes. And make no mistake about it. We've only vetted our dry European tongues this time around. We'll be back and we'll be victorious. A new dawn awaits America - welfare, multilateralism and style are coming your way - in a big way.

We leave you now with a box full of memorabilia and impressions, a few bruises and a strong resolve. But don't you worry. Our sponsors are happy. They've seen we're up to the task. And more money is flowing our way, just as the little dial on my watch is doing its inevitable rounds.

A large thank-you to all our helpers along the way. You will get your just reward in due time.

For now we bid you a heartfelt farewell - and hasta luego!

Shooting - The End of Our Journey

Shooting - Altheimer, Arkansas

The Clintons – Part I - The love plot

It is early morning at the Europe ‘08 HQ at O’Donnell’s in Boston. Yesterday, the European campaigners made a serious stab at getting to the bottom of the stash of alcohol, which O’Donnell’s research colleague from Harvard Business School left behind in a frenzied, narrow escape—resettling with his family in the draft free country of Canada. There is a littering of empty bottles and star-spangled blue paper flags in the sitting room. Alas, I believe that glasses were raised more than funds at yesterday’s dinner.

We have a Clinton rally scheduled at 10 am in Keene, NH, but our driver is incapacitated—he’s nowhere near recovery, he hasn’t even begun to recover. Instead, our gracious host offers to drive us and so we load Sancho Panza onto the back seat to sleep it off.

Before we head off north, deep into the orange forests of Massachusetts Dunkin’ Donuts road signs (believe me, they’re big here, really big!), we swing by a lush, green grove—a drive-in Starbucks on the outskirts of Boston. Drive-in Starbucks! Hegel would have found this to be the incarnate of the absolute idea—a mark of an illustrious civilisation, a sign that the four horsemen still has great distance to cover to reach our part of the universe.

We arrive at the Keene State College in the small New Hampshire town of Keene a quarter to ten when Hillary is scheduled to appear. As with the Rudy G town hall meeting, we are given press credentials straight away — without us asking for it. The set-up with a hung over, hatted, bearded and casually dressed Simon, carrying the camera and me in the suit and the strange accent seems to be the textbook definition of a foreign TV-journalist team. — At least in the eyes of inexperienced locals in charge of press credentials. This time we of course looked slightly more professional with O’Donnell as a local guide. But inside the press tent alongside crews from CNN, ABC, NBC etc. etc., our equipment gives us away: the Sony PD150 is the signature camera of small time ‘independent film makers’. Amateurs they are.

The rally takes place in the corner of a football field at the college. The audience is arranged in the stands with the rostrum alongside at one end and a seating area behind reserved for the local party notabilities. Banners and yards signs drapes the scene: 'Ready for Change,' 'Hillary!,' 'Clinton Country.'

The rally DJ is playing Celine Dion. It is a song which allegedly won the popular vote for the signature campaign song on hillaryclinton dot com — “You and I”—the horror, the horror.

The sun is beating down; the Clintons are late. At 10.30 the heat is already becoming unbearable.

Simon takes up position with the camera on a platform reserved for at the end opposite to the rostrum. I’m in the press tent getting coffee, fruit salad — with journalist’s small talk seeping in through the filter: ...left Denver this at 5...coming in through Logan...the traffic on the northbound 3 was horrible.

Two press officers from the Clinton campaign are making rounds among the journalists. Both young and good-looking women who seem to click well with male journalists—which is why they’ve been chosen, I guess. One of them, Karen, a petite blonde in a flowery dress with fashionable sunglasses on her head, gives me a huge smile. Her interest in me abruptly evaporates as she learns that I’m a foreigner—not even with a news network—that we are making independent film.

Senator Clinton is very late. Two hours—apparently due to an important vote in Congress. The sun is unrelenting. O’Donnell and I are in the stands; using Hillary signs to shade ourselves.

The crowd is abuzz with excitement when the presenter announces that the Clintons finally have arrived in Keene. We go down to hang out at the entrance behind the grandstand—in the forest of satellite transmitter trucks—to catch Hillary as she arrives.

