two posts in one day? impossible!

But no! It is not impossible! It is happening before your very eyes! This post will not be marathon length, however, merely a quick 5K with a children's fun run afterward.

Zach sent me an brief email promising a full description of some unspecified 'interesting events' (said email, I might add, has not arrived as of yet in my mailbox). He then asked the question, "How's the pot in Prague?"

My reply:

...he asks the guy who just got back from smoking a joint. uhh, it's pretty good. i actually got this stuff on saturday night from a random guy who approachedmy friend Chris, who's visiting from home, and I as we emerged onto the street from the illustrious marquis de sade rock cafe (which is fine during the week but on weekend nights turns into the place that hordes of middleaged british tourists descend upon--and i mean that literally, they all come in at once after shuffling around for 10 minutes outside in the cold and there are never less than two dozen of them--in order to leave immediately after consuming one drink which probably isn't even alcoholic, probably because the place is "a bit shabby, isn't it?"). come to think of it, the place really reminds me of espresso royale, if it were a little more touristy than college campusy (by which i mean location, not the actual place of business itself, and what are exchange students except tourists who stay for a really long time?) and that might be why i knew exactly what the mob of mummys and daddies would do. whatever, i only go to these places for the liquids anyway, and the marquis de sade does have the best beer selection i've found here so far, and they play moderately acceptable american indie rock most of the time (the playlists of the two stores under comparison here are actually frighteningly close--maybe someday i'll walk in there and the czech equivalent of nicole or i will be working).

can you tell that i'm stoned yet?

i actually might have a better connection than shady randomness in an alley downtown. let's hope.

the only thing i really have worth mentioning is that i've decided on a topic for my independent study: vera chytilova. the woman who showed us daisies is pretty much prague's expert on both czech and french new wave (peter hames, the guy who wrote that Czechoslovak New Wave book i was reading this summer, asked her to write an article on Daisies for some project he was working on--actually, she just sent it to me, i'll attach it). you'll hear more about this later. i have to run.

ciao (which is an acceptable thing to say amongst the youth of these parts)
ethan

Since I was stoned at the time I neglected to mention that it was pretty much the first pot I'd been able to get ahold of since coming here, aside from a joint Roya and I shared after some Swedish artist guy she met who was leaving the next day gave her the rest of his little bag. It's been one of the few frustrating things I've encountered here, and its partially due to not knowing anyone and partially due to really not having the time to pursue the whole thing, being as busy as I am and living under conditions which do not exactly faciliate such activies (ie. with a family, and two dogs who bark every time you open or close the front door).

On a somewhat unrelated note, yes, I have decided on a topic for my independent study, and why yes, it is Vera Chytilova. Why no, I was not stoned when I made that decision, although talking to someone whose English is at the level of my advisor, PhDr. Zdena Skapova, can be a quite similar experience--what I mean by that is she's really intelligent and knowledgeable about her field, and her English is good but just bad enough that she comes up with some interesting ways of putting things and can be hard to follow. I suppose I shouldn't talk because my Czech consists mostly of ordering food, paying for food, and semi-decipherable hand gestures that make me look like a (I'll use the adjective again, why not, it fits, we'll call it a theme) stoned mime with the munchies.

And I should mention that that class I mentioned signing up for earlier was cancelled due to lack of any student interest worth mentioning and shall thus not be mentioned at any point in the future.

And now, for the fun run: kinoeye. For all the film geeks out there. They did a whole issue on Chytilova. I love them.

deeeeeeep in a dream

Well, well, well. Things are progressing, taking shape, evolving into some sort of something. Vague enough for ya? OK, good.

Chris Burke left a couple of days ago. He arrived on this past Friday, the 8th of October, and stayed until Saturday the 16th. Man, am I glad he was here. Not until he showed up did I realize how much hanging out with girls almost exclusively was driving me a bit out of my mind. Now, I love girls (I'm talking in strictly platonic terms here), and I certainly value the outlook said gender brings to many topics of discussion, but being the only freaking guy in a group of people I am forced to spend at least two-thirds of my time can get very annoying. Pardon my brief rant here, but I don't care what everyone else is doing at every moment of the day, I refuse to pretend to be in a good mood all the time, I refuse to be happy to see everyone all of the time (this applies especially to language classes held at the hour of 8:30 am), etc, etc. It might be the girly noises that are getting to me most--the little exclamations which accompany every sentence, the "awww" that is inevitably sounded by half the room whenever something cheesy transpires, and so on. I'll be reverse stereotypical if only to PLEAD AND BEG THAT SOMEONE FART OR BURP LOUDLY AND UNASHAMEDLY. It is impossible for me to do this, you see, because I am the only guy, and thus would become representative of all males and in such a situation for the benefit of mankind (in its literal sense) I cannot put forth an image of men as such; it is imperitive that I have a cohort in manly activities, so that the inoffensive one may shrug his shoulders and place all responsibility solely on the offensive person.*

