FMS - Makucova

A chorus of dog voices. At the center is one who seems shamed into barking. What has gotten the others so upset? And why does this one dog sound so half-assed? Is his owner a mailman?

On that note, does anything ever whimper loudly?

If the day had only two voices, these would be the ones: blind conviction and stuttered imitation.

I'm growling over my toothpaste and hot tap water. Ugh, shaving cream.

I'll open a bank account. I'll return library books. I'll pick up my late edition paper.

So seemingly simple.

Top 5

Laura Stein (You know how some people always get first and last name? She's one of them.) recently reminded me of something so funny I'm actually under house arrest for forgetting it.

One day (at approximately 10:30am) this gigantic 6'6" pottymouthed turd of an art director engaged me in a verbal setto that ended with "You want to take this outside? Because we can take this outside." I was completely stunned. I said "Dennis, this is a FUCKING workplace." (Laura's comments: If I were an actor, I would have studied the sound of shock, disbelief, and rage that came out of your mouth, and reproduced it later on stage.) Kinder jumps in with "Nobody's taking anything outside." I could hear CB shouting something from down the hall. By the time I got back to my desk Russell had sent me three messages; the gist of all of them was "It's hard to art direct when you're a monstrous asshole."

So anyone reading my column and thinking that my office was all happy funland...there were days I was threatened with bodily harm.

Jesus. How could I forget that?! Anyway.

Top 5 workplace stories...

Maternity ward

I just gave birth.

Thanks galore to mid-wives Caroline Bailey, Ashlee McClelland, Ehrin Fitzpatrick, Bobby Conger, Jeannie O'Toole, Russell Austin, Jeff Canzona, and Laura Stein.

Since this isn't Canada, I'll be back blogging tomorrow. Top 5 will be dedicated to Laura Stein, who is from there.

Duck season

My editor at The Slovenia Times says that the next issue will be in every goodie bag at The Golden Drum competition, a huge advertising festival in Portorož.

Does anyone have an idea what I should write about? Advertising's future? Its discontents? Its "meaning"? Its phenomenological nature?

Please forward this request to anyone who has an opinion on advertising. I need motivation and direction. Nine months of advertising-free living has basically made me a fossil.

My DEADLINE is Wednesday at 4pm CEST, that's 10am New York time.

Monologue about dialogue

Last night, Josh called. I told him about the play. And how one of the organizers said she didn't like that the speech, dialogue for lack of a better word, was so disconnected. She wanted a "see-say" type of drama where what one says leads someone to say the next thing in the narrative, and thus propel action through words. I told her this was unreasonable. No one talks that way. That isn't the function of dialogue.

Dialogue does many things, but connectivity is not one of them. Josh and I were talking about how a number of conversations are vehicles for getting out of conversations. This is a strange but powerful role of dialogue. Silence is ugly, but in many cases the attainment of silence requires speaking. You have to prove there is nothing else to say.

I gave him the example of the drunken stranger at the bar who is mired in his sadsack life and needs a message board to post on. I don't wish to receive these posts. This is how the dialogue goes:

Stranger: Man, it's been a hard week. I had to reorganize all these fucking databases. And my ex-wife isn't returning my calls, but I don't really blame her. And my cat's sick and shitting all over my couch.
Me: Damn. So, how about those Yankees?

If he talks about the Yankees next, then I'll go through another conversation to get out of the conversation.

I was at the Blind Tiger one afternoon, when some sadsack came in and proceeded to regale the whole bar with his tribulations. I was talking to an elderly couple from Wisconsin on their first trip to NYC. The husband was asking what I would do when the smoking ban took effect. Sadsack jumps in "I quit smoking four months ago." The man from Wisconsin says "Why did you quit?" "Clearly, it was getting in the way of his talking," I replied. Problem solved.

My boss at my old ad agency always complimented me on my ability to write dialogue. I pride myself on my dialogue. I give it a streak of realism that exposes how desperately people want to get back to their part in the human play going on before them. This means a lot of non-sequiturs.

One good case: If I'm not an expert on a said subject or if I do not hold the same conviction as the person discoursing with me, I can sit in silence. You know that feeling where a friend is telling you such a good story or elucidating an issue with such authority, you just let her go off. Most of the time, this suffices. But, this is also a stingy way to look at dialogue. Storytellers, like performers, want acknowledgement.

Real dialogue is sustained acknowledgement. A willing participation in a this-that tennis match. In our conversation, we talked about what each person was doing at that point, about our friend Wayne, about my grandmother, about Islam and its American perceptions, about hot girls versus beautiful girls, about dialogue, about Wayne again, about moving to New York City and finally about how we could know when we should next communicate with each other. This lasted 18 minutes (stupid laughter included), and nary a segue in the bunch.

Dialogue is not exposition. Dialogue is verbal placeholding; it's carrying the zero. Where each speaker is a zero. Actually, an empty set.

Žabe

Some observations, then some questions.

Žabe is Slovene for frogs. This play was written by one of the most inaccessible of Slovene writers in the fifties. The group who put on this play "Balkanized" it and turned it into an accordion-fueled musical. I don't know Serbian. Duh. So, everything I got out of this play was visual, musical, allegorical.

The actor who played Satan, the fisherman, the husband, etc. was mesmerizing, completely entrancing. Every movement, every gesture was filled with altrenating fey giddiness and severe "hand of God" force. The performance revolved around him.

The protagonist was penniless, then rich, then poor, then on and on.

The illusory quality of the hanging chains reinforced the ilusion of the square pool of water the actors dipped into--a sunken platform. It took me a few minutes to realize the water was real, and not a trick of the light.

Mechanisms became a metaphor. The toy car assumed underneath the unfeasted frog appeared as a toy reinforcement of the childishness of striving for material extravagance.

The pitchfork: that which catches the frog is that which catches the man. The ancient mariner, liar, birthday boy, Satan is dancing slowly into sin.

Eve is the embodiment of temptation, but where does an apple cease to be a symbol and become merely food. Only the hungry and the religious know.

