Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy

Hey, Jason checking in. OK, so it’s been a pretty long time since I wrote anything on here (I’ve been home for almost three months…) and I guess this will be the end cap post. At this point I’ve forgotten about half the stuff we did, but after having looked over pictures and materials I saved I think I remember enough to write about it. So, I suppose the best way to start would be with the end of the trip…

When I last wrote, we had just left New Orleans in the pre-Gustav fright-fest. Luckily, that turned out to be mostly media hype and I can happily say that everything and everyone I saw are still there and that things are as ok as things can get in a place like New Orleans. When Elliot and I hit the road that day, we ran into a little evacuation traffic but after that things went smoothly all the way to St. Louis. We ended up getting in fairly late, and searching for a place to stay that night turned into a hectic chore. After consulting the Lonely Planet guide we stopped at a place they recommended and tried to get a room. This was at about 3am. We didn’t end up staying there. Maybe it was because I was tired and didn’t feel like standing around to book a room. Maybe it was the intimidating guy in front of me in line who was sniffling and touching his nose a little too much. Or maybe I didn’t feel like waiting in the reception office to take my turn speaking through the perforated holes in the 4 inch thick bullet proof glass. Either way, something told me that we should move on. We ended up leaving and after finding absolutely no other helpful information in the book, we drove around for about an hour looking for anything open before settling on a really nice (and expensive) hotel. This was by far the nicest (and most expensive) place we had stayed in on the entire trip. And, throwing all logic out the window, we ended up being there for about 5 hours total. I watched a crappy movie on the free HBO. We slept and left. That was that. Waste.

That day we took an uneventful tour of the Annheiser Busch Brewery which basically convinced me to never buy any of their beers ever again. It’s not necessarily the beer itself (though, yeah, that does factor in) but the incredibly irritating infomercial video they made us watch turned my stomach more than warm Natty Ice. It was one of those things in which jackasses with too huge smiles tell you the exciting reasons why their product is superior to all others. People who get excited about things that shouldn’t excite anyone (and I quote, as best I can remember, “Here at the brewery we produce nearly ten thousand cans of Bud light a minute! Wowee! It’s this exciting pace that lets us provide America with 50% of its beer consumption. Because we’re working hard so you can take it easy with a nice, cold Bud!” (insert idiotic laughter here)). You get the idea, trying to be up beat about something that’s best left to be said blandly by charts in a board meeting. Anyway, after getting our two free (gross) beers we left and drove around for a while and saw the St. Louis arch before getting to Washington University for the Ratatat concert. There was a small fiasco with the tickets but everything worked out well enough and we got in. The opening bands were terrible in ways I don’t care to describe, though Ratatat was really great and the concert had to be stopped twice for fear of too much raucousness in the crowd. It was really loud inside and Elliot lost his hearing for a day, which I avoided by chewing up my brewery tour ticket and jamming the pieces into my ears to act as make-shift earplugs. We left St. Louis and hit a Carl’s Jr. on the way out…

The trip ended as almost all things do, uneventfully and with little fanfare. After St. Louis was Nashville where we visited my brother and then Atlanta where we saw some friends of mine. We, or rather I because Elliot had left by this point, ran into the Octopus Project again who were great as always. Atlanta was sort of a separate era on the trip. I feel like the trip ended the second I got to Atlanta since it was my home for four years. As soon as I was ITP (non-Atlantans, may want to google that) I was back in my comfort zone, and I did comfortable things. I hung out and enjoyed myself and drank too much the way I normally do. Days rolled on. Time passed. I drove back to New York a few weeks later. Uneventful. I feel like I wanted this story to have an engaging and interesting ending. The kind of ending that watching too many movies has made me expect in real life. All the loose ends tied up tight, maybe you don’t get exactly what you want but you end up better for having had the experience, with important life lessons now at hand. I wished that would happen for this whole cross country adventure. But things never work out like that, do they? Most events in life are just open ended segues into other events. Things happen. They end. New things replace them. Other things happen and replace those new things. On and on…

A while back I wrote that seeing the sunrise in my rearview mirror really pleased me but I didn’t know why. I think I put my finger on it now. When you’re driving long distances at night, there’s nothing around you. Especially in the emptier parts of this country, its just highway and headlights all through the night. Driving especially sucks because the person you’re with will be asleep most of the time, so essentially you’re alone. Then the dawn comes. It shows you that all along you were surrounded by beautiful things, by people, by homes. It’s just that they were invisible black on black shadows in the night until now. Dawn is your reward for making it through the night. Having been awake since the day before, it puts a neat close on one day’s adventure. But it still promises that new adventures are ahead, in a new day. It’s a simple but beautiful cap on one set of adventures. That’s why I liked it so much.

It’s now three months since I’ve been home. To say that my life has changed significantly since the trip would be a lie. I’ve gone back to pre-trip situations and pre-trip attitudes. I’m jobless and purposeless. I feel scared and I don’t know why. My nerves are ruining me. I panic when there’s nothing to panic over. To say the least, I miss my life on the road. I miss the excitement and I miss the freedom. I miss the complex simplicity of new things everyday and I miss the distraction that it provided. I miss the sense of purpose and knowing that even if I never accomplish my goal I’ll be happy. All that bullshit about the trip being in the journey and not the destination can hold a little truth sometimes. Held at the right angle, even a bucket with a bottom full of holes can hold a little water.

