"Scares Away the Rats" ....Pt. 2!

First, I have to tell you about the plane ride. Glory of glories, I was sitting next to someone with post-nasal drip. The term "post-nasal drip" has never made sense to me. When did "pre-Nasal drip" happen? Now we're suddenly over it?

Anyway, if you ever find yourself sitting next to someone who feels the urge to snort his snot back up into his nose every couple minutes, don't make the situation more frustrating for yourself by counting the time that has elapsed between each snort. Just do the normal thing and listen to music on your iPod really loudly for seven hours or until he falls asleep.

By the time the digital version of the plane is hovering over Dusseldorf, I am comatose. When we arrive in Berlin, I am practically dead. Suffice to say, It takes me a bit of time before I settle into my life in Berlin. I am SO jetlagged. Not like the kind of jetlagged where you go to sleep really early one night and wake up really late the next morning and feel groggy but drink an espresso and get over it, but the kind of jetlagged where you lay incapacitated in your hostel bed for almost three entire days, only taking little breaks to down a gatorade and grab a croissant.

The short Italian man in the bunk above mine seems to share my restless sleepy temperament. With every twist and turn, every change from cadaver to fetal to cadaver and back again, he seems to move in a synchronized fashion. We are like the Naavi in Avatar, communicating through bedspreads and steel springs instead of hair. It is uncomfortable, and awkward, to see him in the morning, standing above me and putting on deodorant, his crotch in my face, knowing he'd heard me whimper a little bit the night before as my exhausted body continued to refuse to fall asleep.

The hostel room smells like dudes who smell like rotting Subway sandwiches. And halitosis. And death. The first thing I do after I've roused myself into consciousness is go and get a drink. It's 9 am but I can hear bleeps and bloops emanating from a locked wooden door about fifty feet away from the hostel entrance. I sit down in the bar and order a vodka orange juice from the supermodel bartender. She pours half a glass of vodka into my drink, mixes it with orange juice, asks me for three euros and then runs off to dance suggestively with a woman who looks like her sister. Then someone offers me acid. It's 9 am! This is, weirdly, the moment when I fall back in love with Berlin.

I wander dazedly out of the bar and spot two gays kanoodling over espresso. I stare at them as I'm walking and almost trip over a bike. There are old ladies schmoozing, tatooed hipsyers locking up their bikes, tall, skinny women riding bikes with little wooden carts filled with screaming children attached. I welcome myself to Europe.

I sit down at a restaurant and order a salad. "Salad? Do you speak English?" I ask the waitress with the requisite amount of shame one should feel for not knowing the language in a place you have flown thousands of miles to live in. "No, I don't speak any English," the woman says to me in perfect English. Then she smiles. "What do you want?"

I'd bought a German to English translation book written by Rick Steves- a proud monolinguist -but half the book was about beer. I could ask for an obscure lager but was still at a loss when it came to telling someone they looked sexy. However, I was actually enjoying not knowing the language. Life is so much more exciting when all you have to work with are the wild gestures and emotive facial expressions of an out-of-commission mine.

After ordering, I look at the pictures in a German newspaper sitting next to me. "La la la," I think to myself as I stare at the pictures.

The man next to me feels around his butt. It suddenly occurs to me that I am not reading some newspaper left to the population by a benevolent cradle-to-grave socialist country for general perusing, but this man's newspaper that he bought with his own cash money. I apologize and give it back to him, miming the universal expression of regret.

My food arrives but instead of eating it, I stare into the crowd of people sitting lazily about, munching on croissants, talking, laughing. "This is the life!" I think to myself and renounce all the epiphanies I'd had in New York about the importance of hard work and dedication.

I end up staying at the hostel for over a week. Staying in a hostel for such long periods of time is kind of like enrolling yourself in an international speed-dating service. Everyone starts with the typical questions ("Where are you from? What are you doing here?") but eventually you find yourself courting new friends and romanticizing their home countries. "France, wow, such a beautiful country," you say, attempting to conjure memories of the trip you took with your family when you still claimed you were straight.

