hello world, its about time again…

what up. if you want to know about my life, ask me. Blogs are weird, voyueristic, and annoying. Am I really going to speak my mind on here? Nope. So if you’d like to know something about me, or what Im going through, please dont hesitate to contact me via: phone (507 && 382 *** 1429 ***), email (chaosthetic &&&& gmail.com), or facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=17700509&ref=profile) or myspace (http://www.myspace.com/chaosthetic). Realistically, I am too explicit for a public blog. Grandparents, parents, aquantainences and in most cases, friends (with execeptions) would be running a serious risk of embarrassment and horror by reading the thoughts that enter and leave my brain on a regular basis. I love to talk, so talk to me. Blogging is a thing of the past. I guess Ive always been just a little to obvious for something like this to fly. Love it or leave it, good bye wordpress!!

the final London post

So………………. my room is in complete chaos at the moment. I have to find some way of fitting everything I brought over plus everything I purchased here into two big suitcases plus 1 carry-on. Apparently the UK is more paranoid (yeah, impossible right?) than the US about bringing stuff on planes and you can only have one carry-on item. Which means….. I have this backpacking backpack that I need to fit into my suitcases along with all my other isht, or I have to try and cram my laptop bag into the backpack. Either way Im really not looking forward to the whole process and most definitely do not want to pay the 140 buckeroos to check my backpack as a third piece of luggage. Hells no. I might have to fork over some cash ($14/kg) because my bags are over the weight limit, but it wont be anywhere near $140. Hopefully.

Yesterday was the big IES fairwell. They bought us tickets to the Hyde Park ice-carnival skating rink and a couple glasses of mulled wine afterwards. This was a little comical as the ice rink was (like everything here) much too small for the amount of people on it and they made you wear these ridiculous hunter-orange plastic ice-skates that didnt really tighten correctly so everyone is skating around with their ankles wobbling…. I fell once, a little kid decided to cut me off and stop right in front. Gr… My butt is a little sore still, not only from the fall, but from trying to stay relatively balanced for 45 minutes in those terrible skates. It was fun though and Im glad they did it for us. We milled about for a good hour afterwards, talking with people and saying some awkward goodbyes to people that were leaving this morning. Its a bit strange, this whole disembarkment process, as there are so many kids on this program that I have a kind of middling aquaintance-ship with, but not quite enough to justify a full blown goodbye. But then it happens anyway and its awkward because you both realize that you didnt spend anytime together and maybe should have, but now its too late and…. and….. yeah. There are a few people Im going to be very sad to say goodbye too, but for the most part – it was only 3.5 months guys, give me a break.

Tonight a bunch of us are going out to “Chew the Fat” @ The End, Layo + Bushwacka’s club. The sound system in this place is supposed to be one of the best and most audibly safe in all of London – the club itself was designed around the system, not the other way around. Very cool. Im excited because a few kids are coming for their very first time (fitting, yeah I know, at the very tail end of the semester) and it should be a good one. Im slowly switching my sleep schedule around, last night I went to bed at 5 AM, tonight I hope to fall asleep around 7 or 8 AM, and then Saturday night, Ill just stay up all night until my flight at 8:45 AM and sleep the roughly (hm 8:45 AM – 3:45 PM, minus an 8 hour time difference = i have no idea) long, long time in the air and sitting in Chicago away. Thats the hope anyway. Im probably going to be absolutely miserable when we get to Seattle, but maybe that will help me readjust to the time switch, maybe.

After the winter-carnival thing a bunch of us IES students went out to dinner at a wonderfully cheap and tasty Chinese/pan-asian restaurant near Fulham Broadway. I couldnt believe that I had a full meal for less than 10 pounds – quite an anomaly in this city. Later we went to a bar down the street called The Trafalgar where I splurged a little bit and got a couple amazing organic ciders… mmm.

Today is for tying up lose ends and getting all my isht in order. I have to be out of the room by 10 AM tomorrow morning, but luckily Lauren’s mom paid for her to have another night in the dorms so tomorrow night will be a nice little slumber party for homeless Tacomites. Its strange to think I will be leaving this place in less than 36 hours – its amazing how fast you become comfortable in a new environ. I cant say that London has grown on me to the point of loving it, but I definitely understand the city and British culture in general a lot better now. Its going to be nice though to look out my window and not see people every once in a while…. that and sleeping without earplugs. Yes, indeed.

Well, I guess this is it then. See you on the other side I cant wait!

trip down memory lane

I spent this past weekend in Scotland, Friday and Saturday in Edinburgh and Sunday in Glasgow. This was a particularly important trip for me as I have been wanting to return to Edinburgh for ages to revisit the places and faces of my year as a little Scottish boy After much deliberation and anxious procrastination, I summoned enough courage to give the family of a close friend (albeit from when I was 9) in Edinburgh a call to ask if I could stay at their place. Luckily, Scottish people are uncannily friendly and talkative and the whole thing went down smoothly and un-awkwardly. So, on Friday morning I awoke bright and early at 5:00AM, hopped a bus and made my way to Kings Cross train station where I boarded and promptly fell asleep on a train to Edinburgh.

The most striking thing I noticed when I left Waverly station is that everything looked so much smaller than I remembered it. Prince’s street was this massive, shiny, posh shopping district with the grand Balmoral Hotel, the Disney store, and that giant Gothic monument to someone or another underneith the Castle when I was 9. I think part of the reason I ached to revisit this place is that my 9 year old self had glorified and intensified much of the city and the things that happened during that year. This trip was a sort of nostalgic tour of my past, but also a debunking of my often overactive imagination at that age – not entirely a bad thing, but a little dissapointing. The bus ride to the Bramley’s house was painless, and so was the 3 block walk from there. The re-introduction of self to Allison was equally easy and friendly and before I knew it, I had a cup of tea and was talking about old times like it was 1996 again. Apparently I have changed a lot in 12 years – I think I might have given her a bit of a scare at the front door, but I was pleasently surprised to see that my memory of their family had not changed much. Douglas has a beard now, and is much taller than me, but other than that looked very much like I remembered him. Allison and Glen didnt appear to have changed much at all, maybe a little older, but I guess my mental image of them wasnt as set in stone as people more my age were. I still had a good 2 hours of sunlight (!! the sun “rose” at 8:45 AM and “set” at 3:30 PM) so Douglas took me around the neighborhood and eventually down to the Botanical Gardens where we wandered some more until the sun had set and the cold had become unbearable. The old house, on Palmerstone Way/Rd? hadnt changed one bit – Im not kidding, it looked (garden and all) exactly how we left it, besides the Porsche in the driveway (apparently realestate has gone up in the area since 1996). We also saw the Lutheran Church, which also didnt look to have changed a whole lot in 12 years, the movie store (which is now a pet supply shop I think), the two green grocers on the way to the Meadows (nothing had changed! I was probably the same Indian man selling fruit and veges as well), the Meadows (the playground has been expanded about 3 times since then) and up through to Prince’s street. After the Meadows, the deja-vu slowed down and I didnt recognize quite as much. We must have driven a lot, or else my 9 year old mind only remember those things that had anything to do with me at the time. Probably the latter. The Botanical Gardens brought back fond memories though, especially the big greenhouse with the palm trees and cycads. Very cool, though we arrived almost at closing time and couldnt get into the rest of the houses and ended up wandering the outdoor gardens for a time before the park closed at 4 PM (aka darkness). That night I had my first home-cooked meal in 3 months (fish!), looked at some rather funny pictures of myself and Sarah at Preston Street school (I was a fat little boy!) and watched a bit of television, my first real re-introduction to British TV. All I can say is, British commercials make no sense and their comedy shows are much funnier. Sleeping in a comfortable bed, in my own room, was quite nice as well and I think I slept close to 10 hours that night.

Saturday was my big sight-seeing day. I walked from the Bramley’s back through the area me and Douglas had passed the day before in order to take some pictures (I bought a disposable camera for this trip since the lost one is not going to replace itself anytime soon….). I stood again for a little while outside our old house in the hopes of catching some familiar face, but sadly nobody was around at 11 AM on a cold, rainy Saturday and I had to satiate myself with the possibility of maybe seeing the girl next door get into a car across the street with an older, white-haired man. Was this Emma? It looked a little bit like what I remember of her, but could also have been her younger sister…. 12 years is a long time and who knows, that could have been someone completely different. I had this fantasy of seeing her again and asking if she remembered the love letter she slipped under our door the last day I was there…. I wonder where that ended up? Hm. Would have been funny though, awkward, but funny. 

 

From here I trekked on down towards Arthur’s Seat. On my way I passed Preston Street Primary School, where Sarah and I attended P3 and P5 respectively (or was it P4 and P6? I can never remember). Again, this was a little bit dissapointing, the school looked small and lonely on the corner, but more or less how I remembered it. The big cement structure in the playground area is still there, as are the little painted playground games on the asphalt. It was Saturday so there was nobody around, but I would have liked to peek inside and look around a bit. Im sure it would look even smaller inside. Ah to be 9 again… The Commonwealth pool looked very familiar, though they have taken the big spiraling water slide off the backside of the building. Sad. From here I walked towards Arthur’s Seat and the crags.

 

Of all the things I wanted to do while in Edinburgh, climbing Arthur’s Seat was the most important. This mountain holds so many fond memories about it from our time in Scotland – both physically and almost spiritually. To a little boy from the great flat land of S. Minnesota, this massive, ugly bulge of rock and earth was one of the most impressive things ever discovered by man. And that you could hike to the top in 20 minutes was incredible! I wandered this area for a good 2 hours on Saturday, walking up and down the crags, and to the top of the Seat where, with my arms stretched out, I could feel my feet lift off the ground slightly from the insane wind that was ripping across the top of that balding mound of solid rhyolite. I came down the backside of the Seat, towards Carlton hill with its tower and despondent, half-built Parthenon, and took a little detour over to the ruins of a small medieval chapel overlooking the city. I remember this place distinctly from when I was little, my mom and I found it one day (cant remember if Sarah was with or not, I dont believe so) and I imagined myself turning it into a sort of battle outpost. I took a little breather here and contemplated similar thoughts (it really would be a fun place to build a fort) before continuing my way down into the city. By this time it had really started to rain and couldnt have been much more than 35-37 degrees F out – I was a little cold to say the least. 