If you die six deaths and live seven lives, what have you learned? Possibly only survival.

And what is a theatre of survival? Is it a metaphor in itself to define why art exists against political and economic odds? Or is theatre a taxation on the rich for having too much idle money?

If I use story to alert you of poor people, is that an effective use of art? Can art truly care about poverty, which is temporal, in comparison to itself, which is supposedly timeless? Or, does art too die six deaths to live seven times?

FMS - Makalonca

"In strawberry fields, there bloomed white blossoms. And from tiny yellow outreachings came yellow dimples...I can't do this."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm looking at a table laminated in an endlessly repeating strawberry pattern. And that makes me think of strawberries, but that's not what I'm actually thinking about."
"And what are you thinking about?"
"I'm not sure. But the strawberries were obvious; they were just there. I suppose I could use them as a metaphor, drawing off the role they played in medieval art, as a symbol of sin and the delicious, aftertasteless commission of a sin. I could think of New York and Central Park. Music and death."
"Then why don't you do that?"
"Because my chest is tight and my nose is runny. I'm drinking hot water with whisky and lemon. The aesthetics of sin are the last thing on my mind. Strawberries actually sound gross now."
"What got you sick?"
"What do you mean 'What got me sick?' Staying out late. Smoking too much. Walking home in the cold and damp. Is that what you're looking for?"
"I'm not looking for anything. I follow you."
"Like a shadow, or the sound of a footstep?"
"No, like a little brother. I copy you."
"What does that mean?"
"Did you know yesterday that today would be sunny?"
"Of course not. It rained yesterday."
"But what did you wear today?"
"My black leather jacket."
"In case it rained?"
"Yes."
"Well there you go."

Drunk dialling

Being 6 hours in front of my friends on the East Coast. I get strange phone calls from drunk people between 6 AM and 8 AM. Just so you understand: Caller=CROCKED and listener=BARELY AWAKE. This yields some funny results. Here's a sampling of some exchanges.

#1:
Caller: Sssh, I think they're doing it in my bathroom.
Listener: Wait, how can they hear ME?!

#2:
Caller: Yeah, how come there's so many rules about touching girls?
Listener: Are you talking about being married, or are you talking about rape?

#3:
Caller: So, yeah, we were totally trying to do it in her bathroom, but we could hear her laughing directly outside the door.
Listener: Maybe that was me...

#4 and 5:
Caller: HEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY, but listen...
Listener: (At this point, I put the phone down and start making the biggest pot of Turkish coffee Slovenia has ever seen.)

#6:
Listener: So, what's that cat doing now?!
Caller: He sneezes a lot. That takes some getting used to.

Josh called me once when I was fairly lit up. This exchange was pretty good long-distance drunk dialling.

Me: Listen. I need to get a beer. Talk to my friend.
Josh: OK (Talks to girl next to me for 20 minutes)
Me: OK, I'm back. Hey, that girl you were just talking to? What's her name?
Josh: I have no idea.
Me: Neither do I. Talk to her again.
Josh: Put her on.

This shit is so much cooler than "Hi, it's me, your pussy-whipped ex-boyfriend on his fifth boilermaker. And I just wanted you to know that I think we really have a chance. And I hope that you think that too. And I gonna be blah blah blah."

I need to get a tape recorder hooked up to my cell.

Oedipus in Exile

Having bid the Iranian Barrymores adieu, Wednesday night was "Oedipus in Exile" on the big stage at Drama. It's a beautiful Baroque performance hall. When you imagine a European theatre, this is it.

First of all, let me say that my Turkish isn't what it used to be. (I had some really choice swears I learned from Cigdem and Bora at Bard.) So I didn't understand word one of the dialogue. But with a rather strong background in dance appreciation, I'm fully aware that you don't HAVE to be in verbal communication with a performance. That said, the staging of this piece was astounding.

The stage was arrayed in a light grid of 19: 15 at the stage level for the chorus and Theseus, and 4, elevated behind them for the members of Thebes. Individual spots illuminated each performer as his recitation was delivered. And considering that some of the lines were half-second gasps, the performance took on the aspect of a schizophrenic slideshow where your eye traveled from Athenian chest-beating to Oedipus's shamed guilt in a camera-flash moment. (After the performance, a girl asked me if I thought the lights were done by computer. I said, "No. That had to have been a person. If an actor lost a line, the whole show would be ruined." All she said was "Wow!")

Every recitation moved with volume and intensity. At one point, I turned to Alma and said "I feel like I'm hanging out inside a crazy person's brain."

The vocal delivery was powerful. Oedipus's fateful whining. Antigone's hysterical rationalizing. Creon's grandiloquence.

The costuming was spot-on. From Theban tatters to the chorus's martial black leather.

During the reception, a member of the audience asked me if I found the play static. (Because of the individual fixed spots, the performers could only move a step or two before being completely out of sight--an effect used sparingly and with great insight.)

My answer was "Of course. When you restage classical Greek drama, you are dealing with a static medium. Sophocles wasn't writing plays as we understand them. He was creating group readings. The challenge of bringing these works into modernity was answered by the dancing light play and the forceful delivery. That was dynamism enough. Anything more would have been forced. With this you HAD to pay attention to the stage."

At the end of the play, I told my friends "That's the sort of effect MTV would love to get their hands on and completely fuck up."

In the wee hours, we went to Metelkova and shuffled around to The Cure and The Ramones. The company sang "La Bamba" and "Twist and Shout" as one of the chorus members banged them out on an acoustic guitar. I had a charming conversation with a dancer named Ilksen, despite her protesting "I don't really know English," and me protesting "I've smoked so much hash words are coming out before I start talking."

A bunch of Slovenian freaks were running around throwing Arabic "salaam"s to the group of Turks. That was dumb. But not as dumb as the drunk Slovenian chick who kept coming over and telling me in Slovene that she didn't think I was from New York. If I do one thing, I exude New York asshole cool.

