Israel Redux.

i have been home a week now and this time has let me soak in my trip a bit. its not often that you travel to central america and then to the middle east and back home. a whirlwind of scent and sound. my return has been made somewhat strange since they speak english here and apparently so do i. after being abroad for so long you forget that there is a place in your world where they still speak the language in which you think. not that the costa rican toursist industry or israelis in general dont have a command of english. it's just that when i go to other countries i try my best to blend in and deal in the native tongue. this was especially problematic in israel, where my hebrew knowledge is limited to my 5th grade hebrew school days and a two year relationship to a loud israeli girl.

i did have to bust out a significant amount of russian though. after my business in Israel was done i was bombarded with relatives, some of which i've seen, some of which i recognized from pictures, and some which i couldnt tell from my own ass. that expression doesnt make sense, but either does this: during my short stay in israel, i met no less than seventeen relatives, none of which could properly pronounce my name. bullshit you say. oh no! in less than 48 hours i hugged, kissed, and smoked with the following people: shlayme, masha, zlata, liron, maidan, benya, yakira, lyusa, misha, rita, dodik, masha, sopha, edit, orit, her 2 year old little sister, and azreal. these folks arent that distant either, most of them second or first cousins. so, for the older folks i really had to get my russian in order. though i made several mistakes (including mixing up the verbs "to write" and "to piss") i managed to get my point across without terrible difficulties, but the effort in speaking a different language for several hours at a time was both exhausting and frustrating.

luckily, i found that israelis are really not that different from us, except that they smoke cigarettes. a lot of cigarettes. at first i was intimidated but then i said fuck it and just went full on. smoking in people's houses, around babies, on the can. nobody gives a shit. they just passed a law over there that you're not allowed to smoke in bars any more and people just shake their head and say 'thees eeez boolsheeet law!". i mean for god's sake, do you remember that arcade games where you drop a grippy hook thing into a pool of furry things, hoping to take hope a cuddly little friend? umm yeah:


(that's not candy!)

but their lives are harder than ours and worrying about their health doesnt really figure in. of course the irony of all of this is that they have the 8th highest life expectance in the world (the US is 38th). this includes wars and bus bombings and suicide killers and all the shit americans are so scared of. and of course CIGARETTES ... OMG CIGARETTES. they think that we are crazy for worrying so much about everything and considering their proximity to enemy lines, you can see how we look ridiculous for worrying about transfats.

such proximity to your mortal enemies promotes a currency of violence which is ubiquitous -- even more than money. got a big house overlooking the ocean ? awesome. hijacked a syrian tank with nothing more than the uzi in your trunk and your work clothes? 1000 times awesomer. guns are everywhere in israel -- and the government wants it that way. specifically, they think that having 10-15% of your population armed at all times will create a mobile and instantaneous fighting force, if such a thing is required. everyone has a gun and active soldiers (you are active in the army till your 50s potentially) usually have an uzi in their trunk. again, the effects of this are almost counter-intuitive. for example, armed robbery on the streets is almost non-existant. imagine someone crazy enough to try to rob someone when there is a 10% chance that they have a gun and 90% chance that they know how to engage in some sort of hand to hand combat. i went to the train station to pull some money out of the atm and after several security checks (you cant get into a mall, train station or any hotel without getting your shit searched) i watched two 25 year old dudes walk on the train with automatic weapons strapped around their shoulder. none of this bothered me at the time, which i thought was odd. when i returned home and tried to superimpose this scenario on my current world, i realized the incongruence of it all. can you imagine walking to the 16th & Mission BART station and seeing everyone packing heat? fucking scary! not in israel, where scary takes on a different role. and gratefulness -- gratefulness means waking up alive. all of this is intense, and only heightened by israeli's desperate fanaticism for coffee and everything caffeinated. so you can imagine the scene. cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, handgun holstered your side pocket. these people are INTENSE and thats the way they like it. plus all the girls look like a sexier version of amy winehouse (sans track marks).

the strangest thing is that these oddities make israelis the best americans ever. they embrace a gun culture in a way the framers of our consitution could only dream of, and while their freedom of press isnt necessarily up to par, their democracy is alive and kicking, unless you happen to live in the west bank or gaza , in which case all bets are off (as are the safeties on the guns). israelis love americans because without the states, israel would be naked. "danny," they would tell me, "we want to be the 52nd state!" of course this kills me on many levels, but the fact remains -- they are tied to us and their dependency is not shrouded in any shame or naivite. along these same lines, these people love gw bush. I mean, they LOVE him, because in their eyes, he hates arabs more than they do. call this a pr fumble for georgie if you like, but there is no denying that getting attacked by jihadists and starting an ancillary war in iraq with little reason certainly makes their case for them. "daniel, clinton was our friend. he came when rabin died and cried for us. but bush, bush is our gun. and his hand is on our shoulder all the time."

they are dialed into everything american. when i came home tired, i turned on the tv and flipped between 'goodfellas' and 'the untouchables', another nod to the hyperreality of guns and glamour. at the bar, i stumbled into a chicago bears football game (it doesnt matter which continent i'm on, the bears are still shitty) and had a two hour discussion with the bartender about the 85 lakers, 30 minutes of which were spent trying to remember AC Green's number. israelis love hoop! and politcally they are all way dialed into our process. everyone in Israel was curious about our upcoming 2008 elections and who i thought was going to win. i dont really have a clue and i told them that, but i also imparted that these things are all rigged in some way -- that business and money have hijacked a system which was already pretty strange (where do i send my tuition check to the electoral college... anyone?). i explained to them how you have to be born rich and poor people dont ascend to the presidency, and if they do, they are relentlessly hounded by a paranoid wealthy class, who will stop at nothing to prove that the sitting president engaged in oral-anal contact while on the phone with dick army. as i said before, the currency of power in israel is the gun and while you can be poor growing up, you better have been a war hero, or else you no chance to affect politics in any significant manner. the greatest peace brokers in israel were the greatest warmongers, possilby even war criminals, because that blood stained cache provided them a bulletproof perch from which they could influence real change. menachem begin ran a terrorist organization, irgun, to kick the british out pre 1948 , and this level of heroism and sacrifice provided him the moral footing to trade the sinai peninsula back for peace with egypt. yitzhak rabin was instrumental in routing 5 countries in 1967, eventually capturing jerusalem, which he then tried to partially return. maybe if clinton hadnt draft dodged things would be different, but i doubt people would ever have gotten over how 'black' he was. he loved to smoke weed and play saxophone and rich people hate that shit. in israel, he could be banging the pope, but if he comandeered a soviet built heliopter gunship in 1973, such indescretions are happily overlooked.

the strangest thing for me was how homey this place felt, in stark contrast to the time i spent in lithuania, my true birthplace. in my heart i realize that lithuania was a place i happened to be born, and in many way, the US is the place i happened to end up, through no acts of my own. diasporic dice were rolled, and bam! i'm spending the majority of my first 22 years in the state of illinois. israel is still some strange ethereal anchor that i can always turn to. and however flawed the idea of such an anchor may be, the fact remains that i have more family in israel than i do here, and the food is better too. dont look for me to leave or anything, but let's just say that while i was there, the pang was strong, even despite my understanding that moving somewhere to jumpstart yourself is a dangerous escape tactic. theres something magical about a place where jews clean toilets and when theyre done with that, they smoke like crazy and live till their 85.

so a move (at least a short term one) is never out of the question. if it does happen though, you can be sure i wont be packing heat, since my poor mechanical skills make me liable to inadvertantly shoot myself at any time. in the meantime, i'll just think back to overcaffeinated family and friends, packing late night plates with olive oil soaked hummus, stopping only to laugh and light up another cigarette while they celebrate another day.

