Gin bucket!

Holy shit, I am so drunk.

Whose streets?

I just got back from the antiwar demonstration in NYC. I'm not going to call it a pro-peace demonstration. I think being anti-war is positive and constructive enough.

I'm more than a little disappointed with CNN. Demonstration organizers are estimating a crowd of 300,000, which is probably generous. The authorities declined to provide a figure, which means there was no way they could underestimate the number to their satisfaction and retain credibility. So we're talking a lot of people. The AP, whose story CNN is running, began the story with the cautious phrasing "tens of thousands" (which probably gives an impression that's maybe ten times off), and then CNN puts a headline on the piece "Thousands in New York march." So if you don't click through and read the story, all you get is that "thousands". Which is true. Thousands were marching. And then, you know, maybe about two hundred thousand more on top of those. So that's pretty silly.

But on the plus side I did get to pick up a flyer describing The Booby Trap which (can you believe no one got there sooner?) was the first piece of musical theatre to deal with bras as the nubmer one cause of breast cancer.

Sprout

Small green things are unstoppable. Witness.

Punctuation is everything

This was on one of the windows of the old "Pathologisch Anatomisch Laboritorium" that had been turned into some sort of art and dance space, and which sat accross the Jacob Von Lennepgracht from the Emma Rosa.

The Emma Rosa

While in Netherlands I was a guest of John and Hil in these delightful Deuce Bigalow-style accomodations.

And the man teaches writing

So I'm trying to read my professor's handwriting on a draft of an essay. Can anyone figure out what the hell this word is? I'll even give you the context, it concludes the following: "this is intended for an audience who will react emotionally and passionately to an excitable, emotional..."

The best photograph ever taken

I went to motherfucking Europe!

I have this in 2272 × 1704 if anyone wants to make a poster or something.

Serrated gables

Toothy skyline. The buildings in Amsterdam lean outwards and have loops at the top. There's an interesting story behind that.

Secular humanists, too, walk on water

John getting the shot, at any price to the soles of his shoes.

Smells like food in the hall and weed in the bathroom

Just listened to the first place Red Sox (thanks for fighting off Baltimore for us last night, Yankees) finally beat Toronto. Should be a hell of a contest down the stretch.

I just realized that you can refer to rookie closer Jonathan Papelbon as Jon Bon Juvie. That's way better than saying the opposing team got "Papsmeared". So JonBon got it done.

I had been thinking, for a good while now, of going back to the flophawk. My hair is pretty gross at this point. In fact, last Thursday, my boy the Flipperbaby had agreed to shave it up for me, but the jetlag took me to an early slumber and I slept right through that engagement as well as a party and ½.

Speaking of jet lag, got up at 4 am for the third day in a row today, boo. Especially lame because it rained hard until late afternoon so there was super nothing to do, even if there had been anything to do at 4 in the morning.

Anyway, Papelbon won a bet because he kicked so much ass and had to get a mohawk (doesn't that seem a little backwards?) One of these WEEI clowns (I don't know which is Trupiano and which Castiglione) said something about it being high in the running for worst hair cut of the month, but the hell with those old bastards. Check it out, that shit is thunderdome and ½. Anyway, I'm even more enthused about shaving selections from my own head, now.

I read my named spelled "Willomane" today. I think that's a kinda cool typo. It was this girl named Mallory. Can you believe that I know two people named Mallory? Fucking insane, right?

This one's purdy

Same area as the creepy photo of the last post. I plan to suggest using this as either the front or back cover of the Press' literary supplement.

Tops in creepy

The creepiest thing I ever saw in Urlbany was one of these guys. He sat out front of what might have been a burger joint, or something. It was next to the Lamp Post (college meat market bar equivalent to Stony Brook's Park Bench, since renamed the Blue Moon cafe), and accross diagonally from that hippy cafe that closed down and was replaced by overpriced sammiches. The intersection of Western and Quayle, maybe?

Anyway, they had one of these guys there. Well this little tourist kiosk area, in a plaza behind the Van Gogh Museum, had more than one of them; exponentially creepy. They must hail from Europe--there's definately something a little foreign in the design. We had gone to the Van Gogh Museum on museum day, or museum weekend (I don't recall), when all museum admission is free, but of course, it turned out to be astronomically crowded, so we ended up skipping the actual museum and just chilled in this little plaza. We went back to Van Gogh on a weekday and payed the 10 euros.

I think what's really horrifying about the anthropomorphic hot dog is the sensual abandon (rosy cheeks and lip-licking pleasure) in the degree of cannibalistic self-abnegation. He's like "yeah, I'm gonna spread some sloppy condiments on my head and you tear me to pieces with your teeth".

Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum

This is how I learned that neither google language tools nor altavista babelfish translate Latin. Educated readers, or those who have their Latin dictionaries near their computers, are encouraged to let me know what the hell that inscription means. I like to pretend it's something like "People don't piss in the wind" but that's a pretty wild guess.

So this whole operation here was accross from a nice little place of pancakery. If you were to proceed between those pillars and through the buildings you'd come to the giant chess set and the Guiness time building seen in a couple of previous vacation photos. And, then, I think, the vondelpark, pronounced "fondlepark". Just to give you a bit of a spatial sense.