Comparing "Oedipus in Exile" to "Bitter as Honey" is nearly impossible. "Oedipus" was completely visceral. "Honey" was cerebral. Both were emotional in radically different ways. With "Honey" you were overwhelmed by the infinity of interpretations, this leads to that forever and ever. With "Oedipus" you were caught in the grip of architecture. You were part of monument building. "Honey" was a prayer. "Oedipus" was a temple.

But, both plays were the second of a trilogy. And the groups were both fully versed in seeing the world as a stage, and life as a starring role with no curtain call.

Top 5

I go back and forth on lesbians. Sometimes they're just "mind your business" girls who give a shit, but not about dumb stuff. And sometimes they're 20-something grandmas. My FOFs Ann and Dabney are definitely the prior. For one, when you play a game of euchre with them, it gets so intense that you have to breathe through your nose, and you only stop doing that to take sips of South African wine. Plus Clifton Chenier's greatest hits are playing in the background. For another, they have this: superette.blogspot.com/2005/09/fantasy-chutes-and-ladders.html A fantasy fucking sperm donors match! And dig the line-up. Robert Reich! How cool would it be to have a midget from the Clinton Cabinet make your babies?

Anyway, I love their concept, and I want to appropriate it. So, without further exegesis...

Top 5 reasons your kid will be better than anyone else's...

Bitter as Honey

Here's the format of this post; first, critique, then, set-up, then something else that I'm not sure of yet.

Imagine every duality you can think of. Black, white. Good, evil. West, East. Winner, loser. Mother, father. God, anti-God. Keep going, but in the meantime I'll digest this performance. I know I totally suffer from being over-educated. I have had my share of Manichean headtrips. But this performance was beyond belief. Whenever I thought that no more layers of meaning could be unearthed...well...more layers of meaning WERE unearthed.

In the beginning, a man (hereafter referred to as "the director") stands above a cloth-covered table. He is lit by a desk lamp. He is playing solitaire. The air is thick with theatre smoke. A raspy piece of Scandanavian jazz is playing in the background.

He draws two sticks figures holding hands onto a paper wall. And then a young girl wearing an eye pillow, welder's goggles, and industrial strength earphones charges through the wall, brandishing a knife and howling hard vowels.

The director introduces her to an angel, who was contained underneath the solitaire table. The angel wears a gas mask; you feel the girl as she runs her fingers over this face as lifeless as a computer monitor. The angel gingerly explains to her that he is unable to walk, trapping them in this space if they are to stay together.

Using the paper from the wall, the angel cuts a paper doll chain for the girl. And death (or anti-god or the devil), wearing a black suit and a plaster face wrapped in bandage gauze, comes along and cuts off the heads, then drops them down on the couple like falling cherry blossom petals. This gesture was absolutely terrifying. It was like watching a bully pour gasoline on a cat.

So using these three forces: girl, angel, death, the director plays out his binary immaculate patterning. If the angel goes away, what happens to the girl? If the girl dies, what becomes of death? And if any these events or changes don't suit the director, how then is he to intervene? Admit his mistake and correct it? Or, let it simply play itself out.

I won't spoil any of the events which play out, because Atila wants to take the show back to Lincoln Center, which already hosted the first play in this cycle. In future productions of this play, I see equal parts of black sand and white sand spread out into a grey carpet. But as the actions move along a natural marbling occurs, a darker patch here, a lighter one there. Where each grain is a representative 1 or 0 to this organic computer program we all in our hearts know is our lives. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention not one articulate word is uttered on stage!

And the entire cast is a family! Father, mother, son, daughter. This makes a lot of the action on stage hit warp-drive in terms of psychosurrealism.

So, I scammed free tickets to see this amazing piece. I feel a little bad about that now. My friend Lojs is in Beograd rehearsing a performance; he belongs to the national theatre company here. He sent me 4 text messages as to how I can get into the theatre for free. (His first suggestion was to just walk through the stage door!) Eventually I talk to a gal named Ema. She's down and tells me to show up five minutes before the show.

When I explain to my date what the plan is, she's incredulous. She thinks I'm about to get the embarrassment of my life. We get in the elevator, and when the usher says "Vstopnica," she hits me with her best "You see, jackass" pursed lips. Me: "I talked to Ema earlier." Usher: "Oh, cool." He closes the door. I shoot her back with my best "Sissy, I'm the Roman god of free shit." pursed lips.

And then we see the show.

And then we stick around for the reception, because I truly am the Roman god of free stuff at this point. Ema has already told me to be sure to come back the next night to see a Turkish staging of "Oedipus at Colonnus."

The reception food is fantastic; couscous with dates, stuffed tomatoes. Iranian food has this utter delicacy to it that the Tex-Mex fan in me finds a bit boring. But, this was exceptional. A hint of honey here, a whisper of cinnamon. Yeah, you know.

The wine is so-so.

The actress who played the young girl comes out. I congratulate her. She says to me, "I don't like wine."
Me: "Oh yeah, why's that?"
Serateh: "It gives me a headache."
Me: "Champagne can be a real headacher."
Serateh: "I don't like champagne either."

I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. When I return, she's talking to my friend Alma. Alma's asking her where all she has been with the tour. She says "I really loved New York." I jump in "Yeah, that's one of my favorite towns." And like that we're all colleagues. Alma is planning a cross-continent trip from Turkey to Iran to Pakistan to India in a few weeks, so she's getting email addresses and learning basic Farsi words. I'm sipping viljamovka, and running through a litany of topics from Camus to Amsterdam to Michael Moore to the next production in Atila's cycle. Before the night's over we're shaking our butts at KMŠ.

On the way back to Center, Alma says "It's funny that they can't drink." And making a little English joke out it, I replied, "They CAN drink."

Right now, I'm trying to think up ways that I can work out an arranged marriage with them. Because I really want them to be my family.

NB: While I was talking to Atila, the director of the Ex Ponto said I should come to every performance, because it seems that actors like me. I felt like that goat trainers put in the stables of thoroughbred horses to calm them before a race.