Jerusalem.

guided tours -- you just never know what you're gonna get. I got on the united tour bus with my co-worker Pasha. Pasha is 50 something, has grown daughters and, when slightly tipsy, becomes delightfully existential. for example, the other day at dinner, we were talking about not doing too much work at home. personally, i don't think there is anything that can't wait till the morning (people! we work in software, not surgery). several people shook their head, quietly disapproving of my work ethic. pasha, had a different approach : 'you know what helps with not checking emails.. the thought of death.'

pasha is 100% awesome and i was excited to go to jerusalem with him today, mainly because of his background (he is a pakistani humanist and this seems relevant somehow) and because he is well read in the history of antiquities. i wanted to ask him how he can go and sell software everyday and not want to kill himself, but forgot. i guess that will have to wait till we go to turkey together -- sometime soon, i hope. anyway, on this bus we were grouped with a nice indian family from south africa. the mother worked for el al so any time these people would leave south africa they would have to overnight in tel aviv. the other people on the bus were these two quiet greek folks who wouldnt stop sneezing and coughing. i was right behind them and wanted to decapitate them because of their stupid greek germs. decapitation, though somewhat of an overreaction, would have been effective, and as we will see later on, my instincts were entirely correct.


as we drove from tel aviv to jerusalem i was quiet, watching the terrain turn from fertile valley to slow foothills to legitimate rises in the road that were reminiscent of california. i always have said that israel's geography condenses the geography of california onto a smaller scale. in the north the see of galilee could easy remind you of lake tahoe, while the dead sea and death valley both share a penchant for subterranean elevations. meanwhile haifa hugs the coast and is tech central for israel -- the middle east's version of san francisco.

but i digress... we are rolling towards jerusalem , and i cant help but think back seven years to the time i was in jerusalem last, in a bus full of college kids. between the raging hormones and our familiarity in language, we had a pretty singular experience, and i spent a few minutes looking back on that trip with some nostalgia. making new friends in my age group, talking shit with the bus driver, getting loaded in a neo-socialist setting. not that i'm complaining about today's lineup, but hey, how can you beat kibbutz BJs?

another digression! we rolled into jerusalem, first looking at the city below us from mt scopus. i stopped listening to the ancient history lessons surrounding each point we hit because it was too much to internalize. i just decided i'd read about it later. nonetheless, the city was laid out before us, the dome of the rock shining brightly atop of the temple mount:



I love camels. look at that expression!

then we made our way into the old city, where we wandered around, with the aim of eventually hitting the church of the sepulcher, apparently the site where JC got nailed to the cross. i say apparently, because no one knows, and we are all guessing as to where these events took place, assuming they took place in the first place.
so i'm not totally buying it . also, there are stations every time JC fell, which was like 3 times. i mean, i know times is tough, but thats a lot of falling! i'm sure abraham fell all the time but we don't include that in our tradition. it's a little embarrassing, all this falling. JC is like the gerald ford of millennial prophets -- and that really says little about his foreign policy.

as we made our way through all the stations, we eventually came to the muslim quarter, which is always my favorite. the other quarters are kinda clean, with the occasional sighting of a bumbling cleric from some strange tradition. not in the muslim quarter. you turn the corner and hit the bazaar and hit it hard. people are selling you everything from all sides, including jewelry, posters of palistine, jewish stars, kodak film, and IDF t-shirts. the arab quarter is not interested in irony, or politics for that matter. the arab quarter is full of people who want to make money, preferably off of you. high above the stone walls the muzzin cries from an amplified minaret. no one kneels, no one prays... they just sell , sell , sell.

this video is a bit bloated (and will be fixed), but it does the trick:




we twist and turn our way through the old city, hitting the wailing wall, the western wall of the original temple and the epicenter of jewish orthodoxy. chaos at the wall -- black hatter lubivatchers attacking me from all sides, threating me with tefillin. dozens of boys being bar-mitzvahed (it's bar-mitzvah thursday!) chanting in their broken voices, culminating with a simon tov and a mazel tov. demented false prophets screaming into mid air , arms raised, tzitzit ruffling in all directions. its the jewish rapture, and through this i sneak to the wall, find a deep fissure and insert my little prayer for those i love. i rest my head and hands on the wall, introvert deeply, awaken and step back. i make my way back to our tour group slowly , in a bit of a daze.

this whole scene is followed by a pleasant luncheon. the stock market was discussed.

after lunch we head off to the yad vashem, the massive holocaust museum. i dont know about you, but i am holocausted out. all of my grandparents are survivors and i grew up from a young age hearing about my grandmother's troubles, a 14 year old girl who saw her mother and sister shot before her eyes. and then some of you wonder why i'm so fucking neurotic. a seven year old boy should rather stay away from such stories but they drew me in more deeply. my world view, just forming, was settling on a giant crack which was pulled apart by the forces of good and evil. so i know about the holocaust. when we entered the museum and the old greek looked at me and offered the profound ' you know what they did with many of the jews, they made soap!', i couldnt tell if there was glee at the end of that sentence. i decided to let it go, because this guy was old and english was probably his ninth language. meandering through the museum (i had tried to ditch the greeks but couldnt) we came upon an exhibit on hitler. this greek looks at me and , with suprising aplomb, lets me know 'it wasn't his fault. it was the jews, they had all the money and they wouldnt give it to hitler so he had to kill them all and take it.'

now. fifteen different things ran through my head. i dont want to enumerate them all but the list starts like this.

1. What is this guy doing at yad vashem if this is what he thinks
2. what happens to someone who puts a 75 year old greek dude in a chokehold at the holocaust memorial.
3. is it inappropriate for me to respond with 'hmm, thats interesting coming from someone whos culture is mainly known for taking it in the ass.'
4. can i really engage this guy in a conversation about what he just said, perhaps drawing on some realties from the ground.
5. i cant believe this guy just made me even MORE depressed here.

in the end i gave him a dirty look, did not answer him and simply walked off. i can tell they were a bit dependent on us, not wanting to lose themselves from teh group. the dude kept following me, so i retaliated in the only way i knew how -- violent gas. thats right, i think i've eaten 5lbs of chick peas each day i've been here, so you can imagine what my lower GI was doing. i paced ahead of this fuck, gassing him, WWI style. finally i was relieved, so i ducked away in a small exhibit where they showed emaciated jews playing violins. none of this was helping but eventually the greeks were off my six and i re-paced myself through the museum. eventually i came upon a photo of a nazi, gun cocked and aimed at a woman holding her child and i decided that was enough. i zigzagged through the museum and emerged to the sight of the jerusalem hills -- a rolling, lush respite for the brutality behind me:




so basically, i'm over the holocaust, but im not sure it's over me. i chain smoked my way back to the bus, avoided eye contact with anyone, and made my way back to the hotel.

tomorrow i go to tel-aviv, which is where israelis go to eat, drink, and try to live normal lives. 4 nights there should help me some. and so help me god, if i see those greeks again, i may find other ways of relieving myself ...


till then!!