 

The idea at this point was to make my way down and over to Carleton hill, and from there wander towards the Castle. Did this happen? Nope. I am so terrible with maps in these little European streets where nothing is labeled and some differ by less than a single syllable (St. Andrew street, St. Andrew way, St. John Andrew way, St. Street Andrew Way John, and so on….). I ended up wandering out of the city center, into a district called Leithe, all the while hungry and wet and cold from the ridiculous weather that was building up above me in the slate gray sky. On my wanderings, I passed the new Scottish Parliament building, an ultra-modern complex of stone, cement, and steel that looks as though it is made out of mud and sticks. Weird, but very eye-catching and viewed from above (on the crags) the landscaping and lay-out of the structure is really stunning. One section is designed to look like the hulls of fishing boats, upside down. Im not too sure about this, but it still looked pretty awesome. After realizing that I was no where near Carleton hill, I made my way back to the center and followed Prince’s street down towards the Castle. By this time I was absolutely freezing and starved so I jumped at the first reasonable looking place to consume calories, a fair trade cafe below St. John’s Church. The food was good, but definitely not worth the price and I once again thanked myself for sucking it up and calling the Bramley’s. Free lodging is such a blessing. 

 

After reviving myself a little, I ventured back outside and down to the gardens and grounds at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. Nothing was really happening there and, as it was getting dark, I decided to visit the Royal Museum of Scotland, a natural history sort of place that I loved when I was 9 for its collection of taxadermological (haha sp?) wonders. This was the only place that didnt dissapoint in terms of space and size – it was huge when I was 9, it is still huge. Its a good thing this museum is free, because it would take ages to walk just one level and read/see everything around you. The stuffed animals are a little creepy and looked even less friendly 12 years later than they did in 1996 – apparently there have been complaints about the tatters, sour state of some of these preserved dead things and the museum is working on replacing them with less volitale, plastic dioramas. There was a really interesting exhibit on extinction with specimens of a variety of now extinct critters, including a Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon, and one of those giant hair birds (forgot what they’re called…). I wandered the galleries here for a good two hours before my legs started to complain and my hip began to ache (dont remember either of these ever happening when I was 9…). Exiting the building I was greeted by a veritable blizzard of sleet and rain and decided against the walk home, instead hopping a bus and shivering amidst an amazing number of other cold, wet, and miserable looking Scottish people. It kind of felt like the bottom of some child’s snow cone were dripping all over Edinburgh that night. Needless to say I arrived back at the Bramley’s soaking wet, hungry, and a little tired. 

 

That night Allison and Glen were off to a Scottish dancing event, sort of like square dancing in the US, with a caller and lots of complicated steps and movements in a group of partnered dancers. They spent much of the time before leaving reviewing various dances that were going to be played that night in a series of little, ancient-looking books passed down by Allison’s grandfather. Douglas and I got a bit of a kick out of this whole ordeal. After dinner that night, me and Douglas went to the Golden Compass at a nearby movie theater. Im not going to say much about this event, except that if you have any semblance of a soft spot in your heart for Philip Pullman and his amazing trilogy, see this movie with a massive grain of salt. Like all things Hollywood, the director ripped giant chunks out of the book, spent about two seconds on characterization and relationships, and enlisted an army of CGI and special effects goons to glitz and glam the movie into a watchable, moderately funny, cartoon of what is one of the most philosophically advanced children’s books every written. Sigh. Boooo hollywood, booo! I spent the rest of the night with Douglas in the livingroom watching this comedy show called QI and drinking wonderful Scottish beer from Edinburgh. 

 

The next morning I said my goodbyes to the Bramley’s and made my way back towards the city center to catch a bus to Glasgow. Neil, my good friend from Preston Street, goes to uni at Glasgow University and is in his 3rd year. He lives with 4 other people, 3 girls and a guy, in a flat a little ways out of the city center, but near to the school. The bus to Glasgow from Edinburgh is ridiculously cheap, about 12 dollars round trip. I really wish we had similar service between cities in America – greyhound is much more expensive. I guess its like the bus from Tacoma to Seattle, in length, but still… Lame America, lame. Glasgow is a really interesting city. From the little I saw of it via Neil and our wanderings around the University and the West end, it feels both modern and well-off, as well as old and dangerous. Glasgow has the most violent crimes per year of any city in the UK, with a particularly high occurrance of homosexual rape (weird). Neil was mugged his freshman year coming home from the University, but managed to get away with a black eye and a pretty nasty cut. He says that Glasgow is, for the most part, a great city and that the more violent, dirty aspects of it can be easily avoided if you dont put yourself in unsafe situations (aka walking home at 3 AM drunk ). From what I saw, this is mostly true. It felt like any slightly down-and-out American city, maybe Detroit or Oakland, parts felt a lot like Tacoma, but I guess in the UK, a city where people knife each other is a bit of an abnormality. Weird, that thing with knives here. Guns really havent made a big splash in the inner-city crime scene here, which is great, but recently there have been a few more shootings in London and everyone is freaking out that Britain is turning into the next America. Whatever, all I know is that I can walk back from a club here at 4 AM, in the middle of London’s so-called Bronx (Brixton) by myself and feel relatively comfortable. But I digress…..

 

After arriving I got a little tour of his University and the area around it, after which we stopped in the most amazing little tea and organic food cafe I have ever set foot in. This is in no way an exaggeration and I am a little angry that I cant remember its name for the life of me – Ill ask Neil and get back to you. It had a menu that was about 15 pages long and 90% tea – from everywhere: Africa, India, China, Pakistan, etc… etc… etc… I could have had 12 pound white tea from China, lotus blossom tea from Egypt, mate from Brazil – I was in heaven. In the end we decided to split a pot of the most ridiculous looking thing on the menu, called Mate Boom Boom, an infusion of mate, green tea, ginseng (!!), guava, brown sugar, mint and a few other things that I cant remember. Lets just say it went boom and leave it at that – freakin amazing! I managed to sit down and bump a big kettle of month old tea leaves and moldy water off a brass tea-fire-device-thing and spill it all down my backside in the hour we were at this place. Great, yeah and the back of my coat still smells like sour tea goo. From here we wandered down to Neil’s flat, a typically college-student-esque abode with five rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and central hallway region. Neil’s room is massive and I was provided with a delisciously comfortable couch to sleep on. Its funny how everything I’ve slept on during my travels this semester has felt 10x better than the beds at this IES dorm place…. For dinner, Neil, two of his flatmates, and I all went out to dinner at a pizza place where one of the aforementioned flatmates (Holly maybe? cant remember names for the life of me) works. I had a ridiculous amount to eat (a full pizza, two drinks, and a piece of apple pie), as did everyone else, but it only cost 10 pounds with her discount. After this Neil and I met up with his 5th flatmate at a bar where we where provided with more free food and lots of free drink (Chloe, the 5th flatmate, worked at this place) until about 1 AM when we stumbled full and happy back to his apartment and watched online TV until both of us passed out. Ive got to get myself a group of friends that work at bars/restaraunts – its so much more enjoyable when you dont have to pay/can pay 1/2 price for everything! This whole Glaswegian experience was a lot of fun and Im really mad at myself for not going up there earlier/more this semester. It brought back so many good memories of our friendship from 12 years ago and I really got along well with his friends. That, and it was refreshing to be around some real British kids in their natural setting – aka living in a situation much like my own back home in the NW. I was sad to leave the next morning, but the 5 hours of sleep and rather rushed journey back to Edinburgh to catch a 11:30 AM train to London helped give the reality check I needed and before I knew it, I was back at Kings Cross breathing smog and surrounded by the noise and humanity of everything that is London. Ah…. Home sweeet home. 

 

And so concludes my relaxing and (Halleuja!) problem-free, money-pinching trip to Scotland and back. As the capstone to my time here in the UK, it was everything I had hoped for and more. I feel oddly complete now that I have return unscathed from the land of my distant childhood and the year which I firmly believe set in stone much of the person I am today. In some strange way, I feel as though I can start this new leg of my adventure called life in 5 months 100% a new person, having come to a very satisfying level of peace with all of the issues that came out of that year abroad and the time after highschool. So bring it on life! Im here to kick your ass!!

Ill make sure and update you one more time before Sunday (aka leaving for home day). Things on the docket for this week: 3 finals, packing, ice skating, Tate modern, and Chew the Fat @ The End Club. Woooot!!!!!!!!!! T-minus 5 days and counting.

(btw Im not too sure what happened, but I pressed some random combination of keys on accident and turned parts of this into itallics and others bold. Sorry! )

another weekend – two more to go!

