Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Lucas while he´s away's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, March 27th, 2003
10:34 pm	Back in Barcelona and then gone I take back whatever I said, if I ever said it (cain't fuckin remember)about Barcelona being tiny or something like that. I went to the top of Montjuich (got a name meanin Mountain of the Jews. Ain't nobody can figure out why the hell they called it that. Never really had anything to do with the Jews as best anyone can tell) today, at Elisabeth's suggestion. She left this morning, with her buspass still good for three more rides and four small bottles of liqueur (which I find myself unable to consume, as I ain't feelin so hot right now. I s'pect it's mostly just the stress of goin home, but I can't really tell. We'll see how it pans out.), so I hopped the bus that she pointed out on the way back in, and I rode it up there with Lorca in my pocket. I did a lot of reading, but of course punctuated that with gawking from the walls of the castle at the top of the hill, which provided a panorama of the whole derned city. Perhaps its just having looked out over cute little Florence that put it into perspective, but Barcelona is a major metropolis. The density of it all had me good and astonished, again, even after the crazy little winding streets of Italy, but also I was taken aback by how I could recognize landmarks on either end of my field of vision from up there. Walked up that there hill, strolled along yonder beach. Spain reads fewer newspapers per capita than any other Western European nation. I think there are a handful of major pushes to counteract this tho. On Iberia flights, even fairly short ones, they come down the aisle with newspapers and let you have their pick of them out of a thickass rack, free. Thrownabout fact numbertwo here is that there is not much popular support in Spain for the war in Iraq. When we got back to Barcelona, it showed that there had been demonstrations all week. There was a gigantic explosion of graffiti nearly everywhere, even more than the quantity to which we had become accustomed. This ties into what I been sayin bout the size of Barcelona as the front page of the paper talked about the battle in Basra, pointing out in bold print that it was a city the size of Barcelona that had gone without electricity or water for four days. It took the time to prominently make the scene more alive, connect it with something familiar to remind people that a big plume of smoke on the horizon of some exotic land does in fact mean that a whole buncha shit's on fire. Inside, they pointed out that the inland searoute in Basra was the starting point for the legendary voyages of Sinbad, again making some effort to contextualize it, even within the scant knowledge that a reader suchas myself would have with the region. Perhaps it's a cheap sentimental ploy, but I think it a perfectly good antidote to the bellicose fervor that would prefer the public to see the war as a reality TV show crossed with a video game or action film. So, with my last post in this café, where praps I may have picked up whateverthehell it is that's ailing me, I guess this is goodbye, livejournal. Gettin back to Chicago where I can use my own damned machine to make actual, personalized contact with so many folk. Don't want to end up using this as a bulletin board for my daily life to the detriment of an ability to keep in touch that will be much more realistic at home. That said, why should I ever be so concrete and decisive? I may from time to time be back. Heck, lord only knows when I may leave home again. Current Mood: sick (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2003
5:33 pm	When yr life starts resembling a depressing Dustin Hoffman movie, run (if you can) While walking in the park to get to the bathroom right after I sprained my ankle, everyone looked at me funny, this unkempt, solitary figure with a limp. It felt like a scene outa fuckin Midnight Cowboy. Walkin around with Brianna and Elisabeth, now just Elisabeth, as the former has flown back to the states in hope of finding work and paying her bills, I don't feel nearly so shady. It's more like a scene from The Out of Towners, I guess, as I recall from the time Cari sat me down and made me watch the original version. He sprains his ankle in that, doesn't he, among all the other crises? Foot feels better with each passing day, tho not yet perfectly alright quite yet. Soon, hopefully, tho Imna wear that brace for the rest of the week. Scene change has also largely been good for me. Florence is beautiful. Overwhelmingly romantic, nearly reduced me to tears this afternoon, sitting on a hillside, in a Medici garden now park. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2003
5:32 pm	The post that almost wasn't The last post almost never saw the light of day, eclipsed by other events, some more obviously world-altering than others. As tho to share solidarity with the broken world order, my ankle collapsed on me yesterday while we were walking thru the park. Hobbling around for a day, I woke this morning with it not feeling any better, convinced that it was probably broken. It's not. I have finally experienced socialized medicine, something I had been wondering about for a while now, wanting to see it, but not wishing upon myself the circumstances to have made that necessary. They were reasonably efficient and certainly friendly with me when I limped into the emergencyroom. All in all, I have no complaints. This may have been different if I needed care from a specialist or had to make an extended stay, but for the free service that I received, I have no complaints whatsoever. Between words I had picked up from Gemma's Italian dictionary, the phrases I've learned from the maids, and those I've aborbed from years upon years of reading musical scores (and even doing that badly most of the time), I managed to explain in a very Spanishized Italian what had happened to me, and I understood most of their instructions to wait here, follow there, decently well. As the nurses who triaged me sent me back into the hallway, they said to me, "see, you do speak Italian," which made me chuckle. Gladly, the doctor spoke English very well, touched my foot, asked where it hurt, and told me it would not need an X-Ray, that it was a minor dislocation with no damage to the tendon. Told me I was very smart to have bought a brace yesterday. Told me to wear it all the time for seven days, rest for about three (I can walk no more, he said. Elisabeth, thank god she was there, explained that it was: "You can walk. No More." Rather than what I had feared most: losing the fucking foot.) and put it on ice about three times a day for half an hour each, all while taking overthecounter painkillers. No wheelchair, no crutches, just a limp for a little bit while it heals. Delightful, and free of charge. Second occurence, also in the Villa Borgesa, the park where I sprained my ankle, they have a "must see" art gallery, holding, among other precious treasures, Carravagio's Sick Bacchus. So, I convinced the others to go, since Elisabeth was hankering for the greenspace that park has to offer anyway, putting us in the neighborhood for said museum. We paid our 8.50 reservation to get in. They only let 360 people into it every two hours. Of course, the two hours that we picked were the two that the workers of the museum picked to sit down and strike, along with the workers of all the other city museums, to protest the war. Fresh off of a month of readings about anarchist and general strikes in Barcelona, Elisabeth and I were a bit concerned about what would happen should it turn out to be a general stirke across the whole city for god knows how long. For me, it was kinda exhilerating, gazing into the romance of mass demonstrations for social change, but all the while, keeping in mind the scary part: that we may not be able to eat etc. There was a heated scene back in the ticketbooth, where many an angry tourist exclaimed loudly in several languages that they insisted upon having their money back. I do not envy those behind the counter, but everyone got what they wanted and left in an orderly fashion, thank god. We never got into the museum, but we got pictures of the angry mob, for touristic value. :) time running out in internet point: sprained ankle later. Wanted to make sure the SEX SEX SEX thing got posted in spite of all of this stress. It did, but this story needed told. May spellcheck later. (Comment on this)
5:30 pm	Romegasm (or SEX SEX SEX) Gemma and Talia left two days ago, on the insistence of their jittery parents who didn't want them overseas for the start of the war. Their plane tickets were changed the night before and someone in the room commented "we haven't even seen the Colosseum yet" so I insisted, "then we'll go tonight." Gemma was the only one of us to have taken highschool latin, and she cooed from the bars of the gates outside of the Roman Forum, having what we teased was a "Romegasm." We walked outside of those gates, behind a basilica that none of us recognized and came to a dead end. Not just any dead end, but one with a disheveled woman with two teeth. No, not the front teeth. Oh no, no, no. Two on the upper row, to the right. We passed, and she gave a wicked laugh, the creepiest thing I done heard since the little kid who kept saying "pelota" in the demon voice (Elisabeth and I each knew that it was the creepiest thing since something in Spain, but we couldn't remember what our last encounter with the occult had been), a very Scene 24 laugh, as tho sending us to our doom. We turned the corner and came back more or less the way we had come in to the dead end. It was either that afternoon or the afternoon afterward that we went shopping along the nice but not to expensive street of shops we found. As for spring fashion in Rome, all I have to report is one word: SEX. There is clothing everywhere here that is just printed with the word SEX. Maybe it's all the same brand. Dunno. I almost bought a sex tie. Black tie with sex in rhinestones. They had a sex choker. Most enchanting tho were the sex belts, big, shiny, with SEX written across them in several styles. The one I liked best had droopy chains from this big metal plates that said SEX three times, but not only was it too much money for something I'd be so unlikely to wear often, it didn't look very good on me. It's either that I am not cut out to scream SEX, SEX, SEX wherever I go, or I need to invest in rhinestones once I git home. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 18th, 2003