Costa...

miami seems to have a special place in my recent adventures. i came through here going to both puerto rico and brazil, though both those times i did not stay the night. i'm here tonight in between my costa rica vacation and my israeli business trip. too tired to go out see the city and slightly oversocialized anyway, i decided to stay in the hotel room and write it out...

i just got back from costa rica -- where i fell in love with central america. because of its short length, this trip was really just a taste of the country. we didnt see volcanoes, nor explore beaches. we arrived on sunday, hopped in a rental, played a few hands of costa rican blackjack , and headed off to catch our ferry to malpais. at the bj table, i was down 10Gs! which, in american cash is roughly $20. it took me a few minutes to figure out this exchange rate of 500:1. I suggested to several vendors that the country should consider devaluing the currency like the ruble, but they just looked at me funny.

costa rica is just developed enough , if you follow. dusty roads take you between beach towns but when you get there, you'll find great and cheap food, with some gorgeous beach resorts. we picked something mid tier, meaning the fridge didnt work, i got dripped on by the air conditioning condensation, and the kitchen ran out of BEANS. that last item mortified us the most -- how do you run out of BEANS in COSTA RICA. nonetheless, the trip was great, with wonderful weather (including a ridiculous rainstorm ... "just when you think it cant rain any harder...") and great company.

i tried to get one thing done each day and just chillax the rest of the time. On Monday, Jon, Zach and I drove up the coast to a small port where we arranged to have a couple ticos (thats what the cosa ricans call themselves) take us out fishing for a few hours. We quickly got on board and were shuttled out into the ocean, past a shear-cliffed island, where we saw bait fish dancing on the nearby surface. Douglass, our "captain" said little except "mas cervesa?" when he was thirsty but he was a hell of a tuna spotter. there were times when all three of us had fish on the line and it was wild in that tiny boat.

Journeys

Friends!

It's your lucky day! That's right, I'm about to embark on a trip to Costa Rica, then to Miami for a night, and then to Israel. Take a look:


The say the shortest distance between two points is a line. Bullshit. The shortest distance takes you through tropical rain forests, surfing lessons, 24 hour wife beater locals... I plan to come home browner than you.

Dental Damns....

Friends!

it's been a while since i have posted. unfortunately, absolutely nothing new has happened in my life , aside from a few trips to the dentist. normally, there would be nothing to say about this, but, because of my dentist's unparalleled dexterity and weird sense of humor, i have found that going to visit him is more interesting than attending my job. this revelation, which sprang upon me whilst a grown man had several fingers deep inside my mouth, made me realize that one of two things was afoot:

1. I have come to appreciate the feeling of novicaine shot into my jaw, and the subsequent dull drilling of the interiors of my head by blue hooded jokester. This seems unlikely.

2. I need a new job.


I work in the software industry and maybe four years at one place is enough. There must be some sort of statute of limits on such a thing, but i have poor role models. For 25 years, my father woke up every morning at 530 to drive 25 miles through shitty traffic, so he can go to the same job every day, at a family owned company where he was most certainly not family. Every day he would come home, sit in the living room, smoke a cigarette and swear at the mail. He would then go outside to tend to his flowers and plants, his one escape from the impossibilities of the walls he had suddenly found erected around himself.

Every morning i wake up and check my email, my stocks, my news. I am taking no actions at this point, i just want to make sure the world is still in one piece. After some time, i stand up and attempt to do 20 jumping jacks. i take a shower and when i'm done brushing up, i go back to my room, play some Wilco, dress up and head out the door. Recently i have been taking the train to work. As i leave the train station in san leandro, i walk past the same decomposed bird, only every day there is less and less of it. Today i spotted a feather here, a feather there ,and some ambiguous spot spread out over a few feet of asphalt. As I walked past, it occurred to me that i was experiencing some sort of morose empty nest syndrome -- rather than feeling sad that my bird had flown away, i was simply sad that the decomposition process had come to an end, that i no longer could count on the daily sight of my pal disintegrating further and further.

i dont really know what any of this means, other than i am terribly bored. the thought of going to work every day for the next 40 years makes makes me want to shoot myself in the kidney. to avoid this, i have been lucky enough to mix some travel into my job, and doubly lucky is my timing; i'm heading to puerto rico next week to torment that small island-colony with painful details about the software world... donnyb rides again!! till then.


PS... I'd like to give a shout out to my "anonymous" reader. Valerie: the 72 hours during which your identity was shrouded in mystery piqued me in strange and wonderful ways. and to my "colleague" who betrayed your identity and subsequently mocked me in a southern french i will never forget: "Ne pas les Bleu!!!"

CUBS CLINCH

greetings!

well my last post was a bit of a downer and i want to write about bigger and brighter things... let's get to the point: the chicago cubs have clinched a divisional title for the first time since 1989!!

so what if their ultimate demise is as inevitable as laundry? I am ridiculously excited about a post season appearance and none of these teams in the NL scare me at all. meanwhile the cubs dont bring too much hype this year (unlike 4 years ago, when wood and prior were the two-headed second coming of yahweh). instead we have a solid team, with good chemistry and a weathered old manager, whose photo i carry with me in my wallet. i know thats a bit wierd but so far so good!!

in a san francisco sports bar, tucked away besides golden gate park, the patrons are overflowing for their respective teams. philadelphians, chicagoans, new yorkers have congregated here to hold a bit of home close to them for a few hours, to make that connection through space and time... to relive that one moment in, say , 1984, when you first experienced baseball joy , your mother crying sweetly beside you as Keith Moreland is doused in champagne. you have lived since then, and you have seen all kinds of things which have, in aggregate brought you here.. your experiences have defined you and made you whole. and still, though you are here now, your heart is elsewhere, so used to being somewhere else... so you look for that anchor, and inevitably, like laundry, you are back in Illinois, remembering champagne flowing for something you had nothing to do with, but something that feels so right, so basic.


so as you can see, the cubbies are more than baseball and more than a shitty team. just remember to cheer on.. and on the off chance of a world series appearance -- call me and you'll here me overflow .