What the Fuck Files

I just saw these little sponges that women can stick under their armpits to keep sweat from gushing out there. These little guys are called "potnice." That's Slovene for passengers.

Tonight, I'm going to see an Iranian production called "Bitter as Honey" at the National Theatre. It's about a deaf, dumb, blind girl and her love affair with a mutilated angel. I'm trying to convince the supermodel bartendrix at Makalonca to be my date.

Recently, I have become much more political than ever before. I don't really like it. This new political intention has reached a sort of Jainist nakedness. Like I've stripped off all my trappings and I'm buried in some insane prayer state. But, instead of embracing this meditation, my mantra is basically, "Oh shit. Here we go again."

I'm trying to develop a Men in Black mindstate, that the world is constantly on the verge of being blown to smithereens. And, it's just blind luck and random invisible mechanisms that prevent that from happening.

At 5 this morning, I was at Ajda, a fast food joint open 24 hours. Makalonca supermodel was saying that all the dudes at the all-night fast fooders come from Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia. And that they all know each other. As we're talking, some guy asks her where I'm from. She says "New York." Then in heavily accented Slovene (or Bosnian, I can't tell them apart yet), he asks her if she's going to blow me up. She gives him a flip response. And then, he looks at me and gives me the head-nod and that smile. You know that smile dudes do right before they get into a fight? He was the poster boy for that. I fortunately got distracted by the cook asking me what I wanted on my pleskavica. (Yeah, I know. Pleskavica at 5 AM?! That's retarded.)

Confrontations like that are totally political. And there are a billion issues buried in there that I don't have the brain cells to wrap any sort of logic around. Basically, my life philosophy is "Wake up, have a conversation, read a book, write, have a drink, go to bed, repeat." And really...I'm happy with my life. But when you get a facefull of angry internationalism while ordering a pig/horse/chicken burger, it's sort of hard to stay focused on the simple pleasures.

I'm gonna buy a backpack full of those "potnice." And I'm gonna write "No sweat" on them and hand them out to these dudes. And when they hand my ass to me, I'll use them as little bandages.

Why advertising gives up

When I finished emailing my Mom recently, a little animated text ad popped up next to my "sent" confirmation. Here's how it went:

Stage one: "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast." -Oscar Wilde
Stage two: "Not all quotes are this confusing."
Stage three: A bunch of hard-sell tactics with a red logo at the bottom stumping for Safeco Insurance.

Um, what? I can see pulling something from Yogi Berra or Francis Fukuyama* and getting confused, but this quote is freaking crystal. Dull people don't stay out all night. Therefore, they're not nursing a hangover in the morning. Done. Anyone not on the same page with me should go back to kindergarten and learn the names of shapes. This ad is known as "hard-working" in the biz. It so desperately wants to be clever that it shoehorns its intent (to sell insurance) into a stamp-sized envelope created by the writer. I know. I've been guilty of this when I wrote ads. The first product I wrote for was the syndication of the Larry Sanders Show. My first line went something like this: "Larry Sanders...so shallow you can read the dates off the pennies at the bottom of his soul." Eek! That line doesn't even call in sick when it's dead. What can I say? It was my first day. I didn't know what the Hell I was doing. My first creative director told me I needed to be writing ads that could be understood by a 14-year-old retard in Kansas. For Gary Shandling's sense of humor?! That show was withering smart, and my creative direction was aimed at people who can't pronounce "withering." I'll give that old CD the benefit of the doubt and assume he was metaphorizing Ockham's razor. It's cool. I got better. I had help. Within no time, I was turning out cheeky one-liners for a scotch brand, frisky, sex-dripping catalog copy for some French lingerie, faux poetry for a ballet company. During this period of my employed life, people were always asking me "Why are some ads so bad?" This is like asking a pitching coach why his team lost. I could walk out on the mound every so often, but once the ball was out of my hands, it was out of my hands. I can assure you that I was writing über-hip, compelling copy that would have had you killing your grandmother, collecting the inheritance, and spending all of it on my products. (Well, not YOU, but...) The best ad campaign I made was two weeks into my internship. It involved a New York cigarette company, the recent legislation that outlawed smoking in bars, and a visual tag so punch-happy it would have failed a breathalizer. When the client didn't buy it, I was one saliva molecule away from jamming my thumb up their asshole. This was not the most auspicious beginning. I came to understand that lots of ads just give up, because admakers are perpetually in a state of giving up. (Think of admakers as those Greenpeace dudes who sail some barely seaworthy wreck out among armed whale poachers...except they don't really give a shit about saving whales.) Admakers are constantly watching these scales where on one side clients are saying "We don't have a clue what we're doing" and on the other side they're saying "You have no clue what we want." And then when it gets to the stage where they are saying "We have no clue what WE want"--and it will, you are basically working for a pimple-faced honor student with anarchy symbols drawn all over his easy-fit jeans. There is this completely delicate thing good admakers do which can only be compared to mind-reading, except they're reading the minds of thousands of people four months from now. I had a teacher in high school who only read the first two pages of any paper I wrote and assigned me a "B." How many good papers did I write for her? None. How many good first two pages did I write? Enough. This is how I looked at ads. My cynical view is good ads slip through the cracks. Circumstance is on the creators' side. Some marketing VP gets fired, and everyone in that company's answer to everything is "I don't have time for this." At that point, your really on-the-fucking-ball account executive turns into Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. But these moments are fucking rare. And the lag time is unbearable. Have you ever talked to a person in marketing? These people spent four plus years of college learning how to think dumb. And then you get them alone, and they're all "Between you and me, I think your ideas are really strong, but that's because we're too smart for this industry." WE are not too smart. Either I suck at my job, or your mouth is a rectum. These are the people who are confused by Oscar Wilde quotes. They are so arrogant they refuse to see themselves as dull, and simultaneously cannot imagine themselves NOT being brilliant, EVER, breakfast included. Anyway, sometimes, the cracks are wider than others. For instance, here in LJ, a trash daily called Direkt launched a three-week teaser campaign, where they combined punk rock aesthetics with censorship bars over eyes, girls' butts, headlines...even the name of the pub. The thinking here as I imagine it is this kind of simple. Punk rock aesthetics are basically garbage...unless you're a 50-year-old alt-rag columnist or a tween from Toronto. So, let's use this overblown look for our second-rate newspaper. The effect is on! You can get an idea from their website: www.direkt.si Don't get me wrong. I like advertising. I like Saturday NYT crossword puzzles. I like trying to catch lizards with my hands.

