Can you tell I like this guy?

Another gem from our man Pico:

"Most visitors to the Unites States will tell you that service in American restaurants and hotels is generally as friendly and as unpretentious as you will find anywhere. I know that because I grew up in England, where every waiter in a rundown cafe greeted me as I were a summons to the police and every worker in an upscale place as if I were a fly that had landed on the duck à l’orange. In Japan, where I now live, service in even a convenience store is efficient, quick and impeccably polite, but you won’t get the genuine laughs or banter that you often find in even a bank in New York. Democracy finds its vindication, I often think, in the cheerful, ungrudging attention you get across what is perhaps the world’s most open nation."

Heck, I'll even cite it for ya:

New York Times, December 14, 2007, 11:43 pm "The Friendliest Country, and the Unfriendliest Skies" by Pico Iyer http://jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/the-friendliest-country-and-the-unfriendliest-skies/