Eventually, I meet two Israelis who seem fun.

"Hey, you're a gay right?" one of them asks me.

"What do you think of this shirt?"

"I think it's fucking ugly. Wear that one," I say.

"Hey, all right! That was a good tip, man! Yeah, you're good!"

I feel comfortably bitchy around them. The boys have a series of catch phrases they repeat, probably because they don't feel like coming up with actual English sentences around me.

"I don't give a fuck," is stated was frequently and emphatically as in a reality television show. South Park episodes were quoted with reverence. This was going to be a long night.

One of the first things we do is visit Alexanderplatz, home of Berlin's television tower. Soaring much higher than the space needle, but crowned with an orb that looks like Epcot, the building initially looks like a piece of space junk that just happened to land in the capitol of Germany.


TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Oh, By the Way...

The reason I haven't been writing here is because I've been writing over here. Come read about art!

Hallo, Vas Is Up?

i cannot stop trying to sound like bruno here.

it all started with a music poster which said "vas is worldmusic?" i thought the poster was so silly (because, uhm, world music is world music, aka "music of the world" aka "music made by non-white people") so i started thinking in my head "vas is worldmusic" like all day long because it was bizzare and also i'm trying to learn german so i could file it under the part of my brain that was reserved for "new and exciting information". but i can't stop thinking in bruno's accent. which is actually a fairly accurate depiction of a flamboyant gay german accent.

besides old people and babies (such classics) there are many other things i enjoy laughing at here. i was horrified to find german country music at a gay club, but after i'd sat around for a while i just found it funny. it's amazing to hear the german accent in a dolly parton type song.

some things also get amazingly lost in translation. there's an asian restaurant here called "rice queen" which, in america, is a derogatory term for an older gay man who likes younger asian boys, though i doubt the owners have realized that. the restaurant (i kid you not!) is right next to another restaurant called "papa no." it kills me.

people from every corner of the planet live here. french people are probably my favorite. watching french children eat food is hilarious. they are so dainty with their forks! such cultured children, even at a young age. how do they know how to hold their knives. christ, they even rest the fork and knife on the plate after they're done. when i try doing that, the fork and knife fall to the ground and i laugh because this is what american people do: we fuck up and laugh. these kids are something else, though.

there are sex shops EVERYWHERE. there are like five gay saunas next to my apartment. i went once and stared at the porn on the walls and left. good story right? another time i asked the man behind the counter if i could buy a bottle of water and he looked at me like i was an alien. i want to think of a good gay sex club joke. i want to find something funny about sex shops, but maybe theyre actually just kind of sad? yeah, that might be true.

germans LOVE techno. everywhere sounds like a gay club. i'll be eating falaffel at a schwarma shop and have a gay club flashback mid-bite-of-chicken because the turkish owner of the shop is in lurv with an obscure lady gaga remix.

germans are lazy. relatively speaking. either that or americans are workaholics. i oscillate between thinking one is true, then the other, then both.

germans are effortlessly creative. this is what i've decided. at some point in their lives, some representative from MOMA sat them down and told them how to decorate their living rooms, then they traded a blowjob for excellent fashion advice from michael kors, and then they decided they were "over" all that and created living rooms and wardrobes that were somehow even more sophisticated than anything in america. seriously, i walk into apartments and i feel like i'm a model in a catalogue. i want a life.

germans roll their eyes when you say you're an american, but there's still a lot of love there. you just have to talk about obama and the differences between red states and blue cities. then you're in.

i need to learn german.

i miss u!

Scares Away the Rats

"A gay," the woman chewed the word over for a minute. "A Jew. A gay Jew."

"You are Jewish, but you are also a gay," she explained to me. A lengthy pause. "Vow."

The drunken elderly lady stared deeply into the infinite and confounding space between her face and mine.

"Vas is innn your book bag?"

"A book."

"Vow."