*Here's a playlet inspired by FF starring me and my friend Seth.

Me: Say, Seth. What was life like 50 years ago?
Seth: Dunno. I wasn't born yet. And I'm too busy voting my ass off to think about yesterday.
Me: I walked past a church today.
Seth: Right on. Get your Adidas off my Ikea ottoman, dude.

FMS - A Tour of Ljubljana

Red. Yellow. Green. Teenage couple making out. Teenage couple making out. Supine drugged-out bum. Teenage couple making out. A bunch of tiny specks on the top of a turret looking vaguely like people. Gwen Stefani. B.A.N.A.N.A.S. My gay actor friend who I see everywhere. The smell of piggy. Some pizza with pickles, argula and corn on it. A really pink shirt on a really old Italian guy. A bicycle that looks like it came from Oz. Some cobblestones or sets, if you're English...and if you're here, you probably are. An old lady bum. The distracted notion that if I released a "Best and Worst" issue dedicated to LJ old lady bums would make both sections. Someone acting crazy thinking that I want to fight them because I'm using my American voice. A dude with a blonde moustache who has never seen another country other than Croatia and it wasn't even called Croatia then. A lip stud. A fast food restaurant that reduces sandwiches 30% after 4pm. The US embassy, whichs looks like a Victorian gingerbread house with a zoo of really mean dogs on its premises. Melted ice cream. Something brown and undescribable. "Brez milosti." "High quality and elegant style." Green water waiting the next rain to turn brown. The smell of magic marker. Mariah Carey. Cuz we belong together. That game in Novice where you have to put numbers 1-9 in boxes and columns and rows without repeating them. An old lady who has a little bloody dribble at the corner of her mouth. Some Hugo Boss dicksmoker who thinks he works in London. Then again, he could be English. That lepotica single mom in Trnovo, that I never say Hi to. Lumpi. Robert Magnifico as the Tuš spokesmodel. An old lady bundling flowers together in front of the tourist information office. A red train with yellow piping. A green bottle with a goat on it. Some Americans lying about how great the service was. Maxi Pony. Holland. Rog, duh. Spiky hair. A thong visible. This monitor.

This just in.

I'll be arriving in NYC on October 10th and staying in the States for two and a half weeks. With Dallas and maybe Chicago detours.

Post all the fun stuff you want to do with me in the comments sect. It's cool; my Mom does know this exists.

Top 5

Today I shaved for the first time in 6 weeks. Originally, I left myself one of those dorky fu manchu moustaches, but I went to brush my teeth before I left and realized that I looked like some faggy Robert Duvall biker, so that had to go. I haven't worn deodorant in 6 weeks either. Europe has that effect. If you're not insanely offensive (like the vagrant who was hanging out in front of Pločnik the other night), everything's cool. Basically, I just smell like cigarettes, which while not the freshest aroma around sure beats smelling like feces. (See vagrant section above.) But sometimes I wake up feeling like I flossed with cancer the night before. Therefore, I use lots of mouthwash; it's called Laško. My friend Megan has begun writing a series of stories with her friend Milena about some imaginary misadventures. I was thinking there are going to be a lot of crying dudes unless they get crackin' on the pseudonyms. Then I remembered this: After I sent Lisa my list of how dudes aren't yucks, I asked her to do the same for me, but with chicks. At this juncture, she has sent me zero reasons. Well, here's one:

Sometimes you're walking down the street and girls do that doubletake thing with eye contact. That move is fucking class. It says "I got all the power in the world and I don't mind spreading it around."

So, let's back this topic up like an all-fiber diet, but with words.

Top 5 ways that chicks are not yucks...

PS. Two ways that dudes are extremely yucky: smelling like feces, and sporting faggy Robert Duvall biker facial hair.

More on Jeffica

I'm kinda sick about my friends. I have this freako discriminating streak when it comes to humans, so those that I keep around tend to be extra-quality. Jeffica is one such person. He came into my life interning at the ad agency I was working for. His resume was printed on rose-patterned pink paper. He wore a white belt and white boots and pinstriped jeans. He was hanging around looking for stuff to do. I wasn't biting. I hustled over to my future boss's cubicle. "Is the new intern a woman?" "I don't know. His resume says he's Jeff." "Right. Short for Jeffica." Anyway, he got a job there and things were groovy. We weren't like best fucking friends who cried over mushy movies together. We were like coworkers who hung out on occasion. We had our share of ridiculous ass shit. One night after work we stumbled into a Midtown Christian store completely crocked and bought a handful of Christian party invites for a party that never happened. On another occasion, we wrote a fake Internet party flyer to a gay bar (Therapy) near our office, and got most of the agency out. We invented this fun zone called "The Club," which was basically him jacking his headphones into my CD player's extra port, and we'd rock out while we wrote ads. This was great, because if we were just sitting there and shit was getting blase, he'd say "Yo, let's go to the Club." For Halloween, he and this other kid Gertie and I decided to be each other. He wore a tweed coat and a sweater vest. At the end of the day, he says "Being you is fucking exhausting. I need a nap." When he moved off to Chicago (to fucking support his WIFE's decision to move there!!! What kind of shit is that?!), I was bummed. I had to fuck the proofreader extrahard to get over that gnawing loss. I visited him twice in Chicago. One night, we went berserk and called CB (my aforementioned future boss) at 5 in the morning, and talked about some gay black dude who wound up in Schuba's. We think he was looking for Cuba Gooding Jr's house. The second time he was pressed to squeeze me in, but he did. We met at the W hotel, had drinks and looked at naked girls on the Internet commenting on whether they were hot or not. And that's the way friends should be. Unless you're some kind of human charity case, you can get a lot of mileage out of that shit.