GO CUBS!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodbye Columbus

"donnyb! donnyb! why dont you write about ohio."

read on , you philistines.. drink the nectar of my pen sword!
---

columbus ohio is a simple place but i am struggling to adequately portray it here. think Paris, France, then pretend it is opposite day -- and then add 20,000 Big Ten sluts. voila! so ok, maybe this is a bit presumptuous, but i spent four years in champaign illinois, so i know these people. they are people of the earth. 30% are sexy-as-hell god fearing christians while a good 70% are sexy-as-hell, binge-drinking sluts.

this town has many uninteresting facets, none of which seem worth mentioning, but what the hell, i consider this a good education for the non-midwesterners. for example, every cop car you see has at least one black person in the back seat. i'm not sure if they are paid members of the OSU police department or what, but the message is loud and clear: if you're black and even slightly shady, you best watch your ass, or we'll drive you around town for hours. also, a non-distinct concrete downtown is punctuated, quite phallicly, by a giant concrete slabbed exclamation point which rises thousands of feet in the air. inside, natives shuffle about, dealing with matters of insurance and electric power. then they go home, watch TV, have sex with their wives, and do it all over again. in other words: they are just like you.

when i travel domestically, all of my foreign excitements go away. there is no fear for my life, no worries of mistaken identity which inevitably lead to unhappy relations with a prison guard named julio or hans. instead, i wind up in columbus or topeka and i wonder: why the hell would anyone live here? and then i am slightly jealous.

i admit i am feeling more rural recently... the throngs of SF (not to mention the thongs of SF -- like the one i saw on a dude in chaps on a WEDNESDAY down my street) are slowly wearing on me. i pine for open spaces, backyards and streams. kids and dogs running around naked, playing in sprinklers. fishing boats and john deere tractors. but i am quickly reminded of fishing trips with my father. between awkward conversations and his occasional threat to throw me off of a 14ft rowboat, we would look around and admire the idyllic serenities of lake and forest... only to hear him proclaim this place unlivable for the dearth of the two big J's: Jews and Jobs.

thats right, well placed paternal semitism creeps back into the subconscience and i realize that my musings of fireflies flickering around my west virginia spread are just a poorly thought out pipe dream. as much as i like the country, i couldnt imagine settling in a place where i would be given delicious hams on easter. the wierd thing is that i love hams. it's like my judaism is just a front for a broader anti-social behavior that gets tripped when gentiles offer me hams on the day their boy comes back from his jewly imposed death. or maybe its a deep seeded anxiety for what the anthropologist would call "the other", and "the other's pork products". Unclear.

and let's not kid ourselves in believing my neurosis is solely jewy by nature. how would i afford myself a living? sure i could make $6/hour shoveling shit at the local manure farm, but let's face it, manual labor is not for me. would i have to start a business, whatever that means? i could 'work for myself'. The economists and anthropologists are both shaking their heads. not only do they pity me, they worry too.

so in the end, columbus is no different than sao paulo is no different from San Francisco is no different from the Moon and Antarctica... geography wracks me with open questions, which lead to drinking, which leads to blogging, which leads to dorkism, which i suppose is fitting. dorks buy these tickets for me to tour the world -- now they are getting big dork dividends.

i told you there was nothing to say.

sootblower's lament

man ... i need to stop hanging out with power guys.

SootBlower's Lament

The boiler needs work
The temperature's risin'.
We blow soot past lines ragin' yella,
And our faces reign black
Our shoulders shlumped shale,
Our hearts: NO DATA.

where's the love?

the yiddish swinging union

when my family first arrived to chicago in 1980, we were met and housed by some distant american relatives, but our true friendships were forged with other like-minded immigrants like ourselves. this is not unique to my family, or soviet jews -- people in strange places seek comfort where they can : the mother tongue, strange dishes from their native lands (gelatinized chicken comes to mind), and traditional costume parties, like the one where my father dressed up as a giant box of aspirin. when you embark on such a daunting journey, a brave new cultural web is woven, acting as both a safety net in case things go terribly awry and as a familiar vantage point to remark on the peculiarities of a terra nova. above all, however, immigrant communities provide an impossibly fertile ground for the verbal compadre to streets paved with gold: good clean american gossip.

while i once stayed far away from such talk, dismissing it roundly as idle old-lady banter, i have recently embraced it, and now live for it. every time i visit chicago, i try to get as many chatty women together as possible, preferably at a round table and representing all available age groups. they require very little from me to get started.

'so whats new these days?'
'oh my god, misha lomkin dumped his wife and kids and is going with the polish whore from the office.'
'misha? the one who makes teeth for a living?'
'what kind of job is this? to make teeth for a living? and this putz walked around with his front tooth gone for two months anyway.'

this goes on and on. usually there are men watching baseball somewhere nearby, but i get enough of that on the west coast. on the other hand, stepping aboard the gossip train stamps your ticket for the one way journey to the promised land of sex and money. mainly sex. this amount of genitalia talk and intergenerational bonding is priceless, comparable only to the bittersweet hob-nobbing of a well attended bris. plus, there's coffeecake.

the day before i arrived in chicago on friday, my mother sent me this link:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/450874,CST-NWS-sexlaw01.article

the news rocketed through the community, primarily because it was on CNN and FOX and everybody knows these people, or at least knows someone who knows them. let's just call this game three degrees of pickled herring: mom knows sveta who works with alex who is in the same office of the lawyer who sued the guy. or alternately, my sister is friend with inna who used to date sasha, the general manager of prestige leasing, where that son of a bitch arthur was a big shot. either way, there are so many connections that even my grandmother knew half of the people involved.

you try explaining swinging to an 84 year old holocaust survivor.

'donny, how do you say ? schwigging? schvooging?'

once she mastered the terms, my grandmother, whose fluency in 6 languages never ceases to amaze me, was off running.

'ah donny, at the schvinging party, what kind of dish do they use for the keys? and efsher they catch something? do they have protection against some diseases you can catch? maybe the aids? be a gutinker and answer me in yiddish. mach meer a teva, dannalleh.'

i looked my grandmother in the eye and told her in the most broken yiddish imaginable that im sure the mythical key bowl was something they wouldnt mind scratching and that many 'schvanz socks' where distributed because people were afraid of 'receiving the aids and other choleras.'

we laughed it off, my mother and i losing our lox and my grandmother, still the funniest woman i know, proclaiming them all 'curvah-blyads', her own famous polish/russian amalgam, literally translated as 'whore-whores'.

when the dust settled, and everyone at the table was brought up to speed, we had a weekend's worth of inside jokes at our disposal. the elderly, probably due to their lack of mobility, became easy targets. for example, my brother-in-law's grandmother, was accused of running a swingers club at her retirement community in east rogers park.

