DONE

i am back and this is no longer amusing me.

direct all malingering glances thusward: http://hauntedbyhorribles.blogspot.com. i always liked that better anyway and now i feel no obligation to cling to some sort of i-am-doing-something-fairly-interesting-so-ill-write-about-it-fairly-boringly kind of tedious recounting of things. fuck it. i always liked dangling from the rooftop of incomprehensibility a lot more anyway. see if you can figure out what has to do with prague, why dont you.

independently studying

Peter Hames: You once described Walt Disney as one of the leading destroyers of European culture. What is being destroyed and how can this be resisted?

Jan Svankmajer: Disney is among the greatest makers of 'art for children.' I have always held that no special art for children simply exists, and what passes for it embodies either the birch (discipline) or lucre (profit). 'Art for children' is dangerous in that it shares either in the taming of the child's soul or the bringing up of consumers of mass culture. I am afraid a child reared on current Disney produce will find it difficult to get used to more sophisticated kinds of art, and will assume his/her place in the ranks of viewers of idiotic television serials. That doesn't mean that works with imaginative value may not occasionally crop up in consumer culture--for instance, KING KONG. But I fear their number is dwindling.

In other news: U.S. warns of terrorist lasers. They're working on lightsabers. And the Force.

In other other news: READ BOHUMIL HRABAL.

since when do dreams need to be so political?

Last night I dream that a group of Democratic bigwigs assembled at the top of a snowy hill deep in the heart of some "red" state in the northern midwest. They had some sort of press conference (outside, mind you), then wheeled out these three massive walls made of small glasses filled with red liquid. With some ceremony they proceeded to tip the walls over, sending the liquid streaming down the hill in gushing torrent.

The floods were devastating in the lowlands. In one woman's house we explained to her that a red flood was coming and she didn't believe us (I was taking photographs or filming this whole time, I think). Then the red waters actually reached her house, carried her car away, flooded her basement, etc. As we tracked red footprints all over the white tile floor of her kitchen, we told her how it was the Republicans' fault she had no money to clean all this up. She didn't seem to care.

we all have our needs

Today on the street some Brit asked me if there was a sex shop nearby. There's one a couple of blocks from the building where my classes are, and I told him to turn around and head back in that direction, there's a small one down that way. A look of what I can only assume was honest dismay broke out all over his face. A small one? I should have told him it's the same chain (something like the Blockbuster of sex shops) that runs half of the business in Prague, it seems, but it was a bit too humorous and I didn't want to laugh in the poor guy's face. It was a bit like telling a kid there's only vanilla or chocolate ice-cream when what he really wanted was a triple-scoop sundae with strawberry, black raspberry, and fudge-swirl, loads of butterscotch, a couple of cherries and a fucking mountain of rainbow sprinkles.

dreams that money can buy

Well, I mentioned awhile ago that you'd probably hear me blab some more about Cesky Sen... I'm in the middle of writing a paper about it... So here it comes.

I'd post some of the links that I've found but most are uninteresting and poorly written reviews of the film or articles about the main event itself (wherein thousands of people were led by advertisements to the grand opening of a fictitious hypermarket, in case you forgot). This fellow, however, did a good job writing the film up and, gasp, asking some questions about the whole thing! Guess it's one of those things blogs are good for, thankfully, because the journalists sure are blowing it. The ones writing in English, anyway.

I left him a comment, of course.

The title of this post, by the way, is also the title of my paper. Clever, clever boy, that Ethan.

hmph.

I'm alive. Really.

I'm busy. Really.

I have one more weekend of stuff to do. Final exams on Tuesday. Then the Independent Study Project begins, and I enjoy glorious freedom. Sort of.

I have a massive ejaculation en route concerning this trip we did. The problem is a lack of time combined with a lack of motivation to write about all the things that drove me crazy. I could just write about the fun stuff but that would be rather premature (my awful puns get worse every time I use this thing) and I'd be doing you all such an egregious disservice that I would be forced to give up writing about anything ever again and cut homeless people's toenails for a living.

Really.

Now I will do the thing where I clip bits of emails I've sent to people and post them here because I have just enough time to do that and fuck you I already wrote it once. Ctrl+V!

so, hmm, yes, trip was good, 'cept now i hate most of my group, you will learn all this in great detail very shortly. on the monday after we got back roya had a birthday party at this bar called fraktal... had to hang out with the group again. hate.

but it was ok because we smoke lots of joints at fraktal. also a rock star named jeff showed up. he is an african-american with no arms and tiny legs who plays the bass with his feet and probably sings and has played with ben harper, allegedly. one of his bands was called three foot six. interesting guy.

not making that up, by the way.

And now for some film geekery.

[after mentioning how the civil war starts in 2005, which is a long story I need not get into here but it'll probably happen]

I probably just set off like 5 million government email-checking spy thingies. You'll never break our amazing codes you fuckers!

Uhh... yeah. In Ethan news: I think I've figured out my thesis for my project. Something to do with Chytilova's conception of paradise (and the destruction thereof), y'know, utopia and dystopia, all that fun stuff. Saw another one of her films: Panelstory, or Prefab Story in English. It's about all those fun fun fun communist apartment blocks. Happy stuff: nothing works, everyone steals and is horrible to one another... quite a fantastic film now that I look back on it though. The opening is amazing. Jerky, nervous handheld shots from a moving car of these ridiculous buildings with horror movie music playing underneath.

Also saw another pretty good film by this guy named Vojtech Jasny: All My Good Countrymen. It was made in 68 and immediately banned, although only because it gives a relatively straightforward (but all lyrical and poetic and shit) account of how communism and the power it gave certain people corrupted and wrecked entire towns. Cinematography by Jaroslav Kucera, Chytilova's husband (he did Daisies with her). Goddamn if the film isn't great just because of his stuff. He's a fucking genius, I've decided.

Oh yeah, and I saw A Report On The Party and The Guests by Jan Nemec. It was very late-period Bunuel, subtly surrealistic, the comparison with Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is not inaccurate although this film was made a bit earlier, 1967 I believe. I've heard Nemec's other films are crazy... his first was Diamonds of the Night, which is apparently a film about two escapees from a Nazi prison camp made with no dialogue that tries to capture what the experience as closely as possible (meaning: all sorts of avant-garde trickery).

At some point over the next few days I'm going to watch Marketa Lazarova by Frantisek Vlacil. It gets favorable comparisons to Andrei Rublev by Tarkovsky (they're both big historical epics), and my host father tells me its the best film he's ever seen. I saw a short documentary of Vlacil's in class and it was pretty fucking fantastic.

Fuck man, I just realized that not only can you guys not see all these films, but once I get back to the States, I won't be able to either! Fuck!

Unless I cough up $60 a pop to Facets for a VHS. Ughh...

I bought a winter coat today. In the store, which is called New Yorker, they had an ad on the wall showing two cool duuudes on the London Underground except it was pretty fucking obvious they were photoshopped in because they were in perfect focus and everything else was a bit fuzzy. I think the new motto for all advertisers anywhere is "Things only make sense when nothing makes sense." Very Taoist, I can feel the void, can't you? It smells like money.

Tonight I am going to see Czech Traditional Black Light Theater because Roya's family bought her tickets for her birthday, meaning she's somewhat obligated, and nobody else would go with her. Hmph.

We're buying pot beforehand.

Really.

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.