Saturday, January 24, 2009

International Tidbits

Okay, spending a week with anyone will make you want to kill them. Especially if they make you late for your flight because they need to smoke everything that's left in the non-smoking bathroom in the hotel you paid for on your credit card. But wait, he catches his connection and gets back last night, while I have to wait a whole nother day and get to drop another $100 on a hotel room.

I noticed that I'm really anxious and grouchy now that I'm on US soil. Security here is such a pain in the ass. Always insane lines, retarded don't-give-a-fuck workers, and I just want to go smoke. I don't think I waited on a line for longer than 2 mins in Paris or Amsterdam. Even at the Louvre, where coat check is free, maybe 2 people ahead of me. The trains were exactly on time if not early, and the food, even at shitty little falafel chains was amazing.

Granted we were high the whole time.

So, now I have that regret that I've just blown a shitload of money. Also, I feel the weight of my former life starting to tighten around me. But fuck that shit. I'm not letting anything get me down or get in my way. I'll help and do what I can but I'm only truly concerned with myself, just like everyone else.

Sitting on the floor of the Philly airport as my phone charges. I need to get a beer, even though I said I wasn't going to drink when I got back, but fuck it, I'm still on vacation motherfuckers.

Giant pint of Stella. Now, for the appetizer sampler platter or the soup and wrap? Hmm. Do I need food? Maybe just drink myself silly for the 50 minute flight home. Oh home, NYC, how I've missed you. Greatest city in the world.

I've seen Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, Miami (briefly), Pittsburgh, Philly, Bogota, umm...Chicago from the highway, what else...Albany? Uhh...Oneonta? Shit I can't think. Prob a few others not worth mentioning.

Philly was my close second. I came here years ago and just loved it immediately. Next is San Francisco. Nice city, but spread out too far for serious walking. And pretty much co-opted by commercialism and chains just like the rest of the world: at Haight & Ashbury is a Gap.

Paris was nice. Huge, huge, huge ass buildings. Like bigger than you can think, unable to fit in the frame of a digital photo. But it all becomes redundant. Same old ass buildings with the occasionally overly ornate massive structure. Still cool because of how many people I dig that went there, walked the same streets I did.

Amsterdam though, is the most beautiful, cool city I can imagine. Coffee shops aside, it's just breathtaking. Walk along the canals at night, the streetlights casting just the right amount of light so as to create a circle of light reaching out into the darkness and then falls short of the next, allowing you to linger in the void between. The buildings all plainly designed, yet stunning in their simplicity. They feel like wood, paint, stone should. Real.

So now I'm home and it feels good. Although the stress of coming back to the weight, the burden, the responsibilities, it's nearly more than I can bear.

But as I repeat to myself, my positivity mantra, which even my mom told me tonight, it'll work out, it always does. And it's true.

So I'll go to New School on Monday and pay money so I can register. I'll start outlining a screenplay, a short story, and comic scripts. The lettering of Liquid Fury I'll start over this coming week when I go to the studio. I'll avoid the people in my life that are bringing me down for their own selfish gain, say everything I need to everyone I can, and make plans for the future.

I'm ready to take over the world.

K

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

european vacation - train from paris

train back to amsterdam

european vacation - au rendezvous des camionneurs

ben & elvis 2

european vacation - au rendezvous des camionneurs

ben & elvis

european vacation - paris dinner

dinner @ au rendezvous des camionneurs

european vacation - paris goddess

she'll mess you up with that sword

european vacation - Paris bridge

bridge golden guardians

european vacation - paris palace

phat palatial estate

european vacation - Pont Neuf

la Seine - Pont Neuf

european vacation - Henry IV

In the endless spiral of Henry IV

european vacation - stairwell

In the endless spiral of Henry IV

european vacation Paris

Ile de Cite - Henry IV Hotel

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Sunday, January 18, 2009

Fuck France

Ok, they hate us here too. But we've got this traveling shit down. We're staying at Henry IV which is at the peak of a triangle on the island in the middle of La Seine. We're at the other end of Notre Dam which we just walked by. Meh. It's a big church.

Ok really big, monster movie big. Looming and leering at us.

Dinner at a local sushi place where the French couple there shittalks us in French the whole time. But we get drunk and laugh, exhausted from coming from the rain in Amsterdam to perfect chill weather among the cold French people.

All cities seem the same. Similar districts and sections, all comparable to NYC. But there's a different vibe. Amsterdam was cold indifference. Here it's more a mocking disgust. Either way, we love it, we're angry, bitter American tourists and we don't want to talk your faggy language.

Okay, that's not true. Def learning another language as soon as I get back. After I sleep...for a week. Time to sleep now so we'll get our breakfast. No idea when I'll actually send this.

Je ne comprends pas.

K

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When I Go Away

Disaster strikes.

I was in Florida when JFK Jr. died in a plane crash. I was in Colombia when the Pope died. I know I was somewhere else when Oklahoma City bombing happened.

Now a plane (same airline) goes down as we take off, and Obama takes office right before we come back. All passengers were safe and sound from the flight, so it's the anti-9/11 as Obama kicks off his presidency. So is this a good omen?

Who can tell? I saw Death, a Hindu God, and a Gorilla in the main tourist square of Amsterdam. Ben ponders over the good/ill omen of seeing a dead bird when he spies graphitti that reads OMEN.

Everything is insane. My life has never changed so much in such a short amount of time. So many people I know are going through some sort of major change. Allie's moved to Berlin, Jose's off to boot camp, and it seems as if I've become the fully functioning adult man I always wanted to be, and that this has brought me love.

The opposite number to your own, so similar, yet having none of your experiences. She understands in the way you wished they all could have, that you pushed them all to try and reach, she does it flawlessly. She says the right words, and you want to repeat them right back to her, as they say everything that's needed between old souls now newly in love again.

We're almost at Brussels. A cool rundown city from the train, a sweet comic book mural on a building wall as we pull into the station. I want a smoke, oh wait, an email from Lauren. Brb.

She tells me not to eat McDonald's and to be wary of thieves. Ben goes to smoke a cigarette and I drink his beer. This is the most internet access I've had and I'm prob paying for it although I only bought an hour and I'm way over that.

I'm def coming home with a chest cold and a new sense of reality. I'm totally an obnoxious American tourist and not the international man of mystery I think myself to be. I left all my cool at home in NYC.

K

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european vacation hostel

throwing up mushrooms

european vacation france

beer on the train

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european vacation france

on the train to Paris

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Train to Paris

Ben got robbed while we switched hotels, we alternate from tiny coffees to smoke filled backrooms, I have English Breakfast every morning.

Flying Pig can suck it, lame ass rich kid camp, we get booted to the St. Christopher's Winston which turns out to be more our speed. One half of Old Town is EuroMall, the other half the sex shops and bars. Of course the coffee shops are scattered all about.

We hit up a hotel for two days and sleep a lot after making a total trip around Amsterdam. It's cold, we're coughing, and yet we still smoke more. Cheap cigarettes and cheap beer, we get tore up as we walk around in damp weather. I slept all though Sat night and feel refreshed.

The night before we hit up McDonald's and it was just as bad as Times Square. Maybe not as bad really. But the people here do seem to hate us. Now on to Paris where they'll really hate us.

Oh and no that wasn't the US Airways plane we were on that went down in the Hudson. But it could have been. Big props to Sully Sullenberger for his bad ass landing.

Remind me to tell you about the shit that goes down when I go away.

K

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