Ok, finally caught up here with all things-blogging. It will be a welcome respite to get back to lands where T-Mobile doesn’t charge me 2 bucks a second to call home. J Its Sunday, but really it feels like every other day here, now that I have very little academic pressure on my shoulders and the happy thought of leaving in exactly two weeks. Lets just say that I will be smiling as I board the plane at Heathrow on Dec 16th. Why, you ask? When London is such a “cosmopolitan” city with so much to do and see and experience and learn and…. Read on. You’ll see.
Friday I went back to Brighton to do some Christmas shopping. I mostly took this trip to go to one store that I didn’t have time to fully explore when my IES class visited and had some ideas for a present that needed certain information before I could safely purchase. As it turned out, I couldn’t find anything in said store that fit my holiday needs…. But, never fear, Brighton is a veritable cornuacopia of consumer pleasures. There must be a couple miles of little specialty shops, along with a massive indoor mall (reminded me of home) with all the usual British big-box stores. I spent almost 9 hours wandering the mean streets of Brighton, cold and occasionally wet, and very wind blown. I could have picked a better day to shop, but whatcha gonna do, eh? It was nice to be able to walk around by myself and see what I want to see and not what 28 other people want to…except that I spent all day shopping, and didn’t really see much of Brighton in the end. Oh well. It was too cold to be by the beach anyway. Ate lunch at a vegan café (waaaaaay too expensive for how much food they give you), got some chai tea, found presents for half the people on my list, along with (I know, it’s the one addiction I have/will never have any control over) 2 pieces of vinyl and two rare books about rave culture Id been searching for for years. I ate dinner at a nationally reknowned vegetarian restaurant (Brighton is full of hippy pleasures), also expensive but nothing like the lunch café. If you ever have a chance, check it out (but make reservations first, I almost didn’t get a table at 5 PM, early for Brits) – Food for Friends, Brighton. I had sweet potato korma with brown rice, a fudge pudding with Bailey’s ice cream and berries, and mint green tea. Yeah, it was good.
Last night I went to my last party here in the UK, Barely Breakin Even Records 11th Birthday Party. The line-up, the space, the price, and the night were all collaborating together in my head to make this a suitable closing party to my time in London. Sadly, and I should have foreseen this, as things go when you build ‘em up in your head, they tend to crash rather unnatractively into walls and all over your happy little conscience. Gr. I mean, who would have thought Giles Peterson, Joey Negro, Dimitri from Paris, Louie Vega, Osulundae, and DJ Premier in the same venue would = boring and soul destroying?? Im still kind of pissed about this, if you cant tell. Canvas, the club it all went down at, is a great venue – huge open dancefloors, lots of couches and chairs, ample bars, and two (2!) coat checks to make the end-of-the-night rush a little less hectic. Yeah, great if you don’t fill it to capacity, and still let people in! By midnight it took me 10 minutes to walk from one end of the club to the other – no joke. I couldn’t dance properly, had numerous drinks spilt all over my backside (if your ever in for a good time, ask me about alcohol and clubs….), and almost fell asleep for lack of anything better to occupy my mind/body. The number of times I was asked by sickly looking little Italian men if I wanted to by any x-t-c just topped it all off. What gives London? Are you so spoiled by a glorious history of raving, world class talent, and some of the best venues in Europe that you’ve forgotten why you started going out in the first place??? Ahhhhhh! Im so over this city. It has started to gross me out, more and more, every day. People can become so ugly when surrounded by nothing but concrete and money.
Today I went to an art exhibition at the Barbican (sweeeet Brutalist living/arts/education complex in N. London) all about sex seen through artists eyes, from Greek/Roman times through to the present. The whole thing was a little ambitious in my opinion, but did well with what they had to display and the space available. It is amazing just how consistent human culture has been on the subject of sexuality in art through the ages. Even during the Victorian era, when sex was a taboo subject and sexual acts were never depicted in art, people still drew dirty pictures behind closed doors. I saw little known pencil/pastel works by Picasso and Rembrandt, a gaggle of ancient Roman, Japanese, Chinese, and Mid-East paintings and etchings, video art by Andy Warhol, and countless other artists’s works, both modern and long-dead. By far the most interesting exhibit was of the French (maybe Italian, cant remember) surrealist Sade’s pencil drawings. If you have a chance, look some of his stuff up – really intricate line drawings that play tricks on the mind and morph and swirl and blur images of human form with death and rebirth, space, and imagination. Quite cool. Another incredibly interesting piece was by a photographer named Nan Goldin who took pictures of people’s intimate lives around New York and put them into a slide show to a piece of creepily beautiful music by Bjork. I was amazed by her attention to detail in these random people’s lives – pictures of people waking up, snuggling on the couch, having sex, walking down the street, looking in the mirror, taking showers. It was the most human piece of art I have ever seen and left me with a rare, warm and safe feeling about the status of this crazy world we all inhabit. That said, all these people were artists that she knew somehow and therefore had different living situations/lifestyles than the majority of people in America. It would have been interesting to see the same exhibit with random couples from all across America, maybe a few cookie-cutter soccer moms, trailer homes in Kentucky, billionaires in LA. I might not have felt so great by the end of that one, or not, who knows! All in all, a worthwile 6 pounds spent, and it took up 3 hours of my Sunday afternoon (which feels like night right about now, the sun set at 3:30 PM today – gross!!!).
Upcoming: I leave Friday for my journey to the muthaland (well sort of), aka Edinburgh. Hopefully some friends of my parents will get back to me about possibly staying at their place soon. Neil, their son, was a good friend of mine during the year we spent in the UK, and I am really looking forward to hopefully reuniting and having all those long drifted-away memories come rushing back full force. Other than that, I might do all or one of the following tomorrow: see a Cuban music show, go to the Tate modern art museum, and play the second to last Monday night poker game of the semester. *Tear*

the post that I never posted…..

hola – Ive taken to writing these in Word before I post them because my internet here is not very reliable. This post I meant to put up on the 28th of November, but forgot. Here ya are:

Ok, just to get this out of the way – I finished my last IES work last night (before finals) and the, final, ultimate! literature paper of my entire college career!!! Yup, that’s right, alllllllllll done. And good riddance too. Only one more short-fiction writing class and my English major is complete. Word.

There are only 9 more class session left for me here in London, and then finals week. Time is going to fly past me without saying goodbye, hello, or what’s up. But, as Ive said before, I wouldn’t want it any other way. It means things are happening, the world of sensual input is rushing past my being. And plus, it means that I will be home with the people I love that much quicker. I never thought I would say it, but I miss America something wicked. Its true what they say, you don’t realize you love something until you no longer have it. So very very true. Luckily, for me (and I love to rub it in all the poor other kiddies faces) I have but one 2000 word short story to write before I leave, and 3 finals to take (of which I believe that I am only going to have to study for 1, and maybe an hour at that). And so, with such ample free time, I have decided on a couple goals, to accomplish before boarding the plane (ah what a glorious moment that will be) on the 16th. These are: buy Christmas presents, do my stretch/yoga routine at least 5 days a week, finish reading the meditation book, and not eat any refined (aka sucrose in the form of white/brown/molasses/treacle) sugar. I see that smile…. I bet you’re thinking, “oh, right, no sugar…. for the, hm, let’s see, 39th time?” OH NO. This time, THIS TIME! Im serious. Too many things have been happening to my body related to too much sugar in my blood stream (reading about hypoglycemia was a little bit of a reality check, it may be too late) as of the last month or so and I am done being mean to my body. One of the greatest lessons that I have learned on my own here in London is, without a significant other to rub out sore spots, check your eating habits, and generally help you stay on the “love yourself” track, one must learn to respect their body, its faults and attributes, and enjoy things that, in the long run, equal greater happiness than short term indulgence would. Id ask you to wish me luck, but somehow that would just seem contraindictory. This is my game with myself. Don’t even try to get in my way this time world!

This past weekend was one of the most interesting I have had this semester in terms of music. Friday night was the Synergy Project, of which I posted a link to in my last entry. I was a little bit unsure about just exactly what I was going to find, the flyer said “indoor festival.” I thought, well, so far London really hasn’t done much to impress me, so Im not going to hold my breath. Oops! Me and Stephanie rolled up to the big tunnel next to London Bridge tube station around 11PM to the sight of what must have been at least 500-1000 hippy-esque ravers milling about in various lines, playing drums and dijeridoos and instruments, dancing in the street, spinning poi, and everything you might imagine a group of excited, nu-rave techno-gaia-children to be doing as their acid kicked in and the lines continued to grow. I had bought my ticket before hand, so I made my way into the relatively short line for ticket holders. Steph and this guy (name?) we met on our way to the venue did not have tickets and were ready to sit for who knows what duration of time at the back of a line about 2 city blocks long. I figured that they were not getting in and prepared myself for a long night by my self. Luckily, by some divine act of whateveryouprayto, the guy we met knew someone that knew someone (as is usually the case at these things) who was on the guest list and suddenly, they were right behind me as I waited in the security line. Woohoo! Rave on. The party itself? Like most here in London, it had its ups and downs. The vibe was better than any I have witnessed in London, but still doesn’t even touch the NW. Crazy dancers, people doing glow-poi, costumes, hugs, smiles, etc… etc… BUT, this is London, where 8 million people are crammed into a region about the size of Minneapolis (give or take), and when you’ve got a sold out show, there’s bound to be assholes galore. I get really really annoyed by big crowds of messed up people (weird, huh, right?) because usually I spend the night being bumped and shuved and encroached upon right and left and up and down, to the point that, as happened at this party, I get fed up with things (if the music isn’t good enough to make me stay) and leave. The music at Synergy was OK, better for the first 4 hours than Ive heard in a long time, especially this guy doing a live, world-music dub-fusion set with an MC (the MC was terrible, as usual). I got down to some salsa, reggae, jungle, and house with a rumba beat with this guy – wonderful! I wish more DJs stepped out of their comfort zone of 130 BPM and mixed the tempo up a little bit. Besides this set, the rest of the night was hit or miss. Seeing Gaudi, a local London DJ that has made a pretty decent name for himself in the states, for the 2nd time was fun, though he was playing for a much bigger crowd and his tunez weren’t as bassy or glitchy as I would have liked. I realized after his set that I promoted his first album last fall for KUPS – Gaudi + Nusrath Alli XXXX. Neato. The party was broken into 7 rooms, one each for psy-trance, breaks, dubstep/downtempo, world fusion, breakcore/jungle, food (and such GOOD food, I had a tofu and feta wrap with sweet chili and fresh veggies – I love hippies J), and this big space for fresh air. The world fusion room also had an artists station, where random ravers would take turns sitting in a chair while anyone and everyone sketched their portrait. By the end of the night there were quite a few, maybe 40 or so, completed pictures on the wall behind the model chair. I had never seen this before and thought it was super cool. One to add to my ever growing “what to do, what not to do” list for throwing parties. All over the venue there were booths with different political action groups, flyering for their various causes. I saw everything from the London bicycle organization to Greenpeace, to the ubiquitous “help so-and-so child in Africa” campaigners. This made it feel very much like something in the NW, though Ive never seen the political aspect played up quite as much as it was for this party….. In the end, most of the people here were too messed up to even notice the booths, let alone taking anything from them. I looked at a few, but am equally guilty, not for being messed up, but for being rather passive and unwilling to sacrifice 10 minutes of my oh so precious rave to hear what these people said. Not that I could have heard them anyway, but next time I will at least give a few a chance. I felt rather guilty afterwards.
We left around 4:30 AM, tired of the same old nu-skool breaks, stripped down techno-reggae, and some super weird Balkan band playing in the world fusion room. Oh, and the psy-trance room? Yeah… I really don’t understand that stuff. Everytime I go into a psy-room (besides the few Ive been to in SF, they know their psy!), it sounds like the same beat, over and over and over again. And no matter what people tell me, its way too fast to dance to. Seriously, people are kidding themselves with most psy-trance. All in all, I give this party a B+ for London standards, a C+ overall. Cool people, cool idea, too crowded, not very interesting music.