But I cant entirely say that I came away from the trip with nothing. It feels good to wander, to have no expectations. It seems that all my disappointments with the trip were mostly in things that I thought would happen and didn’t. It didn’t change my life. Things didn’t end nicely. But I had a great time (I think about all the stuff I did… I interviewed some of my favorite bands, I got free booze on other people’s dime, I saw devils tower, I was 5 feet away from bison, I thought I was going to be killed by bears, I romped through san francisco, I saw frida kahlo paintings live and in person, I had great drives, saw beautiful scenery, saw the best and absolute worst of monument valley, I saw the freetail bats leaving a cave in new mexico and a bridge in austin, I saw deeley plaza, gambled fought and drank in new orleans, saw ratatat in a tiny basement and spwnt time with people I care a great deal about). That’s what I took away from it and that’s all one can really ask for, in the end. I learned the joy of wandering with a purpose (that’s life, aint it? corny). So take things as they come, lose your expectations, know that things won’t wrap up nicely. I guess what I mean, to sum it all up, is

sooo i just got home yesterday and this is likely to be my last post on this blog. now for better or worse, i am categorically against ever having to explain myself in any manner to anyone….  but i’d just like to clarify for the record that this trip was fucking AWESOME. ive been hearing lots of the little sewing circles badgering on about how miserable we were on our trip and i must say i was kind of surprised by that……until i reread our entire blog. i think we sound so miserable because jason and myself both share a very healthy(or unhealthy) appetite for dark and sarcastic humor. what can i say, what’s not hilarious and horrifying about a man getting mauled by a zombie? or in our case, a bear? shrug, so i like laughing at really bleak and inappropriate things, bite me.  anyways so i flew into new york yesterday morning and if there’s one thing that kind of overwhelmed me about that, it was the strange affinity/connection i felt with the city. i mean i grew up in ny but i never felt that strong sense of identity that comes with it for crazy rappers. i swear i almost crossed my arms and yelled BX!!!!!….i’m not from the bronx but there’s no cool sign/yell for all of nyc to my knowledge. so yea, this trip has definitely definitely made me appreciate nyc in its entirety and it definitely feels like home more than ever. anyways i know we slacked a lot in our blogging, and some of the most ridiculous shit happened int he past week of our trip so that kind of sucks for any readers. i would add on to jason’s blog about that infamous night in new orleans but all i remember is punching a kid in the face and then sitting in brett’s living room… as for the rest of this trip something i’d like to declare is that austin, texas absolutely stole my heart away. nyc will always be my home, but i’d love to make my life and home home in the future in austin, texas. just the whole vibe, people, layout, places, girls, music scene, everything about that place is just top shelf and fits with me. it has its really crazy fratty areas, but aside from that it just seems like such an ideal place to live to me. there was this one place that we went that was just a gigantic natural spring…it was HUUUUGE and fucking beautiful and it operates as a swimming pool. can you imagine? i mean i grew up  with the local swimming pool being this dingy little shithole in dix hills, long island where parents would come and dump their kids off who’d pee in the pool and stuff like that. austin puts that to shame. i wish we had a picture of that place.   what a true adventure this trip was. i also found it really strange and cool how jason and myself both eventually found that the most comforting place to be was on the road. it was the only thing that was left familiar to us on our trip. i definitely recommend you try it.  anyways i don’t know what else i should say, there’s just so much to say that it kind of overwhelms me into silence. i’ve definitely learned a massive amount of things about my life on this trip, but i’ll spare you all of that. just wanted to write here to say good luck to jason for the rest of the trip and props for being a stellar partner in crime. i’ll definitely hold the memories of this trip real close.   —anyways i’m done w this! FINALLY! i hate this blogging business!AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I DON”T HAVE FACEBOOK, MY “FRIEND” is IMPOSTERING ME. STOP IMING ME.

-elliot

(my initial draft of this post was about 4 pages long, so i had to shave it down for the sake of time and space. This is one of those stories that’s best told, not written. But Ive done my best to give as much as possible here.)

As we last left off, Elliot and I were about to have our last day in New Orleans to “do all the debaucherous shit we can handle” if I might quote myself. Well, I think we got more than we bargained for.

The day was quiet and nothing really went on. Mostly sitting around and listening to everyone figure out their evacuation plans. When the night rolled around, we went upstairs to the apartment above Bret’s to have a few drinks. After that we ended up at the house of a friend of his, for what was described to me as a “hurricane party”. Is it tasteless to theme your party based on an impending natural disaster? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. We ended up at one of the local college bars and things just seemed off right from the get go. We had been in the place for all of about 20 minutes when I noticed some guy was in Elliot’s face. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but seeing his angry look and then a gesture towards a spill mark on his shirt I put two and two together and figured they had bumped into one another which made the guy spill his drink and now he was angry about it. I was drinking a bottle of beer at the time and, as I moved between the two of them, I inconspicuously switched grips on the bottle from a thumb on top “im drinking from this bottle” grip to a thumb down “im going to smash this bottle over someone’s head” grip. I got Bret’s attention and he stepped in to talk to the guy. He seemed to talk some sense into the him, or at least the guy realized that it was about 4 on 1 and that his odds weren’t looking too good. So he walked away and I talked with Elliot about how stupid it was that this guy was so angry over nothing and that fighting over something so stupid would have been ridiculous. Elliot suddenly turns to me with a stupid grin on his face and says “I bumped into the guy on purpose”, then proceeds to elbow me, mimicking the way he nudged the guy. Great… I almost bashed a guy on the head with a glass bottle for something that wasn’t even his fault. (EDIT: it totally was his fault. he bumped into me pretty hard and didn’t apologize, so i wanted him to get the fuck off of me…..plus i drank a lot of whiskey >=] -elliot) The night was getting off to a bad start and things just felt tense and strange. Maybe it was hurricane anxiety mixed with drunkenness. Bret explained to us that it was a pretty bad idea to get into a fight around this area, mainly because we didn’t go to school here and you never know if the guy you’re hitting is in a fraternity with a dozen or more of his frat brothers standing right behind him, ready to stomp your face in should the shit go down. The way he explained it was dead on, and we all agreed that frats were basically school sanctioned gangs. We left it at that.