4:25 pm	Rome is so gay! Here in Rome, the mode of protest is primarily flags hanging from windows etc. Barcelona was much more sticker and wall upon wall of poster oriented. Lots of No a la guerra paraphernalia floatin around there. Big fatally black bombs with bright right slashes thru them. Here, it's a much more positive tack. Rainbow flags with the word "PACE" absolutely everywhere. Funny thing, as I remarked to Brianna (now known injoke iconically as "the gay woman") is that in the Pope's back yard, it really looks as like the whole town is in a big rush of pacifist gay pride. It's an illusion, but a comforting one anyway. Second order of business is a discussion of air quality. I don't believe that Rome is reputed for fantastic cleanliness, tho I could be wrong. Regardless, gotta remark that as soon as I stepped off of an airplane which had last ventilated itself in Barcelona, I was stuck by how easy breathing was (tho I do still have an awfully persistent cold caught from Jacqueline). For the many beautiful things that it holds, Barcelona is still a filthy city. Setting foot in Italy, I felt like I was breathing with a second lung that I had just up and forgotten about, dusted off on Etruscan soil. The water in Rome is potable too (tho not entirely tasty). Got me a little bottle of it in my coat right now. Goin to Florence on Saturday, hella excited, then several days of crazyass travel scramblin back to Barcelona to go from there to Amsterdam to Detroit, and then back to Fort Wayne, to drive to Chicago a day or two after I arrive. Coming home, wrapping up the weblog, tho there may be a post or two left in me as the exploits surely continue. Should the world fail to end, there will still be a weblog to keep in a week or so. Current Mood: nervous (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 12th, 2003
4:56 pm	Notes on Cuisine In my pocket notebook last week I had about seven things I wanted to mention in my last post. I only got to about three of them, but I consider the others either negligible or in retrospect entirely not prudent for public view. Today has notes too. Three of them at least, and a picture. First note on food: This I been meanin to write down for a longass time now. I went to a gelateria, and asked the fellow for a scoop of a given flavor. The dude looks up at me to correct me harshly, saying that they do not use "scoops," brandishing his gelato-trowel to indicate that his establishment's method of dispensing product actually did not involve putting it into a neat little ball at the top of the cone. Semantic debate over fuckin icecream. What a prick. Secondly, I went to a fast food sandwich place with John last week, and he ordered a sandwich. Here's the cool part. Instead of asking if he wanted fries or a drink, they asked him if he wanted a salad or icecream with that sandwich. Thirdly, I ate today. I ate before going to the exhibit at the Palau de la Virreina about eating and communication. Found a nice vegetarian restaurant that just recently opened. I picked up a flyer of theirs at the laundromat (I washed almost all of my clothes. The machines are absurdly expensive here. I spent over ten euros washin all that shit, tho indeed there was quite a lot thereof). I might consider frequenting that place as it is of the handful of its kind that exist in this flesh-crazed city and nation my favorite, but I'm fuckin leaving. Ain't that just the way it goes. To the museum tho. I went on a full stomach and it cost me 1.50, for being a student, not for having eaten ahead of time. Thank god I did tho, as it was a great balance of enticement and revulsion, often in the same piece. Appetizing, disgusting. All there. I asked the feller at the desk where the exhibit was and he told me it was across the patio and up the stairs, so I ascended to an unmarked door and tentatively stepped into a video installation of obnoxious folk in LA talking to near mutes in NYC. It was 50 minutes of satelite transmission from a storefront in one city to the other, at the dawn of the availability of such technological innovation, to great public enthusiasm. The problem is that the booming soundquality was considerably better on the LA side, and they were more talkative anyway. Really annoying shit, but charming in its own way. Little to nothing to do with food, and looking back, I saw that the door I had entered was labeled "exit." I got real confused, and walked thru the whole exhibit worried that I was doing it all backwards, until I got to the last room, which was labeled do not enter on the only door that was not the one I came thru, and sure enough, it was labeled that way in the other direction too, a cool trick, or just a lack of clarity that really affected the experience of the exhibit, but also added some excitement to it, a mistaken bit of assumed mischief. Hee Hee Hee. As for the exhibit itself, there were a handful of pieces that had been on the posters around town that drew me in. A city with a skyline of meat, and a man passively watching television while sitting in a bowl of noodles and his own broth. The most fascinating tho was one room in the old palace, decked out with intricate wall panels and chandeliers. It was called Onion, and it was by a woman from Serbia/Holland named Marina Abramovic, and all the wall plaque said was "Have you any idea how many men come home to find their wives crying and saying they're slicing onions?" It was a ten minute video of a woman eating an onion, like an apple, like my mom used to eat raw potatoes. She starts off with purplish lipstick on, perfectly composed, and over the course of ten minutes, takes this onion, peel and all, and tears into it, as tho each of its layers bear another pent up frustration that she must force herself to swallow. she eats the whole fucking thing, crying, nearly vomiting a few times. On top of all of this, there is a litany of things that worry her. Things she doesn't like about her job, concern that her ass is too large, a repeating loop that lasts only about a minute as these worries compound themselves and she does further damage to the onion, while her mouth foams and tears stream down. No way to know whether she's that ashamed of the war in Yugoslavia as she says, or if it's just the onion, or a combination of the stress and the guilt and the very physical sensation that the image attaches to it. Really affecting, and tho I came in toward the end of the ten minute loop, I had to stay to watch it restart at very least until her eyes got red. She was really aggressive with that onion, biting into it more fiercely than I can imagine possible. Let's just say it left it's mark and was singlehandedly worth at least the euro fifty. And a picture. Kinda related to food consumption, and installation art. I saw this in an art museum in Massachusetts this summer and I talk about it all the time, but now I finally have a picture of the Fat Car by Erwin Wurm, stolen from the massmoca.org Bought a postcard of this at the museum's shop, but it disappeared somewhere between the Berkshires and my apartment's walls. Current Mood: cheerful (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 7th, 2003
4:17 pm	Geography and Anarchism, the dual pillars of my salvation O, Anarchism and Geography, the dual pilars of my salvation. As of yesterday, I can safely say that I am happier than I have been in at least a week, probably longer. Naptime was a major factor in that, so tired that I could hardly even remember that I had taken a nap at all. Tuesday thru Thursday were essentially just one long day, and unfortunately not as upbeat a long day as I would have liked were it more a matter of choice. Tuesday night we didn't really go to sleep. I tried, but others were up in the room well into the night, and by the time lights went out, it was for a merely symbolic space of time. I put on the headphones and had a good cry to pop music. We went out to watch the sunrise over Montjuich, which was going to be a hell of a site, as you can get a good look at most all the city from there, but the horizon was clouded and at best we could enjoy the gradual but definite process of it getting lighter and lighter until by unanimous decision we declared that the sun done rose. It was a bit of a disappointment, but the walk up the mountain was pleasant, refreshing. Upon arrival back at the hotel, I tried going straight to bed, skipping the free breakfast that my buddies dug into before they themselves passed out. I could not sleep, so I reluctantly crawled back out as they were leaving. Got a decent meal and on my third try for the day (there was no class on what was labeled by most folk as Wednesday. Tuesday plus as far as