Sunday morning I awoke to the sound of sirens outside my window. Not an unusual occurance, as the IES dormitory is a block away from the Chelsea fire station, but this time it was enough to rouse me out of bed, to the window, and bam! It was (like one guy said later that day) as if Armageddon had begun, right there on Kings Road. There must have been at least 12 police cars, a couple helicopters, 5 ambulances, a whole gaggle of EMTs and police people, 6 or 7 fire trucks, and a whole bunch of gawking pedestrians. What in the world is going on? I thought. My roommate, Michael, and I watched from our 4th story vantage point as various people were carried into ambulances, some looking really really badly off. A section of a stone wall and iron fence was bashed in a block down and there was a lot of activity around a green Porsche. The next day, we find out that the driver of the Porsche had a heart attack, slammed on the gas, jumped the sidewalk and went careening into the side of said wall and fence. On his trajectory, the unlucky man managed to hit something like 5 people, pinning one between the fence and his car, seriously wounding 3 others. One person, a foreign nanny for some rich family in the area, later died from head trauma at the nearby hospital. Heavy huh? It was an intense way to wake up, lets just say that much. Brought back in a very sudden way some of my worst memories, and things were a little subdued in David’s head the rest of that day. Only in Chelsea does a vintage Porsche crash into a crowd of people at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Sunday night I went to a performance that was part of the London Jazz Festival. I heard this was happening a while back but, as is usually the case with me, promptly forgot about it until 2 weeks ago when all the tickets to the shows I wanted to go to were gone… I really wanted to see Joshua Redman, a famous saxaphonist, play in this funk-bebop fusion trio on Thursday night for Thanksgiving, but it sold out in October (London is great for bringing the big names, but sucks for the 8 million people you have to contend with to see said big names), and Bill Bradford (drummer) only had one spot left – for a wheel chair. SO, instead I took a gander and went to “Adventures in Sound,” 3 hours of experimental jazz combo action from around the UK, Europe, and the US. This turned out to be one of the best things I have done on a whim in a long time – it absolutely blew my mind. Every performer could play his instrument backwards and forwards, making some of the weirdest sounds come out of them, and could go right back into a sizzling bebop run as well as any pro standard player. Unlike traditional jazz, these players were going beyond simply playing with melody and sound, they were taking apart the very pillars upon which music is generally thought to be built. By the end of the night I had watched/heard/experienced a vocalist/beatboxer do a bebop improve set with a rock guitarist, a wind instramentalist play a wooden tube and flute with a blocked end, a pianist use his fist, arm, a comb, and wax paper to produce sounds both inside and outside of the piano, and so many other strange, yet wonderful combinations and relationships to seemingly normal instruments. There were definitely a few “um…” moments, but the majority of the 3 hours I spent in complete concentration, deconstructing the intense waves of sound and rhythm that these people were creating and throwing in our uninitiated faces. When people say that experimental music doesn’t take skill, they’ve never actually seen it done right. Not only were the performers at this show talented in a traditional sense, they were also, and most importantly, able to commit their minds and bodies 100% to the task of deconstruction, to ignoring all the rules that bound their eduacation and years playing normal sounds. That is a feat in itself and I am in awe of their mastery.

back again

helloooo

To begin with, I should clear up some confusion with my last post. Apparently I forgot to mention exactly why my British Youth Culture class went to Brighton…. During the late 1950’s/through the 60’s here in the UK, there was a youth fad/cult/movement called “Mod”. Basically, this was the culture that the Beatles, the Who, etc. came out of with the mod hair cuts, the mo-peds, the fancy suits and a strange combination of northern soul, reggae, and rock and roll. Brighton, as the summer hang-out and band jump off point for most of southern England’s youth, was subject to a lot of mod happenings, including a big show-down between a gang of Mods and a gang of “Rockers”. This showdown made big news in its day, with police, rock throwing, and all sorts of general mayhem (people were arrested for “obscene language”). The whole ordeal made its way into a movie, now a cult classic here in the UK, called Quadrophenia (sp?), filmed to a greater extent in Brighton. We had to watch this for our class and spent 2 weeks talking about the Mods and their impact on British Youth Culture and British music. Brighton also has a lot of musical history – Pink Floyd did their first ever showing of “The Wall” here, the Who and the Beatles played famous gigs, and the infamous Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) lives just down the beach.

Im going back to Brighton on the 30th to do my own sightseeing and shopping. There are some wonderful record stores, an amazing organic/hemp clothing store, and some lovely vegetarian restaraunts that I want to check out. That, and its only 16 pounds round trip. Lovely!

Next on the agenda: Theater. Last week I saw a West End production of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart in the lead. Now, Im not the biggest fan of classic revivals, especially Shakespeare. I enjoy talking about his work in class and respect it for its shear genious and virtuosity, but performed, all the 500 years between then and now shine out in full glory. The dialog is impossible to fully comprehend, the monologues are long and the jokes dated. The only purpose of staging a Shakespeare play is to reinterpret the visual aspect – something this performance did quite well. It took place in Stalin-era Russia, compelte with political assasinations, furry hats, camoflage, and concrete walls. The witches were three nurses, evil and cunning as ever, who lurked on the edges of each scene, serving dinner here, waiting on Lady Macbeth there. Creeeeeepy. Their scenes were by far the most facinating, due in no small part to the projections of blood and TV static on the stage, lighting effects, and lots of mortuary-esque imagery. Patrick Stewart was, in my opinion (which I recieved some flack for in class), boring and awkward. A few of his monologues were riveting, but for the most part, he stood out like a sore thumb with his bald head and pained delivery next to an incredibly sexy, intense Lady Macbeth and the creepy, slimy Porter. The play as a whole? Not worth seeing unless you have IES pay for 90% of your ticket. I almost fell asleep in some places because Shakespeare tends to drag out scenes that give information, instead of giving it and getting on with things (does that make sense?). I dont know… Mixed feelings on this one. Yesterday in class, discussing it made me feel a little more compassionate, but I still say that Shakespeare has reached the end of its modern rope. Give it a rest, let someone else have the limelight for a while.

This week, the last play of the semester (!!), we saw a rather poor production at a tiny theatre called The Bush (near Shepard’s Bush tube stop). The play was called “The Dysfunktionalz” or something like that. It followed the trials and tribulations of a washed-up punk band after they reunite in order to sign a contract with an American credit card company for one of their songs to be used in an advertisement. Obviously, this goes against the whole punk-ethos of the late 70s/early 80s – ie anti-establishment/anarchy. The script here was terrible in places, OK for the majority. The actors did an amazing job with what they were given to work with, and more or less sold the show. It felt a bit campy in places, like the Rocky Horror show but not intentional. The main actor looked like a smaller Johnny Rotten and acted like it too, which was fun to witness in a theatre that held less than 50 people. A lot of the dialog had to do with British views of American capitalism and i think that about half the audience was from the US so things went over pretty funny and successfully. Hearing the British bash the States so freely is a bit disconcerting, but I cant argue with anything that was said. In a way it was refreshing to realize that the things we joke about back home are actually rather important issues that the rest of the world is legitimately concerned with. Everyone should get out and break the US bubble some time in their life.

This past weekend =’d Majorca, Spain with three friends, two from UPS (Stephanie and Lauren) and another from my program here at IES (Brandon). Like all of my trips outside the UK so far, this one didnt go without a major hitch, but overall was worth it. Majorca is GORGEOUS. The biggest island in the Baeleric archipeligo, Majorca has everything you’d ever need: mountains, flat agricultural land, a big city (Palma – 300,000), a handful of smaller cities (10-30,000), lots of tourism, and some of the most amazing beaches, peninsulas, and coves I have ever seen. At times it felt like a movie set or something not quite real. November is the start of the ‘off-season’ and might have had something to do with the otherworldy nature of this place. I can only imagine what Palma looks like during the summer, as about 60% of the shops/restaraunts/attractions are closed or down-sized during the winter. It felt a little bit like a retirement home for main-land Spanish folks. Not alot of people our age wandering around.

Our hostel was about 45 mintues away from Palma by bus, along the beach-strip of tourist attractions that reminded me a lot of Cancun with a European flair. Lots of British and German pubs, diners, and clubs in the area which was a little annoying as we came to Majorca to see Spain, not Germany/UK…. But we didnt stay in that area too much, only at night. The hostel was really nice for the 14 E we paid a night – i was more a budget hotel with a bar and computers downstairs than a hostel in my opinion. The first night there, we just wandered down the beach and ate at a touristy Italian restaraunt. The next day we took the bus into Palma and then another bus to a little ocean-side town called Port de Soler. More wandering ensued and we ended up eating at a Chinese restaraunt for lunch because we had wandered too far away from the open tourist areas and had no other choice. It was quality Chinese food though and nobody was complaining. Afterwards we hiked up to a lighthouse on one side of the bay and then all around the wildlife refuge that covered most of the peninsula behind the light house. This was a lot of fun and reminded me of when I was younger, clambering around rocks and through the grass with a bunch of friends. We caught the bus back to Palma around dinner time and did some night-time (the sun sets here around 5:30) sightseeing of the city, including a massive Gothic-revival Cathedral and battlements on the hillside looking across the Port de Palma. We ate at a more or less authentic Baeleric restaurant that night, more or less I say because nothing in Palma’s downtown is ever <i>too</i> authentic. I had salmon in a pepper-cream sauce. Deliscious! The second day, we rented a car. This is a little difficult when you are under 23 in Majorca, but we managed to find a guy that would rent to someone 22 years of age (thank you Brandon) on the boardwalk by our hostel. And hence, I spent the rest of the day re-learning how to drive manual in a little Pugeot something or other. Despite a few nerve racking moments on roundabouts and in the mountains, I did pretty well for having not driven a stick in over 2 years. I guess its a little bit like riding a bike, you never completely forget how. We drove from Palma NE to another little port town called “Port de Formentar” where we embarked farther north, up the Peninsula de Formentar. This area is absolutely stunning. Sheer granite/basalt cliffs that dissapear into crystal blue ocean crashing white 500 feet below you. Clear skies, 70 degree weather, little grows of cypress and pine trees, ah…… it was heaven. At the tip of the peninsula is a lighthouse with a little cafe where we spent an hour or so eating cake and taking in the incredible views of the sea and back towards the Port de Formentar. On our way home we drove along the NW coast through the mountains – a rather harrowing adventure in the dark with a manual car and no real idea where you are going. The pay off was watching the sun set behind said mountains and finally arriving in Soler to a lovely cafe-dinner of lasanga and ice cream. Mmmm…. On our last day, well half-day, we took the bus into Palma and wandered some more. I had the famous Majorcan pastry called Ensaimada at a cafe near the bus depot – something Id been craving all weekend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensa%C3%AFmada). As usual, I find out a week later that these things are make with pork lard (traditionally). I really hope mine had vege-shortening. At least it tasted like vege-shortening….. Ill just keep telling myself that. On the bus ride to the airport we were lucky enough to sit down next to a professional Spanish guitar player who gave us a little 30 minute show (classic guitar is out of this world) and his business card (http://home.datacomm.ch/rezamusic/index.html). It was really peaceful riding to the airport listening to his music while the sun was setting on our last day there. Too bad this sense of satisfaction was only temporary.