But then in the shade of a modest toilet building, we are whisked off by an authoritative press officer, Jamie Smith, colleague to the petite blonde.

Journalists are not allowed at the back. She asks us to follow her across the backstage area to get to the press area. The moment after our passage is blocked by an aggressive secret service agent. Ms Smith and the agent have an angry exchange. The SS apparently only allows people to enter the back area if they wear a pin with a star.

As he watches the two quarrelling, Thomas Herzen spots a pencil twirled in a sloppy bun of Ms Smith’s long chestnut coloured hair—in an instant all sounds fade away to make way for a silent, frozen moment in time. Standing next to the toilets on a football field in Keene, New Hampshire, Herzen falls in love with the wonderfully commanding press officer Ms Jamie Smith.

And so we’ve found our love plot—the European now has a foot on each continent—a storyline that should make for a lot of interweaving subplots and slapstick situations. Will he be true to Europe? Will its most dedicated servant deceive Europe? Will he shift his allegiance to Hillary on account of his love?

J Smith with her former boss Madeleine Albright

The SS agent at work

Wearing the all-important star

Shooting - Ever Deeper South

Ah, the Personal

The private neuroticism of great men. Their ideas tested and found to be lighter than a duck’s fart - in private. Altheimer, the great European of so many fancy ideas sits next to me in the passenger seat. He keeps pounding the dashboard furiously. He wants out. He can’t stand to be in a car. He screams and attempts to open the door, but we’re actually moving, much faster than he thinks. Ah, such a symptomatic image for the whole thing. Because, you see, Altheimer is a man of action. He really is. He changes things. He moves proverbial mountains, but he doesn’t notice. He’s blind as a mole to seeing the things he achieves. And this leaves him rather frustrated, to say the least.

Shooting - The Long Swing South

McCain

We spent some days in New Hampshire on our own parallel track to the official campaigns. Both in order to raise attention to the Europe ’08 campaign but also to pick up the pieces if a candidate should concede defeat. That is, we would then ask if they’d wish to join the European ticket as vice-president instead.

No dice on the Clintons at a rally in Keene of course, but then we had a luncheon with John McCain scheduled later that day at Marriott in Concord. McCain just back from another trip to Iraq had to face questions on his foundering campaign. The mood was that he might concede today. The media would be sure to converge on Concord.

We had Clinton at 9am in Keene and then McCain at 1, plenty of time to get to the luncheon in Concord. But the Clintons let the crowd wait for two hours apparently due to an important vote in the Senate that morning. In Concord at 1.30 we were still driving up and down exits on the dodgy directions of locals to find Marriott.

We pulled past a column of news vans and satellite uplink trucks at 2 on Marriott’s parking lot an hour late. Reporters were on the sidewalk delivering their schtick to the cameras. Not a good sign — it looked like we missed another opportunity for free food.

The lobby was filled with journalists tapping away on laptops. One shook his head, when I asked him whether McCain had quit. We then went down a long, narrow corridor to find the luncheon venue. Workers were taking down the podium and waiters clearing tables as we entered. I asked one if we had missed the food. Taking pity, he went out back to return with some chocolate mousse in a cocktail glass.

It was a miserable scene as I had my mousse; sitting by myself at one of the many empty tables, studying a McCain flyer left by patrons with waiters still clearing away around me.

Back in the corridor I went to relieve myself. As I returned from the rest room, I passed McCain and a small entourage coming down the corridor. Looking very old, very small and very frail, he looked up at me as I passed him. His gaze lingering for a moment, he tried to ascertain whether this face required his attention. It did not.

Shooting - The Clintons for Europe

The end of the rainbow

Standing there on a dirt lot in Altheimer, Arkansas, in the late afternoon July light, I feel like I’ve finally found my home in this world. This will be my mission in life: to make Altheimer prosper and thrive.