I'm concerned) I slept decently well. Once I got my ass outa bed, John, Jacqueline and Elisabeth waiting for me in the lounge, I bathed and dressed and we headed out to look at an Art Nouveau Hospital that we had been studying in class. It was beautiful, full of wondrous mosaics and brickwork well integrated into its environment with open, clean spaces in place of the deadly, sterile hallways of most hospitals. Lots of outdoor pavilions between one building and the next, lots of great vistas, and a charming little diagonal street connecting that treasure with the Sagrada Familia, from which one can just pivot and marvel between the two. After that, another nap in two days that felt like one, bleeding well into a third. Some homework was done, on Tuesday night the conclusion of selections from a book called City of Marvels, a historical fiction about turn of the century Barcelona. A bit of a reactionary bent to it, pretty harshly mocking attempts at progress while giving some lip service to the plight of the Barcelonese worker of the time. All in all, it just came off as callous to me. Then, attempts at sleep, sunrise, more sleep, hospital, and the second reading of the day, a less fiction oriented piece on the relationship between Pablo Picasso and the political movements in Barcelona in the teens. The Picasso connection was weak at best, as our professor described it, "a ploy just to sell the book" which was really about the way that various groups of people tried to take social action to bring about change in their society. Folks of all walks of life came out, demonstrated, and got beat on the head. It got a bit redundant, but it felt so lively to see how people threw themselves into arranging for a freer, more rewarding life. It never really got there, as the reading for today showed me. It was from a book by Orwell called Homage to Catalonia, and I was really taken with it, such that when I get home, I think I'm going to get me a copy of it and read thru it all. Republican Spain has long been one of my fascinations, and getting a sense in the past two days of the various parties involved in its makeup and downfall has added to one of my major goals in coming to Barcelona, that being to have an understanding of the history of that period specifically. Done. Or pushed a little bit ahead at least. This really, really cheered me up after a dismal week. On Monday, I was whining to Elisabeth about how isolated I felt out in a big city where I wasn't so rabidly outgoing as to get to know anyone, where I was far away from so many people I miss. I described it as "about as close to a glimpse of hell as I've had in a long time," imagining it a foretaste of a lifetime of bitter urbanized solitude, strolling about in some city, pretty much any city, while never feeling a sense of belonging or groundedness. I said the word hell, and as tho casting a magic spell on my own head, birdshit came down onto it in two distinct little plops accompanied by the flutter of filthy, menacing wings. Little bastard pigeon! I turned to Elisabeth and said, "I think a bird just shat on my head" and she said, "well, lemme see" and confirmed, laughing sympathetically that it had indeed come to pass as I had suspected. I laughed and announced that I was going to cry, but honestly it was all too funny, even at my own expense, for me to feel justified in any further complaints. All I could really say for the rest of the day was "a bird shat on my fucking head" through a nod and a defeated chuckle. Quieted mouth aside, I still walked around with a heavy heart until the Orwell. And here comes Geography. I get lost frequently. Streets throw me for a loop, especially in the Gothic Quarter, described in several of the readings (pertaining to the all but constant upheavals the city saw for many years) as ideal for guerrilla warfare. Definitely true. However, I have a sense of the general layout of the city, the feel of a neighborhood or two, and how they compare. Landmarks spring to mind with relative ease, but the best part of all came with the readings of the past two days. When Gaudi got hit by a tram on the intersection of Gran Via and Bailen, I thought to myself, "well, hell, that's real near the intersection where I almost bit it lot so long ago." Protesters (on a side note, I'm endlessly impressed with Anna, who by hearsay has gotten herself onto the front page of the local newspaper in Fort Wayne for being one of the organizers of an antiwar demonstration at Southside. I'd also like to add that I'm impressed with Lydia for being the co-conspirator with the girl who got into the newspaper. Lastly, I'm impressed with myself for being their brother.) setup barricades on streets that I frequent, and I recognize them as such, visualizing the city in my head. Orwell darts from building to building, and I can almost pinpoint where that building must have been before the war took it down or commerce made it unrecognizable. This was an amazing feeling that I had somehow taken something concrete from merely spending time here, that I had absorbed some sort of understanding of Barcelona as a dynamic place. For all of the cultural experience that I have missed out on in this program, with whose structure I am less than pleased, I can say that I know the city a lot better than I even know Chicago. I haven't touched the reading for Monday, tho part of it is from a book I read with Professor Amann in Spanish 208, and I liked it then. Class this morning was great, exciting, yet tragic videos of the horrors of war, with perspectives from all sides coming in, everyone laughing after decades of silence, then hanging their heads in shame at the atrocity of the level of day to day hatred that folks had for those who were their neighbors, countrymen, and even relatives. For my fascination with the revolutionary climate described in the readings, and the constant struggle for equality, I still get saddened by the very existence of Fascists, but ya can't just will them away. Even worse perhaps tho was the way that the demands of combat blurred so many lines and wore so many folk down that by the end, people were just wanting it to end, seeing a victory for either side as at that point equally corrupt and oppressive. I have to end on a happier note than that tho. I'm still happy today, even tho the political shit is more or less passed. It just really captured my interest, dry tho it may have been at times, and I needed to have it get back into my blood to dig something related to class. I've dug stuff here, but this felt integrated, as the very streets that I've done such digging on got dragged into it, and today I walked down those streets again. It was great! A wonderful, sunny day, businessmen in ties on Motos, pretty girls in fashionable jackets. John and I had lunch at an awful sushi place, went out to a fleamarket that wasn't even open today, and came back, having had several hearty laughs. This evening, maybe a French movie into which we've been lured by a provocative poster, and some cartoons pirated onto Jacqueline's laptop. I have one more week here, and I know that I'm going to miss Barcelona, but I'm no longer in the completely annihilating rush to get it overwith. I'm rather enjoying myself. Current Mood: flirty (Comment on this)
Monday, March 3rd, 2003
1:58 pm	Carnaval I felt really, really bad for the poor women in thongs at the tail end of the Carnaval parade here in Barcelona on Saturday. It's temperate here, but good god, not thongbutt weather. Not even big plumes of puffy white feathers could make that acceptably warm. Exhaust from the truck hauling the float must be of some help tho. The parade itself was somewhat, even depressing (we saw this procession of Chinese women with drums who, while keeping the rhythm decently well, beat it out with such a lack of enthusiasm that I just felt drained as a shivering onlooker. Worse still was the endless and redundant stream of political floats, mostly against the war and/or complaining about the oilspill off the coast of Galicia. Even as a sympathizer to the respective causes, that shit got tedious real quicklike) dull about until it got to the Elvis Impersonators (of all ages! cute little Elvisitos marchin along) which was pretty near the end. Luckily, we were at the Plaza España, which for once had their fountains up and running. Not only were they up and running, but they had a lightshow and this amazing display of aquatic wonder with the myriad ways the water could shoot. Slava joked to me, "How do you think they train the fountain to do that?" and I responded, "Years of abuse as a child." More impressive than figure skating. Somewhat better music too, the pop hits that this nation has ground into me in stores, bars, TV etc. Yesterday, we went to Sitges (it's this little town known for being the big flamboyant spot in Cataluña, it's equivalent to Provincetown or somethin like that I guess. Having never been to P-Town [homophobic Dad derides it as "too faggoty," and hence my Boston connection has never wound me up there]I can't say, but it was nice. Lotsa palmtrees and clubs that actually looked like fun.) to see their parade, tho unfortunately we could only stay for the children's parade, as the adult one started two minutes after the last train back to Barcelona left. Staying overnight was out of the question as we had class today, tho Tuesday is the last day of Carnaval, and I can't imagine that there won't be anything exciting happening, and furthermore there is no class on Wednesday (only 200 pages of reading that they give us all day to get done for class on Thursday). Regardless, should there be some big debaucherous revelry in town, chances are that I will miss it, as I am predisposed toward being and having no fun. Broken fun-dar. Yesterday was beautiful. The parade was heartwarming, yet consistently offensive, with every ethnic group that could take offense to a cheap misrepresentation of their culture being displayed in adorable little outfits by the dozen. The race of Spidermen especially has a lot to complain about, since they're phasing out the antiquated blue suit with red mask shit. Geez. That and the shrieking Indian chiefs powwowing it down the street, and the safari float with the kids in blackface in cages. That shit wouldn't even fly in Indiana, I kept saying to myself, tho I'm not 100% certain. Of course, there was fried food too. Wouldn't feel right without fried food, I told myself, so I got chocolate and churros at this stand on the beach that looked no more sophisticated than the booths in the greazieass junkfood alley in Fort Wayne in July. The chocolate was tasty tho. Hot, Hot, Hot poorly insulated plastic cup. Current Mood: blah (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 27th, 2003