We flew out of Palma and had to transfer at Zurich, Switzerland. Now, for any of you traveling through this airport, be warned! It is the most non-user-friendly airport I have ever been in. They make you go through a full metal detector security check point every time you enter a new terminal. Its ridiculous! We had a full 2 hours at this place before our flight left, so we made our way down to gate A3 and waited. And waited. And waited. Somehow we had the boarding time confused with the departure time and since they never once called our flight number or our names and we were sitting just around the corner from the gate (aka couldnt see the gate) we ended up missing our flight. Yep, word to the wise! NEVER miss a non-transferable flight (ie budget flights). After arguing with the Swiss air receptionist lady, we come to the conclusion that the only way to get back to the UK is to wait till the next morning at 7 AM, buy a one-way for 130 dollars, and suck it up. I cant tell you how stupid we felt, stupid and tired and hungry and utterly disenchanted from our weekend in paradise. But, having no other choice, we booked the flight, got some expensive airport dinner, and did a lot of SuDoKu. Im not even going to start on what sleeping was like that night. Lets just say my back is still sore.

So in the end, Ive realized that no matter if you travel alone, or with three other people, something is always bound to go wrong. You just have to suck it up, smile, and go on with life. Too bad that costs 130 bucks each time…. Why cant I have ONE mishap free travel experience!!?? I better have some major good karma built up by this time. Something grand is bound to happen sooner or later, right? Sigh………..

Tonight its off to The Synergy Project. Check it out here: http://www.thesynergyproject.org/    I love me some hippies! Needless to say, there is some serious dancing/stress relief in order tonight. Rave on.

boogalooooooo

Its Sunday night and I am sufficiently bored enough to write on here….. If any of you have been trying to get a hold of me on Skype or by email, I have probably been a little out of the loop lately – apparently you cant share your iTunes library over the network in this building and if you dare, they take away your internet for a weekend. Oops…. I wish they would have made clearer just exactly what they meant by “no file sharing.” But alls well now, they gave me a little slap on the wrist talk and if I do it again, I get fined. Stupid IES.
The last time I was on here, I neglected to mention the play I had seen that week. We had to pick the play ourselves and I chose the most interesting of the choices my teacher wrote up on the board for us – Being Norwegian by David Grieg. It was performed in this crazy venue called “The Shunt Vaults,” situated underneath the London Bridge tube station in the catacomb-like vaults that fill space between train tunnels. The entrance to this theater is a little door across from the main entrance to London Bridge station. It looks like a secret “members only” club, or some sort of black market shop. Once inside, you walk a good 100 yards or so through unused vault space, lit by very dim lights that reminded me of torches, into the Shunt Vaults Lounge, a bar/music venue to the same aesthetic as the rest of the vault-space – medieval gothic meets new-age sheik. My play was in a room about 35 feet long by 15 feet wide and performed entirely on a little couch in the center of the room. We, the audience, sat around the couch on little chairs – I was about 10 feet from the couch. The play was part of a series called “A Play, A Pie, A Pint” and, as per the name, you got just that. As you walk in, you get to chose from two different catered, organic vegetable/meat pies and a collection of alcoholic drinks, after which you sit down and consume your meal while watching an hour long play. It was a bit intense, the eating and drinking of 30 or so people in such a small space, and the actors were sweating (as were we, but not quite as much) profusely during most of the piece. Being Norwegian was about how we deal with emotional problems and followed an hour in the lives of a man and woman you have just met and are awkwardly getting to know each other in a cramped little flat (the space really gave us a sense that we were right there in the apartment with them). Apparently Norwegians have a rather pessimistic, but healthy outlook on life – accepting the darkness that everyone deals with as an inevitable and ultimately helpful part of our lives. Quoted from the program, “We Norwegians think people who are happy are perhaps just a little bit above themselves, don’t you?” This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but thinking of my own Norwegian relations, it rings true, more or less. The dark, cold northern Minnesota landscape does similar things to a person as the Norwegian arctic. All in all, it was a very good night out – the actors had both won a variety of Best Actor(ress) awards in Britain and might have well have been real people (aka not actors) sitting on the couch for all I could discern. Plus I got a tasty sweet potato pie and a glass of wine for a total cost of $10 that IES is paying us back for. Life is good.
This week was full of newness. For my British Women Novelists class, we went to an exhibition of the famous 19th century painter Milais’ work at the Tate Britain. Despite getting ridiculously lost on my way there and arriving 30 minutes late, I really enjoyed the exhibition, especially since IES paid for everyone to get a hand held audio tour device dealy thing and all we had to do was sit in the middle of the room and listen and look. Milais was an amazing painter and I found myself recognizing a lot of the work on display. We just finished reading Lady Audley’s Secret, which I guess was written about the same time as Milais painted and relates to his subject matter. Who knows. I thought the gallery was cool either way.
On Friday my British Youth Culture class went on a field trip to Brighton, a beach town about an hour by train south of England. This was a lot of fun, as the teacher (a man in his early 30s, bachelor, with a passion for music, fashion, and socialization) accompanied and showed us around, as well as taking off his teaching hat and showing us a little of his real personality. Very cool. He works for the BBC as a sort of freelance documentary maker, as well as a number of other odd jobs, dresses like a Marks and Spencer’s model, and cracks the most amazingly random, often dirty, jokes. All the girls in this class have a weird crush on him… I find the whole situation rather annoying at times, but unlike some teachers I have had, his is no feeble attempt to be cool for the kids, its really the way he is outside of class. We ate at this fish and chips place on the ocean-front and we learned all about his family and his decisions to become a teacher. The tour of the city was less than satisfactory as he had just been to the Sex Pistols opening reunion tour the night before in Brixton and had lost most of his voice. It was windy and cold too, which didn’t help. They left us alone around 3 PM and a bunch of us stayed around till after dark. I got a lovely hemp sweater-jacket type thing, went on a kiddy slide on the pier (sorta like the Santa Monica pier, with rides and such), ate 5 giant mini-donuts (yeah I know, contraindication, but it’s the only way I can describe them), and listened to some records in various record shops. Brighton reminds me off a rockier Nor-Cal beach town, complete with a long paved board walk, lots of hippy-beach town stores, clubs, and a big, brightly lit pier. I really want to come back during the summer when its hot and there are mobs of people running around. A whole slew of famous clubs are situated right on the water, like the front door to the venue opens onto the beach. I can only imagine….. No camera yet, so no pictures. Im sorry!!
Last night I went to a psy-breaks party with this guy Ian (from UPS as well, but a year below me). We both have quite a bit in common with music production stuff and had a great time dancing to some amazing dubstep and grime. This was the first party that I have felt completely at home here – lots of dreads, home cooked food, glitchy, bassy, broken music, real dancers, and people doing poi – and I stayed until just about 6 AM when it closed. It was also the first party at which I have had any real conversation with local Londoners, a group of three guys, friends at university. Overall it wasn’t the most intense party, or the best music, I have heard here, but the overall vibe of the place and all the elements combined made this a really positive night out. Im excited for this Spring now that I have someone to bounce music prod. ideas off as well.
This weekend I am planning on either going to Paris or Majorca/Minorca/Ibiza. Ian said hat he was thinking of going to Paris where he has a free place to stay this weekend and wanted me to join him. Originally I had imagined going to Edinburgh this weekend, but I figured it was a bit short notice for the Bramleys to ask their hospitality. Instead I plan on the ol nostalgia tour for the last weekend I am here, before finals begin. If Paris does not work out, and Ill know by tomorrow, its off to the sunny South-of-Spain Mediterranean to see the birthplace of rave culture without a slew of summertime crowds. Either way things should get interesting this weekend. J J

The Amsterdam review – finally!

Its been over a week now since I left for Amsterdam, five days since I returned, and I guess Ive finally calmed down enough to write a little bit about it. This week has been full of midterm excitement, projects and papers and all that wonderful school stuff, plus another couple amazing parties this weekend and Guy Fawkes day. Ooof! London never lets up… Time to revisit:

I left on Thursday morning – hopped a night bus at 5:15 AM to Liverpool station, then a train to Harwich Port. I dont remember a lot of this journey, as I attempted to sleep for most of it, but what I do remember isnt too important. Lots of green, some sheep, a few cities – England in other words. At the port a large number of us “foot passengers” were corralled onto buses and taxied into gianormous ferry. Since I hadnt paid for a room and wasnt a truck driver, I spent most of the sea-going leg of my journey balled up on a booth seat in the “Food City” cafe area. Awesome. I slept decently though, probably a good half of the 7 hour boat ride, bought a news paper and did some Sudoku, ate a lot of food, and braved the insanely cold, windy observation deck a few times. Ferry’s are thoroughly uninteresting, but it got me there on time, was cheap, and infinitely more comfortable than a plane or a train. Once in Holland, the “Hoek of Holland” port, I ditched the boat and took another train to Amsterdam, not without the usual confusion as to which train I was supposed to take, when it was coming, etc… etc… This was my first time in a country that doesnt speak English since Cancun (yeah, doesnt really count I know) in 11th grade. It was a little overwhelming at first, but you learn to stop worrying about what people are saying around you, what all the advertisements mean, and so on… And, you learn very quickly what certain words imply.”Nay” = no. “Straat” = street. Euro = slightly more forgiving than the pound, but not much.

I arrived in Amsterdam thoroughly hungry, tired, and foggy from so much time in transit. Central Station, the epicenter of activity in Amsterdam city, was a mess of people hurrying this way and that with bags and luggages and yelling and children crying and bumping into and people sleeping and people eating and talking in a million different languages. A lot like London actually, except people were taller, better looking, less fat and not quite as white. It was cold too, and dark as I arrived around 7PM. My hostel was about a 5 minute walk from the station, just off this big street that I still cant pronounce, but phonetically (to me at least) sounded like “Noorsvoorgb Neeooistraat” or something… Dutch is a weird language – like Welsh and German had a lovechild. The hostel was called “Hotel Cosmos” and like most of Amsterdam was quirky, but very friendly. Housed in a typical Amsterdam townhouse, complete with insanely steep stairs, a tiny little reception room, and a kitty cat, Hotel Cosmos was just about perfect for the amount of money I spent each night for a bed. I slept in a room with 11 other people, bunk beds, and thanks to the miracle invention of wax ear plugs, had absolutely no issue falling/staying asleep. There was even a complementary breakfast each morning with Cappacuino, juice, and toast. Lovely. They made me pay in cash though (annoying, but understandable considering their clients) and I spent a good hour that evening trying to find the cash machine the man at reception gave me directions to. This was my rather abrupt introduction to Amsterdam streets – they dont make any sense. Some streets barely exist, maybe 20 feet long, some are glorified alley-ways, some change names halfway, and then switch back once they cross a canal. I though London was confusing, but Amsterdam took it to another level. Not being able to pronounce any of their names helped a lot too…..

