Correspondence School of Hits

Fucking nuts

2006-01-10T16:42:00.000Z

That is what James Frey drives me. Don't get me wrong. I love to lie. I love to tell bullshit, embellished stories. But, I also know how to pull the fuck back and go "That didn't really happen, but how funny would that have been?"

This dipshit asshole is #1 on the NYT non-fiction list. That's like giving a chemist the Nobel Peace Prize; the idea is so-so, the classification is absurd.

And when did fiction become such a pariah? My grandmother always hated fiction; I assumed it was, because she was old. And as my friends get older, I see this much is true: Old people hate fiction. But those readers still want the mechanics of a good story that non-fiction will "traditionally" not possess. And, they want it to be true. Why? I don't have a clue. Maybe you do. I don't know that much about non-fiction, mainly because "This really happened!" rides so high in the mix, no one cares about the writing, even the author.

But, seriously, why do we have this obsession with veracity? And how and when did we aquire it? I think of American literature as the gleeful passing along of tall tales, those genius, stopless yarns Mark Twain made such fun of.

People frequently talk about not making babies, because the world is too fucked up. I don't share this approach to bringing life into the world.

I am beginning to find a corollary though in writing. I don't want to bring my thoughts into this world. It's not you. It's them.

Society should be charged with fraud.

Top 5

2006-01-05T20:31:00.000Z

Top 5 signs that a person is a lunatic...

These days, I'm being as cryptic and brief as possible. Now where's the #7 bus?

Music Lists

2005-12-30T14:12:00.000Z

9 Favorite Albums of 2005

Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
Atmosphere - You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having
M.I.A. - Arular
Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
Beck - Guero
Animal Collective - Feels
Lemon Jelly - '64-'95
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (Grrrr...I know)
Kanye West - Late Registration (duh)

10 Favorite Songs of 2005

Sally - Thank God for Sunglasses
CYHSY - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
Thee More Shallows - 2AM
Stereophonics - Superman
Spoon - Sister Jack
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Bloc Party - Pioneers
Jenny Wilson - Love Ain't Just a Four-Letter Word
The Nein - Courtesy Bows to New Wave
Xiu Xiu - Bog People

2005 Live Shows that Rocked

Woven Hand at KUD
Xiu Xiu at KUD
The Notwist at Channel Zero
The Hives at Krišanke

Fucking Musical Annoyances of 2005

50 Cent - He's the fucking Nickelback of rap...a self-plagiarist
Nickelback
Nada Surf - I saw the 'Always Love' video on MTV Adria once, that song stayed in my head all year
Klemen Klemen - Slovenian "rapper". I've never heard him; He just gets pissed drunk and irritates me at bars
The Pussy Cat Dolls - Where do I begin with this one?! They're the anthropomorphism of Los Angeles
James Blount - As if David Gray weren't bad enough...Jesus
Caribou - Played at Orto. I got distracted and missed it. Kicking myself hard.

Top 5

2005-12-29T21:10:00.000Z

I quit smoking. For the third time. Why is this important? It's not.

Top 5 things not worth giving a shit about...

Top 5

2005-12-22T15:39:00.000Z

This week has been ridiculous. Work. Play. That stuff that oddly lies in the middle. Next Friday, December 30, I'll be DJing at Jalla Jalla, a shack in the middle of Metelkova Mesto. They serve great soups there. And good Balkan schnapps.

This is the third Christmas that I've not gone home to Dallas; the first two don't really count since I stayed at home in NYC. I'm still trying to figure out holiday plans. Travel seems in order. Perhaps Bosnia for Christmas and Serbia for New Year's Eve...

I recently heard about an insane Slovenian tradition associated with Saint Mikloš Day (December 5). All the villagers would assemble in the cathedral, and the priest would go from family to family and ask if the children had been good. If they had, they got a present. If they had not, a man dressed as Satan would appear with a basket. The bad children were thrown inside. They were dropped off somewhere outside of town. When they finally returned to town on foot, they were generally beaten up by some high school kids. Har!

I'll assume everyone's been good.

Top 5 presents you want Santa (or Dedek Mraz, as he's known here) to bring you...

Top 5

2005-12-15T16:59:00.000Z

OK, one of my greatest pet peeves is urban mismanagement. I remember when I was a teen growing up in Dallas, I could walk one street, get on a bus, transfer downtown and go anywhere. When I returned from college, some accountant genius eliminated a number of lines and consolidated them. (Mind you, this was--of course--in the poor areas where people actually use the bus.) Then they raised the fare. They doubled it, if I remember correctly. Right.

Here in LJ, the buses are methodically ridiculous. It's the perfect combination of Balkan "don't give a fuck" and Austrian "lots and lots of rules." So, there are 3 Črnuče buses to every Nove Jarše bus and 2 Ježica buses for every Nove Jarše bus. It's Christmas shopping season and Nove Jarše goes directly to the largest shopping complex in southern Europe. So every ride is fucking packed. New York subway at 8:30AM packed. Right.

I remember my first NYC transit strike. And my second. (I want to say there was a third, but whatever.) Anyway, they were all bluffs. TWU goes give us more money, lower our penalties. MTA says transport people around better. It's a farce. It's an every three or so years farce. They all just kow-tow at the last minute, because state employee strikes are illegal in New York with like $200 a day fines. At the end of it all, the fares go up. Unions are bullshit. 1920, great, union me up. Now, unions are complete and utter bullshit. Professional athletes are unionized. There's an alternate universe where the CEO's union is standardizing their financial parachutes right now. Mind you, big rich bastard companies are much bigger bullshit, but I've grown accustom to that. I just don't like the idea that the bus driver sharing the bar with me is a big bullshitty crybaby. Right.

New Yorkers, Top 5 things to do in New York during a transit strike...

Everybody else, Top 5 unions that should be created...

A Denouement (kinda)

2005-12-14T15:12:00.000Z

Thus, I composed the following notice to be posted:

"All reading this have been invited to be servants in my manor...of which, I am also butler...please come by Elder Manor, state the position you would like to occupy and your qualifications for doing so.

"Yr most attentive and endearing master,"

By the time I had returned to my desk, I had already hired a scullery maid, a wine and whisky steward ("I will bring to the position years of experience and a great deal of enthusiasm.") and a young lady who would not watch alien movies. With this last hiree, I wasn't convinced her CV fit the tasks of manor life, but better to fatten the hog before trimming it. In passing, she noted her flexibility.

I then ascended to apprise milady of these latest hires.

"I've just come from town where I noticed this notice the butler put up."

"I put that up."

"Well really?! I can hardly tell your handwriting apart."

"It was printed."

"Aha. In that case, you may tell yourself that I will help out. I suppose I could spare a bit of time to be the official Self-portrait Photographer of the Manor."

At this point, the doorbell rang. Milady and I waited. I went downstairs to answer it.

A young woman stood there. "I would like to be the household exchequer, because I’m good at counting loose change, and if you pull rank on me as master, I can pull rank back on you as butler." Well, this was just the sort of logic we needed more of around here.

I searched in vain for the butler. It was past 5pm. I immediately sent a dispatch: "OK, butler. You've really unimpressed me. This mule cart on the other side of the world does me no good. Your days may be numbered."

Now, two new gals were in the salon chatting with the flexible chick who won't watch alien films. The first one stood. "I’ll be your bootlicker."

"And?" I said, pointing at my feet.

"Uh-unh. You're wearing sneakers."

I gave her a sugarcube to put in her mouth, while I introduced myself to the other girl.

"I've always wanted to be hair fluffer. I don't think it would be as demanding as full-on hair stylist. Also, being hair fluffer would ensure that the hair that I fluff would be clean enough to be fluffable. I have experience fluffing my own hair, and have especially good hair fluffing technique."

I pointed to the top of my head, and wagged my finger. She pouted as she slouched toward the front door. In this firing frenzy, I told the flexible girl who avoided alien flicks her "services" would not be needed either. When I approached the bootlicker, she opened her mouth. The sugarcube was gone. This one still had potential.

At this point, the butler appeared behind me with two school girls, one blonde and one brunette. "I'm here about the hiring notice."

"But, you're already the butler."

"Who's doing the hiring in my absence?"

"I am."

"Yeah, and I suppose you've been doing some drinking and entertaining on your own too?"

"Now, hold on, butler."

"Don't call me that. I would like to be Chief Manner Maker of Elder Manor. Then I can advise all residents on how best to hold their drinks."

"OK. How should the residents hold their breakfast juice? Got you on that one, didn't I, sleepyhead?" I turned and made my exeunt.

Outside, a slow-talking lass approached me and said, "I'll keep the dogs and polish the rifles." I consulted my Big Aristocratic Book of Manor Jobs, and found that role fell under "kennelman". A footnote noted this person should be taciturn. Boo-yah, achieved!

Next, I hired a French maid for milady. She said she came complete with costume and nightly delivery of milk and cookies. I also saw her toenails were painted, so that was one less thing keeping the butler around.

Around sundown, a derelict showed up by the servants' entrance. "I would like to be the sex slave for all the hot chicks in your mansion." I pondered this for a second. If he was to be a sex slave, I would probably get my money's worth out of him. I consulted the exchequer, and she agreed; he was invited inside.

Upon returning to my chambers to change for the evening's entertainment, I found a note from an old school chum on my bureau.

"I think I would make a good valet. I must insist it be pronounced the British way, with a t at the end, not val-ay. I cannot be infinitely more clever than you, or any more clever than you. I cannot, and do not care to, keep you out of trouble. Several qualities and characteristics that recommend me to the job: I have always been more attentive to shoes than you. (The bootlicker would be pleased with this!) I like wearing suits and almost never have the opportunity. I'm not sneaky. I'll tell you up front that I will drink about a third of your whiskey. And I won't limit myself to the cheap stuff."