6:28 pm	Volvo hearses, dead umbrellas This afternoon, Elisabeth, Walter, Emily and I went to the hearse museum, an event long in the making. Several weeks ago, Emily came downstairs and casually mentioned in conversation that there was a museum that she had found in her guidebook a museum dedicated to hearses, asking if anyone wanted to go. This was in the context of discussion of other museums folk wanna go to, the chocolate museum etc, several of which we been to since. On subsequent afternoons, excursions to said museum have been planned and have fallen flat, but today, no more! We actually fucking went. Emily declared this afternoon that we were to have a playdate at 3:30 to go hearsin it, and that worked fine by me, tho I did show up late. Had lunch with Elisabeth and talked about literary theory. Class was flabbergasting all around, so a nice post-trainwreck discussion was a nice winddown. Afternoon consumed with the lengthy walk to the city building for funerary services and asked at the desk if the museum was in that building. This was the second desk of that sort at which we'd asked, and this one gave us the desired yes, but told us we'd have to wait. For what it wasn't ever made clear. After a good 20 minutes, we came back and were told it wasn't ready yet, which scared us, not knowing if we had somehow gotten confused. Visions popped thru my head of gettin lead down the halls of the morgue with some spanish fellow, all prepared, askin us systematically "is this him?" "is this him?" Security guard shows up on the scene and opens the door to the museum, handing us each a very reassuring brochure, confirming that we had indeed come to the right place. Downstairs, 22 hearses, only one or two of which were motorized. The rest were these grandiose carriages with creepy eyeliner laden mannequins in ornate morose regalia posed for their subbasement processionals, with the security guard looking on, making sure we didn't fuck anything up. We made our rounds around it, not very big, no information on the hearses other than just the little brochure, and then we headed back, finding ourselves now in the GSB. It was fun, mostly for the drama of building up to going, but the trilingual pamphlet is fun. Second story, also somewhat morbid, involves my duck umbrella. The fucker broke on me a while back, flipping inside out, but it was still usable. Before the day before yesterday that is. It rained hard and flipped out a dozen or so times, the last being the most offensive. On the side of the Gran Via, it flipped inside out, then immediately a second gust flipped it back in. On this second flipping, it fucking hit me in the head. It just had to go, so last night, I took it out onto the Rambla and ceremonially trampled it to death. Elisabeth and Jacqueline came, and we made a movie of it. In coming days, once I find me a place to post the file, I'll post it here for y'all to see. Current Mood: bored (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 23rd, 2003
11:41 pm	I took a walk In the aftermath of the civil war in the 30's, one of Franco's projects for breaking the will of the people of Barcelona was to change all of the streetnames to reflect the sort of national order he wanted. So, gone were all references to Catalan figures, in with names the General liked, and of course he picked the longest street in town to name after himself. As Elisabeth pointed out to me tho, it's real funny that of all the streets to make into Avenida Generalisimo Franco, he had to pick the diagonal one that cuts across the well-organized grid of the northern half or so of the city. Nowadays, they've changed the name back to Avenida Diagonal, simple enough, and it is indeed one bigass diagonal street. On Friday, I walked with John and Elisabeth up to the Northwest end of it go to a Monastery with a neat little museum in it. Wanted to do the rest of the street, and we were planning to do that yesterday, but I slept too late, so that was shot to hell. This afternoon, once I woke up I decided to make the trek on my own, amblin down most of the way to catch the Avenida a bit east of here, and I followed it as far as I could. Headin down a good ways from where I started, the signs on the lightposts changed. They no longer advertised plays and museum exhibits and cultural events. Instead, they had these depressingass photos with little phrases in Catalan about how in 2004, they were going to fix all this shit so that the river would be a river again and there would be palmtrees instead of cranes on the skyline. Not so bad. As for the surrounding area tho, many skeletal buildings. Some falling apart, others being built, tho maybe being demolished. Some of them looking like they got good and fucked in the war and nobody ever really bothered to put them back together. The truth is probably the considerably less dramatic tale of poverty and derreliction. Had a nice stroll with my headphones and a book or two in my bag, wondering if this was a hardhat occasion or a bulletproof vest occasion. Didn't have either, but at the end of the day felt regardless that I had dressed appropriately. In both directions, they're tearing up the median to replace it with parks I think. I think it's going to look really nice, tho there ain't no way it's gonna git finished before I leave. I'll have to come back perhaps. In the meantime, I enjoyed the walk, tho given the contrary direction of the street with regard to any other it comes across, I found myself dealing with many a very bizarrely laidout crosswalk. Didn't get mugged and no debris fell on my head, so I guess I don't have any particular complaints. Got some excercise and passed by the place where they're gonna build them the largest convention centre in the South of Europe. That and I can say now that I've walked the whole length of Barcelona, with a few gaps. On the way back, I just followed the shoreline, rather grey in the overcast afternoon, but still nice. Still plenty of views of the sea, rollerblading children on the walkway and fighting couples crying on each other on the benches. I had intended to do some reading, but never got around to it, just kept walking until I got to the Rambla, then headed north to go home. The thing is that Barcelona is not as big a city as Chicago as I reckon it. Lots of outlying communities, but it's squished between two rivers on each side, the sea at the bottom and mountains at the top, so it could only get so big anyway. Lots of suburbs on the outside I think, but no real reason to head out there as far as I know as of yet. Still, I had several good kilometers of walkin today, me and my headphones and all them thoughts, gettin some blood pumpin. Current Mood: cranky (Comment on this)
Friday, February 21st, 2003
4:49 pm	Continuing crises of the Cantucubus One of the maids doesn't like anybody, and she always seems on edge. Luckily, only once in a blue moon does she perform this task, with results as detailed below. She especially doesn't like us, so after the incident with her confronting me about the state of the room, I bought a bunch of flowers at Jacqueline's suggestion and left them in the room with a note in Spanish saying "For those who clean the rooms," and the next day she came up to me at breakfast and thanked me on behalf of everybody, which made me happy. I figured everything was alright with regard to that, except that there was a repeat episode of the throwing around of negative superlatives earlier this week, which really bummed me out. The room is not the disaster she would make it out to be, and tho she drags other people in to look at the squalor, none of them ever really seem to be terribly impressed by the mess we or our many guests have made. A coat or two on the floor, a box of cookies next to the bed, nothing too horrendous. I broke a glass in the sink, but I cleaned it all up, just trying to make a very conscientious effort not to make any trouble, but it still doesn't add up to the general state of inoffensiveness to which I generally strive (except among friends. I offend them left and right). John refers to this woman as the Cantucubus, a word that confused me for a while until Jacqueline took credit for having described her as cantankerous, with succubus getting glommed on to the descriptor at some later point. In the post-sunflower world, I find myself relying upon it too soas to convince myself that it's her problem and not mine. In lieu of hostile behavior, failing gestures at longterm reconciliation, namecalling will suffice I guess. Current Mood: bitchy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, February 17th, 2003