All of this goes to show that the Grumpy Old Man cannot be removed from me just because I'm off in Europe (if anything, it's making it worse--the sight of flocks of German/Japanese/British/American tourists makes my hair go gray and my ulcers squirt blood in all directions). In any event, it was great to have Chris here, even if it did little to alleviate all of the other various stresses that are flapping their wings around my head like big bloodsucking bats. We didn't do much of note, mostly sitting in cafes and drinking tea or beer as dictated by the time of day. I also got rather ill on Sunday night, which extended into Monday and Tuesday, culminating in the joyous explosion of pain that was sitting in the fourth floor balcony watching Mozart with a swollen neck that fortuitously allowed me to only look straight forward with my head tilted slightly downward, albeit in excruciating pain. This was perhaps brought about by our ramshackle walking tour of historic Prague all day Sunday (perhaps one of the first truly chilly days of the year). It was intended to be an expedition that would simultaneously show Chris the sights while allowing me to incorporate his wacky persona into a video that I'm working on for class, and while it suceeded in the first matter, it failed pretty miserably in the second. We didn't have much energy, and smoking some of the pot we bought off a random guy outside a bar did nothing to improve that situation, and indeed, it served mostly to force us to reflect upon the shenaniganry we had intended to inflict upon the unwitting throngs of tourists (which included shouting "You're all in a home movie" a la Tom Green, smashing some famous Bohemian crystal [prohibitively expensive], and attempting to be a tour guide with all sorts of interesting facts about Prague).

Alas. By Thursday, however, I was feeling pretty good again, so we ventured out to see a band called Sunshine based solely on the fact that they had done a split EP with At The Drive-In way back when. I was hoping for something that was at least influenced by ATDI, and I got it I suppose, but in a much more MTV Buzzbin sort of package than I had expected. It was a pretty good rock show nonetheless, pretty good lead guitarist monkeying around with his pedals and some big riffs, lots of shouting, a mediocre drummer, you know the drill. One exciting facet I must mention is that this was the first time I'd ever been in the second row at a rock show and not been a) crushed to within an inch of my life, b) had some inexplicably tall bastard stand directly in front of me, or c) had millions of people push in front of me, thus relegating my rather slight frame to the fifth or sixth row by the time the show is over. So that was exciting. Also exciting was the otherwise sorta pedestrian electronic duo who opened for Sunshine (I keep trying to write Sunshite, so perhaps my subconscious had a bad time) playing a cover of Kraftwerk's "The Model" to close out their set, finally dropping the disco/house thump that dominated all their other songs.

Hmm, what else... Chris has a lot of great pictures from his travels all over Europe, if you know him you should make him show them to you... After Chris left on Saturday I went to a screening of Nosferatu accompanied by a live soundtrack from the Czech experimental band DG 307. It was good, despite the fact that they read the German intertitles in Czech with a generous helping of reverb so I had no idea what the hell was going on for most of the film. The music was enjoyable, the film was interesting, especially the part where Nosferatu (my vote for funniest and creepiest movie monster ever) runs around the city with his coffin looking for a place to hide. Awesome... I went with my host family to a sort of company-picnic thingie where everyone made kites. It was on a horse farm, the second-oldest one in continual use in the Czech Republic, where they bred the special horses that pulled the carriage of the Austrian emperor (my host father told me this about four times, he's just like my dad!). There was a goat named Karl who walked around with a studded leather collar on and headbutted a kid at one point. They roasted a pig on a spit in a giant metal spit-roaster thing. I ate some. It was pretty good (!!! I know, I know, I eat meat over here--a post about my various food adventures is forthcoming). **

OH yes! Rewind a bit. Friday night I brought Chris over to have dinner with my host family. That was slightly awkward (everyone's exceptionally busy), and included my host father having to leave the table because his accountant showed up to talk business and chat (they're friends, his wife came with him). So after Chris and I finish eating, my host mother asks Chris if he's tried Becherovka. He hasn't (I have, in the form of drinking a whole bottle, if you read about Cesky Krumlov previously...), so she brings out a bottle and two glasses. We put back a shot. It's good stuff. Then my host father comes out of the kitchen with a bottle of this apple brandy-ish stuff that his friend made. I've already tried it, but again, Chris hasn't, so we both get a shot. We like it, we tell him. He pours us more. Very good, very good--no, please, no more, thank you. This is on top of the beer we had with dinner, mind you.