About 25 minutes after advising us not to fight anyone that night, Bret ended up punching some guy in the face. The guy had been dancing with some girl and not paying attention to where he was going, causing him to repeatedly grind his ass into Bret’s crotch. After asking him to “please stop grinding into my crotch”, the guy got into Bret’s face, trying to act tough, which is what started the fight. After having landed two punches on the side of this guy’s head the bouncers noticed the fight and came rushing over. The other guy grabbed the bouncer and leaned in to his ear to tell him his sob story about how he got hit in the face and didn’t do anything wrong, So Elliot, Bret and I were immediately thrown out of the bar while he remained inside. We cut our losses and headed to a second bar.

The next bar seemed decidedly calmer than the first; the entry was a bit stricter here, so I assumed that the relaxed attitude was due to the absence of freshman. However, after having been in the bar for less than an hour, a friend of Bret’s was tossed out for reasons unbeknownst to all of us. Anyway, he ended up outside and we decided to leave the bar soon after.

Then the shit really hit the fan.

I walked out of the bar and saw Bret’s friend fighting some guy in the street, immediately followed by both Elliot and Bret running across the street and jumping in the fray. I ran across to help them out and saw Bret laying on the sidewalk in a headlock from some guy in an orange shirt. After getting on his feet again he chased the kid around the street and the kid tried to get into a car and leave. But Elliot pulled him out of the passenger side, at which point the driver peeled out and left his friend in the orange shirt stranded in the middle of a fight. What a thoughful friend. Having seen this, Bret began to chase the guy down again and Elliot ran after them as they made a right turn onto the intersecting street. Out of nowhere, a guy in a black shirt runs up next to elliot and shoves him, sending him flying into a telephone pole. Elliot hit the pole head first and bounced off, ending up face up in the street. At this point, Im still standing on the street where I initially ran across, but seeing Elliot knocked out and Bret now with two kids on his hands around the corner i decided it was time to jump in. To say the least, I was super fucking pissed. I started sprinting at full speed and rounded the street corner to see the two guys (the one in orange and the one in black) holding Bret down and fighting him 2 on 1; the guy in the black was holding his arms as the guy in orange kicked him in the face (little baby kicks, like the kind you might use when trying to shove a piece of furniture back into place with your foot). As soon as I was in range, I punched the guy in black square in the face. He stumbled back a few steps, and now that Bret’s arms were free and it was a fair fight the guy in orange stood up and cleared out. I took a few steps forward and swung again at the guy in black. He threw his arms up to protect his face from a second blow and then took several huge running strides back and reconnected with the kid in orange. The two of them started sprinting away down the street, but not before one of them (I don’t remember which) turned around to yell “New Orleans” at me… what a retarded thing to yell as you run away from a fight. Did he think he was “repping New Orleans” or something? And keep in mind this is as hes RUNNING AWAY. How do try and act like a tough guy while simultaneously running off like a chicken shit? Idiots. Anyway, after a little effort everyone regrouped and headed back to Bret’s where Elliot was taken care of, since he was now dazed and bleeding from the head. As we debated whether or not Elliot needed to go to the hospital, three cop cars pulled up outside the bar, which was visible from Bret’s front porch. It was at this point that i found out what had caused the fight in the first place. Bret’s friend who was thrown out of the bar started the wholoe thing when, i kid you not, he called the guy in orange a fag because his car alarm was going off. A car alarm? Car alarm?! Elliot got his head knocked and i punched someone in the face over a car alarm?! Of all the fucking stupid things to fight over i think this has to be one of the dumbest ive ever heard. The last time i hit somebody without gloves on and not in a gym was 10 years ago (I was 12). Since then people have done plenty of shit to me or around me that they deserved to get hit for, but i always let it slide. Now i hit someone in the face over a car alarm? Thinking about that put me over the edge and i decided just to stay quiet for a while, the alternative being to blow up and scream my head off at how ridiculous the entire situation was. Ultimately, we decided Elliot didnt have to go to the hospital, the bleeding having stopped almost entirely. We kept him awake just in case he had a concussion and the night ended with us watching a vampire movie and trying to remember everything that had happened.

So, our time in New Orleans ended in a crazy manner. But then again, it seemed appropriate. Our visit had been full of craziness and we had basically been given the kind of New Orleans experience that one might want but at the same time not want. A raucous, inebriated blur filled with drinking, gambling, and fighting.

Sounds damn near perfect when you think about it.

-jason

Ok so its been a really long time since we posted any significant material. So, i guess this post will be functional more than anything else, just to get caught up to date and move on.

We left San Jose and went to Vasilia, CA to catch the octopus project in concert that night. They actually remembered us from the lollapalooza interview and were super nice. We spoke to Josh and Yvonne for a pretty long while, and when we told them we were going to Austin, they gave us a list of things to do and said to call them if we needed anything. The show was amazing and i got the whole thing on film. Yvonne let me play her theremin. All in all, an awesome night and around 1am we started the drive towards monument valley (10+ hours).