Brevity is the soul of

My friend Jeffica in Chicago gets, um, psycho props for sending me a present. He gets so many that I gave him lip service in my latest Slo Times column.

He sent me "The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll."

We used to sit around the office at ZPFM, reading this shit, going "Suckas!" because it was 2003 and most of the entries were from '97, and holding in our laughs so hard we got man-tits. That's why he's called Jeffica.

Here's what his note said, "You know everything, so you don't really need this. But in case you do, here it is!"

He also sent me a book on how to not dress dumb; I'm not so into that. But since he is, I will be.

This is too brief. I'll reinforce after a spell at Kodeljevo's Balkan music festival tonight.

PS. Canzie, you are fucking genius. Hearts and La Perla lingerie are yours forever.

Šmartinska 106

K-Bar is the watering hole situated on the ground floor of the building the Slovenia Times has its office in. Šmartinska 106. The waitresses there are ungodly surly. Combine a teenager working at Wendy's with a post office window-sitter with an overweight person asked to walk in New York City and you might get close to the surliness of these young ladies--who by appearance and employment are none of those things. There was a new bartendrix today. She smiled, she asked what Jaka (my editor) and I were having, she made it, and then gave it to us immediately. I like it when people are nice. In fact I like it so much it usually has the effect of turning me into a niceness conduit. Just yesterday the receptionist thought she had offended me, because we had this transaction.

Me: Hi there. You don't happen to have change for a 1000, do you?
R: No, but you can go downstairs to the bar. They'll give change.
Me: No they won't. Those girls hate me.
R: Me too.

I went back to my desk. Jaka got a call from her saying she wanted to make certain that I understood the girls downstairs hated her too, and not that she hated me. In the English-speaking world, that would be a tad condescending, but here it was, to wit, nice. On a similar note, I met a girl named Bobo from North Carolina here in Ljubljana. She was detailing an occasion in which she was doing mission work in NYC. Usually this would have led me to run to the nearest church in order to slap Jesus off the cross--even though it's not Jesus' fault really. But, her argument was pretty convincing: churches like to help people, and if you don't get wrapped up in the preachy side of it, you can help people too. QED, yo. Unemployed people like sandwiches even if they don't like invisible superheroes. K-Bar is, in the parlance of one friend of mine, "dangerously close." But, extreme efforts require extreme release. Yesterday, as I sat eyeballs deep in articles to edit, I asked Jaka if he wanted to take a break and grab a beer. The little dickweed marketing turd who sits across from me interjects:

"The beer spectacular was two issues ago. You are a really bad influence."
Me: "To who? Hardline Muslims?"
Dickweed: "No, to hardworking people."
Me: "Great, because my work on bums is done."

And so Jaka and I went downstairs. I ruminated over my beer as to where this little shit got the stones up to act up. Dickweed is the same jack-off who a month ago when the paper had a sitdown to determine its special issue calendar said "You think you're the smartest person here, but you don't know anything." I know what it's like to be unbelievably quick-witted and possess the ability to dismantle someone's world in two sentences. (Putting on my best Shirley Temple gleam here.) And this guy must be smart; he was chosen as a "golden strawberry" when he graduated from college in London. Yeah, it's sounds like slang for herpes, but it just means that this guy supposedly has a bright future and Slovenian companies should "pick" him. Also, I understand the desire to impress yourself on your employers. You want to seem indispensable, so you don't end up laid off. I got it. But, I'm getting paid under the table at nearly base-level wages. I look at my job with Slo Times as volunteer work with beer money and Internet access. It seems to me a classic case of "choose your battles." One, I'm from the United States. I'm genetically a better capitalist. Two, I'm from New York City. I'm conditioned to kick your ass if I'm able to. Three, I don't want to get into a headlock with this prick. I'd rather he sat me down and said "Here's what we've done and it's not turning out the way we expected." Now that I think of it, if I'm feeling like a niceness conduit in the future, I might recommend Dickles take this tack with me next go-round. Contrast that with Jaka and Klemen (our designer) setting up a slingshot target course in the office. Which is rad galore. I scored a direct hit on one of the target's puds today. Tomorrow the paper goes to bed. Look for my as yet unwritten column by clicking the "Slovenia Times" link, then clicking "People."

