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.
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.
posted by anonymous listener at 5:32 AM
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