So then we leave with my host brother Jan to go play pool at the bar he and his friends always go to. As we walk up, some of his friends are outside smoking a joint. Delicious. They give us some. Inside, we start playing Cutthroat, which is a refreshing change from all the straight 2-person pool Jan and I have been playing. We drink more beer. We play some foosball, more beer, another joint, etc. Chris has to leave to get the metro. I end up staying until 2:30, hanging out with Jan and his friends. More beer, more joints, more pool, more foosball. My pool skills had degraded quite considerably, as you might imagine. There was an older, short balding guy with glasses whom Jan said he didn't know hanging around pestering his friends. Jan's friend Richard (who was a bit tapped himself--he liked to flip out when the other team scored in foosball) told me that this guy's name was "Freak Boy," which Freak Boy didn't like very much. He hung about making nonsensical comments for a good while, until he disappeared later only to return with a cassette tape of The Smashing Pumpkins' "Machina/The Machines of God," which was a gift for me, for some absolutely inexplicable reason.

Jan's friend Oskar and I had a final joint outside, during the course of which Oskar convinced me to give him 50 crowns (about 2 bucks) in order to play one of the electronic slot machines, the idea being that he'd contribute and equal amount and we'd split whatever we won. He was very insistent, his drunken English going a bit something like this: "Ethan, Ethan, come on Ethan, Ethan! I know this machine Ethan, I know it, and we are must winner! We are must winner!" So in the end I gave him 50 crowns, we didn't win anything, and he immediately put 100 more crowns of his own into the machine and proceeded to lose again. The whole way home, Jan told me, he kept talking about how he wanted to go back and play the machine. Ah, Friday night. You were fun.



*It should be noted that at this point, literally as I am typing this, three of the girls came into the internet cafe where I'm sitting and said hi to me, a gesture to which I refused to remove my headphones but did make an attempt to smile politely. I CAN NOT ESCAPE, GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY.
**Two more girls came in. Must leave immediately. Headphones have been turned up. Urge to scream rising.

my logic is internationally sound

Hey, what do you do when you're impossibly overloaded with classes and reading and homework and exploring a new city and spending time with family that's been nice enough to take you into their home for 3 months? You sign up for another class, stupid!

Hello,
the Czech film class teach Dr. Zdena Skapova same as the European film class. Your reservation in the Czech film course have been done, but it would be better to sign up as soon as possible. You can come here in PCFE, Pstrossova 19, Praha 1 or I can send you a registration form by e-mail, you´ll send it on the same address and then pay by bank transfer.Thank you for your interest and have a nice day!

Frantiska Dvorska
Course coordinator

The Prague Center for Further Education
Pstrossova 19, Praha 1, 110 00
www.prague-center.cz
Tel.: +420 257 534 013

explore the magical charms of a real renaissance town!

I have been impossibly busy. I apologize for jumbledness--Chris Burke is here and we just drank some wine with lunch sitting in the park outside the building my classes are held in. it was Bordeaux from Bordeaux. Lovely.

I'd love to talk more about česky krumlov but it's sorta far away now and I can only remember basics (additionally, i am abandoning the use of capital letters). my hotel room was pretty great except for the fan that turned on when you entered the bathroom and then stayed on for 15 minutes. the door to the room was this great big metal monstrosity that opened with an old-fashioned key. i kept calling my room the "poet's suite" but nobody thought that was funny or made any sense. the first night in česky krumlov was drunk night. i had almost an entire bottle of becherovka, which is a very typical czech liquor that tastes a bit of cinnamon, a bit of licorice, a bit herbal, and a bit sugary. i ate a huge dinner beforehand, and by the time i realized what i was doing it was too late. everyone in the group says i should get drunk more often.

second day we had a tour of the town; essentially the center of the place is comprised of all renaissance-era buildings, and across the river up on a cliff is a big castle. after the communists fell in 1990 the population of the town has been slowly restoring the place to its original state. all the structural architecture of the place has been intact because one of the noble families that lived in the castle decided it wasn't good enough and built another one a hundred-something miles awayin the 18th or early 19th century, thus abandoning česky krumlov for hundreds of years. not much went on until the restoration work began and the tourists started streaming in.