Those last parts made me think he might be easing himself into a butler's position. I chafed a little, but eventually found him burrowing through my bureau, and hired him.

I ascended to tell milady I'd hired a valet (hard t) for myself.

"Well really now! You already have a valet and I have only one maid! Also the butler desperately needs you to tie his bowtie for this evening's entertainment."

Damn butler! So, I hired another maid to keep things tidy. She said that her husband showed interest in being a chauffeur, and introduced us.

"So, you'd like to be a chauffeur? Do you have a car?"

"No."

"Well, that's not really the job for you, is it?"

"Uh, chauffeurs drive other people's cars."

"Well, then go into town, steal a car and drive that one around."

The exchequer applauded my pecuniary savvy on this point, and showed me 89 cents she recovered from under a sofa. My valet (hard t) wanted to be sure the chauffeur provided valet (hard t) parking for guests.

I found my wine and whisky steward and instructed him to bring one-third of my supply to my quarters immediately.

"The only alcohol on the premises is a half-bottle of Paul Masson brandy and a few drops of vanilla extract. The rest is in the hands of a small fellow accompanied by both a blonde and a brunette midget."

"Oh, midgets are they? Anyway, that's the butler."

"Then I should be having this conversation with him?"

"Not so fast, steward. As long as I am acting butler, he will drink and entertain. In the interim, I'll try to get money for you from the exchequer." She handed over the 89 cents.

"So, I'm to bring one-third of no whiskey to milord's quarters?"

"Yes."

"Gladly." My valet went upstairs to wait impatiently.

Before I could see to milady about the dearth of whisky for the servants, whom I'd grown quite found of in my tenure as head butler (Yes, I believe I had, by this point, risen above ordinary butler), I had a note thrust into my hand. It read:

"I should be the groundskeeper. My current qualifications are these: I have a beard. I'm tired of workign indoors." A beard AND poor spelling! A groundskeeper he must be! And these were only his current qualifications by his own admissions. Who knows what other qualifications might pop up?

Milady rang for me and I hastened to her chambers. The two maids were there, tidying and cookieing at will.

"The evening's entertainment is just about to begin. My hair is now so wonderfully clean, I wish to take a photograph of myself, if it doesn't interfere with my schedule."

"Your schedule appears to have a few free minutes in it."

"Wonderful! Which of you maids will fluff my hair for me?"

They both gazed down, wringing their hands. They spoke in unison. "I'm afraid I have no experience in hair-fluffing, milady."

I was on the verge of slapping myself. Had I really made such a mockery of my butlery to have overlooked such a simple detail in milady's life? And after a moment, I spoke.

"I'm sorry, milady, but your time as Self-portrait Photographer has past. You are now needed as Lady of the Manor."

"Oh! Perhaps it's for the best. Very well, butler-Lord, you may announce this evening's entertainment. We shall be screening James Cameron's sci-fi hit, Aliens."

At least I dodged a bullet on that one. Still, this butler was nowhere to be found, along with his miniature consorts. And now with all the new hirees--lower and upper minion, someone had to delegate all the work of the house. And frankly, Aliens is too good a film to pass up.

Butler trouble

2005-12-13T14:42:00.000Z

I decided not to fly off the handle with my new butler. Perhaps he grew up in those undeveloped tracts near Woadard. Instead, I put together a little test to see if he was a capable butler or just some punk poser looking to hang out at Elder Manor in formal wear. I sent forth this post for his immediate response:

"As my butler, can you write my next blog entry? It should be witty. I'm not paying you for this. In fact, can I borrow some cash from you? Also can you concoct 25 things that milady does well & enjoys? I'd like to surprise her w/these. Are you willing to seduce women for me too? Much of my day goes into this."

He responded back immediately.

"Well, my lord, I would get right on it but my lady has asked me to drink a bottle of whiskey and entertain her w/ my moustache this afternoon."

"Listen up, butler. You can keep the moustache, but hands off the whisky, you hear? As to milady, you just leave her to me." And with that, I left him holding a jar of theatrical glue and nothing else.

Seven shots later, I was ready to see milady.

"Really, what's with this butler?"

"What do you mean? He's head butler. He's to delegate all the work of the house to the lower minion workers."

"OK, first of all, I think that 'head butler' is a title someone earns. Can we just call him the butler? Second of all, there are no other workers here...lower or upper minion."

"Well, in that case, he has to wear a uniform, and get drunk in the evenings for my entertainment."

"That's what he told me he was doing. That sounds funny."

"Like a court jester."

"Hmmm, well then maybe we were rash in hiring him as a butler?"

"What do you want him to do as butler? I have made my plans crystal clear."

"I'll get back to you."

I left milady and rediscovered the half-bottle of whisky. Apparently, tidying up is not in our butler's purview. I sent the butler an item for his immediate attention.

"How about this, butler? You may utterly devote yourself to milady for four days of the week. And to me, for the other three. Surely you cannot object to this sound balance of power and attention. (NB. I still have to figure out a use for you. Would you object to taking a survey of your skill set?)

Yrs.
Mr. Lord"

The butler responded with due diligence.

"Sir, it's quite alright. Milady often encourages you to have a private moment with yourself, as it were. She says it's good for you...

"A skills inventory seems most appropriate, sir. I am good at drinking and entertaining. I also have some facility with a lady's lower quarters. Will those skills be of service to you, sir?"

I returned to milady, and showed her the post.

"You see here. He's only good at drinking and entertaining. And I'm more than competent in those areas. As to those female lower quarters, he can give pedicures in his off-hours."

"Well, it strikes me that you possess an excellence for those things he mentioned...although with only toenails, your talents may be wasted...anyway, my suggestion is this. You should be the butler. That way you can do as you please, and I will still have someone to entertain me while you're away."

"So, hold on. I need to become the butler of my own manor, so I can drink and entertain...like I'm supposed to do anyway? Who's going to tie my bow ties then?"

"One second. I'll dial the butler. One second. Butler, Milord wants you to tie his bow ties. Yes. Yes. Very well. The butler says he doesn't know how to tie a bow tie, so he would appreciate it if you would tie his for this evening's entertainment. Elder Manor will be a sad and lonely place indeed should the Lady of the Manor be unhappy."

"OK. If the butler drinks and entertains you this evening, does that mean I have the night off?"

"That's silly. You can't have the night off from your own manor. No, you must stay here too. The butler will arrive at 5pm."

I realized at this point I would need to find interested servants, both lower and upper minion, that I could delegate work to, if I was ever going to get this butler out of my manor.

Reversal of Fortune

2005-12-12T19:21:00.000Z

I have a butler now.

I have him, because as the Lord of Elder Manor, it is necessary that I sit on my ass while my servants do what I should be doing myself. I asked the Lady of the Manor what she thought my butler should do. She asked what I spent most of my day doing. "Um, drinking." "Well, then you should have the butler drink for you."

I asked the butler what concerns he might have toward his services.

"How late do I get to sleep as head butler?"

"Whoa there. I just said butler. Anyway. My sleeping can be extremely erratic. Sometimes I'm up at sunrise. Sometimes I'm up at 10:30. I never know."

"I am most concerned about the desire for butling in the early am hours. Or just a general disturbance of my sleep."

"You're one lippy butler. Have you been doing my drinking before I've even hired you? What would you do if you were unable to satisfy your butler duties."

"I can always bring on more help."

"Hmmm, that's not really a trust-inspiring answer. Let me just clarify some things here. I guess all I need is for you to just hang out in butler clothes."

"I shall visit the Long Beach Suit Outlet and find a butler's uniform for less than $99 that meets my standards."

I thought all this butler business was settled at that. But, I just received this post:

"Sir, I've secured an ass-drawn coach for you from the Grand Prairie 'R'ent-a-'R'eck. I will have it parked near the ATA gate at DFW for your use whenever the mood strikes you."

"My Lady, I have acquired a Bentley Continental for your distinguished use."

Uh, under what grounds, can a butler just make decisions like that? An ass-drawn carriage? At DFW?!!! And why is the "R" in Rent in quotes?

Pause for pondering

2005-12-12T16:08:00.000Z

This week, almost the entire week, I have suffered from a strange gnawing insomnia. A bastard insomnia that allowed me to sleep at 11PM, only to wake me at 4AM. I attributed it to nicotine, caffeine, and wanting to accomplish something unaccomplishable. I have many people I should be emailing. I have so many people I should be emailing that I even made a list of them on paper. Yet I'm not. I think I may be building up an intolerance to communicating. That sometimes silence says it all. Furious silence.

The Hive, Part 3--Crucible

2005-12-12T10:50:00.000Z

The Crucible was tucked into the third floor of a four-story plot in the Manhattan hinterland between the Village and Tribeca. No buses went there and the closest subways were on 6th and 7th Avenues.

The agency entrance was conceived by an interior designer to evoke money. It was painted a pale blush of green and had black squares and arcs outlined sporadically along its walls. Behind Renee, there was the company logo: an ice blue halo with a stylized "C" and a graceful sans serif font tapping out the seven remaining characters.

Other agencies had monstrous waiting areas for their clients, but the CEO recognized that time was the costliest commodity. Crucible's had just a loveseat, a chair and a coffee table.

This arrangement was meticulously planned. Two men would occupy each the loveseat and chair. Two women would share the loveseat. There was never a situation where three men would be present. If more than three clients arrived, Renee would trot them into the conference room where a morning of fruits, pastries and exotic coffees awaited.

Outside the conference room, in the swell of the office, those nonparticipant employees would tick through the hours of the client meeting until the leftovers were theirs. The designers sat closest the conference room, and met the greatest scavenging success. The production and traffic people saw the least free food.