That first night I ate dinner at an Indian restaraunt down the street. Good food, though I ordered too much and ate it all…. Afterwards, since it was still too early to sleep, I decided to experience a little bit of the Amsterdam every college student talks about – aka Coffee Shops. There was a nice looking place with a glass-enclosed street seating area a block from my hostel called “The Grasshopper” that I decided to venture into. The verdict on Coffee Shops? Weird. Like most of Amsterdam. For one, not many actual Amsterdamers patron these places. Two, most of the people who do patron these places are very inexperienced smokers. Three, you can smoke marijuana while reading the NY Times and sipping a latte. Four, the quality and strength of herb in these places is 10x stronger and better than the majority of what sells on the street in America or Britain. All of these things combine and collide in Coffee Shops to lend a sort of nervous, paranoid, schizophrenic-stoned ambiance. I saw so many people smoke way too much of way too strong stuff, and proceed to have a very bad time and make themselves more worried and anxious than they needed to be (aka not at all – its legal!). Marijuana is a psychedelic, it affects the way your mind perceives reality, and I think most of the tourists that smoke in the Dam do it under the impression that its going to make them silly and eat lots of chocolate. NOPE! The reason its illegal is because, unlike alcohol that distills and amplifies the ego, a psychedlic substance dillutes and manipulates the ego. Most of our consumer-capitalist brethren from suburban binary worlds are not OK with such an experience, and when suddenly in the middle of a foreign country surrounded by rather disgruntled Duth people (Damers have a less than positive view of the weed-tourism that goes on in their city), they tend to have a scary and unsettling experience. I wont spend too much time detailing this side of my experiences, but suffice to say that everything people said about Coffee Shops was more or less true. Expensive, yep. Quality, amazing. Ambiance, devoid. Verdict? Its legal simply because money can be made and tourists can be duped. Deliscious!

The first full day in the Dam I spent at the Artis Zoo complex (aquarium, zoo, planetarium, and earth science museum). This was enjoyable, but cold and more or less like every other Zoo Ive been to, if not one of the worst in terms of upkeep and space given to animal environments. It is the oldest Zoo in the Netherlands and some of the cages look like they havent been renovated since its inception. Highlights: a pretty amazing reptile collection (complete with a huge, 6-7 foot long Boa that swallowed a rabbit, live and whole, while a gaggle of small children and I watched in horror), a goofy exhibit of fish that live in Amsterdam canals, pelicans that ate bass-sized fish in one giant gulp (these things were as tall as me when rearing up), lots of monkeys, and strange gerbil-looking animals with really long hair that live in trees. I missed the last planetarium showing by 5 minutes, but wasnt too dissapointed as it was all in Dutch. I had had enough of pretty visuals by that point. In the evening, I ate some cheap falafal from a little stand near Central Station and ended up back at the hostel to regain strength and figure out where a certain Club 11 was on my map…..

Hostels in Amsterdam are just as strange as the city itself. For instance, when I got back that evening, my bunk-mate (Ben from Edmonton, Canada) and his “girlfriend” Katarina he met on a train to Berlin two weeks ago, were just coming up on an 1/8th each of lovely, legal, psychedelic mushrooms. In the bedroom. Woopee! I spent a good while trying to create conversation with them as they giggled and stared at a poster of Van Gogh on the wall, learning in the process that Ben was at the end of a year long, $50,000, backpacking excursion by himself throughout Europe. Where did he get 50-grand to spend on himself for a year? Apparently selling crack, and Im not kidding. The words out of his mouth – “I dropped out of highschool to be a gansta. I never did it, but I sure sold a helluva lot of it.” Lovely. He was a nice enough guy though, not very smart, but nice. Him and Katarina ended up joining me that evening at Club 11 for Modeselektor’s release party for the new album “Happy Birthday!” This was the highlight of my time in Amsterdam. Everything came together in one beautiful, exciting night, and if my camera wasnt at the bottom of a pond in Vondelpark, you too could see what I was lucky enough to stumble upon that night. Club 11 is on the top floor (11th floor) of a brand new office complex, ultra modern, all glass, behind Central Station overlooking the water and the entire city. From floor to ceiling glass windows surrounded each floor and from the dance floor, you could see out on all sides across Amsterdam at night, a surreal and exhilerating feeling. The entrance was in the back of the building, via a little maintanence doorway. Everything, from the cement walls outside, to the corridors inside and the elevator shaft, was covered in some of the most amazing, beautiful, grafitti art I have ever seen. The Netherlands are full of grafitti art, and not just the lame tagging/name writing that goes on all over the world in cities. This was full on spray-painted, urban, art. The elevator was manned by a goofy local with a boombox blasting techno and we all crowded into the elevator with a sense of awe and exclusiveness – nobody checked our bags, everyone was smiling, ready to dance and just as mystified as we were. At the top, the elevator disengaged, we stepped out, and into one of the best clubs I have ever been in. The sound was crystal and just loud enough – the bass gutteral, the mids heartbreakingly clear, the highs crisp and tight. The space was huge and the ceiling lofty, surrounded by comfy couches and split in half by a curtain. One side was a bar-area with wooden picnic-style tables, the other a dancefloor with raised platforms here and there to give depth to the crowd and allow people in the back to see. Modeselektor ripped that place to shreads. I had only heard things about him in the past, never really given much thought to seeking any of his music out or anything. I am now convinced that he is the European Bassnectar – his music and DJing technique is just as tight and innovative with a similar emphasis on really gut-wrenching low frequency sounds, hip-hop and dubstep beats, and crowd control. When we almost had had too much, bam! he’d break it down into something utterly gorgeous and half-tempo, only to build it back up again in a few minutes into another relentless assault of squelching, wobbling basslines and glitched out funk. Haha… Im sure that makes so much sense to y’all. Go find out for yourself, or at least buy Happy Birthday/everything else this guy has produced. Its all golden. I returned home by myself to the hostel around 5:30 AM, having lost Ben from Edmonten to another 2/8s of mushrooms (he apparently found his way back to the hostel around noon that day…) and Katarina earlier that night to sleepiness, happy and elated as I traversed the open water beneath street lights and the neon modernism of Amsterdam behind Central Station. I had this amazing video of a lone swan swimming across the glass-like canal water near the Concert Hall – it all seemed so other-worldly that night, like I had stepped into a sort of deja-vu universe at the end of time. The bed felt amazing and I slept something close to 11 hours that morning.

Saturday was a bit of a lost day – I got up at 2:30 pm and rushed around in the hopes of seeing the botanical gardens before they closed. Like usual, I ended up completely lost, hungry, and dejected in some random area of Amsterdam because the Trams are pointless and apparently there was construction in the street outside Hortus Botanicus. Go figure. Instead I walked for an hour or so until I was outside the Dam Centrum to a vegetarian restaraunt called The Golden Temple. GO HERE IF YOU EAT ANYWHERE IN AMSTERAM. By far the coolest restaraunt Ive ever eaten at. I walked in the front door and the worlds most friendly hostess showed me upstairs where the entire eating floor was covered in pillows and sheep skins with low tables and instruments and books and magazines, all lit by a million little votif candles. I had a red-fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fruit) and ginger juice-drink with a middle-eastern sampler platter. It was 100% deliscious. I spent 2 hours here by myself reading about Buddhism (something I had never done before, oddly enough) and soaking up the ridiculously calm, happy ambiance around me. If you have some time, look into Buddhist meditation. It’s a really interesting practice that everyone, especially in todays world of constant mental stimulation and input, would benifit from. I ended up buying a book, “Meditation: Now or Never” by Steve Hogan, on the subject that is really good and I would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about their mind and the way we perceive wants, desires, and our everyday existence. So yeah, thanks Golden Temple! That night I went to another club, this time to see a DJ called Agoria. Sadly, he couldnt make it from wherever he was in Germany, and a rather unknown (to me at least) guy whose name I dont remember, was booked instead. The night was OK, better than many Ive had out, but nowhere near the night before. Lots and lots of tech-house and electro, which can get a little boring after while and attracts a lot of people on ecstasy, who can get a little annoying after a while. At least water was free from the tap – always a plus!

Sunday I was much more productive, having convinced myself that I was going to make the most of my time in a foreign country whether I was lonely or not. SO, first came Hortus Botanicus, one of the oldest (if not THE oldest) botanical gardens in Europe. Like most things in Amsterdam, Hortus is rather small (or maybe Im just used to America where everything is so BIG) but stock full of every plant you’ve ever heard of. I saw Europe’s oldest and largest Cycad, an ancient tree-like plant in the fern family, an utterly amazing collection of cactus, including a gianormous Peyote collection that must have been growing since the 1960s (L. Williamsii is a very slow growing cactus), two brilliant, multi-tiered, enclosed tropical gardens complete with banana trees, mist, and lots of mimosa vines, a bunch of neat, old trees I had never heard of, and a lovely butterfly garden with rare tropical herbs and sages. I had breakfast here as well, which I would recommend to anyone in heartbeat. Sort of expensive, but well worth it – everything organic, rich, and freshly made. I had a peice of chocolate cake that absolutely melted in my mouth. Mmmm…. Following the gardens, I decided to walk over to Vondelpark, which was a lot longer of a walk than I had anticipated. Like usual, I lost myself in the middle of who knows where, but a really nice lady showed me the way and I made it to the park with about an hours worth of daylight left. Hungry and a bit tired, I stopped in a little park cafe and had an apple-tart and some capiuccino while watching dogs and little children play on the grass and young people kiss and act all lovey at the tables around me. Needless to say, I was feeling a little bit loney at this point. Lonely, but more or less content. Not for long! Next I went for a walk through the park, saw some cool graffitti on a bandstand, and a tree that had grown almost horizontal, half in and half out of the water by the side of a duck pond. Sweet! I thought. It would be great fun to climb out into the middle of the tree and sit. And so I did, but it was rather boring and cold and so I got up about 2 minutes later and….Ploink! My awesome 350 dollar camera plus 1 gig memory card with 3 days worth of picture and video from Amsterdam fell from my pocket and into the murky depths of the pond below. I started for a second, not believing what had just happened, then shoved my arm down into the water to try and rescue it, but it was deep and the camera was heavy. I think I might have yelled something/alot of things profane at this point and made lots of dejected, pained faces. Next I took off my now soaking wet coat, rolled up my sleeves, and stuck my arm back in the water up to my shoulder. Still no bottom. Cold, wet, and about as depressed as Ive been on this adventure, I walked out of the tree and decided that enough was enough and that I was ready to go home. Trying hard not to cry or yell at any of the pleasent, sunset wanderers around me, I made my way out of the cursed Vondelpark, onto a tram, and back to the hostel where I passed out from depressed exhaustion for a good 2 hours.