4:00 pm	Tombstone hand, graveyard mind. Almost got hit by a car, nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary, ya know? This does however lend further credence to my premonition that the automobile will one way or another (driver, passenger, or pedestrian) be my undoing. I was walking down the street with Elisabeth and we were crossing a street, but the light wasn't shining our way, so we just leaned into the street a bit, waiting for it to turn, but apparently the usually comfy margin between sidewalk and oblivion was not particularly well-respected in the layout of this particular street and a cab came right at us. Luckily, having seen us coming, he honked his horn. This is where the part worth recounting comes in. The rhythm of his horn blew in the same rhythm as some of the mobiles here. I think it's the text message sound. There's a godawful popsong about sending textmessages that has that noise in it. It's two beeps followed by a short rest, no more than a mere breath, and then two more beeps. Beep beep. Breath. Beep beep. He had the timing down perfectly and it saved my life and afterward quite amused me. Speaking of trying to transliterate rhythms, I read a good article in the New York Times on their website yesterday. It was about Bo Diddley, and it kept talking about how he never really got his due, and I'm just sitting there wondering if my admiration for that beat "bop badop bop; badop bop" (I can only speculate as to whether anyone will actually read that as just the right variation on the old shave and a haircut. Lemme know.) could singlehandedly in its magnitude equal that to which he is due. Not gonna happen, but I'm just one of thousands of dorks before me to have attempted, and perhaps the combined zeal could almost kinda do it. Won't make him back the millions he's owed by record labels (he also is owed credit for the line I stole from the song "Who Do You Love" to title this here entry.) that couldn't be bothered to keep clear books of how much they stole from him, but it does give some sort of confirmation that he's really fucking cool. Everybody go out and read that article and then listen to some Bo Diddley. And now, for something completely different: Momma sent that to me. It's a guy who won the prize for best protest costume. Current Mood: bouncy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 16th, 2003
5:51 pm	No, you have the face of a monkey. Went to France yesterday to see a medieval city there that we had studied in class. So, now I can say I been to France, tho it felt awful not to speak the language there and just stumble about their streets like a big jerk. Still, I got my alright. That was until we got into a little convenience store and I kindly explained to this fellow in the most fluid broken French I could muster that I didn't speak French, so he responded to me in heavily, heavily accented Spanish, which sounded almost like Catalan. Made him repeat everything a few more times than I even make Spaniards repeat shit. Came down to it that he had taken it upon himself to insult me. Between that and some odd, but characteristically Spanish, blasphemy with the verb for "to shit" and a mispronunciation of God, the little portly Frenchman said that I had the face of a monkey. I was taken aback, but decided he must be playing with me, so I wasn't particularly offended, but he kept pressing it, but eventually I just said, "what, I have the face of a monkey?" and he said "yes, you have the face of a monkey" so I could only respond "I don't have the face of a monkey; you have the face of a monkey" at which point he just carried on with new animals that he thought I looked like. On the way out, he told Elisabeth that she was very pretty. She tentatively said gracias and we headed out, never to return. We stayed within the walls of the old city all day, which was a mistake, as there was much more going on outside. We missed the antiwar protests in the town. We also missed the million people who showed up in Barcelona for the same end while we were away. What I did get was a genuine insult from a member of a stereotypically rude culture. That and I had crepes for lunch, which were tasty. Current Mood: aggravated (Comment on this)
Monday, February 10th, 2003
4:25 pm	Brincosis I know that in an earlier post I mentioned having spent some of my funds on Spanish guitarpop from the 60's, but I don't believe that I ever elaborated on that. Had some reservations about further consumption here, but upon mother's advice (she told me that being a cheapass in Fort Wayne was a good idea, but being so in a place where there actually shit to buy was an entirely different thing. Silly enabler mother, but she gave me some spending money too, so my only worry is finding space to git it all home) dropped that reservation. Sales on clothes are winding down, and seeing that coming, remarked sarcastically to my friends who had begun to identify me by taste in clothing above more trivial features like personality that February was to be a month devoted to hunting down music. Of course, I jumped the gun some, but so far I been shopping several times, binged on recommendations from Bienvenido Mr. Rock and then sorted out what was good and what was not so good. Starting with what was not so good, there is a label that specializes in cheap reissues of old popsongs, but the snag is that they have all been heavily overdubbed with synths, all but ruining the sound. I made this mistake twice, figuring that it was just a unique bad remastering job, but I was dead wrong. So, my experience of Los Sirex and Los Relampagos have been tainted, but I have a few songs by the latter on another disc I bought of groups from the 50's, clearing up some of the confusion and vindicating the reputation of the band. Los Relampagos are a surf influenced instrumental band, with a farfissa and all that cool shit. I may or may not buy another record of theirs just for the sake of having something that doesn't sound like shit, tho if I can get it for like six or seven Euros as I did with the last one, I'd be doubly pleased. I'm a little bit more compelled by Los Sirex, more garage I believe (underneath the overdub patina) and akin to the groups I've really dug the most thus far. One of the two that I've listened to the most have been this band called Los Cheyenes. They're kinda like the Kinks at times, and even cover at least one of their songs, but they also have some very strong melodies that are unmistakably Spanish. Most of the songs on the CD of theirs are originals, which is something I dig, as I can only listen to cute translations of 19th Nervous Breakdown and Johnny B. Goode for so long before wanting something that doesn't ring so incredibly familiar. Not to say that I haven't really dug the covers I've heard on a lot of these records. The sad part about them is knowing that the selection of songs to be recorded was often made not by the bands but by the fascists that ran the recording industry in this country. This is Franco's Spain we's talkin 'bout here, entirely different from the bullies at the big four or five (fewer of them every day. I'd like to think of it as thinning out their numbers, but instead it's just a gorging of the preexisting ones and the thinning out of the numbers of recent products in which I myself may take interest as a consumer on the market in general. O well. Fuck it. Guess I'm best off just making my own stuff to listen to.) major record labels in the USofA. At that talk I went to, Los Gatos Negros and Los Salvajes were the bands that caught my interest, especially the former, tho their CD was really, really fucking hard to find. Not so with the latter. They're in pretty much every little shop. Los Gatos Negros however have not stayed so well in the public consciousness I guess, which is sad. I went to a lot of record shops and asked specifically if they had it, only to be looked at like I'm fuckin crazy or referred to Los Gatos Locos, an entirely different band in which I couldn't say I had any particular interest. I was about to give up until I found my way into a tiny little record store around here and asked the guy at the counter since I was totally unable to make any sense of how things were organized (tho in browsing found a lot of the old punkish stuff etc that I dig. Not much luck in the regional finds digging on my own) and he called it up on the machine, and instead of telling me it was unavailable as anyone else who had called it up on their catalogues had told me before, he informed me that they actually had a copy of it. I would have just given up well before then if I hadn't gotten two of the members of the band to sign my book. They were nice to me, so I wanted to check them out, and gladly, it was a rewarding search. Their CD was pretty good, a compilation of greatest hits thrown together from various singles they recorded in the 60's. They only place I was able to find a proper LP of theirs was in a vintage vinyl shop, where I asked for that specific band, and the fella did some diggin. A minute or two later, this kinda creepy fellow whose shop was about half cool old vinyl and half porn, the fellow produces an original pressing of a record by Los Gatos Negros and informs me that given it's rarity, he's askin 150 Euros for it. I tell him that I'm very impressed that he has the record and I thank him for diggin it up for me, but as I haven't actually even heard the band, I can't spend that much on it. Wouldn't take a no, but I was not about to haggle with him, knowing he'd never offer me a