These small cheats to the system are high capital's saving grace--along with personal use of studio supplies and printers, or purloined pens and pads. The CEO knew this too. In the wobbly days that followed his founding this new agency, he would have an AE send an email announcement that treats were in the conference room. He soon discovered his employees found greater pleasure from "swindling" him than they did in being offered gourmet sandwiches and cans of soda. The emails ceased. Sometimes he conspired in increasing his employees' sense of deception by having an AE spirit the meeting's remains into one of the three refrigerators.

To be a decent leader, to be a greater advertiser, he had to anticipate behavior patterns. If he couldn't successfully do that here, he would have damned trouble doing so on the street, he reasoned.

The rear of the office, its north face, was a dog-legged block of four rooms. Five, if you counted the CEO's intimate meeting space cum antechamber. Each door bore the same blue halo as the logo with the name of the resident printed thereon. These housed the Crucible partners.

Combined they represented 101 years of advertising experience. The CEO was proud of this, but never broadcast it for fear of appearing fossilized. This fear was so ingrained it guided his hiring practices; he encouraged his managers to hire the lean and hungry, graduates and dropouts. He wanted to approve creativity without having to expend the energy to achieve it. And at this point in his career, he was entitled to that.

At present, the Crucible employed 42 professionals. In the agency's three years of existence, they had shrunk to 32 and swelled to 59. Like every office everywhere, half of them were either irrelevant or terminally dull. They slogged along--crunching numbers or nay-saying ideas, quietly correcting other's mistakes and dreaming of a glass of white Zinfandel come 6:30.

Then there were those of charging and recharging genius--prophets, seers, visionaries, artists, masters. They fought tooth and nail with clients. They fought tooth and nail with themselves. They were paid to care about the futures of enterprises they neither used nor particularly cared about. And since the pay bettered their efforts, they were mantled in the illusory comfort of feeling indispensible. This feeling rallied their sense of play, fueled the balloon that ascended the ballast of work. Collegial in the office and spectrums of personal outside, they engaged in an in-jokey patter that was polite and impolitic. On perfunctory study, they were in love with themselves, and transformed this into a like of one another. On another face, they were cohosts of a mutually agreed party. They believed in a philosophical equation: that by happying up their work, they ameliorated their lives, which blew the tiredness off their work. This circular focus was their universe.

But, they and the other they have destinies outside individuality and collection.

The calendar of advertising is feast and famine. And the Crucible had titularly evolved to abide both periods. In the prior, its employees called it The Excrucible or the Crucifix; in the latter, it was simply the Cruiseable. Despite the approaching holidays, the current workload was waxing gibbous.

Top 5

2005-12-08T17:01:00.000Z

Let's all dream a little dream.

Top 5 things to do with a million dollars...

My new friend

2005-12-04T16:43:00.000Z

I have a new friend in Ljubljana: Tatjana. She is incredibly funny and makes crazy pieces of art. Right now, she's working on a jigsaw puzzle of dinosaurs in scenes from the life of Christ. She has one with Christ as a Tyrannosaurus carrying a cross, and another with Mary as a brontosaurus standing over a gigantic dinosaur egg. She illustrated a calendar of people fucking in front of major Slovenian monuments; her parents didn't talk to her for a year-and-a-half after this came out.

She has the bizarrest sense of humor, which really has been a boon. One night, I was telling her the story of my first open-mouthed kiss, which revolves around going to get ice cream with some Miss Teen Arkansas runner-up in Hot Springs. At the end of the story, she says "But, did you ever get the ice cream?!" The story of her first open-mouthed kiss is absolutely bonkers!

At the expat Thanksgiving dinner, some overly hyped duded from New Hampshire asked her how we knew each other. She says, "We were dancing," then goes back to her soup.

While watching this interminable movie on MTV Adria on World AIDS Day, she says "This is good editing. I need to know everything that happens to these people."

On being extremely pale, she says "This skin has no dignity."

On getting things done:
Me: What's going on?
Her: I'm bored and boring.
Me: Hmmm, a self-fulfilled prophecy.
Her: Yes, I did it to myself.

Finally, when I tell her I think she's funny, she says "This is good. No one thinks I'm funny in my language."

It's like having a really good improv partner who makes you tea and polenta.

A cautionary tale

2005-12-04T16:34:00.000Z

Last week on Tuesday, I forgot to eat, then I remembered to drink. I drank lots and lots of wine at this party for an architecture seminar. I danced to "Disintegration." Then I hitched a ride with a dude who thought it would be a shortcut to drive through the park. I hit my head on his windshield and got my forehead all bloody. Then I fell down in the snow and got my mouth all bloody. Then I got thrown out of a girl's house. Then I lost many games of pinball at Lepa Žoga. Then I went home and promptly forgot everything that transpired that night. When I got up the next morning and went to brush my teeth, I had blood all over my face. The result of this was, um, alarming.

The Hive, Part 2--Renee

2005-12-02T17:09:00.000Z

Susan had a chocolate martini; her second. She arrived first. Joy nursed her Amstel. In the bend of the booth, Bree pored over the wine list like she knew what she was doing. And Renee went with her usual--a Jack and ginger.

Even though they were roommates in the same Brooklyn brownstone, they always reserved Sunday evenings for a girls' night out. Catching up and getting out of their Fort Greene apartment. True they were not precisely consistent in this measure, but they made as good as they could, considering the far-flung places they were from. Toronto. Olympia. Las Vegas. And Renee was from Pittsburgh. When she was a teenager she idled her weekends away at the Warhol Museum and campus galleries. Earlier today she cheered her Steelers to victory over the Browns, from her bed, in her Steelers sweatshirt. Her college boyfriend (Should she still consider him a boyfriend?) had called that afternoon from Baltimore or Annapolis or Silver Springs. She wasn't sure where he lived. It was definitely in Maryland.

She was chewing on the idea beauty was not in the eye of the beholder. It was a constant and it was true, real, beyond physical. Beauty was not entirely in the fashion rags she thumbed through. Well, maybe it was in Nylon, but definitely not in Cosmo. Beauty too should be a five-letter word; she would call it "looks."

And, because she was a spontaneous person, she decided to put her observation into action, from theory to practice.

"Our waiter has some looks."

It didn't come out just the way she had expected, a little over-eager. She thought that she would put the emphasis on "some" to give "looks" the quality of an afterthought. Instead, she accented "waiter" and the rest of the sentence was lost. But there was still potential in this newborn; she would have to prepare her next showcase for "looks" better.

"Ren, are there any cute guys at your office?"

"Yes. Why, yes there are. I don't know which ones have girlfriends yet, but there is one guy from Italy. He brought me some cheese on Friday."

"Was it Italian cheese?"

"It was New York cheese."

Sometimes Bree really got on her nerves with her stupid questions. How could anyone know if cheese was Italian?

"Oh, I may get a raise. Gwendolyn says if we get the Bijou Rouge account everyone will see a substantial bonus in their paychecks."

"A bonus or a raise? Renee, just make sure they don't try to give you more work without more money."

"Bijou Rouge? Is that a cosmetics account?"

"No, it's a big hotel. And I want more work. All I do all day is bring people their mail and say 'Good morning, Crucible Advertising' or 'Good afternoon, Crucible Advertising' or sometimes I just say 'Crucible Advertising.' The 'advertising' part I added myself. 'Crucible' sounded empty without it. Then I sign for packages which I set aside to deliver the next morning. I really need more to do, Susan."

"What would you like to do then?"

"Well, I don't think I have the talent to be a real creative yet, but I would like to come up with some ideas. Maybe I'll write down some ideas and give them to Oz, just to see what he thinks."

"I think that's a great idea."

Before Renee could expand on how the hotel could have a Warhol look, their waiter had pulled a chair up next to her. "You girlds look like a smart bunch. Here's a challenge." And he produced four matchsticks, then he tore a corner off Renee's cocktail napkin. He assembled a football upright and put the napkin piece inside. "You have to get the garbage out of the dustpan, but you can only move two matches. I'll buy a drink for whoever figures it out."

Joy reached over pushed the horizontal bit, then placed the off matchstick, so there was an upside-down dustpan, and the garbage was definitely out.

"I don't need another."

"I'll take hers. Jack and ginger."

Susan looked at her empty glass. Joy nodded.

"C'mon, Bree."

"But I haven't ordered yet."

"We'll go next door. Renee, you stay here and talk to the cute boy." Susan leaned into the waiter's ear. "You're a good waiter. Consider this a very big tip."

He was about to protest professionally. But Renee put her hand on his leg. "What's your name?"

"Raffello."

"Are you Italian?"

"I'm Puerto Rican."

"I'm Renee from Pittsburgh."

"Steelers won big today, yo."

"I did that."

"Then, you are some kind of magic."

"I have a magic sweatshirt."

"I have...to get back to work."

"You have to see my magic sweatshirt."

He stood up, eye-fucking her. She wrote her cell out on a dry spot of her napkin.

"My friends are waiting."

As she walked the endless distance to the door, she rehearsed: You have looks. You really have some looks. Atomize me with your looks. She practically hummed to herself. The delivery was spectacular.

Top 5

2005-12-01T15:25:00.000Z

OK, the first bit is purely selfish. I'm running low on creative steam.

Top 5 topics for my next column...

That out of the way, here's the real one:

Top 5 overrated things...

The Hive, Part 1--Frill

2005-11-25T11:30:00.000Z

Behind the windows were the orange-dusted lights of Manhattan. But Frill was looking at the windows themselves, more exactly their casings, which were black. What if they were silver? He turned around to briefly take in himself before concentrating again on the casings. Or a pearly yellow. And that wall with a blue scumbling over it.

His two paintings would have to be separated. He was bored by their fraternal twinning over the past four months. He addressed them individually. You are 8 years older than him, yet you look so good. And you, are a wicked little boy masquerading as an old man. He wondered what these paintings had to talk about.