Jet lag continues

So my sleep schedule is still totally out of whack. Thursday night I was supposed to go out to a party, meet some friends, get my head shaved back into the notorious flophawk...anyway I had one drink in the early evening, so I headed back to my room to lay down and listen to the Red Sox on ESPN2...I passed out from like 8 to 10:30. And then I got up at 10:30 and I totally couldn't move. Couldn't get out of bed, I was wrecked with exhaustion. So I slept until like 4:30 am Friday morning. Yesterday I took a nap in the newspaper office from around 6:30 to 10:00. Woke up and dragged myself accross campus to my for real bed. Then I ended up sleeping until about 5:30 am. So not only was that at an inconvenient hour, it also represented an eleven hour committment to sleep. This time I slept through Ralph Nader on the Colbert Report. And it's killing me, because the web site video clip of the interview is one of two out of six or seven that for some reason don't display properly.

Boos all around.

The US dollar means fine Czeck dining on the cheap

Most of the vacation photos are going up in chronological order. This image, of the outside to the entrance to Klub Architektu (should have a circle over the final u), from which can be seen emerging John and Hillary, is an exception.

You go into this building, near the Town Square of Praha's Old Town, and then you take a stairway down into some surprisingly elegantly furnished caves beneath. It's a nice restaurant for which I was underdressed, esp. given my fuzzy hat-slovenlized hair. I had, on the cheap, the best beer I have ever drunk in my life. The meal was awesome.

More fun for tourists

It has turned warm and nice (at least during midday) for the last three weeks of classes here. Got in some frisbee time yesterday with sundry peeps.

Dutch rapper Riza asked me why I would want his song if I don't know what the lyrics are aboot.

Grenwich mean time ain't got shit

Here you go, first Europhoto. This is in Amsterdamm, all up in the tourist area of the Eistensplatt or the Leiseplein or something like that. I feel it speaks for itself.

Fix

Suffering from Dutch hip-hop withdrawl, I sent an e-mail off to rapper Riza (with an i), asking how I could, from the states, get my hands on the song and video of his latest hit, "Ik & Ali B", which was all over "The Box", and MTV owned music channel in the Netherlands.

Anyway, Riza promptly e-mailed me the mp3 and linked to me to a web page with the video. At first, I loved this video from an unintentional comedy angle, but he was such a pal that I find myself going over to more earnest enjoyment.

Check it out for yourself.

Comedy Central is a failure

Just a few short weeks after caving in to pressure from Scientologists to pull the relevant episode, Comedy Central has refused to allow South Park to show the prophet Muhammed. What a bunch of jerks.

I assume this comes down from the honchos at corporate parent Viacom. I'm going to swing wildly in my mostly ignorance and blame Bill Clinton's 1996 telecom deregulation legislation for this bullshit.

A fine capper on another night spent dancing

What does this tell us aboot the English? That they're very generous regarding unpaid utility bills, or that they should call their relatives more often?

Czecking out

Leaving the hostel, walking to the square to the shuttle to the airport to the Netherlands.

Spent the night in "Largest Music Club Central Europe". Nothing like the response from a dance-floor packed with Czecks to the DJ segueing from the Ghostbusters' Theme to "Ice, Ice Baby."

Oh, yeah, and it was "Thriller" when I walked in.

Who care's about Ed's blog?

Half past midnight in Praha. In about three hours I've got to get ready to make arrangements to get to the airport to get on a plane back to Amsterdam.

Took a hella lotta pictures today of the Charles bridge (over the churnnig Vltltlavltla), the Basillica at Prague Castle (much larger than you may have expected from my old photoshoppery) and a drawing of Steven Seagall, on sale to tourists.

I was going to take the Hostel bar up on their third tequila is free policy but it turned out that I didn't have change to tip the bartender.

This is going to be more interesting when I get the photos up.

Shiny wet cobblestones are for real

It's the middle of the night in Prague, it's cold and there's a drizzle. If they light up the castle at night, they don't leave it lit this late. It's really something to be walking the crooked alleyways in the dark and hear a chorus of chuchbells ringing the hour from five directions at once.

Had I a notepad, or, better, a mini tape recorder to mutter crazily into, I would regale you with all the trite expressions for the delightful time I'm having, but sadly those thoughts are gone, in Rutger Haur's words, like tears in the rain.

I tried to get into a bar on the way back to the hostel, it was closed. I've a feeling it would have been open had I tried on the first half of my stroll.

Hope I can sleep now.

Beisbol

I felt the need to use das internet to look up the baseball standings (I'm wearing my hey-I'm-an-American-a-hole Red Sox jacket thru Europe...actually saw two others wearing Red Sox in `sterdam `sterday, and 0 yankee fans because apparently they have sense enough not to wear this shit in Europe) ... and was thrilled to discover Boston in first place, New York in last (except for the Mets, who were also in first) and Milwaukee and Detroit undefeated. Hooray!

Are you getting somewhere,

So yesterday I spent in Amsterdam. Probably the same today.

I forgot to bring the cable that connects my camera to a PC, so assuming John & Hill don't have one, even if I do take cool pictures (and so far I have not) you won't be able to see any until, I dunno, the 17th.

Coming in the airport (Schipoll? Is that it?) I had to walk an extra 1/2 a way to get to my baggage claim area, and going down this long corridor there was a little mostly empty room full of spare looking workstations labeled, in Dutch, as "Menzies". The woman walking behind me had to explain to her boyfriend why that was funny.

Jet laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.

Springtime

10 hours until Curt Schilling takes the mound.

Leftover image

Chalk & Charcoal filter, baby! Totally spruces up this old photo I had lying around on my memory card. Pictures are various Pressites making the first "video news in brief", in which I briefly (chortle) appear.

Revival, 129 East 15th Street

Took the old train in to NYC for The Chief's (top picture, con muchas Chemases) birthday party. Happened to mention La Ciudad in my instant messenger away-message, so Sam (bottom picture, conmigo) was able to swing by. Good times. Made the last train back to Long Island by like ninety seconds.