Let me just say that monument valley and the navajo reservation in general is one of the most depressing things ive ever seen. The landscape is beautiful and looks exactly the same as in all the John Ford westerns. But the people… the poverty, desperation, it was a lot to handle. Every time we would arrive at a scenic spot there would be some people selling poorly made jewelry or other trinkets, which no one bought (also, it was exactly the same stuff at every vendor). There was a sign at John Ford’s Point advertising “$2.00 for photo on horse) with this tired old horse being sat on hundreds of times a day in front of what was supposed to be one of the best spots in the park. It was pretty distracting, to say the least. On the way there, we saw a series of signs leading up to a “trading post” that said “Friendly Indians… Nice Indians… jewelry, souvenirs”. Nice Indians? That left me a little baffled. The worst by far however was this little ramshackle stand on the outskirts of monument valley. A blue stand with a big yellow sign that read “Sacred Monument Horse Tour” and featured info about paying to visit this sacred sight, complete with visa and mastercard logos indicating they accepteed those credit cards… in exchange for visiting their sacred monument… this just seemed really wrong for a number of reasons. We had planned to stay the night but decided against it because the place was too depressing, not to mention that the campground where we would be tenting was surrounded by buildings with barred up windows. Generally if people need to use iron bars to keep people out of their businesses and homes it doesnt seem like a good idea to be unconscious inside a thin piece of plastic in the middle of the night.

We left and headed for Carlsbad Caverns, stopping to sleep in Albuqurque at a motel that smelled like a mix of stale smoke and urine. We left the next morning and made it to Carlsbad and we saw the Caverns the next day. All in all it was pretty boring, though to be fair we didnt get to go caving inside the better parts of the cave because they only offered those tours on saturday and it was sunday. That night we saw the bats leaving out of the cave mouth at dusk which was pretty cool. We left for Texas the next day.

The drive across west Texas seemed like it took forever but i guess it really wasnt that bad. Just the monotony of the landscape makes it boring and tiresome. We got to Dallas and stayed with my friend David for a few days, in which we drank beer, watched the olympics, relaxed, read comic books and ate real food. HIs parents took us to Fogo de Chao, an unbelievably nice brazilian restaurant, and i can honestly say it was probably the best meal of my life. We saw Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, and that was really morbid and weird (I dont know what i was expecting though). The conspiracy theorists were out selling their dvds and stuff and some actually had interesting and worthwhile info. Others however, were just bat shit crazy. Dallas didnt have much else to offer as its primarily a business town, but the visit was incredibly enjoyable. So, thanks to David and his parents for being so nice to us and letting us mooch off of them for 3 days.

We hit Austin next and spent a few days there doing things off the list that Josh and Yvonne from the octopus project had provided us with. Saw a concert, ate Tex-Mex, saw the bats flying out from under the Congress Bridge, visited the natural springs. The list was concise and excellent, a great bit of advise from locals on what to see and not see. The one time i didnt listen to them we payed for it… we were told to avoid east 6th street but we went to go see a movie there anyway. When we went into the movie, everything was normal. When we came out, it looked like there had been a spontaneous decision to hold Mardi Gras tonight and in Austin, entirely localized on this one street. There were drunk people and mounted police filling the streets (i saw a man with a blow up sex doll standing in the middle of the road) and we had to wait for the crowd to thin out before we could leave. When i finally managed to get my car out of the parking spot, i had to weave through drunk people at 3mph, while some drunk guy followed behing me banging on my trunk. Thats what you get for not listening to the advise of locals (i cant stress enough how useful of a resource this is, as our travel guide book has let us down many, many times). Austin is definitely one of the best spots we visited so far and a place i will definitely be going back to in the near future.

We hit San Antonio the next day and it sucked pretty bad. Granted we only saw the touristy downtown stuff, but even that was bad compared to other touristy downtown stuff in other cities. After leaving downtown, we headed out to the suburbs and saw the hospital where i was born. That was kind of weird, but interesting also i guess.

We left that night for New Orleans, having found out that our friend Bret was actually in town and we would be able to stay with him. We’re still in New Orleans and have been doing the various things this city has to offer for the last 2 days (eating po boys, getting very drunk, visiting Bourbon Street, going to spots frequented by Tulane kids). Last night we went to Harrah’s Casino and i lost $150 playing blackjack. In retrospect i couldnt believe myself. As strapped for cash as i am, i threw away all that money. Earlier in the trip i ate nothing but hard boiled eggs and pb&j for three days to save about $20. Now i threw away $150 in an hour and a half on nothing. This addictive personality of mine gets the better of me sometimes and even having lost all that money i sat there and thought to myself that i should take my last $50 and try to win my money back. I think that me and gambling dont mix well. So no more gambling for me… at least until the next time someone suggests going to the casino. So now its Thursday the 28th and everyone here in New Orleans is preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Gustov. Today is one day before the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its weird to think about what happened here and what could happen again come Monday. Driving around here, there are still some remnants of Katrina, some houses still bearing their spray painted symbols inidcating the number of dead inside when people finally came to help. The mood here is strange, kids are making their exit plans, and Elliot and I are sort of glad to be leaving when we are. I think I may have a stomach flu, my two day nausea and headache leading me to believe that thats the case. Hopefully it clears up on its own. We have our last day in New Orleans today to do all the debaucherous shit we can handle, then off to St. Louis tomorrow for a Ratatat concert. All is well relatively, the trip is winding down in a way (Elliot only has one week left) and we’re just trying to make the best of everything. Thank you to Bret for letting us stay with him, and also for keeping us pretty much constantly inebriated.

That’s all for now. Hope the recap was a worthwhile read.

-jason.

recap too difficult. days fun. trip fun. tired. don’t know if im still human. my life is better than yours. in new orleans staying w brett. byebye

We had to make up for a pretty long stretch of time in the last blog post, and consequently we missed a lot of little things. So I’ve decided to provide a quick bullet point list of some of the highlights and better details. Here goes:

-The campground we stayed at on the first night in Yellowstone charged us to take a shower. It was $3.50. Each.

-Elliot had a profound experience while we were in the woods: shitting in a hole in the ground while scared to death of bear attacks, with toilet paper in one hand and bear mace in the other, while it was raining. He really had to evaluate what place he was at in his life.