Through the kitchen to the bathroom by the closet wash. This stone basin sink would have to go. He bought it seven years ago in Italy, and now they were found in Canadian restaurants. Besides, it was too obviously faggy. His last three boyfriends had said as much. The polished shallow curve competing against the hard natural edges. The blow job plateau. Thanks, Stephen. Rosemary lavender something soap--a present from his mother. He switched on the spigot and sloshed his finger in the stream. When it scalded and steam levitated off the basin, he switched it off.

I've got to get out of this business and do something that really challenges me. I should move back to Europe, or this time, North Africa.

He made to punch the mirror, then laughed at this frat boy gesture as it passed. He smelled the hand towel; it didn't need replacing.

In the living room, Terry was on the sofa, fluffing his crew-cut. 24-year-old Terry, who had been out for less than a year, and spent every minute exploring his gayness. Ellen in the morning, and double-ended dildos at night. He had on that too small pink bathrobe he'd stolen when Frill's sister came to visit.

"You're dripping on my briefs."

"Oooh, sailor! Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?"

"Yes. And I will again in about half-an-hour. So turn down the TV when she calls."

"I don't know, nurse, it could be glandular... Does Britney need a high colonic?"

Terry unstrung the bathrobe and patted his lap. Frill collected his papers and sat at the opposite end of the sofa.

A new luxury hotel was opening in Red Hook. This was one of several initiatives to put Red Hook on the map. The hotel's business was going to one of three agencies. Decent odds, he figured, but he had no head for numbers. Nor did he really understand advertising. Concept, execution, tactical, branding. He just made things look nice, look right. Of course, he wasn't worried about the concept. Sten would have the concept. Sten had more hooks than a retired fisherman. Frill wrinkled his nose. I've got to stop spending so much time with him; my metaphors are going straight.

Terry was looking into him. "What's so funny?"

"Oh. That guy on the television."

"I know. I love him." And he turned his attention away.

What I need is a look. Colors and lines. Figures and styles. Something that has brashness, without appearing young or artificial. Something that a banker would find new, but a designer would find tasteful. I can do this. This is what I do.

He closed his eyes, and inhaled over his teeth to clear his head. He waited for his sight to completely wash itself of residue. And from the formless black, he saw pearl yellow in the periphery of blue scumbling. The phone was ringing.

Terry wound himself up in that robe, and mouth-pantomimed as he sashayed to the bedroom: "I'll be right over there, lover."

Frill resented how much he needed what Terry gave, and he knew he'd hate himself when he told Terry he had to move out. He'd probably cry too.

"Hi, Mama. No. I just wasn't near the phone. Another check is always welcome. I want to do some new things with the place."

But first...

2005-11-25T10:38:00.000Z

A word from our sponsors.

Mobitel, the Slovenian telecom that is so efficient you can be interrupted from a night's sleep by drunken Thanksgiving revellers at 3:40 AM. Mobitel has crystalline clarity, so you won't miss a wine-inspired mumble. Can I get a testimonial? "I was asleep. I'd never heard my phone ring. I thought I was dreaming that sound, then it happened again. When I picked up, it sounded just like the person I was talking to was in the other room, even though she was six hours away. I just don't remember anything I said. Maybe that's because I was asleep." And is it reliable? You bet; when you're not alert, Mobitel will make you that way. With its complicated, no apparent volume-control function, Mobitel will always be the loudest thing in your house at 3:40 AM.

Mobitel, for emergencies and whatever the fuck else happens when you could be sleeping.

Introducing...

2005-11-24T20:09:00.000Z

I've given up on Fifteen Minute Story Fridays. They served a great purpose, which was distracting me from advertising. Now that I need no distraction, they seem soft and uninspired. I need something with a thread. A cable. Something with staying power, not burn-out brilliance.

When I wrote my column on advertising, a friend of mine read it, and said "I want to hear more about the Hive. Please, write about the Hive." And that's what this will be. I've decided to distract myself from life with advertising.

This will be a Friday serial in the Conan Doyle, Dickensian sense. And it's not about "The Hive." There are no characters ripped from my days in advertising. Those anecdotes are too precious and in-jokey to make good narratives. Traits, situations and perhaps quotes may be borrowed from experience, but the total package is fiction.

It has to be. Advertising is the biggest fiction around.

Top 5

2005-11-24T12:14:00.000Z

I made an error in my Slovene in my latest column. I asked my editor to read it, but I don't think he caught it. I had an East Asian moment and wrote "vreci," instead of "vleci." A very weak slight, but it changes the meaning of the sentence so much...well, it's no longer as funny as it should have been. (Good thing I didn't write "vleči." That's the infinitive form of "to give a blow job.") Anyway, these are the little details that plague me. Not that big details don't, but I can maneuver around them easier; big details have no agility. Verbally, there is nothing worse than posturing to be clever and ending up dumb. So:

Top 5 pet peeves or irritants in your life...

I realize that this post runs counter-clockwise to Thanksgiving. But, Thanksgiving can be pretty irritating too. Regardless, Happy Thanksgiving all.

Winter Wanderlust

2005-11-22T15:37:00.000Z

Winter is here like a punch in the face. I saw it coming, but I never imagined how much it would hurt. My own face is a peachy pink for those several minutes before I defrost indoors. Within ten minutes outside, my nose loses its dam-like qualities toward mucus, and my scrunched upper lip pulls double duty. Even inside the relative scorching temperatures of my jacket pockets, I have to flex my hands to keep their circulation going. (Note to self: Must buy gloves. Must buy boots.) This is the sort of epic cold that wars are fought in. The valor of each side made all the greater by their mutual enemy. Yes, it's that cold.

Still, I walk the 8km to the Slovenia Times office. This is masochism without a center...it is the invention of masochism. And oddly, I'm picking up bits of enjoyment from it. When I walked this stretch in the summer, my thoughts were always my own. A chronicle of memories and ideas, sensations and hypotheses. Under the current conditions, such solipsisms last less than five minutes. It's too cold to concentrate. Instead I've taken to making observations, and then recording them through forced recitations. Today, I noticed that traffic lights here have an intuited protected left. Before, I saw the lack of left-turn lights and thought I was in baby LA. But, no, the traffic of one side is stopped, while the other is free to continue apace. Not a brilliant revelation, but a landmark alternative to a candy necklace of hiccuped thought.

Last night, the weather was spectacular. At 6:30PM, the sky feathered out cottonwood, goose down, burnt-page snowflakes. Any that hit my face or hands instantly became water, which gave me the weird illusion of sweating. It was that snowfall where you look up and wait for just that one flake which should hit you in the eye but at the last minute you outsmart gravity and move. You could actually see a field of perspective through the snow; it was that thick. I was outside on the phone with my grandmother during the heaviest part of the fall. She was trying to convince me to give her my landlord's number. "We're not that close, Ma. I'd feel uncomfortable doing that." "We need the number of someone there." "No, you don't. Call my cell." And all this old people worry just ate me up. Here I am in the middle of my social circle...meaning not "in the thick of it," but that everyone I care for is equidistant from me. I should be more bothered with myself, I resolved. And as I listened and discouraged and assuaged, the snow stopped. Like a switch. And the cloud cover climbed easliy twelve stories off the ground. This whole event took maybe fifteen minutes; a flutter of a bird's wing when you're on the phone with my grandmother. It was as if the sky were being vacuumed, cartoon-style. And the spectacle was not over; two minutes later, fireworks started going off in the northern part of the city. No one knew what they were for, but residents and shopkeepers were standing in front of their places, watching the tracers bat through the clouds and into frosted colors.

Much of this could be described as a miracle. Were it not just so typical.

Blopez

2005-11-20T18:01:00.000Z

In a September entry called "Quiz/Show," I introduced my friend Wayne.

Wayne is the Falstaff to my Hal. He's likeable in a way that I will never achieve. His personality has a softness to it, no edges. Which isn't to say he's without his angles. He's like a parabola, headed one way, then sloping off to another vector.

And I'm Falstaff to his Hal. I'll never be more jolly than him, but I'll forever be less responsible. Wayne has always had a job since I met him when he was 17. He's dependable--dependable good and dependable bad.

When I lost my cell phone, he asked if I lost my SIM card too. I found this question too foolish to answer over email. But Wayne honestly wanted to know. (Dwight, Josh and I have developed a rapport with Wayne where we often speak in a satirical negation of his premise.) Our spoken exchange later went something like this:

Wayne: But you still have your old SIM card, right?

Me: Yes, Wayne. I'm thoroughly in the habit of removing my SIM card before I lose my phone. When I'm going to get my backpack stolen, I remove my laptop and cash too. When my bank cards fall out of my wallet, it's cool because I cancelled them the day before.

Dwight is more harsh; Josh is less. Wayne's wife has frequently admonished him about putting up with our bullshit. It's not bullshit...or rather, it IS. It's an ages-old script for comedy where Wayne plays the wild card and we play the straight men.

When we were kids, we would go out clubbing and follow that up with a trip to IHOP; these nights essentially defined Wayne's persona. Dividing up the bill went something like this: "OK, here's Josh's $5.50, there's my $6.00, and you owe $12.00." Wayne was aghast at the disparity, but he obligingly paid up. (I'm sure he secretly thought we were cheating him.) After five more such visits, he asked us how come we paid so much less. Josh and I simultaneously pursed our lips and shook our heads, talking on top of each other.

Josh: We order the specials, Wayne. You order everything a la carte. That shit's expensive.

Me: And when you want more coffee, don't hand the waitress your cup. That carafe is full. She charged you (picking up the receipt) for four coffees.