That night I had planned on eating at another vegetarian restaraunt, seeing the Sex Museum and a jazz show. My spirits were so low that I ended up doing only one of these, oddly enough the Sex Museum, and eating at a really terrible “Thai” place in the super-touristy bar area of Amsterdam called Leidesplein or something close to that. The Sex Museum was quirky and small, but only 3 Euro and took up a good 2 hours of my night. It was full of old pornography, from little porcelain sculptures dating back to Greek and Roman times, to the first porn film and dirty ancient Chinese calligraphy and water colors. There were lots of gimmicky dioramas and seemingly pointless displays about sex through the ages, as well as the usual overabundance of penises (sticking out of walls, painted on the floors, carved from wood, water fountains, entrance pillars, you name it) that seems to facinate all and any space devoted to the marketing of sex. Hurrah for the phallocentric west!

The jazz club didnt happen, because I was ready to go home (aka London) and though fun and interesting, the Sex Museum failed to rally my spirits enough to spend another night wandering the bitterly cold streets of Amsterdam to hear music that I had no idea whether it would be good or not. So yeah, to sleep I went and on the way home, repeated the 12 hour journey with Jane Eyre in hand (bought at the “American Bookstore” in the Dam) and a pit in my stomach where love for my camera once resided. I ended up reading 250 pages of said book (yeah, boooooooring, I know) and arriving in London around 11 PM. I slept like a rock.

Other things about Amsterdam: the Red Light District is apparently hidden someplace, really well. I couldnt find it, though I only looked half-heartedly for it on my last morning there. Saw a few “ladies in the windows” though, which brought back some weird deja vu from when we stayed near the RLD when I was 9. Definitely understood what “men pay to hug and kiss them” a bit better these days. Not too sure where I stand on legal prostitution. Its definitely better than illegal prostitution (they have their own union in Amsterdam), but I wonder how many of those women feel really empowered by their job/have a lot of say in what they do. I guess Ill have to do some research to really know. Other things: Smart Shops are freakin’ cool (Im not too sure what that article was talking about Mom, you can still buy mushrooms legally in Amsterdam) and Amsterdam record stores are really friendly, helpful, and full of techno and trance. No breaks to be seen, anywhere. Some D&B. No breaks. Just think how hard some fatty West Coast sounds would explode on a blank slate like that!? Food for future thought. Dont eat at “Thai” restaurants that smell like stale cigarettes and give you a complementary basket of puffed egg-whites and fake sweet and sour sauce. Gross! Maoz falafal is cheap and tasty and you can put as much toppings on as you like. Being in a country where smoking cigs is allowed in clubs makes you really really appreciate the funky smell of sweat, fog machine, and incense back home.

This past weekend I saw my all-time favorite British breaks artists, The Plump DJs, along with the super talented A Skillz (check out his remix of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds/Strawberry Fields called “Strawberry Jam” – Bassnectar and Krafty Kuts have been giving it a lot of play this year), Rennie Pilgrim, and a whole slew of other peeps off the Fingerlickin’ Records label. It was their 10 year anniversary, so DJs were pulling out all the stops – playing tracks from waaaay back when (when the Plumps dropped “When the Funk Hits the Fan”….lets just say I wasnt the only person jumping around like a complete maniac) and really showing off their stuff.

Saturday night was Guy Fawkes “holliday,” aka Burn the Catholics Day. Its Britain’s excuse (much like Bastille day in France and our 4th of July) to burn copious amounts of wood, light lots of fireworks, and get plastered before dark. Awesome! In reality, its celebrating the attempted destruction of Parliment by a group of put-upon catholics tired of oppression. Nowadays we understand that this was more likely put together by the British government itself to create anti-Catholic fervour and burn lots of preists at the stake. That said, I doubt whether too many people understand the implications behind Guy Fawkes day too well – for 99% of London it was an excuse to see fireworks (imagine 100,000 people all crammed into a city park watching a half-hour long show timed to Prince, Bittersweet Symphony, and other popular songs, eating greasy food and generally being noisy and drunk in the near-dark) and bum rush every pub for miles around Battersea Park (directly across the Thames from my Res Hall). The fireworks were really cool though, and well worth the crowds, the wait, and the terrible “toffee apple” I was stupid enough to buy. We in America at least understand that if you are going to make junk-food/carnival food, it had better give up its goods fast and sweet/greasy or else people loose interest and dont buy any more. A “toffee apple” is the exact opposite. Take a perfectly good apple, dip it in sugar flavored glass, and call it a treat. By the time you actually chip enough of the dammed sugar-shield away (along with peices of your teeth), the oh-so-healthy surprise underneath is almost unappetizing. Almost, that is, for anything tastes good when you’ve spent an hour trying to eat it. STUPID. I cant believe they sell ANY of these things, except to duped American tourists expecting the mouthwatering flavor of caramel and granny smith running down their throats and faces and sticking to their mouths and teeth and……. Mmmm. Stupid toffee apple. After the celebration in the park, I regrouped and headed down to Elephant & Castle (they pick the weirdest names for Tube stops here) for a warehouse party put on by Super Furry Animals, apparently an indie-rock band with a penchant for acid house and the means to secure a large warehouse space, a Funktion One sound system, and really cheap drinks (though I did not indulge in the latter). I hadnt danced really hard to acid house in, forever really, and last night was a welcome respite from all the breaks shows Ive been attending lately. The crowd as typically London-hipster gross though, and I think they over packed the venue because by 1 AM you could barely move in the outside smoking area or the main room. Andrew Weatherall headlined, and dissapointed – much as Brad said he did a couple years back in Seattle. The guy before him was quite good, and Im sure if I had the energy to stay for Eddie Richards special old-skool set (acid house from the original days circa 1991/2) at 5 AM (!!) it would have been good as well. The insane soundsystem in each room was well worth any money I spent though – Funktion One makes some dang good speakerz. The sub boxes in the main room were all lined up next to this stage for dancers. If you were standing on the stage and big, growling bassline dropped, your feet almost moved without you having to do anything. Alpine Musician’s Friend Earplugs for the win!! I ended up leaving around 5 as it were, my muscles still sore from the night before and nobody to hang out with…. Ah the beauty of a 4 day weekend. Woke up today around 2 PM, went and did my stretching/yoga-esque routine in the sun at Battersea, and completed a bunch of lingering homework.

Wowza that was a long one. Ill make sure and update a little more frequently in the future. I hate trying to grapple thoughts and images from a week ago into the present and onto the page. Its a bit like studying for a test a week in advance. Not a good idea – the night before is much more practical.

till next time

off we go!

Well, by tomorrow this time, I will be cozily nestled in the Hotel Cosmos, Amsterdam, NL. The Architecture exam is done, the Theater paper turned in, the trash taken out, the dishes washed, the everything in order…. Now I just have to fall asleep early enough that Im not a complete walking zombie as I take the early morning bus to Liverpool Street Station – 5:15 AM. Awesome. But it means I arrive in Amsterdam early enough to do something interesting before falling asleep, most likely eating and buying a map. But hey, Ive got 13 hours in-transit to sleep, right? Apparently I should be reading Jane Eyre during this time as well, but seeing as there are no more copies in the IES Library and no bookstores are going to be open at 5 AM in the morning, well, I think I might just have to pass. Hm. Ill look around tomorrow at Harwich port. Maybe they have duty free copies or something.

Yesterday I went to the London Zoo! I was worried that I wouldnt end up visiting since an adult ticket costs 16 pounds and they dont give student discounts. Lame huh? Well, luckily Stephanie’s parents decided to go to bath and lend her their travel passes = free entry! Im eternally in-debt. We got there a little late, due to some pretty serious wrong turns and mis-guided map reading, and only had about 1.5 hours to peruse the animal action. I saw lots of birds, even more reptiles (including the largest iguana Ive ever laid eyes on and a Komodo dragon – cool), some monkeys, a lot of creepy night animals, and my personal favorites – otters and merecats!! I have pictures as well, will post them this evening on Facebook. It was a particularly beautiful fall day, maybe a bit cold, and Im glad I got out of my death-hole room for a little while to smell the roses, er, poo as it were. I really like Zoos. Despite everyone’s issues with them (animals are treated poorly, are not given enough room, etc… etc…), they do a lot of good at keeping biological diversity from going down the oil hole and give little boys and girls (like me!) the incentive as a kid to learn more about how they are affecting the world and exactly who they are affecting. Zoos rock. Its going to be a very zoo-ish week, with the Amsterdam Artis Zoo/Aquarium/Planetarium/Everythingatarium coming up on Friday. Yay!

Mom: I got your article about Mushrooms in Amsterdam. Interesting, yes indeed. It is really sad that governments cannot realize the difference between physical and mental effects of drugs. How many people have killed themselves after drinking too much alcohol while really depressed? Sleeping pills? ADHD medicine? Yup. But everyone likes to pick on the psychedelics because so very few people have tried them. Oh and, in my opinion, they break down the structure of the capitalist society by showing people the idiosyncratic way of their passive lives. Sorry, just had to throw that one in there. But seriously, if you think about it, you can drink, smoke tobacco, take speed, and sleep. Drinking is social and allows business deals to go down without paranoia and people can still go to work the next morning with an asprin and bottle of Evian. Tobacco, you can smoke all you want and you’ll still do work, maybe even more work! Speed (aka ADHD meds), I think is self-explanatory. Sleeping pills? How else can we get to sleep in a world built around stress, money, problems, deadlines, blah blah blah…. Oh, and for those chronically ill folks in California who are no longer able to contribute to the wonderful Capitalist machine that is America, well, they can smoke some weed I guess…. Sigh. Amsterdam, you have failed us. Not that I was going to Amsterdam in the hopes of ingesting kilos of magic mushrooms, but the principle still stands. Some British girl, with a history of mental illness/depression, takes some mushies and realizes her life sucks, then acts on her thoughts. If she had been alone with a bottle of vodka, do you think she would have come to any different a conclusion? Or how about in 5 years when her Dad dies from a heart attack and she no longer has anyone to talk to? Yeah, its totally the mushroom’s fault. Bullshit.