-Direct quote from me: “Let’s splurge a little tonight and stay at a Holiday Inn”. This would be funnier if I wasn’t serious at the time… no, that makes it even funnier. This is a testament to our hobo lifestyle.

-The York Hotel where scenes of the movie “Vertigo” were filmed is being renamed “The Vertigo Hotel”, to join the ranks of Fisherman’s wharf and chowder in a bread bowl as the biggest touristy wastes of time in San Francisco. Sad. But hey, I guess that’s progress.

-We had been in San Francisco for less than 10 minutes when a bird took an enormous shit on my windshield, about one inch out of reach of the wiper blades… it was that kind of morning.

-We didn’t realize that the Gumball 3000 (see here for explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumball_3000#2008) was going to be in San Francisco when we arrived. We traded in bikers for douche bags in gaudy Ferraris with gonorrhea infested my size Barbies on the hood. We got a raw deal on that one.

-The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a pretty amazing place (one of my favorites so far). The aquarium is on “Cannery Row”, the same one of John Steinbeck fame. The building that used to be the sardine packing plant is now a strip mall (insert pithy remark), complete with Reebok factory outlet store, McDonalds, and a place called “First Awakenings” where we ate breakfast. Much to my dismay, Rachel Ray’s photo hung behind the counter with a note marking this place as one of her “$40 a day” selections (bitch doesn’t tip, that’s how she affords to eat at these places. I’m living on $15/day, I do tip. This was the only meal I could afford that day. And I even went over budget.) First Awakenings also employed one of the biggest douches I have ever seen, in the form of some nauseously cheery blond High Schooler in a blue Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. His constant shit eating grin made me want to punch him in the face, but his complete job satisfaction in this shit hole is what made me hate him. When Elliot asked to throw away a piece of paper behind the counter and his reply was “Let’s see if you can make it from there, slugger” (ok, I added the word “slugger”) this was just beating a dead horse. I guess I was still stuck in the mode of thinking that Cannery Row was the setting for one of America’s great novels, or at least a novel by one of its great classic novelists. Instead I found the same shit that everything everywhere is turning into (Buy N’ Large, WALL-E you were right!) and maybe the biggest surprise was that I was surprised about the whole thing. But hey, I guess that’s progress…

-Direct quote from Elliot in San Francisco: “This place is so… gay…” To be fair, we were in Castro at the time, the gay district of San Francisco, and there were enormous rainbow flags everywhere. We both liked the city as a whole, and the gay comment wasn’t a reflection on the city in any way other than the represented sexual preferences of its people. But yeah, in that way, it was pretty gay.

-I saw Rodin’s “The Thinker” and decided it was a piece of shit. Rodin isn’t even a very good sculptor (if you want my detailed explanation why, ask me). This is one of the most famous sculptures of all time and I thought it sucked. Famous art does not equal good art. Although the Frida Kahlo exhibit we saw the next day was pretty amazing.

-Hannah Choe was a wonderful host. She showed us around and with the exception of a few restaurants being closed and the Egyptian Museum (which was Lonely Planet’s idea anyway) we had a great time. Also, thanks to Yong for letting us crash at his place.

That’s the end of that chapter.

-jason.

(Next will be new material including the most depressing blog post yet)

yo. currently caught in traffic because of a ridiculous truck fire so i thought i’d catch up on this blog.
ooook so lets see…today is the 15th and our last post covered up till the 5th…. So what’s happened since then? a lot. so we camped at a campground in yellowstone national park the day after the puggle story and that went well enough. we got to drive around the park and see some beautiful scenery and animals like deer, bison, elk, coyote, and a bald eagle. then the next day, on the 7th, is when the trip took a turn for the worse….like the ground opened up below us and swallowed us into the fiery chasms of hell. like every window in the house suddenly imploding in slow motion sending you gored and flying limply into a wall neck first. so what happened? well we pretty much decided to go camping into the backwoods of yellowstone. sounds nice enough right? wrong. the guy who booked our campsite for us was apparently an expert hiker of some sort and decided to send us to his “favorite spot” aka the most highly frequented grizzly bear area in yellowstone (thanks a million Volunteer Park Ranger Maclam). as if i wasn’t terrified enough, we were given several pamphlets saying that the place we were headed was so highly frequented by bears that we should assume they are in very close vicinity even when we can’t see them. so picture this: us hiking with backpacks equal to the weight of two midgets(very.very.heavy.) on tough terrain and being absolutely terrified the entire time. whenever jason led it was like watching a clint eastwood western due to the fact that one hand was always on his bear mace that hung at his side. oh yea, we each bought a can of bear mace ($45 each), it’s apparently more effective than a gun against bears and works exactly how it sounds.

so on this hike we are clapping and yelling “yoooooooo” and whatever else we can think of to scare bears off of the trail ahead of us. apparently, the majority of bear attacks occur because a person will sneak up on a bear accidentally leading to a surprised and unhappy bear. so after our 5+ hour hike of yelling and clapping we finally get to our campsite. now i’m no primadonna and i’m certainly no little pampered b*@T(H but that place sucked BALLS. i don’t know what exactly i was expecting…ok maybe i do…a nice big tree i can sit under and relax while reading a book or perhaps sit in meditative silence and enjoy nature….what i got? a tiny desolate patch of land with one tree that we were to use to hang up our food. oh yes. another bear fact = you have to hang up your food really high on a tree at all times unless you’re using it because it WILL attract bears. we were also not allowed to make a fire at that campsite for god knows why. the constant threat of bears as well as starvation and exhaustion was starting to wear on our spirits so we decided to cheer ourselves up by fishing by the lake and catching some dinner. so we go to the lake and wade in and……lo and behold our fishing rods break along with our spirits. we sit down on the shore and jason starts to go into a tirade that sounded something like this: “this whole thing SUCKS, there’s mosquitoes EVERYWHERE, it’s gonna RAIN, we can’t CATCH ANYTHING..” then he abruptly stops because he suddenly notices the 3 enormous leeches stuck to his feet. HAHAHA. sorry, i guess it’s funny now that i’m in an air conditioned car eating oreos.