A few years ago, as Josh and I were detailing a recent Wayne story to his sister and her friends, Wayne's sister blurted out "That's so funny, because Wayne totally talks like that," referring to our faux-doofus rendering. Josh and I simultaneously pursed our lips and shook our heads, talking on top of each other.

Josh: Wayne doesn't talk anything like that!

Me: It's like a red octagon means "Stop;" THIS is the universal symbol for Wayne.

Last night, Josh and I were SMSing. 4AM, my time. 7PM, his. He asked me about my last days in NYC. I told him a stripper gave me her phone number...in a strip club.

Josh: Maybe your new thing should be going 2 strip clubs and leaving w/phone numbers + more money than you arrived with. It would make Wayne crazy. Like IHOP 4 adults.

Me: I'm trying to go to sleep & now i cant b/c ill be laughing for the next 7 hrs! "hey jer that one let me touch her." "is that a fact, wayne? good job, real good..."

Josh: "Josh, can I borrow $20? I want a lap dance." "Ask Jer, he's getting a lap dance and $60 as we speak."

Good friends eventually become parodies of who they really are to each other. It cuts down on the need to "talk." We just share in-jokes like AIDSers with IVs. It's easier and harmless in comparison with going outside our circles.

I know Wayne will like this post. We talk nostalgically about being kids now that we're not. His wife won't like this at all. And anyone who knows us will just go "Yep."

Wayne's birthday is April 25th. The best thing about this post is I can email it to him in six months with this paragraph removed, and he'll go "Heh, heh," like it's completely fresh to him. Or I can email it to him with this section intact, and he'll go "Wait, Jer, TODAY is April 25th."

You can't get better comedy than that.

A gross idea

2005-11-20T11:25:00.000Z

Here's a gross idea proposed my friend John and elaborated on by me about the spectacle of excess:

John: What if we staged a contest that pitted Takeru Kobayashi against Annabelle Chong? He would eat hot dogs. She would have sex. Whoever did the most in their respective field would win.

Me: This idea intrigues me as both a mathematical story
problem and an illustration of human consumption. Perhaps we could run the whole gamut of human vices...herewith, gluttony and lust already taken care of. The synch cam on this would be artistically exciting. Kobay stuffing himself full of hot dogs; Chong, um, doing the same. To truly measure the impact of this comparison, there would have to be no time limit. The mandate must be CONSUME. And already I must correct myself. Then we would lose the preciousness of time, the race, the record, those boring human details that put numbers ahead of actions. Could he keep pace with her over the course of a day? Could she be as riveting over the course of five minutes? And where does this satiation become routine? Maybe that's where this execution has its real life? We would monitor those watching this spectacle and see where their breaking points were. It would be, from my perspective, much more fun to bet on the viewers rather than the participants.

Sadly, he didn't get to respond, because he's bounced off to Cali for Thanksgiving week. But, this particular idea made me think of how earlier I had easily watched an hour-and-a-half of two-man bobsledding. This was quite possibly the most boring way I could have spent that time, yet I was entranced. The steady cams never changed. The principle or execution of the sport never changed. Nothing ever changed except for the numbers registering the times. (Oh, and a Swiss team wiped out at close to 120 Km/H, which looked painful, but they got up no worse for wear.) I watched and watched and it was only when Latvia tied for first that I could watch no more. There was some finality to seeing +0.00 pop up at the bottom next to their flag. It was like one night in New York, I watched the countdown/countup clock in Union Square. And when the zeroes hit the center at midnight and began spreading outward again, I knew it was time to go. And even rereading this last sentence, I feel stupidly aphoristic. "At that time, it was time." In many cases, the grossness of an idea is not the idea, but the time spent on it. European basketball is a shorter game compared to the American variety, therefore I will watch more of it. Doing a crossword or mental puzzle is only a success if accomplished in a certain time for me. Sprinter to the end, I don't have the patience for the "big" game. And lately, I've been wondering how this corresponds with my life. Will I continue to tire of long-term projects or will I eventually adopt a Zen mastery of letting time pass unnoticed, like while watching bobsledding?

I always loved Einstein's metaphor for relativity involving the stove and the girl. Maybe both aspects of time can live in the same life. I will make that today's gross idea.

My commitment to service

2005-11-19T13:47:00.000Z

So, I just bought a new cell phone. Some French model called Sagem. It works. And I bought an extra SIM card, that way if anyone decides to visit me and they have a Tri-Band phone, we can stay in contact, if I have to go do something. Smart, huh? So, bring on the visitors.

Top 5

2005-11-17T15:15:00.000Z

Oh yeah, it's Thursday. Time to get the Top 5 on. Thanks to all my friends who wished me happy birthday. You guys rule.

Top 5 new holidays that should be celebrated...

A series of closed letters to yesterday

2005-11-17T14:20:00.000Z

Dear Andrej,
True, women are great. And if you want to date three of them, go right ahead. Seriously, knock yourself out. But, do not rope me in to juggle for you. I'm not a juggler's assistant. In fact, the thing that makes jugglers stand out is their ability to do what they do...WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. Kaja had great fashion sense, and Petra had beautiful eyes, but I'd put my money on Jasna. She's a little hyperactive, but I like that. That's just me. A word of advice, take it or leave it.

Dear Jaka,
Your theories about the roots of drum and bass intrigue me. And although I'm not 100% on your ideas, the music you played was surprisingly good. Next time, yes, we will have to have some old school hip-hop at our disposal. "It's Tricky," "Strong Island," and "Criminal Minded" were all good calls. Also, don't change topics so quickly; I'm still curious to hear what you think about the US presence in the Middle East.

Dear Eva,
No. And that's final.

Dear Jasna,
Aww, it was so good to see you too. Flattery will get you everywhere, including into my good graces. If you didn't live in Vrnika, I would have paid for your taxi home, but that's like 7000 Tolars and really...ouch. But, you're working again tonight. I'll probably stop by after the Slovenian Wine Festival in Hotel Slon. You're tongue-pierced lisp is your best quality and I totally mean that in a good way.

Dear 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, Living in Brazil Dick,
If I tell you I do not give a shit what you think or what facts you're bringing to the table, I mean it. I totally fucking mean it. I'm not pulling your leg. I do not care. I physically, mentally, and spiritually could not care less. I'm just trying to catch up with Jasna here. I'm not a fucking sounding board for you to try out your profound ability to aggrevate. And just because you traveled all over the US for three years does NOT mean that you understand America better than I do. It's impossible. It is "a black hole forming directly over my bed that spits out well-read sex-crazed English-speaking alien humanoid females" im-fucking-possible. OK? Now that we've gotten that straightened out...sip your fucking Guiness out of a can, pay your bill, and stick where the sun always shines, like back in Brazil. Fuck you, it's my birthday. Jesus.

Dear Bartender at Global,
Your memory is amazing. Your partner's not so much. She had to make my drink three times, because she kept adding Coke. One complaint: take fewer bathroom breaks.

Dear Wasted Dude,
You may be the future of Slovene music, but you can't sit up straight in a bucket seat. That doesn't bode well for anyone, especially you.

Dear Polona,
I could talk to you all night. And from the looks I was getting from your boyfriend, I did.

Dear Photobooth in the Train,
Thanks for nothing. At least, you didn't take my money AND not work.

Dear Alcohol,
You suck. But I still like you.

It's my birthday today.

2005-11-16T14:11:00.000Z

Well, 8pm EDT.

I'm about to go buy a coat, because someone stole my leather jacket at Hombre last night. Then I'm going to buy a new cell phone. I know I'm inviting disaster with these purchases.

Motherfucking 31 was the year of loss. And gain. And I assume 32 will be no different.

Incidentally, according to some astrology book, I was born on "The Day of the Boss." I'm going to try to boss a lot of people around today.

Unrelated to anything, my face hurts.

The US & how to fix it

2005-11-15T12:26:00.000Z

So, last night, Josh and I were emailing about our current reading. (FYI: Simon Singh's Big Bang for him, DeLillo's Cosmopolis, Nabokov's Pale Fire, MacEwan's Atonement, and Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club for me.)

Here's a brief recap of the conversation:

Josh: I just picked up Big Bang by Simon Singh. He rocked the history of cryptology so hard in The Code Book that I can't wait to see what he does with the birth of the universe. Oops. I mean, "The Birth of Christ" for all those kids in Kansas.

Me: Thank Jesus, Dover still has some sense. Can we unannex Kansas? Is there a clause in the Constitution that says we can get rid of states? Kansas hasn't done shit, but be associated with shit and shit philosophies. I hope God gets mad that human beings have not figured out He really doesn't exist. Only that could justify the Apocalypse.

Josh: Kansas gave us In Cold Blood and Dwight. I think that's all it has to offer.

Me: Kansas also gave us Dennis Hopper and Damon Runyon...notably neither made a name for themselves there.

There you have it. Unless someone has some secret knowledge proving Kansas is a cultural mecca, I'll continue with my American image gerrymandering.

I've long held that America is not 50 states. It's only three. New York. California. Texas. The rest are pale impersonators of some dominating aspect of one of these states. And, the actual capital of the United States is Chicago. Washington DC is too poor, too facadey, too government to represent a focal point for the American polity. Like other artificial capitals (Ottawa, Brasilia, Canberra), it sucks.

So here's your map of the future. Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota...all you fuckers are California. Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico...that's new Texas. Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts...new New York. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia...that's Chicagoland. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia...I'm not feeling very imaginative. Let's call them The South.

OK, I had to add two, because I need an odd number for legislative matters. And Texas doesn't want to be associated with The South, even though it is.

Now go look at your electoral college map. Check it. New York, California, and Chicagoland keep Texas and The South in balance. Now, with the Midwest spread evenly between Chicagoland, Texas, and California, we don't have to worry about family values going all haywire. True, there is a bit of a rub with all the major metropolitan centers concentrated in New York, but I imagine the other four states can juice something out for themselves. C'mon, Chicagoland...they've got wide shoulders there. I realize the assumption of Alaska into Texas will raise some eyebrows. Go with me on this one.