'asya, its time to come clean! i know youre walking funny for a reason.'

he is merciless.

similarly, my grandmother gladly pronounced she had a new hobby. 'danalleh, may you can take me to the night club tonight so i can make some friends?'

and between the chuckles, the lobbying of sexual harassments towards our ancient relatives, and the grape soda squirting out of my nose, comes the inevitable judgement, where those in the room hotly debate the proper allocation of shame amongst the fuckers and fuckees. in the end of the day, it was decided that while $4800 wasnt a sizeable sum, it should at least help arthur get away for a while. and who knows, maybe during his vacation in the caribbean he'll get drunk, piss on a local constable, and insult the prime minister of albania. i just hope it doesnt happen while im too far from home.

positive paul gets pinched

the cocktail break is my favorite part of the wedding ceremony. after a service of varying length (some cultures tend to be more merciful than others (see vedic v. courtney, 2007)), party goers are treated to small foods and an open bar. this combination is never wrong, except when you accidentally bite into a fried oyster, when you expected shrimp tempura. those first few seconds of a misbite are so confusing, like forgetting why you entered a room or what you wanted to do once you got there. the cocktail hour lets everyone hob nob a bit, warming you up to the rest of the people engaged in this event. this one's a doctor, this one's a lawyer, this one's a gay anglican priest (remember, we live in san francisco). you meet people from all corners of the world, and its fun to see your newly married friends' karmic footprint exposed, fanned out in front of you, marinating in gimlets, sucking on american spirits, and engorging itself on those delicious little crab cakes.

sometimes the cocktail hour can be a source of amusement. during my sister's wedding, the fire alarm blared while i was maneuvering my 35th shrimp of the hour and everyone had to get outside. old russian jews were shaking their head, near tears because of the inevitable tragedy of a wedding ablaze. eventually the all clear was given and my brother-in-law found the fire truck a fun backdrop to a classic photo -- beers in hand, my sister carried in his arms as if walking through the threshold for the first time, smiling ear to ear with firemen posing all around. somewhere my grandmother was crying, but in the end, the maelstrom she feared never materialized.

as with all other parts of the wedding, there is a distinct potential for drama during this warm up period. so much is on the line that any miscue is magnified and before you know it, things get out of hand. we've all heard of people getting left at the altar (though none of us have seen this ourselves). what about people getting booted from weddings for discounting the previous night's dis-invitation?

positive paul had been broken up with by mary so many times that he just assumed that this last break up and dis-invitation the night before was more a suggestion than an order (he is, after all, the most positive person we know). paul, painfully positive as always, arrived at the wedding, chatty but careful. he was a strange looking man, no doubt -- thinned seattle grunge rock hair came down to the shoulder, and when he had it pulled back, there was a strange colonial air to him, especially when he wore a blazer and unbuttoned shirt as he did during the previous night's nautical adventure. maybe he fought for washington in the past life -- it's unclear. what was clear was the unfortunate resemblance of his head with that of a full sized midget -- protruding forehead, bad teeth and strong jaw. i dont want to offend my midget readers, but you get the idea. he wore big aviator sunglasses and while we were mingling described his undying devotion to wild rivers and lamented their repeating damming, a non-consentual hydroelectric buttplug which raged hotly in his eyes. as he was describing his upcoming job pursuits fighting those dams, mary approached. high heeled and serious, mary carried with her a sense of urgency that i had not seen before, though i dont know mary well. she approached deliberately, six foot three in heels, her cheeks sunk vermilion, clashing wildly with the magenta bridesmade dress. 'can i talk to you for a second' she said to paul, less of a question than a demand. paul, looking helpless, his comparative stature finally matching his facial realities, slumped at the shoulders and headed off. hannah and i looked at each other and shrugged, but we both sensed that paul, already on thin ice after many break ups and a inappropriately positive post-break up attitude, was being admonished. trust me, there is nothing worse than being admonished by a good looking woman taller than you, especially if you dont have a ride back from the presidio. time past, drinks were drunk and we continued carrying on. this one's a graphic designer, this one has a bad tattoo, this one fought in the battle of the bulge. by the end of the cocktail hour, you become astutely confused by your friends and their friends. five gin and tonics can be disorienting, but this mingling shit doenst help. as we head into the wedding reception room, mary approaches us... seeming relieved and cheery she proudly tells us that paul had been sent off! that's right, positive paul, who's good attitude had served only to annoy us up to this point -- call me a downer if you want, but there was no upside to the black plague, unless you enjoy boils and pus spilling out of your asshole... i dont -- had been tossed, red-carded and 86'd from the scene. in one swift imposition of wedding day justice, mary reclaimed her brother's wedding for herself and the strange one was sent packing.

i dont know if positive paul made another come back the next day, but it seems unlikely. sometimes the numbers are just stacked against you, and even the most cheerfully winning attitude isnt enough to bring you back into the circle of love. but still i imagine him trying, delusionaly optimistic, knocking on mary's door with flowers the next day, hoping for another shot, dismissing or selectively forgetting his recent ignominy. at some level, you gotta love the guy for trying. who knew the black plague could be so much fun.

Weekend Adventures part I: Nevada

i've always had a soft spot for reno and have long maintained that nevada is the greatest state in the union. first of all, the silver state has the highest average elevation of any other state in the country. the thin air undoubtedly affected policy there -- prostitution and gambling are legal and i'm sure marrying your hot sister is just behind. basically a bunch of migrant silver miners, high on poorly oxygenated air, found several thousand square miles of bone dry dirt and cultivated a culture of sin and solitude. outstanding! also: reno remains the only city in america where i lit myself on fire, richard pryor style, at a blackjack table no less, and survived to tell the story. i think that scene might deserve its own entry sometime.

work brought me to here and when my co-worker and I landed, we were met outside by a jeff fisher lookalike, which tickled me. while primarily known as the head coach of the tennessee titans, jeff was also a backup safety on the '85 chicago bears. just like jeff, our friend was mustached , with dark hair slicked back, some gray hair, paulie walnuts style, wearing sunglasses and furiously chewing gum. Da Bearsssss! was all i wanted to say for a straight hour, but i bit my tongue and instead sat back in the minivan and soaked in the sun drenched eastern sierra landscape. our van took us down US 395, another nevada landmark. diving deep into wide valleys, we could see miles of arid space edged by stunning peaks, their edges sharpened by the dry air. irrigation systems were working extra time to squeeze a bit of alfalfa out of the desert, alfalfa soon to fill the tummies of cows who will be t-bones and baseball gloves when they grow up. this desert, marshaled by gambling, whoremongering , sister-ogling nevadans, is the unlikely starting point for your quarter pounder with cheese.

in minden, nevada, we had meetings in a room with wall to wall windows, a 180 degree view of the high desert. there, i sat in quiet awe of the mountains spread out before me like a granite fan, while technologies were discussed around me in impossibly uninteresting detail. when it was my turn to speak, my computer failed to project on the screen, and i again I was stung by the familiar pangs of a misplaced decade. after all this time, and all this loathing, the computers finally hate me more than i hate them.

we wrapped up our business in minden and headed north where i caught a quick flight to LAX. there i would be met by my little perisan pal, and the weekend would finally get started...

shore leave

gosh its so strange to write from my own room -- like the excitement and isolation of travel cast a potent crucible where the words burn white. being home feels slow and constricted a bit, and I am finding myself dangerously tantalized by a life on the road. work has whetted my wanderlust , and I am becoming obsessed with touching geography intimately, a look and feel not quite satisfied by google earth (though it is fun to hover over half dome and try to find the closest cheese steak shop). My recent reconnection with two of my favorite musical phenomena is only more indicative of my itchy feet: gypsies and tom waits pour through my head all day. i have watched this youtube clip of shore leave at least 25 times, and its affecting my world view. tom waits knows how to bring you to a place and drown you in the provincial kitsch:


Well I was pacing myself
trying to make it all last
squeezing all the life
out of a lousy two day pass
and I had a cold one at the Dragon
with some Filipino floor show
and talked baseball with a lieutenant
over a Singapore sling
and I wondered how the same moon outside
over this Chinatown fair
could look down on Illinois
and find you there

more than the song, i am always blow away by seeing tom waits exploding on stage. he is channeling howlin wolf up there i swear to god.