But, as I said before, Im getting a little riled up for something that isnt going to affect my happiness at all. Personally I know that doing mushrooms in a foreign environment with lots of cars and random people and things that could go wrong is a terrible idea and would end up with me crying in a corner, or at least talking to a wall for 6 hours. Not fun. Im a little confused why it was such a big deal to buy and consume mushies in Amsterdam in the first place by so many peoples. Oh well. I guess their European…. On a different note, I am excited to visit a country where the government is a little more understanding about human nature (albeit via the insane amount of taxed-revenue they suck out of the soft-drug and sex trade in the Netherlands). Humans like to get messed up, its a fact of life. Even if you dont do the usual spectrum of intoxicants, you still get out of your head once in a while, there’s no denying. Some do it by excersizing, alot through sex or masturbation, gardening, meditation, prayer. Ok, so the last three don’t “mess you up”, but you obviously arent doing any of the normal “sustinance or money making” things that you do under a sober conscience. Amsterdam realizes this, though because of capitalism, human nature is preyed on to an excessive level, a bit like, say, Las Vegas, though not quite so flashy. Yes you can have sex for money, yes you can smoke weed while drinking coffee in a little shop down the street, yes you can buy nitrate poppers, peyote, etc… but it still stands to reason that this city exists, the people there are said to be some of the nicest in all of Europe, the kid down the hall claims some of the most beautiful in all of Europe, one of the more wealthy industrialized nations, and hasnt had a war in god knows how many years. Right on Netherlands, right on.

The agenda while I am away includes (for those of you weirdos back home with maps and your vicarious badges): Artis Zoo/Complex, Hortus Botanicus, Rush Records, Midtown Records, Vondelpark, Tweede Kamer, Grey Area, Jazz Cafe Alto, Red Light  District, Albert Cuyp Market, Agoria @ The Sugar Factory, Modeselektor @ Club 11, Amsterdam Sex Museum, and possibly (if time permits) Boom Chicago canal boat tour. Obviously Im not doing the tourist thing while Im away – stating this outright ’cause I dont want to have to answer millions of questions about the Van Gough, or the art gallery, or the canals, or the blah blah blah…. Yeup. This is David’s trip, and there wont be a whole lot of churches, castles and portrait galleries if he can help it (that said, I do enjoy art galleries, just no as much as funny animals and Europes largest Cycad).

Till next time!

David.

the now, the then, the today, the what?

Another weekend, another bunch of newness. Ah, tis the life to be constantly involved in the uknown. Its crazy to think that things are only going to get more involved as time goes on here. Next weekend Amsterdam, a possible excursion to Romania (yeah, stay tuned on that one), then an entire month of David and himself (and possibly Sarah – if you are reading this, where are you!?). Yeah, its coming to the close of October here, midterms this week and all, but I’ve still got a little over 2.5 months before I see the familiar faces back in grand ol’ rainy NW.

Thursday night I saw my first bad play in London. Everything besides the play itself was fantastic – the scenery, the lighting, most of the actors. But the script, the setting, and the accents………. oh boy. I cant believe a director would choose to cast such a thing in England. It was called “A Member of the Wedding” and followed the troubled activities of a young girl with some sort of mental disability in what seemed to be the 1960’s American south. Weird? Oh yeah. Especially since only two actors got the accent right, and one of them wasn’t the main actress. This made watching/hearing most of the play painful and really distracted from the plot (what little there was of it). Most of the actors had a rather odd/flat English accent with a twange on certain words. One didnt even try to do the southern thing, he just spoke lower and slower. I guess that about sums up the south, right? :-/ The story didnt move, there wasnt really a point to the play besides “people’s lives are messed up and in the end you just have to accept it” and to top it off, there was the usual racial-side-plot that never seems to do anything but rehash America’s wonderful past. A lot of the play seemed rather arbitrary to the actual narrative, the characters were stereotypes and for most of the play I was antsy, uncomfortable and hungry (which is why I spent 2.50 pounds on a bag of nuts at intermission and ate the whole thing (it was huge) in under and hour). So yeah, dont see this play. I cant even remember who it was by. The staging though was immaculate and there were some really awesome rain storm effects with actual water and realistic lightning flashes. Props to the set and lighting designers.

On Friday night, I continued the downward slope (though not quite as terrible in terms of what I went there to see) at Plan B, a club in lovely Brixton, where a favorite producer of mine named ILS was spinning for his new CD’s record release. Im not too sure how he got wrapped into playing this venue for his release, but it was a really bad decision. The club had a huge main room that was bumpin’ British R&B, 2step  house, and hiphop for all the Brixton residents (the area is, more or less, the Harlem of London), and this tiny basement room (could have fit, max, 70 people) where ILS was to spin. Strangely enough, this itty-bitty space had a rockin’ Function One sound system, which in my experiences never fails to impress. Impeccable bass response, crystal clear mids, and maybe slightly overzealous highs (problematic since I forgot my ear plugs at the res hall……. stupid!!!). But the system and ILS were the only saving graces of this night. The warm-up DJ could have been taking a poop with iTunes rockin the decks and nothing would have sounded any different. She didnt mix one track, and those that she tried, she gave up about 3 seconds in and just cut it over, making the rest of us wait for the intro to build into the actual track. LAME. I could have rocked that place in comparison to her (well, in comparison to a lot of DJs, but we’re not gonna go there…haha!). And most of her tracks were just the current trendy NuSkool breaks hits, with the random (really random) big-burner thrown in to mess with my impression. She must have been given a few tracks by some drunk big-name or something one night. It was painful to hear her mix them. ILS was the shiznit though. His mixing wasnt amazing, but at least he did it. His track selection wasnt the best Ive ever heard, but at least he had flow. What really made him stick out (besides following such a disaster zone) was his attitude. He brought three big bottles of shampagne into the booth along with a arm load of flutes and gave out drinks to anyone he saw really rockin to his set. He also brought a 100% smile, a cool MC, and a whole ton of energy. I have to give it to the man, he made that crappy little room seem (for an hour, that is) like a fun, vibey, basement rave. I got a couple track names from him, spent a bit talking with him afterwards, and really enjoyed myself. I couldnt believe that the club gave him an hour to spin, for his CD release party!!! LAME #2. The DJ after him took a poop with iTunes as well, this time rockin’ a 2-step house and lounge mix. After ILS???? Oh yeah, there were some smart ones planning that night. Needless to say, it cleared the floor and me and David (guy in my program) left shortly after. Wooooooohooooooo. At least it only cost 5 pounds (though I was dumb and bought a 4.80 drink – never again.)

Last night more than made up for all the pain and suffering of the last two days. Atomic Hooligan @ Herbal (thats what the flyer claimed the headliner was, any way). We get there, me and Stephanie, and right off the bat – awesome. Only 8 pounds with my student ID, the lady at the front desk was all smiles, the club was full of fog and crazy lights, small and vibey, with two rooms, lots of people at 10:30 PM, and seriously good warm up DJs. Yup. It reminded me of this little place I began my electronic days at in Minneapolis called Tabu. For all y’all that know this place (aka Christine, Leon), Herbal is a little bigger, but just as intimate. The best DJ of the night was suprisingly NOT Atomic Hooligan, but an unknown called “Rico Tubbs”. Rico is my height, skinny, very goofy looking with long white-boy dreads and a silly grin. And he can mix like a god. Dude rocked so many tracks that I had to whip out my camera and record bits. It will take me decades to find all the ones that I was just like “daaaaaaamn” to. And he read the crowd like a book. There’d be moments of funky goodness disco remixed madness followed by some low-end bass burners, and then a bit of acid-squelchyness, built into some crazy grungey Electro insanity. And the whole time he’s up there like Bassnectar’s bastard child with bad teeth, bobbin around, flingin’ his hair all over the place. The girl before him, “Lady Waks,” was seriously on it as well. Between the two, I think only 2 tracks crossed over (aka repeats), and Rico did some wicked splicing with one of them so it really wasnt the same track. Atomic Hooligan though……. These big-shot DJs really need to take some time off, learn how to program and flow again, and get to the club at least for the DJ before their’s set. That or make sure every track you have in your bag is a white-label dub plate special that nobody but your mom has. I think Hooligan played 5 or 6 of Rico’s tracks, which made everything a little anti-climatic. He wasnt reading the crowd very well and it seemed a little bit like a “best of Fall 2007 breaks” show. He did some rather cliche stuff with CDJs like cueing the downbeat of the incoming track and pressing the button to the beat to hype the crowd, then dropping the beat. Yup. Seen that a million times before. He even had the ubiquitous MC as well, who did a whole lot of nothing in a lovely Jamaican-British accent (at least over here, that whole cliche is legitimized). That said, his set worked OK, and the crowd in their 2 AM drug-addled state (lots of freakz on the floor for his set. weird how they just sort of come out of the woodwork for the headliners. no wonder these DJs have so much support, everyone’s out of their heads for their sets) ate it up like chocolate covered carmel corn. I danced like a fiend, Stephanie had a great time at her first breaks show, I only spent money on a single Red Bull, Herbal rocks, and overall – a good night out. Too bad I managed to lose a ten-pound bill on the way home………………….. Gr. Have I mentioned that I hate money? Well, I do. A lot.

This week is short and I have no real classes, only a midterm exam for Architecture which is going to be true to the IES program (i.e. very easy) and a paper for Theater which I have about a quarter done already. Im kinda proud of my Creative Writing midterm story, only 1000 words, but I think its one of my better-crafted stories and contains enough understated meaning to put a highschool English class to sleep. Maybe Ill let y’all read it, if you want. Let me know and Ill email you what Ive written this semester. If you havent read my stuff before/dont know me that well, Ill warn you in advance. I write edgy stuff and lately its been a little depressing for some reason. No worries though, Im actually in a pretty solid state of mind these days. Besides eating half a bar of 70% cocoa chocolate along with a mug of green tea today and watching 1.5 seasons of Weeds in the past 4 days, Im pretty on top of things and managed to write my story, plan my Amsterdam trip, finish my Arch diary, see two shows, a play, and draft my theater paper this weekend. Oh, and I cooked a butt-load of Kale and rice tonight. It was good, but i might have eaten too much and well, Kale is mostly fiber and vitamins, so….. you do the math. The chocolate didnt help either.

If you havent yet (and this is more for those of you my age or similarly inclined), check out the Showtime drama “Weeds”. It is super addictive, well acted, original, and engaging like nothing Ive seen before, besides “Six Feet Under,” which no longer exists (sad!). And if you dig hard enough and dont mind loading times, you can watch all three seasons online, like I do, though I dont recommend doing so if you have ANYTHING you really want to get done. It wont happen, or at the very best, itll happen every 30 minutes when you have to wait for the stupid slow IES server to load the next episode……..

Till next time (aka before A-dam),

David.