next we met with an artist who restores gothic frescoes as his day job (he uses bread to remove the layers of plaster) then went to the egon schiele art centrum. they had a huge exhibition on this guy named milan knižak which i enjoyed. he has a good sense of humor and interesting ideas, particularly regarding his performance art. i bought a book of his called "Actions," which was one of the few available in english, but documents his performace work and ideas. it's something of a mix of poetry, pictures, and philosophy. knižak actually has a very broad career spanning a lot of different formats: painting, sculpture, film, music, whatever. for example, in the 60s he made a record called "broken music." here's read something i didn't write:

Widely regarded as one of the most important sound art documents on record, Ampersand is proud to present the first CD release of Czech artist Milan Knizak's groundbreaking work of art damage." "From 1963 to 1964 I used to play records either too slowly or too fast and thus change the quality of the music. In 1965 I started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. By playing them (which destroyed the needle and often the record player, too) an entirely new music was created -- Unexpected, nerve-racking, and aggressive. Compositions lasted a second or for an infinitely long time (like when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over again). Soon I developed this system even further. I began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing parts of different records back together again to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds. Later I began to work in the same way with scores. I erased some of the notes, signatures, and whole bars. I added notes and signatures, changed the tempo and order of the bars, played the compositions backwards, turned the lines upside down, pasted different parts of different scores together, and so on." -- Milan Knizak.

hardly any schiele at the schiele centrum, however. who cares about the guy's birth and death certificates? blah. disappointing chagall and le corbusier exhibits as well.

third day we did a tour of the castle complex, including the baroque theater, which is one of only two intact examples of such a thing in europe. i love the illusionism of baroque architecture--the stage was 19 meters deep, i think, but it seemed to stretch off into the distace forever--fantastic (the cathedral ceilings that are made in this style are pretty great as well). after a rather poor guided tour through the castle itself (along with about 75 million of our closest friends) we got to check out the gallery that's housed in the old vaulted brick cellars beneath the castle. it's run by an artist named miroslav paral, who was a pretty interesting guy, and his freaky humanoid sculptures really suited the space. afterwards he took us to a little café he built inside his studio and rambled on about being an artist under communism for awhile (this is all through a translator, mind you, a translator named bryce belcher who i'm not even going to get into). then he rushed through a bunch of slides of his work so we could leave and make our restaurant reservations for a place that was supposed to have live traditional romany (gypsy) music and yeah, they did have live music but the guys never came to the room our table was in so it was pretty much a complete waste of time except for the nice onion soup in a bread bowl i ate.

sunday bryce belcher went on a pretty long self-important ramble about recent česky krumlov history (he's been living there for nine years). it was interesting but somewhat long-winded and man is that guy happy with himself.

after that we left for prague, and after one more awkward dinner with my first home family, i moved into my new host family's house, the mojžišovi (i later randomly discovered that mojžiš means moses). i wish i'd been with these folks from the start; they're very nice people, really smart, and interested in talking to me (!). but this will all have to wait because now i have to go and watch czech animation with keith jones. shit better be crazy or i'm leaving.

gorgeous nonsense

The phrase above is something our literature professor said today which I found humorous, and a nice turn of phrase for someone whose first language isn't English. He was nuts--smart as hell, really, really, really enthusiastic, and he kept randomly drawing boxes on the whiteboard to signify the forming of the Czech nation, so much so that by the end of class there was a gratuitous amount of the aforementioned gorgeous nonsense.

I've been out and about lately and haven't had time to write anything. Sorry. I don't have the time to write anything at length right now either. Sorry. BUT I will shoot bullets at you:

--POW: I switched host families. Good fucking idea. The new folks are really great, I have much more space and a 19 year old host brother to hang out with. Last night we played pool for a few hours and talked until 1:30 in the morning. And he said he can get me weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!
--POW: Got back from česky Krumlov yesterday. Beautiful little totally intact Renaissance city in Southern Bohemia. Big-ass castle. Lots of good art. One night I got really drunk on Becherovka. I have pictures.
--POW: First film class today. We're watching Daisies. I really want to talk to this film professor, she sounds awesome.
--POW: My music teacher is a fuckin' cool guy. He's really into all the great experimental music that's going on in Europe right now. I might try to tag along with him to Slovakia to go to some Rune Grammofone festival in December. We'll see.

I need food. Pierogies at Meduza, I run toward thee screaming and foaming at the mouth!