15 hours in Zagreb

I have this tricky little two-step I feel obliged to do every three months. Since I'm an "illegal" immigrant, I can feasibly skirt by using just the good ole US of A passport. This document allows me 90 days of uninterrupted visitation to any EU country. Although I seriously doubt the likelihood of being deported, I like to keep things on the safe-ish side. Three months ago I was in Amsterdam. And yesterday I took a little trip to Zagreb. I climbed the historical tower where the cannon that still claxons noon each day is located. I ate a mediocre pizza and too many champignons in gorgonzola cream near Sv. Marko. Later I saw a women get fatally (I'm assuming here) hit by a speeding car full of football fans. Then I trekked out to the middle of nowhere around midnight in search of lodging. Once, I got there, I discovered I didn't have enough Kuna to pay for the room, so I had to walk around in a residential area looking for a bank machine. NB: The person on the 50 Kuna note bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Lopez. I am now back in Ljubljana working on the next issue of the Slo Times. I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to a bluegrass album and copy-editing a piece about a contest we sponsor (Guest Star) to determine the biggest expat contributions to Slovenian diplomacy, sports and business. And sports is such a hard one, because Slovenians hold such a taciturn antipathy toward group sports. They sit in bars and casually take in a loss or a close victory over an indescribably lousy team. Zagreb was more like German or English cities, with the fight songs and chants echoing through those Baroque squares. (When I first started this line of thought, I wrote "Croatians are much more into football than Slovenians;" on a second read that statement sounded as stupidly obvious as "Women are much more into buying make-up than men.") Still, Zagreb was patently pleasant; it begged comparisons to Weimar, Barcelona, Maribor, and a place where pedestrians are hit with such force that a human female form can kick itself in the back of the head before falling two meters into an unmoving heap. Zagreb has numerous obligatory statues of famous men on horses...obliging bartenders who offer aid with directions, tram maps and Sunday nightlife... Sadly, there's not much to do with just 15 hours in Zagreb, especially since I had to rush back to Ljubljana to write a story on seeing The Hives at an MTV Adria launch party and clean up a PR piece on Podčetrtek; our intern has gone back to London. I would have liked to have seen the alternative music and theatre performances at the old Badel factory. I also would have liked to have taken the cable car up to Gornji Grad. I would have liked to have sat in Sax and listened to a bit of jazz or gotten a drink at BP lounge. But it was Sunday, and one can't do everything in a new city. Nor can four police details present at Kvaternikov Trg at midnight do anything to prevent the screech of tires, the shatter of passenger's side headlights or the blue sweat-shirted body lying face down, but crotch up. My friend Julia has a rather sardonic sense of humor for a German. She was making fun of the German tabloid "Bild," with its headlines which follow the formula: "With the fall comes the luck," or "With the pig comes the luck," or "With the what fuckin' ever comes the luck." She was eating a veggie kebab under a lampost with a number of pigeons perched on top. I told her she was going to get crapped on. She says, "I don't care. It's good luck." I answered "Yeah, like the way, rain on your wedding day is good luck, or stepping in dogshit is good luck, or getting hit by a car is good luck." Yup, I actually said that. A lot of people hold onto good luck charms. For the timebeing, I consider mine to be my body and mind--both of which do what I tell them and show signs of continuing this trend in the future. Once they're gone, I think I'll be pretty down on my luck.

FMS

"Let's draw a picture of this song for the deaf kids." Rita is always doing shit like this. She's out to save the world, but she has no fucking clue how to pull it off. Sometimes it's dancing tango for the elderly or putting on puppet theatre in the burn ward. She lives at home. Today she's drawing a bright red sun with a thunderhead in the distance, and pointing to the stereo. Rita can't draw for shit. Rita could inspire armies, but armies are fascist and quite out of her scope. Now she's added a field of chaotic flora: sunflowers, daffodils, corn. One deaf kid is tugging on the hearing aid of this kid who's bopping, maybe to the music. The kid with the hearing aid starts waling on Tuggy. Both of them are tromboning out all those long vowel sounds you get when you can't hear yourself. Rita's got her hands on her hips. Then she's wagging her finger at these two guys locked in hateful embrace. She's snapping and clapping like some gospel nut. A little girl in orange cords--who had patiently been watching the picture--came over to the rumbling pair and tickled them.

Top 5

My friend Josh has an insane good sense of humor. Everyone knows that, therefore I'm right. Recently, he scrambled drunk all over Boston in this ridiculous Pancho Villa moustache, talking like some Down's syndrome vic. I called him Mexican Down's Syndrome. The next day, he sent me a text while visiting friends in Rhode Island; they have a baby. Here's the gist:

Josh: Uhoh, somebody's awake.
Me: Give baby a moustache. Milk or magic marker.
Josh: Dirty Sanchez.

So, you can see that's just about the funniest thing that can ever take place in non-verbal communication. And it sparks today's Top 5.

Top 5 signs you are an extremely bad houseguest...

What A Girl Doesn't Know She Wants

As promised, here is my hyper-extended list of ways that guys are not yucky:

Suppose you're running late to meet a guy a bar. It's raining; your perfect hair-do has collapsed. Your little black shoes have that gray goop on them. You arrive and he doesn't give you the third degree; he stands up, says "hi," and asks you what you want to drink

Every so often when you're sitting there, doing nothing, flowers show up. Some guy did that

Games of catch, horror movie snuggle-ups, weirdo philosophical rants, cool scars, air guitar, reading you to sleep...all dudes

And a shelf full of second best song mixes is better than an empty shelf

If they like you, they always want to see you naked. Even when you're having a "take a shower in jeans and a sweatshirt" day, they still want to see you naked

You're one of 11 people who will ever see him cry

He will never let you get into a fight; he will sometimes get into a fight for you

If you wake him up in the middle of the night to "talk," he'll tell you to go back to sleep. And that's actually the smartest thing to do in that situation.

Also, if you've had 5 salads that week, he'll order you a pizza. If you've had 5 slices of pizza that week, he'll order you a burger. You can't beat that logic with an atomic bomb.

Whenever you're getting it on, and things are so hot that you're like "Tell me what you want me to do," if he has any stones at all, he says "You're doing it."

Instructionals in macho shit like riflery, pool or good writing, because he thinks you're cool enough to profit from it

Reaching high-up stuff in the kitchen when you're cooking together

Charming your mom, flipping your dad out

Smelling like guys, even when that means cigarettes, booze and Old Spice deodorant

Every so often, they make themselves intentionally bad at something they're good at; this isn't to make you doubt their credibility. It's to let you know you're more important than that other shit

Occasionally it's refreshing to be a part of a weltanschauung where all the world's problems disappear in a game of pinball

You'd never go to a strip club unless a dude invited you

If they're straight, you always dance better than them

Sometimes they let you dress them up. The down side of this is you have to buy them clothes. The up side is you're now a deist god advertising your glory to all the other girls that see him

Emotional distance: it may seem like one of the male shortcomings, but imagine if the opposite were true. You'd never have a single fucking moment to yourself

Because of this, the smart ones don't drown you in mush. They keep their autonomy, their integrity, and their truly deep admiration for you bound up in little digestible packages labelled "Save for that moment"

When you need to laugh, the good ones know instantly how to make that happen

This includes such unladylike activities as burping your name, calling your micromanaging boss "your mongoloid boss," impersonating said boss as a retard, or grabbing your ass in public then saying "What?!"

On that note, sex. Some guys, I hear, are mind-blowing at it

They'll never make fun of you in a mean way, even if you break their hearts


I welcome your screed.