I get to be old in Rio too!

My time is winding down in Rio and i had a rather lovely day, despite the lack of action, or sunshine. After hitting the beach for an hour or so, tasting the atlantic and trapping some sand in those hard to reach places between my toes, I decided to go on one of these organized tours. I know, it's not sexy, but I felt bored and itching to see some sites. Plus you just dont know what's safe and what isnt. This is the kind of city where you make a wrong turn and BAM!, you wake up in a bathtub full of ice, about 5 kilos lighter.

anyway, i had the hotel staff reserve the tour. I havent been on a vacation so long, I've forgotten the joys of a well connected concierge. "No problem, Mr. Don, you come down at 2:20, the bus will pick you up." Around that time, mas o menos, the driver came in and yelled '510' . This is me -- even down here I am instantly recognized as an East Bay all-star. I gave him a thumbs up (this is what brazlieros do), followed the man outside, and was overjoyed to discover that the "bus" was actually an old beat up Peugot Boxer. Kind like this guy with windows:


I hopped into the van, which had seats for at least 40 people, despite being only slightly larger than a ford taurus. instantly, i was greeted with a festive 'hola!' from an older mexican couple, while a recently employeed indian graduate student cautiously shook my hand. up front was fabio, (this appears to be a common name down here... they dont seem to get it when I say "No fucking way" everytime a fabio introduces himself to me), some random cute girl who's only role, apparently, was to fondle fabio, and an unnamed driver, who was unheard and unseen the entire trip.

off we went! braving the streets of rio in a giant white box. we hit the usual sites, stopping first at the national cathedral, which smacked of christy spaceship cum yerte on acid. the pope came here like 10 years ago and everyone creamed themselves. good times!



we leave the van to take some pictures. fabio and his girl make out a little, which is great for him, but our ultimate goal was to hit the suger loaf, or Pão de Açúcar (dont't worry, i don't know what any of these diacritic marks sound like either). on our way out there, we meandered through el centro, the downtown area of Rio. Commercially abandoned by the weekend, and robbed of any potential charm by a low hanging sky, the city appeared to us in its barest, post-apocolyptic form. Barefoot children, running after each other in the streets, merchants selling chewing gum and trinkets on the sidewalk, and scores of destitute young people, standing around, milling about, crashed out, hung over, and otherwise killing time, the only commodity god had allotted them. it wasnt shocking, but sad, like driving throuh the west side of chicago on a wednesday afternoon. i was happy to see this up close, even happier to be protected by 2 tons of french engineering. on the other hand, when was the last time the french engineered anything worthwhile? the bechemal sauce doesnt count. moving on...

slowly, we made our way to the bottom of the sugar loaf, all the while under the stern eye of the magnicient jesus on the hill. big jesus is watching you all the time, homes. apparently no one told the whores. we arrive to the bottom of the hill and where i am stoked for the cable car ride! we climb and climb to the top of the mountain -- overly medicated english women are grabbing me in fright, and i think fabio is getting a covert handjob in the back. when we get to the top i ask him how many times he's been on this rock. 'thousands. it's not so emotional for me any more.' must be tough -- desensitized to the loaf.

the views from the top were sweet as you can imagine:



my tour friends drop me off at my hotel, wishing me the best, and i give them a thumbs up and i remind myself that i need to stop doing this in the States, where i would be perceived like a total jerkoff, or worse, the President.

when i arrive to the hotel, Andreas, my concierge suggests a seafood place where the gentleman can enjoy all he can eat. i was famished and quite partial towards creatures of the sea, so i had him reserve me a table. when i arrived at the place, the joint was empty, which meant i had 7 people serving me at once. feeling like a mob boss, i kicked back, ordered someone to make me a gin and tonic and began at the "starters"buffet. there, i selected only the finest:

* shrimp salad in pasta
* risotto shrimp
* squid with some wierd shit in it
* cold potatoes
* green salad
* several different olives
* pasta salad with crab


i passed on the oysters for fear of the yellow-eyed death.

then the real magic began, one at a time , these guys took turns bringing me more and more dishes. feeling like audrey griswald in european vacation, i consistently made the same "holy shit" face, for fear of public explosion. during this time, i enjoyed

* popcorn shrimp
* wierd random shrimp in at least three varieties
* grilled lobster
* sauteed lobster
* paella
* fresh cod
* octopus
* fried calamari
* mussels baked in their shell, in cheese
* shrimp baked in some sort of shell, with cheese
* various fried vegetables
* some wierd but delicious cheesy / mayonaisey puff
* more paella

Then, this guy has the gall to ask me " would you like some steak?" umm, i dont think so, pal. chatting with the staff all the while, i found eating alone less lonely than usual. I topped all of this off with some fresh mango and a limey tart, some brazilian facsimile for key lime pie. I rolled out of that joint (literally), had the doorman grab me a cab, and headed back home.

when i arrived back at the hotel , i exchanged high fives with Andreas the concierge (he is my boy) and he motioned me to turn around. down the stairs came a stunner -- the kind they put in the brochures. it was unclear what was fake and what was real, but in fantasy land that doesnt matter i guess. Andreas winks at me and tells me that for $100 an hour she'll come back up with me. Let me tell you something about the staff at the Luxor Regente. Not only will they book you tours, buy you cigarettes and reserve you seats at empty restaurants, they will pimp out girls and then make you feel like less of a man for not buying pussy. It is a wierd ethos here at the Copa. She gets in her cab, makes eye contact with me, lowers her window, and via a complex network of portuegese note passing, i receive her digits.

I guess I just dont get the point of any of it. I mean, why risk a moral impasse, not to mention long term neurosis about my dick falling off, just to bust a nut? Is this the wrong attitude? Andreas seems to think so. I should just give him the money and my room and let him have some fun. Maybe it's a mitzvah? Besides, my room is a mess (i dont really trust the help) and for some reason i think its rude to invite a whore up to a messy room. my mother would be so proud.

Turning down sex for hire, i retired to my room, where i cozied up in bed and watched the only american movie showing, Mel Gibson's powerful "What women want". ding ding ding! Don Baron, this IS the gayest moment of your life.