I resisted the urge to feel flattered. Usually, when people remark on my specialness, I blush, thank them, and try to impress them with more fun facts (most people won't press if you tell them the third nipple is on your butt). But I was a tough New Yorker now. I didn't divulge my life story to just anyone.

My childhood friend, now behind the bar, made a bug-eyed face at me. I could tell she was debating over how much she wanted to help me out and how much she wanted me to experience the crazy she deals with every day.

"Izzz zhaatt soccherr?" the woman asked, pointing at a screen depicting men kicking balls on a field. She threw her body against the back of her chair in mock shock. "Is Spain in zee orange shirts?"

I went back to reading my book and when I turned around, she was slumped in her chair, almost falling off. I shot her a concerned look and she laughed at me. I turned back around.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry for making fun of you."

Then she fell off the chair.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god what do I do?" I called to Jane.

"She falls down all the time."

This was not the first moment I ended up relishing because it felt like Authentic New York.

Later that day, after I had transformed myself into a quintessential cliche NYC tourist - buying a soft-pretzel, humming Alicia Key's "Empire State of Mind" song and meandering around M&M World - I arrived back at my friend Julia's place in Crown Heights. It was around 1:30 AM and a gaggle of Jamaicans were still playing chess under a "No Loitering" sign. Julia was such a pro at having guests over that she didn't even look phased by the fact that I was coming home so late. She held the door open for me and a haggard looking man who said he required apartment entry so he could "go find his girl." He followed us up the first flight of stairs and then wandered into a dark corner.

When we reached her apartment, Julia pounded the floorboards with her bare feet.

"Scares away the rats," she explained, matter-of-factly.

This deeply impressed me.

Okay, so I was not on the "Sex and the City" tour of Carrie Bradshaw's favorite vabrator stores, but I'd still spent a portion of the day like a naive outsider, praying I'd see Liz Lemon's character in Rockafeller Center. These were the kinds of experiences that made one feel like a clueless Midwestern tourist. Witnessing Julia's fairly nonchalant attitude towards rodent infestation, on the other hand, gave me the realest picture of the city yet.

Excusing moments after branding them with the "authentic" label was something I had also done, exuberantly, while hanging out with my friend Stephanie. Stephanie had seemed harried and had big dark circles under her eyes when I visited her in her diminutive apartment in the East Village but I quickly convinced myself that she was having a totally enviable New York experience. The dark circles were proof of this. I had not a shred of compassion for her; she was living the dream.

I had always held fast to the idea that traveling permanently altered your internal hard-wiring, and now my wires had been re-arranged into a large F circuit, for failure. Failure to become an authentic, hard-working, stressed out New Yorker.

Just as it had taken me a long time to come to grips with the fact that simply setting foot in Chelsea does not a more fabulous gay man make, I was slowly coming to grips with the fact that simply meandering around the streets of New York was not turning me into a more interesting person. I'd have to get one of those job thingies. But what were my skills? The greatest thing about living in Seattle was that I didn't really have to prove myself. If I lost my job, I'd have to move back in with my parents. But I didn't mind watching Oprah on their couch. Unemployment in New York meant being eaten alive by pigeons in some Bushwick alley. Not applying myself was not an option.

The next morning I took the subway back into the city. As I strained to listen to an episode of "This American Life" over the screech of the train, I began to think of ways of simulating a New York life in a less expensive city. Maybe I could rent an apartment under train tracks in Philadelphia, open a bagel shop that doubled as a comedy club and pay people to be slightly rude to me.

I must admit, at this point in the story, that I hadn't expected to fall so masochistically in love with New York. My plan, essentially unalterable due to the price of plane tickets, was to leave New York for Berlin in a week.

"Why Berlin?" I can still hear my mother's voice in my head. I had traveled to Berlin a year ago and had loved it but couldn't find a way to explain my love to those in what that they call the "Post-Holocaust" generation. Like an Arab in love with Noah's lox shmear, mine was a culturally-inconvenient adoration. You should have seen the expression on my mother's face when I had handed her the Lonely Planet Berlin guide book.