Now what to do with the old capital. I suggest we turn everything from Baltimore to Alexandria into a national reserve. Sort of like colonial Williamsburg, but we don't change anything. We use it as a living museum to city mismanagement, fat cat politics, external renovations at the expense of infrastructure, etc. The best part is we can pay the poor people to stay there. You're probably asking "But, if we pay them, won't they not be poor?" As a person who has rarely lived longer than paycheck to paycheck as an adult, we have nothing to worry about at all. I may move into Tenleytown, if this thing takes off.

You're probably wondering who will come to this national reserve. For one, high school students. It's part of civics class. Another group, Scandanavians. I always hated seeing the Norse backpackers schlepping down 125th St. It was like "Hey, you blonde dick, get your own black people." (Which brings out another point, all travelers are basically human zoo visitors. That so makes me chuckle.)

I'm wondering if we shouldn't keep government in DC to teach future politicians a lesson, but the fuck...it's been a shame of a city since what? 1820? 1866? Let it be a beacon of failure.

OK, now that we've consolidated the states, let's get to work on fracturing political parties. TK.

Birthday countdown

2005-11-14T15:36:00.000Z

This is a call to action. I usually make myself a birthday mix. Yeah, I'm all kinds of selfish. But this year I'm spinning it a little different. I want you guys, my friends, to help me make one. Here's the rub: I have to be able to get the songs from the Internet. Either an MP3 site or some file you can email me. I'm using the office computer, so I don't have any of those nifty file-"sharing" progs at my disposal.

Or you can just post a playlist. That way I can go back to it later, when I have my own computer to put whatever software I want onto.

Nus, you're off the hook. That MP3 CD you made is really high.

More of the same

2005-11-13T22:32:00.000Z

So being without a cell phone is a fucking dog. It's proof that no one loves you. Well, maybe not proof, but a serious method for conveying that point. Right about now I'd text someone I know and totally get it on...like hang out and chat and shit. But I can't and every person I know here is undoubtedly going "Where the fuck is Jeremy? I haven't gotten a text from him in like...48 hours. And if that jerk asshole tries to bounce some lame excuse off me as in 'I lost my cell phone,' I'm just going to bounce him right out of my circle of friends." So there you have it. Without a cell phone, I'm garbage. Er, more garbagey.

I'm a fucking idiot.

2005-11-13T17:29:00.000Z

I lost my cell phone. Technically, it's Ashlee's, but I use it...frequently. I lost it the first time near a dive bar in Vevče. My friend Alisa called my number and found it on a dark street by a paper mill. WTF?! Then I lost it AGAIN!!! And I fucking turned it off, since the battery was low. So I can't even check to see if someone picked it up. I feel remarkedly Meganesque right now. (She lost her cell while I was in the City under similarly conspicuous circumstances.) If anyone reading this knows my family, please call them and let them know I'm not ignoring them. So fucking stupid. Can you see me slapping my forehead? I blame Martinovanje. Dumb wine festival on a dinnerless stomach. I'm surprised I wasn't organ-harvested at some point last night. In other news, I met this really cool girl who paints porno tourist calendars and dinosaur Christians. The shit is so nonsense. Jesus as a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the wisemen as velociraptors! A chick taking it in all holes next to the fountain in front of City Hall! Some fucking people...I'm glad it works out this way.

Grumble

2005-11-12T15:31:00.000Z

Today is Mana's birthday. She is crazy smart and quick-witted and pees on people when she sits on their lap, which makes her a perfect candidate to be my friend. I grumble, because I did not get the opportunity to be graced by her presence during my Boston breeze-through. You see, most smart people are completely one-track in their expression. (I know from whence I speak being casually smart at times...when I'm not trying extra-hard to seem dumb.) But, Mana can go from seriously high-brow to cornball in less than a nanosecond. You're all trying to digest these detes she's just laid out about the effect women's lib has had on the Iranian street and you think you've got your addition to this lecture/convo figured out, but then she throws you a curveball like "So, I fell down on the way to class the other day; I think I fractured my tailbone." And you just kinda sit there holding your mouth thinking "Is this her way of saying 'Don't bother, monkeyman. I've got this one covered.'?" The reason I bring this quality up is because there are very few ways to get hard info out of your friends. There's always that ticklish facade that presents itself as "sharing." Every so often, you don't want to share. You just want to get and get and get. Mana understands this. I get articles forwarded from her on subjects I should know about. I get drunken rambles on Harvard internal politics. I get these facts that I can fictionalize and internalize and metamorphose into something my own. She's like your favorite teacher. The one that bought you beers, even though that's totally unethical. Who needs ethics in the field of facts? Her husband refers to her as "his little brown companion." She is little and she is brown. She basically a less-hairy Ewok with a master's degree in skewering mass media. This cuddly quality is regularly undercut by her intensity, and her intensity never reaches severity, because she's so cuddly. If I ran the US, I'd appoint her Secretary of State. I'd send her in after I'd said something completely grievous in a fit of pique. And she'd smoothe out everything I said...by refuting it to the nth degree. Then she would make all those ministers and appointees give her a hug. Then she'd fart on them. This is my new model for political diplomacy. Silly, but aggressively silly. "Don't fuck with us. We have loose bowels." Ineffectual? Perhaps. But how much cooler would it be to be pressured by a stink bomb that's going to land on you personally, than a MOAB that's probably going to miss you and blow up an orphanage? Mana would say "But, Jeremy, we shouldn't pressure anyone." That's true. But her ability at detente is ironclad; that girl will NEVER sit in my lap.

Jetlag

2005-11-11T17:42:00.000Z

I have now slept 25 hours in two days. This is disturbing the feces out of me. I can't believe I'm having this allergic reaction to being outside the CEDT for only a month. It reminds me of the time Josh and his wife came to visit Ashlee in Amsterdam. I was hoboing around Europe and we happened to coordinate a group hang at her place. Josh slept the entire time. We couldn't get him to do anything. It was sad...critically so. I eventually went to Paris and brought back my French girlfriend, because Josh was such a housecat.

It gets dark around 5 o'clock here. I have no idea what time sun-up is. None whatsoever.

So, last night, I reintroduced myself to Slovenian social life by going to Tombstone for 3 pints of Laško. My friends Samo and Ana met me and we played catch-up. Samo is finishing his driver's exam. He's 28. Ana just passed her math exams. She got a B. Then it was off to Metelkova. There was a Belgian trip-hop band playing at Gromka. They were good. Portisheady. Live drummer. Some girl I'd seen in town once or twice convinced me to go to Gala Hala for a DJ set that lasted till 5 AM. The dancing was fun. I got a solid workout. And scoffed at Slovenian moves. At one point, I pulled down a shot of vodka and thought that was probably a good sign to go home. But I did not. Ended up at Ajda, ordering pleskaviča. Will I NEVER learn?

Woke up around 10. Realizing that 4 hours of sleep is not enough, I went back to bed. That nap turned into something else. I eventually got up around 4. Took care of some necessary hygiene matters, namely a thorough soaking and scrubbing.

I feel good, but still tired. I think I'll grab a pizza at Foculus. Then convince myself that I should see sunlight some time soon. If I'm not active by 11AM tomorrow, someone should give me a ring. That'll be 5AM for most of you.

Top 5

2005-11-10T18:06:00.000Z

I just woke up from 15 hours of sleep and I'm actually psyched to get another 7 before morning. I used to never jetlag. Oh well.

My old boss, CB, asked me to come up with excuses for missing work after attending a Thursday night party. I sent her some, but the field is ripe for exploring, so I'm stealing her bit for this week's Top 5. Excelsior!

Top 5 excuses for missing work on a Friday...

Yes, the Correspondence School is again in session.

Change of plan

2005-10-19T18:38:00.000Z

Chicago is out. Boston is in.

Sorry, and you're welcome...but not necessarily in that order.

Off duty

2005-10-09T21:31:00.000Z

My apologies. I'll see many of you soon when I attempt to elucidate through a NY fog of God-knows-what fluids...

Ask me about these topics:

Portorož MTV Party with dickweed marketing director

Final night of Ex Ponto at Drama's actors-only bar

Funny comparisons between Americans and Slovenians

Whatever adventure I have along the 14+ hours of travel between here and there

Do not ask me about:

This hacking cough that will not go away

Why I have no money

Na zdravje (zdravenje).

Top 5

2005-10-06T15:33:00.000Z

Gotta hustle. Ad party in Portorož tonight.

Top 5 new slogans yet to be written...

Yeah, it's fuckin' vague. I'm tired.