We go out to the former head office of Synergy Gas to see whether it will be a fitting HQ for our future work. What looks like a former gas station seems to have been left in a hurry. Through the dark brown glass façade, I see a counter with calculators, a cash register, buckets of paint and a single chair. A letterbox carries an old campaign flyer: A fellow named David Rosegrant running for Jefferson County Sheriff: “I now am asking you to entrust me with your vote. I am running for Sheriff because I will provide the leadership and experience needed to fight crime and protect you and your family.” Behind the office building is a littering of gas tanks. I stand at the fence that surrounds the tank back lot—arms on fence, facing a low setting sun across the flat, green landscape, I think I have finally found peace with myself. This is the end of the rainbow. This is what I’ve been frantically searching for throughout my life: a place, an identity.

Shooting - The Boston Push

Altheimer, Arkansas

It is Sunday. As the light of day softens we approach Altheimer, Arkansas. There is a ceremonial quality to the mood in the car. Driving through the landscape we studied on Google Earth four weeks earlier, it feels like we are in the ante-room to the sublime. Altheimer is our grail—the climax of our quest westwards. On the map it looks like one has to turn down a smaller road from the 79 to reach it. This is not the case. Suddenly we’re just there. The main street of Altheimer branches off from the 79 and connects with it again a mile further down the road. A faded sign in the roadside ditch states the facts in red lettering: Altheimer, pop. 1024. Home to the Altheimer Red Devils. We drive through to get a sense off the place and decide to set up shop on a dirt lot next to a slightly raised railway track that cuts the town in two halves. The day has now shifted into melancholic Sunday afternoon lights, which heightens the spiritual feel of the moment.

The lot appears to be the centre of Altheimer. It is where a central square would have been, had there been one.
There are no people around. We’re just across from the National Bank of Altheimer. A fire engine that looks like an oversized toy with Altheimer printed on sides and front is parked on a patch of grass between the bank and a ramshackle one-storey building, which seems to house the police. Two patrol cars with ‘Altheimer Police’ on the doors are parked in front. On the farther side of the grassy patch is Altheimer’s version of the ubiquitous water towers. No ‘Altheimer, AR’ on this one—an exception in this state.

A coke vending machine in front of the police beckons the travellers. Coke in hand I decide to pay the police a visit. Some kind of police radio chatter comes trickling through the frame of a brown, darkened glass door. No sheriff around—the door is locked with a chain. A peek through renders an empty office. No crimes in Altheimer, Arkansas on a Sunday.

We take pictures of the Europe box sitting on the side step ledge of Altheimer’s fire engine. Then finally a sign of life. A red SUV crosses the track from the South side and pulls up next to the European circus. A boisterous black driver calls to us out the window across a woman in the passenger seat—presumably his wife.
A great encounter in world history: Altheimer meets the mayor of Altheimer, Donald ‘Bruce’ Robinson. ‘Wadda y’all doin here?’ ‘Making some kinda film?’. Robinson hands us his business card which states the facts: Donald (Bruce) Robinson, Mayor of Althiemer (sic!). He’s been in office for three months and apparently already got momentum behind some big reforms. It is very difficult for me to understand what he’s saying. His wife is all smiles and very motherly; from her elevated SUV position next to me at the window, she spots a bug on my jacket collar and of her own initiative brushes it off as I converse with her husband.

Donald Robinson is enthused by the advent of Hollywood in Altheimer. He attempts to reach a journalist from neighbouring Pine Bluff who covers Jefferson County news. But, alas, it is Sunday. No news on a Sunday. We then discuss the prospect of us setting up shop in Altheimer, the European campaign HQ; Robinson has a few suggestions. There is the school, which shut some years ago. Also the former Synergi Gas office-building out on East Front Street. Plenty of office space—all businesses seems to have either shut or left Altheimer. Not even a gas station here. We agree that I call Donald from the hotel in Little Rock tomorrow--then the merry mayor couple drove off in search of gas in a neighbouring town.

WKRN, Nashville

John Dwyer's blog at WKRN, News 2

Arkansas

I am in the Starbucks across from Whole Foods Market on P Street in Washington, DC. The spectacle of the street is a textbook rendering of affluence. The middle and upper classes haul their Syrah, Roquefort and freshly cut mango in biodegradable brown paper bags the short distance from the cash register to the trunk of open-top Volvos and Volkswagens. I have seen this before. I have seen it in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Chelsea, London. It is all very familiar to me.