"Look at all the great shopping!"

"This is a page on Hitler's bunker."

"Oh my god."

Let's get one thing straight: I do not have a Hitler fetish. Let's get another thing straight: the shopping in Berlin is incredible.

After a week in New York, I packed up my bags and headed for JFK with Julia. As she fiddled with her car's iPod, narrowly missing a crowd of Hasids, I attempted to prepare myself for this new lederehosened leg of my trip.

Traveling from Seattle to New York meant preparing myself for the smell of human feces, rotting garbage and the crippling anguish of monetary-inferiority complex. Traveling to Berlin, on the other hand, meant preparing myself for sophistication-deficit disorder.

I tried to adopt a cool but detached look in the airport security line that signaled someone who was over it. I imagined that, if any Berliners asked me what I thought of Obama, I'd reply "I like him, but let's not make a religion out of it." I'd be in the clear unless Germans watched Bill Maher.

Still, it was hard to concentrate when I was having panic attacks about being rendered mute. I still knew no German! I didn't even know what came after "drei" ("drei-et-un"?) Worse, I had adopted a patronizing attitude towards the language. German just made me giggle!

....TO BE CONTINUED!

Like a Pervy Nancy Drew

Last night I read Edith Zimmerman's blog out loud to a few friends. Everyone was yelling at me to stop because the pacing was philistine - like something you'd find in a really stupid campfire story that goes on and on and isn't so much scary as it is boring and weird - but then came the shocking and outrageous and pretty creepy punchline, and that really sorted folks out. I laughed, because the story WAS dumb, but proudly and self-consciously so, and everyone stared at me silently before resuming their activities. So you're just going to have to trust me on this: her blog is stupid hilarious (the best kind). Here's one story that made me howl.

ghost!!!!

Right as I was drifting to sleep, a thumping noise in my bedroom startled me awake, and I gasped. “Who’s there?” I said, sitting up and pulling the covers tight around me. “Who’s there?!” Just then I heard another thump, but this time the thump was followed by a long, slow creak. I know that creaking noise, I thought to myself, That’s my closet door opening! So I looked over and saw that my closet door was opening! “Oh my god,” I whispered—the door seemed to be opening by itself! Finally the creaking stopped and the door was completely open. I held my breath and for a second nothing happened, but then a pale, transparent oval floated out from the darkness within, and it had two empty holes for eyes and a long empty gash for a mouth. It was a ghost!

“Oh my god,” I said. “Oh my god, oh my god, what do you want!?”

The ghost said nothing and just floated around my room, going back and forth, causing all the papers on my desk to flutter to the floor, and my drapes to flap in the wind. Then he came over to the side of my bed and just hovered there, staring down at me with his empty eyes, with that same unchanging expression. “What do you want?” I whispered. “Oh my god, what do you want?! I’ll give you anything. Money, jewelry—whatever you want. I’ll suck your dick, just please don’t kill me!”

So he pulled out his ghost dick and… well, I’m still alive, I’ll say that much!

Haaaaaa...ewwwwwwwww! (hewwwwww?) Edith (who really is so wonderfully weird) also selects and comments on the funniest and most interesting internet memes for New York Magazine's Culture Vulture. You can check out her posts here.

Against the Homosexual Lifestyle?

Force the gays to marry!

Music Dump Wednesday!