Let's go OAK-LAND

Back from the beach, where the sun seems to evacuate the premises every time I lie down. Still, it is GREAT to read this news:

Giants get nailed 15-3.

Barry Zito, looking like a dipshit in orange and black (it's hard not to), getting rocked in his return back to the Coliseum.

Maybe my room number had something to do with it?

Rio

it's been a long day, friends. I arose this morning, packed up all my belongings -- two backpacks as you know. the osi coworkers figured it would be a good day to walk to the office, and when we arrived, i realized that I still had no accomodations in rio, and my main hookup -- the boss of brazil -- vitoria, was nowhere to be found, despite several calls to her mother. luckily, fabiano, half shark alligator half borat, was on top of it:



seriously, F-bomba saved my life. he figured out which flight i should use to get to rio, found me a hotel, and still had enough decency not to be alarmed by my neurosis. "Don, you are a freaking. it is no good for you to the freak."

as he was planning my trip, Vitoria, came to the office. vitoria is clearly in charge down here. she wields a tough brand of love which evokes memories of both a forgotten brazilian aunt and mussolini. within seconds, she was in action . "Don, you should not walk on the copacabana beach very late. there will be whores, and, como você diz?..... the homosexuals. they will offer you sex, and for $300. maybe you say $50 and then they kill you right there." i tried to assure her that bargaining with brazilian whores wasn't on my trip itinerary. she went on, "and maybe you call the police but you dont want to go to the brazilain jail. they are worse than the bandits. they will beat you TO HELL, and fuck you too." ok, i got it. "plus, all the whores are men. do you know how to tell the men from the women?" i suggested the standard crododile dundee trick "i just check their cock". "No , you look at their hands." anyway, Vitoria, god bless her, set me up with a car to the airport from god forsaken sao paulo. Look at this mess:



i took her warnings in stride. i am already expecting to be hogtied, de-kidneyed and sodomized in this town anyway. still, i needed some infrastructure. she set me up with a car to pick me up from the airport in rio and drive me to my hotel. she told me that for R$300 a man would drive me around for the whole weekend, but i wasnt too interested in solo time with caesar. my nerves, damaged by the south american temperment, need beach, drink and peace. if anything, i was hoping for a group tour with some limber sextagenarians to tie me over.

i board a plane to rio. when i arrive, caesar couldnt make it. instead noberto is there with a sign that reads very simply, "Mr. Don." my only regret. my ONLY regret, was that i felt awkard snapping a shot of him right out of the gate. i had the camera out and i was chuckling, but i didnt want to offend this gentleman while we were still in our honeymoon phase. norberto takes me to the hotel, and suggest we immediately go to the giant jesus on the hill. ok, i say, lets see this magnifiscent jesus on the hill. we tool through the flatlands of rio, driving around a gorgeous lake, surrounded by colonial era flats, pass through a tunnel and suddenly, we are asescending up cobblestone roads, lush ferns surrounding us. when we get to the top, Noberto has to drop me off, and i make the final climb alone, to the big jesus on the hill. there he is! JC himself, 200 feet tall, arms spread outward. there is a serious look on his face which i read as "someday, none of this will be yours , jewboy. " still, i snap some shots of him. some are in the clark griswald manner:

while others are an ode to the kids in the hall:




but on the way down, we stopped and took in Rio from above. it is a dusky, defeated, brazilian sun, desperately shooting out orange to fight off the night. failing in its attempts, but so beautiful in its demise, burning orange in ethanol skies:


we see the city from above:


stunning.

norberto drives me home, and after some difficulties with the cash machine, i pay his fare. it's like vincent vega said, its the little things that catch your eye. like the security gaurd in front of the cash machine with the bullet proof vest. norberto deposits me at my hotel. in my room, i find interesting art which induces me to chain smoke:




despite my newfound appreciation for brazilian warning labels:




they say brazil is a country of contradictions. they are right.

it is getting dark (winter time here), but I am determined to find a place to watch your world champion chicago bulls face the pistons of detroit. after several calls, the concierge makes it happen! i descend to the copacabana streets, looking for my sports bar. it is dark, and yes, there is whoring about, but my head is down and i try to attach myself to three indian graduate students. in my mind, they are here for some sort of symposium on solid state electronics, but are making the best of it. i follow them until i approach o rue miguel limons, and make a left. another quick left at Avenue N.S Copacobana, and smack! i'm at the sports bar. i head to the back of the joint, settle into my seat and within 10 minutes .0001% of the entire south side of chicago arrives. old black folks are drinkin beers and cheerin on kirk hinrich and i am in heaven. each one of them reminds me more and more of my old pal jonathan eldridge. those of you who know him will understand.

i ask frank why he's out here. "oh you know, chicago is the shit , but i got to GO!." i hear you there, big francis. a couple jack daniels and several beers later, the bulls are down big and the season is on the line.

the bulls give it away, but i got to see it go down in the hottest, sweatiest, sexiest, humidest, gorgeousest, wettest, southest motherfucker in the world. beat that.

Sao Paulo adventures? No thanks.

It's been subdued in Sao Paulo, and probably for the better. I have been working since 7am and am just now finishing up. Normally I would be stir crazy, but I am almost relieved to be busy because a) I rather enjoy the hotel life and b) it's basically the Wild West out there. every once in a while you hear screaming, or a car screeching it's tires then ramming something, and ramming again and again... scary shit, and this is the good part of town!

I ventured out briefly today for a 'hot dog'. I was curious to hit MickeyDs and in my head I was already have a 'LeBigMac v. Royale w/ Cheese moment' when I walked past Black Dog, where the local kids hang out to smoke cigarettes, babble, and look illegally good. After some hand waving I ordered a soy dog, with curry and mayonnaise. Hey, you can't win 'em all!

Speaking of winners check out this guy:




















That's right ! A warning label the size of a cigarette pack! Finally! I think the Canadians do this too, but not the whole pack. Maybe 70%. This pack of cigarettes cost $1.50. This guy should be a lot gnarlier if they are planning to deter me at those prices!

Anyway, today I got nostalgic for Germany. You heard me. Walk the streets, throw benches into rivers, laugh it off, eat kabobs, piss on the bar floors for reparations. Good times! Today I got nostalgic for Germany. Sao Paulo -- not so much. Although I have to say, more than one person here has reminded me of Borat. Naaaaaaaaaeeeiiiiiice!

earlier today i delivered a talk entitled "Visualização na “Empresa de Tempo Real"" . your guess is as good as mine. apparently it was a great hit -- brazilians love me! when they say hello, they touch and kiss me. they serve me only their finest meats, bathe me in coca-cola light, and offer me hotel-room porno.

but, i am shocked by my inability to understand them in their native tongue. every time i travel to a non-english speaking country, i encounter the same phenomenon. symptoms of my condition include:

1) overarching jealousy of little children, who, despite their mental inferiority to me (not to speak to their obvious physical disadvantages), have some sort of magical ability to weave phonemes into a useful portuguese sentence. hate em.