price I could handle for a record that I would neither be able to play while here nor be able to assure that it would ever make it to my turntable in Chicago safely. Anyway, Los Gatos Negros and Los Salvajes are both from Barcelona, which is real fuckin cool. I think Los Cheyenes are too if I recall the passage in the book well enough (The passage on Los Cheyenes also has piqued my interest in Los Sirex, since the former were compared both the latter and also to Los Gatos Negros). I haven't actually read the book from one cover to the other (quite yet), rather just using it as a guide for the bands that I actually can find to see if it's worth the trouble, or if they have interesting narratives behind what I've already begun to dig. Gives somewhat of a narrative progression of bands taking ideas from each other, picking up where somebody else burnt out. It doesn't seem as tho many of them lasted all that long, a phenomenon for which I cannot yet account. Both of those two bands I know are from round here are a good listen, tho dominated mostly by covers of bands like the Kinks and the Stones. Los Salvajes do a cover of These Boots Are Made for Walkin, a song I always like hearing done by as many different voices a possible (Nancy Sinatra's version makes me happy. I haven't listened to the Billy Ray Cyrus one since I was a wee lad with his cassette, but if I ever manage to dig the tape back up... and last but not least, there's The Fast's version.) It's also good to try to make sense of their translations, knowing the words to Paint It Black etc. I was kinda disappointed that Los Gatos Negros seem to have done all covers, but when "be my be my baby" becomes "tu seras mi baby" and it starts off with castenets, it's pretty hard to go wrong, so songs I don't even dig otherwise become pretty cool. It's not that I'm just indulging in some patronizing amusement with the backward ways of a people in a far-off land, tho that may be some part of it, but more that I like how the castanets reflect an amount of thought and creativity on the part of the artists that I don't know if I can sense as easily in the hit machines that originally cranked out those tunes. I had mentioned Los Cheyenes as one of two bands I listened to the most, and finally I get to the other of those two: Los Brincos. My god, they're so good. I got their first record and was so excited by it that I also found an inexpensive greatest hits thing with like 20 songs that span their other three albums. I like the songs from that first CD best tho, especially this one called "No Puedo" that is for some ungodly reason not on the second CD of theirs I got, even tho it's by far their best. It is unlikely that any of you will escape me sitting you down and forcing you to listen to this song at least once. Los Brincos are a supergroup of sorts I guess, composed of fragments of earlier bands that had split up, forming a collaboration of so much primadonna talent that they were constantly shifting lineups given the pissiness of all of the members. This instability to me at least gives some indication of why the first record would be the best, as it got tamer, more refined as one particular guy took more control and pushed out the other voices who certainly had great ideas too. Familiar story, but the record just kicks ass. The harmonies are every bit as good as A Hard Day's Night, tho I think that perhaps their more uptempo numbers have a little more kick than the Fab Four usually did. The liner notes mentioned the feverish enthusiasm for the band, a silly word like Chaplinitis or Beatlemania, and they called it Brincosis. Definitely got me a case. So, that in a nutshell has been the gist of my experience with binge spending on old Spanish rock. There is more to it, more bands that I've dug into my pockets to explore, but I haven't gotten quite so familiar with those CD's quite yet. It's worth mentioning that ironically, both John and Jacqueline seem to have the most enthusiasm for the bands that have tickled my fancy the least. So, I guess even if I don't really, really dig it, someone will be pleased by it as room-soundtrack, which makes it worthwhile to have tested out anyhoo. Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 6th, 2003
3:46 am	The Worst Room in the Whole Hotel The regular cleaninlady for our rooms was sick, so they dragged another hotel employee, one of generally cranky disposition, do to the job yesterday. She got to our room and was not pleased. I got lectured for having too much stuff on the top of the bedside table. "I can't even clean, so I stuck it all in the drawer" she said to me. She scolded me, telling me that I had to keep it cleaner so that they could do their job. I felt sympathetic to the point that they have a job to do, but I still insist that I am hardly living in squalor out there, and if I've got enough clear floorspace for Jacqueline, Elisabeth, and Todd to sprawl out on it most every evening, we're certainly not really impeding anybody's vacuum. Then, I leave and sit in the lounge for a bit while she does her work, and she one by one brings nearly every other hotel employee in to look at what we have wrought, and all I keep hearing her say is that "THERE IS A BAG UNDER THE BED!" and that it is the worst room that she has had to clean yet. I am yet to figure out what the fuck could have possibly been in said bag, but she was pissed that it was just there. I kinda get the impression that she either found the bag of oranges that I had just bought the day before or she just found an empty shoppingbag that really irritated her somehow. Can't figure out what could have been so offensive that wasn't there any other day that the room had been cleaned, so it couldn't have been some ancient decaying baguette, lying there forgotten and attracting the whole array of Cataluñan pests. Anyway, at Jacqueline's suggestion, I bought a flower on the Rambla, to leave in the room with a note saying "for those who clean the rooms". Sunflowers, symbols of friendship, but by the time I got back from my excursion buying flowers, they had entered the room, cleaned it all up, and left. Tomorrow. Current Mood: mischievous (Comment on this)
Monday, February 3rd, 2003
1:19 am	The family. Upon starting this entry, all that I can really say that I know as regards its intended content is that when it's done, I'm gonna make the little kitty at the bottom say Nostalgic and make Nostalgia faces. I love those little kitties (I been tryin to use a different one each time around. Don't know what'll happen if I just up and genuinely repeat a mood) and I miss having one of my own. Lots of stuff I miss about home, bits of routine and the feelings derived from the interactions (not merely the feline ones) that keep me goin. So, I guess what I mean to say is that, chances are, if you're reading this, I miss you. Santiago Domínguez, the author of Bienvenido Mr. Rock wished me a good time in Spain with my Family, that at the time to his eyes being Elisabeth and Todd. Just days earlier, with regard to I believe it was the grappa of Tod, John suggested that rather than take it up to his own fridge, he just leave it downstairs in our room "for the family." We spend too much time together, the five of us or so. John and I live in room 101 and get along well, so we hang out, and Elisabeth is right next door. Todd and Jacqueline have different reasons for not spending time with their roommates (ya know, otherwise the built-in friend.) and they chill with us. Jacqueline's roommate has managed to alienate herself from pretty much everyone on the trip, and has even gone so far as to pretty openly express hatred for this person who shares her personal space, but who justso happens to be one of the most unobtrusive folk one is likely to ever encounter. Has us all befuddled, but Jacqueline seems to just kinda live in the first floor lounge, which is fine by us. The roommate of Tod is a few years older than us and a real hoot, and he spends a good bit of his time with Elisabeth's roommate, Karen. She and Walter were actually the first people I met from the programe when I finally fucking arrived. They were both very kind to me out on Gema's balcony while we watched the parade that wanted to prevent me from dragging my bags across the street. Regardless, this fact has not translated into any particularly strong rapport between him and Todd, but Walter just does his own thing. They were previously acquainted, but there's something indescribably awkward not just about their relationship but of course about each of them as individuals, tho both cool. They're both out of the room a lot. Todd's with us and Walter goes dunno where and comes home with a bottle of wine 'most every day. Drinks a lot but never seems drunk. We asked him over tea this evening how much water he drinks if he drinks so much wine. Not much. Says he gets most of his water from fruits. Eats a lot of fruit. For the water. I guess that's Walter in a nutshell if that could do him justice. Ran this description by Elisabeth, who's sittin next to me in this here café and she said, "yeah, that and driving around in the car." Walter rented a car early on in the trip. He drives it around. Buys fruit and wine. So, that's the family in a nutshell I guess. The family and a description of Walter, who went out for tea with the five of us tonight. It was nice. I left out a description of Todd tho I guess. Todd and I bought badass gloves in the department store called Corte Inglés last week. They were on sale. Todd wears his much more than I do. He has them on right now. He weighs less than I do, like almost ten kilos. That's Todd. It's a family