Fake Blood:





Janelle Monae:





Vampire Weekend:



La Roux:





Chordettes (Squeak E. Clean Remix):



Robyn:



Annie:

Lindy West on the Food at Sasquatch

It was humiliating enough sitting at a picnic table outside the media trailer, hot and alone, eating my Domino’s* personal pizza. The pizza was lukewarm and encrusted with tar and sadness. It had “ham” on it. I finished the pizza, and shifted my weight to the side to swing my leg over the bench. At this moment, I realized I should have checked my watch, for it happened to be WORST THING EVER O’CLOCK. As I leaned to the side, toward the very edge of the bench, the entire picnic table and bench apparatus TIPPED OVER SIDEWAYS AND PITCHED ME TO THE GROUND IN A TANGLE OF SHAME AND DIET COKE. Hey, everyone on earth! Check out the amazing 900-lb woman! I detected the smell of a Domino's personal pizza somewhere within a 200-mile radius, so i had the sheriff saw the wall off my double-wide and haul my brontosaural girth over here so I could stuff this tarry grease-puck in my face! Oops! Not knowing what else to do, I panicked and yelled, “I’M SUPER DRUNK RIGHT NOW SO I DIDN’T EVEN FEEL IT.” The worst part is that that wasn’t even true.

* By the way, isn't it Domino's that's doing that ad campaign about how their pizza used to be garbage but now it's really, really good? Hey, Domino's! You know what? "Good" isn't really in your wheelhouse. Maybe you should try something like, "Domino's Pizza: At Least It Was Borderline Free!" Or, "Domino's Pizza: Shut Up and Eat It, Fatty." Just a thought!

Read the rest here. I am offended that people are just now realizing that Lindy West is a hilarious genius. The woman has been funny since funny was pooping in diapers and kicking the back of your seat on long airplane flights.

Thank You, Gods of Comedy and Romance, For Having Sex and Giving Birth to the Newest Episode of 30 Rock

I was getting worried about 30 Rock. Liz's single lady jokes were feeling flat. Tracy's shenanigans just weren't cutting it. But the newest episode, in which Liz must attend two separate weddings and Jack has to choose between Avery and whats-her-face-with-the-hilarious-Boston-accent is totally. fucking. hilarious. For one, Liz finally finds someone who likes her (THANK GOD RIGHT? It was getting very unrealistic that every man in New York City hates a wonderfully self-deprecating single lady in her thirties). Add a drunk Kenneth into the mix (he's just the sweetest thing even when he's trying to be mean) and you have an episode that actually allows its characters some emotional growth while still retaining the belly laughs. Also, Cher accents in male characters never gets old. Watch here.

Today in Awesomeness

Sam Lipsyte's new novel "The Ask" has been getting a lot of praise everywhere, and that's because it's a beautiful, hilarious, amazing and heartbreaking new book. I just finished it last night, in bed, still sick with some weird fluey thing. This part caught me by surprise...a rare meaning offering in a book which ardently resists the preachy. I'll share it here because it resonated so much with me. It's a conversation between the main character of the book, Milo, and his son.

I took a knee on the sidewalk, clasped Bernie by the shoulders. I'd seen fathers kneel like this in movies, standard posture for the rushed essentials, the Polonius rundown. A little too in love with itself, Don might judge the moment but that didn't diminish its necessity. Bernie might not understand what I told him today, but he would carry the words with him forever, and with them, me.
"Listen," I said.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"Squander it. Give it all away."
"Give what away? My toys?"
"No, yes, sure, your toys, too. Whatever it is. Squander it. Do you understand?"
"Not really."
"Don't save a little part of you inside yourself. Not even a scrap. It gets tainted in there. It rots."
"What does?"
"I can't explain right now. Someday you'll know..."

In the spirit of this passage, a part of me wants to give away the plot of the whole book, but you'll have to check it out here instead. What do I love about this passage? Oh, everything. I love Milo's self-conscious fathering. I love how everything adults say is lost in translation. I love the random stream-of-conscious writing Lipsyte attempts when writing the kid's character. I love that Milo is so bitter, and he knows it, and he wants it to stop but doesn't know how. I love the message of squandering it all, and I love the way it sounds like it might actually be a bad thing, and that that's because we've cast it as a bad thing, when it's really the greatest thing. I love how the moment pops out of nowhere, the way really important moments tend to always pop out of nowhere, and how it ends quickly because it's so rare for two human beings to ever have an epiphany on the same deep level at the exact same time.