anyways, we pretty much decided on the spot that although we were planning on spending two nights out there that we were hauling ass and getting out of there first thing in the morning. so we decided to eat our cans of campbell chicken soup and get to bed. of course things didn’t work out as planned (seeing the pattern yet?). jason had bought some water purification tablets that we used on the lake water and i guess it worked even though it tasted like pool water. so we used this water on our campbell soup….unfortunately it had some fucked up reaction with the metal can that the soup was in and the water turned black. mmmm nothing like having black chicken soup. after eating we had to wash our dishes away from our campsite because that will also attract bears and that was probably when my fear of bears reached its pinnacle. something about washing dishes in dead dark except for a tiny little lamp in the middle of nowhere with bears looming ready to eat me bc i smell like chicken soup really scared me. so we finally finish washing the dishes and hang up our stuff in a tree and get into our tent. then it starts to rain. we were pondering earlier in the day whether the tent was waterproof or not. it wasn’t. i was fed up at that point and just went to sleep while jason was taping garbage bags on the inside of our tent. about 5 minutes after i fall asleep i suddenly wake up screaming “YOOOOOOOOO”. i guess even in dead sleep my body wanted to ward off those damned bears. so we wake up the next morning and ate nothing but a granola bar or two and hauled ass out of there. i don’t know if it was bc we were so weak from not eating or the constant wear of fear on our bodies…probably a culmination of everything…but that hike back was about 10x harder. to be fair, the place we were hiking along was beautiful and we hit some really magical spots..we also caught a bald eagle in full flight so that was amazing too…of course its hard to enjoy these things to the fullest when you half expect a bear to jump out of a bush and maul your face.

anyway on the way back we ran into a yellowstone patrol officer on the trail and she asked us some questions about our camera and layed down the law by saying that we needed a permit to use any of  the stuff we filmed inside of the park. she let us keep our footage luckily but we just can’t use it for our documentary anymore. yea…i know. so we FINALLY get back to our car, unshowered, with possible spinal damage from the weight of our packs, black water in our bellies, over 20 mosquito bites on each limb, and completely shot nerves from bears. naturally, i immediately pound a delicious cold beer from the cooler in our car… best. beer. ever. with that horrifying episode over we decide to just head straight for san francisco. as soon as we got out of the park we decided to make a stop at a pizza/pc lan store owned by europeans in montana. it was pretty surreal to be eating pizza with a bunch of chinese tourists while watching the opening ceremonies of the olympics(awesome) and doodling on a computer when only hours earlier we were worried about getting mauled by bears.

so from there we drove overnight to san francisco and boy was that a journey in itself(12+ hour drive). we still hadn’t showered at this point since before our hike into the backwoods so we were dirty as hell..all i can say is red bull and cigarettes go a long way. we finally got into san francisco that morning and drove around a bit before deciding we would get a place to stay in san jose for the night. we did so and got really drunk in the hotel as a sort of convalescence if you will. i felt like a king in my hotel room with things like alcohol, shower, bed, tv…man it was great. so the next day we checked out and headed to jason’s friend hannah’s house. we split up our time between there and san francisco for about a week. in that time we checked out several spots, haight being my favorite, where we bumped heads with travis mccoy of gym class heroes and keith buckley of every time i die. random. the things worth mentioning in this time are the awesome aquarium we went to, numerous museums, some better than others (frida kahlo exhibit > egyptian museum). that’s all obviously in a nutshell but it was nice, we drank a lot, explored a lot and basically just got our heads on straight again after the whole yellowstone fiasco. today is the 15th and we effectively left this morning…we would’ve left yesterday if the car hadn’t died, got towed, and gotten a new starter ($500+)…ouch jason’s wallet.  we’re now currently in the car headed for vasilia where we’re going to see the octopus project again for only 5 bucks. awesoome. i am eating oreos and candy while typing this post and i’m still stuck in this horrible traffic after this ridiculously long blog. ok so i guess that pretty much catches up everything.

-el

(written on 15th, posted on 17th)

After the tornado scare (see previous post) the rest of the drive wasn’t horrible, and we made it to South Dakota with relative ease by driving through the night. Since I’m generally the sleepless one, I usually do the graveyard shift driving (let’s say, from 4am-9am or so). When you drive at this time you get to appreciate things like the sunrise, which I’m never, ever awake for in normal life. Driving due west also means that the sun rises directly behind you, and seeing it in the rearview mirror gave me a satisfying feeling, but I can’t figure out why.

Our plan was to roll into Rapid City, SD and maybe unwind for a few hours, maybe spend the night and then drive the other 7 or so hours to Yellowstone. Well plans changed when we got to Rapid City and there was actually nothing there. I guess I was expecting Rapid City to be, I dunno, a city? But as far as I could tell there were just farms, farm equipment shops, and weird little tourist sites. I made an executive decision that we would keep driving.

Then there were the bikers. What we were only vaguely aware of when heading towards SD is that this week was Sturgis Biker Week, where thousands of bikers meet up in Sturgis, SD for a week-long motorcycle festival (lonely planet says up to half a million bikers may attend Sturgis each year). This meant that there were bikers everywhere. Everywhere. I’ve definitely never seen so much leather chaps or man-ponytails in my life. And they gave me a little bit of an uneasy feeling. I guess I really don’t know much about bikers, just what tv teaches you, so I had mixed feelings of curiosity and fear. I kept my distance for the most part, not that any of them wanted anything to do with me anyway since I drove a car with New York plates. I cant stress enough the alienation that this brings, people really seem to react negatively. Maybe like wearing a swastika in a synagogue. No, not really. More like wearing a huge confederate flag t shirt in New York (excluding upstate). It just marks you as that kind of person, take that as you will.