Teaser campaign

My friend Lisa asked me to send her a list of ways in which guys are not yucky. This sparked a number of sidebars on the male-female dichotomy. Here's my favorite by far:

Me: I think I've hit on a female truism: Crazy in bed means crazy in the head.

L: So are you saying sane women aren't good in bed?

Me: In a David Hume sort of way, "Absolutely!" In a Platonic forms sort of way, "Couldn't tell you." I guess I would have to fuck every woman in the world, then administer her an MMPI to be certain.

L: Well, get to work.

Tomorrow, I'll publish the list I came up with as to why dudes aren't barf.

Quiz/Show

You're Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity.  Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers.  And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it's called for.  Good enough to make people cry.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Well, there is very little left to say about this. The name of my fantasy football team is "Yum Yum Pussy." And this anecdote has Thai references: Years ago, when I had first moved to NYC, my friend Wayne came to visit from Dallas. While sitting around my apartment one night, I suggested Thai food. Wayne and I are both from Texas; you could inject us with habanera sauce and our blood pressure might go up a point or two. So, the transition from Tex-Mex to Thai was obvious. For me. Wayne, on the other hand, is a social moderate, and an individual ultra-conversative. He doesn't like something unless he's convinced that he's going to like it. (A lot of people in Slovenia share this aspect with Wayne, but that's another discussion.) Here's basically how our dialogue went:

Me: Wayne, let's get Thai tonight.
W: Um, I don't know about that.
Me: Why not? What's wrong with Thai?
W: I don't like it.
Me: Why don't you like Thai food?
W: Well, I don't think I like it.
Me: Have you ever had it?
W: No.
Me: Well, then let's get it.
W: But, am I gonna like it?!!

Needless to say, Wayne now likes Thai food. Wayne's no dummy. Wayne likes Thai food so much he had his 10th wedding anniversary party at a Thai restaurant. This is Wayne's overarching approach to anything taken in by his senses; when he likes something, he likes the motherfucking shit out of that thing. This makes Wayne an easy friend to have. It also makes Wayne a pain in the ass to be around food with. Either food has been ordered or prepared in just utterly overwhelming proportions, ie:

Me: Wayne, there's too much food here.
W: We'll eat it.
Me: You'll eat it.
W: I'll eat it.

Or, you hunch over your food like some lioness with a five cub litter, protecting it from a one-man pack of hyaenas. He doesn't eat off other people's plates much these days. But you can tell he still wants to. At Wayne's wedding rehearsal, he ate my dinner. He later accused me of fucking shit up by ordering something I wasn't going to eat. (Luckily, Wayne was there to correct that problem.) It's too bad for the drug dealers in NYC that Wayne doesn't know he likes cocaine or hombre or MDMA. Because, fuck.

Taking the message from the streets

You're Mrs. Dalloway!

by Virginia Woolf

Your life seems utterly bland and normal to the casual observer, but inside you are churning with a million tensions and worries. The company you surround yourself with may be shallow, but their effects upon your reality are tremendously deep.
To stay above water, you must try to act like nothing's wrong, but you know that the truth is catching up with you. You're not crazy, you're just a little unwell. But no doctor can help you now.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I took Amsterdame's book quiz. I was positively Dallofied by the results. I also have just put my LJ library card into hard and fast use. Recent withdrawals include: "Joseph Andrews" by Henry Fielding (hilarious, contrived and thought-provoking, like any nascent artform should be), "Dreamcatcher" by Stephen King (the first 250 pages were fun, as were the Bush criticisms, but at 700 pages total, it was blah), "The Red Badge of Courage and other writings" by Stephen Crane ("The Blue Hotel" and "The Open Boat" are some of the finest writing available). I'll migrate over to "Dead Babies" by Martin Amis once I "teach myself Eastern philosophy." All this to say it's nice to have access to English that goes beyond "My friend and I are going to the seaside this weekend." Also, for a town of under 400,000, their libe has an really credible CD collection. The Pretty Things, Kruder and Dorfmeister, The Fall, Jackie McLean, Willard Grant Conspiracy and Godspeed You Black Emperor have all performed on my Walkman. The public library has to be one of the most ingenious inventions of all time. It beats the balls off the Internet. Thanks, Ben Franklin. My days lately have consisted of extravagant email exchanges with New York and elsewhere pals. Homesickness has gone into remission. Fortunately, that will get an innoculation in October when I return for a wedding. Weddings are funny things. They're like private art openings...for the guests, that is. Everyone stands around in a sort of chit-chatty awe, then they get drunk. Last night, there was an art opening at Škuc, a gallery in Stara Ljubljana. There was an old guy there who had 12 plastic cups stacked one on top of the other with a fresh one at the summit. My friend remarked "That's probably so he can know how drunk he is." I thought to myself "That's probably the number it takes for free Teran to taste good." Apparently, this old guy is also an artist's model. I truly love that artists can give employment to the elderly just for be fractured, decaying artifacts of their former selves. It's the same with obese people. Folds upon folds of flesh somehow seem less unhealthy when rendered in gouache. The exhibit itself was nothing of supreme interest to me. I named one part of the exhibit "the wall of shaving cream vaginas." They were actually made of terracotta painted in white acrylic. Abstract art is funny in that it can be simultaneously blase and captivating. It's a meditation on material, but it rarely goes further than that. The "idea" of it is slightly galling to my pragmatic mind, since a hardware store is also a meditation on material. Of the most phenomenological important is my newfound laziness toward my appearance: yawning baldness and Guevaraesque facial Brillo, a cycle of three clothing items every week, wearing busted year-old shoes even though I have new ones. Dirty cleans, as good old Jimmy Joyce said. And so while not at my most delightful, I am at least sanitary. In the sana mens column, I'm teaching myself Slovene by doing crossword puzzles for children which means that my vocabulary makes daily strides while my grammar sits on the bench and eats Twinkies. In the sana corpus, I, like Jesus, walk everywhere.