Bureaucrite

2005-10-05T11:48:00.000Z

Monday, I got a bank account. Here's how it went. I walked into Abanka. I sat down across from a middle-aged woman in orange pants. (Banker ladies really dress like clowns sometimes. What is that?) She says a tad frantically "I can't do anything about a bank account, because you don't have a tax number. You need a tax number." OK, tell me where to go. She says I have to go to the tax office for strangers. Not foreigners, strangers. That's cool; she and I weren't going to be acquainted anyway. I go there. The office is closed for its midday break. I slowly fill out my tax number paperwork and drink machine coffee. When I get in with the tax number woman, she makes me go outside to photocopy my ID. That sets me back 30 SIT. There was a copier in her office. I go back to the bank, but it's closed for its midday break now. I walk out to the Slo Times office. Write some people. Then I go back to the bank, orange pants is already getting flummoxed, because apparently no one from another country has ever wanted a bank account here. She tells me that I can only get a foreigner's account, which means I cannot have an ATM card. WHAT THE FUCK?! This is typical Slovenian for "let's screw over the Bosnians and Montenegrins." Clearly, this will not do. I ask for a second opinion. She brings out a woman who is dressed like a human being. I explain the situation to her. This new woman is better than a problem solver; she's a problem ignorer. Seriously, I think I could be married to her for 50 years with both of us just sitting there, dishes piled up from two months ago, a bunch of dead plants, watching TV with a busted vertical hold. Orange pants is like "What goes here?" Reinforcements is like "Blank." "And here?" "Blank." "Blank again?" "Yes." At this point I'm calling Reinforcements Santa Claus and David Copperfield. She's basically treating the federal government the way teenagers treat their principal. She says "OK, come in on Monday and pick up your card." "I can't. I'm in New York on Monday." "You're a bad one. When do you want it?" "Friday?" "OK, come back on Friday." Then, it's time for paperwork. Reinforcements: "I need your telephone number and email address." "Are you asking me out?" "Maybe." I like that. That means I'll definitely have my card on Friday.

I have too many SMSes

2005-10-05T11:14:00.000Z

Some of them have got to go. Let's review:

Jo jo big J.I yust came.I get the money.When you come back I hope youll have time for a beer or 6.Enjoy and take care.M.
This one is from my landlord. I guess it proves I've been paying him. Contractually, it's a keeper.

Restaurant is called BREZ'N, is on LEOPOLDSTR 72, we are sitting upstairs...Cab should be 10 or 12 Euros. See you soon!
I never saw these people, and it's going to be a long while before I'm in München again.

U've GOT 2 read Atonement. Ian mcewan must've bn channeling dinner @ ma's when he wrote part one!
This is from Josh. He exclusively uses SMS as his sole form of communication. I've had too many dinners at Ma's to be ready for the fictionalized version.

PIVNICA VEVCE, it's right next to the PAPIRNICA VEVCE and POOL VEVCE!
So which bus line do I take? Vevce...OK, got it.

Im @ home getting drnk. I just tried 2 open my pint glass w/a bottle opener.
More Josh. Congratulations. Mission accomplished.

I worked with her through panteon and I got 2000per hour, u could charge 3000. U would get 6000per session. That ok?
Later today I'm going to figure out if that is OK. It sounds OK, but I'm borderline diseased with a hangover now.

Svete. Write another sms if youll have a problem. I'll make a phone call.
It's cool when you're friends with movie stars and TV actors. Especially when they get you into free performances at Drama with a phone call.

R they ugly inside?
Josh...again. This will need an entire entry to explain.

Aha...you could be here to put your face on mine...hehe...like you said
Wherever I was, it was apparently the wrong place.

Sladke sanje tudi tebi...my pillow says hello to yours
Flirting actually is better than sex. No one can ever say they had smart sex.

Mexican Downs Syndrome call 2 slovenia was $91.60!!! i'm billing that 2 the mexican consulate
This leaves me speechless in so many ways. It appears my time is worth $2 a minute. I'm like a shitty attorney.

Hej you!last sms from slo. Here is my mail...have nice time.hope we se you soon.cmok
Cmok! Fuckin' cmok! Those four letters are worth $91.60.

What's yr theory on why I don't email piggy d?
Well, let's see. You've abandoned sustainable communication for "essential word" phone transmissions. You can only think 30 characters at a time. So, either you're a lazy fucking cunt or the human equivalent of a solar calculator watch.

That's the SMS review so far.

Bummer

2005-10-03T20:33:00.000Z

I just wrote a LONG ASS entry about today. And I hit something and it disappeared. That was fucking lame. Oh well.

Ad festival in Portorož tomorrow.

Žur (aka Zabava)

2005-10-01T12:05:00.000Z

I went to the funnest party last night.

Everybody was in Jane Fonda era workout gear. It was a Spandex-plosion.

I'm not a disco loving person; I fucking hate it. But this shit was so infectious. It was like everyone did whip-its and then got up and did stage routines. It was like if Abby Bender put on a dance concert and no one fucking listened to her. It was like a 1980's murder mystery patry where the cops caught the criminal in the first ten minutes and then everyone had to shake their asses to prove there was still order in the world. It was like being on ecstasy, except no one was touching each other or drinking water. It was so fucking fun. My friend Neli and I were running around stealing people's headbands and then asking those same people we stole them from what they thought of our headbands. The party was supposed to be private, but I came up to the doorman talking really fast in English and saying shit like "We have a plus two, but our third person isn't showing." Some British girl gave me a pack of cigarettes; she took two for herself.

Geez, it was insane surreal. I got home at 5AM. I had so much energy from this joint I walked the 3.5 kilometers back to my place, and then put on "Electronic Renaissance" by Belle and Sebastian, and bopped around my kitchen and bedroom. Fuck. Where were you guys?

I woke up at 10, and walked into Center. I have a job tutoring some 30-yr-olds in English this Wednesday.

Last night, I saw a play called "norway.today." It sucked. I felt like I was in high school, only not my high school. Some lame Family Matters-type high school.

FMS - Makucova

2005-09-30T13:12:00.000Z

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

2005-09-29T13:06:00.000Z

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

2005-09-28T15:42:00.000Z

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

2005-09-26T19:39:00.000Z

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

2005-09-26T17:11:00.000Z

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

2005-09-26T16:54:00.000Z

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

2005-09-23T18:54:00.000Z

"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

2005-09-23T14:23:00.000Z

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

2005-09-22T17:58:00.000Z

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

2005-09-22T12:13:00.000Z

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

2005-09-21T14:14:00.000Z

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

2005-09-20T13:22:00.000Z

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

2005-09-17T11:57:00.000Z

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

2005-09-16T16:57:00.000Z

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.

2005-09-16T16:31:00.000Z

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

2005-09-15T16:14:00.000Z

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

2005-09-15T16:09:00.000Z

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

2005-09-14T15:45:00.000Z

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

2005-09-13T16:57:00.000Z

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

2005-09-12T10:41:00.000Z

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

2005-09-09T12:11:00.000Z

"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

2005-09-08T11:50:00.000Z

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

2005-09-08T10:50:00.000Z

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

2005-09-07T16:25:00.000Z

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

2005-09-07T16:03:00.000Z

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

2005-09-07T14:53:00.000Z

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.

A curiosity

2005-05-22T16:10:00.000Z

So, I'm crushing on this Croatian clothing designer who is certainly too scenestery for me, but that can be resolved in that my type is never my type. We met at an expatriate's picnic thrown by the English local paper, The Slovenia Times--possessed of the most egregious tagline I have come across: "Read the Difference." There was a medieval theme as it was thrown in Fužine Castle, and I walked 7km in drizzle to this. Within 10 minutes and one plate of pork products, I stood by the entrance of the castle, surveying the participants. As she walked past me, I stepped in front of her and said "Clearly, you're the most interesting person here." And with a close-cropped rat's nest of blonde and black hair, a home-made dress, no bra and orange sunglasses, there were not many within striking distance. We chatted about ourselves over bad Austrian wine. After realizing that we were both going to be interminably bored by the Canadian school teacher and the British school teacher, we "buggered off" to her place for consumption of just-stolen bad Austrian wine. That was our introduction. So after a rash of weirdo needy phone calls from her (one in particular involved a request that I take a cab to her place for buckwheat pancakes at 1 in the morning), she and I went out to Metelkova, an old army barracks converted into a clubber's strip mall, on Friday night after I fixed tuna pasta. After a little bit of dancing, she said "Shall we go back to my place and have sex?" And considering that I have a crush on her, I said yes. When we got to her place, there was a flurry of semi-nudity which terminated in her saying "OK, we're not having sex." Confused but not deterred, I sat up with her talking about our families, why it's cool to be clever, etc. The early-morning ramblings of tired minds. As we were deciding on a breakfast plan, she said "I don't get you. You are so complimentary." This was just about the most jaw-dropping thing I could ever expect to hear. Since when do girls...especially fashionista girls...not like getting told when they look nice or say something poignant. Am I in some sort of cultural caveman backwater where clubbing on the head and hair-dragging are the norm? This will require further exploration...with an archeologist's touch. Needless to say, this "transaction" devolved into a "fight." I went home, she went home. And then she called me later that evening. Today, Sunday, no work, and still no play. We had a frenzied lunch of curried vegetables, then we parted ways. Her to coffee with friends, me to an art exhibit of Chinese posters from the Second Cultural Revolution. Hmmm. Online diaries, like life, are filled with self-reflection of the most flatulent kind. Combustible...and offensive to all, save the producer. Well, today is sunny and I am about to make my way outside for a coffee and the rambling trip back to my neighborhood, Rakovo Jelšo, which from the responses I get from LJers can only be compared to Bed-Stuy or South Dallas. Oh, Europe...

Rampant unemployment.