Now, lemme tell you ‘bout Cody, Wyoming. Apparently this is a town where Buffalo Bill Cody hung out while he was in Wyoming, so they named the town after him at some point and turned it into the largest piece of crap tourist town I have ever seen. Complete with nightly rodeo, old fashioned trading post and “old west miniature village”, it was like Disneyland ate the movie Tombstone and then took an enormous shit in this spot. Old timey wooden buildings with neon store fronts made us both gag, and it was a relief to drive right through the place without stopping on the way to Yellowstone.

So, couple hours later we made it to Yellowstone and after buying park entrance the Ranger told us that the park was completely full (really, full? It’s a pretty big place, from what I understand…) and that we would have to stay somewhere else tonight. Unfortunately, the only town within about two hours of The Eastern Park Entrance is… yeah, Cody.

Balls.

We drove back into town and looked for a motel for the night. Unfortunately, the Sturgis bikers were really interested in hokey wild west towns and all the rooms everywhere were booked. All of them. But we didn’t discover this until after driving to about 15 motels and walking in to ask for rooms. After unsuccessfully trying the Holiday Inn (complete with cow skull behind the reception desk) we were both pissed off and tired. With no place to stay, nowhere to eat and no options we both agreed on one thing: we missed Chicago. Things there had been the sort of magical, wacky adventure I had wished for, but this was now the sort of stressful and wandering trip my more practical side had counted on. We both reiterated how much we wished we were still in Chicago until we were both sick of hearing it, then after struggling for another hour, we found a campsite outside of town and stayed there for the night. We ate at Subway, set up our tent and tried to sleep.

Elliot fell asleep pretty quickly, but I was feeling restless as usual and stayed awake for a while. In the middle of the night, a car pulled up to the tent site next to ours and a man and woman, who sounded married and middle aged, got out of the car and started to set up a tent. I never actually saw them, but it was pretty easy to get an idea of what they were like and what was going on from the noise they were making. The two of them had come camping, brought their two dogs and were now struggling with the difficulties of dealing with both of those things at once. The dogs (there were 2 of them) were pretty upset, after having been dragged to an unfamiliar location and then made to sleep in the car while the two people slept in their tent.

“Be quiet!! Dogs, shut up!! Shut. Up!” the woman yelled at the dogs in one of those whisper yells that clearly showed she wanted to frighten the dogs into listening to her, but not embarrass herself in front of her new camping neighbors (i.e. us). The two dogs kept on barking, and the woman lost her temper after awhile. Then she opened the car door, rustled about for a second, and screamed:

“I’M GOING TO BEAT YOU, PUGGLE!!”

…at the time I found this to be pretty hilarious, and I laughed about it again later when I recounted the story to Elliot. I mean, the whole thing was absurd as hell, and to cap it off with such a ridiculous exclamation was just too funny. And puggle? Basically the funniest dog breed name it could have been, except for maybe “labradoodle”.

But later on I started feeling kind of bad. After all, it wasn’t the dog’s fault that it was so upset. What did the woman expect? She takes it to the middle of nowhere and leaves it locked in the car, while she and her husband sleep in a tent about 5 feet away, teasing the dog with the prospective comfort of its owners company. Not only that, but even the funniest part of the whole thing, the fact that she had called it “puggle” was kind of sad too. She hadn’t even used the dog’s name, kind of reducing it to a blanket concept, or even a thing. It was like when a pimp yells at a hooker “Ima slap you, bitch!”. He doesn’t use her name, he calls her bitch to make it less personal, so it’ll be easier to actually go through with the threat when the time comes. This made me think that she was the type of person who would actually beat a dog, and I felt bad for this thing that I now felt kind of close to, even though I had only heard it, not seen it. I thought about all the things I maybe should have done, stepped in and told the woman to shut the hell up, that dogs don’t speak English but I definitely do so she was really just bothering me and not them. That it was her fault and she shouldn’t be mad at them. Just completely bitch her out, loud enough for everyone around us to hear. And then I would insult her by calling her “old lady” or even better yet “you bitch” or the even more unlikely but satisfying “you old bitch”. That way when I thought about the whole thing later I wouldn’t feel bad about it, because she would be, to me, just some old bitch.

-jason

(as if it wasnt obvious, this was me trying to be david sedaris. anyway, next time: Yellowstone.)

Fortunes certainly do change quickly. The last time we posted was about 5 days ago and things were going gangbusters. That is to say, we were having the best goddamn time of our lives. But then again, when you’re drinking free alcohol with Perry Farrell and seeing Radiohead and Broken Social Scene (and Girl Talk and Octopus Project and etc.) play for free its hard to not to be having an unbelievable time. And at the time it had all seemed too easy. A couple of carefully placed half-truths had earned us backstage access at one of the biggest festivals in America, doing things we formerly only wished we could do. “It can’t be this easy” was the mantra of the day. We joked back and forth that such good luck couldn’t last forever, karma would have to bite us in the ass eventually, and we would pay big time for having so much good fortune.