kinda in that Manson family sort of way, I joked a while back. I joked with John today that if it's a family, then in some strange way our room is the ancestral manse. I miss my family fictive and otherwise back at home. Gonna send some postcards soon. Current Mood: nostalgic (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:19 am	The family. Upon starting this entry, all that I can really say that I know as regards its intended content is that when it's done, I'm gonna make the little kitty at the bottom say Nostalgic and make Nostalgia faces. I love those little kitties and I miss having one of my own. Lots of stuff I miss about home, bits of routine and the feelings derived from the interactions (not merely the feline ones) that keep me goin. So, I guess what I mean to say is that, chances are, if you're reading this, I miss you. Santiago Domínguez, the author of Bienvenido Mr. Rock wished me a good time in Spain with my Family, that at the time to his eyes being Elisabeth and Todd. Just days earlier, with regard to I believe it was the grappa of Tod, John suggested that rather than take it up to his own fridge, he just leave it downstairs in our room "for the family." We spend too much time together, the five of us or so. John and I live in room 101 and get along well, so we hang out, and Elisabeth is right next door. Todd and Jacqueline have different reasons for not spending time with their roommates (ya know, otherwise the built-in friend.) and they chill with us. Jacqueline's roommate has managed to alienate herself from pretty much everyone on the trip, and has even gone so far as to pretty openly express hatred for this person who shares her personal space, but who justso happens to be one of the most unobtrusive folk one is likely to ever encounter. Has us all befuddled, but Jacqueline seems to just kinda live in the first floor lounge, which is fine by us. The roommate of Tod is a few years older than us and a real hoot, and he spends a good bit of his time with Elisabeth's roommate, Karen. She and Walter were actually the first people I met from the programe when I finally fucking arrived. They were both very kind to me out on Gema's balcony while we watched the parade that wanted to prevent me from dragging my bags across the street. Regardless, this fact has not translated into any particularly strong rapport between him and Todd, but Walter just does his own thing. They were previously acquainted, but there's something indescribably awkward not just about their relationship but of course about each of them as individuals, tho both cool. They're both out of the room a lot. Todd's with us and Walter goes dunno where and comes home with a bottle of wine 'most every day. Drinks a lot but never seems drunk. We asked him over tea this evening how much water he drinks if he drinks so much wine. Not much. Says he gets most of his water from fruits. Eats a lot of fruit. For the water. I guess that's Walter in a nutshell if that could do him justice. Ran this description by Elisabeth, who's sittin next to me in this here café and she said, "yeah, that and driving around in the car." Walter rented a car early on in the trip. He drives it around. Buys fruit and wine. So, that's the family in a nutshell I guess. The family and a description of Walter, who went out for tea with the five of us tonight. It was nice. I left out a description of Todd tho I guess. Todd and I bought badass gloves in the department store called Corte Inglés last week. They were on sale. Todd wears his much more than I do. He has them on right now. He weighs less than I do, like almost ten kilos. That's Todd. It's a family kinda in that Manson family sort of way, I joked a while back. I joked with John today that if it's a family, then in some strange way our room is the ancestral manse. I miss my family fictive and otherwise back at home. Gonna send some postcards soon. Current Mood: nostalgic (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 29th, 2003
3:53 pm	been meaning to do this for a while I just up and forgot that lookin at Cari's weblog a while back, I followed several links to various quizzes. So, I'll post the ones I took, except for the one that told me what sort of female sex symbol I was. No, it's not that I have some sort of prudish (or teasing) desire to hide that it told me (with a big picture of Marilyn) that I am a BOMBSHELL, just that some of the other possibilities were worded really, really mean, so I don't want to be responsible for anyone feeling discouraged or hurt because of something I set them up to click a mouse at. ""Which cocktail are you?"" brought to you by Quizilla and here's the other one: What Sign of Affection Are You? brought to you by Quizilla (Comment on this)
3:44 pm	the mysterious world of highaltitute fetishism Ballsyass El Pais on the plane today just up and accused Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction. Kinda in a roundabout way, but they said that everything he had given as evidence thus far was either some sort of mistake or just an outright lie. This would never happen in America. I'm impressed. The newspaper was free on the airplane from Gran Canaria. They had a stand with a couplea papers on 'em, various publications from various days. Pretty cool shit, I thought. In Madrid, on our connecting flight back to Barcelona, they came down the aisle with newspapers in hand, personally delivering them to whomsoever wanted them. Cool shit. Free papers. I got one. Articles about Bush and war and one tucked away in the national news toward the middle about how the Prince reiterated that he's not going to get married until he falls in love. I was so touched that I'm going to clip it out and save it, to paste up on my wall next to my other amusing newspaper articles. Couldn't make sense of one thing on the flight to and fro tho: On takeoff and landing, the flight attendants wore these navy blue leather gloves. Couldn't figure out why. Also couldn't figure out why they seemed to take on this SM appeal to which I had previously assumed myself entirely insensible. Cute gloves. I came back without a scratch, tho I went in for the two adventures that I had somehow managed to write-in onto my agenda for my four days off in the Canaries. I drank absinthe in a bar and I took off all of my clothes at a nude beach. I might have to redo both of these things tho. Can't decide, but with the absinthe, they didn't set it on fire, but rather mixed it with Sprite (nevertheless, it still had a unique effect on me, and for that, I think I can call the experience worthwhile but donewith) and as for the public nudity, most everyone else had already gone home, so it was just me in a little ring of stones (they had them constructed all along the beach. They ranged from looking like the old Iberian settlements that folks dug up that we saw on fieldtrips to lookin like fuckin world war one foxholes. I sat in a midsized one with weeds growin out of the back) by the ocean, facing the sunset with a book of Rumi (figured it would be somehow a mystical experience, so it was more fitting than the punk rock book I have been reading. Corny tho it may sound, I wanted mystic public nudity and not punk rock public nudity, tho this had a lot to do with the time of day I went) on a cheap little mat I had purchased for the prevention of any major crises of dunesand and bodyhair. Anyway, I got both the nekid thing and the absinthe thing done to my satisfaction I believe. Gonna write poems about what each were like I think. May even post them. The rest of the trip was pretty low-key. We stayed in a bungalow in the hills, procured by Todd's parents who had a timeshare with unused time on it. Pretty cool, so we all budgeted more for food etc having the accommodations so easily attained. It was quite out of the way tho, most of our fellow bungalowdwelling peoples being aging members of Germanic tribes, and we ended up in the same two or three clubs and bars too many nights in a row. I vomited in (I swear I felt fine until I started drinking water. Can't explain that one, but something about diluting my stomach contents at that particular moment gave them real cabin fever down there in my gullet. It was an embarassing mess, tho I myself got out pretty clean, and I suppose that I should thank my lucky stars in some way that I was in such a touristy spot that I don't feel like quite the stupidugly american that I might have otherwise.) on the penultimate night in that town, so I didn't want to go back the next day. John and Kia and I just walked along the beach instead. We'd have liked to find more interesting local spots, but we're convinced that in the town of Maspalomas at least, there must be no locals, just a shitload of northern European tourists. All the signs are in Spanish first, then English, then German. Bad sign, I guess, but it was beautiful and warm. Didn't get much Spanish practice tho, as everyone with whom I talked spoke much more English than Spanish and the conversations just drifted into that lowest common linguistic denominator. That and Santiago had just called before I left to say that the language exchange wasn't going to work for his schedule anymore. Oh pooh. I shouldn't oh pooh the trip tho. It was very nice, tho having left very early this morning after sleeping in the airport (fucking busschedule made it quite difficult to get to the airport from where we were, so we just left for the town that had the airport, chilled there for several hours, and then passed out on benches in the airport. Nobody bothered us) I'm real tired. Todd and John are taking naps. Sensible boys, not like me doing the internet thing or Kia who is still out there, her plane only departing about now. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Friday, January 24th, 2003