But this entry is not about the familiar. It is about Arkansas in the Midwest. Home to the Clintons and Southern Baptists:

We crossed the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee. Entering Arkansas we went off the 40 Interstate and headed south towards the town of Altheimer. Landscape lush, green, very flat with occasional groves. Open view across miles and miles of green fields. Fields of corn, rice and cotton, big ponds for catfish farming. The stretch of road—highway 79—is of course straight as an arrow for most of the 250 kilometres. With only three or four bends to break the monotony of American geography. For me as a passenger, uninitiated in the car driving mysteries, it is a cruel and prolonged exercise in patience. At times nervous energy brings me to the brink of detonation. Continually exposed to outbursts, Simon then has the sorry task of trying to temperate mood swings by asking questions in order to occupy my racing mind. I can’t pace. I must pace. And there’s lots of space to pace in this country. But cars are not made for pacing. They are straight jackets with wheels.

We drive through small towns—most with boarded up shop fronts and gas stations. We see people. They see us. They are all engaged in the same activity: either they are driving around on little tractors, mowing lawns—or they are driving around in their pick-ups with lawn mowers in the back. As we stop for gas, our car is wedged between two cars with trailers carrying lawn mowers. A scantily dressed white woman in her thirties—cut off jeans, tank top—drives the one in front. She gets out to fill the lawn mower. Her conduct is very manly. As she pulls out from the gas station, gas spills from the top of the mower onto the road.

People stare at us as if we just pulled in from Alpha Centauri.

In each town immaculately white water towers seem to be the only dignified architecture. They all carry the town name, printed in huge black letters, commemorating the nostalgia of Nineteenth century European settlers: Stuttgart, Ulm, England, Sweden.

We stop at a grove to find a pole for the European flag. Leaving the air-conditioned car, the blinding heat merrily embraces my neck-tied, suited body. Three minutes trying to break a branch off a tree equals three litres of liquid.
I give up and go to find a branch in a pile of rubbish in the ditch next to the road. It suits its purpose perfectly. The flag mounted I walk up and down the straight road; sweat running like streams on a melting glacier. Simon is in the grove filming.
A pick-up passes by. It stops with screeching wheels further down the road, pulls over. A silent audience to the European performance.

Shooting - Into the Heartland

Question for Rudy

I am Thomas Altheimer from Europe and the Project For A New European Century.

I am afraid I must tell you that I was a bit offended by your dissing of Europe—equating Europe with dark socialism and America with bright capitalism. I believe Europe is much more and has a lot to offer the US in terms of leadership, cutting-edge business and banking.

Nevertheless, I find you possess valuable charisma and a strong European slant with your background in New York City and Italian ancestry.
We are making this film here [Altheimer gestures towards the camera behind him] about our attempt to launch a European candidate for president in the United States. And so we’d like to take this opportunity to offer you the post of vice-president on our European ticket in 2008.

Shooting Europe - The Campaign Trail

Harlem street scene

Ok, so I’m wearing the standard European uniform: black suit, black shirt, black tie, tan combat boots; topped off with a European flag pin on the lapel. 2 pm. Its 32 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit?). I’m lugging the Europe 2008 campaign box as I turn a corner from Amsterdam down West 126th Street in Harlem where the rehearsal space is located. The laptop case is strapped over my shoulder, creasing the jacket. The box has 12 litres (343 ounces?) of water for the talents who’ve been slotted for a casting session with 15 minutes intervals. It also carries a wine cooler, a 2 by 2 metres (78 by 78 inches?) European flag, 12 DV tapes, two 1 metre by 70 centimetres (34 by 76 inches?) Europe ‘08 campaign posters, 95 party-sized European paper flags, 8 lapel pins, 6 bumper stickers, two mugs decorated with the European flag, one can of Budweiser, 65 flyers (size A4 or US letter), one football (soccer ball?) and one copy of People magazine with a cover story on Paris Hilton’s prison diaries (the American version of Antonio Gramsci's?).