2) loud english. a technique usually reserved for communicating with the deaf and my parents, I find it sometimes also works with foreigners. at the very least, extreme decibels can get these people out of your face.

3) hand waving and ass shaking. no one can deny the efficacy of hand gestures as a focal point of non-verbal communications. for some reason, when i shake my ass, brazilians nod and smile. then they put dollar bills in my dental floss g-string. ole!

4) an unhealthy dependency on CNN International. ok i get it, the chinese must be handled carefully in business matters and africa is fucked. still, i can't turn it off. even now, sitting in my room working away, i can here the familiar, soft cadence of my adopted homeland.

despite our language issues, they still welcome me with open arms. they suggest drivers and hotels for my stay in rio. 'i will call caesar for you. he is a good man , with the wife and kids. he will take you to the big christ on the hill, and to the sugerloaf. you should not be scar-ed with him.'

what can i say. what can't i say! they love me in brazil.

The ozone layer is fucked. Trust me.

You can go to all the green rallies you like.
You can write your congressperson in an inflammatory tone.
You may be outraged about the environment, and you may think you can do something to help.

You can't.

Try driving 90 minutes through bumper to bumper traffic in Sao Paulo and see how your lungs feel, and imagine what it would take to change things. Now imagine Beijing, Rio, Moscow, and Mexico City, a symphony of atmospheric sodomy.

You may want to consider the neutron bomb for starters.

I staggered into my hotel room, nauseous and dizzy from the fumes of 50,000 diesel trucks, cabs, and fiats. I showered the grime off of myself and took a nap. I dreamt that I was in Pakistan, underneath a pile of sand, struggling breath by breath.

Brazil beginnings

i packed earlier today. I filled two backpacks, thus making both of them difficult to deal with at once. this packing technique, as well as an unshaven face, torn up cargo pants, and a bad attitude were my attempts to look non-rob-worthy . collecting my bags, i walked down liberty st to valencia, taking my first steps of a long journey. i dont think it matters how many times i get on airplanes to strange countries , those first steps seem daunting, that so many things can go wrong between departure to return. i carried my packs downhill to find a taxi to take me to the airport, and, as i somehow expected, my cab driver was from Sao Paulo. he warned me , as so many had before, on the dangers of this trip, not to wear watches or jewelry (covered! no bling, not for me). victor seemed to be doing ok for himself. the back of his head seemed healthy and he and i shared a penchant for bushy sideburns and the three day stuble (well, six in my case). driving this cab, riding out his soon-expiring visa, Victor was taking this time to learn "the english", and using it well, despite an occasionally superfluous definite article and other linguistic curiosities. twice he suggested that i make sure my door is lock-ed and my window is clos-ed. both times, they were.

i made it through miami easily. recent travels have given me a bit more confidence managing airports and itineraries, and i constantly think of the sales force at our company -- some of whom need explicit instructions on how to wipe their tight asses -- and how these folks manage to navigate the worlds transportation infrastructure just fine. anyway, Miami was a success, and despite my early worries about the relatively short layover period, i hit my plane early enough to steal off for a cigarette in a poorly ventilated room where the questionable air quality, coupled with the south florida humidity, made for an interesting 3 and half minutes for my lungs. when i arrived at D46 , the reclining brazlieros suggested that there was plenty of time to spare. they reminded me in several ways of israelis -- they maniacally waved their hands when they spoke and they over applied varies creams and lotions. another unfortunate commonality: women often chose not to respect the inevitabilities of gravity; denial can have such unfortunate visual repercussions! but there was also something new world about them. certainly , most of these people were white, but their complexions varied all across the board and the men (who were far less ostentatious) looked positively american. i read earlier in my brazil book about the terrible favelas, and the destitution amongst them and i considered whether the intensity of modern social ills is directly proportional to the length of forced labor in a country. brazil did not outlaw slavery until 1888 and they were by far the greatest importers of human labor. now, descendants of this massive slave class live in areas that make me miss the tenderloin. no public power and rampant violence which has caused the brazilian authorities to shrug off any discussions of human rights -- assassination attempts from the police are common and sanctioned practice. reading about these conditions, and their inevitable spill over into more affluent neighborhoods, I wonder distantly, if there is a man or a group of men in brazil now -- perhaps sitting around the bar drinking caiprinha and laughing, maybe they are tending to their sick mothers or children, or sleeping under a piece of corrugated cardboard at this late hour -- with whom i share a fateuful meeting place. i often think of the unlikely rendezvous, like the mountain and JFK -- seemingly such unrelated entities, one providing the lead which happened to be cast into the shape of a projectile, the other encased within an all too penetrable target of flesh and hubris.

in this ultra modern aluminum boat, the tenderloin is disappearing fast behind me, but through pitch black night, i train my eyes to a northwesterly bearing, and i swear she is out there, surrounded by a warm , settling glow, smelling like sunshine, letting me know that she will be waiting when i return .

Leave your horse at home...

Gypsies gone wild in Sebastapol...

http://www.voiceofroma.com/culture/herdeljezi.shtml

I have a man crush on Baron Davis

What a way to start! Out of the gates with a homoerotic confession. But when the sports world is involved, guys get a free pass. When the object of the man-affection is Baron Davis, right now, right here in the Bay Area, no one thinks twice.

Baron Davis plays basketball as part Magic Johnson, part Capaoira master, part Hip Hop superstar. He is a ballet octopus, his appendages seemingly float him through the court space. These tentacles deposit him into unexpected places on the court allowing him to share the ball or score himself. He swaggers around like Kanye West after a three way with Hillary Clinton and Kelly Clarkson.

Test...

My first offering ....

valerie plame, you make me want to divulge all over you

has there ever been a finer representative of our central intelligence agency? the answer is no. mainly cause these people are hard to identify. sometimes they wear mustaches and look like dudes. either way, as far as we know, valerie plame is the finest CIA agent ever. i will now address my favorite VP directly:

valerie, in my evening meditations, i consider four hour interrogations where you insist i tell you everything i know about clandestine central african matters. though i know little, your fineness induces creativity i have not experienced heretofore. god bless your fine ass heart.

saddam, dead.

i realize that i'm a week late and a few dollars short, but i wanted to write something about this execution that took place. i am by no means a saddam apologist, nor do i condone genocide, internecine belligerence, foreign interventionism, or general maniacal tendencies. I just think that execution is simply wrong and does nothing except create a broader violent culture which fuels the spectre of death. if you had asked me, personally, to step into a time machine and summarily execute saddam hussein 25 years ago, i would do it, not out of vengeance but out of a true moral obligation to stop someone from creating horror everywhere he steps. but last week's pitiful excuse for 'justice' is just a thinly veiled power trip, which is entirely non-constructive and morally wrong. if you are interested in reading more, i would highly recommend this article by Christopher Hitchens:

http://www.slate.com/id/2156776/fr/flyout

peace and love,
donnyb