2005-04-10T21:52:00.000Z

Sunday is the Lord's day, a day of rest, and at no time have I felt that more aggressively than today. Nedelja, the Slovene equivalent of Sunday literally translates as "no work." (Monday, to be sure everyone is on the same page, translates as "after no work day." And the widest circulating newspaper, Delo, means simply "work." A trend develops here...) So, as I awoke this morning in search of feeding myself, getting a photocopy of my passport, hitting an ATM to pay off my landlord and then purchase detergents, I had no idea of the Nietzschean mountain I was about to scale. As I made the trek from my home to Trg Prešeren, I found only one sandwich place open. It turned out to be the cheapest I've discovered, and I chalked that in the win column. But my happy surprise turned to dismay when nary a grocer, drugstore, stationer or photocopy place was open for business. The NY audience, for whom Kinko's are as ubiquitous as pigeon droppings, will find this akin to a dragon swallowing the sun. I steeled myself to this dearth of transactionability and stood before an ATM (BA here) to withdraw those necessary funds. But, I had forgotten my PIN #. How could this be? The duststorm that was my extraction from the City spanned approximately 40 days. In that time, I freed myself of my apartment and all worldly belongings—apart from the bare necessities (and a few cherished frivolities), opened a new bank account specifically to tackle the rigors of this trip, and filed/refiled/double-checked on the first files to a Houston insurance broker about a setto involving a carjacker, a car and myself. Factor in opaque nights meeting friends for copious whisky consumption, and you get a PIN # mystery series Kojak and Freud together couldn't deduce. With automaton diligence, I entered the eight or so #s I know I know. (Pardon the Rumsfeldism, but the claim makes more sense here than in Fallujah.) None of these worked. This was clearly an effort that required more than I could bring to it. So, I withdrew to my e-roost (KUD France Prešeren) to draw help from my bank. I sent an email (unsecured) to the representative outside Salt Lake City (or some other quasi-urban storehouse of customer servers) requesting my PIN #. She answered promptly back that I must send her a secured email and sent me the link to do so. As I filled in the blanks, I noticed the final piece in this secure email jigsaw puzzle was my PIN #. I wrote back that this was the very thing I was looking for. My representative obviously found my response too ponderous for her Sunday afternoon, and our communication ended there. I retaliated by enlisting the aid of a friend I know is an online fixture. He emailed me back with the link to the link I had just failed to make into a complete chain...and an international toll-free #! At last, things were moving. (As a sidenote, on the back of my bank card is the # to call if the card is lost or stolen. Oh, ghost of George Orwell, you are a busy spectre.) I migrated downstairs and asked the bartendrix how to dial an operator. "Nula...Nič." Zero. I pulled out my Mobitel cellphone and posed my thumb over the "0," imploring her approval. Her mouth pulled tight. "There is no Mobitel operator. You must call from a home phone or a collect phone." OK, so I can use my Telekom card on a street phone and make a collect call there? "No, you must go to the post office." But it's Sunday... She shrugged. I retreated back around the corner to the ATM. There, to no avail, I entered four more #s phenomenologically active in my memory. And although I got the impression this ATM, like Kafka's guard, would never ask me to stop entering #s, I did. I returned to the bar, where I had a beer and read a book.

Metal show.

2005-04-09T23:50:00.000Z

The bar/cultural venue I am writing from is KUD France Prešeren. Tonight they are hosting a heavy metal festival. The music of my childhood. And as memory serves me, the ultimate mid-80's dog & pony show of rebellion. To wit, if it's too loud, you're too old. I just watched a Slovenian metal band do hair rolls, guitar arpeggiations and complicated drum rolls in the name of that frenzy that comes with a disagreeable temper toward convention. There, I found myself toe-tapping along with the music. A half-hearted journalist in the vast sea of black leather and denim. The crowd struck me as uniquely heavy metal. I may as well have been in Texas. The girls were dumpling in out-sized t-shirts. The boys androgyne in aspect and spangled in silver rings and sewn-on patches. The men too old, as if their presence fought the age their aspect betrayed. The women that rarified breed of truck-stop mama who seems to exude sexuality, even if a faulty, shattered one due to overuse. The music is the norm: a pastiche of Slayer, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest (pre-gay pride). It reminds me of being holed up in my room as an 11-year-old with my Victorola pumping out Van Halen and my portable cassette player blasting some reedy version of Motley Crue. These were the role models I looked toward before I really knew what role models were. I would stencil VH graffitoes on my Trapper Keeper, draw pentagrams on my off-pages of notebook paper. The whole parade seems adolescent to me. And then I caught a moment of retrospection that detailled what this show means for its viewers here. The goal of being noisy, of being worthless, of being satanic (to cut to the chase) is that dissatifaction is close at hand. Youth is always dissatisfied. They feel infringed upon, helpless, unneccessary and unwanted. They mow lawns for a pittance. They talk on the phone until the wee hours, because talk is the only currency they have. And when they get together, they unite their frustration into a cataclysmic expression. Young countries are no different. To think that Slovenija is only 15-years-old boggles the mind. It almost betrays the architecture, the cobbled streets, the statuary and Roman walls of the south. But it remains a fact. They, the nation, are in a state of coming to terms with themselves, and as they get closer to joining the EU, they will find hair in places that were hairless, their voices will crack and still they will shout out anti-everything lyrics. It's a parent's dream and nightmare to see this sort of expression. (I consider myself a foster parent of sorts. I was here 10 years ago when the gurgling infant just broke loose from the umbilical Yugoslav cord. Though I was much more an infant then too.) As I watched the show, I noticed when the red footlights shown onto the drummer, the backdrop became a sort of skull with each eye going goggled whenever the cymbals were crashed. The image of death can be a heavy one, and especially obvious amid a sea of devil iron-ons, Gothic letters and cross bone decals. But mustn't one thing die for another to live? Isn't the food we eat a living thing until we internalize it and from there our lives continue forth at the expense of another? The death wish is never a totality; it's a sacrifice. It screams I have presence through actions that lack vagueness. It's difficult to like heavy metal as a musical form for me anymore. This music has no irony. It is, uh, heavy. (And as a footnote, I should instantly point out that once I discovered punk and indie rock, I consumed it with a voraciousness metal never inspired in me.) But how much irony do nascent societies need? In the States, we saw the ridiculous assumption that after 9/11, irony was dead. A radar blip of an oversight, since a mere 2 years later saw the Onion, the Daily Show and Bill Maher become the "news sources" of choice for the educated. As I figure, the metal empire in the States crested from 1978 to 1987. Nine years. In a country of (then) 200 million, that's a lifetime. In a country of 2 million, hungry for any sort of tradition, it could be much longer. But the ultimate paradox of music is that it is a fad. (The paradox being that music, unlike art or sculpture which captures a moment in time and holds it, needs time in order to express itself.) And like all fads, anyone who liked it once eventually becomes too old. And the future has no room for the elderly...no matter what their population.

An auspicious beginning.

2005-04-09T22:10:00.000Z

Today it rained in Ljubljana. A pitiless and pathetic rain. If you can imagine being caned by a 90-year-old, you understand what this rain was like. At first, completely ignorable and perhaps delightful to some, then after 20 minutes time, a quite tiresome affair. For respite, I sat in Bistro Ga-Ni near Železniška Postaja (the train station). I watched men come and go for Laškos, the Slovenian equivalent to Budweiser...a Bud 5-percenter that makes you blind after two bottles. I was reading an essay on the Biosquat outside Austin, TX, and laughing to myself as the author detailled the composting system (a tricycle with a commode for a seat.) The idea of adults self-fertilizing their land made me take stock of those around me; I needed a positive to my nose-holding negative. No one in the cafe would do such a thing, I decided. No one wanted to much do anything this Saturday and the weather pretty much enforced this indolence. Earlier today, I had gone to Nama to get bedding for the kiddie-sized bed that came with my furnished room. To expedite things, I ran around with the salesgirl whose English equalled my Slovene (translation: we may as will have been infants or cavemen for our verbal transactions with one another). She pointed to dimensions in centimeters and shook my head disapprovingly. We opened up packages of bedding. I used my armspan as yardsticks. I drew pictures of necessaries that were not within my line of vision, and she happily trotted away to add more to her sale. With my two bags under my stool and the pack of $2.25 Marlboros next to my elbow, I slogged through a large orange juice and a small macchiato. When the rain abetted, I threw out flares to the countergirl as Slovene service is one-half of the Dutch. You get service very quickly; you get your bill if you're lucky. I walked the 45 minutes from Center to my rented room in south Trnovo. Very south. The paved road leading to the splinter I live off has two more streets and then nothing. Just ghosted images in the offing. I think I saw a train go past once. The paved road leading to mine has a drainage ditch on each side. They reek of still water and hold consumerist fecal matter: plastic bottles, candy wrappers, cigarette butts too fresh to be swallowed by the tug of the muck. The brands that beat these streets are a testiment to the commune turned capital. Beat-up Yugos turn off at the same point as the silver Mercedes. Leather-clad yuppies wait for buses as warm-up-suited teens bicycle off on the next beer run. It's a hodge-podge, a stew that makes itself from cardamom and bone. No one has any idea what this will taste like when complete. Once inside the room, I set about the deliberate task of making the room somewhat my own, and as I surveyed the walls with a curator's vision, I noticed no nail holes, no patches of miscolored paint where taped posters had peeled off, no expressions of former personality. Just white, interrupted with impugnity by the paper and electronic mess on my desk, the intestine laundry on my floor, the Nama bags. I instantly felt ashamed and with completely reflexive behavior, I decided to take a bath. The water filled up steaming hot, so I went into my room to steam the wrinkles out of some shirts. When I returned, the water was tepid. 20 seconds of warmth and comfort was all I could expect from this bathroom. A shower nozzle flaccidly hugged the spigot, a vestige from a former water heater, I postulated. And in my less than lukewarm baptism, I became ostensibly Slovenian. No rushing to my Mobitel to ring my landlord, no rushing to the kitchen to boil water as I have done in my former apartment. I merely sat and scrubbed. As I began to lose feeling in my fingertips, I decided I should get dressed and head into town for food and exercise. I put on a fresh t-shirt and jeans, and old sweater, and then another old sweater on top of that. I hustled under a bleeding gray sky, as I thought of the things that I had done previously in Ljubljana this past week. The drinking, the meeting new people, the late nights, the conversations, learning Tarok (which will definitely get more airtime in the future), playing basketball, pizza eating, the et cetera. And it dawned on me that Ljubljana is a manic-depressive town that parties to undo the mope it's dying to submit to, that thinks and speaks to fill an ever-present void. And it reminded me of NYC. And it fortified why I've chosen to live in both of those places.