I pass by cars on the curb, open doors, black boys inside, outside and on top; rap music blasting from the stereo. Liquor stores with Asian men passing beer, one by one, to costumers through a tiny square hole cut in the bullet proof perspex. Groups of squat Hispanics all dressed in overalls, NY Mets shirts and baseball caps, ‘hanging out’. Still turning the corner I am tagged to the canvass of a figurative gaudy depiction of a bustling Harlem street scene, tagged to the canvass by the severe heat and the black suit I am wearing, by a metal box seemingly stuffed with stones and a handle grinding the undernourished flesh of the right hand.

Then, in the next frame--life and street back to full speed--I am sucked into a pocket of stinking hot air. The scent and heat so unbearable that only instant death would save me. A series of rattling air conditioners is behind this vile black hole version of hell. Mounted in the windows of a live poultry outlet.—Through the storehouse loading bay: a view of poultry crammed in cage boxes stacked from floor to ceiling.

The weather in this country is a serious challenge to the European dress code. And they tell me it is even worse in Mississippi. Ill omens for our 2008 campaign for president.

Appearance on Lexington

Press conference at Carlito’s, Lexington Ave, Manhattan—Friday July 6th, 5 pm:

First of all I’d like to thank Carlito’s for its generosity in hosting this first European press conference on US territory.

I also thank all for joining us here today. It is humbling to see a crowd like this. This goes beyond our wildest expectations.

We have crossed an ocean proudly to announce to the great American people the launch of a European campaign for president for 2008. Embarking on this epic endeavour two days ago on Independence Day, we have been overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response from New Yorkers. Our journey is long and the trials will be many but adversity for us means only stronger determination and resolve.

Our first challenge is to find a native-born American who will pledge to run for president on a platform of European issues in 2008 —
Issues like increased international cooperation, the slashing of greenhouse emissions, secularism, decadence and good taste. We hope to find this person in the coming days and weeks and in the process set up an American European Party, which will render the necessary mobilisation and organisation to get the candidate on the ballot across the nation.

After years of failed leadership we have been called to help America regain its footing and position in this world as a pioneer of freedom and democracy. The world needs America to lead us into the future, gently assisted by a strong hand from Europe. America is simply too important to leave to the Americans.

Europe is not only calling for willing candidates to come forward but also for volunteers to turn out and march with us, work with us to finish the work that needs to be done to usher in a new birth of sophistication and wise rule on this planet.

If you will join us in this quest, if you feel the call of Europe, and see as we see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us in a union of America and Europe, see with us that in the face of barbarism, there can be civilisation, in the face of ignorance there can be intelligence; in the face of poor taste there can be sophistication; Then I am confident that we together can win the hearts and minds of the great American people to reach for the impossible.

Being 'It' in Copenhagen

Woke up and remembered a dream, which I don’t do very often, so I was pleasantly surprised, although I was still technically sleeping, weakened by five days of celebrating my new life as a thirty-year old. The person who woke me was Mr. Altheimer. He had a mug of coffee for me, half full, half empty, and said we had to leave in half an hour, which left me half an hour to do the usual things in order to get ready. Ample time for someone like myself, because you see, metaphorically I sleep with my clothes on. I just need to wake up.

I wasn’t awake now, half an hour later, although I was dressed, even sporting a hat, a so-called “sport’ straw number, with a brown band and a slight curve. A nice hat by all standards, but then again, not being awake it was like dressing a heap of dung with a white linen table-cloth. We got in a car. It was raining. I was filming. Mr. Altheimer laconically pointed out the blond girls of an early morning Copenhagen, all straddling their bicycles as the rain peppered their thighs.

We got there half an hour late. We discussed our tactic quickly before entering. And we both probably thought we didn’t have one, and that that was just as well. “The as-if principle” I said. And Altheimer nodded. Act as if you’re ‘It’. So we entered as ‘It’. And someone accepted us as ‘It’, and we talked about ‘It’ with this someone, and when we left we were convinced we were ‘It’, and apparently that is all that matters.