Sometimes it sucks to be so right…

We left Chicago on Monday afternoon heading towards Yellowstone National Park, which is in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The total drive is about 21 hours or so and we decided we would stop about half way in South Dakota and pick up the rest of the trip the next day. But before we could even get out of Illinois, Elliot and I noticed that the sky was starting to look strange. The color was a sickly sea foam sort of green, the kind of color you’re generally warned about in Earth Science class as a clear sign that the shit is about to go down. Thinking nothing of it, we drove on anyway. Then the rain started, first as a light shower. Then in sheets. Then in sheets blown sideways by the wind so thick that we could only see about 10 feet in front of the car. I noticed that a road sign nearby was shaking violently, more or less being ripped loose from its bolts. Then the wind picked up even more, and all I kept thinking of was that flying cow from the movie Twister and trying to remember all of the tornado survival skills I had picked up from tv (never stop under a bridge, lay in a ditch if you’re caught on the highway, an oncoming tornado sounds like a freight train barreling down on you).

At this point it seemed pretty obvious to get off the highway, so we pulled off into a truck stop and hid out inside. People had already started gathering inside the truck stop and there were maybe 15 or so of them sitting around when we walked in. The tv was playing the local weather, describing the current tornado warning in effect in the county which we happened to be in. They advised that the warning would be over in about 30 minutes or so, so we got comfortable and tried to wait it out. The tv then switched back to what had been on before the breaking weather bulletin, which happened to be American Gladiators (as if this situation needed to get any worse).

I started to get antsy as I usually do, so I decided to look around at the various products in the truck stop. A lot of the time these kind of places have some super wacky stuff, so I was pretty excited to venture around. I walked passed a Dale Earnhart Jr. commemorative clock and a pastel picture of Jesus with a light-up frame and sort of met eyes with a guy who was standing in the middle of the aisle. Since this was middle America, I took it that he would probably be friendly, considering that’s the going stereotype as I understand it (you know, New Yorkers are interesting but assholes, middle of the country folk are nice but boring). I looked up at him again, having diverted my gaze away from him earlier since eye contact with strangers is weird for me (another New York thing). Thinking it might be nice to kill some time talking to somebody, and the weather naturally being a relatable topic, I said to him

“Some crazy shit outside, huh?”

…

No answer. In fact, not only did he not answer, but he glared at me as if I had just punched his pregnant wife in the stomach. Maybe I just gave off that New York vibe that people seem to hate in those parts. Maybe he was just a dick. I don’t know, but in any case, lesson learned- follow the old New York adage: walk fast, look down at the floor and under no circumstance unless absolutely necessary do you talk to anyone you don’t know.

The rain kept on coming and the lighnting got progressvily heavier ( my dad would later tell me that he heard on the news there were over 100 strikes per hour). The wind passing under the awning for the gas pumps howled in that clichéd scary movie way, and it actually kind of freaked me out. Then the power went out. Just for a few seconds, but it made me really nervous. I wandered around the store again, this time looking for the best places to hide when the tornado ran us over (I think it was the “trucker’s only” tv lounge). I imagined what it would be like climbing out of the rubble, arm torn off at the shoulder but still cursing myself for having survived when so many of the other people didn’t make it (in your doom fantasies you never take into account the idea that you might be one of those people…)

I tried to look calm on the outside and was managing to do a decent job while I practiced my survivor’s speech in my head. We killed the rest of the time by staring out the window or playing arcade games. The rain lightened up, we got back in the car and kept driving. Behind the storm clouds, the sun had been setting and it was visible now, with the expansive nothingness of farm country revealing more of the sunset than I usually get to see. Then Elliot pointed out that there was a full rainbow to our right. A complete arch which, when you think about it, is something you don’t see too often outside of post cards and Lisa Frank trapper keepers. It was kind of nice, and I tried to take it as a sign (as little as I believe in that sort of thing) that hard times were over and it would be smooth sailing again, just like Chicago.

Sometimes, it sucks to be so fucking wrong…

-jason

(next entry: Sturgis Biker Week, the worst wild west town in the world, car troubles, and the absolute terror that was Yellowstone National Park.)

so we never made it back to our hotel or the bss show after lolla last night cause we opted for chicago night life. sweaty, dancing, loud music. stayed w alexs friend and woke up this morning w super hangover and headed back to lolla. greaaaat day to say the least. mark ronson probably impressed me the most…or maybe girl talk…who knows. i’m on a sonic high right now, tooooo much good stuff has been hitting my ear drums in a stream this weekend. feeling inspired. gonna get some drinks and play with some programs, hope everyones having good days. pz

-elliot

i figured this trip would probably be a test of wills, mostly in terms of operating on little to no sleep, food, or energy. well, yeah… day three of lolla was the trial by fire on those points. elliot already mentioned the drinking, the hangovers… i myself only caught about 2 hours of sleep and almost crashed and burned at the festival today until i napped on the lawn (an activity, which, i assume will be very repetitive on this trip) before seeing brazilian girls. highlights on the day? im looking over my pictures and the things worth mentioning are as follows: seeing the octopus project perfrom in all their wonderous glory, getting down to chromeo, gregg gillis (aka girl talk) rocking one of my bandanas (the picture is a MUST SEE, made me so happy, and i’ll share it as soon as i figure out a way to conveniently upload photos either here or elsewhere), me losing elliot in the girl talk mob and freaking out about not being able to find him, and hating on kanye. sure, his light show was impressive (you may remember the bonnaroo fiasco) but his set was lame and he’s a wack mc. he’s the guy i loved to hate. and it was great… though his sunglasses were pretty awesome (the fact that his eyewear was the most impressive part of the performance says a lot, i think). well, to sum it up lolla weekend was almost surreal, and its definitely set the bar high for thr rest of the trip. many side notes and anecdotes later, i wrap up this weekends story, for now at least. im not quite sober and i plan on being less so before cleaning two days worth of grant park filth off of me and heading to bed. more to come soon, probably more details about the weekend which i will write up while im sitting in the car on the 1000+ mile drive to wyoming. thats all for now though…

-jason.