3:54 pm	like a Spanish Nuggets Earlier this week, I decided that it would be a good idea if, rather than walk around aimlessly in the afternoons and end up drifting into shops where I spend too much money, I should take a scenic walk on a regular basis. Wandering around town was my excuse for not feeling like I needed to join the gym with my friends in order to feel fit. Didn't want to spend the 30 bucks a month, didn't want to skip lunch for that shit, tho it means that many of them will never go to lunch with me for it, since they try to squeeze as much value out of it as possible. Kinda makes me nuts to see all the neurosis around their weight, seeing that as the motivation for a perfectly admirable dedication to personal health. Anyway, that aside, I spend, so I figured if I were to walk to, oh, let's say, Parc Guell, most every day, it would be better for me, since I'd feel a sense of purpose and direction. So, I went to see how far it was, if I could do it in an afternoon and how I would feel. It's a good workout, as it's on top of a big hill with a slow incline that more or less starts at the sea. Just far enough to get my heartrate going, and the weight of my schoolbooks was an added help I guess. I think I'm going to sit on the benches up there and do homework, plug in my headphones and read, occasionally glance up at the amazing view of the sea and the children playing futbol below. The snag is that on the way, I ended up in a bookstore, of course, but now that I've already been there, I may not have to go back to explore more. I got to the Parc Guell, spent an hour or so there, read a substantial chunk of Please Kill Me, and then walked back down the bigole hill, feeling quite good about myself. In the meantime, I stopped at the bookstore that's on the same block as the school. Shame on me, I guess. I ran into Gema; she wished me luck with my trip and told me that if we're going to be passing out on the beach, we should make sure to not get sunburnt and we should be careful about the rampant theft. Incidentally, Todd has just gotten us a hotel and has scammed his parents into paying for it, so none of us have to. Go Todd's parents! Anyway, at this bookstore, I saw this poster for a book called "Bienvenido, Mr. Rock." It went on to say that there would be a discussion with the author of said book and several of the artists mentioned in it. Taking a look at one of the dozens of store display copies readily available, it turned out to be a chronicle of the development of Rock music in the Spanish-speaking world from 1957-1975. How cool is that, I wondered. Like exactly the sort of, oh look, here's the garagerock of Spain guide that I was looking for. So, I bought it later that evening after the event, to which I dragged Elisabeth and Todd along. Tried to get John and Jacqueline to come too, but John didn't really sleep the night before and needed a fuckin nap (he didn't sleep last night either on account of having a paper to write, and we're not going to sleep much tonight as our flight gets into Gran Canaria at about four AM local time) and Jacqueline we only caught on her way back into the hotel, and as we seemed a bit rushed, she said she didn't want to hold us up dropping off her stuff. I wouldn't have minded, and in the time it took me to say so, Elisabeth and Todd had crossed the street and the light had changed, so that was that. The pannelists were from about four of five local groups from the 60's and they talked about how much they loved The Beatles, The Yardbirds et al. Pretty cool shit, I figured. They played dirtyass clubs in Germany, just like the Beatles, only unlike those loveable moptops, these fellas never did break into the English-language market, in part for the language barrier, and in no small part to the restrictions that the Fascist dictatorship put on them. Anyway, there came a question and answer session and the author got somewhat impatient with the lack of overwhelming flow of questions, so he decided to just blurt out in Spanish, "you, in the front row" and I wasn't paying any attention, but when he said it the second time, yes you, I looked up from the book. Made eye contact and he asked me (I paraphrase), "you're one of the only young people in this room, with no memory of these bands when they were still together, what was it that brought you here today?" And I'm like, "Who me?" just chillin there in my bright blue shirt I got at an import shop back at home, brightly coloured, ya know, vaguely psychedelic, weird sort of rock and roll fit to it like that shirt Lou Reed wears in the liner to the CD Loaded. I'm getting ready to just prepare a succinct answer of "I saw the sign in the window" when the guy up and fuckin hands me the microphone. I was too bewildered to panic, so I just talked, anxiety, grammatical concerns, and self-preservation instinct all falling away, and I told him that really I didn't know any of those bands at all, but I had come from Chicago to this country thinking that I would find some autoctonous music that I could really appreciate. Impressed my friends and gave me a momentary sense of invincibility, which lasted up until some really lousy shooting at the Archery bar. Meanwhile, autoctonous music was exactly the wrong thing to say, both for what I wanted to say and for how he took it, me wanting to say that it would be really cool to dig the Spanish take on popular musical movements that are anything buy autoctonous, but still somehow consummately Spanish in being the Spanish interpretations (and sometimes gleeful misinterpretations of pop, like the Soft Boys were supposedly a misinterpretation of Pop, like almost every great pop band) of all of that, and he got really defensive about how bad flamenco fusion had gotten, and that it really only started post-Franco, which is exactly where his book leaves off, so I got a taste of the reason, namely that there was all this weird Flamenco, rock, Miles Davis fusion shit that he did not much care for at all. Took me a while to clear that up with him afterward, but I got him to autograph the copy of the book that I had not yet paid for. I thought it would be very punk rock to just leave it on the shelf, replete with the inscription, in English to "Lucas, my friend all the way from Chicago." I got the whole flamenco mess cleared up and I asked him to tell me which bands simply Rock! He answered very clearly and gave me a substantial list of bands, one or two of which I have already not been able to resist purchasing. There will be more acquisitions in the coming weeks. I also talked to members of Los Gatos Negros, and they were very kind to me, autographed my book, which with three really cool autographs would be a waste to just put down on the display rack all over again, so I bought it, and it's so cool, tho heavy. I got my new ATM card yesterday. No mastercarddebit feature on it at all, so now I'm back to pure befuddlement with regard to the workings of that company. Elisabeth lost her wallet in England (at her recommendation in the aftermath of that, I just photocopied my passport and all the contents of my wallet. Not a bad idea, I figured) and when she got her new card, it was really nice and a deep dark blue with a wonderful sheen to it. Really cool. Mine just looks like the old one, but it's useful enough. I took out cash and bought CD's. I bought a Buzzcocks CD that I saw incredibly cheap at the recordshop nextdoor to the hotel. Dangerous placement of shit like that, ya know? And then I went to FNAC, which is kinda like Borders, only it's a French corporation, and I bought Los Salvajes, one of the bands whose guitarist was on the panel, but he left before I could ask him for an autograph, and I got Astral Fucking Weeks (that's the way John always says it. He turned me onto that record, so I have to pay him that homage every time I refer to it) for six Euros, which was too absurdly cheap to pass up, and I bought a compilation called "The Golden Age of Spanish Pop 1978-1990," which I figured would round out my Spanish Pop experience from the period after where that book leaves off. It's five discs and it cost 36 Euros, which I figured wasn't so bad. If I turn out to like it, they have an equally large volume two, which is a little bit cheaper. We'll have to see if I would deem that sort of venture to be absolutely insane. I listened to some of it yesterday, and it's pretty much all New Wave, which has all the strengths and weaknesses of New Wave from anywhere else, the fascinating quirks and the god awful pretentious shite that one might come to expect. Bands that sound like DEVO (one of which was on the recommended list by that author, which puts his tastes in pretty good standing with me thus far) and also bands that sound like Cindi Lauper. OK, now here's where the funny shit comes in. I have no CD player with me. I listened to one or two of the ones I bought yesterday on Elisabeth's CD player. John wants to get a new one, as does Todd, but we can't find them nearly so cheaply as one can in the states. It's a damn shame, but perhaps we will all come back from the Canaries (if they are indeed as legendarily cheap as we have heard) with a little discspinner. I honestly thought I was going to save space on music by only packing my MP3 player, but then again I also knew that it would be highly unlikely that I wouldn't buy anything at all here, just figured I could find some way to rip it if I really wanted to. Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)