Campaign itinerary I

The first European campaign itinerary has now been set:

East Coast: New York, July 4-9. Boston, July 9-11, New Hampshire, July 11-13. Then a push South (they must win the south!) -- Nashville, July 14, Memphis July 15, Little Rock July 16, the village of Altheimer in Arkansas, July 17. (following Hillary’s slogan ‘It takes a village!’ Then Jackson, Mississippi, July 18. Birmingham, Alabama, July 18. Rounding off with Washington, DC, July 19-21.

The quest and the protagonists

Our two protagonists are the tall, thin and fancy-struck Thomas Altheimer, 35, who believes himself one day to become a great leader, and the somewhat thickset, worldly Simon Robertsen, 30, who believes himself one day to become a great novelist. —Both are European, middle-class, single. Altheimer has children from an earlier relationship. The two men are friends.

Despite acute financial difficulties and a great deal of emotional anxiety, the two men travel to the US in July 2007. For Thomas Altheimer it is yet another quest for self-sacrificing greatness. For Simon Robertsen it is more a quest for literature and self to stuff in his novel.

Altheimer is the leader. He is paying (through a grant from the Arts Council). He is staking a lot on this venture. Not so with Robertsen, he is tagging along. He has time to spend before he is to start in a new job--to some extent indulging in his friend’s fancies but also with a feeling that there might be fortunes somewhere down the uncharted road.

Robertsen: “It is summer and summer must be spent away from home. I could just as well tag along, although it might involve some schlep. I’m in charge of spin and documentation, filming. But at least I’m not paying.”

Altheimer claims they are acting on a mandate to further European world leadership. He speculates that the US can no longer be trusted to get itself out of the crisis of confidence, which eight years of Government mismanagement has caused.

Altheimer: “Maybe a gentle hand from Europe can help America regain its foothold on the world scene.”

The plan is to find and launch a candidate for US president who will pledge to run on a platform of European issues and ideals. The candidate must be native-born as required by the US constitution. When in office, this ‘European’ president is then to be assisted at all times by a team of European advisors.

Acting on behalf of an ideal notion of ‘Europe’, Altheimer conjures up a vision of European political agency that is absent on the level of current continental politics. In this way, Europe is not only imbued with political content, Altheimer is also redeemed from the reality of his private, barroom life as he is catapulted on to the world stage as a real political agent.

Oh no, not the credit cards!

Europe is ready, the stars are aligned, the cars are parked and the champagne is cold. But the airlines are uncooperative. Altheimer is on the phone and his facial expressions are stretched to their limits. “Can we not fly… from…? No? … OK.” He hangs up and looks at me. “We cannot fly... by, you know... the route via Amsterdam…” He swallows an imaginary bitter pill, his eyes gone for a split second, and then he settles his gaze on something I can’t see. “So let’s fly via Reykjavík then?” “No way”, he says, and keeps on staring into that great unknown I don’t see. Then he gets up, like a twister, spins around the room, and grabs the phone again. “I got it!” “What?”

Suddenly he looks down at the bean bag resting silently on the fake wooden floor. “Did you…?” He looks at me, incredulous. “Did you...? Did you take the forty pence I left here? They fell out of my pocket last night.” I crack. Under the pressure of this type of fierce questioning, I crack, and I fall over. “Yes.” My face is bursting with heat. “Yes… I stole your forty pence.”

He sits down again, the phone clutched like a leech to his chin. “I have to call this person…” OK. I sit back and taste the silent shame of those forty pence in my pocket. We will make it though. The stars are still aligned and the cars are going nowhere. We’ll make it, I think. Sure as there’s a sun shining.

He gets up. He takes a few strides in the general direction of where the room ends. “Shit.” He walks back, out into the hall, I hear him pace the kitchen, then he reappears. “No” “What?” “Oh no…” He lets his long and undernourished frame fall into another bean bag that stupidly rests on the floor (as is their lot in the world). “Oh no!” “What?” “The credit cards…” “Oh no…, really? The Mastercard?" He looks down. "The Visa?" "Yeah." He shakes his head. "The Amex?" Altheimer closes his eyes and I’m damn sure he’s looking in there again, to where I can’t see, where the future somehow spells itself out in ridiculous code. The credit cards.

I tell you: Europe is ready, the champagne is cold, and America is waiting. We’ve just hit a reality speed-bump.